Some time had passed since I met the two horses on the road and got the directions from them, and now I was exiting the forest and seeing the village that was Ponyville. I didn't know what I expected, but what I saw was far better than that. The houses were well-kept and reasonably colorful, built out of wooden frames and probably that mix of clay and hay people in the medieval times used to insulate their walls. The roofs were thatched and looking quite good, giving off that fantasy medieval vibe. The houses also had interesting shapes, they weren't only squares and rectangles. Honestly, I don't think there are many right angles if any at all. This was one quaint little village, I could see this already. Everyone probably knows everyone, so that means horses - or ponies - will know I'm an outsider.

Despite what Sweet Lilly said, it wasn't dusk yet. The sun was as high above the ground as it was when I started. Maybe I walked faster than expected, which wouldn't be surprising considering that I was, after all, a bit taller than those two ponies. Long legs here!

First, I think I need to take a good look from where I stand, which is just a bit higher than the level of Ponyville. The village seems quite big with at least a hundred households. This equates to, what, two hundred and fifty to four hundred ponies total? The houses seem reasonably big, so maybe the total is five hundred or more. Which is just about the amount of students that attended school with me. Although, I can be off in my calculations - I've not had math in a few years.

Well, this seems rather small. I mean, sure, it's not a city of hundreds of thousands or even millions. Five hundred really seems like a small number compared to that, but I've no idea how many ponies live in the entire country or how big the entire country even is.

In any case, this isn't really a good place to be for a homeless guy like me. Villages tend to have people who know everyone, and I'll stick out like a sore thumb. However, I do need to eat and drink, so this village will be my first stop. I'll have to figure out where to sleep when the night comes, too.

With that set, I need to figure out how to call myself. I won't use my old name - John. I have a feeling it will stand out a bit too much. Plus, I never really liked that name. So, my new name will be... Flame. Why that? Because it sounds cool, plus my mane resembles flames at least a little bit. Flame, Flame, Flame... Yeah, this works.

Alright, it's time I go in and gather the layout of the place. Figure out where the shops are, where the offices are, where the garbage cans are, all that. Once I learn all the important stuff, I'll be able to navigate easily and survive for a day or two.

I knew where the center of the village was - I could see a tower, well, tower above the rest of the buildings. Man, I need to learn more words...

"Welcome to Ponyville!" the first pony I saw greeted me with a smile, "Can I help you?"

That's the first time I saw someone so readily just... talk to a complete stranger. Sure, I've had a few taxi drivers ask me for directions, some old people asking me to help them cross the road, all that stuff. But this pony - I think they are ponies, considering their height - didn't even know why I was here, and yet they were ready to offer help if I needed any. Despite the earlier incident with a pony basically wanting to tell me to fuck off without his water, this pony gives me a far better impression.

"Ah, I'm meeting my friends here," I repeated the same lie I told before, "The center of the village is that way, right?" I gestured at the tower in the distance.

"Right this way, yes," the pony nodded, "Have a pleasant stay!"

"Thanks," I nodded and went on my way. I noticed that the pony also had a mark on their butt and had an adult voice. But they also didn't ask me about the absence of my own mark, so this definitely confirms not having marks is normal.

As I went deeper into the village, random ponies offered me short greetings, which was surreal as fuck. If I went to an unknown part of my city, I'd never be greeted by anyone except polite cashiers and similar people. All the other people would be completely disinterested in me as long as I didn't do something stupid or unlawful. Which is, all things considered, fair enough - I never greeted complete strangers either unless I was, you know, meeting them to get to know them.

Well, this is quite a change from the usual. However, my stomach once again reminded me that you can't eat politeness.

As I went, I started whistling a song I knew. Even if I didn't have a place to call my own here, even if I had no money, no friends, no relatives, at least random people seemed happy, and this happiness was contagious. You can't just walk around all those pleasant faces and want to frown. I felt the corners of my mouth rise up a bit the more ponies I met. Despite my situation, I find myself in a pretty good mood.

