The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
The first light of morning breaking through his wagon’s tiny upper window while the birds sung outside was becoming wonderfully familiar, a highlight to the heartwarming sensation of a soft purple body draped comfortably across his back with her chin nestled damply on his shoulder. The faint stirrings of last night’s study buddy as she began her slow rise from sleep to wakefulness gave Green Grass a mixture of comfortable domestic warmth with a growing tiny prickle of unease in his empty belly that he could not ignore. One purple hoof appeared momentarily at the edge of his vision, running through his tangled mane to rest on a shoulder while she stretched, sending a spike of excitement through him that he crushed relentlessly.
Whoa there, dummy. That wasn’t addressed to you. Calm down and try to act at least a little mature. Perhaps a bit of humor?
“Pardon me, Mademoiselle Sparkle. We simply must stop meeting each other this way.”
“Why?”
For a brief moment his scrambled brain could not think of a response, and then it all came crashing down around him. Everything from Princess Celestia, to both sets of their parents showed the foolishness of his course of action. She was a nationally revered bearer of the Elements of Harmony, while he was only the last-born son of an obscure noblepony. There was no Romeo and Juliet here, no Princess and Noble Redeemable Rogue, only him and her. All he was doing was stringing an innocent young mare on for an eventual and inevitable crash. In just a month or two, he would shoulder his home upon his back like some literate turtle and trudge down the road to his next set of students. In a year or more when he returned, she would most probably have found another stallion more worthy and be swollen with foal, while he would be an embarrassing reminder of a relationship that never could be. All the warmth of the morning drained out of him like a good dunking in the fountain. Even looking at the substantial collection of assembled thesis pages and notes they had managed to complete in an enormously successful night only managed to turn the chill blast into a lukewarm trickle.
What we are doing… no, what I am doing to her by believing in this false hope is cruel and wrong. I can’t tell her now, not after spending the night rebuilding my thesis and cuddling. She’ll think I was just trying to take advantage of her. And she’d be right.
It hurt to see her stumbling around the cramped quarters of his tiny house in a domestic daze, much akin to his own mother before her first cuppa. Twilight Sparkle was obviously not a morning pony⁽*⁾, and he just did not have the heart to tell her. Not now. But when?
(*) Or a mid-morning pony or really an any time before her first gallon of coffee pony.
—
“M’got eggs at home, if you wanna come over for breakfast?” she mumbled, with a yawn and a stretch of delightful purple that extended all the way across his home, a languorous extension that pinned him into a triangular corner next to the closed drawer holding his carefully organized thesis notes⁽¹⁾.
(1) With a second magically created copy teleported back into the library before they curled up for the night, just in case.
—
Both of Green Grass’ ears drooped low as he mumbled, “Sorry, I need to get going. Schedules, you know.” Twilight nodded and trudged out his door with another yawn. Even the sight of his own inked cutie mark on her flank did not cheer him up measurably.
“K. I’ll be back t’nite so we can get to work on it. I’ll leave the screen up in case you get crusaders. You sure you don’t want at least eggs? They’re unfertilized.” She grinned weakly as she continued stumbling to her own library door, vanishing inside with one last yawn and a wink.
The smile that Green Grass had managed to put on vanished like the morning dew.
* * *
“Good morning, Applejack. One fritter and an apple please.”
“Bit short for your morning feed,” said the farm pony, retrieving the desired items from her market cart and hoofing them over in return for bits. “Bit early for you too. Didn’t you normally sleep in till about noon last year?”
“I’m not sure.” The apple fritter went down the hatch into the cavernous empty area that was his stomach without a thought or the slightest bit of joy that normally accompanied the delicious treat. “Ever since I met Twilight, my schedule’s gone to heck. The market’s less crowded today, I suppose.”
“Yeah, kind of a gap ‘tween breakfast and lunch crowd. So what pried y’all out of bed so early this morning?”
