“I like olives,” Rainbow Dash declared.
Nutmeg flipped back to the first page of the cafe’s menu, where the appetizers were listed beneath a series of allergy and trigger warnings. “You’re in luck. They have those here.”
It was their second day in Ponyville, and the afternoon after Twilight Sparkle’s revelatory experience with her family. She had reappeared some hours after vanishing and insisted that she was fine, that everything was fine, that she wasn’t peeved at all at her brother or her parents and no, she liked stallions just fine, thank you, she just happened to appreciate the beauty of the female form as well, and couldn’t they talk about something else like getting ready for their next friendship mission which the table was certain to send them on at any time?
There’d been more. Ponies cried. Confessions happened. It all seemed very cathartic. Rainbow Dash kind of tuned everything out when it was clear everypony was just talking about their feelings and there wasn’t going to be any more dramatic reveals or changeling fights. She could always ask Applejack for the details later. Probably Twilight would take up bead-making or some other culturally significant changeling ritual as a way of connecting with her newly discovered heritage.
They’d spent the night in Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, which was still in remarkably good shape for having been left derelict for a third of a year. The clouds had dried out around the edges, turning brittle and scratchy, and the rainbow fountains were all clogged with rainbow gunk that was going to take hours to clean out. But it still had four walls and a roof and its interior volume was magnitudes larger than the Orithyia’s, so they both had more space than they knew what to do with, but of course there was only one bed so they just ended up sharing that. All the other space just went to waste.
Rainbow Dash scanned the appetizers again. She’d seen the entry for the Olive Sampler Platter already, and the little picture next to it looked appealing enough. “I’ve never bought olives from a restaurant before. Or a store. Or anywhere.”
“Where do you get them?”
“My parents, mostly.” Dash shut the menu and slid it across the table. “When I was a foal we would always have jars of olives around the house. Little olives with pimentos in them for salads, or nice big antique olives for holidays and fancy get togethers. I would always eat so many of them, so many my parents would have to set aside a portion for me and a portion for everypony else. Even today, when I visit them in Cloudsdale, I steal all the olives out of their pantry. But I’ve never bought any of my own.”
“Why not?”
“Well, isn’t that kind of weird? A grown mare buying a jar of olives just so she can chow down on them? Eat them like popcorn? Who does that? That’s not what olives are for. You’re supposed to put them in salads or eat one or two along with the carrots and celery on the appetizer tray.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” he noted.
“And is that even healthy?” she plowed onward. “I mean, how much of an olive’s taste is the actual olive, and how much is just the vinegar and salt in the brine? Do I only think they’re delicious because I’m still a little foal on the inside who loves salty treats?”
“You may be overthinking this.”
“I mean, what would ponies think if they saw that? Oh, there goes Rainbow Dash again, eating olives. You know there’s a clause in our Wonderbolts contract that says we can’t do anything disreputable or ‘of a nature that would cause the public to question the values, morals or judgement of the team’? They made me memorize that part. What if word got back to Spitfire that I was some crazy olive-eating mare?”
“Aren’t the Wonderbolts famous drinkers? That seems worse than having a secret craving for olives, of all things.”
“Nah, drinking’s cool. Olives are weird.”
Their waiter chose that moment to arrive. She was a young unicorn mare, barely more than a filly, probably working her way through college or whatever it was young unicorns did. She smiled brightly at them both. “Hi! Are you two ready to order?”
“Um.” Dash scrambled for the menu again. “Uh, gimme the southwest daisy panini with the mango kale salad. And a sarsaparilla soda.”
“Okay. And you, sir?”
“The same, please. Except water instead of the soda. Oh, and can we get the olive sampler platter, too?”
“Of course. I’ll have that right out to you!”
Rainbow waited until the mare was a safe distance away, then groaned. “Ugh, you had to do that. Now it’s going to be weird. I shouldn’t have mentioned them.”
“Maybe I just wanted olives.”
