The yawns of Esmeralda Verde were so very precious to her father, Copperquick, who listened to each and every one of them. For the most part, the little earth pony foal was bored, but quiet, provided that she was held. The moment that she was put down however, she would become over-anxious and shriek like a siren. After the neglect she had suffered, this was apparently a good sign, showing that she had trust and could make attachments like a healthy, normal foal.
Pastoral farmland rushed past the windows and the train, a newer model, had only a faint sway to it, not the constant back and forth rocking of the older trains. Technology was progressing at a rapid pace, moving along at the same breakneck speed as the fastest of trains. What few trees there were went whooshing by and the train tracks ran straight along an elevated embankment near a curvy, flowing river.
“Copper…”
Lifting his head just a little, Copperquick glanced over at Miss Oddbody, who sat across from him, and he found himself lost in the owlish eyes behind her oversized square-framed glasses. Her bun was extra tight today, with every strand of her mane tucked into its proper place, and the scent of lilac laundry detergent clung to her cardigan.
“I know that you are in dire need of rest and recovery, but your grades need to recover.” Buttermilk Oddbody flashed a prim—but also wry—smile and then returned to looking quite professional. “You are hanging by a thread and the only way you will get a passing grade is if you do all of the available extra credit work. You were given a chance by your professors, which was quite kind of them. I’ll do what I can to help you.”
Sighing, Copperquick had nothing to say and he rested his head against the glass window. He found it amazing that he was still in school at all, being homeless, jobless, and in dire straits. Rather than feel bad about all of the things he didn’t have, he chose to remain focused upon all of the things that he did, and he looked down at his daughter, who was looking up at him. She didn’t appear hungry, her diaper was dry, and her chin was slick with dribble.
“Seven days,” Buttermilk remarked and she sat in her seat tapping her front hooves together. “Well, five days, actually, because of one day of travel each way, but that is how it is. You get to meet my parents. I get to explain to my parents about everything going on. You get a much needed break from everything. I get to wrangle with my parents and face a very stressful situation. Five whole days.” Sighing, the lithe little pegasus leaned forwards, reached out, and booped Esmeralda right on the snoot.
“I’m worried about the preliminary trial—”
“No!” Buttermilk’s tone was scolding and Esmerelda jerked her head back, startled. “No, you don’t get to worry about the trial. No. Bad Daddy.” At this, the foal relaxed a little, turned her head, and shot an accusatory glance up at her father, all while a teasing smile spread over Buttermilk’s muzzle. “You are only allowed to focus on schoolwork, having fun, playing with your daughter, and having a nice time with me. Mrs. Velvet said so.”
Avoiding eye contact with the pegasus sitting across from him, Copper lowered his voice a great deal and said, “At some point, Mrs. Velvet slipped a ‘fruit salad selection’ box of flavoured condoms into my school bag.” Before he had finished speaking, Buttermilk Oddbody was already changing colours in an chameleonesque manner, going from pink, to dark pink, then new shades of reddish-purple appeared, which spread over her face and flowed down her neck. “Said on the back of the box that the lubricant had delicious fruity flavours, making it a real treat to wrap your meat.”
“That”—Buttermilk’s voice cracked and became quite shrill—“was so very generous of her. We shall have to write a thank you note on our best stationarey to show our appreciation for her concern about our well being.”
“That sounds like serious relationship stuff.” Copperquick felt the back of his neck growing hot and his daughter burbled with contentment. “Are we at a point in our relationship that warrants having shared stationary?”
“It would seem so.” With her face now a new, experimental shade of mauve, Buttermilk yanked her gaze towards the window for something to look at—anything but the pony across from her. With nothing better to do, having no gum to chew, she began nibbling on her own lip while the colour began to drain from her face and neck, leaving her a pale shade of buttermilk.
“These past few weeks,” Copperquick began, and then he was distracted when his daughter began chewing on his foreleg. He smiled down at her, not minding the copious slobber, and used this brief pause to choose his words with a bit more care. “These past few weeks have been some of the best in my life, even with the awful stuff that has been happening. As bad as it’s been, I’d go through it all again because you’ve been worth it, Miss Oddbody. I feel like I owe you so much.”
