Cheery Cheesy Cheeky Romance Hoers Words

Chapters

Like Valentine's but with hooves and stuff, I guess
Time to make a move!
The "but she is a horse!" part
And to Canterlot we went, no clue why. Her idea.
The Stone of the Griffon?
The aftermath... wait, what happened!?
Different (Extra)

Like Valentine's but with hooves and stuff, I guess

I have been living here for a few months already. This is a curious place inhabited by relatively small equines coming in a variety of colors, some of them have wings, other have cute little horns, like miniature unicorns, and other are quite plain without any other feature. There are many other creatures, but they are rare to see around here, so I assume they are not locals.

It took me about four months to start speaking (or more accurately singing) their language. It’s the most curious of things, despite having radically different biology and emitting completely different sounds, a fair number of creatures from this place understand each other. The key is that they use pitch variation, intonation and rhythm to express words, phrases and all kind of information. One of the most fascinating side effects of this is that improvised spontaneous music numbers involving several ponies, even completely strangers, are common. You see, you only have to know about what they are singing about, join in and only speak your own mind in the issue, adding a little bit of extra flourishes here and there and playing along, and boom… you are part of an improvised musical number.

Four months may look like a small amount of time to learn a completely foreign and alien language, but truth be told, it is an easy language, how easy you may ask? Well… it’s the student’s dream. Verbs are extremely predictable and easy to form, no irregulars, always the base verb plus a specific prefix or suffix. Prepositions are straightforward, grammar is almost nonexistent and easy to learn. Overall, it looks like an artificial language specifically designed to be easy. It reminds me of Esperanto, but made out of rhythms and pitch variations. To the untrained ear, it sounds as if the creatures are singing in their own voices and calls. For example, ponies neigh, snort and whinny, but following those musical patterns. The little I have investigated about the subject tells me that it is actually a successfully designed and implemented artificial language they call “Common Harmonic”, a feat that only an immortal and dedicated leader may be able to achieve trough generations of influence and teaching. I’m not totally sure, but I believe their leaders, Sky Princess and Moon Princess are incredibly old, so this theory is quite plausible, I have to investigate more.

The only difficulty I have encountered learning their language is to get used to the music, it’s extremely difficult at the beginning to even realize that the pieces of information are in the song and not the articulation of sounds like humans do. Then, you have to be good at singing, and I was not, but a whole cultural immersion in this place did wonders over the months. I ended up sometimes literally singing the words, saying them in plain English but adding the tune and rhythm to it when I’m able to match them, and as a mnemonic rule it’s been working nicely. Some ponies find my “voice” extremely rare and fascinating.

These little equines are as tall as my waist on all fours and should weight a little bit more than half the weight of a regular person, the males maybe a little bit more. Of course, there are exceptions. There is a family of farmers and one of them is gigantic… and also red, so it…HE stands out a lot.

To the point, I have been in this place for a relatively long time now. I can, more or less speak their language fluently, give or take a few rare words and some cultural misunderstandings of the context and second meanings… I hate those… some have been really awkward and embarrassing.

One of the local leaders took me to her plastic… I mean… exotic gem-crystal castle and let me stay in a room for a while, Sunset Glint I believe it’s her official name in Harmonic, but I gave her the nickname of “Purplesmart” because she is kind of purple and seems like she is a scholar. She has both a horn and wings, so, that makes her some kind of leader.

Purplesmart took me to a school teacher mare named… some weird variation of “Cheerleader” in Harmonic. I gave her the nickname “Cheery” in my head, and ended up calling her just “Cheer-cheer”.

But don’t worry, I got a taste of my own medicine, because they can’t pronounce my human name and somepony thought it would be hilarious to call me “Smartypants” because I am kind of smart and I always wear pants and before I could stop her, the damage was already done.

I hate you, little Gay-Pride-Float…

Okay… back to the point…

I have been living in that castle for a while, but I eventually decided that I should get a real job, a place to live and just stop being a dead weight in the hooves of Purplesmart… I was mildly successful looking for a source of income, but nothing stable or reliable. Most ponies hired me because they were curious or thought I was suitable for some weird activity…

Talking about weird activities… the first weeks in this place I made the mistake of thinking of these creatures as relatively intelligent animals, so I gave them a few pets and ear scratches. Somehow they enjoyed it and now, one of my most reliable jobs is at the local spa… petting ponies…

It’s relaxing… and they pay, so I try not to think too much about it.

I can’t afford rent or buying a house for myself, saving up the pieces of gold (yes, gold pieces, or gold fragments, or gold little bits, as they call them in Harmonic, literal translations are difficult sometimes…) to buy an actual house would take me years. So I ended up in the only place I could crash to get away from the experiments and investigations from the curious purple menac… I mean, to become independent and a productive member of this society…

Cheer-cheer’s house.

It all began when Purplesmart took me to Cheer’s house to learn the language. It was awkward at the beginning, but we ended up becoming good friends. She tells me about her stuff and I tell her about mine and we have a laugh… If Purplesmart comes back, we just tell her that we are doing “cultural exchange” and that seems to please her, so she leaves us to our own devices.

Once, I stayed at Cheer’s house overnight because Purplesmart had some business to do and didn’t trust me enough to leave me alone. Girls here (mares, I suppose, since they are horses…) are kind of… how to describe… well, maybe with an example.

When I was staying at Cheer’s house, I of course took the sofa to leave her the bed, and she immediately tried to make ME take the bed. First I thought she was being polite, but after some polite argument she started to be more aggressive with the negotiation, saying things like “no boy is going to take the sofa while I’m comfortably sleeping in a bed.” So, you get the idea…

How aggressive the argument became may you ask?

Well, we ended up wrestling over who would take the sofa. I was completely confident that such a cute little thing wouldn’t be able to drag me away… how wrong I was… Under that colorful, soft, fluffy fur lies a layer of muscles made out of steel, I swear… Don’t get fooled by their appearance, those ponies, especially the ones without horn or wings are STRONG… for their size.

The thing is that, despite her strength… ponies are not very big, hooves are not very good at grabbing and they tend to slip on smooth surfaces like the wooden tiled floor. Using my wits, superior limb reach and grabby hands I was able to remain on top of the sofa, but at the same time I was unable to remove her from it, so we ended up in a tangled mess waiting for the other to get uncomfortable, and surrender.

The sun dawned on us…

We both ended up with a poor night of sleep the backache of the century and a perfectly fine and empty bed nearby.

Cheer-cheer was mortified and chastised herself saying that she was an idiot who couldn’t even treat a boy properly, but I cheered her up telling that the whole situation was kind of stupid. So, you get the idea, girls here treat me like a lady while boys are kind of girlish, with exceptions of course, and in a sense of a very wide, generalized and stereotyped vision. I’m only using those terms to make the reference, of course I believe in equality, but the fun part is that this society has (or used to have) kind of the same sexist problem as human society, but reversed. They work hard to hide it, but from time to time, it shows.

Well, back to the story at hand…

I ended up renting a room in Cheery’s house. I was kind of amazed at how welcoming she was. The moment I told her, she literally scrambled to get everything ready.

I made sure I had the money to buy a basic bed before… just in case.

It was a shot in the dark, more like asking for information; I wanted to know if she knew anyone who was renting. I knew she was not because she doesn’t have a lot of space due to the biggest room in the building being the classroom, and the rest of the place is a little thing hidden behind the schoolhouse.

She offered me to stay in her own room, but I refused. I also refused to make of the living room my quarters, it was the biggest living space in the house and it felt wrong. I ended up taking a little storage room where she used to store some of the school material she wasn’t using at the moment. It is a small place, I can barely fit the bed and it has the tiniest of spaces to access it, it’s more like a big closet than an actual room, like a capsule hotel from Japan or something like that. I can sleep there and the only belongings I have are my hiking backpack with an assortment of human stuff and a bag of clothes, so I don’t need anything more at the moment.

She said that I could stay there for free, because it was not even a real room, but I haggled, and ended up negotiating a rent of forty pieces a month. It’s something symbolic and a practical joke, because their numbers are in base four and mine are in base ten, so it is as many as four tens… and that’s terrible.

So, that’s how we get to the present moment. I live here with her, that puts a little distance from Purplesmart, who still comes to check if everything is going according to her plan in a daily basis, but at least she can’t bring all her scientific equipment for some random test, or drag half the hospital staff for a biological experiment… Well, she actually can, but it is much more awkward and inconvenient for her, so she doesn’t do it as often as when I was living in her castle.

My day goes something like this: I wake up, have breakfast with Cheery, she goes to the school and I go around the town looking for something to do. If I’m lucky I find a little job for someone who needs something and I get some gold pieces as a tip, then I have lunch with the money and go to work part time at the spa, petting ponies… I get a reliable ten bits every day from the spa plus a few more if I’m lucky and find something else. I practice my Harmonic with the locals and grab a book from the school in order to learn some random thing and go back to my room to read a little until Cheer-cheer comes back from the school. We talk a little about our days, have dinner, Purplesmart visits exactly at the same time every evening, we tell her everything is fine, and go back to bed, rinse and repeat.

Princess Sky, Princes Moon and Purplesmart are investigating my origins, they are my last hope of returning home, but it may take years for them to discover something. I may end up stranded here for the rest of my life.
I got my own share of depression, loss and drama back then, but I think I’m getting better and over the months I have decided that I should try to learn about this world and adapt to it as best as I can. It’s a fascinating place, I might end up writing a book or something about it… my own adventure, for someone in the far future to discover…

Yeah, again I got derailed by my thoughts of home and need of feeling like I can make a difference after everything. But that is for another time, right now, I’m just having dinner in the empty living room, waiting for Cheery, who is late. Purplesmart already left after checking everything was alright.

Scrambled eggs with diced vegetables and some spices… I need to keep up my protein intake with the available produce, since ponies are vegetarian. The first pony I met, the one that rescued me from the forest brings me fresh fish from time to time, but it’s kind of a rare treat. Timid Wingbeat, or as I call her, Yellowings (she is kind of yellow, has wings and when I first encountered her I was in really bad condition, so I wasn’t very keen with her nickname.)

I had a bowl set up for Cheery, just in case. It’s been a few hours since her classes ended, but there is no trace of her. She might have gone shopping, to the bar to see her cousins or whatever.

…Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop… squeeeeeak… clip-clop-clip… squeeeaaa-bump…

There she is…

She comes into view, trotting with a little skip, wearing her trademark easy happy smile… and bags under her eyes… She inhales deeply and suddenly seems to literally deflate with a groan, her perky ears going floppy to the sides of her head and her whole body slumping down.

“One of those days?” I simply ask.

“…Like… you have no idea, Smarts…” Oh yeah… the nickname out of the nickname ponies gave me because they can’t pronounce my human name.

“Been a rough day with the foals?”

“Nah, they are adorable and deserve the best Cheerilee I can give them. It’s…” She starts, but pauses.

“Where have you been this evening?” I continue.

“To Berry’s place…”

“You have been to Berry Punch’s bar and didn’t tell me?”

“I can go wherever I want, I’m a grown mare and I don’t need to ask anypony’s permission…” She grumbles.

“Oh, boy… it’s worse than I thought… I just wanted to go with you, that’s all. Have you been drinking again?”

“None of your HIC… business…” There is an awkward pause after her hiccup.

“Okay… dinner’s ready.”

“Yeah… good stallion…” She mumbles while taking a good sniff at her bowl.

“Oh, my… and you are supposed to teach gender equality to the next genera…”

“I’m off duty and the foals aren’t here, so I can vent my life frustrations on you, okay?!” She cuts me off. “Um… sorry for that…”

“Don’t worry, I’m happy to help.” I reply with a smirk and for a moment I’m tempted to continue messing up with her, but something is clearly bugging her, so I stop myself.

Probably exhaustion, but by the way she is acting… Something must have happened. We eat our dinner in a relative awkward silence.

“So… how was your day?” I ask.

“Fine…” Sarcasm and not-fine-ness leaking from her stare. “And you?”

“The usual… Mayor Mare wants some help, so I got extra gold pieces for… decorating with more pink and hearts than usual, I suppose… I’m adapting so I don’t know why she would want that. And nobody is telling me.”

“Hearts and Hooves day is the day after tomorrow.” She informs me.

“What and what? What does that even mean?”

“No… not you too…” She groans and hits the table with her forehead.

“It’s something bad for you?” I innocently ask.

“No but… yes…”

“Care to explain?”

“Yes, I do care… I’m not in the mood…”

“You are supposed to be the one to explain me this kind of stuff, Cheer… Now I’m getting particularly curious about this horseshoe and… whatever.”
“Okay…” She lets her head rest on the table and looks miserably at me. “It’s a traditional celebration.” She informs me in an apathetic way. How she achieves that in the sing-songy Harmonic language is beyond me.

“What do you celebrate?”

“Love.” She simply states.

“Love?”

“Love…”

I stare at her a little puzzled. This ponies are always celebrating love, harmony, friendship… it’s part of their nature, so this festivity feels a little bit redundant.

“When two ponies love each other…” She gestures putting both hooves on the table and dragging them together.

“Oh… Ah! Now I get it! We have a similar celebration in my world. The day of the couples and love and… like love, love.” Well, in my defense I will say that the regular day feels a little bit like a Valentine’s day with all the pink and hearts. The fact that on top of that, these ponies STILL have the equivalent of a Valentine’s Day is kind of unexpected. Also, there is no direct translation for ‘Valentine’s’, so I will also go with that Hearts and Hooves stuff.

“Well, that’s fantastic, isn’t it? Do you have any plans for…”

“I’m single.” She abruptly interrupts me.

“… You seem angry about that…” I say after an awkward pause, trying to discover what got her in such a bad mood.

“I tend to become the butt of the joke… Everypony tries to find me a match.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” I try to see the bright side.

“It gets old pretty quickly… Even my students conspire to get me a partner.”

“Oh, well, that’s adorable.”

“Until they find a potion that controls your mind and forces you to fall in love with another unsuspecting pony that they have decided is your perfect match… It happened a couple of years ago. We required Twilight Sparkle’s help and a couple of weeks in the infirmary to detoxify any adverse residual magic…” She explains.

“Sunset… Gle… Oh, Purplesmart you say. Wow…”

“Indeed… And this year is no exception. Today I went to the bar to get some fresh air, and there I found out that Big Mac has found a marefriend.”

“Well, that’s fantastic news, aren’t they? Who is that… Big… what?”

“The red big farm pony. Actually, he is the one who those fillies tried to match me with and was the other victim of the potion.” She explains.

“Wait, wait, wait… And that bothers you? Is there any residual effect that makes you feel something for him?” I ask, concerned.

“No… Actually, I should feel happy for him, but…” She rests her chin on the table again.

“Are you jealous?”

“No…” She sighs.

“Then what’s going on?”

“Well, you see. He was one of those shy and weird stallions. Mares would gossip about him. He is actually pretty attractive, but he lacks the social abilities to find a mare. I found him nice and enjoyed the dates that the fillies set up us with, but I wasn’t interested in him either, we remained friends. The thing is that… well he found a partner before me… What does that say about me!?” She rants.

“Wow… that’s kind of…” I stop myself before saying something I might regret to my landlord… land… mare?

“Stupid, childish, selfish…” She ends the phrase for me.

“Okay, listen… you need to calm down. You are better than that, stop beating yourself.”

“We went to my cousin’s bar to relax, but she would pester me about having weird tastes about stallions, about… you living with me, like that meant something.” She continues.

“Yeah, I have been there too with you and had my own share of her shenanigans. We are good friends, that’s all, that’s why I want to live here, I’m an alien from another world after all, and you are the teacher who is helping me to adapt.”

“I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I decided to go there alone to avoid her jokes, but then she started to joke about Big Mac, and the fact that even him was able to find a marefriend and I wasn’t, and… and… Well, I kept myself under control, at least in public, but I wanted to go home, get drunk, crawl under my blankets and die…”

“As you told me… Objectively, the mare to stallion proportion is overwhelming, so Big Mac was bound to find a mare, whereas mares have it more difficult. It doesn’t say anything about you, Cheer-cheer.”

