) so I had to wait until it passed. Thankfully, it has, and my next one-shot story is planned to be out on either Friday or the weekend.Sneak peek of chapter 2 of "Pinkie & Eric's Bonding Jungle Trip". And Happy New Year! · 5:08am January 1st
Chapter 2 of "Pinkie & Eric's Bonding Jungle Trip" is close to being fully edited and will be out sometime late tomorrow. In the meantime, partly to make up for my usual slow writing, here's a sneak peek of the beginning of chapter 2. It is not fully edited, so its finished version may look slightly different and all errors currently still in it will be fixed (hopefully). Enjoy!
Also, as I was writing this blog, it hit midnight in my time zone, so I'll go ahead and say it now: Happy New Year!
Three hours. Felt like Pinkie and I had slogged through this jungle the whole day, not just three lousy hours. It seemed my body was becoming a little used to its muggy air, so it didn’t squeeze me and my air sacs so much now. It just felt hot.
If that wasn’t enough, it was getting b-o-r-i-n-g boring! Leaf-crunching under feet/hooves had lost its charm and catharsis factor.
Not surprisingly, Energy Incarnate was still as energetic and cheerful as ever. I had long unboarded the “Pinkie Pie Express” so she was back to doing her signature hopping, humming under her breath, as she led us to our target fruit.
“Ugh. Pinkie, I already know the answer, but are we there yet?”
“Not even close! Why did you ask if you already know, Silly Eric?”
“Because I’m that bored. I didn’t think I’d want it so much by this point, but do something ‘Pinkie Pie’.”
She halted her hopping and turned back to me. “Uh, what?”
“Pie us in the face, give me jungle lessons, sing, anything to liven things up. In fact, if you sing, I’ll sing with you in a duet.”
Pinkie’s eyes sparkled. She sucked in a deep, and I mean deep inhale. “You mean it?! You want to sing?!”
Did I actually say “I’ll sing” out loud? Oops!
“No, no, that wasn’t–”
“Hit it, strange unseen music player! He’s finally ready to sing!”
*upbeat music plays*
“No, I’m not! No, I’m not! I won’t want to sing! It was a joke!”
“♪ No, you can’t take it back! It’s time for you to sing! ♪”
I took a page out of something I had used on Twilight a few times. I laid into Pinkie with my best “puppy dog” eyes. “Big sis” Twilight usually caved, sometimes hard, when I gave her those eyes–karma for the many times she looked at me with adorable/adorkable smiles and faces that were impossible to say “no” to. Maybe Pinkie would respond the same way; like Twi, she is a mare who’s a little older than me.
“♪ Eric, no, don’t look at me like that! You are going to sing, sing, sing! ♪”
Cue to pour on the puppy-dog eyes tactic further.
The Pink One let loose one of the poutiest groans of all time. “Fiiiiine.”
*Upbeat music ends*
Heh, the batting average for the ‘ol puppy dog eyes tactic is still 1.000. AKA perfect.
“But I am going to hear you sing someday.”
“Not likely, and if you do, your ears will learn too late why my lips should never sing. At any rate, this heat is starting to wear me down again. Are there any caves in this jungle?”
“Hmm…yep, there are.”
“How far is the closest one?”
“Uh…about twenty minutes away?”
“Twenty minutes? That’s not too long a walk, so can we go there for a while? It should be much cooler in caves.”
“Fine by me!” she exclaimed with her typical smile returning. Safe to say she was over being cheated out of hearing me try to sing. “Try” being the operative word. “We can use them as a shortcut to the part of the jungle with the fruit we’re looking for anyway.”
“Wait, if it would be a shortcut, then why didn’t you lead us there on your own?”
“You didn’t ask me to, Silly Eric,” Pinkie answered in a lighthearted yet sorta matter-of-fact tone.
“But how…” I facepalmed. No time to get too annoyed over how she didn’t take us on that shortcut on her own accord. “Nevermind. Just lead us to the cave. If you know of more shortcuts, leave me to them, even if I don’t ask.”
“Okie-dokie! Follow me! We’re going cave walking!”“Are we there yet?” Pinkie asked
“No.”
“Are we there yet?”
“No.”
“Are we there yet?”
“No.”
Yes, you are hearing right. Pinkie is asking me “Are we there yet?” as part of a half-game/half-joke she cooked up. To be fair, it worked for the first five or so minutes. And those five minutes had been up for at least ten minutes.
“Are we there yet?”
“No.”
“Are we there yet?”
“No.”
“We’re here now!”
“No–I mean, we are?” I smacked my head to knock myself back out of auto-answer mode. Indeed, the entrance of a cave, digging into a mountain, lay before us.
“Yep! Let’s go in! I can already hear your soon-to-be fruit calling for us on the other side!”
Happy New Year!