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// Laying the Cards Out 
// Story: Christmas Makes a Human Rather Moody 
// by Heartland Picker 
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Ben started to wake up, upon which the hangover hit him immediately. Ugh, why do I do this to myself? It's like I'm on the freeway in Tulsa surrounded by those ghetto punks playing that hip-hop with the bass at full blast. If I keep this up I'll end up in an early grave. His head was throbbing to the point that holding it in his right palm was just enough to take the edge off of the symptoms from the all-too-familiar hangover. He kept his eyes shut as he very slowly rose from his bed. When his feet his the floor, he slowly became aware that something was off.

Okay, the mattress is sitting too low and the floor is hard with a bit of a chill. Obviously not at home. He kept his eyes to a squint just to avoid that extra aggravation that came with the morning light. Strangely, the room's light was still fairly dim despite the morning being as bright as ever for mid-December. He went ahead and opened his eyes to normal to which his suspicions were confirmed. He looked over to his right and noticed that there was a pitcher of water on the bedside table. Oh thank God! He went for it and started to chug it like he had just been in the desert for three days, not even bothering to come up for air until he had downed at least two quarts. After heaving a couple of breaths, he paused to look at the floor. "I owe either Starlight or Twilight big time for this one." He went in for another drag.

He wasn't expecting an immediate response. "Umm, we're right here, so you're welcome," Twilight's said quietly.

Ben almost dropped the pitcher to do a spit-take. He looked to his left to see Starlight and Twilight sitting five feet away with concerned looks on their faces. He only barely noticed this as the hangover decided to poke fun at his foolish motions of haste. "Oooohhhhh, this is bad. Ugh." He moved to hold himself steady again.

Starlight, sensing that he might end up sick, decided to intervene. "Woah, take it easy there Murdoch." She rushed to hold him steady. "Now hold still." Her horn lit up in a baby blue aura that had arced towards Ben's left temple. After five seconds, his balance had been restored and he no longer felt like someone had dropped a steel ladder on top of his skull, thus preventing his mounting wish to empty the contents of his gut.

His mind was now full of questions. Did Starlight just administer a hangover cure? How much did I drink last night? Hell, how rowdy did I get last night? How come- his mind came to a halt. Wait, I get obnoxious when I get that drunk. Yet they don't seem all that mad, just..... worried. Not good. "What's wrong you two? Why are you looking at me like that? I'd expect you two to be pretty pissed off, whatever I did last night."

An explosion rang out from the floor below, followed by an angry scream. "WHERE IS THAT NEANDERTHAL!?!?!? I'LL HAVE HIS HEAD FOR HIS BOORISH NONSENSE, THAT PIG!" Twilight now had an alarmed look on her face. Oh horseapples! We need to get Rarity under control. Her fury will not be the least bit helpful here. "Starlight, stay here. I need to do damage control." With that, the young princess disappeared in a lavender flash.

Starlight remained at his side with her hoof resting gently on his leg. They stayed like that for a moment until Ben needed to get up. "Sorry Starlight, but I need to piss. Excuse me." With that she moved away in total silence to let him head for the bathroom. As he was heading over, the cacophony of Rarity's demands were continuing until Twilight had used the Royal Canterlot voice, after which there was dead silence followed by words too faint for Ben to make out. The fact that 'neanderthal' was quoted clearly means that she was mad at me. What did Twilight say to get her quiet? After he had made it to the toilet, he remembered his nightmare.

"It is regretful that such pain can even exist in a single being......"

Oh no, now I remember. The imagery that his mind conjured up sent chills down his spine. His hands were tremoring beyond his conscious control. Luna had told him he needed help, but it didn't seem right to tell them now. Shit. I don't want to burden them during their Christmas, all that would do is dampen their spirits. After washing his hands he moved to splash water on his face. This did practically nothing for the shaking. Dear God, I need to go before they have a basketcase to deal with.

Ben Murdoch, despite his maturity, was immediately reminded that reality has a way of throwing a wrench into life. When he opened the door, all three mares were waiting for him patiently with sad, worried looks (although Rarity's was laced with a hint of confusion). Damnit. He couldn't help feeling bad for whatever led to these faces, and couldn't shake the feeling that this was likely his own fault. "Um, sorry about whatever mess I caused, and thanks for looking after me...… again." He moved to head out.

Twilight took to the air to head him off. "You're not leaving yet. We need to talk." She flew behind him to the right and nudged him with her snout. Once back in the bedroom, all three mares followed in with Rarity closing the door behind them all. "Take a seat, Ben."

Ben did as he was told, after which Twilight softly dropped to the ground to take a seat with the other two equines. They sat there for a good five minutes, different thoughts circulating in their heads. Twilight spoke again. "Ben, we know that you haven't been yourself for the past month. In the events of the last couple of days, you've become particularly rash. There's clearly something that's bothering you, and we want to help. However, we can't do that if you don't tell us. What's wrong?"

