Gardening With Rose
Afternoon
Admiral Biscuit
One thing that I really missed from Earth was bottled water. I knew that it was wasteful and usually tried to use public drinking fountains or bring my own water from home, but sometimes that just wasn't an option, and it was really convenient to be able to get a bottle of water practically anywhere.
Ponies didn't have bottled water, and I was thirsty by the time we'd finished loading the wagon. Honey Dipper and I were both soaked with sweat, and I was starting to have fantasies of cooling off in the river, but that was unfortunately going to have to wait.
“You've got water back at your house, right?”
“Yeah. Green beer or water, whichever you prefer. We'll take a break before we unload the wagon.”
“That's good.” Now I had more motivation, so I helped Honey Dipper with her harness so we could put the outhouse back where it belonged. Once it was back in place, I hitched her back to her wagon.
“Do you need a bit of a push to get started?” I wasn't sure how heavy the wagon was now. It felt like we'd moved several tons of manure, but it probably wasn't actually all that much.
She rolled her eyes. “I can get this.” She shifted on her hooves and dug in, and the wagon obediently followed along.
•••
For once, I wasn't insulted that the few ponies we encountered got well out of our way. I couldn't blame them; no doubt they were constantly wondering if the wagon might somehow dump its contents all over the road and they didn't want to be anywhere near it if that happened. I could understand that; I’d always kept a little extra room between my car and trucks that looked like they were carrying particularly unpleasant or dangerous cargos.
Did ponies ever get into accidents with their wagons? Were there pony traffic cops that wrote tickets for speeding with a wagon? I'd never seen one, but maybe I didn't know what to look for. Did Honey Dipper need some kind of special permit? Did some wagons have warning placards? The hardware store sold jugs of kerosene for lanterns, which I assumed were shipped in on trains. Maybe when they carried them from the station, they had to put a placard on the back of the wagon saying it was flammable.
Then again, ponies didn't seem to go much for warning signs of any nature. In a small town, everyone might know what was in any given wagon. Hopefully none of the ponies ever got the bright idea of lawsuits.
I was so lost in thought that I almost walked right past her house, and if she hadn’t turned into her yard, I might have.
She went right back around to her row of compost piles and backed the wagon up, then twisted around and kicked the front of the wagon with a hind hoof. I heard a latch click open, and the entire load bed tipped back. That's really clever. Unfortunately, despite the dumping bed, not everything slid out.
Honey Dipper turned for her harness, and I held up a hand to stop her. “I can get it. It'll only take a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I probably shouldn't have volunteered to go solo, but it was too late to turn back now.
I drove myself on with the thought of finally getting a tall glass of cold water, and I did get the wagon emptied out fairly quickly. Long tasks get easier when the end is in sight.
•••
After it was all into a pile, she tugged the wagon forward and then told me how to work the latch to fasten the bed back down. It wasn't actually very complicated and I probably could have figured it out on my own if I’d had to.
“I'm going to go put the wagon away,” she said. “And get out of my harness. Then we'll have something to drink. If you want to work a full day, we’ll empty out the barrels we took from the pail houses and then turn the compost piles.”
Since the option had been offered, I could have said that I'd had enough work for one day, take my half-day's pay, and then . . . and then probably never work for her again. Nobody wanted an employee who quit when the day’s work was only half-done.
“I'll stick around,” I told her. “No sense in leaving things unfinished. Especially if you’ve got trouble finding help.”
“I appreciate that. Everypony says that you’re a hard worker, you know.”
I didn’t really know what to say to that without sounding full of myself, so I just nodded.
Even though I didn’t have to, I followed her around to her shed, and when she’d backed in front of the doors, I unhitched the wagon and pushed it back into place for her, and then the two of us walked up towards her house.
“Do you want any help getting out of your harness?”
She flicked her tail and for a second I wondered if that was a bad pony pickup line at the bar. Who would wear a harness to the bar, though?
“It's complicated,” she said. “How it comes off. You don’t have a harness, you won’t know how.”
“Berry Black let me put his on and take it off,” I said.
“That's not the same.”
“I don’t really see how it would be different. His looked pretty much the same as yours, and—“ I paused for a second, mindful that I was potentially getting into dangerous territory. “Well, your bodies are similar.”
She wrinkled her muzzle, and I wondered if that was an unintentional insult, despite my attempt to avoid one. “He’s a jack.”
“Yeah, but.” I didn’t know what that was. “Okay, you’d know better than I do, but to my eye your harnesses look about the same.”
