Fleur was almost certain that there were less than two days remaining until they had to leave for the Algonquin, and the 'almost' was just one more cause for concern. She was normally capable of tracking dates on memory alone, but this one had been important enough for her to mark down on Fluttershy's kitchen calendar: providing her charge with an absolute deadline in the form of a near-splash of blue ink. And she was effectively trapped at the cottage, had been for nearly two weeks now, and it was something which should have effectively given her the freedom to check on the page for the current moon whenever she wished.
It was just that she was hardly ever able to get away from the sitting room. When she managed the feat, it was usually so she could go into the surgery. Truly desperate times found her trying to get through what seemed to be a live-in day crowd, because pushing her way through another kind of puzzle had to make some of the pieces slide and if enough of them relocated, it would theoretically open up a path to the restroom's continual-flow toilet trench. As theories went, it had provided enough successes to officially be working on a proof, and had yet to account for the part of the equation where the discovered occupancy of said restroom could be reliably set to zero.
And if she did get into the kitchen, if there was somehow enough time for her to reach Fluttershy's ancient personal food cooling unit (something else which needed to be replaced, and Fleur was keeping exact inventory of everything she'd been taking) and look at the calendar on its door...
She could look at the marked square. It was just that whenever she did so, the ink performed the exact same trick which her sleep-deprived mind kept trying to cast. Unless she fought for focus, continually fought... the world tended to blur.
It was probably less than two days until the rented carriage would pick them up at the Grand Gymkhana, taking them from Canterlot's train station to the party: the one Fleur had seen as the next, best chance. And it would be a carriage because the tradition was for the majority of guests to arrive that way, plus she hadn't been about to pass up on a chance to send the palace an extra invoice. But whenever she looked at the calendar, the definitively marked date turned into more of a temporal smear. One day was spread across three, then a week, it seemed possible that they'd already missed it and Fleur wasn't sure if she had the strength left to care...
Time was blurring, and doing so in more than sight. Fleur was almost sure that they were just about on top of the official season shift, which would be Autumn Abeyance or Fall Finish or, given the Weather Bureau, possibly something like We Exist In A Sphere Of Permanent Perfection, But You Can Go Ahead And Freeze. She wasn't quite sure what the locals called it, but she was fairly certain that the last described what it actually was. And it would be something for which Fluttershy apparently had assigned duties, which somepony else was going to wind up taking over because her charge was stuck at the cottage.
Nopony had tried to leave a letter carrying town-assigned tasks at Fleur's rental. There were two absolute proofs of this: the first was that she hadn't found one, and therefore no postponies had departed the area while carrying a tightly-rolled Return To Sender. For purposes of saving time, it was probably best for said postpony to fly directly to Town Hall and have the doctor perform the extraction right there...
...it's not the messenger's fault.
You don't attack somepony just for being a carrier.
It made so much more sense for Fleur to go directly to Town Hall, roll up the letter on the spot, and --
-- tired.
Too tired.
The darkest fantasies always intruded when she was this tired.
The darkest dreams.
She was at the cottage (because she was hardly ever anywhere else), in the sitting room, behind a desk which Twilight had scavenged from the library's basement. It had a few more drawers than what Fluttershy had been using, along with greater capacity on each. It was capable of holding multiple appointment ledgers, and it still hadn't been up to the task of containing them all.
Her location was typical. The fact that she could see the front door by doing nothing more than looking over the usual group of animals was strictly temporary. Fleur had reached the rental on the previous night, her sleep had been -- as understatements went, 'poor' hadn't even been sarcastically amusing for a week -- and when she'd woken up for the sixth and last time under Moon, she'd staggered out to the cottage. There were things which had to be done, and some of them could only be managed while its mistress tried to find some tiny amount of rest.
The few birds which were staying for the winter hadn't really sung an alert for her when she'd come over the bridge: Fleur suspected they were equally worn out. There was also the question of whether they were trying not to wake Fluttershy. The pegasus needed less sleep, but she'd barely been getting any and with Fleur approaching under Moon, a Moon which kept hanging around for a longer period in every diminishing day as solstice drew near...
At least she didn't have to knock. Fluttershy, in what was probably an effort to save one trip out of a seldom-used bed, had given her a key.
