//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: First Autumn - Ask Lovely Laughter // by LovelyLaughter //------------------------------// Dear Blog, Seriously? Seriously. Not one single pony wants to know about… him? Are you all out of your minds?! I mean, what the fuck? Here I am, trying so hard not to talk about it, trying to lead you on and give you tiny hints so you’ll be compelled to ask but… that’s all you want, isn’t it? Just tiny mentions in passing, no detail whatsoever! I know what your deal is. You don’t give a flying feather why I moved to Ponyville, why I lost all my friends and still pine after some guy. Some guy who, obviously, nopony cares about but me!! YOU DON’T CARE! It’s like I’m doing this whole blog thing for no reason! What’s the point of working through something via a blog when nopony who reads the blog cares about the thing I want to work through?! Two questions. TWO! And neither of them are about Sparky! So you know what? Fine! I just WON’T talk about him EVER! You had your chance! I thought you might want to hear about, oh I don’t know, the only pony who I’ve ever loved. The pony who I STILL love with all of my heart. But no! I can’t believe this! Whatever, okay? What. Ever. I might as well answer the questions about the shit that you all care about significantly more than some stupid Canterlot love story. But… UGH! I’m too mad to even LOOK at them right now! Fuck y- ... Tears streamed down my hot cheeks. My head already throbbed with the sinus pressure. I stopped typing and slammed my laptop shut angrily… then angrily peeked at the screen to make sure I hadn’t shattered it. Nope, all clear. I closed it - gently this time - and shoved it to the side of my fluffy cloud cave. Nopony cares. That’s all I could think. I threw my blanket over my head and kicked it under my hooves, wrapping myself up tightly like a burrito. I shut my eyes. No. Pony. Cares. I shoved a wad of blanket in my mouth and screamed. Stupid blog! Stupid ponies! Stupid, stupid Lovely! I scrunched up my face. Stupid stupid stupid stupid… Why had I done this to myself? Why had I bothered to open my past to a bunch of “online” strangers! Even more… Why had I expected them to care? I’m just some random pony in a flood of more interesting ponies, and here I was expecting them to pay attention to me after a couple posts. I’m acting like such a pretentious bitch, I thought, trying to force them into asking questions like that. And now look at me! I’m throwing a stupid fucking hissy fit because they care about something else. The air trapped around my face quickly grew too warm. I huffed and kicked the blanket off my body in a whirl of tangled glory. Then I shoved myself to my hooves and squeezed out of the cloud cave’s maw. I flapped my wings and hovered in the air for a second. The cloud was shaped like a saucer, mostly flat with a bulge in the middle. Honestly, it wasn’t designed to be a home. I’d fashioned it myself out of stray clouds and set it juuuust outside of Ponyville’s jurisdiction so they couldn’t move it unchecked (and so I wouldn’t have to pay taxes.) I could get away with it for a few months, just enough time to save up for an actual, Cloudsdale-certified cloud home with solar powered insulation and properly solidified floors. But if it wasn’t reclaimed or registered by the weather team, it would drop all my belongings and fall victim to the self-moving magic of the Everfree Forest. Of course, I could keep moving it around myself and delay the inevitable, or keep fashioning new ones, but it was also inevitable that I would eventually be discovered squatting by Ponyville’s government. There was a lot of freedom in Equestria, but you couldn’t just steal clouds unchecked and live wherever you pleased. It was irresponsible and dangerous. Imagine hundreds of cloud homes accidentally sucked up into a rainstorm, or suddenly becoming self-moving and dropping occupants and their things unannounced into the woods. Not to mention, they weren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. I might be an artist, but sculpting clouds was some pretty advanced weather magic. I fluttered to the edge of the cloud facing Ponyville, folded my wings, and sat with my hind hooves dangling in the air. As mentioned before, the night was really cold. But after five minutes of suffocating in that blanket, it was briefly refreshing. I sighed and gazed over Ponyville, watching the few lamps that were still lit. A pony or two quietly wandered the streets, their silhouettes barely distinguishable. They looked like black ants wandering across a navy blue sheet. (In the dark. Because… you know… night.) Even from here, I could pick up on their calmness, though I couldn’t tell how that calmness was affecting them. I guessed they might be