She shook her head and then blew her forelock up. “Fine.”
“I don't have to. It just seems like it would be easier.”
“I suppose,” she admitted. “Plus your hands are really clever.” She chuckled. “And you're stronger than you look.”
I ignored the barb; it surely wasn’t intentional. “How do you usually take it off? Slide it off the front, or the back?” If I’d known more about harnesses, I could have figured it out from seeing her half-dressed in the morning.
“Um, off the back's easier for me. When you unclip it from the yoke, it'll all come off my rump in one piece, and then I can just slide the yoke up over my head.”
“Huh. Berry Black preferred it the other way, because it was easier for him to put on the next day. If you’re doing it for yourself, I guess it would be different.”
She flicked her tail again. “Yeah, but there’s—you’d. . . .” Her ears drooped. “I guess it is easier that way.”
“Do you want me to unfasten the straps on the left side or the right?” I knew from helping Berry Black that there were lots of buckles that could stay fastened when the harness was loose enough to take off, and I imagined that each pony had a personal preference. Some of it might have come down to harness design, and some of it might have been if they were right-handed or left-handed. Or hooved, or mouthed—I didn’t really know for sure how that worked with ponies.
“The left.”
“Got it.”
I reached under her belly and unfastened her breeching strap first, which made the whole harness loose. Next was the ring around her dock, which was probably the reason that she had first said that she wanted it to come off the other way. That was something I should have thought of sooner, especially since I already knew how Rose had initially reacted to me working with her tail.
I really couldn’t blame Honey Dipper for being nervous about that. If our positions had been reversed . . . I tried to imagine her offering to help me take off my shorts. I’d have refused, even if I knew she didn’t have any kind of ulterior motive.
Maybe it wasn’t the thought of me reaching under her tail; maybe it was the fact that she was soaked with sweat. Even the harness was damp, and while that didn’t bother me from the limited horse experience I had, I wondered if it was embarrassing for a mare to be sweaty.
Just in case she had kicky feet, I kept off to her side and put my hand gently on the back strap. “Go ahead and lift your tail up.”
It took a moment before she did, and I'm sure her eyes were on me the whole time. I focused instead on her back as I slid the ring past the end of her dock and then tugged her tail hair through it as well. Berry had been nervous about that the first time, too.
After we’d worked together a little bit, it had become routine.
“Let me slide it forward,” I said. “I can get the whole thing off at once, and you won't have to sit down and pull it over your head.”
I made sure that nothing tangled as I got all the straps up to her collar, and from there it was pretty easy to gather the entire harness and pull it off. That was easier on her than it had been on Berry Black; ponies had smaller ears.
“Where does it go?”
“There's a hook,” she pointed to the wall. “I usually hang it up by the tiedown ring on the back of the yoke.”
•••
I hadn’t been sure what she'd meant by green beer. I'd assumed that it was beer dyed green, or maybe made out of grass. Instead, it turned out to be a cross between actual beer and a soft drink. Fermented long enough that it got a little bit bubbly, but still with a really low alcohol content.
Just the same, I only drank one, along with a few glasses of water. I didn’t know how alcohol worked for ponies, but I figured that beer would ultimately dehydrate me, and I really didn't want to get heat exhaustion and collapse on one of her compost piles.
Unfortunately, she didn't have very much to offer for lunch that was edible human food, so I wound up with just two thick slices of bread and an apple. It tasted like there was hay in the bread. I should have bought a whole cruller from Pinkie Pie.
Neither of us was in a real hurry to get back outside. I assumed that was because with my help, she was ahead of her normal schedule, and could afford to relax a bit, or else she was just decompressing from the discomfort of having my hands well into her personal space.
There wasn't much to emptying the pails. I just used a mallet and pry bar to get the lids back off and dumped them on top of the pile. The first one, I made the mistake of having my head over it when I opened it and the smell was intense. I should have expected it: the barrels had been cooking in the sun all morning.
After that, I leaned away and held my breath when I took the lids off and it wasn't so bad.
The barrels didn't have to be scraped out—Honey Dipper filled them with water and let them sit for a couple of days to wash out the insides, and then used that water on the compost piles.
We spent the rest of the day shoveling the piles, and she was right that her staggered arrangement was nicer for that. It gave me a chance to work more muscle groups and not always be twisting the same way.
By the end of it, I was drenched with sweat once again, and so was she. At least that had kept anything from sticking to us.
