Dreamstrider

by OkemosBrony

Chapter 33

I look up from my cereal and see that just like the last few times I’ve looked up, Snowy’s just staring at Jure, love plastered all over her face. She hasn’t even touched her oatmeal, and it looks like it’s getting pretty cold at this point. Even Jure seems to be noticing a little bit, because he looks really uncomfortable right now. My guess is he’s starting to notice that something’s up, as well. I know I feel bad for Snowy, but I’m going to feel even worse for him because he didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe I’ll explain to him later why I had to do what I did, but if he doesn’t think their argument is real, then it won’t be nearly as effective.

I really don’t want to do this, but I just look down at my cereal and take a deep breath. It’s just a few questions, based off what I felt from her dream and the demon last night. Nothing to it. It’ll be easy. Besides, I’m doing this to help her. It’s like when I was little and dad practically had to drag me to the doctor’s office to get my shots: I may not have liked it, but it was good for me.

“So Snowy,” I start, “how long have you two been dating?”

“Since October 9th,” she replies in a heartbeat, almost as if she was expecting the question. “He brought me to downtown Manehattan and we went to The Gilded Lily, one of the fanciest restaurants in town.”

He seems to be trying to hide it, but I can tell he’s blushing a little. “It wasn’t that fancy. Just thought it’d be a nice place for a nice mare.”

I put a spoonful of cereal in my mouth, then chew it enough so I can speak and not get food everywhere. “What do you guys do for dates?”

“Lot of little stuff,” she responds. “Hanging around home, going for walks, those sorts of things.”

“So you don’t really go out and do many big things together, then?”

“We do things! There was this one time the Equestrian national figure skating team was in town and we went, and it was just so romantic!” She giggles and tilts her head a little. “Do you remember that night?”

“It was really nice,” he agrees.

“You remembered that Snowy really loves figure skating,” I wink at him. “She took lessons all the time before I was born. I bet you two go skating all the time, huh?”

“I was the one that found out about it and bought tickets,” she admits. For the first time in a few days, she actually doesn’t sound extremely excited about everything. “And no, I don’t think we’ve ever gone skating.”

“Why not?” I ask further, hoping to start poking at some nerves. “Have you not told him you love doing it?”

“I’ve told him before.” She takes her eyes off him, then looks down at her oatmeal and starts eating it. “Jure, how come we’ve never gone ice skating?”

“I guess we’ve just never gotten around to it,” he shrugs before laughing nervously.

“I’m sure you guys do lots of fun stuff together,” I tell Snowy.

“Yeah!” Jure agrees. “There was the national team, the art galleries, the couples’ cooking class, and those concerts, just to name a few!”

“Those were all things I put together!” she yells. “Every time we get together, it’s just doing all the same boring stuff! I’m the one who has to put together fun, new activities for us, because you never do! I was even the one who had to coordinate you coming here, because you wouldn’t have done it otherwise!”

“Well, I didn’t know how much I love you is measured by the number of new experiences we do per month!” he yells back. “What happens if we run out of stuff to do, do we have to break up?”

“Oh, that is not the point and you know it! I’m just trying to say that it wouldn’t kill you to try and be a little more adventurous, you know?”

He looks at her straight in the eyes. “Name one time I hesitated to do something new.”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say her eyes were about to start shooting fire right here and now. “Literally all the time! You never take initiative, so that leaves me putting all the work into this relationship and you just sitting back and not even trying!”

I think this got just a little out of hoof.

I don’t want to be near them in the middle of such a big fight, so I just grab my mostly empty cereal bowl and put it in the sink before making my way into the backyard. Dad’s using his magic to pull some weeds in one of his vegetable gardens, so I don’t think he knows what’s going on yet.

“Hey!” he waves as he looks over and sees me just standing there awkwardly. “Wanna come help me pull some weeds?”

The answer’s obviously no, but since dad's asking, the answer has to be yes. I don’t even answer, just walk up towards him.

“You okay?”

The question throws me off, so I look up and see him looking down at me with worry all over his face.

“I’m fine,” I mumble.

“You look like you’re about to cry. Are you sure you’re fine?”

I try to tell him again, but a few heavy tears manage to start rolling down my face before I can get any words out. He gets down and hugs me, then wipes some of the tears off onto his forelegs. “What’s wrong?”

“I made Snowy and Jure fight.” I sniffle, then wipe my nose a tiny bit. “They’re in there yelling at each other.”

“What about?”

“She says he doesn’t do anything and that she has to do all the work in the relationship.” I sigh and shake my head. “And I caused it.”

