//------------------------------// // A chance meeting // Story: House of the Rising Sunflower // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// For what purpose was the bunkhouse built? It was a compact, yet somehow spacious structure. It had twenty beds in total, more than the requested amount due to a clever use of space. From the outside, the building looked like a cloudcrete pound cake, a long rectangle with soft, rounded corners. Inside, it was one big room, nothing special, with beds against the walls and a wooden table dominating the middle. Just what was Twilight Velvet planning? Would she send more convicts? Lawbreakers? Mares like Hollyhock? It bothered him just a little that Twilight Velvet was making plans in his barony without consulting him. He stood in one spot, near the table, staring at a bunk bed, seemingly fixated upon said bed, but he was actually lost in thought. Aside from all of the other things competing for his attention, such as the state of his barony, whatever trouble Rustic and Turmeric were dealing with, Princess Celestia’s arrival and grand inspection, all of which were weighty things, he was somewhat troubled by the sheer number of agendas all coming together here, in this place. What if they conflicted? He didn’t think Twilight Velvet’s plans would conflict with his own. She probably had some well-meaning do-goodery in mind, which was fine. While this was reassuring, he still worried that if he didn’t take the reins a bit more, it might mean trouble. So much had been done with him just passively allowing things to play out, and that had worked. Spectacularly well, in fact. But making decisions meant understanding the issues, and he had very little knowledge of the issues, or the politics that drove them. Doing something, anything, meant committing himself to things he didn’t understand. “What do you know of Twilight Velvet?” Sundance asked of the young unicorn mare in the room with him. Her first reaction was to be startled; not a surprise, really, as he had been absolutely silent for whole minutes. She was a bookish sort, with thick glasses that magnified her blue-purple eyes. Her mane was drawn back into a sloppy sort-of-bun, of which whole hanks of hair had already escaped. When she whirled around to look at him, there was something appealing about her expression of befuddlement, and Sundance was rather puzzled by his own attraction to her, as nothing about her did anything for his sense of physicality. But, she was appealingly nerdy in the extreme. When she replied, her voice was excruciatingly nasal, as if she suffered prodigiously from springtime allergies and pollen. “Well, there are many who call Twilight Velvet the Princess of Bureaucracy.” The young mare licked her lips, nervous, and when she’d recovered a bit, she gave Sundance a shy, but warm smile. “She’s the Reformer. Well, there’s a number of Reformers really, like Prince Gosling, but Mrs. Velvet completely restructured our government and administrative bureaucracy.” Patient, he waited, hoping that more would come. “I’m here, today, right now, because of Mrs. Velvet.” “Oh?” Sundance wondered if the nice young mare might explain herself. “My mother hit a rough spot when she lost her job. It wasn’t her fault, she was a hard worker, but the factory closed without warning. My mother was her work, if you know what I mean. Earth pony. Her strength was her pride. She operated a stamp press that smooshed little pieces of metal into parking brakes for delivery wagons. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but my mother made hundreds of those things a day, and she was proud of her work.” Sundance nodded; it felt like the right reaction, to show that he was listening. “Mom fell down hard. She’d gone to work in the factory early, as a filly. Never finished primary school. Mom was the sort that just sort of settled in and did what life expected her to do. She often said she understood her place in the world—at least, before the factory closed. After… well, that’s a whole different story. Afterwards, Mom, well, she was lost. She was a living steam piston that needed no coal to operate, just oats.” As this was said, Sundance thought of his father. “My mother, she started drinking. Like, a lot. She was hurt and confused. We lost our apartment and homelessness made everything pretty bad. We drifted a bit, going from city to city, but Mom couldn’t find anything. As things got harder, her drinking got worse, and she started doing whatever she had to do to get bits. Even bad things… things she was ashamed of. She held me a lot, and she cried, and one night, she realised what this life was doing to me…” Sundance heard the young mare gulp, and as she fumbled for what to say, he asked, “What happened?” “Mom decided that I shouldn’t have to suffer for her failure. She took me to the orphanarium in Las Pegasus, so she could give up custody. Mrs. Velvet just so happened to be there, she was doing an