I'd decided that I was going to go to the river and get in with my clothes on; once I'd cooled off, I'd walk home with wet clothes, get something clean, and then go back to the river to wash off properly. Honey Dipper had a different idea.
“Do you want to clean up at the spa? I've got an account there, I'd pay. Since you worked so hard.”
“They . . . they'd let us in? Like this?”
“They've got showers in back, for tradesponies.”
“They do?”
“You didn't know?”
I shrugged. “It never came up.” I should have asked if Ponyville had showers for rent, but it wasn’t something I’d thought of. I’d discovered that ponies didn’t have YMCAs with locker rooms—that had been an option I’d considered. There was a hotel, but that cost more than I was willing to spend just for the use of a shower.
“If you don’t use the spa, how do you get clean?” Her ears flicked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I wash up in the river. That's not a problem, is it?”
She shook her head. “I've got a pond that I use sometimes, and I've also got a shower that I can rinse myself off with, but it's not as nice as having hot water. Especially in the winter time.”
“Okay, yeah.” I was suddenly very interested. “You’ve convinced me.”
I'd imagined that come the wintertime, my personal hygiene was going to be washing off as best I could in the washtub, using water that I heated on the stove, and I wasn't looking forward to that. If the spa had public showers that anybody could use, that was pretty tempting. “I'll have to stop off at home to get some clean clothes and a towel.” As hard as I’d tried, I hadn't entirely avoided getting manure on my pants or shoes.
“They're got towels that you can use,” she said. “And—”
“My house is sort of on the way. I can duck in real quick, leave my shoes and get the shorts I was wearing this morning and a clean pair of panties.” I paused for a minute, considering. “Speaking of that, do you want me to pick your hooves or anything? Just in case you missed something?”
“I cleaned them already. I've got a brush on the back porch. Do you want to use it?”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but I figured that the grass had wiped off my shoes reasonably well, and I’d be going to the spa barefoot anyway.
I have this strange impression that Honey thinks she a he...
9569386
You beat me to the comment.
“I wash up in the river. That's not a problem, is it?”
Ahem. Upstream or downstream of the town? Inquiring ponies who drink out of that want to know.
Generally, its meat products and brassica family that give rise to sewage stench? Vegetarian composts are a lot milder?
9569735
Ponies may not eat much meat, but they do eat protein rich animal products like eggs pretty often. I'd imagine the intensity of smell is somewhere between humans and horses.
I know you felt a little uncomfortable being on Honey's back side, but getting a mare underwear this early in the relationship? :) (Kidding here, I know who the panties are for.)
And now we wait for the inevitable "You're a female?!!" reveal to Honey when Sam finally goes full nude at the spa
I'm please to see a return to this series. Love the world building. Good stuff as always.
9569386
Since you’re not the only one to comment, why would you think that?
9569581
I’m curious, since several people commented, why do you think that Honey Dipper might think Sam’s a boy? I mean, Sam’s got nipples--which Honey Dipper has seen--and stallions don’t have those.
9569620
Downstream of the water intakes, at least.
What’s more concerning--which Apple Flora pointed out in a previous chapter--Sam shouldn’t pee upstream of where she’s bathing.
9569735
I believe so, although gut flora are likely also a contributing factor. While I don’t know this as an actual fact, I have to imagine that a vegetarian with a diet high in beans might have some rather stinky poops. That might change over time, though. There’s no research that I’m aware of to give a firm answer.
9570100
For the sake of the story, I’m assuming that pony manure tends more towards the actual equine end of the spectrum rather than the human end. In my own opinion, that’s not a bad smell--maybe not what you’d want in a can of Febreeze, but not terribly unpleasant.
9570203
To anticipate what Alondro would say, “ponies need to cover their shame.”
I wonder if that would be a gift that a pony would even understand the implications behind? Like, let’s say that you’re wooing a pony, and so you buy some sexy pony underwear, would they understand the implications of that, or be confused about the social situation where they might wear it?
9570424
But why would Honey Dipper think that Sam wasn’t a female? Presumably, Sam has come up in conversation and been referred to as ‘her’ or ‘she,’ but even if not, Sam has nipples (which Honey Dipper would have seen, since Sam was shirtless), and everypony knows that stallions don’t have nipples.*
_________________________
*It’s true, IRL stallions don’t have nipples, and they’re one of the few mammals that doesn’t. That’s a horse fact I’d love to see in a fic, where the ponies assume some guy in Equestria is female due to the fact he has nipples.
9573198
Thank you!
