Date with the Delivery Mare

Brisk Travel got home late to her little apartment, just west of the city limits of Pontiac.

Being that far from civilization was completely her style. The insanely packed urbanized areas that were prevalent in the human world were not her cup of tea. So her handlers had secured a single bedroom, single bathroom half of a townhouse out in the sticks after she'd complained about the city life, and the things that came with it.

That being said, the quiet let her take deep sigh of comfort as she entered through the front door and tossed her bag onto the kitchen island in what she figured was the most like how a human would have done it. Immediately, she flipped out her fold out tablet, the one issued and designed by the United Nations for pony use. It had a circular digital keyboard designed for hooves, with an additional setting for unicorns with the magical dexterity to use a normal keyboard, hers was set to the latter option.

She'd been thinking about her spontaneous invitation to dinner since she'd done it. Only a few additional conversations throughout the day, and the process of driving back to the station occupied her mind for long enough to forget. She had gotten a text from an unrecognized number a few minutes after, and had desperately tried to ignore it. Everything she'd read said that humans didn't usually respond instantly to text messages, despite the instant nature of the communication technology; weird to her, but she wanted to seem confident in herself.

She still wasn't sure if she was clear enough when she gave him the invitation. She wanted the aloofness that came with presenting the premise quickly, but didn't want it to be so confusing that he thought it was just dinner. Yes, she had invited him out on a date. Maybe not the best idea, but she couldn't go back on it now.

She looked down at the tablet, only now just realizing that she'd zoned out.

• 'Hey, this is that guy from your password delivery. I didn't give my name, or get yours. I'm Emanuel.'

Her immediate response was to throw up her own name, but she hesitated. She needed to deliberate for a moment if she was going to get this right on the first try. Brisk had never even asked out a pony. So she began to pace, muttering to herself as she crossed the room, and then back again.

"I will eventually want to give my name."

"Gotta actually find a nice restaurant."

"Do that first."

"And then maybe? No."

She stubbed her hoof on a chair leg. "Ack! Buck! Ow!" She sent it a stink eye and levitated it out of her way, taking a few more laps to get herself back into the zone.

"Emanuel, that's a nice human name. No last name though, does he think it's not important?"

"He lived with someone else."

"He lived with a woman."

"It didn't seem like they were together, stop worrying."

"I'll have to make it clear it's a date, I don't want him asking me halfway through."

Her pacing continued for minutes as she 'haw'd' over every detail she could extrapolate from the encounter, and her outside, yet intricate knowledge of human culture, as she tried to devise how to respond. His message gave her limited options, he very indirectly asked for her name, so if she didn't give it, then it'd seem like she was ignoring him. She was doing anything but, so she devised a simple, if cunning plan.

She typed out what she had thought up on the drive home, copied it and then cleared the text box again.

'Hey, I get off work at eight tomorrow, I know that's kinda late, that won't be a problem for dinner will it?'

She pursed her lips, contemplating whether or not she should leave 'eight' typed out as the word, or if she should remove it and just put the number. Eventually, she decided to leave it as is, and quickly sent the message; then sent the one she had saved to the device to make them come together, without time for him to separate them. Just in case he responded immediately.

'and my name's Brisk Travel. Emanuel's a cute name, what do you think of mine?'

Then she waited. It was a perfect pair, in her eyes, the name came second to skew what she was potentially focusing on, there was a little lightly flirtatious compliment, and a pair of questions. Depending on which he answered first, it would give her an important idea of what he was focusing on.

She didn't have to wait long, though if someone was watching, they would have gotten to experience her staring at the screen for over a minute like it owed her a frankly unreasonable sum of bits.

• 'Thanks, they have you working weekends? Sorry about that. Eight works fine for me, and if I can be totally honest, I have no idea what's up or down with pony names, I like yours though.'

Brisk narrowed her eyes despite the smile coming to her face. This was fun, challenging even. The man had flipped the script, answering in scattershot formation. He clearly responded to her compliment first, then expressed sympathy for her working hours, answered her first question, then her second; with an admittedly more thought out answer than she expected, yet there was still plenty hiding under the response.