inspection of the place you see, and when she found out what Mom was going to do, Mrs. Velvet just sort of, well, she took over. My mother was glad to give over the reins, I think. She never offered any sort of resistance, and just sort of did everything she was told. But Mrs. Velvet kept us together. She made a promise, and she kept it.” Hearing this, Sundance wondered if the bunkhouse was a promise that had to be kept. “Mom got sober. She got cleaned up. Mrs. Velvet eventually found my mother a job as a mail sorter, which is just another lever-pulling job. I worry sometimes that it too, will go away. The world changes and moves on, ya know? It don’t slow down so we can catch our breath.” With everything said fresh in his mind, Sundance thought about his barony, his purpose here, and his own position as a bureaucrat. He was a bureaucrat, that much couldn’t be denied. His genealogy project was, in essence, a sort of hooves-on higher education of sorts that taught him everything he needed to know about bureaucracy. With all of this in mind, his own position as baron gained a little much-needed clarity. Once things picked up here, once there was something to work with, he would be in a position to function as an administrator. All manner of possibilities opened themselves up to him in this moment. “Mrs. Velvet sort of, well, she worms her way into everything. Worms sounds bad, don’t it?” He nodded, but did so with a good-natured smile. “But that’s what she does. She gets involved in everything, in every aspect of every government office, and she gets those in positions of power beholden to her. Owing her a favour. Over time, gradually, she causes change. This bunkhouse? She wants something from you. If you give her what she wants, she’ll reciprocate and give you more of what you want and need.” “How do you know so much about all of this?” he asked. “Before joining the Gringineers, I worked as an intern beneath Mrs. Velvet’s assistants, Mister Quick and Mrs. Oddbody. My mark came late. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and Mrs. Velvet had me try all manner of stuff to keep me busy. Even got to work as a research assistant to the Crusaders for a bit. That was exciting. But then, one day, my hard hat showed up, and now, I’m doing this. But all my skills mean I won’t just be a construction worker. Unlike my mother, I don’t have to worry about the levers in my life becoming obsolete.” “So, you think I should work with Mrs. Velvet?” Even as he asked his question, he began to wonder what he might be able to get from Twilight Velvet in return. Clearly, she was a mare with reach, resources, and influence. He had need of a great many things, but lacked resources. Mrs. Velvet was a mare in need of things as well—this bunkhouse was proof of that—and he started to wonder what sort of obscure trades he might be able to make that would benefit his barony. The trouble, as he saw it, was that he could barely even conceive what a mare like Twilight Velvet might want, so he didn’t know what to offer. Which, as far as trades went, put him at a severe disadvantage. Mrs. Velvet had a better understanding of what he had to offer than he did; she knew his resources and what could be exploited. To deal with Mrs. Velvet, he would have to spend more time thinking, not as a baron, but as a calculating bureaucrat. “Want some advice?” Pulled from his thoughts, Sundance nodded. “Mrs. Velvet loves to haggle. Even if she seems angry, or put off. It’s an act. Apparently, it’s the same act that she used on her daughter and her son, Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor. When Mrs. Velvet haggles, it isn’t about what she can get from you, it’s more about getting you to do better. She’s trying to get you to think. She’ll stonewall you and manipulate you. Make you angry, if she can. Play with your emotions. She did this to my mother… something I learned in hindsight. One of the great things about my internship, I guess.” “Why haggle for something if you’re not trying to get more of.. well, whatever?” “Altruistic haggling?” The young mare adjusted her glasses, smiled, and her head bobbed as she nodded, thoughtful. “She does a lot of things that don’t make sense. At least, not to me. And she’s taught all of her tricks to Mrs. Oddbody, who’ll probably be her successor one day. Sometimes, you have to shake things up to get a new approach to work, or to even see a new approach. Ponies get settled into routine, and don’t want to try new things. Like… my mother. She was fine trading whole hours of her life, pulling a lever in exchange for bits. It’s uncomplicated. I think the haggling process stimulates new ideas, gets ponies to think about stuff they might not normally think about. I hate to say it, but most ponies aren’t great thinkers. We just follow the herd as a whole, come what may.” “I’m not a great thinker,” Sundance remarked with brutal honesty. “Are you sure about that?” the young mare asked. “Well, I…” Sundance, with