You Can Lead a Pony to Water
But You Can't Make Her Drink
Admiral Biscuit

“. . . and this is the kitchen.”

“Uh-huh,” Rainbow said unenthusiastically. “I've seen a kitchen before.”

“But have you seen running water?” I asked as I filled a glass under the kitchen tap. “Go on, have a drink.”

“No thanks.” Rainbow flicked her tail. “You know, we've got running water in Equestria.”

“You do?”

She sighed. “Yes. Equestria is not some primitive backwater nation.”

“But I thought—”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Okay, you've got automobiles and home theater boxes, but your weatherponies . . . um, weatherpeoples get it wrong half the time.”

I shook my head and looked back at my computer. Every time Rainbow was in the kitchen, it reminded me of that embarrassing conversation when we'd first met.

It wasn't like I'd never heard anything about Equestria before Rainbow showed up. All of us who had volunteered to host an Equestrian exchange student went through a pretty comprehensive training program . . . but the problem was, the presenter didn't know all that much. He said that he'd met with one of their Princesses—and maybe he had—but I was rapidly learning that a brief glimpse wasn't the same as full exposure.

Which I guess was the point of the whole exchange thing.

When I'd first seen the flier, I thought it was a joke, but I signed up anyway: what girl doesn't want a pony? I hadn't expected anything to come out of it, and two months passed without a word, then suddenly it was a flurry of meetings and discussions and I found myself with a new roommate.

While she was hardly the best roomie I'd ever had, she was far from the worst. She was kind of boastful and full of herself, but overall she was reasonably mature. She wasn't a party girl, and she never brought strange guys home, nor did she leave her underwear scattered around the house. Down, yes—that was a perennial problem. I had thought that the biggest downside would be fur, but what little she shed wasn't really an issue. The down though—it went everywhere and got into nearly everything. Luckily, I'd been able to persuade my parents to buy me a good vacuum, and I'd even taught Rainbow how to use it.

After I coaxed her out from under the covers.

“Hey, Sarah?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there any more peanut butter?”

“No.” I saved my world history homework—current progress A number of factors contributed to the beginning of World War Two, including—and reached for my purse. Rainbow was addicted to peanut butter, which was yet another thing they hadn't covered in orientation.

I suppose it was healthier than the habits of my binge-drinking former roommate.

Amusingly, it had been almost two months before I discovered how much Rainbow loved physical activity. It was a case of missed cues, really. She didn't get the significance of me heading out in the morning wearing jogging clothes, and I never really wondered what she was up to when she headed out to the park in the afternoon. We probably would have remained clueless if I hadn't seen a video on Facebook of her doing sprints—gallops, maybe?

Not that it went smoothly at first. She wasn't exactly a morning person—I'd floated the idea of us running together, and she'd seemed interested, but that next day, I was ready to go, and she was sprawled out on her back on top of the covers, snoring loudly. Gentle prodding did nothing to wake her, and when I shook her, she slapped me with a wing before rolling over and facing her back to me. I was wary of going much further, so I just let her be and jogged by my lonesome.

Of course, by the time I got back—specifically, when I was in the shower—she was ready to go.

We eventually reached a compromise where I started an hour later and she woke up an hour earlier.

Our running habits, too, needed adjustment. I was more of a distance runner, while she was a sprinter. On the first day, she left me in the dust, frequently darting back to check on me, but after twenty minutes or so, she was winded.

After a week, we figured it out. I think it was a positive sign that she slowed for me—but this was my time, and I made that pretty clear. If she was going to run with me, she was going to run at my pace, not her own.

I'd like to think it was my persuasive abilities, but I think it really came down to her competitive nature. She knew she could beat me easily in a sprint, but it irked her that she couldn't outdistance me, and she was going to keep trying until she could.

And I have to confess, it gave me a perverse sense of satisfaction to outrun a pony. Maybe it was a species-memory of chasing food down on the savannah, or maybe it was the one way in which I could do something physical she couldn't. Certainly, it was the one subject I could bring up when she was bragging that would shut her up.