“Aurora, I’m sure it’s not your fault. If it was, I don’t think they’d have let you leave that argument.”

“I tried to cause it, though! There was a demon messing with her dream, and the only way to undo everything is if she fights with her boyfriend. I was just trying to help, and now what if they break up because of me?”

“They won’t break up,” he says confidently. “They’re just having a fight. Mom and I still fight sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we love each other any less.”

“But mom’s never said that you never do anything and that she has to do everything,” I point out. “I’ve only heard you guys fight about stupid, little stuff.”

“I think they both care about the other enough to have their relationship survive this. It’s not like that’s an uncommon topic to fight about, anyways. Have I told you about the girlfriend I had that argument with?”

I shake my head. “No, what happened?”

“She yelled at me for almost the exact same things it sounds like Snowy is yelling at Jure for,” he laughs. “Said she was putting in so much work and she didn’t feel like I was reciprocating any of it. Dug into me pretty good, as a matter of fact; she really let me have it, didn’t hold back at all. Wanna know what happened to her?”

“What?”

He rubs my back and smiles. “Ended up having three foals with her. I think Snowy and Jure are very compatible, and they both seem to want the relationship to succeed. If they break up, it’ll be at some point down the line and not because you instigated a fight. But the fact that my wife once yelled at me for the exact things our daughter is now yelling at her boyfriend for shows that it’s not an automatic relationship killer.”

“But you can’t hear them out here. They’re really yelling at each other, and they’re both really angry.”

“You don’t need to worry yourself too much about them,” he laughs. “Aurora, when you get a little older and start dating, you’ll realize that fights just happen. No two ponies are absolutely perfect for each other, and we all have things that drive our partners up the wall. Sometimes, the best thing for a relationship is to vent and just get your feelings out. Having my girlfriend scream at me and tell me she hardly thought I cared about our relationship hurt a lot, but it it showed me that if I wanted to make it work, I had to put more effort in. And clearly, that’s exactly what I needed to do if I didn’t want to lose her. It’s obviously always better to try and talk your problems out calmly like adults, but unfortunately, that doesn’t always work. The important thing is to not let one fight or argument cloud your judgment, and to look at your relationship realistically. I still loved mom and she still loved me, and I imagine that once Snowy and Jure’s heads have cooled a bit, they’ll think the same thing about each other.”

Almost as soon as he finishes saying that, the back door opens and then quickly slams shut before I can hear somepony growling loudly. I manage to turn my head while still staying in dad’s hug and see Snowy just pacing back and forth and appearing to be mumbling to herself.

“Everything alright?” dad asks her.

“I’m fine!” she screams at us. “Just need some alone time is all.”

“Aurora was just telling me that you and Jure were having a fight. Want to come talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about?” she scoffs. “He doesn’t try at this relationship, leaving me to do all the heavy lifting.”

“So you don’t feel like he cares a whole lot about you, then?”

“Well…” She stops, then starts thinking. “I don’t know if I’d say that. I guess he doesn’t put a lot in, but I can tell he does care about me and wants what we have to survive.”

“Well, how can you tell that? What makes you think he wants to continue the relationship?”

“I guess I can just kinda tell that when I’m around him, he’s a lot happier.” She walks over to us and sits down next to dad in the grass. “And he’s always there for me, and always seems to know exactly what it is I need when I’m going through a rough patch. He also puts up with me when I get a little neurotic, which if I’m being honest, is pretty often. Never seems to really be phased by it or get frustrated with me.”

“What don’t you feel like he’s putting into your relationship? It sounds like at least emotionally, he is indeed there for you at least some of the time.”

She just sits there for a few seconds, then sighs and shakes her head. “God, it sounds so stupid now that it’s not in the heat of the moment. I said he never went out and took much initiative on doing new things, while I did.”

“I don’t think that’s stupid,” he comforts her while pulling her into our hug. “Is it? It could be. I don’t know the details of your relationship, though, so that’s something you and him need to decide. Maybe it is a stupid thing to think, maybe it’s not. But the important thing is that you expressed it, even if it wasn’t exactly in the way you probably would have wanted to. Because now that you’ve said it, you can see if it’s truly an unreasonable and stupid expectation or if it’s a need of yours that isn’t being fulfilled. Relationships need to work in both directions, and you told him you didn’t think it was. This sounds like it’s been frustrating you for a while, so if you hadn’t had this fight, it probably just would’ve built inside of you and gotten even worse.”

