The guards kept a tight circle around Princess Celestia, but Sumac, who walked by her side, wasn’t sure if he felt safe. He supposed it didn’t matter, he was never safe, such was the curse of a sorcerer. Outside the wall of guards, ponies watched and stared, not just at Princess Celestia, but Sumac could feel eyes on him. He was Ponyville’s foal and everypony took it as a point of pride to have a sorcerer in their town.
Sometimes, it felt as though that it didn’t matter that he was Sumac, but only that he was a sorcerer. Coveted, desired, wanted, sought after, craved—he was a prize to be kept. Feeling more than a little downtrodden, Sumac wished he was working, because when he was buried in a project, these thoughts were quieted and he felt better.
“Head up… chin up,” the princess said, not only offering instruction, but providing an example as well. She trotted with an exaggerated high step and had her head held high.
Sumac was more of a loper who kept his head down. Due to his hind legs being longer than his front legs at the moment, he walked with an odd diagonal gait, something he was a bit self-conscious about. It was even worse now, because the princess beside him was a regal creature of great, perfect beauty and he was a dog-legged colt missing more than a few patches of hair. Princess Celestia too, was thin, but in an awe-inspiring way, while Sumac was aware of the fact that he just looked malnourished. Ponies tut-tutted his mothers for not feeding him enough, but Sumac was a voracious devourer with four hollow legs.
“You have the strut of a troublemaker, Sumac. A disturber of the peace. Straighten out. Head up, stop slouching, come now. What is Twilight teaching you in that school of hers?”
“Science and explosions,” Sumac remarked whilst glancing up at the big mare beside him. “I’m gifted.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Of all of the ponies that might have greeted Sumac, Vinyl was not the one he expected. She was wearing a gauzy sundress, which was rather something of a shock to see her in. Dresses or otherwise feminine clothing was a rare sight on Vinyl. But it was hot and the summer sun had no mercy. For further protection, she carried a parasol which she held over her head and he stood in the shade of it now, looking up at his master, his teacher.
“Lemon Hearts said that you’d come to your senses,” Vinyl—who stood almost nose to nose—said to Sumac. “Even Octavia said that you just needed your space and some introvert time. I was starting to worry about you. Feel better?”
For a moment, Sumac almost said something reassuring, but at the last second, he chose honesty. “No. I don’t feel better at all and I think I hurt Pinkie Pie’s feelings.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Vinyl nodded. “For the record, you hurt Pebble’s feelings too. She’s been moping around and looking sad. Sumac, if there is anything that Pebble hates, it is being ignored. Right now, Maud is trying to convince her to come out, but you have a lot of apologising to do.”
Sighing, Sumac’s neck bent, his head sagged, and his ears went limp. Turning his head, he saw Octavia chatting with Princess Celestia and there seemed to be some kind of animated discussion about something. So despondent was he that Sumac didn’t bother trying to eavesdrop, so he stood in the shade of Vinyl’s parasol feeling quite put out.
“You and Octavia were about to go and do something nice, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, Sumac, we were.” Vinyl grinned, but Sumac didn’t see it because he stared at the ground. “We were going to satisfy Octavia’s lepidoptery hobby and go butterfly hunting, but I think that’s been cancelled. You’re more important than some silly butterflies.”
“Oh, Vinyl, do come over!” Octavia lifted up her hoof and waved. “Princess Celestia must speak to you. She has instructions!”
“I’m needed.” The pale mare hesitated and her wild, poofy mane was tugged at by a playful breeze. “Okay, that’s it, mope time is over. It’s time to sort stuff out. No more pity party. I’m going to find out what the princess wants and you… you’re going to make good with Pebble. Got me?”
Sumac, who knew better than to argue at this point, nodded.
“Good, now go make things right with Pebble.”
This was going to suck, but Sumac knew that resistance would be met with insistence.
