//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16 
// Story: Spring Broke 
// by kudzuhaiku 
//------------------------------//

Letting go was hard. The world was a less than perfect place and there were no promises of safety, of security, of return. With a firm, but gentle grip, Copperquick held onto Buttermilk’s fetlock, squeezing it in his own. It had been a long, meaningful morning, fraught with emotion and epiphanies, rife with reasoning, all of which had awakened some sense of existential dread. There was also a profound realisation of just how much he adored this flighty little pegasus.

“I’m just going shopping so I can find a night light, don’t be a sap.” Buttermilk’s cheeks darkened a bit and the buzzing of her wings seemed to falter for a second. “You look so sad right now, stop that. You’re as bad as Esme.” Reaching out with her free foreleg, she tapped Copperquick on his square chin.

Swallowing a painful lump in his throat, Copperquick let go and allowed his hoof to fall to the sturdy planks of the porch. He took in every detail, every loose strand of her mane that had fallen free from her bun, the way the sunlight glinted from her glasses, the muted shades of lavender, mint, and orange that was her fresh, clean cotton cardigan.

“What’s gotten into you, Copper?” Buttermilk asked as she lingered in the air in front of Copperquick’s face.

“I think I’m having an earth pony moment,” he replied. Why had he said that? What had made him say that? What had gotten into him? What was this feeling? Buttermilk Oddbody was free to fly, free to flit about, able to go zooming around in a wide-open sky that was filled with all manner of danger. To an earth pony, most of the worst threats came from the air and he was unable to explain his own anxiety.

Was this a tribal issue? How could he talk about it without being rude? Without being offensive? There were too many thoughts rattling around inside of his head and Copperquick felt quite overwhelmed by whatever it was that was going on. Earth ponies stayed together and tended not to go off on their own. With a huff, he dismissed his own silliness and blinked his eyes a few times to give himself a good sorting out.

“I’ll be fine,” Buttermilk said as she reached out and caressed Copper’s cheek. “Try to study, if you can.”

“Right.”

As Buttermilk began to zoom away, Copperquick watched her go, wondering why he felt the way he did…





“She was okay with me while you stepped out,” Butter Fudge said to Copperquick as he came in through the kitchen door. “Mind the cat, I don’t want her getting out.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Copperquick shut the door and this got him meowed at. “Sorry, cat.” Esmeralda did seem fine, more or less, perhaps a little stormy, but not squalling. At least she hadn’t cried, or freaked out, or had a meltdown in the few minutes that he had been outside with Buttermilk. But was she happy? No. Not in the slightest. Her mood had soured and being the seasoned, somewhat experienced father that he was, he knew the solution.

His daughter needed a nap.

Also, it seemed, all of her extra time spent in the bath had turned her mane into a floofy, unruly mess. A shock of green tangles stood straight up right between her ears, and try as he might, he could not resist smiling at the sight. Almost daydreaming, he imagined his little diva having a bad mane day when she was a little older, and then when he realised that he was spacing out, he blinked a few times to regain his focus. Maybe he needed a nap.

“Oi, I don’t mean to be rude, but there is a little bit more that I could be getting done today,” Butter Fudge announced as she gave Esmeralda a soft pat. “I’ll be taking my leave. Oh… before I go…”

“Yes?” Copperquick trotted over to where Esmeralda and Butter Fudge were sitting together.

“I saw you and Buttermilk on the back porch—”

“Watching us through the windows again?”

“Oi, well, it’s my window to watch through.” Butter Fudge’s ears splayed out sideways, but the left corner of her mouth tugged upwards into a devious smirk. “Copper… you have to trust that they’ll come back. They’re not like us, Copper. Now, I know that there is all of this codswallop about tribalism and how we’re all ponies and such, but we are ponies separated by tribe. This might not be a popular opinion, but it is true.”

“Do go on…”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Butter Fudge’s ears stood up as she did. “For about the first year of marriage, not a day went by when I didn’t have my heart up in my throat when Midge flew off for work. Scared me something awful, it did, and there was always this horrible sense of worry. Even after I got used to it, there were still days that just got to me. They’re pegasus ponies, Copper. They’re all fancy free and flitting about and flirting with the clouds, all while we’re down here being all stodgy and doing all of the hard work. The point I’m trying to make is, celebrate your differences and make the most of it.”

“How?” Copper asked.

The mountainous mare shrugged. “It’s different from pony to pony. This is something you have to find out on your own, Copper. You fell in love in with a hummingbird, same as I did, but that’s about all we have in common on this subject.”

“Huh.”

“When we go out, it is a major undertaking. We go on journeys. We cross vast distances the hard way. We work, and we toil, we sweat and we labour, and every mile we travel is a mile worked for. For a pegasus pony, flying from horizon to horizon is effortless. They don’t even get a sense of accomplishment like we do. It’s as natural to them as breathing. They’re not like us at all, Copper, but we can love them without understanding them.”