I walked along the street, passing under an entire bridge between two houses. That's... really unusual. The houses themselves definitely looked like they weren't perfectly level. I could see the curves easily, so I think the choice in how stuff was built was deliberate. Which is, well, strange, but it makes the village look quite unique even within itself. I won't really have to memorize much, considering that every house seemed to be different from the other even from a cursory glance. In my head, an imaginary map of this place has already begun to form.

In a few minutes, I finally arrived at the main square. But it was a circle. Funny how English works, right? Anyway, in the center of the square, a round - no, cylindrical - building stood, which was quite big, maybe around seventy-eighty feet in diameter at the very least. I'm not actually all that good at estimating distances and measurements, so let's just say it's big. Yes, big.

In front of that building, a fountain stood, and on top of it was a statue of a mare standing on her back legs. How do I know it's a mare? Because, well, the statue is quite anatomically accurate. At least the water isn't flowing out of her pee hole. Not that I'd care - there were plenty of fountains of pissing boys. For now, I simply needed some more water - I was thirsty again. Considering that I've just seen a pony drinking straight out of the fountain, I guess I can do the same. It may not be perfectly sanitary, but I dug up food out of trash bins, so who am I to say what is and isn't sanitary? A man's gotta eat and drink, at the end of the day.

I walked up to the fountain and took a look at the water. Seems clean enough, doesn't smell weird, no gunk floating around. I took out the glass bottle I saved and dipped it under the water, filling it up, then I emptied the bottle into my mouth. The water tasted like, well, water. So, I suppose it is clean. Or, at least, cleaner than most, which was a relief. Then I refilled the water, screwed the lid back on, and put it in my pocket. It's definitely going to be useful.

"Hi!" a startlingly high-pitch voice said behind me, making me jump in surprise. I turned around and saw a mare for which the name 'pink' would be perfect, "I'm Pinkie Pie, what's your name?" called it. I fucking called it. Anyway, my name? Uh... it jumped out of my head the moment she asked me for it. Ah wait, I remember!

"I'm Flame," I said slowly.

"Welcome to Ponyville, Flame!" she enthusiastically continued, "Are you staying?"

"I'm just passing through, I guess."

"Oh..." her poofy mane and tail became just a bit flatter, seemingly, "Well, I hope you enjoy it while you're here!"

Then she literally bounced away, singing some kind of a joyful song to herself. What a weird mare... Although I do like her energy. I think I can describe it as 'sugar rush'. I definitely remember the time when I drank too much coffee and had more sugar than I should've - I cleaned every dish, disassembled and cleaned every bit of furniture in my room, and also cleaned my PC and phone to utter perfection. I felt like crap the next day, but hey, that was surprisingly fun. However, now I need to remind myself to not drink coffee - even if I drink little, I can barely sleep and my hands itch to do stuff. As for sugar, well... As I grew up, I found it less tasty.

I decided to walk around the main building and see if there was anything else of interest around here. I walked counter-clockwise and saw a bunch of bridges over a river to my right. Alright, now it's clear where I will bathe, even if it might be a bit cold. The river seems to be rather calm, so I'm not in any real danger of drowning. Now, I need to figure out where I take a dump. I'll probably have to live on the outskirts and poop in the forest or something because, well, pooping out in the streets isn't good for pretty obvious reasons.

Round the main building, there was a market. Not a chain supermarket, not a supermarket at all in fact, but many stalls standing together with all kinds of ponies selling stuff. I decided to go and investigate what they have.

A pony mare was selling tomatoes with a price of one bit per tomato. Is it short for bitcoin? If it is, then those tomatoes are really damn expensive. On a serious note, I need to figure out how money works here, where the cheapest stuff is, and where I can possibly earn some. I honestly don't want to steal from these ponies - they're nice, maybe they'll just give me a job or something and not even scam me. Or they will scam me, in which case that would suck. As a homeless person, you don't really have any leverage when it comes to that shit. It's not like I can come up with money to sue anyone, especially not now.

Suddenly, all the shopkeepers put up the 'closed' signs and left their stalls. Huh? Oh, and the sun is going down at a rather quick pace. What the fuck? That's not how a sun is supposed to work! A-and the moon is also rising - that's, that's, what? How in the- uh, what the fuck? And just like that, night came in just under five minutes as I gaped at what was going on. The ponies seemingly completely vanished from the street, everything grew quiet.