Sumac had scarcely made it into the doorway when he was glomped—then almost subsequently destroyed—by a brown dwarf moving through the universe at super-relative speeds. At some point during his short life, Sumac had been in more pain, perhaps in a crash or something, but at the moment, he could not remember such a time with any great clarity. The force of the impact completely and totally knocked the wind out of him. Bowled over, he saw stars, moons, planets, circling birdies, dancing monkeys, and the curious flock of alicorns that sometimes arrived when one hit their head too hard.
“You had that coming,” said the teeny, tiny Princess Celestia.
“Yeah,” itty-bitty Princess Luna agreed, “own it!”
“What we do in life impacts others,” Twilight remarked in a wise, knowing way. “Pebble Pie, doubly so.”
“Woohoo! She’s sitting on you right now! Score!” Swooping about, Princess Cadance pumped her hoof into the air while she grunted in triumph.
Then, as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone, along with everything else. Pebble was, indeed, sitting on him, and this might go a long way towards explaining why he couldn’t breathe. Of course, being struck hadn’t helped matters at all, but Pebble sitting on his ribs quelled any chance at recovery. Gasping, Sumac looked up at the filly sitting on him and wished that he could enjoy this, but Pebble weighed a ton.
“You made me hate you.” Pebble, her eyes narrowed, glared down at Sumac with a look that could and would make rocks roll away in shame. Squeezing her thighs together, Sumac’s attempts to draw air were terminated with extreme prejudice and she leaned down until her nose was a mere inch away from his. “You made my mother give me the talk about how sometimes, the pony you love the most in life will disappoint you, and it was awful, embarrassing, and strange, and I hated it. But don’t worry, I’ve decided that I’m going to let you live.”
When Pebble relaxed her thighs, Sumac sucked in a wheezing whine of a breath, but her weight on his ribs prevented him from getting all of the air that he needed. Almost enough air was somehow worse than no air at all, and all four of his legs flopped about while a rushing, roaring sound filled his ears.
“Right now, you’re living, but I figure that you feel just about as miserable as I was this past week. I couldn’t breathe either, my chest ached, and everything hurt. You did this to me. How does it feel?”
Sumac tried to respond, to say something, or maybe just beg to breathe, but Pebble’s thighs tightened once more around his breastbone and ribs. This felt pretty awful, and if this was what he did to Pebble, and she had existed this way for a week or more, he had this coming. Because he couldn’t do anything else, he nodded.
Pebble scrambled off and Sumac felt himself being yanked into a rough hug. With a terrific, terrible whistle, he sucked in some much needed air while Pebble held him upright. She was crying, and he could feel it when she pressed her face against his ear. His throat was dry, parched, and felt as though it was full of gritty sand. Each breath made his lungs ache and every blood vessel in his body burned like fire as oxygen permeated his blood once more.
When his higher brain functions started to return, Sumac discovered that he was rather pleased with the outcome, all things considered. Pebble had sat on him, and that was a memory that would stay with him for a while. But Pebble had also terrified him, so that memory too, was going to stick with him. The chubby earth pony that was his boon companion and best friend was only going to get bigger as well as heavier when she grew older, and this prospect filled him with stark terror.
“Please don’t send me away again,” Pebble said, mumbling the words into Sumac’s twitching ear. “We can be quiet together if that’s what you need, but don’t send me away. It causes me earth pony pain.”
Wheezing, no words came to Sumac for him to say.
“I’ve been miserable too and nopony wants anything to do with me.” The hard touch of Pebble’s teeth against the edge of Sumac’s ear caused it to slap her on the nose in response. “Nutmeg and Boomer took off. They said I wasn’t welcome, because I was a mopey dope. They went fishing.”
It felt nice sitting on the cool stone floor with Pebble, and even though it was far too warm, he welcomed her touch, even if it was a bit moist, a bit sweaty. Sumac tried to think of something to say now that he could breathe again, something kind, witty, and charming. Something meaningful. While he sat cogitating, lost in thought, Pebble snatched his spasming ear with her hoof and pressed the velvety back of it against her backed-up sniffle-snorter.
