"Speaking of potatoes... Any food around here? Preferably not hay?"
"Humans don't like hay? I mean, we eat a variety of things, but I don't know what you eat."
"I've never personally tried it, but I'm pretty sure we don't have the stomach acid for any kind of grass that hasn't been processed into flour. Things we eat... Meat is big, but I'm guessing ponies don't have a lot of that. We can eat fruit, corn, spinach, bugs- lots of stuff. Might be easier for me to look at a menu and rule stuff out."
"Okay. Fruit and corn and spinach and flour are all available. Bugs you might have to catch yourself if you want them."
"Bugs are not my all-time favorite food, don't worry. Included for completeness only. Want to go get something to eat?"
"Sure. You'll be looked at strangely, but as long as you don't bother anypony, ponies will probably just assume you're a really exotic visitor."
"'Anypony.' Your dialect is... It'd probably be offensive to say 'adorable,' but your dialect is adorable. Lead the way, at any rate. Any joy on that shrinking spell?"
"If you want to eat now instead of in an hour, I'll have to come back and look for it a little harder then, but we can find you an outdoor café and you can sit on the ground?"
"All right. There's a place with a pretty good selection about two blocks from here." She trots to the library's exit, opening the door with her teal teekay.
Ari ducks under the frame. "So, what do you study at Gifted Unicorn School? Just magic stuff?"
Outside are lots of pastel ponies. Unicorns and pegasi and earth ponies. Ari gets a lot of weird looks, but since he isn't doing anything threatening and is accompanied by a totally normal pony, no one gives them any trouble.
Ari grins irrepressibly in response to any and all weird looks he receives. (What does he care if he looks kind of weird? He's the beige ape here.)
And here is a cute little pony café, with many vegetarian foods for Ari to eat.
He picks out a spinach pie and some variety of fruit tart, then turns to Clarity. "Do you guys have any kind of barter system, or should you pay and I pay you back when I have money, or what? I've got a handful of assorted gemstones, but those usually aren't currency, and I think they're probably worth a bit more than a café lunch."
"Gemstones can be pretty readily traded for bits, but I can buy you lunch until you know more about your long-term financial situation."
"Well, that's very kind. If nothing else I can dig up a heap of rubies to throw at the market, but with any luck I can get some kind of monster-hunting retainer. Unless you don't have any monsters, in which case I guess I could go into architecture or something."
"I mean, no one will complain if you go out and bother some hydras, but I'm not sure it's a budget item." She munches her apple arugula salad.
"Well, we'll see. By the way, are there any types of animal that are just categorically not-people? Just out of curiosity." And carnivorous tendencies, but there's no reason to distress the herbivores if he can help it.
"Fish. I think. I'd want to ask someone with a special talent relating to animals before I guaranteed you that. Most kinds of insects."
"Good, good. I can make do with cricketburgers and sashimi for however long, but nothing but greens would probably start to get on my nerves."
"There's also fruit and bread and - well, you saw the menu. And this is only one restaurant."
"Yeah, but there's something about having meat that you just can't get around. Little omnivore things, I guess."
"...Hm, do you guys have giant bugs? This seems like the kind of place that would have giant bugs."