I think my head hurts... how in the fuck is this possible? From perfect day to night in five fucking minutes!

My stomach growled louder. Well, I'll have to think of this weird-ass shit later, I gotta eat something. The market stalls were left as they were, with goods and all. I could just easily walk up and grab everything I wanted. Just like this. I've heard some European countries had food stands that didn't have anyone attending them, so you grab what you want and leave money behind. This requires a lot of trust between people - I personally would never leave stuff I want to sell out in the open like this.

Well... honestly, I'll just go chew on grass. Maybe the stalls have some magical spells on them that catch thieves or whatever. And even if they don't, I don't really want to ruin what this community has going on. So, grass it is.

I noticed that the moon is quite bright, and its light is not as dim as the moonlight from Earth's moon. Obviously it doesn't look like daytime, but it's bright enough to be, I don't know... ten in the evening during summer? Basically, when things are dark, but not dark enough to completely dull out the colors. This is... interesting. But not as wacky as a sunset that lasts five fucking minutes. Damn...

I found a small field and started munching on grass. You know, it's actually not all that bad. A bit hard to chew at first, but equine teeth were made to grind grass and such, so I'll manage. The grass is a bit dry and crunchy and also tastes a little like dirt, but not the worst thing in the world. I wonder how much of it I need to eat to actually fill myself and not feel hungry anymore. Cows and such eat, what, thirty-forty pounds of grass per day? That's a loot of fucking grass, it would take me half the night to eat. But I don't think I'm as big as a cow. I'm a pony, and, by my estimation, I'm around halfway between four and five feet in height. If I stand on my back legs, I'll probably be six. Basically, I'm around the size I used to be, I think. A cow weighs, what, one thousand pounds? One thousand and fine hundred? As a human, I weighed one hundred and fifty or so. So, roughly four-five times less than a cow. Thus, I would need to eat around ten pounds of grass a day if my weight is still relatively the same.

I'm not looking forward to that, but oh well. Better do that than starve, no matter how weird it feels. Still beats looking in the garbage for food.

---

I think that will do it for now, I'm tired of chewing so much fucking grass. I now need to find a place to sleep, and... I've no idea where. Sure, I can probably go back to the forest and sleep there somewhere, but I don't feel like being eaten if there are any predators. Or get insects in my ears, that would be awful. I need to find an abandoned building or something like it to sleep.

I looked around and, a bit far on a hill, behind rows of trees, I saw a barn. Hey, that's actually perfect! If I hide well enough and wake up before the owners do, I'll be able to leave before anyone knows I was ever there. So, I made my way to the farm, clumsily got over a fence, snaked my way between the trees, quickly galloped over the open land straight to the barn, and stopped there. Thankfully for me, the barn wasn't locked, so I slid the door open slowly, entered, and closed it behind me. Whew, that was stressful. Every second, I expected someone to shout at me and drive me off, but I suppose I got lucky.

The barn has a ton of hay, but also various farming instruments. The barn smells of old wood, hay, and a bit of rust. Pretty dry place, which is perfect for sleep. No cows or horses or whatever - I guess it makes sense for ponies not to have them, which is a pretty good thing. I saw a ladder leading to the second floor, and I did my best to get up there. I almost fell once, but I managed to get up without breaking any part of my body.

On the second floor, there was only hay. I did my bed the best I could, making sure I placed more hay closer to the edge of the second floor so that I'm not easily seen from the first, and then I finally laid down. I'd check on some memes or whatever before sleep, but tough luck - no internet, no cell service, nothing of that sort whatsoever.

However, I should calibrate my time and set an alarm for right before dawn. If ponies start doing stuff at dawn, I should be away from here before then, that's for sure. So, I pulled out my phone, set the time at a bit past ten - which I guess makes sense? - and then set an alarm for four in the morning. I might be off in my time estimations, so let's just hope I'm right. Also, that's just a bit over five hours of sleep, but I'll manage.

Well, off to sleep I go.

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