his gaze focused on the adorable, nerdy mare, reconsidered. “You know, I don’t recall your name. Perhaps you told me, but I failed to remember?” “My name is Eventide Sparks—no, don’t even say it. Yes, I am aware of my name and what it means. Yes, I’ve heard it all before. It was a fad, okay? A phase that a bunch of dumb parents all inflicted upon us poor foals. Every conceivable word for evening or the start of night. My mother spent hours in the public library trying to find a name that wasn’t already popular and common. She pestered the poor librarians to no end, to hear her tell the story.” Sundance, silent, wasn’t sure how to respond. “Sunburst, Scholar of the Crystal Empire, along with his counterpart, Dim, the Scholar of Night, theorise that fad names are a manifestation of prophecy. A hallmark of destiny. Pony society went through a phase where every foal had some kind of night-based name, and not long after, Nightmare Moon returned. I like this theory, it is a good explanation for mass-stupidity.” “Huh.” Almost slack-jawed, Sundance thought about what had just been said. It blew his mind. Names as prophecy. He’d always thought of names as being made popular by characters in books, or movies. Back home in Baltimare, he knew quite a number of Darings, ponies with the name of Courageous, more than one Dauntless, Valorouses aplenty, Gallants were common, as were Resolutes, and in school he’d known a girl named Spunky—a terrible, horrible, awful name that caused her all manner of trouble. “You know,” the young mare said with a wry smile, “you’re kinda cute when you stand there, looking all stupid.” Then, raising her hoof, she gently closed Sundance’s mouth for him. Her touch was electric and Sundance, overwhelmed, wasn’t sure how to respond. In the entirety of his life, he’d never been in a situation like this one, and didn’t know the rules. Was he infatuated? What was this? Why was he reacting this way? For what reason was he smitten? Visually, she did nothing for him, but there was something appealing about her nerdy intellect, as well as her vivacious nature. But this was complicated. She was young—though adult enough to enlist and become a soldier, even though she was still of the age where she should be in secondary school. A million different thoughts raced through his mind, many of which were chased by thoughts of his mother, the mare that had raised him to do right, to be right, and to behave right. Not knowing the rules, he couldn’t fathom how to respond. Whole gaggles of girls had been brought to his barony and set free to run amok. He was no longer the loser he was in secondary school, he was a baron, a pony in a position of power, and for the first time, he gave serious thought to how that might make him attractive to some mares. His mother’s voice echoed through his skull, warning him that he’d better not take advantage of that, and do wrong. He’d even noticed more than a few fellas, as well… And so began to wonder if he too, had been noticed. Well, of course he had—Miss Sparks was noticing him right now, thus causing his state of alarm. He allowed himself to look at her, as there was no harm in looking, was there? Her eyes, a curious shade of blue-purple, were warm and animated. Her mane was the colour of fresh hay, a colour that couldn’t decide if it were yellow or green. As for her pelt, she might appear whitish at first glance, but it was whitish with a pale green tint. She was chubby, though it could be said that she was chubby in all of the right places, the best places, the places were chubbiness was welcomed. Much to his surprise, he found himself admiring and appreciating a different aesthetic than he normally prefered, and while it didn’t do much for him, he could understand the appeal of it. The chubbiness would be quite squeezable, if that was your thing, and he supposed that such a thing was inviting, in its own way. “I’ve never had a stallion look at me like that before,” she said, her voice husky and uncertain. “Plenty of colts have looked at me, and I know what they want. It’s easy to know what they want. But you… you looked at all of me, and that was quite flattering. Thank you. Look, I know I’m not a pretty mare… not that it matters to most colts my age. They’re just eager to take whatever they can get.” “Are you sure about that?” he asked, turning the tables. She was confused for a moment, but then her eyes lit up with understanding. After taking a step back, she bit her bottom lip, chewed it for a moment, and peered up at Sundance with a warm, thoughtful expression. “You might be smarter than you let on, and maybe I’m prettier than I think I am. Thank you… it’s hard to deal with colts my own age. They’ve only got one thing on their mind. Is it warm in here? It feels warm in here. Kinda stuffy. Feels like a furnace.” Suddenly, Sundance wanted to say all kinds of things—but he didn’t. She was enlisted, had obligations. He was in a position of