Blushing, Buttermilk attempted to respond, but failed. She drew in a deep breath, held it, and her cheeks bulged outwards like a greedy squirrels. At this, Esmerelda laughed and slobbered all over her father’s now glistening foreleg. Buttermilk’s cheeks bulged so much that it pushed her glasses up muzzle and her eyebrows bumped into her thick lenses. Then, she let everything out in a flatulent raspberry that was still somehow dignified.
Then, she tried again: “Our encounter with the feces-feasting cave troll, Blancmange”—she spit out the words, shuddered, and her glasses slipped back down her muzzle—“left me in a low place. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express just how awful it made me feel. I was ready to quit right then and there. You picked me back up, dusted me off, got me on my hooves, and you gave me confidence back. I have no words to explain to you just how much what you did means to me.”
“I also kissed you—”
“Yes, you did that as well, and looking back on that incident, that kiss helped me feel like an empowered mare again. It woke me up and reminded me how much this job means to me. It made me think of my professionalism. I had a reminder of just how much hard work I had done and how foolish it would be to throw it all away. At what was quite possibly the lowest moment of my life, you kissed me and gave me near-perfect clarity. For that, I am grateful.”
Pulling his cheek away from the window, Copperquick sat up straight, his ears perked, and he gave some thought to everything that had just been said. He knew Buttermilk well enough to know that she was earnest and forthright. A blossoming warmth filled his barrel and he looked down at Esmerelda, who was still gnawing on his foreleg. These weren’t empty words, or base flattery, these were words that Buttermilk meant and Copperquick was touched.
At this moment, there was so much he wanted to say, but the words eluded him. He wanted to wax poetic, to quote the greats, to show off his education. Sentences and snatches of Princess Luna’s sonnets from over a thousand years ago tickled his brain—she was known for scribing lewd, hilarious poems, way, way back when she was the Element of Laughter. Shall We compare thee to a floppy teat? Allow Us to count the sways. These lofty numbers that I have tallied, let them be Our days. They could be read in Ye Olden Canterlot and sounded even better, at least to his ear, but he had trouble remembering all of the flowery words.
Even though he was sitting still, it felt as though he had been in a flat-out run for miles, given the way his heart slap-thumped against his slight (by earth pony standards) ribs and he could feel the blood squirting through his veins. Lifting Esmeralda in the crook of his foreleg, he gave her a squeeze—holding her tight enough to make her giggle-squeak with happiness—and then he held her out to Oddbody.
“This is yours, if you want it,” he said to her as he gave his daughter a gentle shake. “I have to go and take care of some private business.”
“Oh, I do want that,” Buttermilk replied, and she reached out with her forelegs. “I’ll be happy to take that.” Reaching out with her forelegs, she took the squirming foal into her embrace so that Copperquick could depart.
The train continued on to Tall Tale at a steady pace, but Copperquick, Buttermilk, and Esmerelda would be getting off in Dales Delta, a farming community that existed between Tall Tale and Vanhoover. Dales Delta was a vast expanse of marsh and floodplain that sat right on the coast. It was said that ten thousand creeks and streams found their way to the ocean there and emptied out. Salmon were common, plentiful even, and the tidal flats represented endless opportunity.
The settlement was divided into two halves by the Kissing Moon River, which emptied out into the North Luna Ocean. North of the river was the province of Vanhoover, and south was Tall Tale. Buttermilk Oddbody’s parents lived south of the river in a community of well-to-do farmers.
“Hang on, Esmy, it is going to get dark.” Buttermilk, still holding the foal after Copperquick’s return, covered the little filly with her wings. “Big long tunnel through the mountains. I won’t let anything get you.”
“Nuhuh-nono.” Looking quite alarmed, the filly clung to Buttermilk while making fearful, squeaky whimpers.
“Copper, this is quite a long tunnel and you know how she is about the dark.” Buttermilk had a magnificent frown ready in anticipation of the situation.
