-Velvet-
Arizona just gave me this long quirked look at what I had just said, I think I can understand why she was staring at me like that.
“I meant fun that doesn’t require violence and beating each other up.” Our fight had been fun and the free food and drink had been great, but I wasn’t willing to go another round. Arizona’s stamina was quite incredible and hard to keep up with.
Thinking of the boorish bovine, she was now giving me an alien look, as if she couldn’t understand the concept of fun where our hooves are not aiming to slam as hard as they can into the others face.
I also wanted to dig into her past to find out why she would have so much trouble with cow culture to show off.
“Something like shopping?” Airzona queried as if she had never done a girly thing in her life, I wouldn’t be very surprised to find out she probably hasn’t. We were on our way out of the bar, back into the streets of Manehatten.
“Well we did win a large bag of bits and your saddlebags look a bit… shall I say… ragged?” They looked like they were held together and were made entirely of patch stitching to me.
“Yeah, I guess I could get them replaced… it’s just that they hold sentimental value for me.” As Arizona spoke, we continued down the street looking at the ponies who stopped and stared at us. There were so many shops, the brightly lit signs, the city was quite alive and I’ve never seen so many people or so many things at once. Arizona must be feeling the same thing as she looked around at everything. “That was a neat fight at the very least, apparently it’s a La Perm family pastime to go to bar to pick fights for money and apparently each bar is different and has different levels of customer brawling. All that lore Jade told me about throwing a seat is true, I also think Cherry Blossom was the top tier brawler for that particular bar. That she happened to be there was awesome!”
“I think that was Ms. Cheerilee’s twin sister.” Now how to broach the topic of… didn’t she just say her saddlebags were sentimental?
“Huh, Cheerilee has a really cool sister.” On that Arizona, I will agree.
“Yes, she does at that. Now… how are your saddlebags sentimental exactly? If it’s not too much to ask.” We continued along the sidewalk watching various carriages taxi ponies around the city, we were about to pass by another alley.
There was just so much stuff in this city, it was hard to wrap my head around why someone would build a place so large like this. It was nothing like Airship Mauled or my hometown.
It took some time, but eventually I was about to receive my answer from Arizona when she went to open her mouth. Only a pony with a cutie mark of a knife popped out of the alley into our path.
“Your money or your life!” We both gave him a flat look, did he just seriously threaten us? Us, out of all the other beings in the city that he could choose to target.
“Excuse me, but has that line ever really worked?” The bland tone was quite appropriate for the situation Arizona, well done. I nodded as if asking that question myself.
“Not yet, but it will eventually.” This poor uninformed brown earth pony with the short black mane didn’t know exactly who he was messing with. Sure we were still sore from fighting, but we weren’t that weak or pathetic. “Like right now for instance, I have the knife here and the deer looks like a rich broad.”
“Oh no, my one true weakness, a knife!” I groveled before him in a mocking manner. “How will we ever survive the power and majesty of such a magnificent blade made of the finest metal?”
“Your mocking me aren’t you?” My answer to his question was my left hoof snapping up to flip the knife out of his right hoof and into my own right hoof, where I proceeded to throttle him against the brick wall with my left.
I held him there for a moment looking into his wide blue frightened eyes, I held the knife up to my mouth and breathed out a small bit of freezing fog on it and then slapped it against the brick wall next to his head making it shatter. The pieces fell to the ground making musical tinkling noises.
Calmly placing the knife handle back into his right hoof in a gentle manner. He gripped it and looked at the lack of a blade, then back to me as I released him and stepped back to take on a rather haughty stance.
“Why yes, I do happen to be mocking you.” I leaned forward and continued to speak, but in a more chipper tone. “Please vacate the area immediately or so help me, what I did to the knife will be the least of your worries. Because if I don’t break you, then my friend certainly will.”
