-Fortitude (The Fantastically Fragrant)-
Yak friend be in poor health, yak not know how to help. Yak protect town though and that good thing for yak to do without needing to be asked! Not smash anything in a while though, I was mighty at protecting with great yak strength.
“I am Fortitude the Fantastically Fragrant!” Everyone glanced at yak for a second and go back to watching two young combatants show their strength. They weren’t running out of stamina anytime soon and they were enjoying a fierce battle.
Magic of ice and power of muscle being shown in full force. This would be a tale to tell little yaks and later on in afterlife.
My brother Flamberge was egging them on, he was loud and boisterous like yak. He was a great brother. Gene was sitting next to local pirate parrot, she seems friendly with my brother of quick reflexes. Magic turtle now be looking at two, does turtle see something that yak doesn’t?
Yak sit to watch fight.
“Well met brother, tell me do you think we’ll see any more of those highland…” Flamberge was stopped by pirate parrot tackling him to the ground.
“Don’t say those two words in conjunction or at all around here, they always invite them to attack!” Parrot seemed high strung, yak is knowing that they attack when talked about. Flamberge not learn lesson last time we went out and still hasn’t. “Also we have a lot of visitors and some injured around here at the moment! So please, whatever you do, don’t say the next word you were about to say or else.”
“Okay, I will not say it then!” Flamberge was always so loud, yak like that about him. “I will imply that they are little spiny imps with demonic senses of hearing and reaction times bordering on stalker like tendencies to always know when they are called forth by talking about them!”
“Yeah, that’s a problem, we really shouldn’t talk about them when the mayor’s family is infirmed and we’re not sure we could actually protect everyone here. It’s not a good idea to cause a mass panic.” Gene be smarter than Flamberge, he be great leader! Yak like Fortitude not as bright, but yak does well enough to be brighter than Flamberge at least.
“Ow… that was so very painful… and I enjoyed every second of it.” Small stumbling war goddess wobbled up to group watching the fight and flopped onto her face. Sekhet was worthy goddess to follow, as worthy as was Rata was to have Gene as a follower. “Who’s winning, I actually have double vision at the moment and the ship that hit me was really quite heavy.”
“They seemed to be evenly matched to an absurd degree despite yonder cow not having magical prowess compared to lithe and fair magical reindeer that oddly has no flying capability whatsoever!” Pointed out Flamberge in flamboyant manner. Yak agree, the two are excellent warriors. “Nobody would dare get between them in the midst of a battle being so well fought, why it is quite spellbinding to witness! I believe the fair witch of tastefulness Kuril herself couldn’t concoct a potion that could draw our attention so readily.”
Rarely does yak ever hear Flamberge not yell words, yak sometime disappointed that Flamberge is not always obscenely loud.
Yak watch parrot try to get words out of beak to Gene. Strong girl acting weak? Common problem among yak girls, Gene needs to make her aggressive. He will find happiness for sure with overbearing highly angry hexed parrot girl.
“Say, how long exactly was it since you’ve last had a round of…” Gene narrowly avoids getting hit by a tree branch, one that came from tree more than forty feet away. Yak think Gene best at swift reaction out of us all, which is why he earned his title. Parrot girl get upset with branch, maybe because it made her move away from griffon? “Never mind then, answered my question.”
Pirate Parrot grumble under breath and magic turtle look upset with something in the air above parrot, maybe dislike bad luck? Yak very observant, everyone likely already know this and Fortitude doesn’t have to say thing that is obvious. Like how parrot girl likes griffon brother.
-A few days later, Sekhet-
Good news all around, Ponyville Construction didn’t have much going on and they could work with a cruise ship. The mayor’s family could recover in peace and Velvet and Arizona didn’t miraculously kill one another. Speaking of, I wondered if Velvet stayed at the Helping Hoof and what her first impressions of Grace were if she did.
Ponyville Construction just finished rebuilding the town after an invasion of nomadic calygreyhounds that randomly destroyed half of all the houses in Ponyville on whim for no apparent reason. None of the ponies were hurt and the construction crew certainly had plenty of job security with how often they fixed any damage done to Ponyville.