“I suppose you are right… but I still feel down.”

“The thing is that I don’t see any serious problems there, I don’t know why you are so affected by that.”

“It’s not anything in particular, it’s just this time of the year, I hate it, and it is always the same. A never ending stream of tiny things that day after day, in school, in the bar, my family, friends, outdoors, indoors, everywhere and all day long… It ends up getting into my nerves and…” She explains.

“Okay, I understand. It happened to me too from time to time back in my world.” I admitted to her. Then we just sat there in silence.

“And Hearts and Hooves day marks the start of the season…” She adds.

“The… what season?”

“The season…” She just mumbles, blushes slightly and looks away.

“Uh?”

“Nothing!” She smiles awkwardly.

Usually we get on well with each other; we joke around and learn stuff about our respective worlds. We drink together, in a responsible and moderate way; I do my part of the chores around the house so she won’t have to do everything… Sometimes I help her with her job. You see, I sometimes correct math exams for her; it is useful for me in order to practice some math in base four.

We clean up after dinner and she is ready to go sleep, but I stay on the couch and pat the seat near me in an inviting manner. She looks at me a little confused.

“Come here, I’ll give you a scratch behind the ears.” I offer.

“Whaa…? Really?” She tilts her head to one side in puzzlement.

“I don’t know, it seems to be relaxing, my clients at the spa love it, so I suppose that it would be nice for you.”

She has been my teacher for a few months, so, apart from the occasional wrestling match after drinking because of some stupid argument, we kept our distances. I don’t know, but petting my teacher felt kind of wrong, but right now, I was inclined to give it a try. After a little hesitation, she climbed the sofa and sat next to me.

“Oh…kay… Now what?” She asked.

“Oh… wait a minute, I’ll be right back.”

I made a beeline to the bathroom, washed my hands, went to her bedroom and grabbed a pillow, and then I brushed the pillow to get rid of any residual hairs and came back to the living room. Sitting back on the sofa, I put the pillow on my lap and patted its top to signal that I was ready. She watched the whole operation with mild curiosity and amusement. Finally she looked back at me and giggled.

“One must stay professional; I’ll let you know that I’m making a living out of this.” I said in an exaggerated professional tone.

“Okay, whatever you say…” She smiled. I accommodated her, guiding her hooves, letting her belly rest against the pillow, so I had access to her whole back, nape and head.

I started to run my fingers through her mane, really one of my most basic moves to see how she reacted and continue from there. She tensed a little bit, but stroke after stroke she relaxed.

Her coat had just this down-to-earth kind of average feeling. It was nothing too silky nor too coarse, just regular and clean, more like a dog's, not as nice as a cat's. Her mane was slightly more coarse than regular human hair, but still nice. Normal ponies without wings or horns tended to be like that.

Unicorns usually had nicer coats and manes, silkier and more velvety, more similar to a cat or a very luxurious coat made out of fox fur or something similar, and very, very well maintained. The winged ones had just this side of weird coats and manes, extremely soft and nice, resembling very thin and long feathers sometimes in particular places near the wings, but they tended to be more careless about it, except for the actual wings, which needed to be in perfect condition to fly. Those loved the attention, but they didn’t usually like their wings to be touched, or any place near them. Winged little horses are weird.

Cheery lowered her head a little bit and her ears pointed backwards, one of them directly at me and the other one slightly floppy. That meant that she was comfortable and relaxed but still paying attention to me. I took that as my cue to start scratching her neck and head, eliciting a harmonic-less little content horse sound.

“I see you are enjoying that…”

“Uhh… hmmm… yuh… I can kind of understand why some… hmmm littletotheright… yeah… might like this treatment.” She mumbled.

“If you become light headed from relaxation, feel free to pass out.” I told her in a slightly robotic voice.

She snorted at that. “... flippin… stallionish… uh… wits… hmmmm… little up…”

I complied, and after that I attacked with both hands the spots behind both her ears at the same time. She neighed and closed her eyes, wagging her tail from side to side. After a little while, I switched to her back, massaging her relatively strong muscles. She is a teacher, her job is not really physical, and she is kind of petite, but she is still one of the horn-less and wing-less type, so they are naturally stronger. That woke her up from her bliss just enough to be able to talk again.

“Uh… yeh… you… err… You were telling me how your day was.” She said, obviously trying to regain her composure.

“Well, after what I told you, I went to the spa a few hours to take care of the line of clients that were waiting for my services.” I informed her.

“Anything funny to tell?” She asked, clearly trying to get into a little small talk to hide her previous embarrassing reaction.

“Nah… not much, just the usual. Just that green and white unicorn that keeps coming. It’s the third time this week, and it’s only Thursday.”

“Uh… that much?” She asked.

“Yeah, she comes almost every day and asks me all kind of questions about myself and my species… I think we have become pretty okay acquaintances. Today she even gave me the scrunchies…”

At the word ‘scrunchies’, Cheery seemed to tense up slightly for some reason. I gave that nickname to a particular pony expression. It was a weird thing, the best way I could describe it is a dignified Flehmen Response. It was similar to that weird face horses from Earth do sometimes but more controlled, showing just a little bit of teeth, scrunching their muzzles and combining it with a smirk. In human terms, it would look halfway between a smirk and someone who just had licked a lemon. It was adorable, but also a little creepy because it gave the impression that the pony was plotting something.

It was remarkable enough, so I have asked Cheery a couple of times about it and she just laughed a little, did the scrunchy herself to demonstrate and just dismissed it as ‘something we ponies do’ in quite an enigmatic way, making me even more curious about it.

“Uh… that was… today?” She hesitantly asked.

“Yes, it was after I gave her a long massage and some scratches.”

“I see…” She said dryly. “Well, I’m kind of sleepy now, and I think that massage or whatever you did relaxed me enough. Thank you for that. Um… see you tomorrow.” And with that she got up and headed to her bedroom.
“Okay, see you.”

She got into her room and closed the door. Well, that was weird. Anyways, if she was feeling down today, I might as well give her some space.

Author's Note

Not fully revised, if you spot some awkward phrase or grammar error, please tell.

Time to make a move!

Incredible, just incredible. Better go to bed and be done with this cursed day. First my cousin Punch making fun of me being single, then, Big Mac finds a marefriend before I do, and now, that weirdo is totally going to ask Smarty Pants out for Heart and Hooves. And the most irritating part is that I SHOULD feel happy for them, but I know, I just know… Lyra snatching the weird stallion just out of my own house, the very stallion I’m sharing my house with… I’m not going to hear the end of it, I’m going to be the butt of the joke forever.

I hate Hearts and Hooves, why nopony could leave it be? Why nopony would stop pestering me about finding a companion? I just want to enjoy the vacation, get a little rest from the day-to-day routine, hang out with my friends, have some fun… But no, everywhere I go, everypony is like ‘Oh, are you going to ask a stallion out THIS year? Oh, what a shame…’

I would rather be alone than with a stallion that I don’t really like. Yeah, I know, with how few stallions there are, I should go for every opportunity and all that stuff, but that’s not me, and I’m not the kind of mare who goes ‘hunting’ for one-night stallions, like my cousin, nor I’m the kind of mare who wants to be in a herd. I want it to be like I want it, or be alone. If I can’t get it the way I want it, I prefer to stay alone, I’m pretty happy alone. I’m a formal mare and I need to be an example for my students.

Yes, nopony has said anything yet about Smarts and Lyra, but I just know I’m never going to hear the end of it, I just know. It’s going to be the biggest flop ever since the Crusaders’ stunt… Even the foals who had already seen him around are plotting to get us together, I have seen them whisper and giggle every time they see us near each other, and a few of them had already asked if he is my special somepony or if I’m going to ask him out for H&H…

I need to stop ranting or I’m not going to be getting any sleep tonight, even after the nice massage Smarts has just given to me… This time of the year makes my head spin in weird ways.

So… Let’s just try to put my mind in order for the night. Why am I furious? Because ponies are going to joke about it. But then, if I’m doing what I want, why should I care? Because they just get on my nerves. I could always stay at home…

And what about the Lyra incident? More of the same… But still, the idea of Lyra having a date with Smarts… Why does it get on my nerves so much? Am I jealous? Nah, I’m just better than that. I’m totally not jealous…
Am I?

No, for sure…

Maybe?

Okay… then I should ask myself this… Do I have feelings for Smarts? Nah, we are just cool friends like that, and I want it to stay this way… And the massage-petting-scratches he gave me are really nice, I would like to get more of those.

But if Lyra gets lucky, he is probably going to spend all his free time with her…

…

He could probably move out to their house. Bonbon would be angry at Lyra because she is more of a traditional mare, but eventually they would get together because Lyra can be kind of passionate when it comes to chase down two-legged stallions. Heck, she even sits weird… And Bonbon has a business, and Lyra gets some good sums of money from time to time when she goes to a concert or plays at some orchestra. They have the industrious one, the creative and crazy one, they would get the smart and academic one and they would make an adorable herd.

…

I’m asking him out for H&H.

…

Stupid tummy butterflies, stop telling me I was just jealous all along! I was not!

***

Today I let the foals leave school early so they could enjoy their vacation from early on. I didn’t stop at home and headed directly to Bonbon’s. Her store was decorated accordingly for the occasion. For most mares, Hearts and Hooves day is just a day to spend with their beloved ones, or hunting for a beloved one, but for Bonbon, it meant business. The day before the festivity was probably the most productive day of the year for her little sweets store, as everyone came to buy sweets for their special somepony or just to offer when they declared their love to them.

As this was one of her busiest day of the year, Bonbon would fetch Lyra to help her of course. They lived together and the magic of a unicorn was a huge help for the humble Bonny. It was the least she could do, and so she did.

The waiting line was relatively short. Most ponies were out for lunch, but still, there were around ten or twelve ponies in front of me, mostly mares, and when it was my turn, there were already a few more behind me.
“Hello, Miss Cheerilee! How is it going?” Bonbon greeted me, kind of surprised to see me there. I wasn’t a regular customer after all.

“Well, a little bit stressful lately, but I think I’ll manage just okay.”

“Oh! Cheerilee! It’s nice to see you around here!” Lyra noticed me while organizing the sweets and bonbons that went into three different custom-made boxes at the same time. I nodded and smiled at her.

“What can I do for you today?” Bonbon asked, specifically not mentioning Hearts and Hooves day despite all the decorations and activity, she knew I hated it.

I checked the prices of the boxes. The regular heart-shaped boxes were cheaper, but they were all the same, chocolate or ‘mixed’. I knew Smarty ate chocolate, but didn’t like it that much, and in the mixed ones were some flower based and sweet hay-based confections that were a no-no for him. He could probably eat the ones he was familiar with and I could eat the others, but giving him a box of bonbons knowing that there was a considerable portion of them that he was not going to enjoy wasn’t all that marely of me.

“I want a… Uh… that’s err… I want a big… hmmm… a medium custom Heart and Hooves bonbons box.” I finally decided.

The custom ‘special’ size, was really expensive, though maybe it was the most economical option considering its size, it was well over my budget. The big one was nice, but in the end, I didn’t believe it would matter. I pictured myself eating the whole box in one sitting after being rejected and it wouldn’t do me any good.

Truth be told, I didn’t know for sure what he would say, and he being from a different species with different cultures and a different point of view about relationships… Buck… he was from a different UNIVERSE!

The medium box seemed like safe option. It wouldn’t make me look like a crazy, pushy mare with an oversize box, and it wouldn’t make me look like a stingy mare with just the smallest and cheapest box possible.

Why was I putting so much thought into this? I had no idea. I was not in love after all; this is just a way out from being mocked by all my acquaintances, friends and family… And a way to spend a nice afternoon with a good friend.

“Oh… you are going to… ask a stallion out?” Bonbon whispered.

“I may… or may not… who knows?” I smiled at her.

“Did you hear that, Lyra?” Bonbon giggled.

“Yeah, about time!” Lyra laughed.

“So, what do you want in the box that may or may not end up in a special somepony’s hooves?” Bonbon asked giving me a wink.

“Well, maybe a few chocolate ones, but just a few, errr… lemon drops, absolutely some of those… Hmmm… are those spicy ones? Yeah, those too, and the hazelnut ones too…”

“I do strongly recommend the sweet tulip ones, they just came out, stallions love those and that’s as fresh as they can get.” Bonbon suddenly recommended.

“Uh… nah, not flower flavored.”

“Aaand… what about one of my specialties, the classic sweet hay ones?” She smirked.

“Uh… sorry, none of those.”

“Oh, what kind of pony wouldn’t like some flowery bonbons or hay flavored ones…” She mused out loud and looked back at Lyra.

She knew…

She totally knew.

And she knew what Lyra was up to for sure… That confirmed my suspicions.

Lyra was preparing the box, looking oblivious, until she looked back at Bonbon, who had a smug smirk on her face.

“That’s a WEIRD one, don’t you think?” Bonbon asked.

“A wei… who… wha…” Something seemed to click in Lyra’s head, who suddenly dropped her smile.

“Okay, and the chocolate covered orange ones too… Hmmm… the walnut ones too, those seem nice. And some of those mints.” I concluded my order. Lyra mechanically put the sweets in order and closed the heart shaped box.

That’s all the evidence I needed. Lyra was totally planning something. She had unlimited access to Bonbon’s products, so she probably was planning to get something big for Smarty.

The tradition was to give a box of something sweet and propose to the beloved ones in the morning of Hearts and Hooves day, but Smarty lived in my house, so, I would give him the box first thing in the morning, just before breakfast. I wasn’t going to let him come out of the house before giving him the box.

If Lyra wanted to beat me, she would have to pull out something weird like coming really early to my house before the sun rose. I could still perfectly beat her by proposing before the door was opened. She would have to do something really weird that would make Smarty freak out and even then, I could perfectly get ahead of her.

Checkmate.

I smiled at her while she passed the box to Bonbon for the last inspection, Lyra smiled back but I caught a slight eye twitch. She knew… So, I smiled back to make her know that I knew that she knew…

I put the box in my bag and trotted out of the store, feeling relieved, knowing that for once I was going to play the game and I had the upper hoof. For once, I wasn’t going to be the laughing stock!

Even if he said no, I would be the first one. I didn’t really care about what he said anymore. If somepony said to me something on the Hearts and Hooves matter again, I would respond that at least this year I TRIED…

Time to get some groceries, just in case I ended up preparing a romantic dinner. Oh, and I need to visit Berry Punch and get some Double-Punch Berry’s Special… Hmmm make it Triple-Punch Special… I just had to hide the box, and pretend that I was the regular, miserable, sad-looking Cheerilee at this time of the year so nopony would get suspicious. And also, I needed to go to the spa to get my mane and coat done. With some luck, Smarty wouldn’t even see me, and if he saw… well, he is kind of dense when it comes to the marely subtleties, so he wouldn’t even suspect anything.

***

“Oh, somepony’s going out hunting for a mate tomorrow…” Smarty wiggled his eyebrows at me the moment the blasted bell on top of the door signaled my entrance. Aloe and Lotus giggled at his comment.

Oh, come on! He is the kind of stallion that wouldn’t get the hint even if you slapped his bum with your tail! And he catches me at first sight!?

I had seen mares buy him drinks and he would buy them back another round. I had seen mares wag her tails like puppies staring at him. And he was oblivious or just dismissed them as “cute ponies doing pony stuff”. Well, not a lot of mares, but a few of them, the weird ones like Lyra…

“Er… Sorry about that.” He apologized immediately when he noticed I had tensed up.

“Uh… wha?” Was my oh so coherent answer.

“About the… tomorrow, I know you are not happy about it and shouldn’t be joking around.” He explained.
Okay, he has no idea; he is being as dense as ever. I just have to just keep calm. I went to Lotus and asked for the mane and coat smoothing treatment and let myself relax.