As she lays her head on dad’s chest, I swear I can see her eyes start to get damp. “I’ve never had a relationship get this far, so I just guess I don’t know what to do. Every other time I had a big fight with a boyfriend, we broke up and I felt better for it. But now, I don’t know if that’s the best choice. I’ve never felt this way about a stallion before, and I just don’t know how much love is the threshold for considering something to potentially be permanent. I don’t want to stick with this if we don’t feel deep enough about each other, but I don’t want to walk away if he could be the one.”

“Snowy,” he laughs, looking her in the eye, “you can't measure love, and there’s no benchmark for when you should stick with a relationship or when you should drop it. You just have to go with what you feel is right, and take it one step at a time. You’ll always be faced with unknowns, and the only thing you can do is sit down with your partner and talk things through before making a decision. I’ve been married to mom for two and a half decades and been in a relationship with her even longer, and even we don’t know what our future has in store. But we’ve learned how to sit down and talk things through, because if you don’t learn that skill, you’ll never find the pony who’s right for you.”

Jure walks outside and seems to be pretty angry, but he seems to calm down when he sees us. “Snowy?” he asks.

“Go talk to him,” dad whispers into Snowy’s ear before kissing her on the forehead and patting her on the back. “Tell him why you’re upset, but listen to him, too. Knowing how to listen is just as important as knowing how to express your frustrations.”

She gets up when he lets her out of the hug, then walks over to him before saying something and following him inside.

“Another day in the life of being a dad,” he winks at me.

“Is it really that hard for you and mom to get along?” I ask. The way he said it, you’d think they were constantly fighting.

“You make it sound difficult,” he laughs. “Again, we’ve been together for...gosh, thirty years or so? And we’ve gone through college, started careers, and raised a family together. All of those can be very stressful, so with as much time as we’ve had together, yeah we’re bound to fight. But we aren’t constantly at each other’s throats, just have had a lot of time together. But with that comes a lot of time to figure out how to live with each other and communicate so we don't fight that much.”

“And you really think that Snowy and Jure will be fine?”

“For now, at least," he confirms. “Them making up doesn’t undo what you did for Dreamstriding, correct?”

“No, I just needed them to fight. Basically, the demon make her think way too highly of him to the point where he was all she could think about. Fighting undoes that and brings her back to reality.”

“Then encouraging her to talk with him is probably even better to undo all of that,” he smiles. “I do hope they can make up after this. Compared to her past boyfriends, he does seem to be the most compatible with her, and as her dad, I obviously want to see her end up with somepony that fits well with who she is.”

“Everypony keeps saying stuff about ‘being compatible,’” I point out. “What’s that mean?”

“It means just…” He stops and thinks about it. “It means being able to understand your partner and being similar to them but also different enough to be able to not get on each other’s nerves all the time. For example, mom yelled at me for not putting much into our relationship because to me, just spending time with her was enough for me. If I found somepony who was exactly like me in that regard, we’d never do anything and I think we’d just get bored with each other. But mom has even told me that if she found somepony like her who likes to go out and do all sorts of new and exciting things, she doesn’t think they’d get any time to spend together and it would always be about what they’re doing, not who they’re doing it with. Since we’re different, we get to spend quality time together but also when we go out and do things, get to enjoy not only what we’re doing but also the fact that we’re doing it together.”

When he finishes speaking, he kisses me on the tip of my horn and then messes up my mane. “Snowy is seeing if her boyfriend is a good fit for her, and I know that she’ll eventually find somepony she can spend the rest of her life with. And I’m confident that someday, both you and Dew Drop will also find ponies that you won’t mind marrying and starting a family with.” The hug gets tighter, and I can really feel his sun-warmed coat now. “You’re all still just my little fillies in my eyes, but I know that at least for Snowy, it’s time for her to go out and start a life of her own. And seeing her seriously thinking about her future shows to me that she’s ready to be her own mare.”

It’s hard to think about it because she’s so much older than me, but I guess she really once was a little filly like I used to be. And I can remember being younger, so it’s really weird to think about the fact that one day, I’ll be in a relationship just like her and trying to think about whether or not my boyfriend is the pony I plan to marry. Even weirder to think that mom and dad were once just boyfriend and girlfriend in college like Snowy and Jure are, because I can’t picture them as anything else besides parents with three foals.

“Now, come on,” dad says as he gets up and then helps me to my hooves. “I really do need help weeding my garden. Didn’t think you’d get off that easy, would you?”

We both laugh, then I light up my horn and look at the garden in front of us. “Alright, what do you need me to do?”

Comments

[Dlaf rferg]

Lot of insight on relationships being thrown around this chapter.