Telling Tales

by James Washburn

Chapter Eleven - Tales Hears All

Chapter Eleven

Tales Hears All

The squirrel was laid back in his favourite tree on a branch which hung over the river, the long, slow, broad river that ran down to the bigger, broader lake. He was just relaxing, not a care in the world. He was about to shut his little eyes and have a snooze, when he heard a voice.

“Squirrel,” said the voice, a whispery, wet voice, “squi-irel!”

Squirrel looked down, and saw a pike below him in the river. It was long and sleek, with a mouth full of sharp, pointy teeth. It was using all of them to grin at the squirrel.

“Hullo,” said the squirrel, whose branch was just above the pike.

“Hey, squirrel,” said the pike, ”The king of the fish is holding a party at the bottom of his lake.”

Squirrel nodded, a little uncertainly. “That must be very nice for him.”

“Ah, but it’s not a party without squirrel,” said the pike. “What’s say you come down from your tree and come along?”

The squirrel’s jaw dropped. “What? Are you nuts? I can’t swim!”

“Ah, don’t worry, squirrel. I’ll carry you on my back to the lake, then I’ll take you down!”

The squirrel squinted at the pike suspiciously. “You wouldn’t just be trying to tempt me down so you can eat me, would you?”

The pike gasped. “You’d suspect me of such a thing?”

"You are a pike.”

“Granted, but I’m not trying to trick you, I promise.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes!” said the pike, exasperated. “Come on, it’ll be fun! There’ll be singing, and dancing, and cake!”

(Mr. Cake glanced up out of habit)

The squirrel looked suspicious. He rubbed his chin with one paw and studied the pike carefully, but there didn’t seem to be so much as a flicker of dishonesty in his fishy face.

So, he glanced one way, and glanced the other, until at last he said. “Well, okay.”

The pike thanked him and slid up under the lowest branches of the trees, and the little squirrel clambered down on to the pike’s back. It was slippery, and scaly, and smelled unpleasantly of fish (not that the pike could help it, being a fish who ate fish and all, but the squirrel was not an accepting sort).

The squirrel hunkered down as the pike shot off down the river. The banks flashed past either side and the river slowed and widened. The squirrel hung on as best he could, even as the wind and the water tried to tear him away.

He tried not to think about the scaly, slippery fish below him. He tried to think about the party, tried to stay optimistic. Think of the singing, the dancing, the cake! He was going to have fun. The river soon widened into the lake, which spread out as far as the squirrel could see.

Finally, after what seemed ages, the pike stopped in the centre of the lake.

“Are we there?” said the squirrel, hoping the journey would soon be over.

"Ye-es, about that," said the pike. "I'm afraid I wasn't totally honest with you earlier."

“Oh...?”

“Yeah, you see, the real reason I brought you out here wasn’t really that the king of the fish is having a party.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, see, he’s in no position to have a part of any kind. He’s sick, you see, and I need a squirrel’s heart to make him better.”

The squirrel was quiet for a long time after that.

“Squirrel? Please don’t be angry.”

“So there’s no singing?” he said, slowly.

"Not as such.”

“No dancing?”

“Not really.”

“And no cake?”

“No, no cake.”

The squirrel was quiet a while longer.

“Well, you should have told me that to begin with!” he said at last, rolling his eyes and throwing his little arms up. “You see, I brought my lungs for singing, my feet for dancing, and my mouth for eating, but I completely forgot my heart!”

The pike sighed, exasperated. “Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Sorry. We’ve got to go back and get it.”

The pike sighed again, turned around and set off back down the river. They sped on through the water, through the spray, wind etc etc.

Eventually, they reached the squirrel’s old tree. He hopped up into the lower branches.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back with my heart,” he said.

The pike nodded and waited. And waited. And waited. And as far as I know, he’s still waiting.

* * *

“... and that’s why, the squirrel says, he can never go back down to the river.”

Tales only pricked his ears up on that line, but it sounded good regardless. He put his mug down to applaud, and took a seat there. Well, everything seemed more or less in order. He’d have a drink and then head off. Yeah, they didn’t need him here any more, right?

“Hey there!” said a voice all too familiar and terrible. “That was good, don’t you think that was good?”

“I only caught the end,” said Tales, diplomatically.

“Well, trust me, it was real good.”

Thankfully, she seemed to run out of things to say. Tales sipped his cocoa and glanced around the cafe. He saw Pretty in Purple sitting a couples of tables over with a couple of other ponies and tried to catch her eye, but she studiously ignored him.

“What’s up with her?” he said to Pinkie. “Is she usually like this?”

“No, but I think you annoyed her.”

Tales’ jaw dropped. “I annoyed her?”

"Yeah, Twilight’s not keen on ponies lying.”

“I wasn’t lying! I was telling stories!”

“I don’t think she sees much of a difference.”

Tales took a moment to think. Well, to sulk thoughtfully, at any rate.

