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// 4 Look at the Time 
// Story: Potion Panic 
// by gaitiem 
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	The two decided to go somewhere they could speak privately; it was a hill that Scootaloo was familiar with, just a short ways outside of town along the old Matthew Trail to Canterlot. “Hardly anypony uses this thing anymore,” Scootaloo pointed out. “The Friendship Express is quicker, and safer.”
“We don’t tend to take the safe routes, do we?” Sweetie asked rhetorically. Scootaloo just smiled in reply. She was looking out into the sunset out over the town. The white clouds were tinged with pink, while the sky that was not orange was a brilliant purple. They could see most of 	Ponyville from where they sat, and had an excellent view of the bell tower. They sat there for hours, yet the hand on the clock held fast, and the sun was still only nearly set. It’s delay would not hold, as their decision stood before them. Now that they had some perspective, they knew they would have to choose, one way or the other.
Neither of them were in much of a rush. There was nothing to hold them to a label except other ponies, and they were in their own little world right now. Still, they wanted to decide whether the holding hooves, sharing smoothies, and other couple activities were things they had found themselves doing on accident, or something they wanted to do together for other reasons. And they each figured, silently, that they would have to decide before going back to civilization, or at least before they saw somepony else they knew personally.
Neither wanted to rush the other either. When it started getting dark around 5:14, Sweetie started a little fire with her horn. Scootaloo figured that Sweetie wouldn’t want to hold a spell like that for too long, so she got a candle out from her saddlebag, touched the tip of it to 		Sweetie Belles horn, and planted it between the two of them. As she did so, the two ponies faces came very close together, nearly to the point of feeling the other's breath. This warranted padding the silence out a little further, both for the awkwardness of the situation, and the personal event of a young fillies life that was almost-almost-kissing somepony. 
At 5:37, Sweetie Belle made a decision. She liked Scootaloo. She had liked Scootaloo since they were even younger, wanted to spend time with her, play with her, go through fillyhood with her. Now, though, she felt something more than those old feelings, new feeling that, more and more, were turning out to be, she thought, “mare-friend” feelings. Scootaloo might not have felt the same way, but Sweetie decided she had a right to know, either way. She dreaded her reaction more than anything, but in spite of how she imagined the worst to play out in her head, she brought out of herself a single word. Afraid she might whisper it and have to repeat herself, she overcompensated and just about yelled “Yes!” to the hilltop.
She couldn’t so much as look at Scootaloo now. The dread was too great, and her heart was racing so fast she feared it might explode. Even looking out onto the still orange horizon, she half expected an orange face to pop up with a look of confusion, disappointment, or repulsion. As she felt the roll of the dice play out in a cold, cruel universe, she asked only one thing of it: please don’t hate me, please don’t hate me, please don’t-
She was all turned around. Scootaloo had gently turned her head away from the sunset, and towards herself, with her hoof. They were face-to-face now, dimly illuminated by the sunset and the candle between them. After a deep breath, with eyes shut, Scootaloo responded, half- yelling herself: “Yes!”
Sweeties expectations were shattered in the best way possible. “Yes?” she checked.
Scootaloo confirmed with a more softly spoken “Yes.”
“Yes!” Sweetie exploded, throwing her hooves up in the air in chear. Scootaloo suppressed a chuckle in response to this. Sweetie clarified one more time, “So, we’re special someponies now?”
“If there’s nothing else we need to do… yeah!” Scootaloo responded, cautiously.
“I don’t think there is…” Sweetie said. Her tranquility was stirred by new questions. “I mean, now we’ll need to decide if we’re going to tell anypony else, and who. I hope Apple Bloom doesn’t feel left out when we start doing couple stuff together without her.”
“You don’t think she saw this coming?” Scootaloo asked, trying to bring Sweetie back to earth.
“Maybe. She does know us pretty well.” Sweetie found the rational in this, but found herself thinking further on the subject. “I have no clue what Rarity is going to think about this… or my parents. What if they hate that you’re more than my friend? What if-”
“Hey, Sweetie,” Scootaloo interrupted, “are your parents here right now?” 
Sweeties neck moved to look around, but she quickly realized the answer was an obvious. “No.”
“Then do we have to make plans for them, or Rarity, or Apple Bloom, or all of Equestria right now?” Scootaloo asked.
Sweetie Belle understood her point, and answered again, “No.” She added, “And we already made up our minds right? We said ‘yes’... it 	doesn’t matter what anypony else says.”
“That’s just what I was gonna say,” Scootaloo said, bringing Sweeties muzzle nearer hers, gently with her hoof. They were even closer now, and Sweetie could feel Scootaloos breath on her own lips. They were fully almost-kissing now, which was exactly as far as Sweetie was ready to go. “Rainbow Dash gives really good advice, though it’s not usually about… this kind of thing,” Scootaloo went on. “But something she said once went along the lines of, ‘Don’t make a decision before you have to’. We’re gonna have to figure that all out eventually, yeah, but, for right now, we’re the only ponies who need to care about whether we’re special to each other. I’m just so happy you said yes!" Her wings stood straight up from excitement.
“I feel the same way,” Sweetie Belle admitted. This weight off her shoulder was a long time coming, and between the biting late winter winds, and her total emotional reconfiguration, she couldn’t help but collapse into Scootaloo’s warm and fuzzy embrace. They held each other so long that Sweetie forgot what the world outside of them was like, and didn’t want to remember.
Eventually, though, Sweetie Belle did remember that she was supposed to be home for dinner by half past six. “Oh my gosh!” She said out loud. “I need to be home in 24 minutes!” 
“Their clock probably isn’t as good as ours,” Scootaloo commented.
“I’ve never been out past curfew. I don’t even know what’ll happen,” Sweetie admitted.