Moon was still in the sky, although that wouldn't last much longer. And once Sun was raised, the clients would begin to crowd in. Those with appointments (and there were just too many appointments), plus the ones who were convinced that they could be squeezed in whether it was an emergency or not, and the previous day had seen Fleur swear that she was starting to hear accents which had originated in the capital...
But for now, the room was empty -- or rather, it was empty when it came to ponies: most of the animals silently accepted her presence. The exceptions were the rabbit, who occasionally peeked in just long enough to glare before dashing out again, and the shrew. The shrew had worked its way up to desk level by climbing up Fleur's discarded saddlebags, and was watching from a self-assigned post near the inkwell.
There were no clients yet. The cottage existed in the temporal space between caring for the nocturnals and getting up to look after those who required dawn feedings. It was a good time for Fleur to go over the ledgers. But some of the most basic math functions wound up being worked three times, and there were long seconds in which the numbers themselves tried to blur.
...she'd just written down the wrong total.
Fleur closed her eyes for a period which might have been a second, or ten minutes. All she really knew was that when she got them open again, Sun hadn't been raised and the shrew was still there.
Fix the error...
...I think that's it. There might be one or two which show up in the mail today, but even if they don't...
...this just about closes out most of Accounts Receivable.
They're paying.
Of course they were paying. Nopony in the current wave wanted to risk losing access to their new vet through cantering out on the bill. And when it came to the overdue accounts... well, there was a relative tsunami of fresh reputation flooding Ponyville. It did a lot to encourage a certain kind of pony to get current.
It would never be all of them, of course. For starters, the flood was mostly a local one, with some degree of backwash heading into the capital. Living in Ponyville during the Bearer era seemed to have certain side effects on the residents, and one of the most notable was that a number had quickly decided to stop living in Ponyville. When you were in a settled zone which had seen the appearance of Nightmare, what Fleur had been told was a fast-spreading cloud of dragon smog (although she'd been told that by Caramel, who didn't know how that one had ended), at least one townwide brawl over something or other, and then you had to make space on your personal What I'm Willing To Put Up With ledger for the entry reading And By The Way, Discord Drops By Every So Often. For Fun. Which usually didn't, and perhaps shouldn't, fit.
It was something which encouraged a degree of relocation.
The local moving supplies store never closed: something which had undoubtedly aided Sweetbark in her endeavors. Ponies had been known to pack up their troubles in saddlebags at three in the morning, followed by either waiting at the train station for the earliest commuter rail or just galloping down the old road in the hopes of meeting it halfway while each party was heading in the opposite direction. And when some of them left, they conveniently abandoned their trash, any possessions they hadn't felt like carrying, and all of the bills which obviously didn't have to be paid any more because what was Fluttershy going to do? Leave the cottage to travel cross-country and lose several days to filing small claims in the new jurisdiction's courthouse? And paying somepony to go out and collect meant you were paying for their travel, their expenses, and (very much) their fees: it didn't take long before that particular set of equations took a dive into the sea of negative numbers and never, ever came out.
Pursuing those who'd left wasn't going to happen. (Fleur had said a few recent words to Fluttershy about using the missions which took the Bearers into different settled zones to at least look at any residential directory, and had temporarily given up after the pegasus hadn't been able to get through the first three minutes of instructions without yawning.) But for the ones who'd remained in Ponyville -- no matter how far back Fleur went in the ledgers, regardless how long each entry had been there and it was possible to date Fluttershy's arrival just by looking at the age discoloration of the tear stains on the pages... just about everypony was paid up.
Which was just creating different problems. For starters, Mr. Croesus kept scrupulous banker's hours: he looked for those times during the day when the majority of ponies would have trouble getting to the bank, and that was when it was open. Kick in a mutual inability to leave the cottage under Sun, then add the fact that Fleur wasn't sure anypony had the lifespan to wait around while the account update was chipped out (which was starting to include Celestia), and all of that money was still at the cottage.
Still, it wasn't Fleur's biggest concern. The bulk of the bits were in the basement, near the entrance to the dug-out setts, and that was as close as most ponies were going to get because badgers made for excellent security guards. However, the cottage had some magpies, they didn't really migrate for the winter and while the birds would know where the money was, Fleur suspected she would rapidly become sick of tracking it all down.