Bad news, Jade wasn’t waking up any time soon, Kuril was up but needed more bed rest and it was upsetting Fizzle to see Jade like this.
I made my way to the temporary hospital room in ‘The Witch’s Faire’, I stopped at the door and looked on as the Fizzle stood next to Jade and gently nuzzled her neck. Jade had a lot of bandages around her face, head, arms and upper torso.
Things were going to be okay then, Fizzle isn’t trying to ignore or avoid her cuddle cat. I was softly pushed aside by Maries and I didn’t feel like retaliating, they went to Jade’s side to show their own affection for the sun priest.
Watching the three heads look to Fizzle and her looking back, I felt like I was intruding on their time with Jade. So I decided to go do my job as a secretary and keep things running while lady Kuril was still unfit to govern. I looked back to Kurilian and saw that she was sleeping, I then made my way downstairs.
Fresh Start was holding down the fort as usual and feeding the influx of Ponyville Construction workers that were busy setting up for things. Her talents as a maid were quite good and she was also a capable cook, but she didn’t match up to Kuril’s meal making mastery.
I made my way out the front door and saw Velvet and Arizona arguing in front of the Helping Hoof with Grace throwing in weird or odd comments here or there. She was trying to calm the two down and they seemed dead set on being angry at one another.
Grace was definitely out there in many respects, she was trying to mediate the cow and reindeers aggressiveness towards one another and was failing spectacularly. Even then she hasn’t raised her voice even once and had the patience of a saint to keep those two apart.
Velvet could have left and gone back home at any time, so why didn’t she? Somehow I think Snickers was involved in them coming together and I wasn’t touching that mess with a ten foot pole, speaking of which…
“Jacky.” The parrot jumped, she had been watching the Vibrant Vikings train with one another, more specifically the griffon of their three man group who had corded muscles and was currently sweating up a storm. Upon looking up, I saw Snickers hovering above her head. Yep Snickers was definitely still spreading it around. “Would you prefer Blackcap or Ms. Chickadee La Perm?”
“Jacky or Blackcap’s fine.” The female parrot had always been a very unlucky one, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to her about. She was promptly hit in the head by a falling pinecone, yet there weren’t any pinecone bearing trees anywhere near here. There was no fixing her broken luck when it was that bad, at least it wasn’t trying to kill her outright. “Ouch… what do you need Sek?”
“About that debriefing I received from you and Fizzle. You said you came across a blob like monster that ate Kuril’s ten foot long collapsible pole?” I didn’t mention Daring Do as she had taken off for her next great adventure.
Daring was going to follow up on what Caballeron was doing and the information she got about this ‘end of immortality’ malarkey. I’d like to see someone try and end me, I had too much to live for and was one of the most beautiful goddesses in existence… also I’m really quite humble.
“Well yeah, that actually happened. It was a swamp like blob creature that oozed out of the ceiling, scared mom and made her drop her ten foot collapsible pole after it had taken a large amount of crossbow fire.” Jacky seemed to pause to think more about it. “The last we saw of it, it just sunk into the floor without doing anything else.”
“So… a creature that stupid actually does exist.” Chuckles filled my throat and I was soon finding myself feeling more filled with mirth than usual. In fact it became full blown laughter for a few seconds, but then I calmed myself down as it looked like Jacky had something to ask of me.
“Do you know what it was Sek? Jade and mom aren’t exactly in a condition to tell us about it, though Jade mentioned that mom thought it was too stupid to possible be a real thing like you do.” It sounded like Jacky was curious to know about this, even if it wasn’t exactly very important to know about. “Was it dangerous?”
“It’s not very dangerous, more like highly annoying.” If it was anywhere around here then it would continue to be just highly annoying to me and everyone else, especially if we were to go camping. Pitching tent poles of a specific length would have been impossible. “Say… it didn’t follow you home did it?”
“No, it just sunk into the cracks in the floor at the monastery… it’s more likely to appear in the Fright Night Grotto than it is here.” Here Jacky put her left index talon up to her beak in thought. “Come to think of it, I should send Rata to tell them to look out for it.”
