My Farrier Lady, Sunspot

by Georg

1. Wistful Opening Title

“It’s a sure thing, Nails.”

“Sure, it’s a sure thing.” Silver Nails nodded skeptically while his bright blue eyes kept track of the serving mare on the other side of the bar. “You’ve told me about sure things before. Like betting on Silver Streak at the Wonderbolt Derby.”

“That’s different,” said Golden Hammer with a huff of breath that blew his blonde forelock up, only to have it fall back down over his eyes again. “This is important. We may never get this opportunity again. If Dad sells the shop to another farrier, the contract goes with it, and we’ll be working under somepony for the rest of our lives instead of standing on our own four hooves.”

“Speaking of under…” Nails continued to watch the slim pegasus as she wove her way through the bar clientele, which made him pay Hammer little or no attention at all. The young unicorn was well on his way to his nightly flirtive approach and likewise nightly crash, but after watching Pirouette distribute several beers to her customers and head back to the bartender for another load, Nails turned back to Hammer with a sigh.

“Look, Ham. This is our off time. We missed the Summer Sun Celebration last night, so I think we deserve it. I don’t want to think about work, I don’t want to think about shoes, or bits, or engraving enchantments, or anything other than—” Nails jerked his horned head in the direction of the bar where the young pegasus server was picking beers off the counter.

“Point taken.” Golden Hammer scooped up his beer and took a measured sip to make it last. He always limited himself to a single tankard, or two if the kabobs were over-peppered. “So, did you want to order something to eat before she shoots you down in flames, or after?”

“Very funny.” The two stallions watched the pegasus barmaid weave her way over to a table filled with burly cargo stevedores from the airship docks, who had most certainly not restricted themselves to a single tankard each. Pirouette managed the impressive task of sliding a half-dozen tankards onto the table without spilling a drop while sidestepping three different grasping hooves, then glided over where Hammer and Nails were watching.

“How are you two gentlecolts doing this evening?” she asked. “And before you answer that, Nails, I will not walk by again, or stay to mend your broken heart, or anything having to do with your procreative propensities other than to have Stout over there put a skewer up somewhere you really don’t want skewered if you bug me even in the slightest.”

Hammer held a hoof over his friend’s mouth. “Two kabobs, two more beers, and an apology on behalf of Nails, since if he gets his jaw started, he’s going to wind up eating one of these mugs, I suppose. Rough night, m’lady?”

Giving a frustrated and very unladylike snort, Pirouette tossed her head to get her long yellow mane to lie flat against her neck. “The Summer Sun Celebration last night was epic, and I’m still exhausted. Then we have payday at the docks, too. It’s always a pain in the plot, but none of the off-duty guards from the palace have dropped by yet to balance things out. Still, Stout’s been cooking kabobs like crazy and the tips aren’t too bad tonight.” The young mare gave Hammer a speculative look from under her untrimmed bangs. “You sure you want that second beer, big guy? If things get rough tonight, there’s no guards around, and I’m pretty sure Stout doesn’t want you breaking a few of the patrons.”

A side effect of his being nearly twice average size made everypony think Golden Hammer was violent when drunk, or at least that was their safe assumption. In fact, bar fights tended to get very peaceful when he would saunter over to the combatants and request that they take their discussion outside. Sometimes, the startled stallions would even pick up the broken bits of furniture they had just created and apologize to everypony in the vicinity, even the unconscious ones. And if things at the bar did get nasty, spending nearly every day at the forge since he was a foal had given Hammer enough strength that he was extraordinarily careful about punching or kicking anypony who seemed fragile.

Thankfully, that precision of focus was his talent, although he preferred to use it on shoes.

“It’s a special occasion,” said Hammer, still keeping his large hoof over Nails’ large mouth. “Dad announced his upcoming retirement yesterday, and I’m trying to convince Nails that we should buy him out and be our own bosses. We’ve got the guard contract and Dad’s regular customer base, and we’ve worked there since we could walk, so it should just be a matter of changing the sign.”