***

I didn’t wait for him because I needed the extra time to prepare a nice dinner for the both of us. He has been preparing dinner and cleaning up my own house ever since he moved in. I needed to show him and demonstrate to myself that I was a capable mare who could take care of her stallion.

It was obvious that the few weeks that I haven’t been cooking got me really out of practice. I knew he liked grilled stuff, and he liked the more protein heavy foods like eggs or some kind of beans, he is an omnivore after all, so he likes to eat meat, but it is generally rude to do so around ponies, and also it is extremely rare to find it in town and in that case, it would be really expensive.

Okay, maybe I could try some omelets with some spices and vegetables mixed in… Umm… Maybe beans omelet? Is that even a thing he would eat? Probably is already too late to go to Fluttershy’s to ask her for a fish, and in that case, I have no idea how to cook it.

As I was dicing the vegetables awkwardly slow in a mix of trying to get them even fancier than usual and being absolutely out of practice, a cloud of black smoke announced that the butter and spices I had put on the pan to heat up was probably no more than a crust of charcoal already. Oh, well… seems that it took way too much time to dice the vegetables.

I cleaned up the pan from the little mess and repeated the process, put the vegetables in it and went for the eggs. Again, it took me way too much time to crack the eggs open and whip them up. As I was finishing, the vegetables were already burning.

I ended up cooking an easy vegetable stew with what I got on hoof. Nothing too fancy, and it didn’t require much finesse to get the ingredients prepared, just clean them, cut them a little bit and throw them at the pot. I used the kind of spices and condiments I knew he liked and improvised a little bit with tomato sauce. And the pot contained only water to heat up at the beginning, so it was unlikely to catch fire.

In the end I managed to get a decent pot of veggie stew, or something close to that, as it was a weird combination of an old aunt Berry’s recipe made with some missing ingredients that I didn’t have and some creative additions to try and match Smarty’s tastes.

Not my most brilliant moment. I don’t like cooking.

I prepared the low table in the living room for a fancy dinner. Got out the candle, the wine, the fancy red tablecloth, the good silverware that I haven’t used in ages… It looked nice. I opened the windows for a few minutes. Smarty Pants had a really bad sense of smell, so he wouldn’t even notice the burnt odor coming from the kitchen.

…thump, thump, bump-bump… squeeeeeak… thump, bump… squeeeaaa-bump…

There he is…

Sometimes he can be surprisingly sneaky for his size, especially when you weren’t paying attention. Something about being a half predator, I suppose. But I had kept an ear pointed to the door and the hinges were squeaky.

“What… What’s this?” He pointed at the decorated table.

“I… thought that… since… you have been preparing dinner lately… I would… err… come early this time and prepare it myself for yo… err… for the both of us?” I explained, hesitating and stuttering, the final part of my phrase felt more like a question.

“And… the smell? It’s something burning?” He asked, sniffing here and there.

“A… Are you… able to smell it?” I asked, feeling like a filly caught with her hoof in the cookie jar. “I thought your sense of smell was kind of bad…”

“Yeah, far worse than a pony’s, but this smell is obvious. You burnt something while cooking?”

“Okay, that was my first attempt… But I got it right! It only took me a couple of tries! I can be a really good cook, I’m just out of practice.” I explained.

“Oh, well. Thank you anyways. You know, I have these…” He wiggled his fingers. “It’s not a problem to help you out with this kind of things.”

“That’s why I’m so out of practice, every time I come back home, you have already done most of the stuff. I can do my share of chores, you know?”

“Oh… kay?” He answered, not really sure what this was all about.

We sat on the table, or more accurately, we lay near it, since it was too low for chairs, more so for a chair that could fit him. It was a little bit awkward; we don’t usually have formal dinners like this. We tend to grab whatever is on hoof and eat on the couch, chatting about our day and whatnot.

I insisted on serving the food, grabbing a wooden scoop with my mouth. I was terribly out of practice, but I managed to pour a couple of good stew portions on the plates. I lit the candle, which I had forgotten to before serving the food, and we tasted the stew. We did it at the same time, but I paid more attention to his reaction than to the actual food.
“Well, is it good?” I asked, innocence radiating from my face. I knew perfectly that it was barely edible, I had just tasted it myself.

“It’s… um… something… that’s for sure.” He answered. His face was carefully inexpressive, so I couldn’t read him. “What is it?”

“Err… good question. It’s an old recipe, but with the ingredients I had on hoof and… well, some creative additions that I thought you would like.”

“Well, I can eat it, it’s not bad…” He said, but I could feel that he was trying to avoid hurting my feelings.

We finished eating in relative silence. I was too ashamed of my little stunt at trying a romantic dinner to start a conversation, and he was probably wondering what this was all about. Truth be told, I was so grateful of his help with the chores. He could cook and clean up in a fraction of the time it would take me. His cooking abilities were questionable at best, but he could do it.

We finished, did the dishes and cleaned up like every other day. All the time I was wondering what I had to offer. I was a humble school teacher, I was good teaching foals, but little more. Before he moved in, my house was always a mess, I ate bachelor chow like sandwiches, apples, hay, take-away food or some treat at Sugar Cube Corner. Simple stuff, simple life.

“Are you okay?” He asked, looking concerned.

“Yeah…” I didn’t sound very convincing.

“You wanna talk about something? You have been acting a little weird lately.”

“Nah, just… you know, this time of the year… Tomorrow will be another day, we have tomorrow and the whole weekend afterwards, I will recover.”

“Do you want a massage, ear scratch or something?” He offered.

“Uh…” I was really tempted, but I restrained myself, it was so weird! “No, better not. I should go to bed early, I’m… feeling under the weather these days…”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“Goodnight Smarts”

“Goodnight Cheer-cheer. And… well, thank you for preparing dinner.”

“Uh… it was… the food was kind of bad, I’m sorry it didn’t come out as I wanted.” I answered, a little crestfallen.

“Well, dinner was alright, you know, not the food. Dinner as… a general concept…” He motioned comically with his hands.

“Oh, you…” I snorted a chuckle despite myself. He had that weird charm that made me feel okay even if I messed up.

“The whole setup was nice. I appreciate the effort that went into it.”

“B grade for the effort?”

“Yeah… probably.”

And with that, we went to our respective beds.

The "but she is a horse!" part

I was really sleepy when I heard a couple of knocks. I was living in a slightly bigger than normal closet with no windows, so I couldn’t see at first glance what time it was. Morning already? Wasn’t it a holiday? Was it late already?

I opened the door and found a smiling Cheer-cheer. Looking around, it was still slightly dark, probably just before dawn. I didn’t have to work today, what was the deal?

“Eh… Cheers? What’s going on?” I asked, still sleepy.

“It’s morning, breakfast is ready!” She announced happily.

I looked left and right. No signs of kitchen destruction. There was just a couple of hot cocoa mugs on the table and a plate of cookies.

“That’s nice and all, but… Isn’t too early? We don’t have to do anything today.”

“Nah… I just wanted to be absolutely sure…” She mumbled to herself, looking suspiciously left and right through the windows.

“Absolutely sure about what?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“…Aaahh… bout… Just making sure we enjoyed this day!” Came her not-awkward-at-all response.

“Okay…” I raised an eyebrow. This mare was starting to creep me out.

“Let’s have breakfast before the cocoa gets cold!”

We sat on the couch and relaxed a little. With how sleepy I was, I was almost falling asleep again. Then, Cheery suddenly got up and trotted to her room, coming out a moment later with a blue saddlebag. Then she stood there, staring at me, with her eyes a little bit lost in the middle distance for a moment and a darker hue of red adorning her cheeks. She stood there for a moment, paralyzed, blushing and her eyes wide open.

“Cheery, are you okay?” I asked, clearly concerned.

She blinked twice, then laughed nervously, took a deep breath and released it, like trying to calm herself. Then she reached for her saddlebag, turning her whole body a little bit like a cat chasing its own tail but only less than a quarter of turn before she got her muzzle into the bag with the help of a foreleg. Then she took a red heart shaped box and presented it to me, her eyes closed tightly. After a couple of seconds, she opened up an eye tentatively, as if scared of what my reaction would be.

I slowly reached for the box and took it, as she was clearly offering it to me. The moment her mouth was free, she was able to speak again.

“Would you be my… partner this… Hearts and Hooves day?” She asked timidly.

“I… uh… what?”

“Would you… err… spend this day with me?”

“Uh… wait… spend this day like… a couple?”

“Yes?”

“Uh… but… me… I… you… How?”

I was completely dumbfounded. I sat on the couch and put the box back on the table. I looked down trying to understand what was happening, but my brain wasn’t working. I noticed the slight weight shift of Cheery sitting on the couch next to me.

“Well, I had to try at least…” She said to herself.

“You… what?”

“Ask you out for Hearts and Hooves day, you know…” She explained.

“But… You are a… pony and… I’m not…” I tried to carefully measure my words in order to not sounding… racist? Specist?

“Yeah, and?” She asked.

“We are from different species.”

“Yeah…so?”

“I don’t get it. Why would you ask out someone from a different species?”

“Why would I not?” Her reply came like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Wouldn’t you want to be with a pony stallion instead?” I asked.

“Depending on the stallion I may or may not…”

“Then… why me?”

“Because I like you.” Her words, those exact words, hit something weird inside me, like if they were coming from an old crush or something.

“But… why?”

“Why not?”

After that, we remained silent for some time. My brain was experiencing a slow-motion train crash between the ‘But she is a horse!’ train from Earth station and the ‘Well, she is kind of nice, why not?’ train from Horse Land station.

“I knew you were likely to reject me, but I had to try, at least try one year to have a special somepony to spend this holiday with. I’m feeling better now.” She explained.

“Wait… I didn’t say anything yet.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“I… never considered this to be an option.” I answered.

“Why not?” She asked again… I was starting to hate that question.

The answer was so brutally obvious that it was overwhelming, but despite that, I had nothing good to answer the ‘why not?’ apart from ‘because of nope’.

“I’m not… into… other species.” I argued.

“I see… I didn’t expect that.”

“You didn’t!? What is surprising is that you are actually considering it.” I answered.

“Ponies, especially mares, date other species all the time, is not that rare.” She sighed and went back into lecture mode a little bit, like trying to swallow down her emotions.

We remained in silence near each other, both of us looking down, not really sure about what to do next. It was a really awkward situation. Truth be told, I enjoyed Cheery’s company, but I only considered her to be a friend.

“I don’t know what makes me sadder… the fact that I got rejected, or the fact that… one of my best friends will probably never find a special… somecreature… Just like me.” She continued after a while.

“A special… what?”

“Well, since you are the only one known of your species and you said you weren’t interested in a relationship with other species… That means you will live a lonely live unless you are able to return to your planet, and Twilight said that was going to be really difficult, if at all possible.” That was another hit to the feels I was not expecting.

“But… what gave you the idea that I would want a relationship with… somecreature from other species?” I asked, a little baffled, trying to reformulate the issue.

“Remember last week? We were talking stuff about universes and the possibility of space travel and you mentioned that your species had a lot of fictional stories about it and that some of those stories were based in actual theories that could become true in the far future…” She explained.

“Uh… yeah, but what does that have in common with…” I motioned between the two of us.

“You said that there was one creature… Um… I can’t remember his name… who was a hybrid between a… one of your species and other species, yes?” She asked

“Spock, who is a hybrid with a human mother and a vulcan father…” I said, falling back into English for the actual names. As those names didn’t have an equivalent in other concepts familiar with the inhabitants of this planet, there wasn’t a direct translation in Harmonic. They couldn’t even pronounce them.

“Um… that guy… yeah, the one who had a mother of your species and a father from an alien one…” She clarified. “And you looked… completely okay with that.”

“Yeah, but that’s different, that’s…” Well, probably not that different at all, damn it, I went face first into her conceptual trap, I tend to forget sometimes that she’s a teacher... Clever girl…

If I was to spend the rest of my life in an alien planet, and there was a cute alien girl interested in me… would I say yes? Probably, if I was attracted to her.

Well, but it’s different, she is a little horse! An animal! An animal? An animal who is a year older than me, intelligent… who is a productive member of a complex society, who talks a foreign language, who has kind of the same feelings as humans do…

I looked back at her. She was looking at the floor, some tears trickling down her muzzle, but maintaining a dignified stance. What would I do if she was a human? She was intelligent, fun to be around, strong, one of the most stable ponies I knew (believe me, that is a huge plus considering how crazy they can go sometimes), independent but without being cold and lonely… She was totally not a princess in distress, she could handle a bunch of wild children in a dairy basis without letting her emotions get in the way of her job, and she could handle herself and whatever life threw at her. The kind of girl I liked, not someone I had to protect, she was someone who could fight against whatever back-to-back with me, together. A battle buddy who could go on adventures with me, talk about weird science bullshittery, go drinking with me, wrestle with me over stupid stuff…

If she was human, I would totally be all over her.

But she is not…

“Is it that common around here? I mean, dating other species?” I asked.

“Uh… yeah, a lot.” She answered.

“Ponies are weird.”

“Well, not that much. Look at the griffons… It is said that the father of their species was a primordial eagle and the mother a primordial lioness. Those species existed and there are some records in ancient history.” She explained.

“Griffons are even weirder then… I mean, it should be a legend, genetics don’t work like that!” I argued, falling back into English for the word ‘genetics’. Heh… they don’t have that word either, they haven’t discovered ‘genetics’ yet, so it may not apply here… like in some crazy child’s mind who would think that life was in black and white before color was invented just because all the footage from back then isn’t in color, or that we went flying around until gravity was discovered… Stupid Newton had to ruin it all.

“And Hypogriffs… they are half griffon and half pony. It is said that a unicorn mare ran away with a griffon because their respective families wanted to kill the other’s, and their sons and daughters founded a new species. There are more recent and actual records about that.” She added.

“I haven’t seen those.”

“Well, nopony has in a very long time, but they were there.”

“More legends.”

“And well, then, there are the minotaurs. We have cows and bulls, but the Minnow Dominion is ruled by minotaurs, you have seen those, we know almost for sure that their primordial mother was a cow… but we don’t have any clues about their primordial father.” She explained.

“Is that… true?” That was hitting disturbingly close home… In human mythology, a minotaur was a mix between a bull and a…

“Dude, I’m a teacher, I have been teaching this stuff for ages! I can get you a textbook for foals with all the different races of Equus. Uh… are you alright?” She asked concerned when she saw my reaction.

“A cow and a…” Then I pointed at myself.

Cheery eyes’ went wide. She was smart, she got what I wanted to say. A minotaur was a hybrid between a human and a bull. If the things she was saying were true, then there had been humans in Equus before, long, long time ago. A human desperate enough to… bang a cow?

Greeks had myths about gods, demigods and weird stuff. I remember that there were even horses in the mix, like a horse demigod that had relationships with other characters that were represented as humans and had more sons and stuff, a pegasus or something. I know I had read about it somewhere; I don’t remember the details and I don’t really want to. Greeks are weird.

Also… Centaurs, damn it…

And here I was, surrounded by mythological creatures, talking miniature horses, and unicorns and… oh god, there are pegasuses too, their cloud architecture reminded me of Greeks or Romans, and there are minotaurs too!

“You will have to forgive me, but this is coming as a shock for me…” I said.

“What shock?”

“In my world, the only intelligent species are humans, so I find this really weird.” I answered, saying ‘human’ in plain English.

“I thought you were over the species barrier already. We have discussed that.”

“Yes, I accept that there are other intelligent species and I interact with them as people, not animals, but… Dating?”

“If you are over the species barrier and treat us as people, then why not?” She asked again.

“We are going in circles with that question.”

“That’s because you are not answering it.” Clever girl…

I was in a loophole, the answer should be obvious, but for some reason, Cheery was poking every single hole in that logic, I couldn’t come up with anything anymore. The only thing that I could add to defend my position was that I didn’t like ponies, that I didn’t like her like that.