I glanced over at her. She was still gamely trotting alongside me.

I angled over for the public bathrooms, and the drinking fountain between the men's side and the woman's side. Rainbow followed, keeping about five feet behind me. She liked to try for a final burst of speed at the end of our runs, and she'd built enough endurance that she finished first as often as not.

I leaned over the fountain and took a drink, then glanced back at her. She had her left wing outstretched and was biting it lightly—probably straightening a bent feather.

“You want a drink?”

She finished nibbling on her wing and looked at me, then the drinking fountain. “Um, nah. I'm fine.”

“Suit yourself.” I flexed my legs, leaned over and took another sip of water—too much, and I'd cramp up—then glanced at the paved path around the park. “One more lap?”

“Just one?”

I smiled. Every day, she acted like she had more endurance than she actually did, and pretended she could keep on going even when it was obvious she was at the end of her rope. Normally, I'd stick to my guns, put up with her fake disappointment, and end when I meant to.

But some days I'm a bitch.

“Okay, how about two?”

As soon as I saw her ears fall, I knew I had her.

Grocery shopping with Rainbow was an ordeal. What with all the news coverage of the ponies, and their presence on campus, you'd think that people would be a little more blase—certainly, I had gotten used to her by now—but inevitably, there was at least one little girl that wanted to pet her, one adult who wanted to interview her, one store employee who wanted to kick her out for being a pony, and one nut who wanted to explain how the whole nation was going to hell just because the President had allowed ponies to visit the US. Add to that her clueless nature when it came to how foods were advertised and the claims made on the package, and you had a recipe for disaster.

My first indication of how bad things could be was when she'd bought a can of pie filling and then expected—based on the picture—for there to be an actual pie in the can.

Fortunately, experience had made us both wiser, and she'd largely gotten a grasp on the whole 'shopping for groceries' idea. What had thus far been the most humiliating experience for her was when she'd put a whole case of Campbell's Chunky Beef and Bean soup in the cart because some athlete on TV had endorsed it, and I had to explain where beef came from. I was hoping that would be the low bar, but who knew? I lived in dread of the day I might have to take her down the feminine hygiene aisle—I actually wasn't sure what ponies did about that, and I was content not to know.

On the plus side, at least I hadn't had to tell her after the fact that time.. And on a side note, I'd probably never eat clam chowder again. Who knew you could get PTSD from food?

I slid a case of Dasani® bottled water under our cart. At the sight of the unshaven fundamentalist heading in our direction with a wild gleam in our eyes, I slumped my shoulders in resignation, tore open the package, grabbed a bottle of water, and twisted off the cap. Might as well remain hydrated for the upcoming verbal battle.

I took a drink, and then grabbed a second bottle, offering it to Rainbow. “You want one?”

She glanced down at it, and shook her head. “Nah.”

“Okay.” I girded my loins and waited for the verbal onslaught. I swear, he was actually drooling.

Of all her little proclivities, it was the one I never noticed. It was subtle, to be sure. There's an expression—I think it's Chinese—about death of a thousand cuts, and I'd never really understood it. Sure, I got the idea. It's not a hard thing to wrap your head around, after all. But I guess it's just one of those things where you hear the expression, and maybe you've got an image of someone being papercut to death . . . bleeding out one painful drop at a time. You never really consider it psychologically.

I think it was right after the trip to the grocery store that I started wondering. I e-mailed a couple of girls in the exchange program, and they'd observed the same thing. They hadn't noticed it—not until I brought it up—but they'd observed it.

Still, none of them had really tried testing the theory directly, so I made it my mission to do so. Observe and report, that's me. I even took notes—but there was never anything where I could pin it down with certitude. Close, sure, but there could be a reason, an excuse, some subtle cultural difference I didn't quite get. Heck, our experimentation proved that—Rainbow liked hard cider, but not beer. She was okay with apple juice, but she left the kitchen when I cut into a pear. I always figured that the two fruits were pretty much the same, but she clearly had a different perspective.

