The establishment of a routine created something of a lull. Greet the dawn. Watch as the sun rose, spreading its golden light over the many cracks, crevices, and crags of his barony. Listen to the blood-curdling screams and shrieks of owls. Watch as his peasants went to work, wasting not a single moment of precious daylight. Yesterday, Sundance had gone to Canterlot seeking delivery work. Today’s tasks were still unknown. He had no real plans. The past few days since Corduroy’s arrival had been productive ones.
Birds were returning, whole vast flocks of them. With the return of the birds, war had broken out, a rivalry that Sundance had only just learned about. Owls and crows hated one another, they were ancient enemies of the worst sort, and it seemed as though there would be no peace between them. His barony would not need scarecrows, because he had an army of owls.
Corduroy had begun the construction of a dwelling. Sundance was delighted to discover that her claws could cut through stone like a hot knife through butter. She made stone blocks from random chunks of granite and assembled them with simple tongue-in-groove construction. Already, she had laid a foundation, squared off the corners, and had the beginnings of a wall that was a yard or so high. This would be her living space, a clinic, an alchemy lab, and whatever else the barony needed it to be.
The burrowing owls were returning, coming down into the lowlands by the score. Apparently, they went up into the mountains for the winter. Sundance was only just now learning of their existence. These owls could fly, but for the most part, didn’t. They strolled around, ground bound, and took up residence in the various cracks to be found in the box canyon. At least these owls did not scream, but they sure hooted a great deal.
Spring had sprung; the full glory of spring had arrived and each day seemed warmer than the last. Stuff was growing, seemingly whole inches in the span of a single day. From his lofty perch, Sundance could actually see the changes that each new day brought. Come fall, he knew that he would watch as the land died, succumbing to the icy grip of winter.
He had been warned that the winters here could be brutal.
Sundance, now strolling through the terraced farms to examine all of the green, growing things, was not alone. Little Amber Dawn had escaped from the watchful eyes of her mother, Earwig, and Earwax as well. She trotted just a short ways behind him, and a bit to his left, looking up at him with big, soulful eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was watching him, or if she was focused on the owlet perched upon his head.
No one bowed, nopony paused what they were doing when he passed, in fact, not a one of them paid him any mind at all—which was good. Why, he was almost one of them now, and he couldn’t help but feel that he had some measure of their respect. The general consensus seemed to be that he was doing good, and he had their approval. Bringing Corduroy home was now considered a favourable action, a good thing, and she seemed to have some acceptance.
Except for Grimer Patch, who, at the moment, was galloping away with Corduroy loping after him in hot pursuit. As she closed the distance, Sundance heard her say, “Stop! Stop! You have impacted anal glands that need treatment!”
From the looks of things, Grimer had swallowed his usual mouthful of chewing tobacco, and his now-slack lower lip flapped like a nervouscited windsock hung out in hurricane force winds. Sundance took a moment, paused, shuddered, and felt the small filly just behind him bump into his leg.
Then, from behind him, he heard a grunted “Oof!” as Amber Dawn tried to sort herself out.
Just a few yards away, Good Spirits asked this of his companion: “Think she’ll catch him?”
To which Rusty Tap replied, “Pony gotta run, hound gotta give chase. Such is the way of the world.”
“She has big paw-thumbs,” said Good Spirits, keeping the conversation alive.
“Yup.” Rusty Tap nodded and his lone, surviving eye glittered with quiet mirth.
Sundance resumed his stroll, and casting a sidelong glance over his withers, he saw Amber Dawn following him. For every step he took, she had to make many to keep up, and after reflecting upon this for a short time, he saw the wisdom in putting foals down for a nap or a two. All that extra effort to keep up had to be tiring. Being the sort of pony that he was, the sum of his experiences, Sundance empathised with the plights of others.
Near the barn-cave, Acorn was strapping himself into a harness to pull a drag-rake.
Aware of Amber Dawn’s struggles to keep up, Sundance sat down upon the broad edge of a stone retaining wall. When she looked up at him, her eyes questioning, he held out his foreleg so that she might pull herself up. She did so, and he discovered that she was surprisingly heavy for being so little, so small. As a pegasus, Sundance was solid, sturdy, and rather light all things considered. Amber Dawn on the other hoof, was solid.
Smiling, she sat back on her haunches and when the breeze lifted her mane away from her face, she became the very embodiment of foalish innocence. Sundance, having grown up in thoroughly modern conditions with a rather austere, authoritarian mother, knew that Amber Dawn should be in school—she needed to be learning. It fell on his shoulders to provide a future for her, but he had no idea how to do such a thing. He’d brought home a nurse, a good start by any standard, but now he had to find a teacher.
“You’re nice,” Amber Dawn said whilst looking up at Sundance.
“I try to be,” was his reply.
“Will you be my daddy?”
Absolutely stymied by the question, Sundance found himself at a total loss for words. His brain, the helpful—though sometimes rather stupid organ that it was—suggested that he wasn’t ready for a relationship with this level of commitment. Amber Dawn had just bared her tiny, fragile little heart to him, and the idea of crushing it left him feeling a bit queasy.
“You’re nice,” she said again, repeating herself, perhaps for emphasis. “The other fellas my mom meets, they’re not so nice. I’ve been kicked a few times, shouted at, told to get lost, and teased. Mean, not-nice teasing. They wanted to be alone with my mom, and wanted me to scram. How rude.”