“Twilight,” he said reflexively while looking at the apple for a good starting spot to bite. “Once she woke up, I don’t think we could get back to sleep anyway.”
He turned the apple over and over in his hooves, wishing he could just hide or run away from his problem, instead of lying about it. Applejack was the bearer of the Element of Honesty, the one pony who could see through any deception he had ever tried to pull. She was Twilight’s friend, and that meant he was lying to her too, just by standing outside her apple cart. The wreckage he would leave behind by hurting Twilight would include all of her friends, the Princesses, and possibly Equestria.
“Oh, I feel like Tartarus, Applejack. I lied to her.” The confession poured out as if he were unloading a huge weight from his back. “She spent the whole night with me after we finished working on my thesis, she actually trusts me, and the first thing I do when we kick off the covers is to lie straight to her beautiful face. I’m a jerk.”
“What’d you lie to Twi about?” Silently, the farmer withdrew a stout hickory stick from under the wagon bed and held it ready, just in case it was needed to adjust an attitude.
Green Grass hung his head in shame. “She invited me into the library for breakfast, and I told her I had something else scheduled. And I didn’t.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, I’m no good for her. I know it. You know it. Everypony in town knows it. I’m just getting her hopes up with false expectations that will tear her up when I leave. She’s like some princess in her oaken tower, guarded by a fierce dragon, and I’m just the fat, delusional pony who trims the rosebushes.”
“You ain’t fat, yer just a little outta shape.”
“I’m fat.”
“From what I hear from Apple Bloom, yer doin’ a right fine job teaching Sweetie Belle how to use her magic.”
“It’ll probably let the Cutie Mark Crusaders destroy the world somehow⁽²⁾.”
(2) Or release Discord from his stone prison.
—
“And Twi ain’t dropped you in the fountain for a whole day now.”
“It’s the only shower I’ve been getting lately, other than from Rainbow Dash.”
Applejack’s brows lowered. “You been showering over at Rainbow’s? Anything else you been gettin’ over there?”
* * *
“Really, darling.” Rarity happily continued working on her latest creation, surrounded by a virtual halo of flying tools. “I don’t know why you would want to talk to me about Twilight, when she practically lives in your cute little love nest. I heard from Spike that she didn’t come home last night again, you naughty little colt.”
This was clearly a time for a ladylike Giggle of Girlish Glee, and when she looked up, Rarity was tickled to see the tutor’s cheeks light up in a most delightful blush in reaction, although the expected smile was missing. In fact, he looked positively dreadful this morning, with an additional wrinkle in his crumpled hat, and the leftover smear of a smashed apple over one eye. She froze, stunned into silence as Green Grass began to talk in a flat, emotionless tone.
“You’re her friend, so I thought I’d talk to you about it. Applejack was less than sympathetic, but I deserved it, I suppose.” The handsome young tutor looked away from her, twisting one green hoof against the carpet in a fidget that had always irked Rarity when Sweetie Belle had used it against her.
“Deserved what, dear? Did you and Twilight have a fight?”
“No. Not yet.” There was a nervous twitch to the tutor’s tail that she had never seen before as he continued to fidget, looking everywhere in the room except at her. “I violated her trust.”
Throttling back an urge to leap up and throttle the miserable green creep, Rarity took a deep breath. “I… see.” In the kitchen far behind the stallion, a frying pan wrapped in blue magic slowly rose into the air and began its silent trip into the sewing room. “Do continue, please.”
“I don’t know what to say. She gave me the greatest gift anypony could ever give, and I’ve hurt her so badly by pretending to accept it. I don’t want to hurt anypony, and especially not her!”
“None of us ever want to hurt anypony,” said Rarity with a deeply sympathetic tone in her voice as the frying pan floated into position. “Sometimes it just happens.”
“This didn’t just happen. I did it to her. I need to leave her now before I hurt her any more than I already have.”