There was a brain-jellifying honk followed by a flood of gooey snot when his fillyfriend used his ear as a hanky.
Daylight was a-burning, as Applejack was fond of saying. Vinyl, still wearing her gauzy sundress, stood in front of an enormous slate chalkboard, attacking it with a piece of bluish chalk that squealed at the most inopportune times. In the corner of Vinyl’s workshop, Octavia coaxed a tune from an electric cello plugged into a bizarre-looking amplifier while Alto Clef sat on a battered wooden bench stool and watched his mother. Having a skeletal appearance, the electric cello produced the most haunting sounds, unnatural, spooky, and otherworldly.
Pebble sat in a makeshift hammock, unmoving so she wouldn’t fall over, and Sumac stood in the middle of Vinyl’s workshop, wishing that his own was this opulent. Vinyl was humming to herself while she drew a simple diagram on the chalkboard. Sumac let out a startled gasp when Vinyl turned on him with a question.
“Okay, Sumac, what was the mechanism that allowed the kite to turn the dynamo? I’m lost. I think this dress saps my intelligence, because I just want to stand in the corner and look girly while I’m trapped inside of it. Attractive mares aren’t supposed to brain because that makes them intimidating.”
From Octavia’s direction, there was a powerful snort followed by, “Oh, don’t worry, that dress is coming off later. I’ll see to that.”
The tiny presence that kept the lights on in Sumac’s head decided it was time for a lunch break, and checked out forthwith. Overcome, overwhelmed, the gatekeeper that kept all of his emotions in check chose to follow union regulations and joined the lightkeeper for lunch, leaving the gate unguarded. So began the mass exodus of Sumac’s mental facilities. Sumac laughed once, let out a hiccup, and then came a slow flood of tears.
“Oh, here we go… just as Lemon said would happen. Keep playing, Octavia.”
Stupefied, Sumac stood there, leaking, staring at Vinyl with a blank expression.
This continued for a time while Sumac felt a little bit of everything. Pinkie Pie’s visits, all of them, Princess Celestia’s unexpected arrival, his mothers’ many attempts to reach out to him, the ever-increasing feeling of isolation when he distanced himself, Pebble’s angry, aggressive affection, and now this. Reaching up with one foreleg, Sumac wiped his eyes, shuddered a bit, and surrounded by those he loved and trusted the most, allowed himself to be overwhelmed.
“I connected the kite to a lever, the lever was connected to a catch that only worked in one direction, and the catch was connected to a weighted flywheel,” Sumac said while everything in his brain went wrong all at once. “The tugging of the kite pulled the lever, which had a spring, the lever turned the catch, and the catch made the flywheel spin. The more the lever swung back and forth, the faster the flywheel spun, and this turned the dynamo. Everything worked until the fire.”
Rubbing her chin with one hoof, Vinyl nodded.
“The hardest part for me was getting the kite airborne, but once it was up there, it worked pretty good. It worked enough to make a four watt bulb turn on, but it flickered a bit, because I think I needed more wraps around the dynamo to produce enough power. I thought about using some balloons to get the lift I needed, but Princess Celestia pointed out the flaws in that line of thinking.”
“Well…” Vinyl began, “we’ll either need a bigger balloon or a balloon with more lift… maybe both. We’ll need a dynamo, an electric crank motor, a battery, a light, and probably a sturdy means of anchoring.”
Knowing that there was work to be done made Sumac feel immeasurably better, but the tears continued to flow in a slow, steady trickle. The cello music was soothing and this—all of this—was just what he needed. Why hadn’t he come to his senses sooner? Maybe it just wasn’t time.
“Hope is a rising balloon,” Vinyl said while she drew nearer to Sumac. “I think I heard Cherry Berry say that once. She’s the hot air balloon pilot. Smart mare. Now… are we ready to get things started?”
After a moment of consideration, Sumac nodded: he was ready to get better.