The Search for Shiny Things: Part 7

Back on the road again the teddy passed by a statue of a pony, quite impressive in its lifelike colors, it was as though it was really breathing, in fact, perhaps it was. The teddy stopped, stunned, wondering if a breathing statue or a pony pretending to be a statue was more frightening, too absorbed in the question to be frightened at all by either.

“What are you staring at?” the pony snapped and the teddy bear hastily spun on the spot, remembering that trees most likely grew in other places, but mostly because the pony's voice was much more terrifying than any statue, living or not. “Wait! Come back here!”

“You should ask nicely,” the teddy said, glancing over its shoulder, as well as it now could. Which wasn't very well at all, so it simply tipped backwards and fell over.

“Come here and help me,” said the pony, ignoring both the advice and the falling.

In any case inclined to help, although not terribly flattered by the tone, the teddy crawled to its paws and waddled over.

“I need you to hold my rabbit,” said the pony.

There sat a tiny rabbit between the pony's legs, which had been bound quite effectively by many laps of leash. Eyeing the mess, the teddy leaned down for better vantage, and the rabbit twitched and tried to run but only managed to fall over.

“We seem to be like one another, me and your rabbit,” the teddy said.

“Stop talking nonsense and help me untangle,” said the pony.

Bickering with the pony, because teddy paws were not created for the task of untangling tiny rabbits, and the pony was impatient, the teddy struggled with the leash.

“I have stood here for so long,” said the pony. “I am fine with standing, in fact I'm tired all the time so standing still is nice, but I am bored with the view now.”

“If you are tired all the time you need to sleep,” said the teddy, because while it may not know ponies, rabbits, or leashes (or many other things) it did know sleep.

“I sleep all the time,” the pony insisted.

“Not all the time, not now for example,” the teddy said, eyeing the pony, applying its expertise in sleep to judge the statement true after it was said.

“Of course not now, but ponies can sleep standing up, so I could.”

“There is a difference of doing and can-ing.”

And so they went on.

“All I want,” the pony whined, “is to get free of this leash, so that I can go find this candle-maker that everyone is talking about, so that I can get candles, so that I can be out at night, so that I can go on long and arduous adventures, so that I can learn many things, so that I can become a great and awesome person, so that I will get lots of money and a nice house and all the nice things in the world. If only I wasn't tied up and always so tired.”

That was so many things, the teddy's head spun. “For me, all I want is a nice green tree and many shiny decorations, so that I can have friends,” it said.

“That's stupid,” the pony said. “Why do you need those things to have friends? All you need is the friends.”

Quite grumpy over being called stupid, the teddy untangled the last bit of the leash. “There, you're free.” And stepped back.

The pony sighed and took one step, and stumbled over the untangled leash with a loud and peculiar pony sound, and went down quite undramatically by slowly tipping to the side.

“I will help!” the teddy proclaimed and hurried to try to catch the pony.

Unfortunately the teddy forgot in this critical moment that fleshy things weighed considerably much more than plushy things, and so the pony quite unceremoniously slowly tipped onto it instead. “The rabbit!” the pony yelped, as the teddy's hold on the leash was crushed, and the rabbit, terrified by the very slow fall and subsequent very slow crushing, rushed away.