As the green stallion poured out his story about being inadequate to court her friend, Rarity felt a bitter and not totally ladylike ire begin to rise in her heart. While a noble stallion would never abandon his one true love, the sheer arrogant gall he was displaying showed just exactly how little he was thinking about Twilight’s real feelings and her judgement. Green Grass really had no idea just how Twilight’s poor innocent heart would be crushed by his removal of affection, but at least he was asking for advice, and as a true friend, it was her sacred duty to encourage him into making a decision more appropriate for the young lover’s destiny together.
Carefully levitating the frying pan over to a nearby shelf for future use, if needed to get through his thick skull, she gestured to the frilly pink party dress she had been working on before his arrival.
“Darling, I would just love to talk about your little problem with my friend, but I’m on a deadline with this project. If you could just hop up here and let me fit this outfit while you talk, it would save me a great deal of time.” The fashionista carefully grasped her latest creation in her magic and draped it over the stallion, and after a moment of thought, selected a pincushion with her bluntest and therefore most ‘encouraging’ pins. “Go ahead and talk, darling, and I’ll let you know what I think. I’ll just be pinning this seam across your flank.”
* * *
Tattered bits of pink cloth scattered down the road left a trail out of town to the surrounding hills, one of which was the location of a very strange sight, even for Ponyville. A huffing and puffing green stallion gasped his way up the side of the hill, still dressed in the remains of what had once been a frilly pink party dress, but now had been turned into a tattered wreck not even suitable for a dusting rag. Ahead of him floated an amateur photographer, skimming along a few yards above the road and dangling a camera in front of the stallion the same way one would tempt a dieter with a carrot.
“Rainbow Dash!” Green Grass panted for breath, his pursuit of the pegasus having slowed to a brisk walk even before the steep hill. “You come back… here right… now!”
Rainbow Dash simply laughed, doing a quick loop at the top of the hill and waving the camera at of him. “Are you kidding? A picture of you in a dress? It’s going to be pure comedy gold. I bet it will look pretty swank blown up to life size and sitting in your bachelor party. Or even at the wedding! That would be so cool!”
“There’s not going to be a wedding.” The tutor leaned against a tree and concentrated on just breathing without throwing up. The task was made much harder by the pain from several dull dressmaker pins which felt as if they were stuck deeply into his hide⁽³⁾.
(3) Because they were.
“I’m just not right for Twilight, and I want to break things off before they get too complicated, and she gets hurt more than I’ve already hurt her.”
It’s awfully quiet. Maybe Rainbow flew away.
Green Grass opened his eyes.
Or she’s standing in front of me, looking furious.
* * *
The light fall breeze blew gently through Green Grass’ frazzled mane, bringing the delicate scents of pine sap and the gentle rustling of the needles to his attention, a forlorn attempt by Nature to get him to actually open his eyes, instead of clutching frantically to his tree branch with all four limbs. The sounds of birds with their voices raised in song among the trees would have been a great comfort if they had just been farther away. And above him, instead of below.
“You’re right, Mister Squirrely. He is an awfully long ways from the ground for an earth pony.” The soft and gentle voice succeeded where all of Nature had failed, probably because it offered a possibility of escape from his treetop perch without the sudden impact of the ground below.
“Fluttershy,” he whispered with only one eye peeking half-way open to ensure the yellow pegasus and her little squirrel friend sitting in the top of his tree were not altitude-induced delusions. “Could I get you to do me a favor?”
Five harrowing minutes later when Green Grass had quit kissing the ground and was just laying there, all sprawled out in an attempt to touch as much immobile and blessedly solid ground as he could, he finally became aware of the shy yellow pegasus still hovering nearby.
“Thank you, Fluttershy. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“You’re welcome, of course. But you’ve thanked me a few hundred times already, and I don’t even know how you got up in that tree. Is Twilight angry with you? I hope she isn’t angry with you. I don’t like to see my friends angry. Or trapped at the top of a tree.”