“…I mean… I don’t want to sound like a pushy mare, I know your answer, but… I just wanted to know why. Sorry, I won’t push the issue further.” She spoke.

Was I against the idea because I thought she was unattractive? Because she resembled an animal from my planet? Because of ‘Deus Vult’? I looked back at her, staring into each other’s eyes. Concern was present in her eyes, those green, expressive eyes sparkling intelligence and understanding. Dumbfounded but at the same time curious about me, she cared about me. She tilted her head a little bit to the side in puzzlement after we have been looking at each other for a while.

If she was a human, I would be all over her.

“Okay…”

“Uh?”

“I mean… yes. Just… I’ll need time to adapt.”

“What? Do you mean it?” She said, a spark of hope shinning in her eyes.

I just answered by scooting a little bit closer and bumped my forehead to her cheek in a very pony like gesture. She responded by nuzzling my head and putting a hoof on my back to pull me in for a hug. We stayed like that for a little, her head on my shoulder and nuzzling my neck while I stroked her back. She shuddered a couple of times with a sob, but despite her tears, she was smiling.

“An alien mare interested in me… that’s kind of crazy.” I said.

“Well, there are a number of mares interested in you in town, at least that I know.”

“Wait what!?” I broke the hug in shock.

“Yeah, I have seen a few of them send you… hints and signals.”

“What kind of signals?” I asked.

“For the love of Celestia… Lyra whipped your bum with her tail last week in the bar! That’s as obvious as it can get!” She said with a groan of frustration.

“Wait… are you saying that she meant it… in…”

“As sexual innuendo, yes.” She deadpanned.

“And the scrunchies…”

“They mean something like ‘hey, you smell nice, come at me, big boy’.” She managed to say maintaining her serious glance and I bet she would had said that in a flat tone if it was at all possible in the sing-songy Harmonic.

I started to think about every time a mare has given me a scrunchy… Lyra in countless times, Berry Punch a couple of times… The pink menace at Sugar Cube Corner… at least once that I remember… And a considerable number of other mares that I didn’t even knew personally.

Thinking about all my interaction with ponies but considering the possibility that they could be hinting something in that way… Oh my… there were a lot…

“But… How is that even possible?” I asked.

“Would it be different if a pony from Equestria was sent to your planet?”

An Equestrian on Earth… A pony… let’s say a stallion. He would be treated as a weird animal, probably some government would try to make some experiments with him. Just like Purplesmart did…

He would be treated as an animal for a time… just like Yellowings did with me at the beginning, when she rescued me from the forest.

If humans really made an effort to understand him and the experiments didn’t kill him and the government somehow let him go… If he was smart enough, he would end up learning the language… Just like I did.

Then, I thought about girls… Girls would think that he was cute, of course, ponies in this planet are adorable.

Then I thought about the internet. Hippies, furries, kinks, weird stuff… there were plenty of people who could potentially be interested in him in a romantic way. With the number of humans that there are, and on the internet, without doubt, he would become famous in no time. If only one in a thousand humans was interested in him in a romantic way, he would still receive a ton of attention…

“I don’t know…” I answered.

“Well, not all mares are interested in you, but just think about it. If there is only one in ten mares who would consider you a nice stallion to have, you are the only one of your species. If only one out of ten are interested in you, there would be like a dozen mares just in Ponyville for you.” She explained. Just as I was considering the opposite scenario. Were we sharing a mental bound already?

“One in ten seems like a very optimistic proportion.” I replied.

“That’s a conservative guess, I think there are even more, actually…”

“Really?”

“Yeah, remember that we ponies are used to other species, and dating them is not out of the realm of possibilities in general. Mares are curious about you.” She concluded.

“So… what did you see in me that made you ask me out?” I asked.

“Well… we have relatively similar interests, I like to chat with you, you are learning a lot about Equestria, I love teaching you all that… I suppose that you trigger my romantic feelings and at the same time my passion for teaching. Like if you were one of my students but you are actually grown-up, so it’s totally okay if I ask you out.” She explained.

“Do you find me attractive?”

“At first I have to say that you were kind of intimidating. You are so tall and have such long legs and those hands… Now, I find you kind of menacing too, but… in a thrilling way?” She said, blushing a little and hesitating at the end. “And… do you find me attractive?”

You know as well as I do that if a girl asks you that very question, there is no right answer, nor a good way out. Wait… I started it by asking just that, so it was all my fault! I made a terrible mistake; I dug my own grave! This planet was doing weird things to me.

“Um… I find you adorable, like all of your kind. The moment I see you I feel like I should protect you, but I know that you are a grown-up mare and need none of that, but still… I also get the feeling that you are my pet or something, so I get the urge to pet you like if you were my cat or dog… But at the same time, you are kind of intelligent, and one of the most stable ponies that I know. I feel like you are one of the few ponies I can talk to and who can really understand me.” I said, and felt the cheesiness dripping from every word.

“Oh, the dangerous beast that would protect me instead of attacking me because he is in love…” She turned slightly around, covering her smile with a hoof and blushing.

“That sounds like a cheesy love story for teenagers…” Fun fact, there is a story that is similar to the ‘Twilight’ saga back on Earth, but instead of a vampire, it has a cute little colt who is actually a timberwolf-pony at night and if he refuses to transform, he sparkles in the moonlight. That saga is called ‘Predator’, with a red apple held by two wooden claws in a dark cover and all. Why did I remember that? Because I knew where this conversation was going.

“Oh, the predator… but he won’t hurt me…” She made an act of fainting and falling on my lap, her forelegs curling up to her chest in an adorable way. “You wouldn’t bite me or something, would you?”

“No… probably not… at least… not too hard. Unless you are into that kind of stuff, and you ask nicely, that is…” If she was going to make me uncomfortable and embarrassed I might as well counterattack.

She got up from my lap, smiling cheekily, breaking contact for a moment, then she sat in a more dignified manner and leaned on me. I got my arm around her back and her tail swished trying to get around both of us from behind, but the back of the sofa prevented that. I started to pet her back and she started to muzzle the crook of my neck. When we were both sitting in that position she was as tall as me.

Author's Note

And that's the first part. More to come, but I wanted to get this out, so if someone is interested, I will be pestered about continuing it and it won't end up in the drawer for another year.

And to Canterlot we went, no clue why. Her idea.

We spent some time just enjoying each other’s company, just as we should, given the situation, but we had a day to spend together before us, so we might as well start moving. It was quite early in the morning.

“So… do you have a plan for today or something?” I asked innocently, but for some reason she suddenly tensed up and looked at me, almost scared for a moment.

“Oh… umm… yeah! Of… course?” I bet she wasn’t even convincing herself.

“That’s what I thought…”

“Hey! I will show you the time of your life, young… err… stallion?” She replied.

Then I saw it. Her face suddenly full of DETERMINATION. It was the face of someone who was going to do something cool but stupid that they might regret later and knew it, but would do it anyways to impress their pals…

She got up and walked with purpose towards her bedroom. I followed her with my eyes until she disappeared through the door. A little bit of rummaging, a little whinny of triumph and then… CRASH!

What…

I got up and ran to check if she was okay, and she was, but her bedroom floor was a mess. A lot of little pieces of some kind of pink ceramic and… coins all over the place? Cheery was using her hooves to carefully brush the coins together and pushing away the shards of pottery at the same time. Yep, there goes the piggy bank.

I leaned on the doorframe and crossed my arms, watching the display of the pink mare frantically picking up every single coin and putting them in a pouch. During the process she shot a couple of nervous glances at me with a sheepish smirk.

“Now that the sacrifice has been made… I’m really starting to worry.” I interrupted her activity.

“Don’t you worry. It’s gonna be great! I just got the perfect idea!” She replied.

“But really… That’s like… all your emergency savings. You don’t have to do this just for me, you know…” I tried to dissuade her from whatever she was planning. It was obviously too much of an investment.

“Hush you… I’m not doing this for you… well, yes, kind of, but… I’m doing this for ME! I want to show myself that I can do it! I can give a stallion a WONDERFUL date.” She interrupted me.

“I’m not gonna let you pay for all of it, whatever it is.” I told her.

“I’ll bite you if you don’t…”

“I got the feeling that this is spiraling out of control, and you just agreed to make this slow and nice.” I said, getting serious for a moment.

“Oh… um… right.” She stopped in her tracks, took a step back and breathed deeply before continuing. “Would you come with me to participate in the… despicable… horrendous, OUTRAGEOUS! And completely depraved act of having a romantic dinner in a nice place?” She said with an unnecessary amount of drama.

“Oh, uh… you know that I can’t eat some of the normal things ponies do and that a… fancy dinner for a pony might not be as delightful for me?” I asked, a little puzzled.

“Believe me, you are going to enjoy this one and… I’m feeling a little adventurous today. I just got the idea, but it’s a surprise.” She answered.

“Okay then… I’m going to put on some clothes.” And grab some cash just in case.

Oh well, the nicest thing I had was a dark blue set made by Rare Thing out of thick and strong fabric that I purposefully chose to be comfortable, like some kind of tracksuit but somehow she managed to make it look slightly stylish with lighter blue trims and light blue bunny ears on the hoodie for some reason as an inside joke that I had not the privilege of understanding. She said it was to make me sneakier, but how a bright blue trim would manage to do that on a dark set of clothes was beyond me. It was made back when I was living with Timid Wingbeat. I didn’t have any formal clothing, so I was limited to just pay a little bit more attention and comb my hair as nicely as I could with the limited things I had.

When I finally came out of my little room, I found Cheery already waiting for me, and the sight was kind of shocking. She was wearing a black and white checkered scarf around her neck, a couple of blue lightning pendants and reddish pink leg warmers coupled with some multicolor cheap looking bracelets. Except for her mane looking more or less the same and her not wearing any brackets she looked like herself in the pictures she showed me from when she was a student.

“Isn’t it totally radical?” She made a little dance in place.

“Uh… what?” I very eloquently asked, not very familiar with that word in pony language.

“I mean… the outfit, isn’t it… ugh, how do you say it nowadays? Isn’t it cool?”

“Well, not my style, really. I was more into the… 90’s” There I had to think a little to say the number in base four for her.

“Do you mean 990’s after the Nightmare? This is exactly what it is!” She responded.

“Uh… well, that style was more from the 80’s, not the 90’s.”

“Does not, I was there…”

“Uh… I think we are mixing stuff here. I mean in my… planet, that would be from the 80’s.” I explained.

“Oh! So… it has an equivalent in your world but it is…”

“10 years displaced… well, more like 1010 years, because it would be the decade of the 1980’s.” I ended her sentence. Also, the closest equivalent for a ‘decade’ on base four was sixteen years, and that make everything be slightly off. I always thought in base ten by default and studying Equestrian History was a headache with the dates.

“Food for Twilight, not dealing with this right now. We will get to it later, if we start talking about it it’s going to take the rest of the day and it is not how I want to spend this particular one.” She rubbed her forehead with a hoof. Yeah, perfect, I wasn’t up to the task either.

“Yeah… totally agree.”

“So, you like it or not?”

“Um… totally radical? It’s how you, elder people, used to sa…” I started, but she lightly punched my side.

“HEY! I’m not THAT old, I’m just ONE year older than you!” She interrupted me, slightly vexed. Yes, in our time together as a student and teacher, and later as roommates we did the math and figured it out.

“Oooow… why did you punch me? I’m too old for this. Back in the day, when I was young, I would have fought you back and, and…” I started to imitate the voice of an old man.

“Oh, no… just stop it already!” She started to giggle.

“Okay, okay… Let’s get to it, radical mare. What do you have planned?”

“We need to head to the train station, the place I want to take you to is in Canterlot. They have a few extra trains today for couples to go there, it’s a particularly attractive destination in this holiday. It would only take us a couple of hours to get there from Ponyville.” And so, we went outside.

Surprisingly enough, the minty green mare that used to come to the spa was just casually crossing the street when we came out. It felt weird to see her alone (without the other mare, the cream colored one who makes sweets for a living) and walking around at this early hour in the morning to this part of the town. I mean, there is only the schoolhouse at this side of the place, no markets, no stores, only regular houses and the school, and even that is closed tight now… How peculiar.

“Hey, Lyra! Where are you going?” Cheery asked in a cheerful way that, for some reason, gave me goosebumps.

“Uh… just… stretching my legs! Yeah, a lot of work with Bonnie lately… What about you two?” She asked with a distinctive amount of hesitation.

“We are heading to the train station, you know, taking my stallion to a romantic dinner in Canterlot, we need to hurry and get a spot before the tickets run out.” I could swear that she put a little too much emphasis in the ‘my stallion’ part.

“Oh, so… you two are… dating?” She asked, a little bit nervous.

“Yup! Finally, about time, don’t you think?” She answered.

“Uh… err… Oh! Yeah, that… about time. Go have fun you two! Well, I’ll just go and… continue the… stretching of my legs!”

“Yeah, that’s right… stretch them real good. See yah ‘round!”

How peculiar…

We waved our goodbyes and continued on our separate ways, with Cheery having a little extra bounce in her gait. I suppose she was just happy, but I didn’t get rid of that weird feeling until we were halfway to the train station. Was I missing something?

It was just after dawn. Probably Sky Princess just did her thing and put the sun up. I was thankful for the clothing; it was still a little chilly and humid from the night. A pleasant day anyway, but that was to be expected, as the inhabitants of this place more or less controlled the local weather. It would be silly to plan a thunderstorm just for a national holiday.

I have been to the train station a couple of times before. I went to Canterlot for a couple of meetings with the princesses once Purplesmart discovered that I was an alien from another planet. They thought that we should have a diplomatic encounter, but I bet it was more out of curiosity than any other political issue, it was nice anyways, just the princesses offering me an evening of peaceful chatting and tea drinking. I was the only human on the planet and with no way to communicate with Earth, so there was no need to follow any political protocol, just a few curiosities about humans. They were nice enough to tell me that I could write a letter to them anytime I wanted and they would respond, or if I wanted to chat more about anything, I only had to tell Purplesmart and they would take a couple of hours to talk with me. The white one, Princess Sky seemed kind of eager for me to do just that while the dark blue one, Princess Moon was more like ‘Really sister?’.

After half an hour waiting in the platform, one of those trains that looked like they were something out of a toy store for little girls came to a stop and we took it. There were a few other couples and a group of ponies that went in with us, all of them looking more fancy than usual around here. There were also some passengers already inside, from the previous towns the train stopped, I suppose. Apart from a few curious glances in our direction and a ‘humph’ from a unicorn mare in a really fancy dress, no one payed much attention to us. Most of them were couples and they were just enjoying their time together, just as we were. Cheery sat next to me and leaned a little bit on my shoulder. I put an arm around her back and scratched her mane and behind her ears.

It was still relatively early, and by the look of it, Cheery didn’t sleep a lot this night, and the relaxation made her start snoring lightly. After half an hour I fell asleep too.

***

We arrived in Canterlot. Like Ponyville, it was decorated with even MORE hearts and pink things than usual, which by itself is kind of an achievement for this civilization of little equines. Apart from that, it’s Canterlot, you get the idea without repeating how it looks and how it’s perched on the side of a tall mountain overlooking the rest of… a big place and it’s kind of white and gold-ish and castle-ish… yeah, that. Canterlot.

It was slightly too early to have lunch so we went around sightseeing. I had already been here recently, but Cheery hadn’t. It reminded her of her time as a student, but it had been a long time ago. Noticing things that had changed or that remained the same from when she lived here and that kind of stuff. Most of the time we just walked around, visiting the parks and ambling without a particular destination.

We were here to have a romantic dinner, but it was just lunch time and we had to improvise something. In the end, we went to a local bakery that was kind of famous, something like Sugarcube Corner but here in Canterlot. It was called something like Donut Joe’s. There, a slightly pudgier than normal but kind of strong looking unicorn stallion sold us a special ‘Hearts and Hooves care package’ to indulge in for lunch. He just nodded his approval to us.