“No, you got it because I was talking about them. Now ponies are going to see.”
“Ms. Dash, I promise you that nopony cares about your perfectly acceptable love of olives. Do you think the olive industry would even exist if ponies didn’t buy their products? The mere fact that the olive sampler platter exists on this menu is evidence that a great number of ponies enjoy olives on their own merits.”
Dash frowned. “Okay, but you have to eat some, too. I can’t eat all of them or it’ll look weird.”
“I promise to eat exactly half of them, unless there are an odd number of olives, in which case we can fight over the last one. How does that sound?”
She mulled that over. Ponies would still see, and they might talk, but at least Nutmeg would be eating them with her. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. “Okay, fine. But if anypony says anything, I’m outta here.”
“I’m sure they won’t.” Nutmeg glanced around the cafe and the half-dozen-or-so other ponies who’d gathered for an early lunch. “Nice little place. We really should add Ponyville to our list of regular stops.
“Eh, it’s okay.” Rainbow Dash hadn’t even realized the cafe opened before noon, when she normally woke up while living in Ponyville, but apparently most businesses opened their doors shortly after sunrise. Every day! It still boggled her mind, sometimes.
Already the sedentary familiarity of Ponyville was starting to seep back into her pores. On the Orithyia she woke at five bells every morning. It’d been torture for the first few days, almost cause for mutiny, but soon enough her body adjusted and she came to appreciate the sight of the rising sun. Now, back in Ponyville, surrounded by her old haunts, smelling the same scents, she could feel herself drifting back to the old ways. Sleeping in. Napping on clouds. Thinking about work maybe once or twice a day.
She shook herself. “How long are we staying here, anyway?”
He gave a little shrug with his wings. Now that she knew they were there, she could here the faint click-and-whine of the springs in his braces, hidden beneath the feathers. “The Orithyia’s engines should be fully remounted by the day after tomorrow. But I’m in no particular rush. There will always be air icebergs out there, waiting for us.”
“I know. It’s just…” Rainbow set her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her folded forelegs. “It’s kinda boring here, you know? Nothing ever happens.”
“Ms. Dash, just yesterday we discovered that your friend, the Princess of Friendship, is actually a changeling. Then another princess from a foreign land came, and they got into an argument, followed a few hours later by a tearful reconciliation. Also there’s this nice cafe.”
“That’s just Ponyville, Nutmeg. Trust me, it’s nothing special. By this afternoon we’ll be sleeping on clouds wishing something cool would happen.”
“It occurs to me that crewing an airship like the Orithyia isn’t always the most glamorous or exciting occupation. Certainly I’ve never had a princess on her decks.”
“Yeah, but what we’re doing with her is awesome! We’re, like, the fastest thing in the skies, and then when we capture an iceberg we’re hauling a literal mountain of ice across the entire country! How cool is that!” Rainbow Dash was warming to the subject. She stood, her forehooves on the table for balance. Her voice rose with her, gaining volume and intensity in time with her heartbeat. Just the memory of the Orithyia was enough to light a fire in her heart. “Or maybe we’re dodging ice-boulders around Typhoon, risking certain death to save the city! Oh, or fighting off pirates! Pirates, Nutmeg! Do you know how many mares get fight pirates?! Not enough! That’s what we could be doing right now!”
Just the thought had her breathing hard. She could feel the blood pulsing through her wings, every feather standing on end, ready to claw at the air and rocket her into the sky. The little cafe was too small to hold her – she was ready to explode out of it, to retake the heavens and beat them to her will.
Every patron in the cafe was staring at her. She knew most of them – there was Rosebud and Vanilla Wishes and Peppy Pepper – and she welcomed the attention. They all knew her, knew how awesome she was. This was probably as close as most of them would ever come to true greatness, sitting a few tables away in a little cafe while Rainbow Dash, the mare who shook the world, made a brief stop to bring a little bit of light and color and awesomeness to their ordinary day—
“Here’s your olives!” their waiter broke into Dash’s reverie. “I’ll have your sandwiches right out.”