“I can’t imagine why,” he muttered.

“Probably because she’s lived through a couple of stories, and didn’t find them fun.”

Tales’ curiosity piqued. He wasn’t averse to true stories. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, she defeated Discord, and Nightmare Moon, and talked a dragon down off a mountain. I don’t think she really enjoyed doing it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “For real?”

“For real.”

Tales looked across at Pretty in... well, across at Twilight, if that was her name. He didn’t know how far to trust Pinkie, but if she was even a little bit right... well, it couldn’t hurt to ask. He went to get up.

“She’s the one who defeated Nightmare Moon and Discord?”

"Well, she had help,” said Pinkie, noncommittally.

He nodded and wandered over, quite casually. The Mayor was telling now. She had a story of local politics whose intricate, byzantine complexity would put even the most long-winded Connemaran Táin to shame. Twilight was sitting with the stetson-hatted earth pony and the white unicorn, and was quite absorbed in a discussion with a pegasus (who was a rather charming shade of Air Superiority Blue with a rainbow mane, if you must know), and didn’t notice Tales sidling up, not least because he had sidling down to a fine art.

“Excuse me,” he said, politely as he could. “Are you Twilight Sparkle?”

Never before had he seen such enmity in a single look, even in front of a Trotheim crowd after one off-colour reindeer joke too many. He wilted.

“Yes, I am,” she said, like he’d just said ‘no you’re not’.

“Ah, right, good, because I was wondering… you see, I’ve heard that... well...”

“He wants to hear about Nightmare Moon,” said Pinkie, who was standing beside him.

“How did you get here...?”

“Oh, really?” said Twilight, a little confused. “It’s not much of a story.”

“Are you kidding me?” said Air Superiority Pegasus, laughing. “It’s one hell of a story, ‘cause of the main character, none other than Rainbow Dash! You shoulda seen me when Twilight fell off that cliff!”

“Now jus’ hold on there,” said the earth pony, “don’t you go gettin’ caught up in it, RD.”

“Well what did you do then?” said the aforementioned RD.

“Girls!” said Twilight, exasperated. She turned to Tales. “It’s complicated, okay? Look, it was all in the newspapers at the time, didn’t you read it then?”

“I may have been elsewhere at the time,” he said, which was true. There wasn’t much market for Equestrian newspapers in griffon country, where literacy ranked some way below the ability to tear your opponent’s lower jaw off and use it as an ice cream scoop. They had a good ear for a story, though. “Anyway, I want to hear it from you.”

“What are we talking about?” came a breathy voice from behind them. Fluttershy had wandered over, a mug of tea balanced on one wing. Tales was surrounded now.

“Tales here was just asking about our rather sordid adventures with creatures of unknowable evil,” said the white unicorn.

"And I was just about to tell him to -”

“Oh wow, really? That’d make a great story,” said Fluttershy, although it sounded to Tales more like a wheeze.

“Just what I was gonna say,” said Rainbow. “So there I was, diving to rescue Twilight...”

“Hey, you can’t just start in the middle!” the pony in the stetson protested.

“Yeah, you’ve gotta start at the start,” said Pinkie. “That’s why they call it a ‘start’! Unless you're using in medias res, but that's just showing off.”

“Ugh, where does it start, though?” said Twilight, her head in her hooves. “Most of it is just our lives."

Tales thought of something clever to say about that, but left it unsaid.

“Tell me the whole thing, from the start,” he said, instead.

“Okay, okay...” Twilight took a few deep breaths. “You sure? It’s a long story.”

"That’s okay, we’ll just take a break and tell it in two parts,” said Pinkie. “That’s how I remember it, anyway.”

“Okay... so, it was last year, and it was the eve of the Summer Sun Celebration...”

* * *

You know that story, right? Well, Tales didn’t. He lapped it all up. He’d heard all sorts of mangled versions of it up north, where Equestria was rescued by any number of miscellaneous persons, but this version, this version was the truth. Six mares between Equestria and eternal night. You couldn’t make it up. And it was good to hear it from the ponies it’d happened to. The way they told the bits that had happened to them, the way they bickered over the details, it was all... right.

Tales listened furiously. They began to attract the rest of the clientele of the cafe as the yarn rattled on. Heads turned, chairs and flanks shuffled over to listen, and by the time they finished, everyone was listening.

It had seemed perfectly reasonable then, to tell the story of how they’d beaten Discord. Everypony was rapt. Ponies who had been present in Ponyville at the time, who had witnessed the epic battle were still on the edge of their seats. They’d all agree later that they might’ve known the story, but hearing it like that made it new, made it proper.

There was applause, naturally, at the end, quite above and beyond what would be expected. The walls of Sugarcube Corner shook. It would be entirely true to say they ended the night on a high. Everypony went back home feeling that, in some small way, the world was a better place.

And what more can you ask for, really?

Comments

[Crimson Dawn]

Tell it in two parts? lol