Other curious thing was how the locals behaved around us. They were mostly dressed in some kind of fancy attire and a lot of them, specially mares, gave us the ‘humph and nose up’ treatment, like making a statement for us to know they were intentionally ignoring us. How charming of them. We made the best impression of naïve, annoying, overreacting and excitable couple of tourists in return. You know, just for them and their enjoyment.

The street was full of coffee shops and tea places, kind of typical here, and by the time we arrived in this particular district we had started to play the ‘Hey, look! A Canterlot something!’

It all started when I pointed at a particular fountain at the center of a park, and it was kind of great and famous but I couldn’t have any idea of its name because of being from a different planet and all that, and Cheery couldn’t remember either. So, we ended up labeling it as ‘A Canterlot Fountain’. And the game was on.

“Hey, look! A Canterlot house!” I pointed at a particularly castle-ish white and gold mansion.

“Hey, look! A Canterlot taxi!” She pointed at a passing taxi, painted as all the other taxis in this city. Drawn by ponies to take other ponies to places…

“Hehehe… Hey, look! A Canterlot lamppost!” I pointed at an especially ornamental lamp that was even more decorated in pink and hearts than usual for the occasion.

“Hey, look! A Canterlot coffee shop!” She pointed to a slightly fancier looking than usual, but otherwise unremarkable coffee shop. Some of the patrons gave us the ‘canterlot humph’ as on in cue. One of them, a white stallion with blue mane dressed in a tuxedo watched us in amusement through his monocle.

“Hey, look! A Canterlot bench!” I pointed to an absolutely mundane bench.

“Hey, look! A Canterlot cobblestone!” Okay, this was getting out of hand…

“Hey, look! A Canterlot canterlotian!” I pointed my finger at random to the first pony I saw and… It landed on a middle aged, slightly pudgy unicorn mare, dressed in a white and purple fancy dress with golden trims, wearing just a little bit too much make up to try to desperately look younger, just a little too much jewelry too and just caught in the act of giving us the ‘Canterlot Humph’. She looked exactly as if someone had told a pony to draw a pony from Canterlot and made the absolutely most cliché version of its inhabitants.

Time seemed to stop. The whole street fell into silence for a moment, not even the birds chirped. The mare in question seemed frozen in the act of lifting her muzzle high in the air and blushing profusely as everypony’s eyes fell on her. And the Tuxedo stallion proceeded to lose his tea in a Canterlot coughing fit.

Maintaining her pose, but quickening her pace, the mare went out of sight as quickly as possible while remaining kind of dignified. Meanwhile, the stallion tried to recover his breath, but was really unable to as a laughing fit followed suit. His companion, a white and pink stylized unicorn mare was just there, holding him and patting his back. Giggles and gossip were already spreading through the tables as many eyes were switching between the couple, the retreating mare, and us.

“I say, that’s one way to make an impression.” The stallion said in our direction.

“Oh, Uh… I guess…” I said, a little bit confused. Cheery seemed frozen in place for some reason.

“No offense intended, but I have never seen anything like you before. Would you two mind to join us for tea and a little chat?” The stallion asked.

“Uh… Cheery?” I gave her a questioning look. She seemed like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck. When she realized I was asking her, she gave a single, jerky nod in response.

“Welp, not at all.” I said, taking a seat in front of them. Cheery followed me.

“My name is Fancy Pants, and this is…”

“Fleur… Fleur de Lis.” Said the mare.

“Uh… Smarty Pants.” I was suddenly self-conscious about the name ponies gave me.

“Oh, by Celestia, that’s a pleasant coincidence, good taste with names, I say. And… What brings you to Canterlot of all places?” He asked.

“Well, just a touristic route, if it wasn’t obvious enough…” I scratched the back of my head.

“Smarty… this is Fancy Pants!” Cheery whispered, but in such a panicky way I’m sure the stallion and his companion heard.

“Yeah, that’s what he said.” I reassured her, earning a chuckle from Fancy.

“And who is this… peculiar and lovely mare?” He asked.

“This is Miss Cheery…”

“Cheerilee.” She interrupted my introduction. Uh, yeah, I have to start using the correct sound for her name and not the mnemotechnic one I gave her while learning Harmonian. It was kind of endearing, but I slipped in this more formal situation.

“Yeah, that. Cheerilee. She is a teacher in Ponyville.”

“Oh, Ponyville… a lot of stuff going on there for such a small and quaint village. A lovely place overall. We ought to visit that more often.”

“And go to Miss Rarity’s… I’m dying to see what is she coming up with this year.” Fleur added, fluttering her eyelashes.

“So… tell me more about yourself. You seem quite a peculiar character, I would like to know what are you.” Fancy said to me.

“And those… clothes… Uh… are certainly peculiar.” Fleur continued, sounding kind of disgusted but fascinated at the same time.

“Well… it’s complicated to explain. One day I was trekking through the woods, and the next I was chased by Timberwolves and rescued in Ponyville. I’m a… human… from… well, let’s say just an alien from another world.” I corrected the explanation when I realized there was no direct translation for ‘human’ in Harmonian and the very way to say it without the music they used to communicate was going to sound weird and just like a noise for them.

“That’s a lot to take on, I say…” Fancy said messing his moustache.

“Did you come through a portal?” Fleur asked. Based on local folklore, aliens here came through portals and not in spaceships. There were actual records of portals to other worlds being opened and crossed by creatures.

“I have no idea. One moment I was walking around in the nature, then I started to see things off and the next thing were the Timberwolves.” I explained.

“Oh… kind of anticlimactic but at the same time quite an adventure, isn’t it? I’m glad you are okay, those things are dangerous.” Fancy said.

“Yeah… I have to thank… Princess Twilight for letting me stay in the castle and granting an audience with… Princess Celestia to clear up my situation.” I used the formal and official titles exactly as ponies pronounced them of Purplesmart and Queen Heaven.

And then something clicked in the couple and their demeanor changed. Fleur started to do overly dramatic poses, like a star posing for a magazine and Pants got surprised and dropped his condescending attitude towards us.

“Oh, I did it again, my dear. I told you I have a keen eye for very important ponies!” Fancy Pants told his wife.

“Even if they are not actually a pony!” She answered.

“Well, I’m not that important. I was only interviewed by Twilight and her friends because I was an oddity.” I tried to play it humble.

“Are you friends with Rarity!?” Fleur asked.

“Oh, kind of. She was kind enough to provide me with some clothing for free when I had no money.” Fleur immediately started to analyze my attire.

“Oh… it seems… uh…” Fleur was obviously confused by the blatantly unfashionable clothing but at the same time trying to process the fact that it was made by Rarity of all ponies.

“I’m pretty sure it is kind of an inside joke, don’t take this outfit too seriously.” I spoke.

We chatted a little bit. Nothing too complicated, just idle chat. Cheery was a little bit uncomfortable, that much I could tell, so after declining to meet again tomorrow with the particular couple with the excuse that we would only be in Canterlot today, we parted our ways. I wouldn’t want to ruin whatever Cheery had in mind as a surprise for me.

Author's Note

I had this in the buffer for some time, and I suppose it's about time I gave it a reread, revised it and updated the story.

The Stone of the Griffon?

Author's Note

So, it was that day, and I'm like half a month late or whatever. I should write more. Anyways, here it is. I haven't checked it too thoroughly for mistakes, I hope it is mostly legible, for the most part because it's half-past-I-should-have-gone-to-bed-an-hour-ago.

The Stone of the Griffon?

Our destination was located in a somehow relatively shady part of Canterlot. The most ‘multicultural’ place, and the locals tended to avoid it for some reason. I was kind of scared of the place at first, Cheery made it sound like some kind of lowly suburb inhabited by a lot of non-unicorns, but somehow, there was something interesting there and our destination was precisely a restaurant in that area.

I saw earth ponies, the ones without horn and wings, some pegasi too, and only a scruffy unicorn here and there, but unlike any of the Canterlot unicorns, those seemed more agreeable, like the unicorns from Ponyville. I also saw a minotaur… A minotaur!

The elitist and exclusive unicorn society of Canterlot was nowhere to be seen here in this small part of the city. Probably the only place where non unicorns could live in peace in the city, able to commute to their jobs but at the same time out of sight of the more idealistic projection of the city’s society.

When a unicorn gives you the nose up treatment is almost even funny, they look adorable and inoffensive, but when a griffon looks at you the wrong way, with those sharp beaks and cracks his claws… that makes a chill run down my spine. When we didn’t run away on the spot, that griffon just kept watching us suspiciously from a distance and that was it. We rounded the next corner and he was gone.

Surprisingly enough, the rest of the creatures here just looked in our direction and gave me a curious glance before carrying on with their business. Kind of like the coldness of a populated city. At least I would rather have that than the outright hostility from the high society.

Streets weren’t as pristine and well maintained as the ones in the main city, and the buildings looked almost like a pony version of a human city, just big brick and stone cubes. I guess not as tall because they don’t use concrete and steel, but stone, bricks and wood.

“Here we are! I knew I remembered this place from when I was a student.” Cheery proclaimed.

It was a square-ish building made out of red bricks, small windows and a couple of smoking chimneys. It had a sign painted in what looked like a very angulous and straight version of the regular flowy Harmonian characters. There were also a couple of swords and crossbows painted on the sides.

“Uh… the… Stone of the Griffon?”

“Yeah! It’s a griffon restaurant. The one and only in the whole Canterlot. I know there are a couple of them in most big cities, but it’s the closest one I could think off.” She answered.

“And it serves… griffon food?” I hesitated.

“Of course! Isn’t it great?” She answered with enthusiasm.

“And… what exactly makes the griffon food so special?” I had to ask.

“Uh… well… you see… I thought you would… because it’s been so long and…” She suddenly deflated, like physically struck.

It wasn’t intended as a depreciation of the food, more like I had no actual clue of what griffon food looked like, I was about to correct that interpretation mistake when the smell hit me. Something delicious was being grilled, and it was definitely not a veggie grill.

“Wait… you mean… meat?” I asked in low voice, kind of the habit when talking about something that made ponies uncomfortable.

“Of course, duh… But if you are not THAT interested, we could go other places… I thought you would absolutely adore this surprise.”

“Yes! I mean… that was… incredibly thoughtful of you. I would actually love to eat some meat but… what about you?” I asked.

“Uh… well, I think they also have vegetarian dishes and… well, I’m not really too uncomfortable around meat eaters and… I wanted to make this special for you.”

“If it’s not too expensive…”

“Oh hush, you pesky stallion, it’s on me, you shouldn’t be worried about that!”

“But I am, because I don’t want to abuse your hospitality.”

“Are we a couple-for-the-day or not?”

“…Yes?”

“Then I get to treat you, I need to do this, it’s personal.”

“I will treat you back someday.”

“Don’t you dare, Smarty, don’t you dare!” I was starting to get scared, but I saw the corners of her muzzle twitch, suppressing a smile.

“Okay, okay… full Equestrian experience where the mares treat the stallions.”

“And it’s not that expensive.”

“Uh… for a regular vegetarian pony you know an awful lot about this place.” I teased her back.

“Student times, truth or dare game… imagine the rest.” She explained.

“Oh, so you got dared into eating meat!?”

“Nah, one of my friends got the dare and we all went there to check if she did it.”

“Yeah, yeah… one of those ‘it was a friend’ kind of story.” I teased and she stuck her tongue out to me.

We went inside. It had that slightly worn appearance of a town eatery, those kinds of small places where they make delicious and cheap food. The interior was also made out of rough red bricks, but with some decorative tiles drawing some geometric patterns and weaponry themes like swords and armored griffons. Along the walls were low tables with long benches at each side, and a few more round tables in the center for bigger groups, I guess. And the whole place had a shady and smoky appearance. The smells of cooking were so much obvious in here.

There were some patrons in there, most of them griffons with some kind of light armor made out of bronze plates and rough fabric. The Equestrian Royal Guard logo was printed in the chest plate, so they were hired by ponies?

I’ve heard of some special units from the Royal Guard that weren’t composed exclusively of ponies, but seeing all those griffons in the same place was kind of shocking. And almost all of them immediately noticed us the moment we came in, they stared or whispered amongst each other. Yep, not creepy at all.

There were also a few pegasus and an odd bipedal furred gangly creature. Those didn’t pay us much attention. Oh, and what looked like a big version of Sunset’s dragon assistant, likely just a bigger dragon.

“Well, well, well, that’s an oddity…” I heard a griffon approaching us with a tray, pen and paper.

“Uh, excuse me?” I hesitated.

“An earth pony, I mean. You guys rarely come up to this place. Oh, well, and also you, whatever you are, welcome to the Griffinstone. Please, take a seat.”

He took us to an empty table and we sat near the wall, so we could look into the rest of the place and enjoy the atmosphere… and watch our backs, I suppose.

“Not one of our regulars I see. Have any idea about what will you take, or want the menu?” The griffon waiter asked.

“I would like to take a look at the menu.”

“And for the lady?”

“Uh… same.”

The griffon gave us the menus and went on with the rest of his clients. Cheery seemed a little bit intimidated, but kept control of herself. This was meant to be enjoyable for the both of us, but she seemed to be having a hard time relaxing.

“Hey, Cheery, are you okay?”

“FINE! I mean, yes, I’m fine. Are you enjoying this place?” She nervously answered.

“I’m mostly okay, but you seem nervous.”

“I’m a grown-up mare, stop worrying so much about me.”

Yeah, she’s not completely okay but will carry on with whatever she has planned for me. Kind of adorable, but a little bit uncomfortable too.

“Maybe it is you who is scared about so many predators around.” She whispered.

Yep, a little bit, but not as much as she is right now. Well, if putting the focus on me helps her calm down, I’ll play along.

“Kind of, it’s all new an all. Those weird different creatures around. But I used to go to a similar place back before I ended up in Equestria.”

We took a look at the menu. There were vegetarian options, but not a lot of them. Most dishes had at least a small amount of meat or fish by the look of it. Not the most pony friendly place, and actually the only other pony appart from Cheery was a pegasus who was eating something that looked like fish. Probably she could find a vegetarian option to go along.

But if she wanted me to enjoy this place, I should probably do that and stop worrying so much about her. Another look at the menu revealed that dishes didn’t have the ingredients printed near them, so you had to take a guess. By the look of it, most dishes were about chicken, pork meat, salmon or other kind of fish.

“Have you decided yet?” Asked the griffon waiter.

“Actually no. Would you be so kind to give us some suggestions?” I asked

“Griffon cuisine is famous for the chicken, but if you ask me, I would say pork is tastier. Back in the mother land we had other meats, but those are not allowed in Equestria. If you are a meat eater and want something special, I would suggest the roasted pork.” He explained.

“You cook it in a wood oven?”

“Is there any other way to cook such a glorious piece of meat?” He raised an eyebrow.

“I guess not. I’ll take that.”

“Wise choice. And for the lady?”

“What’s a Griffon Salad?”

That earned a chuckle out of the waiter

“An inside joke. It used to be a trap for those snob ponies who wanted to ‘taste’ the ‘authentic griffon cuisine’ but didn’t want any meat. Ponies ask for salads, and those snobbish enough and stupid enough to think they know everything are likely to ask for that, as it is a salad and it is part of the ‘griffon cuisine’ as they dare to call it.”

“So, you put meat in it…” I concluded.

“Oh, a smart one, I see. Yes, we put some fried chicken mixed up with the veggies.”

“I’ll have that! The griffon salad!” Cheery said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I came here, I might as well be part of it. Seems tame enough, yet it has some meat in it for me to try and see what all this fuss around meat is all about.”

The ungainly bipedal furred figure howled and a griffon wolf whistled at Cheery, now we got the attention of some of the other creatures that were having dinner.

For drink we took beer, they made it in house, so we ought to try it. Cheery wasn’t as familiar as me with this kind of drink. Maybe too sour for her, but for me it was fantastic, it tasted like an exotic craft beer from a local brewery. And that’s most likely because it WAS just that.

