• Published 9th Jul 2013
  • 2,516 Views, 254 Comments

Horizontal Lines - horizon



Stories and poems too short for individual publication (including some award-winning minifics).

  • ...
4
 254
 2,516

You, Ms. Harshwhinny, And A Pair Of Cougars Go On A Double Date

The hymn of cicadas in the nearby fields. The timid glow of stars in the darkening sky. The delicate fragrance of a distant ocean breeze. The fanciest restaurant in the Seychelles. An intimate table in a dark alcove.

Harshwhinny turns her withering gaze upon the unlit candle until it spontaneously bursts into flames out of sheer terror.

The waiter scrambles over. 0.3 seconds late. Harshwhinny renders judgment! This restaurant is imperfect and unacceptable. You're crushed for a moment, until she consoles you that it's the least imperfect restaurant she's seen this month, and really, you made a good try of it, and she'll give you a chance to continue, out of a mixture of abject pity and the dark amusement of watching yet another trainwreck of a first date unfold.

Meanwhile, the cougars have snuck away, brought down one of the other patrons, and retreated under the table of a nearby booth to tear apart their bloody repast in peace and solitude.


The waiter returns, humbly crawling back to your table with a drink tray on his back. He sobs at Harshwhinny's hooves, begging for forgiveness, and hesitantly suggests that the restaurant has authorized him to bring over some cocktails on the house. Harshwhinny checks the Official IERC List of Approved Material Compensation and nods curtly. He leaps to his feet and slides a White Russian across the table to her, bowing at the perfect fifty-six degree angle that maximizes the multiplicative product of obeisance and dignity.

Harshwhinny stands, a magnificent rage darkening her features. She braces her hooves under the table and effortlessly upends it. Silverware flies everywhere, killing two other patrons. The cougars' night has now gone from entrée to buffet line.

You behold the full glory of her wrath. Her luscious lips are pulled back, exposing perfectly aligned teeth, whiter than Celestia's coat and glistening with a thin sheen of saliva. One corner of her muzzle is curled slightly further downward than the other. Her pupils have shrank, and the whites of her eyes reflect the candlelight, now a cheerful blaze as the carelessly lofted candle lands upon one of the heavy velvet curtains and sets it instantly afire.

"WERE YOU NOT AWARE," she thunders, and the heavens themselves echo with her voice, "THAT I AM LACTOSE INTOLERANT?"

Her voice is even more beautiful in the slightly accented Seychellois Creole she effortlessly switches to in order to berate the hapless staff. You had no idea she even spoke it, but how could she not? Of course she learns every single language of every unnamed corner of every continent; how else to approach perfect comprehension and ranking of the world she so disdains?

At that moment, the infatuation you were stricken with long before your birth blazes out into the fiery passion of love; a love, alas, doomed to remain forever unrequited, for she could only love perfection itself, but in that perfection you have found a new goal worthy of lifelong aspiration. To be the very best. Like no one ever was. And suddenly, you know what you must do.

With a single bound, you leap across the room to where the cougars are now chasing stampeding herds of restaurant patrons, indiscriminately killing with vicious bites to the neck. You grab the female. She yowls and spits, vicious claws blading through the trembling air, teeth lashing and snapping. She thrashes in your grip. The moment of your doom approaches. Right up until, with a Herculean heave inspired by your newfound dedication, you suplex the beast straight through a nearby table.

While the cougar lies stunned for a moment, you grab an empty glass with one hand, and the teats on her belly with another. With two mighty pulls, rich, life-giving fluid bursts forth. You seize a boomerang decorating a nearby wall and hurl it into the night with all your strength. Moments later, having warped time and space at your behest, it returns to you, rotating around an upended bottle of Grey Goose Magnum, the last of which sloshes into your glass before the bottle smashes against a wall, further stoking the now-roaring blaze which six fire departments are straining ineffectually to quench. You snatch some coffee beans spilled across a nearby table, and squeeze them in one trembling fist, screaming to the heavens as you summon all of your might, until the beans themselves weep in agony and a thin dark liquid courses from your hand to complete the drink.

You prostrate yourself before Harshwhinny's imperious form, all thoughts of the dignity/obeisance balance gone, for does the attempt at perfection not carry its own dignity far surpassing any mortal vanity? "No mere cattle byproduct," you declare, "could ever hope to fuel your elegance. I ask only that you consider my humble offering; and, in the consideration, that you may temper the steel of my imperfect adoration."

She takes a sip. "Hm," she says. Then, again, "Hm."

You tremble, not daring to look at her, eyes fixed on a spot on the ground just shy of her hooves.

The corners of her lips slowly crinkle upward. "Your suplex form was abominable."

You weep. To merely be the object of her attention is so transcendent that there are no sufficient words.

"I shall practice it for years," you say, "just on the off chance that I might one day demonstrate it again for you."

"I have a better idea," she says. Before you realize what's happening, her hooves are wrapped around you. "I think you might benefit from some personal training."

She drags you into a back room.

Five minutes later, you are so spent that you can barely crawl back out into the towering inferno of the restaurant. Her mane is slightly mussed.

The cougars hold up number cards.

She, of course, scores a 10.

Author's Note:

There is something wrong with my brain.

Written for a prompt in the Miss Harshwhinny Is Best Pony group — which has inspired me to such vast depths of wrongness that this doesn't even make the Wrongness Top Three.