“No, Rainbow Dash stuck me up there when I told her I—” A sense of self-preservation long suppressed leapt to the front of Green Grass’ mind, clamping his mouth shut and giving him a moment of ground-bound thought.
Twilight’s friends react negatively to the news that you want to break up with her.
Yes, but this is Fluttershy.
How well do you really know her?
She’s Fluttershy. She’s afraid of her own shadow, and friends with every living thing.
I’m still worried about telling her.
Relax. She’s the last one you should be worried about.
No psychotic episodes? No backyard⁽⁴⁾ full of bodies?
(4) No, but she did have a shed.
—
She’s Fluttershy. It will be fine.
Well, okay. But I warned you.
* * *
The basement of Sugarcube Corner was dark, extremely dark⁽⁵⁾, so dark that darkness tended to pool together into little inky puddles that took light a few moments to evaporate away.
(5) It’s where they stored the dark chocolate, after all.
—
The darkness filled the basement in great abundance, but one thing the darkness thankfully did not have was bees. Or bears. Or badgers. Or any other woodland creature with claws, stingers, fangs, and a bad attitude about ponies who made their special friend Fluttershy cry.
It did have one frightened green stallion, however, and there were more than a few bee stingers and porcupine quills in his coat, if that counts.
“Hi Greenie!” Did we mention it also had⁽⁶⁾ a Pinkie Pie?
(6) Actually it just had a probability of a Pinkie Pie, due to the Hoofenberg Uncertainty Pinkie Principle that states: In any unobserved area, there is a finite probability of a Pinkie existing regardless of the existence of a Pinkie observed elsewhere.
—
The amount of time between the “Yikes!” and the solid thud of impact did not allow Green Grass to accelerate to a dangerous velocity in the pitch dark basement, but it did make his voice a bit shaky when he responded after bouncing off the wall.
“H-hello Pinkie.”
“What’cha doin?”
“I’m hiding from the bees.”
There was a rattling of the outside basement door and a sliver of afternoon sunlight lanced down into the darkness. “Hello? Is anypony down here?”
“Hello, Mr. Cake! Green Grass and I are hiding from the bees.”
There was a long pause until the voice of Mr. Cake⁽⁷⁾ slowly said, “Right,” and the door closed, once again plunging the basement into pitch darkness.
(7) Long term exposure to Pinkie Pie made the Cakes nearly immune to unusual events. Should aliens ever land in Equestria, the Cakes would be the perfect choice for ambassadors, able to cater lunch while negotiating long-term trade agreements in baked goods.
—
“You... um... haven’t talked to Fluttershy recently, have you?” asked Green Grass cautiously, still unsure exactly where Pinkie Pie was standing.
“Noperoini. You want me to go get her?”
“No!”
...
“Pinkie?”
“Yeeeeees?”
“Could you under any circumstances whatsoever imagine yourself being angry at me?”
“Nope!”
...
“No possible way?”
“Nope!”
“How about if I said you needed to go on a diet? Would that make you mad?”
“Nope! I am getting a tad pudgy around the middle.”
...
“You really like Twilight Sparkle, don’t you?”
“Yep, she’s my absolutest bestest friend ever, just like Applejack, and Rarity, and—”
“Would you be angry if somepony were to say something that would hurt her, even if they didn’t mean it?”
Pinkie giggled somewhere out in the basement, the walls echoing the noise in as if it came from all directions at once. “Of course not, silly. If they didn’t mean it, we could have an Apology Party, and everypony would laugh about it over ice cream and cake!”
“Oh.”
...
The words seemed to stream out of him under pressure, only to vanish into the inky darkness of the basement as if they had never been said. “I don’t think I should see Twilight Sparkle any more. Our relationship could never work out in the long run, and it would be best if we were to end it now so it would cause less pain for her.”
“But that would hurt Twilight, and make her sad.” Pinkie gave a little sniff out in the darkness.
“Better now, than later. Right?”