“You think I can’t get you there fast enough?” Scootaloo asked.
“I’m just sorry to cut things off so quickly,” Sweetie whined.
Scootaloo had hustled to put on her helmet and set up her wheels. "Don't feel bad. It can't be helped. And besides, we'll have other chances to spend time alone together." Her tone shifted. "Unless your parents decide to move somewhere far away!"
"But they've lived here since Rarity was born," Sweetie reasoned as she climbed on Scootaloo’s back, teetering on the scooter. "If they were going to move, they would have done it a long time ago"
"But they're always traveling!" Scootaloo argued, as they traveled. "Who's to say they haven't been looking at places in Manehattan, Canterlot, or Appleoosa? What if they take you away?"
"They're not gonna do that;" Sweetie restated, "they wouldn't just uproot our whole life on a whim like that. Rarity lives here... so do all of their friends."
"I guess you're right," Scootaloo admitted. "Ugh, I'm doing the thing I told you not to do."
"Are my parents moving away right now?" Sweetie Belle asked, teasing. "Be like Rainbow Dash, relaxed, cool, in the now."
"Now that you're my mare-friend, are you still gonna make fun of me for idolizing Rainbow Dash?" Scootaloo asked.
"Yes!" Sweetie stated bluntly. "What kind of mare-friend would I be if I didn't?"
"Heh. You're lucky you're so cute."
Sweetie took the compliment immediately to heart and it filled her belly with wavy, fiery stuff, like how her horn felt when she used magic. 		She held a little tighter to Scootaloo as they rode merrily along. It was all setting in now: "yes", "mare-friend", "cute", these words her friend had used that day. Words were nothing but signifiers, but what they meant was so real to her that the words became all silk and silver. Like cutie marks, they were so precious, not for what they were, but for what they meant. They meant that Scootaloo and her were in love.
Scootaloo stopped. They had traveled quite a ways, and it was difficult now to make out the image on the clock tower, but she managed to tell the time all the same. "Got you here nine minutes early! No need to tip me or anything," she joked.
"Oh, no," Sweetie played along as she disembarked, "I insist on it."
"What kind of mare-friend would I be if I let you do that?" Scootaloo echoed. Sweetie responded with a quick and bold peck on Scootaloo's cheek. 
"My mare-friend," Sweetie answered, softly. "So I'll see you tomorrow?" she asked, as if nothing had just happened. Scootaloo, naturally, was paralyzed. Sweetie was pleased with herself.
"Sweetie, is that you hon?" Cookie asked from inside the house. "Come inside, it's freezing out there!"
"Coming, mom!" Sweetie called back. "Bye Scootaloo!"
Scootaloo came back down from the clouds to finally respond "Uh, yeah! See you tomorrow!"
Over dinner, Cookie noticed that Sweetie was unusually chipper, and also strangely full of questions. She had to assure her daughter that she her father loved it in Ponyville and intended to stay even into their eventual retirement. She got the impression that her daughter had more questions, but wasn't sure how to phrase them, so she made a guess or two. "Are you worried Rarity is going to move away?" That wasn't it. 		"Cause you know, Rarity's a grown up professional fashion designer, and we can't go moving to Manehattan or Canterlot to keep tabs on her all the time. It's hard as a mothe', but I gotta let my chicks leave the nest eventually. If she thinks she wants to move away to the big city, I -that is, ‘we’- got no right to keep smotherin' her." This clearly wasn't what Sweetie was concerned about, but someone was certainly interested in this topic. "She's got to be her own independent lady... at least until she meets a nice fellow. She tell you she had a date with a prince once? And there's that Fancy Pants guy she's always on about. She says he's not interested in her like that, but I think she's just modest. I tell her she should tie the knot before she gets old like me, and she says 'believe me, I would if I could', but I think she's just being bashful. Or picky. Golly is she picky. Have I ever told you about trying to get her to eat baby food?"
"You have," Sweetie answered. She was clearly getting annoyed at hearing Cookie gossip about her other daughter while she was lost in her own thoughts.
Cookie realized she was getting lost on her own train of thought as well, and remembered she was trying to determine the root cause of her daughter’s attitude to begin with. Going off her previous thought, she asked "So are there any boys you like at school?"
"May I be excused?" Sweetie asked, ignoring her mother's question.
"But Sweetie, you've hardly touched your-" in fact, Sweetie Belle had finished her soup a little while ago. "Well, look at that. Yes, young lady, you're excused." Sweetie wished her mother and her father's newspaper goodnight and went directly to her room. "Honey, do you think something's wrong with Sweetie Belle?"
"Eh, I don't know, she seemed fine to me," her husband replied from behind his newspaper. "Better than usual, even."
"Wasn't all that chatty," Cookie pointed out.
"You were chatty enough for the two of you." 
"Huh, was I now?" Cookie acknowledged. "Do you think it might be boy troubles?"
"She's never had any before. I can tell you one thing, though," he said. "She better not see no Baltimare fan. Least of all when they're playing Seaddlle."
“Oh, but dear, I don’t think that foals her age are all that interested in hoofball.”
“That’s why we told her to wait ‘till she’s older, right?” he joked.
“You’re lucky you’re so cute, hon” she replied. She knew she was worrying over nothing, but it didn’t keep her from worrying. Baking, she thought, might stop it, and so she baked.
Meanwhile, Sweetie was laying in her bed, not sleepy as of yet, but so exhausted that the bed seemed like the best place for her. She estimated it had been a big day, and needed time to take things in. When she was really starting to get tired, she looked out her window to make sure her mare-friend wasn’t still there. She went to sleep with the scent of cookies in her nostrils that sent surges of happiness flowing through her little filly brain. Few ponies could boast of such pleasant rest.