//------------------------------// // It Would Have Been Worse With A Piece Of Toast In Her Mouth // Story: Anchor Foal: A Romantic Cringe Comedy // by Estee //------------------------------// She had about two seconds of warning, and for somepony with Fleur's background and hard-won reflexes, that could be all which was needed. The youthful shouts reached her ears (which had already been carefully rotating in a preemptive attempt to further understand her new environment), and the volume of those desperate cries had not been enough to completely drown out the sounds of heavy hooves landing against cobblestones, the little scratches of keratin on rock as a being not used to moving across this kind of terrain scrambled for purchase, and then there was another shout, one of alarm, trying to make her move -- -- but Fleur's reflexes had already made their choice. Whatever was going on, it worked out to trouble, and they wanted no part of it. And so she pushed with all four hooves, flinging herself forward, getting out of the surprisingly large body's way, giving her just enough distance to clear the lowered head and tremendous spread of antlers. Her reflexes brought her to safety, and even if that safety ended with her just about spread-eagled on the ground in a rather embarrassing fashion (and pose), it still left her unharmed. The mistake had been in assuming that the fillies giving chase would have been following pretty much directly behind the thing. As it turned out, they were a little more to the left. The earth pony didn't quite manage a hard veer, dumping herself onto the cobblestones in a frantic skid of what started as hooves and then wound up as a tumbling body, friction quickly slowing her final slide until she came to a rough-bump stop against Fleur's flank. The pegasus simply buzzed her wings a little faster, angled the scooter's front wheel, and turned her headlong rush into a jump which cleared Fleur's back with room to spare. But the unicorn, physically weakest and moving at the slowest speed, tried to follow suit using only the power of her legs, and by the time she reached the point where she would have to trigger the leap, she needed to vault two ponies -- and went for it anyway. There was a sound of impact. And for anypony willing to ignore the squeaking of wheels and bell-like bleats continuing to race down the road, it was followed by a moment of perfect silence. Fleur took a slow breath. The weight moved accordingly, but not much. "Are you okay?" Fleur carefully checked. "I'm sorry!" the unicorn filly desperately cried out. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry we're sorry, we're sorry we're --" "Are. You. Okay?" "...I think so." Fleur exhaled. "How about you?" This to the earth pony. "Ah... yeah, Ah'm fine." "Good. So..." Another breath, which wasn't being made any easier by the weight. "...would you please get off me now?" She could hear the blink. A heartbeat later, the earth pony started forcing herself to her hooves, and the unicorn filly got off Fleur's back as quickly as the humiliation would allow, doing some scuff damage to the coat which Fleur would have to straighten out later. Nothing major, though, and that wasn't exactly the important thing right now. Fleur carefully got up, noted the sudden aches and twinges in her back, then looked down. The yellow and white fillies nervously stared up at her -- but only for a second. "We're sorry," the unicorn tried again, sounding as if she was on the verge of tears. "We didn't know anypony was -- we never thought it was going to go this way, we thought it would try to head down... but it went here, we thought everypony had gone to work or shopping or everything else already, like even staying home today, so there wouldn't be anypony in the street, and then..." Which was when the squeaking of wheels began to get louder again. "I lost it!" declared a frustrated, somewhat brash pegasus voice. "It went over a fence and -- if I'd just had a little more momentum, just a little more straightway before the jump, I could have cleared that, but..." (It took a lot for Fleur to pick up on the mostly-repressed sigh, and absolutely nothing to realize this filly would instinctively deny it had ever emerged at all.) With more than a hint of self-directed sarcasm, "Cutie Mark Crusaders Deer Wranglers... um... oh." There were certain things Fleur had a lot of experience with, and being stared at was extremely high on the list. A pony with her looks got noticed, and some of that notice could go on for a surprisingly long time without blinking. So she felt the approaching filly staring at her, even as the sounds of the wheels stopped entirely. But it wasn't from the pegasus filly realizing she'd jumped somepony and recognizing a need to add her own apologies. There was no awestruck state at the sight of Fleur's beauty, something which occasionally left ponies trotting into buildings, traffic, and each other. The filly was very visibly staring at -- "-- your mark!" the little pegasus exclaimed, and Fleur heard the longing. The other fillies focused. Two looking at her right flank, one staring at the left. "What is that?" the earth pony immediately asked. "Ah ain't never seen one like that! What's it mean?" "What's it for? And -- how do you get one? How could we get one?" the unicorn openly wished. She heard it. All of it, the need and desperation and hope, standing between three fillies whose puzzle pieces were just beginning to acquire their first washes of color, with their owners barely starting to become aware that there was anything to be solved at all. Stood in the midst of something very close to innocence. "You don't want it," Fleur quietly said. They stared all the harder. "But it's