“And have a nice day.” Arizona added with a bright cheerful toothy smile as she hit the wall next to her knocking a brick out of it. She proceeded to snap said brick in half with her bare hooves, showing no effort whatsoever in the act, she then forced the two pieces solidly back into place as if she had never knocked it out.
“…” The pony stood up and calmly walked away from us with his eyes wide in horror.
We’d later find out that he turned himself in for trying to accost us and he made a statement that he was much safer in jail than out here with us.
“Well that was almost unnecessarily brutal… so where were we again?” Asked Arizona as we continued down the sidewalk as if that didn’t happen, we were receiving various looks of surprise.
“The saddlebags and what makes them sentimental?” Not going to get me off the topic Arizona, I wanted to know where you come from. You knew where I came from, I told everyone ‘most’ of my story. Arizona and Grace’s story is still somewhat of a mystery to me.
“Oh right, Grace just kept repairing them for me and they’ve been with me for… all my life really. They…” Thinking about what Arizona just said as she trailed off, I could only assume that Grace was not in fact her mother. Maybe her sister? “Airship Mauled is probably the one place we’d happily spend the rest of our lives at, well maybe Grace could. I feel like I actually need an adventure every now and then or I’d go absolutely stir crazy.”
“So what is Grace to you… is she your… sister?” I was trying not to upset Arizona by treading lightly into the conversation as we walked. I like Grace well enough, she was nice, peaceful and more than a bit weird. Arizona stopped and sighed.
“No… she’s not… not even close. I’m just surprised you’re the one that started asking questions.” Okay, Arizona has never looked so depressed before. She was always rambunctious, brave and aggressive. In fact aggressive might even define her existence. “Jade and the others respected our privacy, but I guess a certain nosy reindeer doesn’t.”
I was about say we can change the conversation or drop it entirely, but she held up a hoof stopping me from saying anything.
“Grace… is… kind of my pacifistic loving aunt. She was one of my mother’s best friends and these saddlebags were the last thing that I have from my mom.” The way Arizona drooped tugged at my heart, but I still wasn’t kissing her, now wasn’t a good time for those thoughts anyway. We stopped and sat down on nearby a bench, must be near the central park. We have been wandering around aimlessly for a while. Thankfully I could still find my way back to the hotel from here, so I wasn’t exactly lost yet. “My mother is kind of a famous cow, the only one I know about that is really.”
“Really, what did your mother do exactly that would make her so famous?” To think I’d be the first to hear this out of all of Airship Mauled, but I really didn’t want to press Airzona too far.
“What didn’t she do is the actual question. Grace told me my mom was a show cow before they met. She was said to be loud, proud and about as outgoing as you could get, she was a wild cow that wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Grace even says I act a lot like her at times.” Here Arizona paused and looked up at me with her green eyes boring their way into my icy blue peepers, then I felt those orbs going down into my heart. “It was after meeting Grace and her good friend that things took a turn for the weird for my mother from the way Grace tells it, because my mother apparently became a bounty hunter not too long afterwards. She was the first cow to do so from what I hear, Grace and their other friend assisted my mother in some really bizarre stuff. If you ask any cow about it, I’m sure they could tell you my mother was a large cow who knew how to throw her weight around quite physically. So whenever you hear the story involving three dairy cows walking into a bar… then it’s likely they were talking about my mother, Grace and their third friend.”
“What was her name?” It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Arizona was upset about when it came to her mother.
“She was called ‘Minnesota’, but Grace always called her Maggie.” So Arizona’s mother was someone of incredible repute in cow society?
I wanted to know more and I’ll just ask Grace when we get back to Airship Mauled, which is feeling more like home to me then my actual home. That’s kind of sad, why didn’t I want to go back to the other reindeer? Was it because there wasn’t much for me there? Or was it the fact that I had leanings that wouldn’t be… appreciated.
Whatever the case, I had to live in the moment and at this moment I decided to comfort Arizona with a hug. She just accepted it, but she didn’t say anything. We sat there for a minute, before I released her.
