Rose and Sam
Chapter 9: Reflection
Admiral Biscuit
I waved goodbye as we parted ways, hoping I hadn’t kept her too long and there were still jobs on the board. Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t justify keeping her another day. Not to mention what Lily would say when she found out, and I knew she would. Even if I didn’t tell her or she somehow didn’t smell Sam in the house, other ponies would gossip.
The breakfast dishes only needed to be put away, and I could do that after lunch. There was no hurry. Maybe Lily or Daisy would do it, to make up for going out of town and leaving me alone.
I could work hard, and then I could go over to Sam’s in the evening, find out what kind of flowers she wanted around her house. I’d already imagined what I’d put there if it was my flowerbeds, but of course different ponies had different tastes.
At least I wouldn’t have to work around her coat color, it was all pretty neutral shades of pink to tan and browner for her hair. Unless she wanted flowers that matched her complexion, in which case I’d have to do a lot of work. There weren’t any normal cultivars I knew of that grew in those colors.
Which reminded me that it would be a good idea to weed and trim the flower beds along the street. They’d gotten overlooked with all the other spring planting we had to do, and the weeds were taking advantage of our inattention.
I scuffed my hoof on the kitchen floor as I considered it. I should have thought of that yesterday, that would have been a good thing to start Sam out on, even if it wasn’t urgently necessary. If she hadn’t been any good with flowers, that would have been the place to start out.
But that was all water sunk into the soil; she’d done a good job.
I flicked my tail and blew out my nostrils: I felt on edge, unfocused, tense. It wasn’t helped that the kitchen still smelled like her, and that I had to keep reminding myself that there was nothing different from having her work yesterday than all those other days where we’d hired a pony to help out. She looked different and sometimes acted strange, but she was a pony where it counted.
•••
It was shaping up to be a beautiful day, and there was no reason to not enjoy some of it out in front of the house. The flowers didn’t need all that much attention, a few trips with a watering can and a few sprinkles of fertilizer here and there, and most of the weeds had barely gotten a root-hold.
I was fighting a burr plant—which was doing its best to put burrs in my muzzle—when Apple Cider greeted me.
“Hey, I heard that you had Sam helping you out at your house.”
I nodded, and dropped my trowel. She wasn’t wearing saddlebags or towing a cart, and it wasn’t a market day.
“And you didn’t get gobbled up.”
She must have seen me tense, because she held up a hoof. “I didn't think you would, but Florina and Apple Top were talking and you know how Apple Top gets worked up over nothing, so I said I’d check on you. Just in case I was wrong, too.”
“I’m a big pony, I can take care of myself.”
“Whoa, never said you couldn’t. Fact is, everypony who’s hired her has said she’s a good worker, and I’ve been thinking of giving her a chance, but the press is a one-mare job and Florie likes pouring in the apples and watching them get squished.” She moved in closer to me. “I’d give her a chance to run the mill, but she’s got more enthusiasm than weight, you know?”
I nodded. Plenty of fillies and colts were like that. She’d gotten her mark and asked a lot of questions and helped out for a while, and we were talking about taking her on as an apprentice—seriously enough that Daisy had broached the subject with Apple Cider—and then she had decided that feral flowers were more her calling.
“Sam did a good job,” I said.
“As soon as I saw her chopping wood for Ginger Gold, I knew. You can always tell. No wonder the miller swept in so quick to hire her.” Apple Cider ducked her head down in the flowerbed and came back with a weed in her mouth, which she spit onto my pile.
“You coulda gone for the burr,” I said.
“What, and have to pick burrs out of my muzzle? That one’s all yours.” Apple Cider leaned in and gave me a nuzzle. “Sorry to trot off, but I got to report back before Apple Top decides Sam ate me, too, and needs to fortify the neighborhood.”
I suppressed a snicker as she left, then went back to work on the burr plant. It only stuck one burr on my cheek before it was vanquished.
•••
The first thing I noticed as I set hoof into the greenhouse was that we’d forgotten—I’d forgotten to put away our tools last night. They were still laid out where we’d stopped working. I guess I’d been more flustered than I thought.
The second thing that I noticed was that I could still smell her in the greenhouse. Doing the flowerboxes and border hedges had gotten her scent out of my nose, and now it was back.
