//------------------------------// // Chapter the Fourth // Story: Lending Things // by SilverEyedWolf //------------------------------// Coal huffed as he counted the stitches again, hurling them away as he confirmed his fear. "How the fuck do you even go from twenty-five stitches to forty-two?" he yelled after the gray yarn, cradling his masked face in his hands afterward with a sigh. The tangle didn't answer. The bell at the front of his shop, however, let out a small jingle as it was disturbed from its rest by the large door beneath it. Looking up, Coal noted the vibrant hair atop of pinkish-red eyes and a sky blue coat. "Looking for a pair of cursed knitting needles?" he asked, nearly pleadingly. The pony blinked at him, confused thoroughly, and their mouth cracked open to let out a half-formed, "What?" He still wasn't sure if it was a mare or a stallion. "I just said 'Welcome to the store'," he quickly muttered. "My name's Coal. Looking for anything in particular today?" He glanced over at the trail of yarn that led to a dark gray skein on his countertop. "Craft supplies?" "Uh, no," said the pony with a scrunch of their rounder face. "I was told that this place had some neat old stuff. I was wondering if you have some old stuff that used to belong to the Wonderbolts?" "The what?" he asked. "Ya' know, the Wonderbolts?" she replied, rolling her eyes. "Who?" Coal asked, his tone slightly too confused to be completely serious. "The elite flying group with ties to the E.U.P Guards of Equestria? The first ponies dispatched when you need speed and precision? The best and strongest fliers in the known worlds?" she deadpanned. Coal reached up and scratched his head. "... Where?" he asked. The pegasus made a disbelieving noise in her throat and her eyes widened, one eyelid flicking up and down quickly as she stared at the creature on the other side of the room. He stared at her for another second before shrugging. "Yeah, figured that one was too far." He reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out a thin silver rectangle. "What kind of stuff you looking for? Out of print posters, old action figures?" Snorting, the pegasus made her way up to the counter before looking around the rest of the shop. "I dunno, Twilight and Rarity just said you have some cool junk and I thought maybe you might have picked up some of their old equipment or something?" "Ah," said Coal, nodding as he brought up his ledger. "You're after the lore items then. You want the story behind the memorabilia, not just something with a logo on it." She slowly sounded out the long word, silently, before shaking her head. "Uh, sure. Just, something cool." Coal stared at her for exactly the length of time something would need for an eyebrow to be raised. "I've got a 'The Protomares' record in the back if you just want something cool," he said, raising a paw and pointing at the door behind the counter. "And a pair of aviators signed by Raul Panther the Third. Those're pretty cool." The blue mare scrunched her face again. "Who? No, just, augh-" She shook her head, clearing her mind and taking a breath. "Do you. Have any. Cool old. Wonderbolts things." Coal leaned forward over the counter, propping the bottom of his mask in his paw as his elbow rested on the counter. "You're a stubborn one, aren'tcha," he slowly asked, gazing through the mask at the mare. The mare let out a snort, glaring into the dark slits of the shopkeeper's eyes. The stared at each other for a minute before Coal shrugged. Reaching beneath his register, he pulled a massive book from beneath the counter and started flipping through it, searching for something in the lines of neat, precise ink. "How old are you..." Coal started to ask, looking back up at the mare, trailing off as he looked at her. "Cool old stuff," he muttered, his gaze returning to the book as his digits continued to play along the lines and through the pages. The mare sat in front of the counter, waiting... well, waiting quietly at least, her hair bobbing as she looked around the shop. "What's that thing?" she asked, pointing towards a strange silver cylinder on a stand to the side. "Scroll case," he muttered, glancing at it before looking back at the book. "Keeps your scrolls dry. Looks fancy." "Oh," she murmured, looking around the store again. "How about that?" she asked, pointing towards something that looked like a bat skeleton with a weird head on it. "Model pterodactyl," he said, barely looking up. "Ancient being that used to be around long, long, loooooooong before ponies." "Oh," she said again, hesitating on the skeleton before looking around once more. "What about that?" She looked back to Coal, only to find his masked face a few inches from hers. She blinked, flinching away heavily. When her eyes opened again, Coal was still where he had been a moment ago, looking at her over the book. "Something cool," he said with a chill in his voice. "Something probably old. Almost definitely not something of the Wonderbolts', though." Her ears folded back, and she turned away from the minotaur, a large frown on her face. He watched her for another moment, before returning to his book, flipping through it towards the end. After a minute, he cleared his throat. "I've found a couple of things you may be interested in," he said, finally looking up from the tome of his own accord. "One is a leather bracelet, worn by one of the founding Wonderbolts. The other is an old helmet, made of gold and steel, worn by the guards who would become the Wonderbolts. It's from about eighty or so years before their founding, though," he finished, looking over the counter at the mare. "How much is the bracelet?" she asked, reaching over her shoulder and pulling a large bag of bits from its place under her wing joint. "Well," he said slowly, "it belonged, once again, to one of the founding members of the renowned crew of fliers known now as the Wonderbolts." He drew a circle on the counter in front of him, placing his paw flat over it before flipping his hand up and displaying a thick brown band that unfolded from his palm to nearly half a meter long. The rainbow-haired mare quickly went to snag it off the counter, her foreleg moving as quick as a released arrow. "Yeooow!" she yelled, mostly in surprise, as a bolt of magic shot down from the ceiling and into the frog of her hoof, zapping her hard enough to make her tail stand straight out and causing her to drop her bit bag. Coal clucked his tongue towards her. "Careful moving too fast like that," he groused, moving the leather thong back towards him. "The anti-shoplifting runes will think you're..." He