Wolves Should Stay Quiet, You Might Upset the Dragons
Dan's Comments
DISCLAIMER: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro, Inc.

I have been told that it is customary to give a gift and to describe embarrassing incidents participated in jointly, with the language barrier I decided to use the printed page to achieve both of these.

How did I meet those celebrated today? It was in arguably the best and the worst circumstances. I met them in combat that I neither sought nor wanted, and as a show of both intelligence and compassion, neither did they.

His arrival had all the hallmarks of a disaster. Considering he had likely been in the process of dying rather horribly when he'd left where he was, arriving here battered and bruised was a marked improvement. When the universe is nice to me, he thought, It always wants something later.

He stood slowly, verifying that he was essentially intact, and to his delight, still hexapodal, he'd even retained his preferred color scheme, an unlooked for bonus. Only the horn jutting out from his forehead put a damper on things. "I've become a unicorn, oh joy. You'd think I'd flunk the entrance exam, let alone graduate" He ignored the minor inconvenience and tested out his wings on a short flight. The new, feathered things lacked the power and he considered the majesty of his original models, but they served.

Flying over a small lake, or large pond, he got the second disappointment. "I had to be cute and fluffy, didn't I? Well, it beats being dead." He started following the course of the river on foot, or hoof, into and through a wood. While the trees gave him a vague sense of scale, he couldn't determine his actual size until he encountered something of a less variable size. He was vaguely aware of something following him, something that seemed both much larger, and trying to remain unseen. Since it was content to remain unseen, he was content to leave it unmolested.

The creature that stepped out from the forest onto the riverbank before him was a nightmare of the darkest form, for it chronicled the world he had found himself in only too well. "A wolf made out of wood, a timber wolf." He facehoofed. "The local creator is a comedian who thinks it's clever. Oh joy and rapture." He watched the creature advance as no wolf ever did, especially not alone.

He tried his breath weapon and found it useless, he shrugged and loosed a blast from his horn. "I wonder if it'll form kindling kits now," he commented on the sawdust and splinters that dotted the path. "If that was the size of a regular wolf, I am rather tiny. Not a horse, barely a pony." He briefly considered that whatever was following him was neither cowed by his obliteration of the predatory firewood, nor had it worked out that if he'd wanted to harm it, he already would have.

The rest of the journey through and out of the forest had been a strictly boring affair. Ironically when he started going the wrong way, the noise behind him got very agitated, and calmed down when he was back on the optimal path. If it's trying to guide me by only sounding threatening when I'm going to get lost, he thought, I'll take it. If it's a trap, I'll just kill them all. Once he'd cleared the woods, his 'pursuer' broke cover and sprinted away as fast as her legs could carry her.

"Border Collie, I am rather diminutive," he said as he noted the road sign that directed passage to Sweet Apple Acres, or to Ponyville. "If the sense of humor of this place holds, Ponyville will be all equines, and Sweet Apple Acres will be an apple farm. Considering the mobile tree, they may actually need a herding dog for the apple trees." Wonder why she was herding me? he considered before setting his hooves on the path.

He continued towards Ponyville, hoping that the place was not a completely psychotic nightmare.

"Naw!" the Pink Maniac said. "Wow! I've never seen you before and that means you're a new pony in town," the pink pony exclaimed

"Or you've had a psychotic break and I'm just a hallucination," he replied, barely getting the words in edgewise. He noted that while the population seemed to be all equines, many of the fixtures were optimized for human-forms, not their users'.

Rescue came in the form of the dog who'd been skulking in his shadow during the walk through the forest.

"Good Lord, now it's wearing a hat," he said as the happily barking dog approached, hotly pursued by another brightly-colored equine. He considered the human headgear and the possibilities that implied.

"Winona! What's got into you?" the following pony shouted as the dog, possibly 'Winona' came to a stop before him, panting and grinning. The orange pony snatched the hat off the dog and put it on her own head.

The orange pony looked at him. "Sorry, I don't . . . Woah Nellie! You're an alicorn!" The pony fell back into her haunches in shock.

"Wow that makes you an extra special -!" the pink maniac began.

"I'm not standing around here being insulted," he told them as he launched into the air. He flew basically back towards the forest, while gaining as much altitude as he could, testing his wings as well as looking for a place to hole up until he got his bearings. "Ponyville is definitely off my to do list," he said. And wondered, Why set up a town with human implements, but scaled for these equines?

He noted the blue, winged horse in pursuit, but easily outdistanced it in altitude. Later, there were a couple of others, but he stayed well above their maximum service ceiling. He didn't want to test whether he could manage outer space. As weird as this place seems to be, he thought, It might have crystal spheres or lumeriferous aether instead of empty space.