There was no way that Lily or Daisy wouldn’t notice it in the house, and that was sure to be grounds for a fight. I could already hear Lily complaining that I’d let the monster into our house, I’d let it touch our flowerbeds and spoil the soil.
I could leave for Sam’s house before they got back, leave the two of them to figure it out on their own. And if Sam was serious about letting me stay the night, not have to worry about it until tomorrow morning. But that was the coward’s way of dealing with problems, and who knew how worked up Lily might get? Especially if they smelled her and I was gone. If Apple Cider’s surprise visit was any indication, Lily would assume the worst, and by the time I came back she’d think I was a zombie pony or something.
It was smarter to wait for them, let Lily have her freak-out, and then go and see Sam. She could see with her own eyes that I was fine, and that the two of us had gotten plenty of work done.
With that idea in mind, I started to work, already missing having Sam as company. It was always nice to have somepony else with you when you were working, it wasn’t the same working alone.
At least it was a familiar task, and I could let my mind wander as I kept trying to figure her out.
In so many ways she was like a pony. When we were just talking, I almost thought that she was, and then I’d turn and realize the truth.
Even after she’d become at least grudgingly accepted in town, some ponies still went out of their way to avoid her, although I’d never heard anypony who’d hired her for a day’s work complain. And when anymare hired a bad worker, the whole town knew about it in a few days, complaints would get passed on from pony to pony. Sometimes it wasn’t fair, especially if it was just fillies and colts trying their best. Whenever we got an apprentice I’d always go easy on her, explain things carefully, and not get mad if she didn’t know something I should have taught her but forgot to.
I thought I had been as fair with Sam, even though she wasn’t a pony. I hadn’t had to correct her after I taught her something, she picked it up right away, and that was more than I could say for some.
Plus, she wasn’t lazy. Admittedly, clearing the beds and filling starters wasn’t the most labor-intensive task, it just took a long time, but I hadn’t heard anypony complain about her slacking off. Even some of the Apple clan had started to warm to her, and they were really smart about things like that. If they hired her and she did a good job, everypony in town would know about it. It seemed unlikely they would, the family was big enough that kin could cover for each other if needed.
I dug my trowel into the dirt and tried to focus on that, and I did for a while, then returned to the quandary of Sam.
Ponyville was usually welcoming to newcomers unless they were weird. Sam was weird in many ways. Not much she could do about the fact that she wasn’t a pony, but I thought if she acted even more like a pony, her neigh-sayers would have no choice but to accept her.
I could tell just by the way she acted that she didn’t have any real friends. Maybe if I was being generous, she had Berry Black, but he was a donkey and didn’t really count.
Other than that, nopony.
Did she want to be my friend? I thought that she might, and I wasn’t opposed to it. Daisy would understand, and Lily would eventually come around.
•••
I must have lost track of time as I was working in the garden. My stomach was grumbling and I thought it odd that I was hungry and then I realized where the sun was in the sky. It was past lunchtime already.
Silly filly. Two days in a row I’d lost track of time, although at least yesterday I’d had an excuse. Breakfast felt like it had been only a moment ago, and also like it had been so long that I was in danger of collapsing from starvation.
I’d just made it into the house and started to rummage through the icebox—we hadn’t eaten all the casserole last night and that would be a perfect lunch—when I heard the front door open.
I didn’t remember hearing the train whistle at all, and for a moment I froze up, then relaxed as I heard Daisy’s voice.
“—out back in the flowerbeds.”
“What if—” Lily’s voice trailed off as Daisy poked her muzzle into the kitchen.
“Hey, Rose.” Daisy’s nostrils flared, and for an instant I saw a green flash just under her forelock. “You, uh, is that—what kind of casserole is that?”
Lily poked her head in the kitchen before I could answer, her eyes darting around the room and her lips pulled back as she took another deep breath. “What did you do?”
I’d known this was going to happen from the moment I’d realized that the greenhouse still smelled like Sam, and I’d spent part of the morning while I was doing familiar, repetitive tasks, considering how I might reply, or broach the subject if somehow neither of them noticed that the house smelled different than it had when they left. I’d thought that I was ready, but I wasn't; Daisy was more confused than anything, and Lily was already dancing on her hooves. She hadn’t placed the scent quite yet but it was only a matter of time.
“You were gone, we had a lot of work, and I needed help.” That was true, and it bought me a moment’s reprieve. “So I put a flier on the job board.”