“She’ll just have to have a good cry about it and get over it,” Copperquick replied and his lips pulled back from his teeth as he too, began to cringe with dreadful anticipation. Not only did his daughter have stunning good looks, she also came with singer’s lungs and a terrific set of pipes. “Ugh, here we go…”
Sure enough, as predicted, when darkness shrouded the train, little Esmeralda began to wail. She sucked in one impressive breath to fill her tiny barrel, her eyes bulged unseen in the darkness, and then she belted out her wailing song, railing against the impenetrable inkinesss that robbed all sight.
As all traces of illumination were snuffed out and as sepulchral darkness bled out from every surface, devouring every last vestige of sight and light, Esmeralda Verde fought back against the terrible, all consuming blackness the only way she knew how. She sang. Sure, it was the song of banshees and those poor damned souls in the blackest bowels of the Abyssal plane in Tartarus, but it was a song and Esmeralda sang it with as much soul as she could muster.
Just as Esmeralda was reaching a pitch and volume that was sure to disrupt the seasonal mating migrations of nocturnal pegasus ponies and the local population of bats, a miracle happened. Electric lights turned on, banishing the darkness and sending it into retreat. The lights flickered a bit, going dim for whole seconds at a time, but then they grew in intensity, offering comfort to the passengers stricken with terror by the dark.
None of this mattered to Esmerelda though, who decided that now of all times was the perfect time to see how loud she could scream, and for how long. It didn’t matter that the lights were on, or that she was being snuggled, or that she was wrapped in two safe, secure wings that were both tickly and warm: no, now that she had driven away the darkness with the power of her voice, now that she had restored the light, she had to ensure that the dreadful blinding gloom would not return.
Resigned to his fate, Copperquick stared downwards, not at the floor, not at anything in particular, just downwards, perhaps as a symbolic acknowledgment that Tartarus existed way down below and he was now one of its denizens. Yes, now he was one of those ponies, one of those ponies that everypony else hated, that jerk with the crying baby on a train. When he inhaled to sigh, his ears rose just a little, but then fell while he exhaled.
And Esmeralda's shrieks continued unabated.
This was his life now. He was the proud father of a wailing shriek-beast. After a tryst with a dancer, he had fathered a banshee that had no concept that other creatures possessed eardrums, and that they could be damaged. Across from him, Buttermilk wore the perfect blank expression of mothers everywhere when they had their hopes dashed against the sharp, jagged rocks of defeat. This wasn’t even her foal, but she wore this expression all the same, knowing that in the eyes of the public—in the opinion of said present public—since she was the one holding the aria-slinging aural assaulter, she was as guilty as sin.
Tears squirted from Esmeralda's eyes in great, fat droplets, and her uvula could be seen swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Perhaps feeling that screaming just wasn’t enough to convey the depths of her emotions, she banged her tiny front hooves against Buttermilk’s cardigan, thumping out a funky rhythm to accompany her wailing song of dread.
“There are only two words to describe this situation,” Buttermilk said as she reached into her nearby bag with her wing and began to fish around.
“Birth control?” Copperquick quipped while his eyes lingered upon nothing in particular.
“Quite.” The bespectacled pegasus mare found what she was looking for, and she drew it out of her bag. Fumbling with it in her primaries, she jammed her secret weapon into Esmeralda’s mouth like a cork.
Startled by her own pacifier, Esmeralda’s screeching was now suddenly stoppered and with her eyes crossed, she stared down at her binky. The tiny filly with the long eyelashes blinked a few times, trying to process this new development and make sense of how the situation had changed, all while her father held his breath, waiting, wondering, and hoping.
To continue singing meant spitting out the binky, and Esmeralda didn’t want to spit out her binky, because it was special. Soon, it would go away, back into Buttermilk’s bag, and then there would be no more binky. She would be binkyless, a dreadful state of affairs. Blinking, she gave the binky an experimental suckle, found it to her liking, and then settled against Buttermilk while closing her eyes.
The time of song was over and now it was time for a nap.