“So you don’t know about your culture, but you know what your mother got up to?” She nodded, but didn’t say much. “How about we find a cow to talk to while we do some shopping for… uh… what is there to get around here that would be interesting?”
“Not going to talk me into getting better saddlebags?” Don’t sound so dry Arizona.
“Sometimes, you just can’t beat sentimental value Arizona.” She blinked at me and then smiled a little.
We started touring the nearby stores until we came upon one particular one advertising something called Ice Cream.
“What’s ice cream, how does one get cream from ice?” Was it anything like a snow cone? I was a little confused about what was being sold in the store.
“You know what snow cones are, but you’ve never heard of ice cream? It’s one of the many tasty cold treats that cows helped create. I’m not exactly culturally inclined, but I know a thing or two about what comes out of the dairy industry.” Arizona looked at me and frowned a bit. “Why don’t we go in and get you some, you look to be sweating a bit there and could use something to cool off.”
“Sweat? I guess I used too much of my magic at the bar, my normal body temperature shouldn’t allow for sweat.” Ice shaper reindeer don’t sweat unless something is wrong, it was awfully warm out today and I really hadn’t noticed that my fur was dampening with my bodily fluids. “I guess I’ll try some of this ice cream. We don’t eat snow cones too often, we only did so when it was a bit too hot like this.”
Upon entering the store we saw a cow eating some of this ice cream stuff, Arizona shivered and looked a little off about that. I looked to her and silently urged her to go over and talk to the cow while I sought out another snack for myself.
I really shouldn’t eat too much as I wanted to keep my svelte figure and Ms. La Perm’s constant praiseworthy delectable cooking wasn’t really helping in that respect.
-Arizona-
She may be an ice spewing prissy reindeer, but she was my friend. Telling her about my mother helped get some baggage off of my chest. I guess I better go chat with the cow, the only one I’ve seen in a while.
“Uh, hello there.” She was big, not muscular big, but cow big. Her head was covered in a small mop of curly brown hair and she had brown and white fur. She seemed to be enjoying that ice cream, though I found that a little disturbing. “My name is Arizona and I was kind of wondering… do you know anything about cow culture?”
“Well hello there Arizona, here for the cultural festival I take it? I’m Daisy Jo, it sounds like you’ve been lacking a social herd most of your life.” A social what now? Daisy had to have understood whatever expression that appeared on my face. “A social herd for cows is a good number of friends that you can spend all day conversing with, us cows really like to network and herd. I’m here for the cultural festival as well, I and thirty or so other cows are wandering around the city doing who knows what. It’s all very exciting don’t you know!”
“That’s just it, I don’t know!” I was absolutely curious now and Daisy Jo sat up when she noticed how distressed I was. “Also isn’t it a bit odd for a cow to be eating ice cream?”
“Not really, I love oatmeal cookies and milk. I drank my mother’s milk growing up, so I don’t see a problem with continuing to drink milk… well… so long as I know it’s clean and safe. Just popped in here for a treat, but I’ve got plenty of time on my hooves help out a fellow cow.” It sounded like Daisy Jo knew a lot and I just had to ask about it all, there was so much I wanted and needed to know. Apparently Grace wasn’t ‘entirely’ crazy in drinking her own milk, but was it clean though? “So what do you want to know?”
“Well, there’s been a few things I’ve been needing to know about. Like for instance, does the name Minnesota mean anything to you?” There was a spark of recognition, I wanted to know more. Grace never told me what ultimately became of my mother.
"You mean like Menacing Minnesota? Every cow definitely knows the three dairy cows walking into the bar bit, but she's also stuffed herself down a Roc’s throat and knocked out a dragon three times her size with a head to head collision.” Smiling, Daisy Jo sighed airily. “Now there’s a cow who knew how to ‘moo’-ve! Don’t know what became of her, but she is definitely legendary!”