My opportunity came over Spring Break. I had planned to spend it at home with my mom, but her new boyfriend spirited her off to Cozumel, and I couldn't decide if I was upset that he ruined my vacation plans, or if it was just that she was partying while I couldn't afford plane fare to Kokomo, never mind Cozumel.

Of course, Rainbow didn't have Spring Break plans either. In fact, the whole holiday took her by surprise. Not the idea—she mentioned something about Winter Wrap-Up, and I got the impression that it was pretty much the same holiday—but the lack of guidance.

Ultimately, the ball fell into my court, and what was a nearly broke college student to do but fall back on her past experience? There was a bus, State Park fees were cheap, Rainbow didn't mind roughing it—and it would be the ultimate test of my hypotheses.

So it was that we found ourselves deep in the wilderness. I'd been prudent, and taken her on a couple of short hikes, just to see how she handled herself, but she was a natural woodsman. Woodspony. Whatever.

In the back of my mind, though, I had the ultimate goal in mind, the one thing that would prove me right or else send centuries of ancient proverb crashing down like . . . well, like the proverbial house built on sand.

It was an all-day hike, and I'll be honest, my first thought upon waking was that one poem by Edna St. Vincent. “Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come see my shining palace built upon the sand.”

I can't remember the hike at all. I was on autopilot, my mind on the culmination, rather than the journey itself. But I remember it well enough from when I was a Girl Scout; back then, it was probably the longest journey I'd ever taken through the untamed wilderness. And I got us there, although I can't say whether it was by the trail markers or my own memory of the trip.

I'd made sure that we were prepared, and by that I mean unprepared. I'd deliberately gone out into the woods without any water, and I'd kept an eye on Rainbow. She, too, had left without a canteen or bottle.

It was a hot day. Not crazy hot, but just warm enough to feel unpleasant if you were standing in the sunlight, and by the time we arrived, the dryness in my throat was almost unbearable—it was all I could do to keep myself from bolting to the spring as soon as I heard its pleasant burbling. But I held back—not for me, but for science.

I still couldn't read Rainbow all that well. Some things were obvious—she flicked her tail when she was irritated, she flattened her ears when she was annoyed, and she scraped her hoof when she was impatient. Those were the obvious signs, but I knew that there was a second level that I didn't quite comprehend, movements between the obvious and subtle.

But I kept a close eye on her, right from the moment I knew we were close. Before I even heard a sound—I'd been here before, after all, and I knew where we were going. She had no clue. I am sure of that.

“The Springs,” I said, as I leaned forward and cupped my hands. “Pure water.”

“Uh-huh.” Rainbow looked around the grove of trees, uninterested. “Looks nice, I guess.”

“You'll never taste fresher,” I told her, taking a drink of the cold springwater bubbling out of a fissure in the ground. “Go ahead and try some.”

I was looking right at her as her eyes flicked to the left, and then to the right. Her ears turned forwards, and she looked directly at the wellspring. For a moment there was nothing but the soft humming of insects and a distant birdcall. I stayed where I was, slightly hunched down, the chilly water surging across my hands, and I watched her.

I'd like to say that she had some significant reaction—but there was nothing. Her eye movements could have been no more than curiosity at her surroundings, after all. She might have been brushing at flies with her tail. Still—I don't think I was wrong, and I think it's an obligation for them.

“Nah.” Her ears turned forwards, and she gave me a bemused look. “I'm not thirsty.”

“Of course you aren't.” I took another drink and stood up. I walked back beside her, running my hand down her back. Ponies loved contact, something I'd learned through some amusing misunderstandings, but this time there was an ulterior motive. I could feel the sweat soaking through her coat, and even with the drink I'd had, my thirst wasn't entirely slaked. Still, my mission was complete; I'd proved for once and for all that the old proverb was true.

You can lead a pony to water, but you can't make her drink.

Author's Notes:

As always, author's notes are here.