your mark!" the pegasus declared. "How could anypony not want a mark? We -- anypony -- anypony should accept any mark at all, any mark as long as it's cool and awesome and makes you cool and awesome, as long as it's your mark...!" Fleur turned her head. "It's not a mark for fillies," she told the orange filly, looking directly into purple eyes, or as directly as she could with so much of the filly's attention still on her mark. "And it wouldn't be something you did to get it. This mark comes when something happens. It's something which won't --" shouldn't "-- shouldn't happen to any of you." Gently, "I don't want to see this mark on anypony else. Ever. And if I ever heard that you were trying to get it, I'd stop you. The deer --" she blinked "-- Sun and Moon, that was a deer! You three found a deer in Equestria? How far did you go into the wild zone to spot one? And then you managed to drive it out, it had antlers, it's still too early in the season for the antlers to have fallen off and you got it in front of you... what were you doing chasing a deer?" Three sets of hooves scraped against cobblestones. "Um," the unicorn said, and seemed to feel that summed everything up. "We're kinda... tryin' t' find our marks," the earth pony elaborated. "We've -- gone through a lot of things without doin' it. A lot. We're startin' t' feel like we're gettin' a little low on options." "And somepony in our class said," the pegasus relayed, expression resplendent in both frustration and ignorance, "that since we'd failed at pretty much everything else under Sun, we'd probably stink at bucking too." "So... we... um..." the unicorn awkwardly offered, "...found a buck?" Fleur blinked. They stared at her as she helplessly laughed, all three of them, and she neither knew how to tell them nor wanted to, for understanding the joke required knowledge she didn't want them to have just yet and a childhood they'd been lucky enough not to experience -- although in truth, the part which had led into the joke hadn't been bad. "Do you know why they call the males 'bucks'? Because if it's mating season and you get in front of one, you are screwed." Eventually, she got it down to a few last giggles. "Okay," she gasped out. "So... bucking. Obviously no mark in that. Any ideas on what to try next?" "Not today," the pegasus half-pouted. "We didn't think we were gonna need anything else today. I think what we've gotta do is --" The distant scream cut her off, and the initial attempt to resume was interrupted by the equally-distant sound of antlers crashing into (and through) a greenhouse. "-- leave," the pegasus decided, and finally shifted her gaze off Fleur's mark. "Did you see my jump? I went right over you! There must have been, like, two full hoof-heights of clearance over your back! Maybe four! Did it look cool from underneath? Or --" "Scootaloo," the earth pony urgently broke in. "We've gotta leave. Like, y'know, now?" "Oh... yeah." Back to Fleur. "You can tell me later, okay? Let's get to the barn. They won't look for us at the barn, not after we got caught there the last time. Why would they look somewhere we already got caught?" The earth pony looked worried. "Because... y'jus' said where we were goin', in front of..." "Go," Fleur smiled. All three stared at her. "But y'know --" the earth pony began. "Me? I'm new in town. I don't know anypony or anything," Fleur innocently declared. "I've never seen or heard of you three before this morning, and I probably won't find out about you until this afternoon at the very least. I'm not even sure I'm here right now." She paused, waited for the sounds of crashing planter pots to finish having their rather pointed say. "Go." The wild hope surged in their eyes, and nothing could have made her shatter it. "Okay," Scootaloo grinned. "You heard her, Apple Bloom. Let's see if we can think of anything at the Acres!" A quick glance at the only adult in the area. "You're new? Watch out for Pinkie! Come on, Sweetie! Bye!" And before Fleur could ask who or what a Pinkie was, wings buzzed, making wheels squeak. The strongest set of hooves broke into a full gallop. But the little unicorn filly was still there. Still staring at Fleur. "Go," Fleur gently insisted. "Um..." The filly, whom process of elimination had named as Sweetie, deeply blushed. "...you're -- really pretty..." Fleur smiled again, ignored the fresh piece which had just acquired some very familiar patterns. "Go." Timidly, with her head down, "I'm sorry." "Nopony's hurt. No squawk, no blood, no foul." She probably doesn't know the expression. "It was just a -- bump in the road. The barn, Sweetie: somepony's going to be tracking the direction that deer came from any minute, and the police chief lives on the street behind us. Go." Sweetie blushed still more deeply, then raced away as best she could. And Fleur watched her go, still smiling -- but she didn't hold the position for long, because it was her first day in the settled zone and the police chief was looking for any excuse, with 'standing in the general vicinity of a deer's charge path' easily qualifying for 'any'. Instead, she trotted away, legs automatically moving at the casual noplace-special-to-be pace which never got any attention over and above that paid towards the shapeliness of the limbs going through it. And there was no anger in the movement, because there was no reason for anger to be there, certainly not regarding what had just happened, for it had simply been three fillies questing for their marks. Fillies with time aplenty stretching in front of them, time to find... where will I go? who will I be? what might my mark whisper to me? And when the last echoes of the old song finally faded from her inner ear, she began to trot again.