9574642
Her response "he's a jack"
Without archive binging a can only assume jack is short for jackass (a male donkey). This leads me to one of two viable conclusions;
A) it is socially permissible to touch a donkeys 'parts' by ponies if required for work or platonic fashion. (Not likely)
B) Hony thinks Sam is male making it more permissible for Sam to touch him than her.
Actually that whole conversation screams "RAPE"
Plus she is an Alien; Honey would have no idea what Sam is supposed to have for different genders.
"*It’s true, IRL stallions don’t have nipples, and they’re one of the few mammals that doesn’t. That’s a horse fact I’d love to see in a fic, where the ponies assume some guy in Equestria is female due to the fact he has nipples."
Fun fact; I never knew this till fimfiction. It was brought up as a dude was changeing into a mare (slowish) and until nipple movement and gender swap came that this mare/dude looked at the only stallion in the room. His response was short; "No, i don't."
Which prompted a few Google searches.
9574664
After several comments questioning if Honey knew Sam’s gender, I thought that might be it. Which, kudos for attentive reading.
Jack is in fact the term for a male donkey (and Jenny for female) [and this is really irrelevent, but if a pony and a donkey hook up, they’ll produce a mule (male) or hinny (female)].
Couple of things at play here, actually--and her calling him ‘a jack’ instead of ‘a donkey’ was a last-minute change which perhaps unintentionally muddied the water. Honey’s comment was more on the side of ‘he’s lower on the social scale than you are’ rather than a gender-based denial. Sam actually mentioned that in a previous story, that her social standing went down when she worked with Berry Black.
Honey knows that Sam’s female, and even if that hadn’t come up in hypothetical gossip around town, Honey would have made the assumption that since Sam has nipples, she’s female (IRL stallions don’t have nipples). Her hesitation is as Sam guessed, discomfort with having a relative stranger reach under her tail to get part of her harness loose.
9574674
I suppose in a darker reading, it could.
I mean, that’s a fair point. One of a male octopus’ tentacles is also its penis, and I’m sure that’s not the strangest bit of genitalia here on earth; how aliens do is really anybody’s guess. But in my interpretation of the show at least, ponies generally aren’t that imaginative, and would shove things into familiar categories whenever possible, and thus assume that Sam was a gender that they knew and understood--that Sam was like a weird bipedal horse with hands.
It’s amazing what you can learn from FimFiction. I also found out when doing research for a story that IRL equines do sometimes have canine teeth, and I learned from one of my readers that IRL equines can’t get scurvy (they synthesize their own vitamin C).
As I recall, rats are one of the few other species where the males don’t get nipples.
9574659 I recognize that. (and have brutally used it before)
One thing to remember is that horses don't outwardly demonstrate one of their (ahem) male parts until they're needed, and dragons/lizards don't have indications on the outside of their gender at all. It normally takes a little guessing, some color matching, or a lucky coincidence to tell for certain. (or having Fluttershy ask, but she hates to do that. It's so embarrassing.)
Perhaps, they think humans are the same. They have a very limited sample set.
9574645
That's actually a very good point. I just got that vibe by how nervous Honey was with Sam messing with her beehind. See what I did there? Yeah, but it's a good point that since she's got the nips, ignoring the breasts for sake of argument, that she'd figure Sam was also a she.
So maybe Honey's also into the honeys? Does Rose have competition? Flower pony versus the Outhouse Ringer?
9574701
Although a quick glance under the tail would at least eliminate one possibility for gender--if you see an innie there, no need to wonder if there’s an outie somewhere else, if you catch my drift.
I’m not a lizard expert at all, but don’t they have cloacas? And I’d have to guess that one cloaca looks the same as any other one. I suppose there might be some secondary characteristics, fancy ruffs or whatnot to attract a mate. . . And one other thing to ponder, if our ponies are like IRL equines, they’d have a better sense of smell than humans, so it’s possible that they would be able to sniff out the difference. Which might make for an interesting character, a pony who has a cutie mark in sniffing out lizard gender. <sniff> “It’s a boy.”
This is a good point, and why Miss Cheerilee asked Sam for help sketching out what a human male looks like.
9574709
And that’s a fair point, but it was more of the not wanting a relative stranger to be poking around the goods. Pity what earth ponies have to do with their muzzles, and figure they’ve got social rules about that, and they aren’t going to let just anypony get under their tail.
I feel like I’ve probably got more experience with that type of thing than most due to my second job, and it’s still weird even knowing that there aren’t any particular connotations when I’ve got to help a guy button his pants or take a shower or whatever.