Daisy nodded. We hadn’t discussed that before they left, but it wasn’t the first time we’d been shorthooved and needed some help.
Even Lily relaxed, briefly.
“And I hired Sam to help out.”
There was a moment as my words sunk in. Daisy’s eyes flicked between the two of us and her ears went back, while Lily’s eyes shrank to pinpricks.
“You did what?”
Oh no, she had the trots? I hope Sam is ok.
Lilly needs to learn to chill. If she got out of hand, I'd remind her of the Zecora incident and the resulting nightmare of ending up being lectured by Twilight Sparkle on treating outsiders with compassion and not jumping to conclusions.
Daisy. Lily.
bap
Chill. The f. Out.
ah yes nothing like a fresh cup of paranoiac xenophobia to start the morning
Rose hired Sam
Daisy be like: mmm...okay whatever.
Lily be like: 😱 oh noes a non-pony was in my house quick grab the emergency decontamination kit...better yet we're moving...to another town...after I burn the house to make sure the weird germs don't spread.
Ah, time for the regularly scheduled panic-high.
Honestly Lily, why can't you take up sky-diving and rock climbing like all the other adrenaline junkies?
At least Rose acknowledges the personhood of sams. Sam said that her kind is called something else, but I cannot remember the word.
Evidently, Rose does not consider donkeys persons.
¿Might I suggest the Interrobang? :
11105866
Are you kidding? As low as her tolerance is, she'd stroke out halfway through liftoff. (And as for rock climbing, she's a pony, not an ibex.)
Lily you are being a bit of a worry wart. I hope she can grow out of this.
11105761
If it was worse would it be called "the gallops"?
Changeling!
11105912
skyrim taught me horses dont care about gravity and traction
And all of a sudden, apropos of nothing, I'm curious if parachuting from a hot air balloon is a thing? Could one even get high enough IRL, and if not, is it possible in Equestria, anyway?
11108039
Apparently, it is a thing but not every hot air balloon company will offer it for obvious legal and safety requirements.
11108087
11108039
The highest parashoot-jumps in human history are from balloons.
Earlier, we talked about the problems of winter and Sam:
A few million years ago, prehumans domesticated fire, invented clothing, and improved bedding (other primates make sleeping nests). This allowed for humans to lose fur allowing for better thermal regulation on hot days. Everything comes at a cost, and the price is that, in the cold, humans are dependent upon fire, bedding, and clothing.
You mentioned (¿foreshadowing future chapters?, or ¿a red herring?) that, if Sam cannot get warm clothing, she can stockpile bedding, money, food, and fül and basically hibernate under a pile of bedding on her bed which will be next to the fire.
Coincidently, My fitted sheet tore (it had a good run of nearly a decade and hundreds of washes). When I went to buy a new fitted sheet. I found, that complete sheet-set of a flat sheet, fitted sheet, 2 pillow-cases, and 2 shams, cost only about twice as much. Them I found that all of the above plus a comforter and 3 decorative pillows cost only about twice as much as the sheet-set; so now, I bought a new bedding set.
Coincidences occur.
11107512
yeah, I'm not sure what that was supposed to be.
Got to love that charming, down-home country speciesism.
(Okay, that’s probably unfair to Applejack, as Rose herself notes.)
In any case, time to deal with the fallout. And whatever the story is with that green flash.
11121545
Greenhouses are only heated by the Sun, but hothouses have an heatsource inside.
11105761
11105774
Lily doesn’t know how to chill, she’s very reactionary. Eventually she goes along with what all the other ponies are doing, but it’s not a quick process with her.
11105812
Maybe Lily needs to take Princess Cadance’s breathing exercises. Or get a paper bag to breathe into until she feels better.
11105818
Exactly!
Lily really needs to learn how to chill out, how to think about the situation before going into a panic. Probably needs to see the pony psychologist.
11105841
Daisy has her head screwed on at least somewhat tightly.
Yeah, pretty much. Lily goes from ‘okay’ to ‘severely overreacting’ in about one second. She really needs some pony Zoloft.
11105866
Pretty much.
Are you kidding? There’s no way her heart could take that. She’s better off just trying panicked running around town, that’s good exercise.
11105879
Yes, and so does Daisy, at least to an extent. Maybe not as much as Rose, but Daisy at least recognizes that Sam’s not a monster.