Staying at altitude and hiding behind, and later on, the high cirrus, he waited until night fell and the towns and villages lit up far beneath him. He also noticed the sun and moon seemed vastly closer to the planet than the heliocentric systems he was used to. So the sun and moon go around the planet, he thought as he mused, The equipment is human-form. And the animals are intelligent. Interesting. Let's hope this is C. S. Lewis, rather than Lewis Carroll, or George Orwell.

From altitude, he spotted several coastal cities and decided to head to one of them, the one farthest away from the Castle of Ludwig the Mad he'd seen earlier. He descended fast, but not so fast that he created shockwaves, the last thing he needed was to draw attention to himself. Landing a short distance outside the city proper, he tested his magic to disguise his wings and horn. That done he trotted towards the glowing lights of the city.

Upon entry, he was immediately challenged by guards, ponies in armor. "Hey, you!"

He looked at the pair, and could feel others nearby. "Yes, officer." He decided a doughnut joke could wait until he discovered if doughnuts even existed here.

"What's your business in Los Pegasus?" the officer asked, the other held back, but neither had the look of rookies.

Considering to hell with it he answered, "I was looking for work."

They had a crude picture of his previous form, but without the wings or horn, they had dismissed that and were now dealing with a potential vagabond. "What kind of work?" the officer asked.

"You'll think I'm teasing you, officers," he said, trying to look sheepish, the hardest thing he'd done today.

"Just tell us," the officer who'd held back demanded.

"Making doughnuts," he replied and looked between the officers.

"Beaker Street and Rose Court, they have a help-wanted sign for the night shift," Officer Grumpy told him, "Move along."

He nodded and trotted away, as the pair and their hidden backup drew away.

I seem to have made quite a stir, he thought as he moved through the streets, located a map kiosk, and was soon at the aforementioned Beaker Street and Rose Court, only to watch one of the buildings blow fire out the upper floor windows and flap its roof up to vent the force of the blast. This may be interesting, he considered applying at the alchemist building, but decide on the doughnut shop. The place was crawling with police. Cliches, he thought as he entered.

"Get your order in a moment," the pony behind the counter called.

"I was here about the job," he called back, and in the slickest piece of transformational magic since his own earlier, he was behind the counter wearing a striped cap and apron.

"You're hired," the pony who'd performed the transformation/teleportation told him, and directed him towards the counter, and all the police waiting to place their orders.

For an hour, he took doughnuts from the racks, filled coffee mugs of varying sizes from large to 'able to drown larger farm animals', and ran the cash register. The idea that a single type of coin made up their entire economy made little sense, but the nonsensical never made an impression on him.

He did manage to figure out that the rounder-faced ponies were female, or effeminate, and the squarer features were male or at least masculine. Those retaining their eyebrows were police, and those without, the alchemists. He'd also learned that he was actually rather well favored, considering some of the flirting he'd been subjected to by mostly female police, but also an occasional alchemist, females and one male. He vaguely wondered if it was to get better prices, or their husbands were just inattentive. He doubted it was anything else due to his apparent near poverty.

After the hour, there was enough of a lull for him to check for the owner, who had presumably been refilling the continuously replenished racks. He couldn't find the pony. He didn't go too far out the back, and could find no trace of the pony. He vaguely recollected that the pony had been male, without wings or horn, but couldn't recall anyone using the pony's name.

With someone unseen diligently refilling the racks, he 'ponied' the register until closing, just before lunch, then locked up. He searched the place, finding neither hide nor hair of his employer or the other helpers. He found a set of duplicate keys, and vaguely hoped that the owner had his own set. After finishing locking up, he was initially surprised that it was so hard to leave the building, like invisible hands were trying to drag him back in. Then he realized, Idiot, that's the security system, they can get in, but they can't leave. He unwound the filaments of the 'Roach Motel' from himself, and proceeded on his way.

Overall, the town was like any other, familiar and strange bits. That it was so familiar was one of the stranger bits. The library and a few civil buildings were of the local ideal of grand style, and the other buildings were a hodgepodge characterizable by their age to a certain style of construction and ornamentation. Within a few minute, he could guess the approximate age of the building by the architectural style, with a few glaring exceptions.

Museum of Modern Art, huh, he thought, I wonder if I could encourage the pigeons to show their own artistic talents. Probably better than anything on the inside. Maybe find out what typeface they use on their note cards and attach a doughnut to the wall with something esoteric written there. The mundane torus, the torus of mundanity, no. Widershins and Spinwise? Yeah that's the ticket.