Kawa's Attempts at Self Discovery and Squick

Cutie mark: ‘Television Typewriter’. Brilliant. I didn’t even care if ponies had proper TVs or not. It was brill as fuck and there’d be further discussion about it. I turned the form in to the lady behind the counter, who took a few good looks at it.

I flashed my best smile at her.

“Very well, sir”, she said after a tense couple minutes. Or maybe seconds, fucked if I know. Can’t tell, don’t care to. “Welcome to Ponyville.”

I staggered back out of Town Hall feeling very much as if my spirits were lifted. Trying to keep the volume down a bit as my odd mode of locomotion caught enough attention already, I found myself humming that one mashup of the Doctor Who and My Little Pony theme songs. Having random songs stuck in my head really helped pass the time.

I encountered Pinkie Pie once more on my random way to Twilight’s library. Y’see, my second objective, I had decided, should be to accumulate as much factual information as possible. Especially in language – if they seriously used ‘sire’ and ‘dam’ instead of ‘father’ and ‘mother’, who knows what sort of stupid mistakes I could avoid with half a dictionary up in there?

“Hello, mysterious hat pony”, Pinkie greeted. “Still drunk?”

Somehow, and I still don’t know how exactly, I managed to tip my hat at the pony. “Hi again, miss. I wasn’t plunk in the first drace.”

Smooth. Ordinary phrases come out as a bumblefuck of realistic diction, but somehow the comedy gods let me joke at regular speed? Ah, who even gives a shit. With enough forced practice I should get better at spoken English… Equestrian?

I probably must’ve passed the library at least once before I found it and knocked on the door.

“It’s open”, a young male-ish voice called out. That was probably Spike, though it was harder to tell through the door than I thought. Anyway, I gave the door a good push and walked right into the side of the doorway.

Spike was there almost before I finished saying “ow fuck”.

“Are you okay, mister? That looked like it hurt”, he asked.

“I’ll be fine… thank you. Do you… have any dictionaries?”

“Sure, mister… Mister…?”

“Kawa”, I introduced myself with another impossible hat tip. “D’ya mind if I hang out here with one? I don’t have any… I don’t have a place to go.”

“You don’t?” the little dragon asked in confirmation.

“Nope, ‘n no cash ayther”, I admitted with another sick snort. “Gonna have to… do somethin’ ‘bout that.”

Just a moment later, I was sitting in the corner with an Equestrian dictionary. I skipped ahead to the S just to confirm that ‘sire’ thing. I noticed a few extra letters on the way, but I’d look into those after.

sire (say-er) n.: male parent. contrast dam.

Yeah okay. That’s one obvious thing confirmed. Now, I’ve never been very good at reading pronunciation guides, but that seemed a pretty fun way to say ‘sire’. I stopped for a moment to recall how the lady from Town Hall had pronounced it.

foot (fuht) n.: lower extremity of bipedal beings such as a diamond dog or dragon. see also hand, claw.

cu·tie mark (cyú-ti marhk) n.: symbol representing special talent. also talent brand, rarely butt symbol.

Heh. I knew about butt symbols, but ‘talent brand’ was new to me. Gotta be sure now, so I flipped over to the letter H for Hentai and several other things.

As I’d almost had expected. No entry for ‘human’. Which was actually good, in a way; if I were to meet a certain pony she wouldn’t be likely to ask stupid-ass questions. That whole thing was overdone anyway. No sense beating a prone pony. Now what was that one new letter? I flipped over to the letter just between A and B. It seemed like your average AE ligature, and apparently counted as its own letter. And what do I see right in the middle? That’s right.

æl·corn (ayhl-corn) n.: 1 - horn of a unicorn or pegacorn. 2 - substance of horn. 3 - (rarely) syn. pegacorn. sometimes written ‘ali·corn’.

Cælesha (sayh-lesh'ya) p.n.: immortal goddess of the sun and ruling princess.

No T? I could deal with that. And it seemed like you weren’t allowed to break her name at the end of a line, considering the lack of middle dots.

After roughly two hours of plodding through that dictionary, I had the basic differences down and maybe the others would form some nice sediment to randomly call upon.

When I stood up and carefully cracked my aching limbs, a familiar lavender unicorn walked up to me and took the dictionary in her telekinetic grasp. After she put it back where Spike had taken it from without looking, she turned to me.

“Hi there. I’m Twilight Sparkle”, she started to introduce herself. She must’ve picked up on my being new here. Was it Pinkie or the lady from Town Hall that tipped her off? Did it even matter? I was about to make an ass of myself anyway.

Hat tip, somehow.

“Kawa, nice to, eh... Nice to meet you, heh...”

Speaking normally was somehow even more difficult this time. Possibly because this was an unattached, nerdy as all get-the-fuck-out young woman in rooouuughly my age bracket, and pretty good-looking for an equine. The fact that she sounded like Tara Strong with a smexy accent didn’t help.

“You must be ah…” I fumbled. I couldn’t show too much foreknowledge from watching the show, after all. “You must be the ah… personal student of Princess Celestia, right?”

Fuck you, accent. Fuck you right in your non-existent ass. You do not pronounce the Celesha-thrice-damned T you just fucking learned not to do that!

“Caelesha, you mean. And yes, yes I am”, Twilight corrected and confirmed with a noticeable pride. “But if I’m the Princess’ Faithful Student, what are you?”

“Umm… A homeless, jobless piece of crap with a fancy hat?” I blurted out.

“Well”, the librarian pondered as she gave me a quick look-over, stopping at my shirt. “You certainly don’t seem to be here to make friends. Take it from me, mister Kawa; you’ll find out how wrong that shirt is soon enough.”

How delightfully foreboding.

“I’m shuuure”, I mocked as I realized I was indeed wearing my ‘not here to make friends’ shirt. “Now, where and how can I earn some quick bits?”