“You will still hurt Twilight very much, and make her very sad. That would make me very angry with you, Mister Green Grass.”
“B-but you said you would not be angry if somepony said something that hurt her even if they didn’t mean it!”
“Do you mean it?”
Green Grass’ voice died in his throat. There was some quality in Pinkie’s voice that the back of his herbivore hindbrain reacted to by lighting up a series of little signs labeled ‘Predator!’ and ‘Fire!’
“I didn’t say I couldn’t be angry at you, I just said I couldn’t imagine it. I don’t like to imagine bad things. They make my friends sad, and that makes me sad. When I’m sad, I’m really not a nice pony at all. I would much rather be happy. And if my friends are sad, there’s really only one way for me to be happy. Do you know what that is, Mister Green Grass?”
“A party?” he ventured cautiously, the darkness around him seeming to crush in on all sides.
“No,” said a husky voice that only vaguely sounded like Pinkie Pie, and echoed around the pitch-black basement. “Cupcakes. Would you like to help me make some cupcakes, Mister Green Grass?”
* * *
The basement door to Sugarcube Corner fairly exploded open as Green Grass emerged at high speed and still accelerating, making the turn at the end of the block with a long, four-hoof drift that sprayed turf and gravel in a wide arc before he vanished down the road in a clatter of hoofbeats.
Behind him, Pinkie Pie bounced up out of the basement with several sacks of flour and sugar on her back, and coughed several times to clear her lungs of flour dust. “Sheesh! If he didn’t want to help make cupcakes, he could have at least helped carry the ingredients upstairs.”
♫ We’re making cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes! ♫
* * *
Several hours later, as he lay in the spa mudbath with only his eyes and mouth sticking out, Green Grass mumbled quietly to himself. “And I thought dating her would be dangerous. Breaking up is going to kill me yet.”
So his plan is to make every one of Twilight's friends angry with him before breaking up with her? Holy crap, he really does like to live dangerously.
It probably goes without saying, but he is making a really big mistake here by deciding to break up with Twilight for her own good without actually discussing his concerns with her first.
Poor Green
The ability of some ponies to convince themselves that pain now is better than joy now and pain later never ceases to amaze me. Hopefully eventually even Green Grass will benefit from his ongoing aversion therapy and come to realize that you take joy where you can, and joy shared is joy squared, or something like that.
And thank you for the Cupcake double reverse. I do not react well to stories that bring that particular Pinky fully into their universe, but this was actually funny.
He's actually more of a romantic lead than he thinks - he's even doing the whole "I am unworthy! I must make myself nobly miserable so I can protect her from me!" delusion! As djthomp says, it might actually be intelligent for him to discuss this with Twilight. He might be surprised and learn that she probably considers herself even more unworthy of him than he does of her!
That said, angry Pinkie is talking of making cupcakes and he induced a rare psychotic episode in Fluttershy. Everything that has happened so far should indicate to him that, if he breaks up with Twilight, getting to the border with Griffinstan intact would be his only serious hope of surviving intact. That said, this are the Elements of Harmony we're talking about: Celestia might already have a spot in the statue garden picked out for him!
And another great chapter
How does this fic only have 66 likes?
I told him to run away chapters ago. Did he listen to me? No! Not it's too late.
This fic is a wondrous roller-coaster of chaotic emotions and bees
Time for Green Grass to stallion up, it's too dangerous to back out now.
1908835
Its not that she went psychotic its that she cried because he'd hurt Twilight and Fluttershy crying is the one thing nature abores more than a vacume thus nature decided to attack greengrass.
This whole chapter...
It's pure genius.
"Would you like to help me make some cupcakes, Mr. Green Grass?”
You did not just go there. As if the shed footnote wasn't bad enough
Y'know, I honestly did expect a psychotic episode from Fluttershy. Then again, if she'd used the Stare he'd be halfway to the altar right now
Man, I love this story so much. It's crazy, really. I usually read dark/sad fics. But this one is totally intoxicating.