He also typed with verbal grammar, an important note. That and there wasn't any spelling or grammar errors she could see, a good sign, or what humans called a 'green flag'.

She typed out another question with her magic. She had yet to even take off her vest.

'I have an idea for somewhere to go, but do you have any preferences?'

The icon showed that he was typing a second after she sent the message.

• 'I like trying new things, where do you have in mind?'

"Crud. Now I do have to find somewhere to eat." She muttered. She had to do it fast, too, the text conversation had picked up, if she spent forever trying to figure out where to go, it would be clear she'd only just then came up with it. Remembering where she said it was, she typed in the requirements into the tablet's specialized search engine. Plenty of locations for fashion forwards romantic dining establishments appeared, and she picked the one closest to where she guessed was the midpoint between her and him, copied the name, and hit send.

'Ciao Italian Bistro, in Fenton.'

• 'OoOoh, going fancy then. Should I bring a suit?'

She didn't have a good reference for whether or not it really was a fancy place, the 'OoOoh' was an indicator of sarcasm, or he was impressed. She gave her best guess at a good response, and hit send.

'Nah, no need. I know I won't be bringing a dress.'

• 'You should try a suit sometime, the colors would match up really well, I bet.'

The unrelated statement threw her through a loop, but he followed it up before she could come up with a way to respond to that.

• 'It's just about a twenty minute drive for me, you want me to get there at say... eight thirty? Fourty?'

Ignoring his comment, wondering if he was saying something about her...

Crap, what if he thought she was a stallion? It's not like he'd know for sure. She felt like she had a pretty feminine voice... She tried to recall how she spoke to him when she was at his house, but ended up dismissing the spontaneous worry since he didn't seem confused about her comment on not bringing a dress.

'Fourty is perfect for me. See you tomorrow?'

That was when she remembered that he'd identified her to the woman on the phone as a 'she' and breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn't already completely messed this up.

• 'Yes, though, I have a... bunch of questions to ask you.'

'Ask me at dinner ;)'

Was that too much aloofness?

• 'Hah, fair enough, so long as you don't mind staying out late.'

'I don't, I can always get the day after off from work.'

• 'Being from another planet let's you pull some strings? Or is that just the normal work flow?'

He was asking questions despite her attempt to end the conversation.

Not that... She was opposed to that, but her vest was starting to itch, reminding her that she had yet to do anything aside from put her bag down since getting home. She was a little peckish, and needed to use the bathroom. She didn't want to just put the conversation on hold while they had such good momentum, so she resigned herself for the moment and sat down on the carpeted side of the front room.

All of the furniture in here was pony sized, a gift from her handlers, though the ceilings were still way too high. A pegasus may have loved a room like this, plenty of space to fly around.

'Being from another *dimension*, but no, I can just ask someone to cover my shift.'

• 'Noted, dimension. I'll hold the rest of my questions for dinner.'

She smiled and was about to put the tablet down until she saw the icon signaling him typing again.

• 'Just one more though, if you'll let me?'

She giggled and flexed her magic.

'I'm not the question police, shoot.'

She hoped that was the right string of slang. She payed very close attention in her American culture classes, especially to the vernacular sections. Despite the slang generally being pretty weird, it was also pretty fun.

• 'To be clear, for my sake,'

• 'Is this a date?'

She half muttered a curse. Despite being a fair question, it put her in an odd spot. She could respond with the truth, but she didn't want to move the tone away from casual; equally, she could respond ambiguously to keep him wondering, though, certain ambiguous statements could be admissions in it of themselves...

She came to a solution, a texting apotheosis. Yes, without saying yes. It didn't take long to type in her answer.

'You tell me <3'

Silence from the other end of the line. There wasn't any self consciousness from her gamble, but she was anxious enough to see how he responded. Enough that she continued to ignore her body asking her to take care of herself.

• 'I promise not to fumble over myself again, lol, it's a date.'

She smiled to herself, nodding slowly.

Mission success.