authority, and had his own obligations. This was infatuation, he was certain of it, and while infatuation might be fun to act upon, it didn’t feel appropriate. It was a fleeting thing, a passing thing, fun to experience—but certain to cause trouble if acted upon. “I can’t have conversations with colts my own age,” she said, her voice still husky and uncertain. “They’re too distracted and want to make out. Or do… other things. It was nice being able to have an adult conversation with you, and for you to have so much restraint… I liked it. I liked it a lot. Sure is warm in here. I’ve never turned my eye on an older guy before. Maybe I should have. But not too old. That’d be creepy. Wow, it’s hot in here. Are you sweating? I’m sweating. I got the fat filly sweats, and oh my Luna, I can’t believe I just said that out loud. Why am I acting like a scatterbrained school filly?” He thought of his own days in school, his insecurities, and suspected that he had more in common with his fellow students than he might have realised. “Fat filly sweats are the worst,” Eventide Sparks muttered, mostly to herself. “Can’t sit down nowhere, as you’ll leave behind a big wet buttprint. Or worse. You have to be careful of how you sit down, and what touches what, or you’ll leave behind something worse than a big wet buttprint. Why am I still talking about this? What is this sudden verbal diarrhea I am cursed with? I just had the most wonderful adult conversation in my life, and now I’m talking about fat filly sweats. I need my head examined.” She blinked, shuffled a bit, her tail flicked from side to side, and she licked her lips. “You’re incredibly nice,” she said to Sundance, while somehow managing to stare him in the eye and avoid looking directly at him at the same time. “It was rough growing up in Canterlot, after Mrs. Velvet moved us there and got my mother a job. Canterlot has a lot of beautiful ponies, and I never felt beautiful. Mrs. Oddbody, she’s beautiful, and I tried to be like her. Put my mane up in a bun… I, ah, uh, well, you know, it’s just not as rewarding when some guy looks at you and wants you because of lust. Or desperation. Colts!” She blew a raspberry. “It’s not very fulfilling. Since you’re a guy, I feel you should know these things. When you meet the right girl, and I’m sure you will, look at her the same way you just looked at me, and things will be just fine. Great, even.” “I was a colt once,” he said to the shuffling, self-conscious young mare. “As a colt, I too was insecure. Didn’t think I was attractive. I might have had more trouble than most colts my age, because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. I was into both colts and fillies. Even now, I still don’t know which way I swing. Colts are colts though, just as fillies are fillies, and maybe you should give them a chance. We’re not so different. I think we’re all insecure and in need of reassurance. Affirmation that we’re desirable. In fact, maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. Perhaps what I need isn’t so much which direction I swing, but that somepony finds me desirable in return.” “That’s, uh, a lot to think about,” the now scared young mare replied. Sundance nodded. “That’s something I never thought of.” The young unicorn’s face crinkled with concentration and it was clear that she was now distracted. Shaking her head, she spoke, saying, “I’m always worried about being fat. Makes me mad, sometimes, that a pony looks at me and dismisses me because I’m fat, and they do so without getting to know me. Me. Me as a pony. But I think I’ve been doing the same. Judging colts because they’re colts. It’s complicated. Why does it have to be so complicated? Just when I think I have everything figured out, everything changes and nothing makes sense. But then again, colts my age really are perverts, and I’m potentially putting myself at risk and…” Her words trailed off in a sigh. He waited. “I’ve had a few colts show some interest, but I felt like it was a matter of scoring. Nothing about the situation made me feel like I was a keeper, but just a conquest. Everything about school disgusted me, which is why I dropped out and why I signed on.” “School,” Sundance said, cutting in, “is a terrible place to form opinions about ponies. Which is a lesson I need to learn myself. In school, I was an unapproachable loser. Got called queer. Was shamed for it. All because I just couldn’t talk to girls. Nothing made sense and everything was confusing. But looking back, I was surrounded by ponies every bit as insecure as I was. At least, I think so.” He took a moment to think, nodded once, and then rubbed his chin with his wing. “Canterlot is a city of pretty ponies.” Now, Eventide was looking Sundance in the eye, and not looking away at all. “Maybe some of those colts didn’t feel handsome. Right now, I don’t know if I feel insulted or not about how they saw me. Were they setting their standards low, or was I approachable? Suddenly, school