“Thank you… I think I’m going to put my daughter down for a nap now.”

“Good luck with that.” Butter Fudge paused for a moment, pawed the floor with her hoof, and then a happy-sad sympathetic smile could be seen on her face. “You know, one day… Copper… you might have yourself a little pegasus foal… the odds are good. And if you think having a flighty little pegasus wife is tough… well, just imagine the most precious thing in the world to you and you can’t keep up with it when it goes flapping off. I bought myself a tether, so I did, and while many criticised me for being a bad mom, or a lazy mom, that tether was peace of mind, let me tell you.”

With that, Butter Fudge took her leave and left Copper to his most unwelcome thoughts.





No matter what he said to her, Copperquick could not impress upon his daugher his need to study. She was in a mood, she was, and naptime? Nope. Not now. Not ever. Not in this lifetime. He lay on the floor beside her, thinking of his studies, and of Buttermilk, and then there was everything that Butter Fudge had said, which didn’t seem like tribalist nonsense, not at all, but good practical common sense.

Reaching out with her foreleg, Esmeralda whacked her father a good one right in the snoot. Copperquick’s ears stood up, his scalp went tight, his eyes narrowed, and he looked his daughter right in the eye, only to find that she was glaring right back at him. This might just be her being fussy, or it might be a behaviour she might have learned from her mother. He had no way of knowing and it was one of the many things that drove him to distraction as well as kept him awake at night.

“Hey, that’s not nice.”

“Nyahnehyah!”

“That didn’t sound very nice either.” With a grunt of effort, he lifted his head from the floor and let out a huff of annoyance. “You’re not wet, you can’t be hungry, I know that you are sleepy… so what is your problem?”

“Flibbish!”

“Flibbish yourself,” Copperquick replied and this was clearly the wrong thing to say because the storm in Esmeralda’s amber eyes intensified tenfold. When his daughter reached out to take a swipe at him once more, Copperquick pulled his head back. She missed by a country mile and the momentum of her failed strike caused her to lose her balance and she tipped over onto her back.

Like the proverbial straw that broke a camel’s back, or like pulling out a cork, this was the act that undid her. First came the warning whoop—an impressive sound to be sure and Copperquick had a morbid sense of pride about it—and the whoop was followed up with shrieks of foalish rage. There was a muffled thump when his head hit the floor, landing just a scant few inches away from his precious kicking, thrashing, wailing little fuzzball.

“Ah,” he sighed, “the joys of parenthood.”

Ears twitching, Copperquick listened to the sounds of his daughter, who was currently doing her impression of an axe murder victim, mid-murder. She had impressive volume and a wide range of pitch at her disposal. Darting off to one side, he glanced over at her bag, which sat on the edge of the blanket. Then he glanced at the screaming, shrieking lump that made him think of confusing questions regarding the nature of love.

The binky was an option: a good option that brought immediate results, most of the time. However, use the binky too much, and it would cease to be an option. It was a weapon of surprise, and like any weapon of surprise, if it was used to often, the effect would dull and it would become commonplace, ordinary. A banal binky was a useless binky, Buttermilk had said, and she would know. He trusted her on this issue. Jaw set, brows furrowed, he considered this option, wondering if now was the time to deploy it.

Lifting his head, he stretched out his neck and picked up her carrot in his teeth. It was quite soggy, cold, slimy with drool, and right away he wanted to spit it back out. Being an earth pony sucked sometimes, and what he wouldn’t give to have magic right now. So repulsed was he that he began to gag, and it was a struggle to bring the carrot to Esmeralda.

Who, as it seemed, did not want her carrot, and shrieked even harder when she was touched by the cold, damp, soggy stuffed vegetable. One kick sent it flying and Copperquick was not sorry to see it go. Shuddering, he eyed the stuffed eggplant and had no desire to pick it up. Entertaining the idea of the binky, Copperquick decided to exhaust his other options first.

Lowering his head down a bit, he looked down at his daughter, trying to feel sympathetic towards her needs, he tried to feel pity, and not anger. When he got close, she bit him on his chin with a savage chomp. His first response was a visceral reaction to the pain, but his second response was emotional: had her mother taught her to do that? Had Cielo del Este bitten her? It was too horrible to think about, but it made a nagging bit of sense. Perhaps because of the pain he was feeling, a deep and abiding rage filled him, a terrible, dreadful, impotent rage that he could do nothing about. It was awful to assume the worst about somepony, but at the moment Copperquick was too emotional to be rational.

“Oh, fronk it all!”

Crossing his eyes, he tried to look at his chin, even going as far as to making his jaw protrude, but he couldn’t see anything. Angling his head, he looked down at his daughter, peering right into her wide-open maw, and he noticed something. A tooth jiggled as she thrashed around. No doubt, another tooth had to be pushing on the milk tooth, and maybe, just maybe, this was the reason for her crankiness.

With a sigh, Copperquick lifted himself up from the floor so that he could go and fetch the binky…