The food arrived some time later. A generous piece of meat roasted to perfection and accompanied by some baked potatoes and seasoned with spices. Nothing too complicated, as griffon food looked like no nonsense, honest food.

I appreciated the sight before me, and the aroma of it and then took a look at the mare in front of me. She wasn’t so sure about her choice. It was what appeared to be a Caesar salad in front of her. She looked at it like if it was going to jump at her at any moment, specially at the brownish golden squares that were mixed into it.

“Is this… the meat?” She pointed with a fork to one of the small nuggets.

“I suppose it is.”

“You suppose?” She asked, a little bit surprised that I didn’t give her a straight answer.

“It looks like it, but I’m not familiar with griffon food. It looks like a particular kind of salad that I used to like.”

“Your species also put meat in salads!?” Her surprise grew.

“Yeah, we humans do eat meat so, some of our salads have it in their recipes.”

“But… salads are meant to… they are…”

I just shrugged and cut a piece of meat. It had the perfect balance and a layer of roasted fat, after contemplating it for a little, I ate it and it was… well, it was glorious. Just imagine glorious but add the fact that I hadn’t been able to get a good piece of expertly cooked meat in ages. I sighed, closed my eyes and enjoyed the experience thoroughly.

It was Cheery’s turn. She had forked one of the offending unassuming golden-brown squares and was pondering it.

“You know… When we talk about meat, I always imagine a bloodied and disgusting piece of carrion or something equally disgusting. But this… this looks completely normal. If it wasn’t for the fact that I know what it is, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

“That’s probably the intended deal, to be unnoticeable until it’s too late.”

More than half of the creatures were already looking in our direction, waiting for the pony’s reaction to meat.

There was kind of an expectant atmosphere around Cheery. She took a deep breath, took the bite in her mouth and started to chew carefully. At the beginning, her face was that of someone who was going to swallow a particularly disgusting medicine but was determined to do so. Then, slowly, her face turned more neutral and then she was looking into the distance, lost in thought as she finally dared to swallow.

“I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that I had just eaten a piece of meat or the fact that it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.”

And suddenly, the restaurant exploded in a small ovation. Griffons clapped their claws and cheered, and the other creatures joined. Listening to the small ruckus, the waiter came back to check on us.

“So, by the look of it, you ate some. How was it? Did you like the meat?” The waiter asked with a smirk (a smirk with a beak, that ought to be illegal!).

Cheery was blushing and trying to become as small as possible, but the attention was on her. The other meat eaters seemed delighted about the pony eating meat and some of them were carefully listening to her reaction.

“It was… kind of savory and… uh… I don’t know. If I didn’t know it was meat, I would have said that it was kind of nice?” She hesitated.

“So… you liked it?” The waiter asked again.

“Uh… yes.” Cheery answered for the delight of the other creatures, wolf whistles, cheers, squawks and howls were heard.

“It is always fun to see the reaction of a grass eater tasting real food for the first time.” The griffon winked at her and went back to his business.

After that, we ate in relative silence, enjoying our meals. Cheery seemed a little cautious about hers, a little embarrassed too after the small spectacle, but she was eating it, including the chicken.

When I was distracted going to the bathroom, she paid for the food, as she said she was going to do. She didn’t even let me know how much it was, and frowned menacingly when I tried to gain access to that information. It was her treat, and she wanted me to have a good time.

After finishing our meals, we had to go back to the train station to catch one of the last trains to Ponyville, as we weren’t planning on staying the night in Canterlot, one of the most expensive places and indeed one of the most expensive days of the year when, without a doubt, hotels would try to earn some extra money because of the holiday.

The ride back home was quiet. Most of the passengers were also silent, as it was already night. Some other couples were in companionate silence, other lonely ones were just catching some extra sleep.

We just sat there, contemplating the nocturnal scenery. The stars and moon were extra bright tonight to celebrate the day. Coincidence? Or Princess Moon doing astrological shenanigans that I would shove into the ‘don’t think too hard and just roll with it’ pile of things. One way or another, this allowed the night to be especially bright and very pretty to contemplate, both the sky and the landscape illuminated by it.

We sat on the train bench. She put her forelegs on my lap and rested her head on my chest, and I just petted her mane and neck, and she showed her appreciation of the gesture with the occasional nuzzle. If I didn’t think too hard about it, everything seemed fine in the world.

The aftermath... wait, what happened!?

My mouth is dry and my head hurts. I get the feel like the room is spinning, and my stomach doesn’t appreciate it.

Also, my barrel is being slightly squished by something, something that just shifted a little bit.

Wait…

I stir awake with a gasp, and I immediately regret the sudden move as the nausea intensifies. My head comes back down, crashing into the pillow and I groan.

What happened last night?

Thinking hurts.

The weight on my barrel shifts and disappears and my swiveling ears get the grunt and a few mutterings of a strange being in a strange language. He still does that sometimes, talking in the language of his people. He usually does that when he curses.

I vaguely start to gain some conscience of my surroundings. I’m on my bed, the bedlinen is in disarray, and I can smell a mix of sweat and alcohol, and a foul taste is in my dry mouth, probably because of going to bed without washing my teeth.

Last night… what happened last night?
Ponyville, it was still early in the evening, at least early considering the special day it was. After Canterlot, Smarty and I went for a walk in Ponyville, and there was Berry Punch in the bar, serving special drinks for the occasion and…

Oh no… I got a stallion drunk and into bed…

That sudden thought mortifies me. How could I? Especially when he told me he wanted to go slow!

“Ugh… you awake, Cheery?” He groggily asks.

“Aeoug…” That is the only thing I can say as a sudden spike of pain stabs my head and nausea overcomes me.

“Exactly…” What?

“I… ugh.. eough?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” Oh, come on! I kick him with my hindleg, the weak blow doesn’t even connect, but gets the message across.

My cousin Berry Punch was surprised to see me with a stallion, and wanted to celebrate the occasion. She invited us to come in and the first round was on the house. After some hesitation, Smarty accepted and we had a good time.

Berry was already inebriated, and started to tease us as if she was a school filly. She was chanting ‘Cheerilee has a coltfriend!’ over and over, adding equally foalish kissy stuff. It was fun at the beginning, then annoying, then infuriating. The whole bar was focused on us, making funny remarks and in general laughing at Berry’s antics. When I was on the verge of just getting up and leave, one of the times Berry said ‘Cheerilee has a coltfriend!’ again, Smarty booped her snout with a finger and said ‘And you don’t.’

It caught her off guard and it granted some giggles from the rest of the ponies. It was enough to make her stop. I was slightly embarrassed that my stallion had to stand up for me, but I have to admit it got a smile out of me. We got the upper hoof for once.

My other cousin Cherry Berry was there too, and she also wanted to invite us to another round of drinks to celebrate. Smarty got another round for all of us, to be invited by a stallion also caught me off guard, so I had to mare up and get another…

“I’m going to get some water and some analgesic for the headache.” He says, as he untangles himself from the bedsheets and goes to the kitchen.

After that, he refused to drink alcohol anymore, switching to fruit juice and water. Berry Punch called us pushovers and mocked us for our low alcohol tolerance. He didn’t take the bait, but I did and drank a couple more, just to make Berry shut up. Not my brightest move, must be that time of the year, and the unstable emotions that come from it.

All that recalling causes a fresh stab of pain in my skull, bringing me back to the present, and it becomes apparent that I need to get to the bathroom ASAP. Groggily I stand up and flop onto the floor, miraculously managing to stay on my hooves and covering the distance between the bed and the toilet in a rush of adrenaline, barely managing to get the toilet lid open.

My mouth and nose get the foul acidic taste as I spit a little bit of bile. I stay there, slightly stunned while my digestive system decides what to do about my stomach contents…

The Griffin Salad…

A powerful retching nausea makes me vomit. The sudden effort and the foul taste make tears run down my cheeks. My body sways and threatens to fall to the side as I feel the room spin.

“Oh, goodness…” I hear as Smarty approaches me from behind. I feel my head supported by something soft and warm that adapts perfectly to the shape of my forehead and an arm around my barrel keeps me in place.

The human kneels down at my side and I lean slightly onto him for support and rest my forehead onto his warm palm.

“There, there… let it out, you’ll feel better.”

I have no words to say, I just comply and after some deep breaths, I empty the remaining contents of my stomach in the toilet until only dry heaves signal that I have nothing more to spill. A sniffling stinky mess of a mare, but my headache is slightly less pronounced and the dizziness recedes.

“Is it over?” He whispers quietly to my ear as it flicks, and I nod as my only response. His hand comes up and down with my forehead, keeping me supported gently despite my movement.

“Then get some water and wash your mouth to get rid of the taste.”

I do as I’m told and rinse my mouth repeatedly with fresh faucet water. After gargling some, I spit and drink some water. It’s not particularly cold, but it feels as an icy stab against the acidic fire and dryness in my throat. A little pang of fresh nausea makes me stop drinking, that’s enough for now, let my stomach settle before drinking anymore. The human remains at my side, his arm around my barrel, although is not necessary anymore, but it feels nice. I grab my toothbrush and wash my teeth. The minty paste helps me to get rid of the foul taste and smell.

“I’m gonna need some caffeine and some aspirin in my body… Heh… You ponies have aspirin after all…” He gets up and I feel the cold contrast where he was in contact with my coat moments ago.

I freshen up and wash my face, it helps some. The cool dampness of the water in my face takes away some of pain. I grab a brush and look at myself in the mirror. I almost fall back from the sight. I have bags under my eyes, my coat is matted and my mane is a bird nest. I try to brush it, but the brush catches so hard that it slips out of my hoof and remains there, dangling from my tangled locks, acting as a counterweight and pulling some hair down to obscure my left eye.

Oh Celestia… what else happened this night? I got my stallion drunk and got him to bed… That’s the lowest trick in the world, I feel terrible!

“Hey, how are you…*snort*… oh my… you look charming like that.” He points at my mane, and I stick my tongue to him, but the playfulness quickly turns sour in my mind.

“Uh… I…” I stutter.

“Yes, Cheery?”

“I’m sorry…”

“For what?”

“Ugh…” I need the aspirin; I can’t say two words straight like this.

I go back to the bedroom, where a little tray waits for us with two cups of warm tea, a pitcher of cold water from the ice box and a couple of aspirin fragments. I get comfortable on the bed and take the medicine with some water, he does the same, then he sits on the bed near me and grabs his cup of tea.

“I… I know you told me you wanted to take it slow, and the first thing I do is to get you drunk and take you to my room…” I manage to explain.

“Is that so? Oh… well, then don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

“But… I feel like I took advantage of you. You know, alcohol makes colts don’t think what they are doing.”

There is a tense silence between us as he looks away in thought.

“I’m not a colt. I’m a grown-up man, and I… well, it’s hard to explain.”

“Still, we agreed in taking this slow, so I feel like I owe you an apology for getting you drunk.”

“Except that I know the effects alcohol has on me and I decided what to drink and how much. Cheerilee, I’m not a naïve teenager who doesn’t know better. To get drunk was absolutely my decision and I knew the possible consequences, and when I wasn’t comfortable to drink anymore, I just stopped.”

“Ugh… but I took you to my house and…”

“I also live here.” He interrupts me.

“Yeah, but it still feels wrong.”

Another pause. I rest my head on the pillow and close my eyes to shut down the world around me for a while. It soothes my headache a little bit.

“I got to that point… I needed to clear my mind and just stop overthinking everything. I got to the conclusion that I wanted some drinks and for once, let things go, just like I used to do back home. Go out, date a girl… stuff. You know, I’ve been living here in Equestria for a long time now, and… it doesn’t seem likely that I’m ever going to be able to go back, so…” He explains. Some of his words are said in his language, but I understand what they mean at this point.

“Well…” I almost say that I’m glad for him, but then I start recalling what happened last night again.

I had read my fair share of romantic novels, like any other mare, and in them, there is always that moment, that apotheosis where everything clicks together and they have an eye-opening date where everything seems so perfect. Celestia, there is even a novel about a mare and a griffon who get at it and, and…

He was explaining how humans rode horses back in his world, and I asked how the human told the horse to walk forward if the horse couldn’t talk. Then, he loomed over me and suddenly pressed his fingers to the sides of my barrel, I squeaked at the unexpected ticklish sensation and walked forward a couple of steps before realizing what was happening and stopped. I looked back, and we stared at each other for a couple of seconds before he collapsed on the floor laughing and proclaiming that it had just worked on me…

With things like that we just made a fool of ourselves. Our night was more trial and error, and error and error than anything else. Two drunkards trying to figure themselves out. It involved more stupid stuff, embarrassments, misunderstandings and a little bit of pain rather than an eye-opening night of novel-like carnal pleasures.

“I… well… I suppose I’m happy that you felt enough at ease around me for all of this to happen…”

“Indeed… what happened was a… something…”

“Yeah, definitely…”
“This day was absolutely… a day…”

“A lot of things happened.”

“Yeah, one thing, then another, and so on…”

“And feelings were felt while those things happened…”

“You are getting frighteningly good at this, Cheery…” At this point we are both barely containing a fit of giggles.

“Practice at things makes you good at those things.”

“That’s the power of nonverbal communication. Just imagine just writing this and getting someone to read it without context… Imagine that the author even forgot to add cues to make it clear who was saying it.”

“Never mind, we would be exchangeable in that conversation and the meaning wouldn’t change.” I smile at him, and then immediately wince as another stab of pain makes me rest my head onto the pillow. It is painful to think, to remember, but…

We were going to my bedroom, giggling and not really sure about what was happening. He made a tickle attack and somehow it was agreed that this was better done on bed, so, without saying a word we were both headed there.

“You know, I’ve always dreamed of carrying my rescued stallion to my bedroom.” I told him.

“It should be the other way around, you know? I should be carrying you in my arms.”

“Does not.”

“Does so!”

“Does not!”

“Does so!”

“Does not!”

“Does so, it’s the way of my people.” He said.

“Does not! double not because it’s the pony way and YOU are in the land of ponies.” I replied.

“Then I will conquer your land and change the rules!”

“You what?” I snorted to contain the laugh.

“Yes, this is my land now, YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” He stood defiantly at the entrance of my bedroom, his limbs extended and covering as much space as possible, more than enough to block the door, except for…

In a swift motion I crouched and went pass him taking advantage of the space he left under his tall legs. Playfully I also lashed up with my tail and hit him while doing so for good measure.

The reaction was instantaneous. A cry of agony that would’ve made any drama actor proud, sounding like the last battle cry of the hero of the play taking a mortal blow, he held his crouch with both hands and rolled on the floor. It made me feel a pang of apprehension through the alcohol and stupidity of the situation, I almost rushed to apologize and help him somehow, but then I heard that between his cries of utter agony were some giggles mixed up. Human stallions are weird…

“And that day… the Omnissiah made me understand the weakness of the flesh…” He muttered.

“…The buck are you talking about?”

The aspirin and cold water help. Probably the water has a more immediate effect, but I feel slightly better. Also, the back rubbing distracts me and provides an enjoyable sensation to compete with the sickness.

“It’s weird… if I close my eyes and we just chat, I would believe you are an amazing girl.” He talks softly. That’s very considerate because he knows my head hurts, probably his head also hurst and that’s why we are both whispering in general.

“Do you have to close your eyes? Am I ugly?”

“You…” He stares at me for a few seconds. “You are adorable.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not cute!” I try to punch his shoulder, but is slightly out of reach and I barely scrape his arm. The whole thing comes as awkward, as everything else we do, stupid human tallness…

He laughs at that…

“Here, let me help you.” He grabs with one hand the handle of the brush and with another the lock of mane that it is tangled with.

With a gentle but firm tug he breaks the knots in my hair while holding it so it doesn’t pull on my scalp. Once untangled he repeats the process and starts to fix the rest of my mane.