Ben started shaking again, and his eyes betrayed his struggle to open up about the state of his mind and soul. How can they understand? They have no problem with mingling with other species, but it's so wrong. Even if we weren't the only sentient species, it wouldn't work like they think. Blurring the lines only makes the mind more lost. "It's complicated."

With his head still down, he noticed that someone had placed a hoof on his leg. Starlight had moved in at some point while his eyes were downcast, deep in thought. "Ben, nopony has seen you since Nightmare Night. Then we heard about what happened the other day with Rose, and we were ready to rip your ears off for that."

This only served to make his head drop further in shame. Twilight then spoke up. "When we found you at the bar last night, you were pretty far gone. We've seen you drink before, but not to that extreme. There was no way that you would process anything that we had to say to you, so we figured it would be best to bring you back here to sleep it off." Twilight then pulled out the scroll from Luna. "I was planning to give you a rude awakening until this came." Ben recognized the seal on it. His face couldn't have looked more defeated if he had tried. There was no way out of this.

His memory kicked in again: For understanding to exist, one must relate their concerns to their friends. It was time to fess up.

He began to speak. "Ladies, I'm sorry that you got dragged into this. I was hoping that I'd be able to deal with this on my own once the holiday season kicked in, as I doubt you would get it." He then became disgusted as he recalled the night before. "When I got home from a failed hunt the other day, Rose was on the front step of my cabin..... again. She asked if she could come in to 'talk'." He was sneering at this point. "I figured I better play nice with her since it's Christmastime, so I let her in. I'd put my guns away for the day and was about to remove my winter garb when she came in to 'assist' me. I told her I was fine, but she wouldn't have it. However, while she was helping, she was sneaking whiffs of my clothes. Ugh, creepy. I asked her to just go wait on the couch and I'd be in shortly." 

Realizing his anger was starting well up again, he clenched at the mattress to reel it in. "I brought in some cuts of leftover oak and ash to put on the fireplace. What I saw when I walked in was, well..... I'd rather not speak of what I saw, but Rose was getting desperate to persuade me. You've known her longer, so you might be able to piece it together. All I could think was 'yeah, this has to stop'. I basically told her to cut the shit because I wasn't interested in that kind of thing. She argued otherwise, and the 'conversation' that followed broke the last of my patience."

Two nights prior.....

Ben was standing in the doorway, absolutely furious at Rose's bull-headed attitude. He was barely holding the reigns of his temper. "I've told you before, I don't go for this sort of thing. My answer will not change regardless of what you try."

The flower mare tried to turn it around on him again. "Aw, come on you whip-poor-will. It's not good for anyone to be lonely for Hearth's Warming. You've already won me over, so I'll keep you happy and warm for the rest of your life. Now how about a glass of mulled dandelion wine while you sing me a lullaby, sweetie?"

Ben snapped, which made the rest of his words gravely. "I've had enough of this shit. Let's get one thing clear: I will never sleep with you or any other creature on this planet! It's disgusting that you mares would even consider this! The last thing I need from anyone is temptation! I posted that sign on the door for a good reason, ya floozy!"

Rose was upright and shaking with tears threating to fall, finally crumbling under Ben's stubborn refusal to her wiles. "B-but I-" she stammered. "I-I thought y-you were-"

Unfortunately the man of the house wasn't finished. "If you're so damn bent on getting your rocks off, go find one of your own kind! You ain't gettin' it from me! Now GET OUT!!"

Rose didn't need told again. It wouldn't matter what anypony did: he would never lay with anyone. She gathered up all of her things as fast as she could and ran out the door. She couldn't help what came out of her mouth while she was galloping through town. "How could I ever expect an ape to be a gentlecolt! Wah-ha-ha-haaaaa!!!" She locked the door to her home and threw everything off to the side while throwing herself on her bed to cry for the rest of the night.

Present day.

Rarity sat there in total shock, now starting to process what Twilight had said in the foyer. "Rarity, your little matchmaking scheme may have set this whole thing off!" Only now did she realize that telling him off would do nothing for his opinion on romance or make it worse. "Ben, I am so sorry. But we have to know: do you simply think that a relationship with us would not be acceptable to others? You've seen evidence against that fear already."

Ben, however, was not in the mood to be defensive after thinking about how rude he was to a guest. Instead, he opted to enlighten them. "Girls, you've asked before why I wouldn't ever consider the idea. Well, I'll explain. Back home, my species is the only one that is sentient."

While this statement of fact slowly donned on Starlight and Twilight, Rarity was still a bit uncertain. "Why should that stop you here? We feel, speak, and think with just as much complexity as you do. Where's the problem?"

Ben decided to fall back on what little he had left of his faith: truth. "Rarity, I'll tell you a story that explains my foul demeanor over the holiday, as it's related. The sapience of my species came at a grave cost. We became aware of the difference between right and wrong in an unnatural manner, thus our very souls were doomed to eternal death once our physical forms had expired. That was until a savior was born by divine intervention to offer repentance for our wrongdoing, thus granting us eternal salvation."