Somewhere, somehow, he could feel his mother’s eyes upon him, burning him, staring right into his very soul and threatening the worst of punishments if he messed this up somehow. This went beyond mere ear twisting, and his imagination began to think of the myriad of punishments his mother might spend whole days plotting. His mother had never actually done anything horrible to him, and he wanted to keep it that way. The idea of what she might do, or could do, kept him on the straight and narrow.
How long had she planned this? She had quite some courage and he imagined her rehearsing this in her mind, waiting for just the right moment to spring this on him. Or maybe this was just one of those random things that foals did. Maybe this wasn’t planned at all. He had no way of knowing. As young as he was, there wasn’t a whole lot of experience with little foals, but he did make a point to be nice, because he didn’t want his mother twisting his ear off.
“So, there’s a foal inside of my mom, and it has to come out. I’m not sure how it will come out, and I don’t quite know how it got in there. Mom says that Princess Luna gives moms a special dream about being a mom and then leaves a foal behind. But that seems unfair. What if you wanted to be a mom? The world is so unfair.”
Princess Great-Aunt Luna has some explaining to do, Sundance thought to himself. Then, he came to his senses and reminded himself that it didn’t work that way. There were just too many ways for him to mess this up, and still at a loss for words, he didn’t know what to say. Was it rude to explain the mechanics of procreation? Probably. Maybe?
“You haven’t sent me away yet, or called me a pest, or shouted at me, or anything really. This has never happened before.” Amber Dawn scooted a little closer, snorted, and then poked and prodded at Sundance’s cutie mark with her hoof.
“Your mom and I,” Sundance said, struggling to get the words out, “we’re not involved.”
“So?” Amber Dawn looked up at him with wide-eyed innocence of the worst sort.
“Well, uh—”
“I want you for myself,” Amber Dawn continued while Sundance squirmed. “If Mom can have a fella for special mommy time, then why can’t I have a fella for special me time? Mom says she has special mommy needs. Well, I got needs.”
Sundance wanted to explain to the little filly that there was a lot going on that she didn’t understand, and that she didn’t know what she was saying, but these words flew south like birds escaping the frozen touch of winter. This was entirely innocent, even if it was set against a backdrop that wasn’t. It was also a bit weird, as Amber Dawn wanted a daddy, but didn’t necessarily want to share with her mother. There was a lot that could be said about all of this, but Sundance wasn’t the pony to say them.
His mother had once said something about this, something he hadn’t paid much attention to, something about how good fillies went bad because of daddy issues. Aching with regret, Sundance knew that he was having one of those moments when one wished that they had paid more attention to what their mother had to say, rather than roll one’s eyes or outright ignore the wisdom being shared.
“Look, being a daddy means being involved with your mother,” said Sundance to the filly looking up at him with unabashed adoration. “It’s a special sort of family relationship. It’s a name… it’s, uh, um, well, it’s a term really. A daddy is somepony who is a special sort of friend that is, uh, er, um, like I was saying… it’s a special sort of friend that a mommy shares with her daughter. I think. Maybe? I don’t know how to go about saying this, to be honest. Or son. I’m making a mess of this. I’m sorry. You and I can be friends and that’s—”
“Alright!”
Whatever words he had left in him slipped out with a relieved sigh. What had he just done? What had he got himself into? Would his tender ears survive untwisted? Little Amber Dawn appeared to be ridiculously happy at the moment, grinning, and her little ears were pricked rigid.
“Can you read me a story?” asked Amber Dawn. “Everypony is so busy. Nopony has any time for me. Mom has been learning how to breathe, and that’s stupid. At her age, she should know how to breathe by now. It’s dumb and boring and stupid because I gotta be quiet so Mom can think and count.”
“Well, I suppose I can read you a story.” Sundance’s head tilted off to one side. “What did you have in mind?”
“Hitut the Unlikeable Elephant.” Amber Dawn grinned wide enough to reveal her molars. “There’s a spider with a fancy hat and an umbrella. And an elephant, an elephant with a friendship problem. There’s a crocodile witchdoctor that tells riddles, a wise stork, and zebras and everything about it is super-good!”
“What makes an elephant unlikable?” Sundance began to wonder if the elephant was cranky, or perhaps a bit rough around the edges. Perhaps he liked to trumpet during the odd-hours of the morning, well before dawn, when others were trying to get some shut-eye.
“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough!” Amber Dawn could hardly contain herself at the moment. “Aunt Nancy is a really good spider. The best spider, really. Aunt Nancy says that no matter how bad something might seem to be, there’s usually some good to be found. That’s the best part of the story and I want to be like that. I want to find good in places where others don’t look. Because Aunt Nancy tries to look for the good in everything, Hitut gets to be a hero and he makes friends.”
“Hmm.”
“You brought this book home and it’s the best. We read it in school. Princess Twilight Sparkle has her special seal of super-okay-ness on the book and says it’s great for foals. I’ve been trying to read it, but some of the words are super-big and I have trouble.”
“I have a better idea.” Sundance looked down at the filly beside him and tried to read her face. “How about you read to me, and if you get stuck on a word, I’ll help you.”
Amber’s eyes brightened and almost seemed to be illuminated from within. “You’d listen? And not get mad? Or impatient? No hollering?”
“I’ll listen,” he replied. “And we’re friends. No hollering. Now, how about we go and get your book, maybe find your brother, and then we’ll go someplace quiet and out of the way of others so they don’t get annoyed with us. And you can read to me. If you get stuck, it’s not a big deal. We’ll sort everything out.”
“You’re the best daddy a filly could ask for!” Amber Dawn blurted out; then she lept from where she sat and began pronking around willy-nilly.
Meanwhile, Sundance wondered what he was getting himself into.