She quickly discarded the tablet and rushed into the bathroom.

Emanuel had no clue what he was doing, how any of that conversation worked. He was still half sure he had imagined the whole thing until he remembered to go get the package from the door, and received a response from Brisk Travel. The complexity. He wasn't sure, he couldn't tell. Agonizing over the tiniest details was something that usually only happened in his head. It seemed like her responses were reflecting that, but he really didn't want to assume because that had ended poorly before and -

He was going on a date with a pony from another dimension. Something he found out was a thing today, in probably the most jarring way it could have been done.

"I... really need to start paying attention to current events." He mumbled to himself, laying on the bed in the spare room. It was just long enough to fit him even if he stretched out all the way. Though, if he reached his hands up, there was a wall. The room itself was cluttered, but in an organized way. The old woman that owned the home was an adventurous one, taking frequent trips to Alaska and bringing back plenty of mementos. The room was filled with memories and stories, not furniture and random knickknacks. Something Emanuel appreciated.

He picked up his phone again and checked the screen. No new messages. That marked the natural end to the conversation, and unfortunately marked the start of the series of questions he was holding off asking himself.

Like what the hell he was supposed to do.

"Do I even..." Of course, going on a date with a horse wasn't likely going to make him a smash hit with his admittedly small circle of friends from the college he used to go to; though, it may be the opposite. It's not like he was against it, she seemed like a nice mare, it's just...

Well...

She's a mare.

Totally different culture, literal alien mind. How was he even supposed to approach personally connecting with her?

"Well... Maybe not a literal alien mind. Is it... fantastical alternate dimension rules?" He figured that she could have a spectacularly similar mindset to your standard run of the mill human. She's not from a different world, supposedly just Earth with magic. Of course, that could still mean anything. The federal website detailed an eerily similar culture and society to theirs, just with far less technology, and a surprisingly egalitarian society. Kind like if Capitalisms and Communism finally stopped bitching at each other, tied the knot, and had a child that really enjoyed monarchal representative oligarchies.

Equestrian's apparently tended to be kinder than the average human. Their civilization numbered in the millions, rather than billions.

"Focus." He brought his mind back around the mare that had asked him out to a vaguely fancy restaurant.

On a date.

Hands went to his face as he groaned. He'd never had a moderately successful date with a human. There was a slew of trauma there that he'd mostly gotten over, but the tl:dr was that he was either A: consistently unlucky, or B: just that bad, at the whole process of 'conventional dates'. He honestly preferred treating it as a way to get to know people, asking friends out on dates was essentially the same thing as hanging out. Except the majority of human society was super weirded out by that, and way more interested in making the entire thing way more complicated than it needed to be.

"I guess I can't really talk. I'm the one overthinking this right now." He huffed, clearing his head and looking to the side at his laptop. The time on it read four fifty nine. His laptop clock was four hours behind for some reason, he never changed it, just got used to it instead.

He wasn't unsure of himself, quite the contrary. He was very certain he could present a honest and friendly version of himself without issue. It was the trepidation that came with the utter failure that course of action tended to yield that brought up the butterflies from his stomach. People who got to know him tended not to like him. He was complex, despite him feeling marginally embarrassed to admit it do to the millions of screaming children in the world who used the same argument to justify screaming for no reason. He was also a fuckin' nerd, all the way up to the top. Dungeons and Dragons, video games, tabletop card games, you name it.

He was just a guy being a dude, and now he was going on a date with a pony.

He waved a hand in the air, gesturing to himself for no other reason than because he could. "You know what? I bet there are people who would literally end the life of another person for a chance like this."

The future of what could come of the situation bore down on him like fire, and he elected to simply ignore what success would mean, in leu of simply believing that he wouldn't succeed. Then it wouldn't be his problem anymore.

"I'm just gonna..." He waved his hand again, "Accept that this is a crazy interesting opportunity. Go on a date with a mare, and then... have it as a story I can tell for the rest of my life."

His arm flopped down onto the bed next to him.

"Just gotta not totally fuck it up."