“Aw, jeez, not so loud,” Dash mumbled. She sank back in her seat, ducking her head. “They’re, uh, for him. He ordered them, not me.” She told the mares at the next table over.
“Indeed I did,” Nutmeg said. He peered at the tray, which was divided into nearly a dozen little depressions, each filled with a few olives each of different types. He finally selected a large green specimen, glistening with oil and stuffed with some sort of cheese. He popped it in his mouth and hummed quietly. “Ooh, that’s good. You should try one.”
“Eh.” She glanced around to see if anypony was watching, then leaned forward to pick up one of the same olives with her lips. It was coated with a fine sheen of sunflower oil, dusted with pepper, and the scent of the blue cheese stuffing invaded her nose. The oil was so light, so delicate that its taste was mostly imagination. Her tongue touched the olive’s taut skin, and before she knew what happened she had chewed it down and swallowed it gone. A feral desire seized her, demanding that she lunge forward and devour the rest before Nutmeg could steal them away. These were her olives, dammit, and—
She resisted the urge, squeezing it back down into her heart. “It’s okay.”
“Just okay?”
She shrugged. “Decent. I liked the cheese.”
“Mhm.” Nutmeg went for a darker olive next, a dusky purple kalamata served raw. He worked it in his mouth, then discretely spit the pit onto a little plate.
Wuss. Dash grabbed two of the kalamatas and chomped them down. The hard, stony pits surrendered to her molars, bursting with a hard, bitter, beautiful flavor that flooded her mouth like lava. She hissed in a breath of air between her teeth.
“Now that’s better.” She blew out a breath.
“So you’d rather not remain here for a few more days? It’s no problem if you do. I know your friends mean a lot to you.”
“They do. And it’s nice to see them again.” Dash surveyed the olive platter and finally selected one she’d never seen before, a green cerignola somehow stuffed with an entire almond. The pointed tip of the nut stuck out from the olive like a tortoise’s head. She marveled at it, then snapped it down with a merciless chomp. “But, it’s like… I dunno. They can come see me. No need for me to come back here.”
“It’s your home, though.”
“So? Where’s your home?”
“The Orithyia, of course. I guess I’m like a snail, always carrying my home with me.”
Dash snickered at the image. The Orithyia had as much in common with a snail as she did. She stole another few olives from the plate – a plump castelvetrano basted with fennel, a thyme and bay leave dusted liguria, and a meaty gordal stuffed with capers – and as she was devouring the last of them the waiter returned with their sandwiches.
Did they make olive sandwiches? They should. Pinkie would know. Pinkie knew all about cooking, even if she was a baker by trade. And she could trust Pinkie – Pinkie wouldn’t care about her weird addiction to olives. Heck, Pinkie would probably want to bake an olive-pie for her, a thought that twisted Dash’s muzzle.
“Is your sandwich alright?” Nutmeg asked.
“Er, yeah. Sorry, was thinking of something else for a moment.” She nibbled at her daisy panini and gave a little nod. Satisfactory.
They ate in silence. One thing Dash did not miss about the Orithyia was the quality of food. Almost all canned or preserved or dried. She liked oatmeal, and Nutmeg kept a sufficient quantity of honey and maple sugar and molasses and dried fruits onboard to add variety to their porridge, but at a certain point oatmeal was oatmeal was oatmeal, and the body longed for some variety. Fortunately, their stops were rarely more than a few days apart, and iceberg delivery was a leisurely enough trade that they could afford to detour to settlements for meals at night.
But to have food like this, whenever she wanted? Every single day? It seemed so privileged, so spoiled, that she had to put the sandwich down and stare at it.
Nutmeg noticed. He raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry. Just… thinking some more.” She was doing that a lot lately. Too much. Less thinking, more flying.
She finished the rest of the meal without incident or further introspection.