seems a lot more confusing. And gossip, gossip makes everything else worse somehow. I overheard the popular fillies in home-ec talking about how Brass Bounty wanted to fronk me just so he could watch my fat butt jiggle. That absolutely destroyed me. It was all I could think about and it left me feeling like a circus freak.” Choosing his words carefully, Sundance responded, “You don’t seem that fat.” “I’ve lost a lot of weight since joining the guard. Like, half of me is gone. I think I left her back in the training yard of Canterlot Castle. Prince Gosling has standards for fitness that are totally unreasonable. You know, you’d think that Father Goose is a laid back, easy going sort, but that is a total lie. In the training yard, he’s a monster. Seriously, he’s like the worst. The absolute worst. Never sweated so much in my life. It was so gross.” It occured to Sundance that early adulthood was a time of recovery—from the damage caused by school. He could be wrong, and maybe he was; his own experiences were limited and this reduced his perceptions in ways he had trouble conceiving. Still, he could not help but feel that there was some truth to what he felt and thought right now, that as a young adult himself, he was still recovering from the bovine excrement heaped upon him during his school years. He glanced over at a bunk bed, thoughtful, and then looked at Eventide once more. She was pretty; now more so because he knew her. Or, at least he knew more about her than he did just ten minutes ago. Knowing her had changed his perceptions about her, it had made her more attractive somehow, which puzzled him. Somehow, knowledge changed his vision, how he saw things with his eyes. While he liked strong, physically well-muscled bodies, he found that he quite liked Eventide’s body, though he had trouble understanding why. Perhaps because he understood that it was a work in progress, or maybe for other reasons. But talking to her, getting to know her, this drastically changed how he saw her, and he was left mystified by the change. Even though he liked what he saw, he did not act upon his feelings. It was enough to appreciate it for what it was, and to like Eventide for what she was. A pretty, somewhat troubled, socially awkward nerd that existed on the precarious cusp of marehood. Infatuation probably also had an effect upon what he saw, how he perceived things, and while she was desirable in weird ways, she was not irresistible. Overall, Sundance rather liked where he found himself at the moment, and he could not help but feel that he had grown somehow. And that his mother would approve of his behaviour. “It’s so weird,” Eventide said to Sundance. “I feel like I can talk to you about anything. This has never happened before. I always thought it was just a throw-away line in trashy romance novels, but it’s true. There are ponies that you can talk to about anything. It’s pretty obvious that we’re into each other, and while it might be fun to see what happens, it would also be foolish.” He nodded. “But it sure would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Again, he nodded. “I have a duty to my country. To the Gringineers. As much as I’d like to see where this would go, I’m smart enough to see why this won’t work. Any mare that would ditch her duties would make a terrible baroness. Right now, I’m having all kinds of silly, girlish thoughts of things I’d like to do, or be doing, and what do you know, most of them involve you in some way. Including an athletic fitness program, which is really, really weird. I’ve never felt that way about anypony.” This time, Sundance did not nod in response, but blushed. “Can friendship survive the crush that started it?” she asked. “I don’t know,” he replied, not experienced enough about life to answer. “I’d like think that it can,” she said, hopeful. “Never felt like this before. It’d be a real shame to lose touch with the pony who caused it. Though, I suppose this sort of thing happens every day, and ponies do lose touch. Maybe first real crushes don’t matter. But this feels so important. Then again, that might be the nature of crushes.” Saddened, though he could not say why, Sundance sighed. “There’s only one way this can end, I guess.” Grimacing, her eyes flinty, Eventide rushed forward with incredible, remarkable speed, invaded Sundance’s space in the way that only a soldier could, and stretching out her neck to the point where it popped several times, she planted a quick kiss on the corner of Sundance’s jaw. Stunned, he failed to react. Before he could recover, she was gone. She slipped out the door with the same speed that she had ambushed him with. He thought about going after her, but then reminded himself that she had departed for a reason. Being alone, together, in the bunkhouse was probably a bad idea, doubly so if the feelings of infatuation progressed into something else. Eventide Sparks; a name he would remember. And a friend he hoped to keep.