At the movie theatre, there was a bit of a crowd, but the long, long line of ponies that Sumac found himself in was a crowd unto itself. As his crowd approached that crowd, one pony broke away and begin to move towards Tarnish. Sumac watched, and something about the pony seemed familiar. She had a cloche hat, a heavy cloak, and glasses. There was something about her, but he couldn’t quite put his hoof on it. She was also a dark grey colour, and he realised that this was what was throwing him off.
He had met this pony before, in Canterlot, during the wedding. This was Miss Yearling.
“I didn’t think you’d make it,” Tarnish said in a low voice while the disguised pony approached. When she drew near, he bent his long neck, lowered his head, and kissed her cheek. When he started to pull away, she pulled him back in with her wings. “I missed you and I’ve been worried about you.”
“I wasn’t sure if I would make it.” After a moment, she added, “Where’s Rainbow?”
Vinyl, moving slow, finally made it to Tarnish’s side. In silence, she snoot bumped the disguised Miss Yearling, and Sumac wondered what was going on. He was confused, very much so, given how much Miss Yearling and Tarnish seemed to hate one another during the wedding. Down was up, up was down, and a smile had turned into a frown. Was that how the old saying went? Sumac wasn’t certain, and didn’t want to be distracted thinking about it.
“You two hated each other at the wedding,” Sumac said, not caring if he was ruining some big secret. Clearly, subterfuge was at work here, and he didn’t care. At all. Something about this bothered the colt, and he felt as though he had been lied to. Scowling, he gave them his best disapproving stare.
“It’s complicated—” Tarnish started to say.
“Mister Teapot and I are dear old friends.” The disguised Miss Yearling smiled at Sumac while standing neck to neck with Vinyl. “At the time, Mister Teapot and I were deep into a role that we both had to play and we kept up our seeming conflict to remain in practice and character.”
“Are you a spy?” Sumac asked.
“Oh goodness no,” Miss Yearling replied, and then she began to chuckle.
“That’s just what a spy would say.” Sumac’s eyes narrowed and beneath him, Twinkleshine began laughing. “You can’t fool me, I know what you are up to.”
“Actually, I have finished my acts of espionage, I just can’t get the dye out of my coat.” Miss Yearling’s chuckles turned into full blown laughter, but only for a moment, and then she calmed down to become her reserved self. “Feels good to be honest again.”
“I’m excited about the spring,” Tarnish said to Daring, and he did, indeed, look excited. There was almost a coltish level of exuberance to him, and his blue eyes were bright with happiness. “I mean, this is a little outside of my field of expertise, but I am just dying to expand my repertoire and fill my portfolio with new stuff.”
Confused, Sumac didn’t understand what any of this meant, it was a rare instance of grown up talk that he failed to comprehend. When Tarnish and Miss Yearling kept talking, he tuned it out after having lost interest. He looked over at Pebble, who was still sitting on her grandmother’s back, but she wasn’t interested in looking at him. In fact, she was outright ignoring him, and he understood why.
The little colt let out a sigh while suffering a moment of being down in the dumps.
“Hey!” Lemon Hearts shouted while pointing upwards. “Here comes Rainbow Dash!”
Before Sumac could even protest, he found himself stuffed into a seat with Pebble. The stocky filly helped to wedge him upright, and it was easier to sit up with her by his side. She was still trying to ignore him, and didn’t turn to look when Boomer clambered up onto his horn. Sumac knew that he had somehow injured her feminine sensibilities, but he didn’t know how to make things better. It seemed that trying to fix it would only make things worse.
In the row of seats behind him, Tarnish, Miss Yearling, and Rainbow Dash were chatting in low voices, and Vinyl was silent. Sumac wondered why, and maybe it might have been because Vinyl was enjoying keeping a secret from Miss Yearling. He had no way of knowing. To his left was his mother, Trixie, to his right was Pebble, and on the other side of Pebble was Pinny.
Sumac wondered if their horns would get in the way of the ponies watching behind them.
“Are you mad, Pebble?”
“No.” Her voice revealed nothing.
“You seem upset.”
She turned away and Sumac felt his throat go tight.
“I’m really sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” Pebble said, still looking away. “Things are just… weird… right now.”
“Are they?” Sumac realised after saying it that this was not the right thing to say.
“Yeah. They are.” Pebble was still looking away.
“I was thinking—”
“Yes you were. You were thinking about doing gross, weird things to me. That’s where our friendship is going, isn’t it?” Pebble turned around to look at Sumac, and even in the dim light of the theatre, it was possible to see that her eyes were misty. “Things are going to be complicated now, because I’ll never be able to stop thinking about the things you want to do to me.”
When Sumac felt a hoof touch him, he almost jumped out of his skin. It took a moment in his panic to realise that his mother was rubbing him, trying to ease him through this moment. Sumac, overwhelmed and overcome, experienced a sort of awakening, a realisation involving gender, but it was too much for his mind to grasp.
“Why do you have to make everything complicated?” Sumac demanded, and much to his embarrassment, his voice cracked. That was the worst. Now squeaky, he kept going: “I just want to be your friend… I just wanted to l-lo-like you”—stammering, he found it difficult to keep going—“I just want to be your friend but you always have to make everything so complicated! Is it because you are a filly or because you are a braniac?”
Eyes narrowing, Pebble’s face lost all expression for a moment, but the stony mask cracked and she looked… angry. “Me being a filly has nothing to do with it. One of us has to think ahead and plan, and it certainly isn’t you!”
“I was thinking ahead.” Sumac, almost sputtering, leaned back and away from Pebble. “That’s what caused this to happen.”