“Well that’s a relief, it’s creature with one purpose in life.” I paused dramatically, goddesses were known to do that right? “Which is the consumption of inanimate things ten feet in length. It subsists entirely off of said objects of defined length and that is all it does.”
“Yes, we kind of got that from Jade and mom, but what is it called?” You really wanted to know Jacky, I wasn’t about to tell you that. Not when it’d drive you nuts trying to figure out what it is!
“You’d have to ask Jade or your mother Kurilian about the name, it’s interesting that you’ve even seen one.” Smiling slightly, I could see Jacky was a little disgruntled that I didn’t answer her question. “They must be creatures so rare that finding them is a one in a thousand chance. I will tell you that ponies probably don’t even have anything about them written down… well technically that’s not true. It’s just that ponies don’t have anything written down about them actually existing in reality.”
“You’re making this a riddle thing aren’t you, do I really have to figure it out for myself?” Quirking an eye at Jacky to let her know that yes, I was making this a thing for her to solve.
“Try to figure it out before Kurilian or Jade tell you. I am a Sphinx you know and I hardly get an outlet for to make people answer riddles these days… aside from being hit by airships of course.” Or a random Cruise Liner before I could even start taunting the world. I seriously didn’t know who I had to riddle for that one and I would likely know them if I ever saw them, but the ship was entirely empty so I didn’t get anyone to riddle. “While you do that and waffle about trying to attract the eye of that griffon, I’ll be busy running my rounds. I am the mayor’s secretary after all.”
“I am not waffling on it, I can talk to him clearly and succinctly!” Yet you wouldn’t ask him out on a date even with Snickers hovering above and waiting for you to make a move.
I decided to continue on to see the fruit orchard. Everything looks in order, but I still decided to ask Wary Berry about it anyway.
“How’s everything going for the most famous quality control pony in Airship Mauled?” Despite how much she despises fruit and think that it might come to life and try to kill us all, I knew Wary was excellent judgment for quality control. She knew the most perfect fruit on sight and on some level it probably horrified her that she had this as a special talent.
“Nothing wrong… yet. The fruit will rise up one day, you’ll see, you’ll all see! I’m not crazy!” No one said you were Wary, but your and Jade’s constant fighting over fruit and its goodness therein was kind of annoying. “So… how is my bitter rival, that degenerate fruit lover?”
“She’ll make a full recovery.” That statement from me had Wary snorting slightly.
“She better… or else I wouldn’t have someone to argue about fruit with.” Yeah, Wary and Jade’s friendship was odd. She actually seemed upset to hear Jade was still out. She stared at the fruit with a suspiciousness bordering on overly paranoid. “So was that all you needed? The quality hasn’t gone down and I’m not the one that eats these fruits. I’m vegetable eating pony all the way!”
“Yep, going to see how the construction crew is doing across the way.” Today was a good day, I was happy and nothing too horrible was happening to the town. I walked up to the foreman. “Okay guys, how soon can we get his hospital up?”
“We can get it done, but it’s going to take a bit. Don’t honestly know how you got a cruise ship out here and upside down, but we’re not exactly asking too many questions.” That was something I appreciated the foreman for. “We’re sorry to hear that mayor Kuril is hurt and hopes she gets better soon. You don’t suppose she would mind if we all sent her and her daughter get well cards right?”
“You’re only upset because the witch of good taste is not around to cook a meal for you.” The pony gave me a small smile. “Still, it would be a nice gesture on your part I suppose.”
“Guilty as charged ma’am, but seriously though. She’s a sweet lady and we’re fans of her work in the culinary arts.” He tipped his hardhat to me and turned to his guys and girls. “Okay guys, you heard the goddess. We’re all signing a get well card for the mayor, they really need a hospital out here so let’s do this right the first time!”
The construction workers shouted out in a boisterous agreement, they were clearly willing and able to help our town grow as a loving community.
A community that I happened to be a part of, that thought warmed my immortal ever beating heart to be here.
So what else was on the agenda today… oh right, I have to talk with a few beings about moving in.
I needed a good sales pitch.