So, I've had this burning question about the MLP world. If every pony is a Herbivore, then whould they really eat eggs? I mean really think. Eggs are the offspring of chickens, so they "technicly" count as meat. But every pony eats baked goods as well, which almost a always call for eggs. It's a stupid question, I know, but it's too boggling to put down.
Man, I genuinely feel really sorry for poor Greeny in this one.
I do like the way you handled the Cupcakes reference, though.
Okay, so, Green here is stupid right now. He is a fucking idiot, and it is actually quite infuriating. Instead of saying, "Hey, Twi, here's a problem that needs to be fixed," he creates these delusional ideas of not being good enough for her and instantly resorts to breaking up with her.
God, that is so fucking stupid. Green, you stupid bitch.
The abandoned glee with which ponies in this town fling themselves at conclusions is
ratherquite alarming.Personally, I always liked to think that she met a Professor Schrödinger between leaving her farm and moving to Ponyville. But I have to admit, Hoofenberg fits quite well, too.
Applejack, round is a shape.
3312218
Although technically herbivores, horses can and do eat eggs. Heck, it's recommended for horse owners to feed their horses eggs once in a while for a healthier coat.
4550725 A flavor of stupidity known as avoidance issues. I know it well.
Sounds like something that AJ would do and has done before
D'oh, that reference!
Eugh, memories of fanfics past *shudder*
Overall, a wonderful chapter due to the sheer amount of nope that our little Green friend has gone through
If I had any real complaints about this story, this would be it; clearly Rarity understood what Green Grass was worried about, and yet instead of telling him to not only think better of himself, but to ALSO think about Twilight’s feelings in the matter, she instead tortured him with pins. I understand that it might be a bit funny to see him run out of the shop wearing a dress and looking like a pin cushion, but I’d like to think that Rarity would give him sound advice instead of... whatever you would call this.
2317302 Well it's not like there isn't plenty of pain and violence in it.
Everyone's saying Green Grass is so stupid, but no, he has low self esteem. He honestly can't believe that he's worthy of Twilight Sparkle.
So, what do her friends do? Listen to his concerns and try to show him that he could make a go of it? No, they just jump to the worst possible conclusion, assume he's taking advantage of her, and immediately respond with violence or cruelty. Great plan, mares! If he ever had any doubt he was unworthy of Twilight Sparkle, this should have quashed them nicely.
These's a fine line between comedy and cruelty, and this fic ingnores it completely in it's rush to go past cruelty into character torture. If things were reversed, and it was a female character suffering this level of abuse, everyone would be up in arms about it.
It's a pity, because this fic is otherwise pretty good fun. Of course they are going to get together, because story, but at this point there's no reason to in story.
Every romance needs a section for the intrepid male to passionately hug the idiot ball.
9591690
Agreed. The girls didn't only jump to conclusions at the drop of his hat, but willfully and intentionally sought out the worst possible meaning of his (strangely ineloquent) blithering.
Nopony in this chapter took half a second to even begin to think, "wait, what? Why?"
Though perhaps it's just heavily exaggerated from the recurring thing of "don't think about it" that's brought them to this point in the first place.
A tiny pink alicorn figure slinks off with a smirk. "My work here is done." Sliding her bow into its case alongside the quiver of heart-shaped arrows across her withers, she ducks through a conveniently open ventilation block and flies off in the direction of Canterlot, cackling softly under her breath.
You are being rather astoundingly stupid. Even Rainbow was bound to notice eventually.
They only see the idiot, and don't take into consideration WHY he is expressing feelings of inadequacy
4550725
Like any male of any sapient species when they are in love with someone and has massive inferiority issues.
Green. Green. Green my lad. There's a healthy amount of humility, and then there's this.
And try actually talking to the mare, you intransigent oaf! At least try to determine whether you're even dating before breaking off!