Nails shook his head, although his eyes never left the serving mare.

“Okay, maybe a little more complicated,” admitted Hammer. “By the way, how’s the patch we did on your rear hoof doing? Still solid?”

“Yes, indeed.” Pirouette turned around and lifted a delicate hind hoof to place it almost on the table. “Still firm, tight, and hard.”

Hammer applied a little more pressure to the hoof he was holding over Nails’ mouth.

“That’s good to hear. If it gives you any trouble—” Hammer lifted his head to peer over at where the drunken cargo stevedores had gathered around another table “—or if you have to kick too many drunks, just drop by the shop again. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

Pirouette giggled while returning to a four-hooved stance. “I thought that was your partner’s saying.” She flicked her tail at Nails on the way back up to the bartender, and once she was out of earshot, Hammer moved his hoof.

“She’s hot for me,” said Nails.

“In your mind,” said Hammer. “Speaking of small objects…” He nodded in the direction of the drunk, who had made their way over to another table where a young earth pony was engaging them in the same way attractive young mares dealt with drunk males since the dawn of salted alcohol.

“It’s been a long, long day at work,” she snapped in a much fiercer voice than the bubblegum-pink coat and maroon mane made the young mare appear. “All I want to do is drink my beer and put my hooves up for a few minutes. Alone,” she added in a lower voice closer to a feral growl.

“Hey, babe. We can be alone together.” One of the burly ponies slipped into the seat next to hers and put a hoof around her shoulder. “Just me and my mates.”

The pink mare made to leave, only for the heavyset earth pony to push her back down into the seat with a thud.

Hammer stood up.

“Excuse me, gentlecolts,” he announced, taking several long, slow strides in their direction. “I believe the lady said she wanted to be alone.”

“Buzz off,” snarled the seated stevedore without even looking away from the young mare. His buddies did look up, and although most sober ponies might have taken a step back at the sight of Golden Hammer looming over them, sobriety had long since become a vague and blurry memory to them.

“I don’t need your help,” said the young mare. She swatted away a misplaced hoof from one of the affectionate crowd and tried to get up again before the heavyset one reached out and—

Hammer had seen it before, and never wanted to see it again. There would be a struggle. A blow from the young mare. A retaliatory blow by the drunken pony, even if he did not mean to. His mates would jump to his defense, and when Hammer dove into the scrum to keep the young mare from losing a tooth or worse, there would be… trouble.

Instead, Golden Hammer reared up, then dropped both forehooves onto the bar floor in a massive blow that crumpled floorboards and shook the building.

Everything stopped, which was just what he wanted.

“We’ve got a hero here, chums,” growled the heavyset stevedore. “Come to fight for your frill, big guy?”

Hammer nodded, but held up a hoof before his prospective opponent could say anything. “Not in here. Too expensive. Lots of breakables.”

Like all of you.

He turned and nodded at the back door. “The alley.”

“You’re on, fatso.” The drunken stevedores streamed by, bumping into each other and giving high-hoofs in anticipation of the upcoming fight, with Hammer striding along behind them right up to the alley door.

Which he slammed closed, locked, and walked back to his table.

“I swear, Nails, they get dumber every year.”

Silver Nails nodded, but the mare over at the table was staring at the two of them like they had just sprouted extra heads. “What are you DOING?” She stormed over to the table, looking more dangerous than the noisy drunks outside, beating on the bar’s back door. “I had things perfectly under control!”

Hammer looked at the smallish mare, taking in her bright pink coat and narrowed violet eyes before looking to the front of the bar where Stout was locking the front door and flipping over the sign.

“I sent Pirouette to get the guards,” said the heavyset owner. “If those losers stick around the street and make trouble, they’ll get hauled off. Sorry about that, Miss Sunspot. Normally, it’s a little quieter around here this early in the evening.”

