Who am I? What is a "pony"?
Meanwhile...
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I heard a light "click". Vinyl was back! I stopped chasing the elusive tail, and I crouched like a... cat... thingy... whatever on the hunt. I was on the other side from the door and she hadn't seen me yet. Slowly I tip-hoofed around the bed, ready to strike.
"Hello?" Ha, she had revealed her location! she was right around the corner. I braced my leg muscles and leaped!
"SQUUUUEEEE" I roared as I leaped at my prey. Wait Vinyl was white, not gray!
"oooof!" was all I heard as I glomped the mysterious gray pony. We both fell into a tumbling pile of hooves. Not wanting to let the stranger escape I latched onto her ear. The mysterious intruder yelled for help as I munched down. bouncing and bucking as she yelled; I held on for dear life. " Vinyl help it's trying to eat me!" It cried out. Hearing the familiar "click" again I turned I saw Vinyl enter the room. Of course I had to let go of my prey to turn, and I fell off of the Mare. It was more then worth it. Vinyl had a big smile on her face! " Stop laughing and get your flank over here!" the now prey called out to Vinyl. I roared again as my prey tumbled using the opportunity to regain purchase on her back. I decided to sample her mane before more help arrived. " Vinyl I'm serious help me before I'm lunch!" Miss Vinyl picked me off and set me on the bed with her glow.
"Awwww" I whined dejectedly. I had almost gotten her... her?... gray?!... It was that mare from yesterday. The one with the mean sound!
" Don't worry Octavia, as delicious as it sounds I already had other plans for our lunch." Miss Vinyl chuckled some more as my stomach grumbled. Feeling a few words on the tip of my tongue I spat them out. because they tasted weird.
" Food for my belly, wood for the fire, don't trust Loki, he is a liar!" Hey! That sounded cool. I should do that more often. I wonder what it means though? I turned to ask Vinyl... but... but... she was looking at me funny. I didn't like that look. Those words must have been bad. I started to apologize, but she was headed for the door.
" Umm... Don't worry, we will be right back with something to eat." Miss Vinyl didn't look at me as she and Miss Octavia started back towards the door. They were leaving me here! Alone??!! Noo!
"please don't go! I promise I won't say the weird tasting words again." Dang it why was I such a mess up??? Now Vinyl didn't like me! I had to make her like me or she would go! No! No! NO! Not... again?
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Vinyl watched the small foal run across the room. How could one small pony make so many tears? The thing was giving the song "Cry me a river" a good run for its money. Wait no, that was the problem wasn't it? The foal wasn't a "it". "its" don't cry, you don't adopt "its", "things" didn't need love. THE foal was scared and alone. The foal needed her. The foal needed a name and home, and a pronoun ...
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It had taken several dozen cookies, a hour of snuggling, and a drowsiness spell, but the foal had finally accepted that Vinyl wasn't abandoning it. She and Octavia were now sitting on the foal's hospital bed, eating a now long overdue lunch from flowers and flour bakery.
" Octavia What do you think of thon. It's a conjunction of 'the one'.?" The two of them were rifling through a book of neologisms for a gender neutral pronoun. It had been suggested by Twilight Sparkle when Octavia ran in to her while getting food. There were a surprising number of new pronouns of no-gender probably due to the recent resurgence in Stallion civil-rights activity. Octavia had agreed readily with the need of a better pronoun then "it" because of the connotations it held.
" No that isn't any better then yo." Vinyl frowned she had really liked 'yo'.
" 'they' singular?"
"too confusing!"
" OH MY GOSH I mmmfphje!!" Whatever Vinyl had been about to say was cut off as Octavia grabbed Vinyl's tongue with reflexes faster then lightning.
" shuuuuuush... you will wake the foal.
"FOUND IT!" Vinyl whispered with as much enthusiasm as when she had yelled. She then rotated the book and pointed out the word for Octavia too see.
" Ze...? Ze said so. I called Hir over. I liked Hir shoes. The shoes are Hirs... It is very, witty." Witty?
"witty? I just thought it sounded cool." Vinyl didn't see it.
" don't you see it? hir is a combination of hi(m) and h(e)r into one word! While ze is the sound right between She and He. Really Scratch wasn't it obvious?" Vinyl Scratch scratched her head. It made a bit more sense now. She and Octavia both liked it, so this was probably going to be the best they would come to agreement whise. They finished and Octavia left to return the book, and pick up some papers from the Town Hall.
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Vinyl watched as the foal continued sleeping. She was sitting on the bed with a pen and paper at the ready. The sleeping foal unaware of the ramifications of its actions made a tiny little sneeze.
"Cute" was the only thing Vinyl said as she scribbled on the list of potential names.
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Vinyl began scratching the word cute off the list VERY quickly. Cute Scratch was not the name that attracted friends or admirers. Pranks were enjoyable, but attaching such a name permanently to a newborn foal was way over the line. Deep into the territory of plain out cruelty.
It was at this exact fiber that the rug of time slipped a bit, and every single hair on every time lord in all of causality felt a slight nudge as this closed point in time happened. All of these twitching follicles throughout time and space created a single energy wave around the Doctor Whooves currently handing the newborn Dinky Whooves to Ditzy Whooves. It reverberated around the Cosmos for a while, did a slingshot around the sun of Equestria traveled to the past, and vibrated Celestia's horn for five seconds at a sedate frequency and magnitude. On a normal day Celestia would have ignored such a oddity. Except it happened to coincide with a dust particle entering her nose. Still, either of these alone would have done little, but when they occured together it caused her to sneeze in the middle of a Gala. The riots and looting of the Apocalypse fearing ponies lasted for a week after that. One of the stolen items was a pencil. That pencil was dropped twenty decades later by a horse in Saddle Arabia. The shock-wave traveled across the planet, and was just the right strength to cause "Drakkans Ok Þhik." (Dragons and you in Equuith) to fall off the hospital bed when it passed by. This was just as Vinyl scratched cute off the list of possible names.
"Hmm maybe hir favorite book could give me some ideas." Vinyl was sadly disappointed because the book was in a strange long dead language that Celestia had attempted to strike from history.
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