Anonymous in Nu-Questria

You awake to a delicious aroma. The morning light is creeping in through the basement window, and you hear birds calling outside.

You climb up the stairs groggily. There’s the sound of something simmering in the kitchen down the hall.

You walk over and peek inside. Izzy is sitting by the cast iron stove, moving a wooden spatula around inside a pan.

“Morning Anon!” She says in a cute voice. She turns to look at you and beams. “Help yourself! I made a lot.”

You look over at a small wooden table. There’s several plates set out, each one carrying a tower of pancakes. Syrup and colorful sprinkles adorn each one.

“Uh, thanks!” You say, trying to sound appreciative.

“How much food do humans need, any way?” Izzy asks.

You don’t respond and instead grab the smallest stack you can find. You and Izzy move to the atrium to eat more comfortably than you can in the cramped kitchen. The pancakes are light, fluffy and very sugary. They are basically drenched in syrup, and split apart easily.

You eat as much as you can, but you hardly make a dent in it. You put your fork down.

“Sorry Izzy, I can’t eat another bite.” You say.

“Heheh,” Izzy giggles, “Nah, that’s okay. It’s so fun making pancakes now that I have magic, I kinda got carried away...”

You nod politely at her. “I really do appreciate you cooking though.”

“No problem.” Izzy says sweetly. She suddenly sits up. “So hey, what do you want to do today?”

“Uh...” You say. You think for a bit.

“Oh, do you like gizmos?! Check this out!” Izzy says excitedly.

She rushes into a side alcove and rustles around inside a box. She pulls out a hexagonal box with her hoof and scrambles back to you.

She holds it up to you and turns a small crank on the side of the box. Slowly the powdery blue walls of the box begin to unfurl and notes from a music box start playing. A small stuffed unicorn doll is posed like a dancer inside the box. It spins with a mechanical whirl, and it is wearing what looks like a navy-colored, full-body morph suit that stops at the neckline.

“Ta-dah! A unicorn in a unitard!” Izzy says with a huge smile.

You quirk an eyebrow. “Hm. You made this?” You ask as you take the box from her hoof.

“Yep!” She says, “Pretty funky, right?”

You look at the little doll as it spins. Its clothes look to be made out of some kind of nylon material. You suddenly remember your pile of smelly, destroyed clothing and your beaten-up shirt.

You set down the box. “Hey Izzy, how good are you at making clothes?” You ask.

The unicorn tilts her head and rubs her chin. “Well... I’d say I’m medium-okay at it.” She says, “Why?” Her ears perk up.

“Well, my clothes got kind of wrecked in the woods out there.” You explain, “I’d be more comfortable if I had... I dunno, a new shirt at least.”

“Oh,” Izzy says, nodding her head in understanding. “Yeah, it’s weird that you’re wearing those still. Why don’t you just take them off?”

Oh, that’s right. She doesn’t know shit about humans yet.

“Well,” you start, “Humans usually wear clothes almost all the time. It’s a human thing.”

Izzy tilts her head with a puzzled expression. Then she perks up and raises a hoof.

“Oh, I see! I know some unicorns that always wear clothes. Prim is always wearing that ascot whenever I see her. And Plum Patch has that beanie she loves.” She says with a smile.

“Well, it’s kind of like that.” You say. You decide to give her a brief overview of the reasons humans wear clothes, protection from the elements, warmth, no natural fur, et cetera. Izzy’s eyes glaze over a few times as you speak, and she keeps glancing to the sides. Yet she doesn’t interrupt and seems to be mostly paying attention.

You finish explaining and Izzy just tilts her head and looks at you pensively.

“Huh, weird. I didn’t know humans would be so complicated.” She says.

“Well, yeah. I mean didn’t Sunny tell you?” You ask.

“Oh, well she mostly just said you’re like a big monkey guy with no fur but you talk like a pony, like you have a pony brain, but its in a different kind of body.” She says with a shrug.

“Well, if that’s how you want to look at it, sure. That’s pretty accurate.” You say.

“Alright. So. New threads? New duds?” Izzy says as she walks over to an end table. She picks up a pair of large, nose-mounted spectacles and puts them on. “This mare has got you covered.” She says with a smile.

Soon you are looking over swatches of fabric and colored threads. Izzy’s choices are almost exclusively pastels or bright primary colors. There doesn’t seem to be enough of one color to make an entire shirt’s worth of fabric. Izzy says that most of these “reclaimed” from somewhere. Well, fuck. You decide to just let her go wild and use whatever she wants.

She takes some measurements on you, and then you help her trace out a design for a t-shirt. With the materials she’s using it will be more like a short-sleeved tunic, but oh well. She rolls out an old-fashioned sewing machine with a hoof pedal attached to it.

Soon she is sewing up the seams carefully, her magic powering the hoof pedal as she hums. Her eyes widen and she sticks her tongue out to the side as she works.

You decided to fully convert your shoes into flip-flops for now. Plus it makes you feel less guilty than you would if you just sat and watched her work.

You are threading twine through the holes you make in your detached shoe soles when you remember a question that had been burning away at you.

“So, uh, I notice you still have electricity here. That’s not taboo to unicorns, is it?” You ask.

“Nah,” Izzy says, “We have this big water wheel thingy and it spins like, all the time. It makes electricity they store in these big crystal jars. It’s really neat, actually!”

Izzy stops sewing and looks at you with her large, spectacled, purple eyes. “Sunny mentioned they had stuff like that in your world. Did you make stuff like that?”

You shake your head. “No, I didn’t have an important job like building hydroelectric dams.”

“Hydro-whanow?” Izzy says, making an exaggerated confused expression.