As a mare, I should be pristine to my stallion, I should present myself as a strong, beautiful, capable mare, yet, Smarty is weird. He seems to enjoy my company when I’m most vulnerable, when I’m low. Any normal stallion would’ve run away from me ages ago. It was almost embarrassing to have a stallion help me with my awful hangover, almost embarrassing. But after living with him in my house for so long, his presence has become comforting even. I am at ease around him as much as he said he is at ease around me. My house is tidier, cleaner, we cook better food, have more money, do more things…

“You are weird…” I mutter.

“Says the weirdly colored, talking, relatively small equine lifeform from another planet.” He replies.

“Allow myself to remind you that YOU are the alien here, thank you very much.”

“It’s a matter of perspective.”

“Perspective my ass…” I come back at him.

“Wow, do you have a perspective in there?” He pulls my tail and leans back to take a look at something…

“Shoo! Grabby grabbers out of the way!” I free my tail with a quick twirl and lash playfully at his hand with it.

“Wow… a horse just shoo-ed me.”

“That’s what you get.” I make my own version of the ‘canterlot humpf’, pointing my nose up in the air.

He leans in and quickly steals a kiss between my nostrils. But this time, I’m prepared, I have been waiting for it, luring in my prey. I don’t sneeze or stare cross eyed at my muzzle as before, this time I lean in for a lick. I barely manage to lick the tip of his nose as he retreats quickly.

“Woah!” He looks back at me, surprised.

“Yeah… just try that again and see what happens.” I give him a challenging scrunchie. Yeah, that serves you well.

He chuckles, then pets the side of my neck with one of his hands, tracing patterns with his fingers and I melt into his touch, I find myself closing my eyes as he continues to brush away my mane with his other hand, giving it the finishing touches. He broke my guard! That’s unfair!

The sudden moves have caused my headache to become slightly worse, but I feel relaxed again and it starts to fade away. I’m not yet completely recovered, that might take until the afternoon, so the change of pace is a welcome one. He seems to agree as he just rest beside me. Suddenly, something crosses my mind, and I get another small bit of apprehension.

“Uh… by the way…” I hesitate. This is really hard to put into words.

“Yes?” He is listening.

“We agreed to have a… date for the day… didn’t we?” I look at him, searching for any reaction.

“We… yeah, kind of.” He looks back at me.

I find myself looking down, then up at him again. I can’t see myself right now, but I can feel my face turning into the most powerful ‘puppy eyes’ attack ever. He doesn’t look away; he just maintains eye contact and smiles. I can feel a smirk forming in my mouth too.

He leans in and nuzzles my cheek. It’s a very pony gesture, something that, surprisingly enough, we talked about a long time ago. Humans don’t usually nuzzle, they express their affection through hugs and kisses, mostly. Ponies usually nuzzle and lick. He finds the nuzzles adorable and the licks a little disgusting.

I give him a small lick to his cheek now that he is distracted and in range for it. He pulls back, giving me a face of mock disgust while I smile cheekily. He leans in and kisses my cheek in revenge.

“Ugh… my head…” He complains after his sudden movement.

“You did that to yourself.”

“You are the worst.” He replies.

“What about we just lay here forever?” I ask.

“We have to work the day after tomorrow.”

“Don’t remind me… Even thinking about foal squeaks make my head hurt.”

I wriggle my way into a comfortable position, nestling my back against him, and he adapts to my shape and hugs me. I get the best ear scritches ever and I feel myself drifting back to sleep.

“Uh… your tea is getting cold…” He mutters, and I softly kick him.

“Shut up and scratch ear.”

Author's Note

Hey, would you just look at the time! Oh... it's not... Valen... ANYWAY! Have some more words.

The story arc is complete at this point, but somehow I know I might add more of this two, because sometimes, thoughts cross my mind and I think 'oh, these two could totally do this or that'.

Different (Extra)

I hear the door opening and closing, and her noisy clip-clop on the wooden tiles. She is home. Well, she never left, she’s just been in the schoolhouse that is technically another room in the building, but you know what I mean.

Work has been slow for me lately, which is kind of eye opening and scary at the same time. I have a significant decrease in number of clients every day ever since we became a thing. Still, business is business and I still make a considerable amount of Bits giving massages and scritches at the spa, but when I run out of clients I can leave. The schedule is pretty flexible, if a pony asks for my services and I’m not there, Lotus and Aloe just take note of them and make an appointment.

It felt wrong at the beginning, like I was treating them as animals when I petted them, but what started almost as a joke became my main source of income. The most profitable employment I’ve managed to ever have. Even if I count my previous life and the recent decrease in clients, and that’s kind of sad in part…

All my studies and college degrees to end up giving ear scritches, and the worst part? I wouldn’t change it for my previous job. No pressure, no bossy boss, no high mentally taxing tasks, and the payment? I was able to save up now, and I wasn’t able back then. Maybe a slower life train? Less bills to pay? Cheaper life in general? I’m not an economist, and even if I was, I don’t have the slightest idea of how much an Equestrian Bit would be worth back on Earth.

Cheerilee appears through the door and plops down on the sofa next to me. She looks tired, but the happy kind of tired with a pleasant smile on her muzzle.

“Hey.” I greet her.

“Hey…” She smiles at me.

“Any plan for dinner?”

“Uh… actually I was expecting you to… never mind, I guess not.”

“Let me see what’s in the icebox. I’m not really in the mood for cooking.” I am not that tired, just feeling lazy today.

“Ah, well, I guess that’s going to be it… Still, your quick dinning solutions are usually better than my regular bachelor chow…”

“You like my cooking skills then?”

“More like I like having a stallion bringing me dinner.” She winks at me, and I stick my tongue out as I disappear trough the kitchen door.

There is not a wide selection of groceries, but enough for a couple of quick sandwiches with our favorite stuff. I was even able to get some smoked meat from a griffon merchant.

Dinner goes as it always does lately. She has very good table manners, as she should to be an example for foals, she always eats in a kind of dignified pose, with a special attention to being polite, using ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in abundance, she always avoids to speak with her mouth full and all that.

Me… not as much I would say. Old habits die hard, and I was pretty used to my bachelor life where I didn’t have to worry about such things.

This causes her to go into teach-pony mode and chides me for every little thing, and I end up teasing her about it. To a degree, of course, not enough to be unpleasant to each other.

This comes as a little bit of a surprise, as she is not as tidy as she appears to be. Her house tends to become a mess with her stuff all over the place, school materials to review and papers to grade here and there. She is only tidy when in class, to be an example to the foals, or when she is trying to make a good impression of herself to others, like when we first met.

But not as much when she is relaxing at home and takes the least resistance path to manage her tasks. That path is not usually the more organized or clean, but an effective one nonetheless.

As a result, the house ends up looking a little bit like a mess. She was very embarrassed about it the first few times we met, when she was teaching me how to speak Harmonian. She tended to avoid going to her house proper and usually took me to the empty schoolhouse after the foals were gone for the day. Or she thoroughly cleaned her home before we had our sessions.

Now I live here and I can clean up and make the small household look better. I also cook for her sometimes, as it is what stallions appear to do here, kind of. I never had a problem with that, and I know how demanding being a teacher can be, and my job doesn’t actually require much in terms of physical or mental effort, so I kind of come back home pretty relaxed and full of energy.

She of course, teases me about that, being a ‘good stallion’ and all that, because she fully knows that human gender roles tend to be reversed compared to the pony ones. She teases me, but not enough to become unpleasant, we are just being playful with each other.

After living with her as a couple for a few weeks, we ran out of topics to talk about while we were having dinner, so we just eat in silence. A thunder storm is scheduled for tonight, and the pitter-patter of rain is starting to make itself known hitting the roof and the windows. The smell of rain is pleasant and the crackle of the fire in the hearth is relaxing, casting dancing shadows around us.

I burp quietly, but loud enough for her to hear. She scrunches her nose and frowns at me. I stick my tongue out and she puts her muzzle up high with an indignant ‘hump’.

“And remember to wash your teeth.”

“I no wanna…” I respond, tensing my vocal cords a little bit more than necessary, so I sound more childish.

“I’m not going to let you go to bed without.” She rolls her eyes.

I always wash my teeth, but I only pester her about it when she tells me out of the blue to do so.

There is no TV here to watch, and I don’t really miss it. I rarely watched TV back on Earth, but I miss a little bit my computer and the internet. Apart from that, life becomes surprisingly pleasant here, and I’m kind of thankful for it. Nothing like being transported to a fantasy world to get a true disconnection from the social media. I still miss my family and friends, I hope they are doing okay, as I’m doing just fine in here.

“Stallions first.” She says after we finish dinner.

“For what?”

“For teeth.”

“Why such a hurry?” I reply.

“Come on…” She insists and nudges me out of the couch with her muzzle.

Earth ponies are quite strong, surprisingly so, given their size, so, I only manage to oppose her for a while, until she uses her forehead instead and pushes me hard and I find myself standing.

“Okay, okay…” I say as I go to the bathroom.

I brush my teeth and come out just to find her on the other side of the door, waiting to get her turn in the bathroom. We switch places and I go back to the couch and plop down. Not a whole lot to do after having dinner, probably just the rest of the evening for ourselves. She comes out of the bathroom, sits down next to me and leans on my shoulder, resting her cheek on the crook of my neck.

“What got into you today about dental hy…” I start to ask, but I get silenced by the application of muzzle.

The kiss is brief, but surprising as she just pulls back after a fraction of a second.

“Can’t have you stinking like a griffon.”

“Uh… what? Um… I thought you liked predators…”

“Yeah, maybe, but what I definitely don’t is the taste of their preys when I kiss them.”

Oh, yeah… the meat in my sandwich… That could explain things.

“But you enjoyed that griffon salad.” I tease her.

“I endured the griffon salad.”

“So, you didn’t like it?”

“I… it… kind of made me uncomfortable. More like the fact that I found it palatable was the wors part of it. And that smoked meat of yours smells way stronger than those chicken bits did.”

“So, you just wanted to…” I try to articulate, but fail as she starts rubbing her cheek on my shoulder.

“Get rid of the smell and taste.”

“I see… is somepony feeling frisky tonight?”

“Nah, just some snuggles, maybe you could give me one of those massages.” She looks at me with her eyes half lidded.

Ponies don’t usually go for kisses as much as humans do. Ponies usually muzzle and lick, but on rare occasions also kiss. One thing I enjoyed a lot was to give her a quick peck between the nostrils, that usually discombobulated her and made her go cross eyed for a moment, and I found it utterly adorable. She then tried (and usually failed) to appear offended, which only succeeded in making her look even more adorable.

But now, after her little assault, she is looking at me with half lidded eyes… how dare she… time to act! I perform my practiced-into-perfection move and unleash the nostril kiss, but… As soon as I take the optimal position and launch myself I can, for a fraction of a second see an evil scrunchie on her muzzle.

Oh, no… It’s a trap!

She slightly pulls back, avoiding the kiss and I feel something warm and moist graze the tip of my nose. I go cross eyed and look back at her, her tongue is out and the scrunchie has intensified.

She licked my nose!

I narrow my eyes at her and launch a second attack. She is prepared, but I’m prepared too. I go for the peck; she goes for the lick… we end up in a French kiss and our tongues say hello to each other. We pull back at the same time, both surprised at the unexpected outcome.

Now that I think about it… It doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all.

I approach a little, and she takes the hint and closes the rest of the distance for another kiss. It is not an eager one, we don’t lose our breaths, our tongues don’t battle for dominance, they just show each other around and dance together as a team, listening to each other, leaving room as an invitation and then guiding one another in turns.

We are not a couple of teenagers. We take our time, we enjoy the moment, not like gorging yourself in cheap alcohol like the first time you got drunk, we enjoy each other like savoring a glass of fine wine in good company. If anything, we make sure the other one enjoys the moment. We keep our pace as we continue to breath slowly, I feel the light stream of warm air coming from her nostrils into my face with each breath, and I bet she feels mine.

I feel her shivering a little when her tongue finds one of my fangs, and I can’t help but feel how different she is from what I’m used to. An alien from another world, as different, and as exotic as it can get. She might look like a little equine, but her eyes spark with sapience. She is the girl who taught me how to speak their language. All the things about her show a high level of care and attention, and the slight minty clean flavor from the toothpaste tells me she was planning this kiss all along.

But then, she pulls back, sighs and looks down. Something is bothering her, and I’m wise enough to give her space. The last thing you want when you think about something unpleasant is someone pressing you. This has come more often than not, but it usually goes away after some minutes, then she goes back to her cheery self. I just give her space and wait, if there is something…

“We… we need to talk…” She mumbles.

There we go… the words everyone fears… Let’s see what’s going on…

***

“We… we need to talk…” I tell him after some hesitation.

The reaction is immediate, he scoots back a little and looks at me with his black eyes. And I get some chills down my spine and my tail twitches nervously. I know how stallions hate those words… Heck, we mares absolutely hate those words too if they come from our stallion, it usually means trouble in the relationship.

What’s in my mind? is it bad enough to call for this? Is it too late to take away those words? In reality I have been waiting to bring this up for a while now, and the longer I try to ignore it, the worse it becomes. I hope he understands. When I look up back to him, he has an unreadable expression, his sight is lost in the middle distance, towards the hearth that is crackling merrily in this grey afternoon.

“I’m listening.” Is the only thing he says. Well, there goes nothing.

“It’s about… well, our situation.” I introduce the topic.

“Aha…” He nods and urges me to continue. I can’t see any traces of emotions on his face, just his pair of black eyes, laser focused on mine.

“You see, um… what are your feelings on herds?” I try to inquire him about it.

“A what? I think I am not following you, what do you mean?” He looks utterly confused. Of course, he still doesn’t know pony culture in detail. I am the first contact he has ever had with pony relationships… maybe he needs some explanations before…

“Uh… you know, a pony family.”

“You want to… start a family? Like… having foals?” He seems a little bit alarmed at that.

“Uh… no, not at all, I know the chances we have at that are… well, astronomically small. Don’t worry about that.” I rub my muzzle with my fetlock, trying to rephrase an explanation.

“Then I’m even more lost than before.”

“I mean… there are other ponies interested in joining our family, if we decide to start one seriously.”

“What?”

“More ponies, other mares joining our family, you know…”

“Other… wait… like… becoming a trio with other mare!?” He asks, mildly surprised.

“Well… something like that. Adding more partners to our relationship. How do you feel about that?”

“Uh… I mean… this… well…” He hesitates. “I have never been in anything like that.”

“So, is it not normal for humans to form herds?”

“The standard for humans is… um…” He backpedals. “Is the… herd thing the normal thing for ponies?” He asks back, probably trying to gather more information before answering my question.

“Um… more or less. We like families of one mare and one stallion, but a few mares for each stallion are not uncommon.” I explain. Usually, a mare will try to get a stallion for herself as a couple, but that’s not always possible, as there are too many mares and too few stallions. Some mares go alone, other mares join a herd, and others might even get… creative. I might fit into that ‘creative’ category if I take into account that I’m basically dating a stallion from another species.

There is a pregnant pause, neither of us have any idea of how to break the silence for a while after this, until he talks again.

“…Would you like to be in one of those… herds?” He hesitantly asks.

“I… it depends… would you?” I want to get an unbiased response from him before going on, so I answer with another question, just like he did before.

“Why are you this to me?” Bingo… he knows there’s more than just a matter of preference.

“Because… well, there are other mares who might be interested, and I wanted to know your opinion in the matter.”

“Is this about the Lyra thing?”

“Yes and no. She has dropped plenty of cues that she might be interested, but there’s more… I mean… more mares.”

“Wait, wait, wait… What are we getting into? I don’t want to end up having a harem or anything like that.”

“Harem!? No, Smarty! It’s not anything like that! We mares are not the concubines for any stallion!” I suddenly get a little bit carried away.

“Then what’s going on in a herd!?”

