A New Beginning

by BurningProse1929

Ch. 3 Story time Part one or How is it that Old Wounds Hurt the Most?

Prose was still deep in thought when Rarity came back with the fresh kettle of tea and placed it on the table between their cups. Noticing the look of sadness and indecisiveness on the green and purple pony in front of her, Rarity cleared her throat gently.

“Oh!” Prose said with a slight start, “Terribly sorry Ms. Rarity, just kind of got lost in thought….” Prose took a sip of the freshly made tea and drew back from his cup at first wondering when it had been filled again, then resumed his sip.

“It’s quite alright dear, whenever you’re ready to talk about it just go ahead.” She said trying to hide the concern in her voice.

“Before I begin my tale, I just want to warn you that it may be a bit graphic, and while I apologize for that now, I want you to know that the past is the past and I am not the same pony.” Prose stated.

“Well darling, none of us are the same as we were in the past, in fact I’ll let you in on a tiny secret, years ago I was not the same mare you see before you, I used to be an utter gossip queen.” Noticing a hint of reservation in his eyes she pulled his hoof into hers as she said, “Everyone has to change, whether it be for good or bad. I am no longer a gossip queen because I found out that it doesn’t matter who’s doing what with what or who. All that matters is that everypony learns from their past.” She released his hoof and smiled gently towards him.

“O-ok Ms. Rarity,” Prose said noticing he was sporting a slight smile of his own. “Well, to start off, I want you to know I didn’t have a bad foalhood growing up, I had two loving parents and grew up in a relatively decent neighborhood not too far from Baltimare.” His smile got a little wider at the memories, “In fact I was actually a pretty well behaved colt, and had a nice small group of friends. I didn’t play a lot of sports but that didn’t mean anything to them, my friends were happy to hang out with me regardless of whether I wanted to play hoofball or not.”

Prose paused to take a sip of his tea before continuing. “I was picked on, but that was just colts and filly’s being just that. I mostly got made fun of for my more…” he took his feminine style hat off and looked at it, “well let’s just call them ‘mare like’ qualities. I always liked playing with dolls, as well as action figures.” He put his hat on the table and took off his green bedazzled glasses and set them next to his hat and looked back up.

“Heck, I even had a small little tea set,” Prose chuckled at this.

“What did your parents say about all of this?” asked Rarity with a raised eyebrow genuinely curious.

Prose waved his hoof in the air as he said, “My mother and father were a very liberal couple, they knew that you couldn’t stifle a foals growing process and only saw all of this as me just being me, and no matter what they would always love me.” He looked up towards the ceiling as a tear fell from his eyes at the thought of his parents.

Rarity noticed the tear and handed Prose a tissue stating, “You love them dearly don’t you?”

Prose nodded, attempting to regain his composure before resuming. “They were the best anypony could ask for and they never stifled my creativity, well, there was that time when I tried to get my cutie mark for spying.” He brought his hoof to his mouth stifling a giggle, “Man dad sure was one mad stallion after he found me in the neighbor’s house with a camera around my neck and me hiding in a closet underneath a bunch of towels, all in the hopes of getting a good shot.”

Rarity giggled lightly at the thought of the purple and green stallion, then just a colt, under a huge ball of towels.

Prose had to stop himself from laughing loudly as he said with nostalgia in his eyes, “Even funnier was the towels weren’t even green! They were bright white and the only reason I was found was because my dad came over to see if I had been there and they all heard a small sneeze as I tried to rearrange myself to get a better look. Man I ended up grounded for a while for that one.”

Prose nostalgia was quickly replaced with sadness as his thoughts started going back to his school days. “Anyway I didn’t have too much trouble dealing with all the other foals teasing until middle school and high school,” Prose practically spat the words out like it tasted of spoiled food, “that was when the trouble started.”

Rarity was slightly taken aback at the sudden change in attitude, ‘It couldn’t have been that bad,’ she thought.

Prose’s ears flattened back as he talked, “It began in middle school, I started going through that ‘magical’, he made sarcastic air quotes as he said this, “time in every foals life. I started to look at the fillies the way every colt does at that time in their life, but….” Prose sighed, “I also started to look at the other colts the same way, and I was confused, not to mention mortified, because I always thought that you could only feel that way about fillies if you were a colt.”

Prose paused as the horrible memories started flooding back, and a few stray tears started their way down his cheeks. Rarity placed her hoof on his trying to comfort him somewhat. He looked up at her and smiled weakly.

With a few tears still in his eyes he continued, “I tried to bring it up to mom and dad, but the only thought that consumed me was ‘What if they didn’t love me anymore?’ I was different and I knew it, but I just kept it to myself until the day I decided to talk to my best friend Blue Thrill, about it. I didn’t expect acceptance of me and my being different, but I told him, with tears streaking my face, and do you know what he did?”

He looked in Rarity’s eyes as he asked her and all she did was shake her head.

“H-he put his hoofs on my shoulders, I was expecting some kind of horrible punishment for what I told him, like he would maybe shove me away from me, or say, ‘Well what do you expect of a blank flank?’ I still hadn’t gotten my cutie mark then, but all he did was pull me into the tightest hug he had ever given me. He pulled back when he noticed I had stopped crying, I was stunned silent and just stared at him confused with tears still in my eyes. What he said next has stuck with me since that day.

His exact words were, ‘Prose, it doesn’t matter who you fall in love with, gender isn’t a factor when it comes to what your heart wants and desires. No matter who you choose to love, I will always be there to back you up 110%’”

Prose grinned slightly, “Then he said that if I fell in love with him he wouldn’t blame me, ‘I certainly am the most handsomest colt here after all!’” Prose imitated a cocky attitude as he repeated what was said to him that day. “That got me to smile and he laughed, he told me that no matter what he always wants to see me with a smile, through thick and thin, always smile. From that day forward if I had a problem he would be the first one I went to, and he always made sure to help me through my problems.”

