//------------------------------// // Bedpan rhymes with deadpan // Story: House of the Rising Sunflower // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// A wan ray of morning sunlight somehow found its way through Sundance’s window, and he was grateful to see the sun. His body, though mostly healed, still had a few lingering aches. A whining, whinnying yawn escaped and he raised his foreleg to protect his eyes from the golden light. Whatever painkillers he had been given yesterday had left his mind a little fuzzy, a little foggy, and his eyes a little sensitive. When he woke a little more, he thought of Earwax, of his mother, and of the fact that his stomach was empty, but something else was full. Would his hooves still be tender? He didn’t know. They had told him that his healed hooves would be harder now after the impact, and that this kind of injury was treated all the time with newly recruited guards. He was tough now, and he couldn’t wait to tell his mother about all of this, perhaps over tea. With a need born of sheer necessity, Sundance set off on an adventure to find a bathroom. “The incy-wincy breezie crawled up the waterspout. WOOSH came the rain and washed the poor breezie out. Out came Celestia’s sun, which dried up all the rain, and the incy-wincy breezie crawled up the spout ag—oh hi, nurse!” Grinning from ear to ear, Sundance gave the stern looking nurse his best sheepish grin while the foals around him giggled at his seeming misfortune. “Somepony was not in their bed when I went looking for them,” the nurse deadpanned. “That’s because that somepony was in the potty and not in his bed.” “And this somepony is now in the playroom, unsupervised, getting the wee ones all worked up before breakfast. Many of these foals are sick, Mister Sundance, and should not be getting excited before breakfast.” “Show of hooves,” Sundance said to the foals around him while the nurse scowled. “Who’s excited?” A dozen or so wide, innocent eyes were turned upon the nurse, along with protruding lower lips. Not a hoof was raised. An I.V. pole rattled when a filly pulled it closer and its wheels let out a faint squeak. The nurse, clearly immune to such displays, ignored the foals around her and remained focused upon Sundance. “Look, I appreciate what you are trying to do, and you are a good pony for trying, but we really need to stick to the routine here. If you want somebody your own mental age to play with, perhaps you should adopt.” “Ouch!” Sundance winced from the nurse’s deadpan rebuke but smiled when he heard more giggling from the foals around him. “Earwax is awake and aware. The doctor wants the two of you to have breakfast together. Please, if you would, come with me.” “Sorry kids, I have to go. All of you stay very calm, and have a nice breakfast, okay?” With a wave of his wing, Sundance offered up his goodbyes and followed the nurse out of the room. Sundance wasn’t sure what he expected when the door was opened, but what he found wasn’t what he expected. Earwax appeared confused, scared, and out of sorts. She sat in a bright blue plastic chair beside a shiny green plastic table, which had an untouched breakfast laid out upon it. The walls were covered in paintings, drawings with crayons, and pictures made with glue and glitter. When she saw him, her expression changed to one of utter bewilderment. “Ya saved me.” Unsure of how to reply, Sundance nodded and shrugged. “Just doing my job.” Then, almost as an afterthought he added, “Does it hurt?” “I can’t tell.” Earwax lifted her left leg and rubbed the spot where her right front leg used to be, which was now bare and smooth. “It’s like I never had a leg at all. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what to make of anything. I don’t even know what it is I am sitting on.” “It’s plastic,” Sundance said and for a second, he felt a pang of pity for Earwax—not because she was missing a limb, but because she had never known the wonders of the modern world. “About a hundred years ago or so, an earth pony chemist did something with cellulose from soybeans and treated it with nitric acid as a solvent. After a few other steps I can’t remember, she created synthetic ivory, or plastic. She wanted to stop the predation of elephants and manticores and creatures with tusks. Nitrocellulose as it was known, was also an explosive, and the world hasn’t been the same since. Eventually, this discovery lead to film for movies and pictures, as well as advanced munitions.” “Yer