Forgotten Day
April 16th, 2013
"Well, are you alright?" Twilight asked with concern as we walked through Ponyville.
"Right now I am. It was a whole lot worse last night." I said, unwrapping a section on my bandage.
Twilight hissed through her teeth at the sight of the four teeth marks that punctured about one millimeter down into my skin, two on each side of my wrist. May not sound like much, but that's pretty deep for a bite.
"And are you sure you don't want to get your injury looked at by a doctor? We could both head over to the hospital right now." Twilight said.
"Nah, I'm pretty sure it's okay," I said, wrapping my wound up again. "Besides, I put some of that magical cell regenerative alcohol on it, and it seems to be doing its job well."
"Hmm. I have heard rumors of rubbing alcohol like that, but you can never find any. Looks like those rumors have been proven," Twilight said. "What will you do now?"
"Earlier today while I was lying in bed, I was busy brainstorming all of these ideas on how I could defeat the Cock- chicken, and I remembered this one story I heard of before." I said.
"What's that?" Twilight asked.
"In greek mythology, there is an evil woman named Medusa, who possesses the power to turn anyone who looks into her eyes into stone."
"Oh, so she basically has the same powers as the chicken." Twilight said, putting emphasis on the word chicken to cover up what we were discussing about since there was a crowd of ponies near us.
"Right. And so, I was thinking, if the chicken could possess those powers aswell, could it be possible for it to stonify itself in a mirror?" I asked.
Twilight thought for a seconds before nodding her head in agreement.
"That's actually not a bad idea at all, Caleb."
"But now all I need is a mirror so that I can--"
Before I could finish, I stopped because I heard a distinctive *zing* sound come from behind me. It almost sounded like something was speeding right past us. Me and Twilight both poked our heads down the alleyway between two houses to find the source of the cartoonish sound, but found nothing but the green grass.
"Did you hear that?" I asked.
"I did." Twilight said.
"Eh, could've been anything. Now let's head down to the store and buy ourselves a mirror." I said.
I pulled out a bag of bits, which made the coins inside jingle.
"But I got a few extra mirror back at the library, Caleb. You can use those." Twilight offered.
"What kind of mirror? Small, square, round?" I listed.
"It's a 24 inch by 24 inch square mirror. Is that good enough?" Twilight said.
"I could probably prop the mirror up with a large stone, but yeah, that should do the trick real good." I said.
"Good. That'll save you a few extra bits, right?" Twilight said.
"That's right." I said.
"Oh, and another thing, stonify isn't the word you should use to describe something being turned to stone. It's petrify." Twilight said.
"Really? I did not know that." I said, a little dumbfounded.
"And if you were to say stonification, then it would be changed to petrification." Twilight informed.
"I get the idea." I said.
Twilight gave me a friendly grin before we walked back to the Golden Oak Library to retrieve the mirror. When we got back to the library, Twilight led me upstairs into the spare room and gave me the hand-held mirror that stood up against the nightstand.
"This'll do nicely," I said as I checked out the mirror. "You want this back in good condition or no?"
"That doesn't really matter to me. It used to be my spare mirror incase my other one broke, but I'm too precautious with glass for that to ever happen." Twilight said.
"That sounds a lot like you, Twilight." I said.
"Now what will you do?" Twilight asked.
"Well.... I'm not sure. I know how I'm going to defeat it, but now I need to find out how I'm going to lure the chicken over to the mirror, or at least somewhere near it. The chicken most likely has gotten smart enough to know that the mannequins are fake." I replied.
"You're probably right about the mannequins." Twilight agreed.
"Too bad meat is rare in Equestria because that would be perfect bait for the Cockatrice, and I sure am not going to use live animals as bait." I said.
Me and Twilight sat down on the bed and thought for a moment before Twilight came up with an idea.
"You did say that there were still some petrified animals still out there, right?" Twilight asked.
"Yeah, there's still some, but they've been broken into pieces," I said. "But wait!"
"What is it?" Twilight asked.
"Last night, before I got attacked, I found a full-bodied petrified raccoon and it's still in backpack. So what I'm thinking now is that I could probably put that one out in the field for bait. I mean, it's not alive, right?" I said.
"But wouldn't be a little bit suspicious for the chicken? If it decides to stalk the raccoon a while before attacking, then it would have to figure out sooner or later that it's just one of its victims and move on." Twilight brought up.
"Yeah, I was just thinking about that, too." I said.
Me and Twilight both shrugged.
*knock kn-kn-knock knock... knock-knock*
"I'll get it!" Spike shouted from downstairs.
As soon as I heard the front door open downstairs, the high-pitched sound of party whistlers filled the library alongside with Spike's yelp.
"Happy birthd-! Oh wait, you're not Caleb." Pinkie's voice said from downstairs.
"Oh, my god!" I said as a smile formed on my face and facepalmed myself.
"Is today your actual birthday?" Twilight asked excitedly.
"Yep, it is. April 16th." I replied.
"That's great! Happy Birthday, Caleb!" Twilight congratulated, hugging my right leg.
"Thanks, Twilight." I replied.
"So, how old are you today? Didn't you say you were twenty-six before?" Twilight asked.
"Yeah, I'm twenty-seven years old today." I replied.
"Wow. If I knew it was your birthday earlier, me and Spike would've gotten you a present." Twilight said.