feeling similar to how I was; dusted in silence. “Why do you want to talk about me?” His voice echoed in my head. I could still hear the way it fluctuated, the way his vocal chords gripped every word. I could practically feel his hoof wrapping around my shoulder again. I imagined, for whatever reason, that he might be sitting next to me. I spoke aloud. “Because I love you, obviously,” I said. I imagined him frowning. “Why in Equestria do you still love me? I told you to move on, didn’t I? I told you to find somepony else and get on with your life, didn’t I?” I blushed and looked at my hooves. “I want to wait for you, though. M-maybe when you come back, you’ll realize how much you missed me and-” “And what?” he interrupted. “I’ll probably have a new girlfriend by then.” The words hurt, but they reflected my own painful thoughts, and I knew that. What if he found somepony else and realized exactly how shitty I’d been? What if he fell in love with her, and I never got a chance to reclaim what’s mine? I furrowed my eyebrows. “I… I really hope you don’t?” I reached for the space where he sat, and my hooves met empty cloud. “Scarlet,” he said. His voice echoed. I looked up. Sparky towered over Ponyville like a giant. His hooves narrowly missed crushing multiple hay roofs. I could see every detail of his fur, how it curved over his cheeks and flowed down his slender neck. I remembered every blemish, every spot from his forelocks to his fetlocks. All the details that would soon fade into the past, I held them close to me. His sky blue eyes shone like moons beneath his milk chocolate hair. “I’m not going to wait for you,” he said. “Maybe when I come back, we’ll still be friends, but things are never going to be the way they were.” “They can be, though! If I just try harder-” I protested. He frowned at me. My heart panged with his expression of disapproval. “You ran out of chances.” He was right. For a moment I remembered his breath on my ear, his hissing questions. I remembered the way his tail swung as he walked away. Oh, the things I wish I’d said… “Sparky, wait!” I called into the night. The giant stallion of my imagination watched me carefully. Things I wish I’d said were things I’d already said a hundred times. As if it could make any difference. “I’m sorry… I’ll fix it, I promise.” He reacted the same way he always had: He shook his head. For a while, a long while, it’d been followed with something like, “I know you will.” But in the last few days of our relationship, he hadn’t said anything. He’d just shaken his head. He faded. I stared at the space where I’d imagined his hooves, tucked between buildings. Somepony blew out a candle somewhere in their bedroom, and another window went black. I’ll fix it, I thought. Give me just one more chance. I remembered talking to Sharpie a few weeks after the breakup. He’d been sitting in his favorite spot in his favorite bar in Canterlot. I’d approached him not-so-subtly and sat down next to him, ordering a water from the barpony. Ponyville disappeared below me as I relived the conversation. “Hey Sharpie,” I greeted cheerfully. He glared back at me, a bit buzzed but not quite drunk yet. I’d caught him early. “How’s it going?” “What do you want?” he snapped. “Juuust wondering how Sparky’s doing. If you’ve heard from him or anything.” With a scoff, he downed his drink and slammed the glass on the counter, then shoved a lime slice into his mouth. The barpony, unfazed, shook up another mix of whatever it was and poured it over the still fresh ice. He then slid a plate of fresh lime slices towards him, not bothering to add any fancy garnishes. After a gruesomely long moment, Sharpie spat out the pulpy rind and glared at me. “Listen here, Scarlet,” he snapped, “I don’t know what the hell went on between you two, but you need to stop. He broke up with you, he moved away. That asshole doesn’t even talk to me anymore, and I’m perfectly happy with that. You know why?” He poked my chest with a sharp hoof. “Because I don’t want to think about him. And if all you care about is obsessing over him, then I don’t want to talk to you, either.” He turned back to his drink and downed the rest of it. A shudder ran through his back, and he quickly bit another slice of lime. After that, I’d left, my water glass still full. Maybe my readers felt the same, I pondered. Maybe obsessing over him really was a turn-off. But obsession wrapped around my brain like plunder plants, digging thorns in and spreading until there was no surface left uncovered. Would it be possible to write a blog about myself without talking about him? I sighed and flew back into the cloud. The cold was starting to get uncomfortable again. I wrapped myself in the blanket and opened my laptop. A third question had appeared. ~ Lovely Laughter