“Sunspot?” Silver Nails rose from his seat and bowed. “A beautiful name for a beautiful—”

“Oh, can it, you twit!” snapped the furious mare. “My first night free from work in ages, and you two have to butt into my business! Who do you think you are?”

Hammer touched his chest with one large hoof. “Golden Hammer, ma’am, and this young upstart is my partner at the forge, Silver Nails. I’m sorry if we disturbed you.”

The mare paused with her mouth open to snap at them again, then settled back down on her haunches and glowered, adding a vicious frown when the sound of hooves pounding on the front door echoed through the bar. “They’re going to break something to get in here, you know.”

“This place used to be a city guard station,” countered Hammer. “My grandfather forged the hinges and the door reinforcements, then Nails’ father put the enchantments on them. If they can break in the doors, I’ll eat them.”

“We’ll eat them,” added Nails, who had moved up next to Hammer for moral reinforcement against the mare’s penetrating gaze.

Sunspot took a deep breath and became a little less red around the face. “You could have at least let me bust that one blowhard across the nose,” she grumbled.

He almost responded with a flippant remark, but something made him hold back his words. It may have been Nails’ hoof connecting with his shin, which gave the suave unicorn stallion the opportunity to speak first.

“As much as I am sure you could have handled yourself, Miss Sunspot, I believe my good friend Hammer was simply trying to reduce the potential damage to those shoes of yours, because they seem a little delicate to be breaking over heads. Plus there was the potential damage to our favorite watering hole.”

Stout Flagon choose that moment to draw attention to himself by clearing his throat over where he was examining the earlier broken floorboards. He caught Hammer’s eyes, gave a long, slow shake of his head, then rolled his eyes while calling out to them in his best formal voice. “On that note, gentlecolts, I will overlook the damage you did this time given it was the only injury that occurred. Now while we wait for the guard to show up, can I get anyone anything?”

Nails was quick to respond.

“Another round of beers and some kabobs if you please, Stout. Pirouette never did get us our order before the trouble started. Also Miss Sunspot, if you want to be better prepared to wallop drunks, I suggest dropping by Golden Hammer and I’s farrier shop, the soon to be named Hammer and Nails, and we’ll get you set you up with the finest set of brawling shoes in Equestria, guaranteed not to crack, break, or bend on the hardest heads.”

Hammer nodded. He found it easier to keep his mouth shut when dealing with female customers, which let Nails speak twice as much. There was something about this mare’s eyes, though. Dad had always spoken of ‘violet eyes to die for’ as the mark of a perfect mare, even though he had inherited his mother’s hazel eyeshade. This slight earth pony mare most certainly had that shade of violet, and if Nails kept pushing the way he was, the ‘to die for’ was going to most likely be his friend.

“M’lady,” said Hammer in his most polite rumble. “We’d be honored if you were to sit with us this evening. I’m not much for being beaten on, so if you’re wanting to get rid of your frustrations in that fashion, you could just keep on walking out the door, but I’d rather sit with you and talk.”

“We would like to sit and talk with you this evening,” said Nails, who obviously recognized his partner’s efforts to slow him down as assistance instead of competition. “As long as we don’t talk about shoes.”

“Why not shoes?” asked the mare with a narrowing of her dangerous eyes.

“Well…” Hammer considered the question and jerked his head slightly in the direction of the bar, a motion that Nails picked up on perfectly and moved to assist the barkeep with the kabob delivery. Once the two of them were relatively alone, Hammer lowered his voice and added, “This is Away. It’s away from work, away from problems, and away from all of the frustrations that build up over the day. We don’t stop by here more than once or twice a moon, but if it’s a particularly difficult day with farrier work, particularly if kids who need shoes are dragged into the store, we go here. No kids, no work, no holding a hammer for hours on end. It helps to have some alone time with a few kabobs and just one beer for me. I don’t drink much, because… Well, that’s pretty obvious.”