Exactly, and I think that for most ponies that would be the general assumption. Maybe if she covered them up, that might make them wonder.
Amusingly, today at work I asked my manager if anybody was flinging poop . . . I feel like Honey Dipper would, and I feel like if she did, Rose would surrender instantly.
9574659
I was basing that on Honey Dipper's reaction, and the fact that Sam has yet to remove her shorts/panties in front of HD. Maybe I'm just reading into it too much.
9574761
It’s not an unreasonable assumption, although I think for a pony, the nipples would be seen as a giveaway (potentially unfortunate for a human male).
In actual fact, Honey Dipper does believe--correctly--that Sam is female.
9574806
That's good to hear. Still looking forward to a bit of skinship between Honey and Sam at the spa.
9574813
It probably won’t be like you expect--nowhere near the Social Bathing end of things--but still, social progress is social progress.
9574816
Come now, I don't expect it to be like some typical Japanese Ecchi anime where the big breasted female lead smothers the MC while they're in the Onsen. You wouldn't do that... would you, Biscuit-sensei?
9574823
Of course I wouldn’t do that. You know me, it’ll be platonic and awkward and let’s be perfectly honest, unless an actual cow is at the spa, there won’t be any big-breasted anyone there.
Fun fact; there is an aquatic animal who's male genitalia detaches to find a female. I think the male survives even if the genitalia does not.
9574982
Does he get it back, or is it just one shot at reproducing?
9577272
Nope, no well.
(Though, well, as you might be aware city water systems have their own issues what with deferred maintenance, aging infrastructure, and the like. Having a well might look pretty smart in the next few years.)
9577353
In a city environment, if it’s legal, a well might be a good backup, assuming that the water that comes out of it is drinkable. Obviously, though, it wouldn’t work in a power failure, unless you also have a generator and can get to the well’s power supply.
9579346
I'm not sure what the groundwater around here is like. I used to go camping further out in the county's rural area and we would drink water out of a pump at the campsite. But that was a good ways out of town.
9579346 In the Pine Barrens, water tends to be rather close to the surface unless you're at the top of the sand hills.
I hit water a lot when I was a kid and used to dig holes in the back yard. Usually about 6 feet or so down. It tends to be pretty clean thanks to the low pH and leaching of the sand.
9604708
Actually, thinking of it, this came up at work a little while back and I don’t know the answer. On beaches in Michigan, you can dig down not very far and hit water--I haven’t measured, but I’d assume it’s about the same level as the lake or perhaps just a little bit deeper. I can’t recall ever having drunk any of that water, but if I had, it would have been fresh water, since the lakes are fresh water.
If you did that by the ocean--how far inland would you have to be before the water was unsalty enough to drink? Would it be just a little ways up the beach, maybe around the high tide line, or would you have to go further inland?
9596564
I think she’s gotten past the first part of weirdness, of ‘this can’t be real,’ the initial culture shock by now. Like, she’s past the “OMG, you can talk?” point of things, but now that she’s getting more integrated into pony society, she’s still running into new stuff she didn’t know that’s different, new customs that ponies have that she didn’t know about.
And yes, she probably is doing things that she wouldn’t do back on Earth, and realigning her priorities, expectations, and taboos to align more with pony culture rather than human culture, although she’s certainly got a ways to go yet.
9574659
Ponies are familiar with minotaurs, aren't they? Actually, now that I look back, Iron Will had pecs, but no nipples.
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/c/cd/Iron_Will_ID.png/revision/latest?cb=20140816233533
A male donkey?
9607758
I can’t imagine Hasbro ever allowing them to draw in nipples, so it’ll forever be a mystery if Iron Will has them or not, and if he does, where they are.
Going off Wikipedia, I’d imagine they’d be roughly where a cow’s teats are, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Reddit says they’re there, for what that’s worth. I wouldn’t advise leaning under a bull to find out.
9608879
Yes, a jack is a male donkey.
A jenny or jennet is a female donkey.
Annnnd now, I am having a Kingdoms Amalur Reckoning flashback.
One the other characters in the game, a guy by the name of Agarth told me that a tracked a creature on a moonless night be smell alone. So you know that had to be very intense odor for a human being to pull that off.
*shudders*
10963189
I would imagine that there are some you could, although I don’t know if the human nose is good enough to pull it off. Like you can smell a skunk for a good long ways, but I have no idea if you could track it or just know it was nearby.