paused oddly, cocking his head towards the mare. "Up to something," he finished. "I just wanna look at it!" she half-yelled at him, rubbing the sore part of her hoof against her chest fur. "Then ask, oh impatient one," he said, holding the flat cord out to her. She gingerly reached out and took the cord in both of her hooves, taking a long moment to look over the long piece of leather. "This doesn't look much like a bracelet," she groused, spreading her hooves and making a show of measuring out the cord. It was well over the length of one of her forelegs, and she could honestly almost stretch her legs out completely. "Well, ponies in the older days were larger, longer-legged and thicker too," he said, reaching out and gently pulling one of her hooves towards the counter. He started looping the bracelet over and over on her leg, reaching from her fetlock up to just over her elbow and tying off both ends. Stretching out and moving the limb, she found the strap to be very flexible and comfy against her leg. Turning it over, she saw a series of old runes stamped into the work that was quite misaligned, barely even on the same side of her foreleg. "Wassat say?" she asked, nodding to the old letters. Looking over the runes, the minotaur took a moment to pull up a piece of paper, scribbling on it as he read over the runes. "With this here, that means, u as in oo... black spaced white spots passion..." He looked over the notes. "Star anger?" he said, unsure. "Star Fury!?" she asked, once again excitedly looking over the runes. "She was the second captain of the Wonderbolts, after Sky Ranger had to retire after pulling a wing muscle!" She pulled the leg back and started looking over the straps, and the runes that were so deeply punched into the leather. "I'll give you eighty bits," she said, picking up the purse and opening it. "Now, hold-" Coal started to say until she blew a strand of her hair out of her face and plopped the bag down on the counter. "A hundred bits," she said, giving a small smile and a cocked eyebrow. "Listen," Coal tried again, the smile falling off of her face. "One twenty-five, and not a bit more," she said, forcefully this time, her teeth almost audibly clipping off the last of her sentence. "You're not-" he started, only to have her stand on one of her hind legs and push the purse towards him. "Look, there's at least a hundred and fifty bits in here," she said, smiling and nodding as she said, "I'll just wear this out, thank you, bye." She turned and started towards the door, walking at a trot and almost bouncing through the air like a certain pink pony. After a moment, she stopped, walking slower and slower, until she reached a stop. Looking behind herself, she saw she was, maybe, four hoofsteps away from the counter. "What the," she muttered, flicking out her wings and taking flight, speeding her way towards the door, reaching out with her hooves and pushing herself. Slowly her wings started feeling leaden, her forelegs drooping, sweat pouring down her face as she tried her hardest to make any sort of headway towards the entrance of the shop. She fluttered towards the ground, splaying out on the wooden floor as she ceased the buzzing of her wings, drinking in the heavy air around her as she tried to look around herself to mark her progress. She'd moved about an inch from where she'd been. She heard a metallic scraping behind her, and she pushed her head through the dense air to look at the source of the noise. Coal sat on the counter, his thin legs crossed as one of his arms stretched out to his side to support him, the other holding a silver box with a small flame on top of it. Slowly he held the flame to a small white stick of paper leading to the slash that was his mouth. "What are you?" she slurred, her tongue feeling heavy as the words drifted through the air. Ignoring her, Coal flicked the silver box closed with an audible snap before placing it within the vest he carried. Reaching behind himself, he seemed to feel around under his counter before pulling out two pieces of wood. One was a cube with a hinge running around the width of the hunk, and the other was some strange square with a handle leading out of one side. Jumping soundlessly down from the counter, he moved to her front and gently pushed her hair to one side of her face. She shivered twice as he knelt in front of her. The first time was from just how burning hot his digits were as he moved her hair. The second was when he unclasped the box and dunked the other piece of wood into it, before placing the freezing chunk to her head. As he pulled it away, she noted a strange design carved into the surface that had just touched her. Closing the box, he held both items in his left paw before he grabbed her leg with the bracelet in his right paw. Quickly he ran his palm over the leather, the strip disappearing as he moved over it. With a small flourish he was finished, both hands completely empty and all three objects gone. Walking over to the door, he opened it and looked expectantly at her. "Good day, Miss Dash," he said, reaching out and making a scooping motion through the air towards her that finished with his paw outside the door. She felt a soft force gather beneath her rump that moved under her, and then she was being rapidly moved towards the exit. Just before she hit the portal she felt all of the force beneath and around her vanish, and she found herself launched into the air just in front of the shop. Quickly flapping her wings she caught herself, soaring through the air and circling into a slightly rough landing. Quickly she snorted, feeling the anger coursing through her at the rough treatment as she planted her hooves and started stomping towards the door. As she moved, she felt the cold mark on her head start to heat up, and as she neared the door she felt more and more force being applied to her forehead, as though she were a filly and the shop was a bully with longer forelegs. "You'll regret this!" she yelled at the door, still ten feet away. To her surprise the door opened, and Coal stood there with his blank mask just gazing at her. Without a word, he tossed two things just in front of her, within easy reach even with the strange mark on her forehead. The first thing she noticed was her coin purse, looking unmolested and plump as it had been to begin with. The second thing was a pair of metal sticks with dark gray fabric stretched between them. She looked up at him, bewildered. "Banned," he said, holding his arms up so they crossed in front of his chest. "May your yarn always become tangled." He turned and slammed the door behind him.