Hammer put one oversized hoof on the table with a thud, but the mare promptly brought one of her own up and put it next to his. “I’ve seen bigger,” she quipped. “There were some elephants at the palace a few weeks ago. They don’t wear shoes, but they do make problems. Then the ibex last week, and the zebra.” She gave a short chuff of breath and put a second hind hoof up on the table before leaning her chair back. “I don’t know if you can find a topic that doesn’t feed back into my job. Travel coordinator and foreign feather-smoother. Chargé d'affaires for the big lady. I’ve been everywhere and done everything by now.”

“Must be nice,” rumbled Hammer. “Nails and I have been in Canterlot most of our lives. Can’t just pick up and leave for a couple weeks if you expect to have customers when you get back. Our parents took us as far as Vanhoover once, but that’s about it. Canterlot, though, we’ve seen just about every back alley and garden. Some folks just can’t get to us when they crack a hoof or split something, so they send word and we visit.” He shook his big head, allowing his short mane to sway around his ears and a few tiny cinders to settle out onto the tavern floorboards with soft clicks. “The city’s full of nice folk. A mite expensive for some of them, so we don’t collect on all of our little emergency trips but sometimes they bring a blackberry pie or chocolate pecans by afterwards to say thanks. That and the smile they have is nicer than goin’ to all the pretty places you get to see.”

The mare put on a pensive, thoughtful expression that made her violet eyes become soft and very lookable, which Hammer had no problems doing. She took her hooves off the table and scooted over closer to Hammer when Nails returned, bearing several cool beers and a number of hot kabobs on a platter, which he floated down to the center of the table.

“Did I miss anything, Hammer? Other than you making eyes at Lady Sunspot, that is.”

“Don’t call me a lady,” muttered Sunspot. “We have far too many of them at the palace already.” The kabobs did not even touch the table before she scooped one up, and resorted to talking around a mouthful of roasted tomato. “Call me by my name. I’m used to that. At work, I just have to live with all the Ladies and Sirs.”

Nails nipped a bit of dripping pepper off his kabob. “And here, you can feed a steel shoe to—”

“Et,” cautioned Hammer. “You said the word. Next round’s on you.”

“Darnit.” Nails looked over at Sunspot, who had kabob juice dripping down her chin and had nearly finished her first skewer. “Hey, Miss Sunspot, if you’re going to sit with us, you need a buy word too. Otherwise, we’ll go broke feeding you.”

She nodded, but did not speak until she had finished her skewer and was wiping her face on the back of one fetlock with a look of triumph, much like Sunspot had always wanted to make such a mess at the palace but never had gotten up the nerve. “Titles,” she said once her mouth was free. “If I use the name of any living pony in the palace with a title, I’ll buy. And if any of you two call me ‘Miss’ or ‘M’lady’ at this table, you both buy.”

“Sounds fair,” said Hammer, who had just finished his first skewer too. He arranged a second one on his platter and added, “You need a name to use here too. At work, we’re Mister Silver and Mister Golden for the customers. I’ll bet you get awful tired of being called Miss Sunspot, so how about…” Hammer paused with an unstoppable quirk turning up the corners of his lips. “Spot.”

“Spot?” asked Sunspot with a look of consternation.

“Spot it is,” declared Nails. “Just look at that face. That’s a Spot face if there ever is one. The way the tomato juice pools in the frown marks. The way she wrinkles up her nose while chewing.”

“The way she’s going to stick that empty skewer somewhere Celestia’s sun doesn’t shine when she’s done with it,” cautioned Hammer.

“I would never use violence against somepony in response to their words,” said the newly named Spot, “unless he really deserved it. Thanks,” she added when Nails floated the last untouched skewer of roasted veggies over to her.

“Think nothing of it,” said Nails, obviously preparing another pickup line before his friend interrupted.