Ears splaying back, Pebble did not reply, but kept staring while making angry little snorts.
“Ah, good, the Pebble-realises-she-is-wrong-phase.” Pinny Lane, leaning her head down, gave her granddaughter a gentle nudge. “I think this is one of those moments that Twilight might call a friendship lesson. The two of you have had your squabble, now make up and get it over with.”
“Yeah,” Trixie said while she prodded her son with her hoof. “Now get with the make up smooches.”
“Mom!”
“Ugh, no!”
Trixie had herself a self-satisfied chuckle while she continued to prod Sumac.
“What he said made me feel weird.” Pebble folded her front legs over her barrel and her ears pitched forwards. “I was really embarrassed and I didn’t like it.”
“Pebble, little fillies and little colts have some differences. That can’t be avoided.” Pinny sighed, lifted her head, and turning her head to one side, cracked her neck. She made a face for a moment while easing the crick out of her neck, and then she smiled. “It’ll be okay, Pebble, I promise.”
“No, it won’t.” Pebble’s head swiveled around to look at her grandmother. “I’m fat and gross. Parts of me get sweaty and smell. And what he said made me think about all of that and having to deal with it and having him see me and I don’t want to be seen and then I started to panic and I—”
“Hush,” Pinny said as she placed one hoof over Pebble’s mouth, and the little filly went quiet. “When the movie is over, and we’re home again, you and I, we’ll have tea, and we’ll talk about this, okay? And maybe we’ll get a few more mares and we’ll all talk and we’ll find a way to make this better, okay?”
When Pinny’s hoof was pulled away, Pebble nodded and replied, “Okay.”
“I didn’t know I made you scared about that stuff,” Sumac whispered.
“Well, you did,” Pebble whispered back, and her voice sounded every bit as strained and squeaky as the colt beside her did. “If you saw how fat and I gross I was, you wouldn’t like me.”
“Yes I would—”
“No. You wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about. You’d barf.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Oh yes you would.”
“I’m gonna go get some chewy taffy candies to keep your little mouths busy,” Trixie announced. “Hopefully I’ll be back before the movie starts. Now shuddup, both of you!”
Tinny music blared as the screen flickered to life. Sumac, chewing on a piece of sour cherry candy, struggled with the drool flooding his mouth and the achy feeling in his cheeks. He was almost certain that his mother had returned with super sour taffy to punish him and Pebble. Beside him, she gnawed away, and he was aware of her furtive glances in his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Daring Do and the Cult of Collie Ma!
Sumac, entranced, watched the words scroll upwards on the screen, and the bright, vivid colours dazzled his eyes. The clack of the projector was a muted background sound, buried beneath the tinny, shrill music and the sound of Pebble chewing and slurping next to his ear was almost the only thing he could hear.
Wincing, Sumac saw with much dismay that the pegasus playing Daring Do was a bright, eye-searing yellow. Something seemed off with her, and the little colt scowled. The pegasus mare playing Daring Do was wearing heavy mascara, eye shadow, and bright red lipstick. Right then and there, Sumac decided that he didn’t like her. Not at all. Not one bit.
Daring Do had a companion, a big, no, enormous hulking brute of a unicorn, a pale, weak brown in colour, with huge, rippling, sweaty looking muscles. For a moment, Sumac was so in shock from what he saw that his mouth fell open, causing a copious flood of drool from his sour taffy to run down his chin and onto his poncho.
Worst of all was Crown Agent Crash. A nerdy, timid bookworm that followed along after the two eye candy leads, looking pusillanimous and fearful. She had glasses and everything had been done to make her look as dorky as possible. Sumac, shocked, stunned, was about to say something, but—
“BOO!” Rainbow Dash cried from behind him. “Movie-me sucks!”
“Did I… did I get stung by a bee?” Tarnish asked in a low whisper from where he sat just behind Sumac.
Sumac watched as the camera pulled out, revealing a wide shot where the trio was about to enter a sleazy looking bar. He was too excited to remember how this played out in the book, but he knew that they were on the trail of some gemstone, and now it was a matter of Crown Agent Cocoa cracking skulls until he got what he wanted.
The door slammed open after Cocoa kicked it, and the big brute was the first to go inside. Beyond the door, the bar was filled with sleazy, shifty looking characters, all of them dirty and none of them as pretty as the heros. Cocoa pulled his whip, allowed it to uncoil, and the length fell to the floor.
“No way!” Rainbow cried in a loud whisper. “That only comes out after somepony does something stupid!”
“Shut up, Rainbow!”
“I’m looking for Admiral Banks,” Crown Agent Cocoa said in a booming baritone. “Admiral Cloud Banks. Where is he?”
“He’s not here,” a shifty looking pony replied, and the camera began a slow zoom.
“Do you think the fight between Banks and I can be shown in this film?” the real Tarnish asked.
“You shoved him into an airship propeller,” Daring snapped in a low whisper.
“No I didn’t!” Tarnish retorted. “You need to stop saying that, he tripped—”
“Your whip was tangled around his legs!”
“He punched you in the mouth!”
“Shut up, all of you!” Cloudy commanded.
“I’m here to cause a bad day,” Crown Agent Cocoa rumbled while he menaced the dirty looking mob with his whip.
Something about that line was off, but Sumac was too over-stimulated to figure out what it was. The sourness of the taffy, his little spat with Pebble, the sound of the music, the glow of the screen, everything being said around him, and the warm, pleasant feeling of Pebble sitting beside him. With a sigh, he allowed himself to collapse against her, finding her a soft, comfortable place to rest.
She was perfect.