The mares were confused now. Twilight was the first to come around. "Go on."

Ben started again. "Our people are aware of a lone, divine, almighty creator God who brought all life into existence. He made the heavens and the Earth from nothing. When he made the first humans, the man Adam and woman Eve, he instructed that they not eat a certain fruit that would grant them the knowledge of good and evil. You know what, they were seduced by an evil being and did it anyway. They and all of their offspring for the rest of eternity were cursed with total mortality for it."

Now it was Starlight's turn to ask a question. "Ben, what does this have to do with Hearth's Warming?"

He decided to address this. "We have a holiday called Christmas rather than Hearth's Warming. God decided that after a few thousand years that humanity needed a savior to absolve them of the sin of Adam and Eve. By divine intervention, this savior named Jesus was not stained by sin: he was born pure so that He would ultimately absolve us from sin. Christmas celebrates his arrival along with the path to forgiveness and life eternal.

"Sin is still problematic, but Jesus gave us the way to be absolved from it. Interspecies relationships are a grave form of sin, as it warps the mind while removing the chance of any natural offspring being possible. Being stranded, it's not worth that risk of eternal damnation. It's practically the same as spitting on the face of someone who has forgiven you for a past wrong."

All three processed this to an extent. Ben then spoke again. "There's something else. When God created Adam, he said that it wasn't right for Adam to be alone, so he attempted to make a suitable partner for him, thus he ended up creating all the other species that roam our planet. Though Adam would acknowledge them, none were suitable as life companions. Thus God had to remove a rib from Adam while he was sleeping and with it he created a woman. When Adam awoke, he said: 'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. They had not eaten the forbidden fruit at the time, so Adam was not blinded by the persuasion of evil at the time. That's why interspecies romance is a dangerous idea."

At this point, his lashing out at everypony made so much more sense to Twilight. He wasn't willing to go against a dogma that was not only predetermined by his faith, but also validated by nature. This alone caused Twilight's face to falter into sorrow. Also, both Ben and whomever he ended up with would eventually have a fallout, and both will end up hurt forever. They'll both still feel lonely in the long run. Starlight wasn't in much better shape, understanding how lonely he likely felt, almost like when Sunburst moved away to Canterlot when she was a foal.

He spoke again, "Now, before I wound up here, I was in a serious relationship with a nice girl. I was kicking around the idea of proposing to her, but landing here basically threw that out the window with the bathwater. When Christmas came around, I was immediately reminded of what was lost. No family, no practice of faith in its fullness, and no more chances to set things right with our Maker. It's been hard, so I started shutting myself in to avoid spreading the gloom to the community, and started drinking hard just to deaden the loneliness."

It was too much for everypony. Everyone in the room was now spilling out tears in silence for the next five minutes. Though the sun shined a bit brightly into the room, the room felt colder than ever.

Starlight, however, had a lace of anger in her sadness. Being the bold and blunt one, she grabbed Ben's face with her hooves to make him look her in the eyes. "Ben, I don't know where you get the idea that we wouldn't understand what's bothering you, but you're dead wrong. We may not be human, but we also feel pain and sorrow. I won't go into as much detail, but I know exactly how you feel: completely isolated. That scares you because you're the only one of your kind to exist here, and it worries you that you'll end up in the wrong place when it's all said and done. Well guess what? We won't let you suffer through this alone! You're our friend, and we'll stick by you no matter what happens. Understood?"

Rarity came out of her funk after that. "Starlight is right! You shouldn't have to suffer through difficult times alone, it'll drive you insane! As for romance, your stance is understandable. I will never bother you about it again."

To this, all three mares moved in to hug him and openly bawled their eyes out. Ben was about to break earlier, but this outpouring of sympathy and support calmed his nerves entirely. Thus he no longer felt any reason to fight the tears, and he began to weep himself. "Thanks girls. You're too good to me." They stayed like that until the cries had all subsided. Then a thought crossed Ben's mind. "Well, I guess I need to forgive someone else. I hope Rose doesn't mind seeing me after what I said to her."

Twilight then spoke. "Yes, Ben. That would be the right call, but for now, just stay here with us. You need this."

Ben wouldn't argue with that, as it had been a long time since he had received a genuine hug from anyone, at least in the physical world. However, one thing that all halfway-civilized beings tend to forget is how nature likes to mess with a good thing. Thus, the liquor from the night before decided to play a specially noisy tune to ruin the moment.

PPPPPLPPLPPLPLLTTTT!!!!!!

The noise was alarming for everyone. Then the girls took a light sniff, which they immediately regretted. They yelled in unison "OH CELESTIA!!" Everypony teleported out just to get out of the newly-made natural gas chamber.

Ben was unable to apologize for the breach of etiquette, as he was laughing himself senseless.