smart.” Earwax blinked a few times, her ears rose and fell, and she continued to rub the blank spot where her leg used to be. “You say that, but I almost didn’t graduate secondary school. My mother darn near twisted my ear off and made me study.” Moving forward, Sundance approached the table, pulled out the bright yellow plastic chair, and then sat down. “Why’d ya save me?” Earwax asked while leaning forward, and her dull brown mane spilled down over her faded orange face. “Because leaving you in the woods would cause my mother to actually twist my ear off, and I like my ears. Both of them. Right where they are. I’d rather like to keep them.” Looking Earwax in the eye, he pulled his tray loaded down with breakfast closer to him and made a gesture for her to do the same. “I don’t get it.” Earwax shook her head. “I wasn’t worth saving and now, I’m not worth keeping around—” “You don’t get to say that,” Sundance snapped, his emotion causing his voice to turn flinty. “I get to be the judge of that.” “Sorry, Milord.” Earwax bowed her head. “What do ya wish of me?” “I wish to take you home to your sister and then it is my sincere hope that maybe, just maybe, I can have a little bit of your trust.” Sundance looked down into his bowl of oatmeal filled with stewed fruit, sniffed, and then let out a sigh of contentment. “Let me get one thing straight… I am not like the last Milord. You are not just some peasant that labours away for my benefit. I want to be your friend—” “Why’s that, Milord? What’s that do, ‘zactly?” Taken aback by this question, Sundance stared at Earwax, and wasn’t sure how to reply. “The last Milord was prolly my father, but that didn’t make no lick of difference. He didn’t show me no kindness and I wasn’t invited up to his tower for tea and cakes. He was as mean as the day was long. I was born to work, and he was born to rule. I don’t see what friendship has to do with anything.” Frustrated, Sundance found that he couldn’t eat his oatmeal, even as hungry as he was. His stomach gurgled, then growled in protest of this ill-treatment, and he had to fight to contain his rising anger. After the harried flight through the storm and almost crashing in Canterlot, after all this risk, and this… this was all he got in return. Aggravated, he choked back a few angry words before they could escape and continued to stare at the still bewildered mare on the other side of the table. “I think I done said something to upset you, Milord. I’m sorry.” “I’m not angry with you,” Sundance said, and he couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. “I’m just angry. This whole situation stinks. And you… you… you just don’t understand. I’m frustrated by all of this and I don’t want to take it out on you, because you’ve suffered enough—you’ve had a lifetime of suffering and I feel just awful about that and I am so overwhelmed by everything because I want to make things better.” Earwax shook her head from side to side, and her ears pinned back in the most submissive manner possible while she replied, “Why would my suffering mean anything? I’m a tool. A plow. Just a means to work the land. Ya don’t feel sorry for a rake when it busts, ya replace it—” “NO!” Sundance bellowed while he slammed his hoof down upon the table, which made everything jump; plates, glasses, cups, trays, and poor Earwax, who almost fell right out of her chair. “I can’t listen to you talk about yourself like that!” Ducking her head down, Earwax’s ears somehow managed to sag even more, leaving her looking both discombobulated and terrified. She said nothing, but sat hunched over in her plastic chair, and after a few seconds, she blinked away tears from her glassy eyes. The tears proved to be too much to hold back, and the glistening droplets of liquid clung to her long eyelashes, darkening them. “Please, eat.” Sundance gestured at the food on the table, and felt even worse when Earwax began to do as he commanded, not because she was hungry, but because he had told her to do so. She was quaking with terror while tears ran down her cheeks and dripped into her bowl of oatmeal. “Look, I am gonna take you home to your sister, and everything is gonna be okay. The only thing I want from you is your trust and maybe just a little bit of help from you so the others will trust me. For now though, let’s just eat breakfast, because I don’t think I can make you understand me, but I really want you to understand me.” With her muzzle tucked into her bowl of oatmeal, Earwax did not reply.