“As the newest citizen in the country of Away, you get your first kabob for free,” said Hammer. “The second one costs a proper introduction. I’m Golden Hammer—”

“Son of Sledge Hammer,” said Sunspot through a mouthful of roasted onion. “The farrier who won the Royal Guard shoe contract thirty years running and who has been talking about retiring for the last five since his partner’s magic started acting up and he stepped back from the business. Which would make you Tap Brad’s son, Silver Nails, correct?”

Sunspot’s violet eyes tracked over to where Nails was obviously caught speechless by the sudden attention. “Commander Wind Streak says you’ve got a smooth touch with the enchantments, thankfully smoother than your touch with the mares. They’ve had exactly zero shoe enchantment failures since you started assisting Sledge. One less thing out of thousands for me to worry about at work, and I really appreciate it.” She leaned forward, placed a greasy kiss on Nails’ cheek, then sat back down on the bench with a smirk. “And that’s all you’re getting.”

“I can live with that,” admitted Nails, giving the wet patch on his cheek a rub with the back of his fetlock. “So what do you do up at the palace that lets you know all about us? Are you a Royal Guard? Some sort of spy?”

Giving a short snort that splattered a little bit of tomato across the table, Sunspot shook her head. “I’m just a general gofer for the big lady, a specialist in anything that needs specializing. All day long from sunrise to sunset it’s go here, do this, talk to this pony about that. There’s something new every time I open my eyes, which is always tiring but never boring. I might be sent to Neigh York this week, and spend a month in Vanhoover afterward.”

“I bet you have problems keeping houseplants,” said Hammer.

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Sunspot gestured with the half-depleted skewer. “I like to think of the whole palace grounds as my home, and that I’m just… sharing it with a very large and important roommate. It has more gardens and art galleries than I could explore in a lifetime, a beautiful place, but after spending so long there, tonight I just needed to get… away.”

“And here you are,” said Nails. “Welcome to Away, population us.”

“The beer’s cold, the kabobs are hot, and the company just took an extraordinary step up,” said Hammer.

“Thank you, kind sirs.” Sunspot took a drink from her beer and licked off the resultant foamy mustache.

“No, thank you, young lady,” said Nails. “Away really needs you. Will you be with us for long this evening, once your sparring partners leave?” he added at the thumping from the bar’s front door.

“Well… I really need to get back. I’ve left so much work piled up back at the palace,” said Sunspot with a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“Sounds like you need to be here instead, eating kabobs with friends,” rumbled Hammer. “A little thing like you getting into the faces of those drunk stevedores? Speaks of a lot of stress in your life, Miss Sunspot.”

“Well… true,” admitted Sunspot.

“And the work will be there tomorrow,” said Hammer. “Won’t it be easier after a night of relaxation rather than nursing your bruises from a fight?”

“Also true,” said Sunspot hesitantly before straightening her thin shoulders, making the weight of years seem to slough off her in a wave of released tension. “I haven’t had a night off in ages.”

“We’re out of kabobs and Hammer just called you ‘Miss,’ so he volunteered to buy the next round,” said Nails. “Barkeep! Another round of kabobs over here for us and Spot, please.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could eat a whole…” Sunspot looked at the two empty skewers next to her plate, then took a sip of her beer. “Well. Maybe just one more. They’re not bad.”

“Best kabobs in… well, several blocks of this place,” admitted Hammer.

“Can you say that about the beer?” asked Sunspot after another sip.

Nails shrugged. “It grows on you.”

And over the next several hours, three friends relaxed in the magical land of Away with kabobs and just enough beers to keep the next morning from being too painful. Embarrassing stories were exchanged, sports teams were criticized, and there was a belching contest, which Hammer won by considerable margin although Spot came in a very respectable second. Time passed, as it tended to do when not watched carefully, and before the three of them realized, it was time to depart. After a little creative requesting from the other departing patrons, Sunspot traveled back to the palace under the protective escort of one of the off-duty guards, leaving Hammer and Nails to return to their own homes alone.

Hammer really never expected to see her again.

Several months later, he was pleasantly surprised. But that is a different story. Or at least a different chapter.