“We would be a family and everypony would love each other, not anything like a harem, no pony is lesser than any other pony. There is the stallion and the first mare, but anypony is as important as the next one.” I try to convey the complexity of modern herds of nowadays.

“The first mare amongst equals…” He poetically and cryptically says.

“That was kind of a… way too convenient description.” Seriously, this Smarty… he keeps pulling this kind of things out of the blue.

“Uh… I’m not prepared for anything like that. I mean, one pony partner is more than enough weirdness. I mean… Last month I didn’t even think about the possibility of becoming a thing with… one of your species, you know…” He explains.

“Then you don’t want more mares in our family?” I ask.

“Not at all… One mare is shocking enough. A herd is a bridge I’m not prepared to cross, a bridge I’m not willing to prepare myself to cross if I can help it. Humans are usually monogamous, we only get one partner in most cultures, and I come from one of those cultures.”

“So… You humans don’t have herds?”

“I think there are some equivalent arrangements, but they are very, very rare and usually frowned upon. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t care less about the love life of anyone, but I think I have monogamy firmly ingrained in my mind.”

“So… you are only willing to have one mare.” How did his society managed to work like that! They would need to have plenty of human stallions!

“Yes, anything else would make me feel really uncomfortable. Are you uncomfortable having only me?”

“Goodness, no! After being alone for so much time…” I trail down at the end of the sentence, remembering my years of solitude and believing I would never get a chance.

“So… are we cool being just a couple?”

“Yeah… I’m cool being a couple…”

Another long silence. He looks back into the fire, and I distract myself in the merry flames, and my ears rotate to catch the sound of the rain outside.

“But...?” He asks… “I feel like there is something else bothering you.” He turns his attention back to me, his small black eyes again focused on my own and I feel like I was just under control but suddenly corralled and flanked by a predator.

Clever boy…

“I’m uncomfortable with your job at the spa…” Well, here goes nothing.

“Why is that?”

“Because I know many of the mares that go there to get a massage from you are doing so just to be around you, waiting for the perfect chance to snatch you up…”

He bites his lower lip at that and looks away.

“Truth be told… ever since we kind of became a thing, I ger fewer customers… That is also freaking me out, to be honest.”

“That’s why I asked for the herd thing. I know many mares who are interested, and by making ourselves an official herd, we could make it clear for any other mare interested in joining to come up front to me… and also to you about it. I don’t feel prepared to compete against other mares for you if we are not an official thing yet...”

“So, you are uncomfortable if I give a massage to another mare, but completely okay if I do so making it official that she is also my marefriend!?”

“Of course! I don’t want any mare making a move behind my flank!”

“Wow… you ponies are weird.” I snort at that, but need time to prepare an appropriate response. He purses his lips and arches his eyebrows, looking away for a moment. The little pause helps me to calm down my frayed nerves and prepare to take control of the conversation a little bit again.

“Allow myself to remind you that you are the weird alien in here.”

“And you are in love with said alien, so expect the weird that comes with him…” His response was so automatic that I almost felt like he was expecting me to say exactly what I said and was also preparing his answer.

And just like that, now it’s time for me to bite my lower lip and look away. Truth be told, part of his charm is how weird he is at times, the things he says, the things he does… Sometimes he does something incredibly smart that makes ponies feel silly in comparison, other times he seems to be unable to catch and process the most basic stuff, making him look utterly silly.

And I love both sides of him…

“I’m not quitting my job… I think is the best employment I’ve ever had like… ever. I get paid to pet fluffy things, and they love it, and they appreciate me, and I get enough Bits to live by comfortably and then save some. And my coworkers are nice, and I get to work flexible hours, and I don’t have to break my back plowing the fields…”

I sigh at that. Asking him to leave his job because I get suspicious would be a little too much, after all. But still…

“Yeah, I know… But I still get that nagging sensation that a mare is going to make a move on you, because we are not officially engaged. Ever since Hearts and Hooves Day we have been ‘kind of together’, but… We never made an announcement or stated that we were officially engaged. A crafty mare could take advantage of that.”

“And if said mare came to us openly and became… part of the family, would you be okay?” He added.

I don’t want to lose him… but that seems a little bit too much. We are not officially engaged yet, we have only ‘dated’ for the day, and that day was some time ago already, despite living more or less as a couple ever since, and becoming ‘a thing’, we haven’t made any official announcements to the general public. Him being monogamous made it even worse for me. If a better mare came into the picture, that would mean I would come OUT of his picture, and I get the feeling that there are plenty of really good mares interested. Now that he is kind of open to a relationship with a mare…

“If it makes you uncomfortable, then herds were never an option…” I explain.

Again, we stayed silent, watching the flames and hearing the rain and wind picking up some strength.

“Anyway… I can’t get my head around being that popular amongst mares. I mean, back in my world I struggled to even get the occasional date with a girl. And we are a whole different species.” He broke the silence.

“Like we talked before. There are not that many stallions around, so they tend to be shared or very contested.” I motioned him to wait, as he was about to interrupt me, most likely going to object to that. “EVEN if you are from a different species. We mares can get creative about that.”

“Wow… I still…”

“It’s like Iron Will all over again.”

“Who?”

“Iron Will the minotaur. He came to Ponyville to give a masterclass about assertiveness. Most mares didn’t need it, but they came along anyway, and cheered him, and supported him. More than half of them, I can assure you, weren’t even interested in the least about what he was saying, if you can get the hint.” I explained.

“So… you are afraid mares are coming to the spa not to get a massage, but to see if they get lucky with a happy ending?”

“Yeah…”

Again, the silence. I felt terrible breaking the mood for this perfectly rainy and stormy evening for staying inside and just cuddle, but this has been plaguing my mind recently.

“How many do you know of that might be interested?”

“Lyra obviously, and with her, Bonbon would come along. Roseluck directly asked a couple of times if we were going to start a herd and if she could join… her two sisters would most likely follow her. Goodness… even my cousin Berry Punch seems to be interested now that she knows we are a thing, and Cherry Berry is a wild card…” And Princess Twilight… please, PLEASE dear Celestia, make her just scientifically interested in his case and nothing more… Rich, intelligent, noble family, pretty, ALICORN, PRINCESS… against a regular, out of the mill earth pony teacher mare…

“Wow… that many?”

“Many more actually… but those would be the most serious about it.” Those and Twilight… or Starlight Glimmer…

“Gee… That’s scary.”

“And I’m feeling weird about it, like if some of them would go to the spa to snatch you away from me… Every time I hear somepony talk about the spa, or I see a mare going there, specially one of the mares that I know for sure are interested in you…”

“I’m not an object that can be stolen just like that, I’m better than that, you have to trust me. If they were able to ‘snatch me up’, then I wouldn’t be worthy of your companionship.” He says.

Direct to the feels… I blush at that and look away. This stallion I swear…

“What else can I do to help you trust me?” He adds.

“I don’t know…”

“They know we are a thing, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but as you said it… we are… kind of testing if we can work… you are my coltfriend, but we are not promised, as you said it, you wanted to take it slow. Some mare could take advantage of that…”

“They won’t. I will shoo them away if they try anything unbecoming.”

This stallion doesn’t work like a regular stallion at all. With how tall he is, I can totally picture him kicking a mare out of the spa. He can be such a janefilly sometimes. And a marely janefilly at that. He is so different, I feel like I can be myself around him, I don’t have to pretend, I don’t have to show my worth and that I can protect him all the time. He protects himself all alone, and as weird as it seems, I feel relieved. And sometimes, I feel protected by him. But I’m still a mare, and mares have to be marely to their stallions.

“We are so different…” I sigh…

“If we made it official somehow, would it help?” he asked.

My heart skipped a beat there… He isn’t… or is he…?

“It’s still too soon, but of all the girls around here, you are the only one I can picture myself to be with in the long run. If everything continues as well as it is going, in a few months, I wouldn’t mind marrying you.”

I fainted.

***

I would’ve been worried if not for the over dramatic way she fainted and how she landed on top of my lap, legs up in the air. And she had a content smile wrapped around her muzzle. So, I did the only thing that could be done…

I started to pet her chest fluff, and she puffed it out as much as it would go, so it would be extra fluffy for my fingers to slide along it. Earth ponies don’t have the silkiest coat, that would go to pegasi and unicorns. Unicorns felt more like a very smooth and velvety fox or cat, whereas pegasi were kind of weird, but also really soft and fluffy in a feathery way, when they puffed their coats, it felt like a mix of fur and feathers. That wasn’t the case for Cheerilee, she was an earth pony and had a slightly coarser coat, kind of fibrous, even prickly if rubbed in the wrong direction, closer to a dog or an actual horse from Earth, but still enjoyable, especially when they did the puffy thing with their chest fluff.

“So, would it mitigate the problem?” I asked as I saw her eyes fluttering open and setting into a seductive half lidded position.

“Any sensible mare would stay away from an engaged stallion.” She responded.

“And what’s the difference? I know Rarity already knows we are kind of knowing each other and kind of… you know, a thing. If she knows, Ponyville knows, I mean… she is the master gossip mare.” I inquired.

“Yeah, but ‘we are knowing each other and kind of a thing’ kind of leaves a lot of room to interpretation, and a cheeky mare could slip in and take you away if we don’t make it official.”

“So, until we get married, am I in danger of being ‘stolen’?”

“Kind of… well… maybe other mares might get their hopes up as long as we don’t at least announce that we are marefriend and coltfriend and are planning to get married.”

Yeah, I kind of see it. Back in my world, it wouldn’t be that rare that an unscrupulous boy seduced a girl out of her current relationship, that was part of the game, a game that I was really bad at, therefore my years of solitude. It seems ponies are not that different, but…

“I am not an object or possession that needs to be protected.” I flicked her muzzle with a finger, she went cross eyed for a moment and sneezed on my hand.

“…Eww.” I cleaned my hand on my trousers. For a moment I considered to clean it on her coat, but that seemed a little bit too rude given the circumstances, those circumstances being the fact that I was the cause of said sneeze, and would be counterproductive for petting her afterwards, I wanted maximum fluffiness.

“Hey, that’s what you get for that.” She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Bad girl, thinking I can be stolen like a bag of Bits.”

“Don’t ‘bad girl’ me, I’m a grown-up mare, and I can protect you, and make you safe around me. We earth ponies might not be able to cast spells or be able to fly, but we are mighty strong, I am stronger than you and… EEEK!” She suddenly squirmed as I poked her belly on the side.

“…and mightily ticklish.” I finished the sentence for her.

She retracted her legs to protect her exposed belly, but she was laying with her back on my lap, so it was a lost cause, as much as she tried to become an upside-down pony loaf, I had the upper hand this time and she knew it. She yielded and looked away, scrunching her muzzle.

“Okay, then tomorrow we will go to Berry’s and tell everyone that we are officially engaged and considering getting married, if that puts you at ease.” I told her.

She just relaxed again and resumed her half lidded look at me, and I resumed the chest fluff scritches. After a couple of weeks living with her as a ‘kind of a thing’, I have come to the realization that she was as close as I would get to a normal girl from Earth. Also, she was very stable (hah… cause she’s a horse) for a pony. I mean, mares around here in general are kind of crazy. I felt like I could tell her anything and we could talk our problems like reasonable adults. And I found it funny how protective she could become, even though I didn’t need any protection at all, but it was a pony thing. Here, the girls were the knight and the boys were the prince to be rescued. And mare princesses were badass heroes.

The wind and rain outside made the crackle of the fire and its gentle glow of orange warmth very comfy here on the couch, but it wasn’t big enough for the two of us to get really comfortable.

“Let me carry you.” She asked.

I let her get out of the couch and gently sat on her back. Despite how absurd it was, I found myself enjoying the ride as she proudly paraded me around the house. Well… she was kind of small and I had to bend my legs in order to not drag them on the floor, but seeing her all proud of herself made me want to squeal. She was adorable. Our adorable inside joke about how human and horse were meant to work back on Earth.

At first, I was kind of afraid of hurting her, but after a few times I got confident. She was strong indeed, she could bear my weight without a problem, and I could feel her small but powerful legs and muscles carrying me. Her back was rock solid under that layer of soft fluff.

We arrived in her bedroom and she dropped me on top of the bed, soon to jump herself on it too. The house only had originally one bedroom, and the small repurposed storage room that I rented as my own room. The glow of the fire was still kind of visible from here with the door open, so it still was cozy. Even cozier with a magenta fluffy pillow to hug, of course. She wriggled under the covers and made herself comfortable, and pressed her back to my stomach.

“Spoon me” She demanded as she just arched her back, pushing me into big spoon position.

I hugged her and grabbed one of her hoofs with my hand. She suddenly seemed a little bit self-conscious as I inspected it.

Slightly chipped hoof, some cracks and irregularities. The bottom was not very smooth, but not a complete mess, it was healthy, but worn down. There was no hoof polish, just a little bit of white chalk dust sprinkled around on the underside of the slightly pliable part of her hoof. The hoof of a hard-working mare.

She didn’t wear horseshoes. Farm ponies or traders who needed to cover long distances by hoof usually wore them. It was more of an earth pony thing. Pagasi didn’t need them as much, and unicorns were mostly focused on magic, so their worries were more about polishing their hooves to look good. Cheerilee wasn’t a farm pony, and her job wasn’t physically demanding, so she chose not to wear shoes, but her job wasn’t an easy one either, so she didn’t usually bother taking too much care of her hooves apart from the bare minimum for practicality and health.

It was just her naked hoof, slightly rough and slightly dirty from her day at school. I rubbed it clean a little with my thumb and then kissed it. She flinched a little and tried to recover her leg, but I hold it and she didn’t try too hard.

“Oh, my goodness… you…” She hid her furious blush behind her other foreleg, the pursed lips of her embarrassed muzzle were visible from under the fetlock covering her eyes.

“What?”

“I… I… didn’t even… oh gosh, my…”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t even polished it…”

“And?”

“But…”

I brought her leg close to my face and nuzzled her fetlock in what I learned was a display of affection for ponies. They nuzzled a lot.

“S…staaaaaph!” She wriggled a little.

“Do you want me to take care of your hoofs? I’m not an expert, but I’m learning at the spa, just in case Lotus or Aloe are too busy… I’ll give you a free ticket for the treatment, the one they give when a pony is learning to do it” I let her recover her hoof.

“It’s not that bad… It’s… um… I can…”

“The word you are looking for is ‘thank you’.” I said.

“Thank you!?” She snorted indignantly.

“You’re welcome!”

She just snorted scrunched her muzzle and frowned.

“Stupid stallion whimsy…” She mumbled to herself after a while.

We stayed like that for some more time. I started to comb her chest fluff with my hand, then moved on to give her some slow and relaxing belly rubs while my other hand just hugged her. Outside, the storm was at full force. The rain was hitting hard, and the wind was blowing, making the wooden structure groan and creak. The rain hitting the windows and roof at uneven intervals as the wind carried the droplets with more or less force depending on how strong the gusts were. The tree branches shook, and the leaves rustled in the wind, adding to the plethora of storm sounds. The rolling of thunder just added the finishing touches, and she flinched a little bit sometimes with that sound. Pony ears were kind of more sensitive, so it made sense.

The fire continued to crackle merrily, and the dancing light creeped through the open door. It was warm inside, specially sharing the body heat with Cheery. Ponies had a higher body temperature than we humans, so they made for good heaters in winter or in cold weather, and they had fur, and were soft, so it was nice. It wasn’t going to be as nice in the summer, but they controlled the weather, so, they might get it tamer than the great heatwaves from Earth, I hope, because they didn’t have air conditioners.

We were different. Different customs, different cultures, different species even, yet, surprisingly so, we were still the same where it matters.

Author's Note

You know, because absolutely no one else is doing the Valentine thing...

Well, I guess it's the best moment to publish an extra something for this story. Even though the main thing is finished, this kind of 'extra' chapters are not out of the picture.

Hope you like it and I hope I was not too heavy on the RGRE in this one.