Rarity had her own smile, as well as a tear or two, as he said that. “He sounds like a lovely friend darling.” She carefully wiped away her own tears thinking about her group of friends.

Prose wiped his eyes, “Yea he was the, as the kids would say, ‘bestest’ friend I had.” His smile faltered a bit, “After that day I thought it would be smooth sailing ahead, I still got picked on, but knowing I had Thrill on my side I knew nothing could get to me.” His smile disappeared, “Until we got to high school that is.”

Prose paused again wincing at the mere mention of that time in his life. Shakily picking up his tea cup and taking a sip hoping to calm his mind, he sighed and began to resume his tale but was stopped by the sudden embrace. Rarity hugged him harder than he thought possible. After she let go she returned to her seat making sure she didn’t look disheveled.

“Sorry about that dear, I just felt it was the ideal thing to do, but I have to ask what about your parents? What did they have to say about all of this?” She asked.

Prose sat there for a second regarding the question, hoof placed firmly under his chin in thought. “Well, when I became a high school freshman my mom accidentally found some,” Prose blushed brightly, “less than ideal magazines in my room one day and confronted me about them. I explained to her what had happened that day in middle school and apologized profusely for not being ‘normal’ but all she could do was laugh.”

Rarity gasped, “She laughed? Why that’s horrible!”

Prose quickly looked at her and wildly waved his hooves in front of him, “OH No, no, Ms. Rarity please don’t misunderstand, she wasn’t laughing at me about that, she was laughing because I was scared to talk to her about it, with me thinking her and dad wouldn’t love me anymore.”

Rarity lessened the disdain on her face and asked, “Well what did she say when you told her?”

Prose smiled warmly placing his hooves on the table in front of him, “Well first she smacked me upside the head,” this elicited another gasp from Rarity, which made Prose chuckle some, “Then, with the love and kindness only a mother could have she hugged me and told me that no matter what I did, either in love or life, her and dad would love me unconditionally. It was then I figured out why her cutie mark had three hearts instead of only one. She had so much love for everypony that one heart just wasn’t enough.”

Rarity smiled at this comment. But then curiosity overtook her and she asked, “I was wondering something, if it isn’t too intrusive darling, when did you get your cutie mark?”

Prose looked at his fiery quill cutie mark thoughtfully then back at Rarity. “Well I actually got it about two weeks after that conversation with my mom, which by the way having the same conversation with my father was SO awkward.” Prose put the back of his hoof against his forehead and widened his eyes, “It felt like I was gonna die!”

Rarity chuckled, Prose continuing after his little theatrics, “I was in the courtyard of the school writing, just minding my own business, when this disheveled looking mare went running by me tears flowing from her eyes, it was all I could do to not go after her, I figured it wasn’t any of my business, but something in my head told me I needed to try and help. So I put my things down and went after her.”

“I finally found her after looking around for like twenty minutes and there she was underneath a stairwell still crying. I asked what was wrong and all she could get out, or at least all I could understand in between her sobs, was that she had just got dumped by the quarterback of the hoofball team. The only thing that I could think to do was give her a hug, but I didn’t want to invade her personal space like that,” Prose put his hoof to his chest and switched to a more posh accent, “being the gentlepony I am after all.”

Prose put his hoof back down and spoke normally, “It was then that my first big inspiration hit me, mind you I didn’t call it that then, and I just spouted out the first thing that came to my mind. When my eyes focused back on to her she stood there silently, I thought that I had maybe said something wrong, but then grabbed me into the second tightest hug I had ever been in, which of course made me blush the reddest I had ever been.”

Prose looked down into his tea thoughtfully, “She was the first mare I had a major crush on and I always thought it would never work out between us, while I was right, it was still nice to be able to make her happy like that, then she noticed my cutie mark had appeared and well that’s it. I was as excited as a foal to finally get it and I thanked her even though I didn’t need to.”

Rarity asked, “What did you say to her that day, if that was what caused you to get your cutie mark it had to be something big, right?”

Prose chuckled, “Honestly Ms. Rarity? I couldn’t tell you to this day what I said to her, all I know is afterwards I never saw her without a smile on her face. Really though I don’t care what I said to her, all I care about is that I made somepony happy.”

Rarity sighed thoughtfully, “Well whatever you said to her had to be just marvelous,” she then said, “but you said sometimes your ‘inspiration’ as you call it, got you into trouble. How so?”

Prose shifted uncomfortably in his seat, “Well let’s just say that I got beat up a few times because of it, I couldn’t really control what I said at the time, I would just look at somepony and bam, I did what I do, and then most of the time, BAM!” At this Prose hit one hoof with the other, “I hit the floor in pain. I’ve gotten over it now, but something like that does something to you. It got to the point that I would curse my cutie mark any time it happened.”

Rarity poured him another cup of tea and asked, “So how did you end up dealing with all of that, it had to take a lot out of you, did it not?”

Prose looked back down into his, now full, cup of tea and shuddered, “Ms. Rarity what I did to ease that pain is something I’m not too proud of, I did it the wrongest way possible.” Prose took a sip of his tea, “I ended up getting into drugs.”

Author's Note:

Hey look, my first A/N! Well anyway, yes, Prose and his little backstory is gonna be a multiparter. Here's Part one, I might have part two up sometime later this week. As always comments, whether good bad or indifferent are welcome. And please tell me if I have done any spelling errors and all that, I want to at least come across as competent.