"Don't worry about it, Twi. As you said before, having friends is the best gift anypony could have." I said.
Twilight smiled and gave me a playful nudge on the leg.
"Hey, I did say that, didn't I?" Twilight said.
"You did say that. But anyways, let's go see what Pinkie has for me." I said.
When I turned to the doorway, I was met with a close up of Pinkie's face as she jumped in front of the doorway to surprise the heck out of me.
"Happy birthday, Caleb!" Pinkie squealed.
"Heyyyy!" I said and crouched down to give her a big hug. "How did you know it was birth-"
"Hold that thought for a sec." Pinkie said.
She then strapped a white, cone-shaped party hat with a purple swirl onto my head.
"Now what was that?" Pinkie asked.
"How did you know it was my birthday? I never told you the date." I said.
"My Pinkie sense." she replied.
"Your Pinkie sense?" I asked.
"You see, sometimes my entire body will get a certain twitchy-twitch whenever somepony has a birthday on the day it happens. Kinda feels like those little pins a needles you get when you're numb. Once that happened, I knew right away that somepony in the area had a birthday today and that certain somepony turned out to be you because the closer I got to you, the more the twitch got even stronger than before." Pinkie explained in a fast pace.
"Are you serious?" I asked Pinkie.
"Would I lie to the birthday human?" she replied.
"No, I guess not." I said.
"That's the birthday spirit I'm looking for. Now come on down here. I've got cake and a present for you!" Pinkie said as she curled her right hoof, indicating us to come downstairs.
The downstairs area was now decorated with colorful streamers and balloons while a little bit of confetti covered the wooden floor. Near the ceiling was a banner that read "Happy Birthday Caleb!"
"Wow, you got this all set up pretty quick, Pinkie." Twilight said.
"Tell me about it," Spike said as he emerged from a pile of confetti, spitting a few out of his mouth. "And happy birthday, Caleb."
"Whoopsie-daisy. Sorry about that, Spike." Pinkie apologized.
"That's fine." he replied.
I then tilted my head to the left a little bit and noticed the cake sitting on the round table.
"Oooh, is that cake I see?" I asked with a hungry fervor.
"That it is. C'mon over and I'll show you it." Pinkie said.
I then followed her over to the cake, and to be honest, it looked like a cake that came a frickin' gourmet chef, but that's just me. The words "Happy Birthday, Caleb" was spelled in blue icing while a well designed face of me giving a toothy smile and winking my right eye was plastered on the main vanilla frosting.
"A three layer chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Just the way you like it." Pinkie said.
"Wow, this looks great, Pinkie," I complimented. "Uh, what's in the gift box?"
"Open it and find out," Pinkie allowed. "I did a little last minute shopping for it."
"Okay then. Thanks." I said.
I then took the lid off of the colorfully designed gift box and inside was a mirror that was similar to Twilight's, but had an upright support stand on the back.
"A mirror?" I asked, confused at first.
"Yep. You did say you needed a mirror, am I right?" Pinkie questioned.
"Ah, so that was you who zipped away after I mentioned a mirror." I said.
"Hey, sometimes eavesdropping is necessary for getting gift ideas." Pinkie said.
"Well, thank you anyways, Pinkie Pie. I think I'll be able to get some use out of this." I thanked.
"You're welcome, Caleb. Now let's dig into some cake!" Pinkie said.
"I'm down for that." Spike chipped in.
With that, I took the cutting knife and took a decently large piece of cake. Once everypony had a piece, we all sat down at the table and ate. Twilight was chewing politely, Spike had a expression bliss as he ate, and Pinkie just gobbled it down in like five bites and used her tongue lick the icing off her face.
"So Caleb, how could you of forgotten your own birthday, you silly human?" Pinkie asked.
"Oh, maybe because I'm in a world filled with multicolored ponies that can talk, and that kinda fogged my memory." I said.
"Or it could've been your cock incident." Pinkie said.
I raised both of my eyebrows for a second.
"Cock incident?" I questioned.
"Y'know, the chicken incident. You and Twilight were talking about it earlier." Pinkie clarified.
"Cock is another term for a male chicken." Twilight added.
"Oh! Yeah, the little thing pecked my right wrist really hard yesterday." I covered up for the Cockatrice.
"Can I see?" Pinkie asked, referring to my wound.
"Sure."
I then removed the ace bandage and showed her my flesh wound, but it was getting much better than before.
"Ouchies. Well, I hope it gets better real soon." Pinkie said.
"Thanks." I said.
We then went back to eating our slice of cakes and I continued to brainstorm ideas on how I could lure the Cockatrice to where I want it. As I chewed on my cake, I came up with a new idea that might just work, but I'll need a few more gifts.
"Hey Pinkie." I said.
"What's up, Caleb?" she replied.
"Would you mind getting the birthday human a few more gifts he forgot to list off?" I asked her.
"Sure! Anything for your day. What'll it be?" Pinkie asked as she pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of her hair.
"I'm going to need four large rolls of see-through tape, a sturdy stick, and a small amount of extremely thin rope." I listed off.
"I'll get right to it!" Pinkie exclaimed before she zipped out of the door, but came back a second later. "You want them wrapped or not wrapped?"
"Not wrapped." I replied.
"Got it!" Pinkie said before flying out the door again.
"What do you need that stuff for?" Spike asked.
"Just for a little craft project I have in mind." I replied.