“Eh, never mind. What I mean is that... I was kind of a nobody. I just worked at an office building with other humans. Doing mundane tasks tasks and paperwork mostly. I bounced around a few jobs, but all of them were pretty much the same. Big office building, lots of corporate bullshit.” You say.

You don’t know why you’re explaining all this to her. You feel a bit relieved to be talking to someone so openly, even if it is just a random pony. There’s no way she really understands though.

“Wow...” Izzy says. Her eyes narrow. “No offense, but that sounds really, really boring.”

You smile and chuckle a bit. “Yeah, you have no idea.”

Izzy goes back to her sewing, humming tunelessly as she steadily guides and curves her hooves to angle the fabric just right.

You keep working on the sandals. As you finish up and are ready to test them out, you hear a clap of thunder and the sky outside flashes for a second. You turn and look out the front windows of the atrium. An overcast sky loomed above the trees, and you noticed a thin sprinkle of rain starting to spot the dirt trail outside.

“Looks like it’s going to rain.” You say to Izzy.

She doesn’t respond. She’s in some kind of creative trance. The sewing machine is whirring very quickly now, the pedal spinning as it glows brightly with arcane energy. Izzy’s hooves are quickly spinning the shirt around.

With a sudden flourish, she whips the cloth off the machine, winding down the machine quickly with her magic. With a small spark of her horn, she ties a knot in it and cuts the thread. She catches the shirt midair, spins on her hind hooves and turns it right-side out, shaking it out in the process.

“Done~!” She says in a sing-song voice.

Wow, you’re honestly impressed at how quickly she finished that. The tunic is made with cobalt blue patches on the back and sky blue patches on the front. She even sewed a little pocket into it with a lavender-colored patch, and there’s a small stylized flower in gold thread embroidered on it. It looks sturdy and comfortable to boot.

“Wow,” you say. You’re honestly impressed.

“Do you love it?” Izzy’s amethyst eyes are sparkling as she waits for your approval.

“That’s... amazing actually, great job.” You say. You stand up and grin.

Izzy trots in place and squeals with delight. “Ah! You have no idea how happy that makes me!”

She rushes up to you and levitates the tunic to your face. “Quick! Quick! Try it on!” She says.

You take it in your hands and flip it around. You pull it over your head and down over your dress shirt.

You turn to Izzy and put your hands on your hips. “How do I look?” You say.

Izzy whips off her glasses and stares at you, hoof to her chin. “Hm, it’s missing something...”

She taps her hoof on the floor. You glance down and roll up the sleeves of your dress shirt.

“Wait! I got it!” Izzy turns and starts bolting as quickly as she can toward an alcove, her hooves skidding on the stole tiles from her sudden acceleration. “Aah! Wait right here!”

She slides into a large box and springs off it, moving out of the way. A basket tumbles and hits the floor. You hear something break. She reaches into a big chest in the corner of the alcove and roots around inside.

She turns back and walks up to you with a cheeky smile on her face, levitating something behind the curtain of her mane.

“Close your eyes, Anon.” She says.

Hm. Okay... You comply with the unicorn.

You hear the ambient flow of magic from her horn and the gentle hum of the levitation spell as it floats a small object up towards your sternum. You feel a gentle pressure there.

“Okay! Okay! Open them!” Izzy urges.

You look down. Izzy has pinned a large broach to your tunic. It’s made from tarnished brass and has a pillow-cut emerald in the center.

“Huh.” You say.

“Emerald!” Izzy says, stretching out her forehooves to the sides.

“Yeah, I see that.” You say. It’s a bit tacky, but, eh... why not.

“No! Emerald!” Izzy says, pointing to your chest. “That’s the color of your sparkle!”

You look at her. “My what, now?” you ask.

“It was really dim at first, so I couldn’t tell.” Izzy says, “But when I saw you in the campsite, I new instantly!” She beams.

She seems like she’s talking about your ‘aura.’ Well, she is magic, so maybe she could sense things like that? You never had any unicorn tell you that you had an aura in the past though.

The rain starts to pick up outside. The sky is dark and the rush of droplets hitting the forest becomes a cacophonous roar.

Izzy doesn’t seem to really mind. “My sparkle is fuchsia, by the way.” She says, batting her eyelashes.

Suddenly there’s a clap of thunder behind you. For a moment you cast a long shadow, eclipsing the unicorn as it rises up the walls of the atrium.

She has a strange look in her eyes. As you touch the broach on your chest, you feel like this revelation means something in the unicorn culture.

“That’s... uh, interesting, Izzy.” You say, smiling a bit and hoping your nervousness doesn’t come trough.

“So,” she says, slowly running a hoof along the floor, “What do you wanna do now?”

You think and suddenly remember the movies downstairs. That might be fun on a rainy day, right?

You make the suggestion to Izzy and she agrees. Soon you are sitting on the beanbag chair, watching a schlocky action movie about a robot unicorn rampaging through an innocent earth pony town.

You spend the day watching movies, talking about various ones you have both seen, and discussing what genres you preferred. Izzy loved all movies, but you could tell from her slight blush that she especially liked romantic comedies.

You broke for lunch and dinner. The rain continued until evening fell, and the forest began to quiet again.

You convince her to watch one more before you go to bed. As the movie progresses, you notice that you and Izzy are starting to sink closer together due to your combined weight on the beanbag chair, and that you’ve both been slowly shifting it into a new shape through your coach-potato ways.

Izzy passes out around two thirds of the way through the movie. You don’t try to move away as Izzy’s head gently drifts against your shoulder. Her chest rises and falls in a smooth rhythm, and she has a contented smile on her face.

Her mane, now close to your cheek, smells of lavender and hibiscus, with that signature mare scent you know so well. It feels... nice. To have her close by you as you binge stupid movies and pass the time.

You feel like maybe this won’t be so bad. You close your eyes and think about what you might do tomorrow.

You pass out.