This is true. Well, sort of sub-persons, I suppose. Rose isn’t exactly a saint here either, let’s be honest. Although maybe this is a good learning opportunity for Rose, too.
It’s a weird punctuation and I don’t trust it.
11105912
As with IRL horses, panicked running until her fear wears off is the best option to deal with her problems.
11106080
She totally is, and she probably will grow out of it eventually, when enough time passes and she isn’t gobbled up and all the other ponies in town start to see Sam as a pony-like resident of Ponyville instead of some monster waiting to strike . . . so it might be a while.
11106108
I suppose so
11107512
Nope, just Daisy using her horn magic for a moment.
11107805
You do raise a good point.
11108039
As others have said, yes it’s possible, although not the usual way of doing things. I don’t know much about parachuting, but I do know with an ejection seat in a fighter jet, you can (but shouldn’t) fire the seat on the ground and have a survivable landing, so chutes can be open from fairly low altitudes and work. I would think (but not an expert) the lowest altitude you could open a chute at would be based on your fall speed and how fast the chute could slow you to a survivable landing speed. BASE jumpers jump off bridges and towers and buildings and stuff which aren’t that high, certainly not as high as a hot air balloon can fly.
According to a quick Google search, hot air balloons normally fly between 1,000 feet and 3,000 feet (roughly 300-900 meters) which is plenty high enough to parachute from . . . the lowest BASE jump I could find was from 95 feet (29 meters).
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I wouldn’t say we domesticated it, we figured out how to cage it and make it do what we wanted.
This is true. There is some genetic variability to allow better survival in colder climates, but clothing is still a requirement. We’re long past the point as a species where we can grow a winter coat when it’s cold.
Potentially, yes. Or if she can’t even manage to afford much warm clothing and firewood, she could move back in with Berry Black where at the very least she wouldn’t be lacking in firewood.
I don’t think the ponies would be so heartless as to let her freeze to death (or starve to death) . . . if it came down to it, while there might not be enough generosity to pay for her house, clothes, and firewood, she could work for the miller (for example) indoors and stay at the mill with food provided in lieu of a normal paycheck. That’s not a spoiler, that’s just me speculating on how the ponies would think. When it comes to winter, she’s got options, obviously some better than others.
Sheets are silly expensive. My bedding kind of runs the gamut, I have no idea how old some of the oldest stuff is. I think my comforter is at least twenty-five years old, maybe more, and some of my blankets have been around as long as I can remember.
I can say that my newest blanket is a Sunbeam heated blanket and that thing is pure luxury.
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It’s her reflexively using horn magic, which in canon is green.
11117213
The joys of small towns and ponies set in their ways. Of course, when you’re in you’re in, just ask Spike.
Yes, indeed. Poor Rose. She’s got a situation.
Reactionary magic flare from Daisy.
11130253
Delayed gratification, I must respond to you before I read the chapter FallOut (it is probably set 200 years into the future after a generational war between Equestria and Zebraica, culminating in an exchane of MegaSpells which killed over 90% of sapients on the planet).
I should have wrote "tamed". Fire, like tamed dangerous animals, sometimes kills its owner.
We have extinct relatives who lived outside of Africa. Perhaps, 1 or more of them reevolved fur.
¡The xenophobic ponies can call donkeys asses all the want, but donkeys are not arses like the speciesistical ponies!
So now, the donkeys take her in out of the goodness of their hearts and Sam voluntarily repays them with labor; but sadly however, the ponies give to her the option of work or hypothermia.
For warmth, I just keep adding strata (Rocktrix Maudileena Daisy Pie Ph.R (Philosophical Roctorate) would find that interesting). I just counted them. It is now 11 between the new flat sheet and the new comforter. That should keep me warm. It might excessive, but most of the bedding is hand-me-down, with some components older than I. The new comforter, which came with the new bedding, is the newest layer in a decade.
I have an heated MattressPad (the left and right have independent controls —— ¡great for when marefriends visit!. The controllers say "Chalham". ¡It is pure luxury! I also save on heating:
I stay in bed as much as possible and let the house freeze.
11130234
The ponies make progress.
All sapients are equal, but some sapients are more equal than others. That is why we should attack Zebraica and take its coal.
You start to sound like Lily
Heee. Nice timing.