Light began to touch the windows, and she heard hooves moving overhead. Approaching the ramp. Slow to shift, mostly shuffling, just barely capable of lifting from the floorboards and not for very long...
There were other problems, and the fact that she didn't feel like they were ready for the Algonquin was threatening to become the least of them. Because it wouldn't be all that long until the first clients arrived, neither of them had truly rested, and the parade of fur, feathers, paws, claws, and bits just never stopped...
I'm going to make a mistake.
I will, or she will. We won't catch each other, because we'll both be too tired to notice.
You can't live on wake-up juice. It's lying to your body, over and over. Coffee is just the same lie with a stronger scent. Eventually, it figures out what's really going on. I've already had too much this morning, and... it's just liquid now.
We're going to reach the point of collapse. She has some benefit from her mark, so I'll get there first. But at some point, one of us is going to be too tired to think, and the other won't see the error.
Animals are going to get hurt.
"...good morning," sleepily wafted towards her. "...I didn't think you'd be here this early."
"I was up." A flicker of field closed the ledgers.
"...you should have stayed in bed."
The cattle calls the minotaur bull-headed.
Fluttershy shuffled into the room. The incredible tail dragged its way across the floor.
"...I'll start the feedings," she offered.
"You're going to have breakfast."
The pegasus visibly thought about that. It took a few seconds longer than usual.
"...there's a lot of feedings..."
"And if you don't take care of yourself," Fleur quietly asked, "then who's going to do the rest of them?"
More weary consideration. The one exposed eye slowly closed, and eventually managed to open again.
"...breakfast," Fluttershy sleepily agreed, and managed to appropriately change course on the second try. Fleur got up from behind the desk, followed her in. Somepony had to make sure the oven was set properly. And at this level of sleep deprivation, it was just as crucial to have somepony standing by to turn it off again.
If we don't rest...
...if there's a mistake and she can't forgive herself...
It was two hours into the crush when the first Bearer arrived: an event so rare and spectacular as to almost make Fleur raise a foreleg in half-hearted greeting.
Identifying a Bearer's presence through the crowd could take some work. Fleur usually heard the bitch before seeing her. Twilight was so small as to get lost in a sea of larger ponies -- but at the same time, the herd often responded to the presence of an alicorn on the move by getting out of the librarian's path. Applejack steadily pushed her way forward until everypony realized that she was going to keep pushing whether they were in the way or not. Rainbow had yet to appear for longer than it took to drop off supplies from town, but all of those brief visits had moved through the air: anypony searching for the weather coordinator was advised to look towards the ceiling, followed immediately by seeking a place to dodge.
In this case, the second-tallest of the group could still wind up hidden in the crush -- but the mane added a few bouncy hoof-heights. It was usually possible to spot approaching curls bobbing above the bulk of the crowd as the baker advanced. What seemed to be the town's collective tendency to greet her by name didn't hurt either.
"Hello, Pinkie," Fleur half-yawned as the oddly-serious face managed to poke between two ponies who had squeezed in near the desk. "Thank you for coming. Fluttershy's in the attic, getting some things from the herb patch --"
"-- does that take long?" asked the mare on Pinkie's left. "I was hoping to be at work by --"
"-- it takes as long as it takes," Fleur wearily stated. And growing some of them takes even longer. They'd wound up raiding Sweetbark's patch five days ago, transplanting nearly all of it into the attic. It had been well-tended, because earth pony. It had also been lacking eighty percent of what they needed, because Sweetbark. "She'll be down soon. And she can tell you what needs doing." Actually... "How good are you with the Cornucopia Effect? We could really use a push on some of --"
"-- Ah'll get that."
Fleur blinked. Eventually refocused, and it took a few extra seconds to locate the fast-advancing hat.
"Oh. Thank you." And, belatedly aware that she'd gotten the order wrong, "Hello, Applejack. I wasn't expecting you this early. How long can you both --"
From somewhere near the ceiling, having flown in under cover of curls, hat, and possibly ego, "Go to bed."
This time, Fleur blinked in a vaguely upwards direction. And when she finished, Rainbow was still there.
"I mean it," the weather coordinator said. All four legs straightened somewhat, implying a mare who would have put her hoof down if she could have just been bothered to land. "Go to bed."
"Workday's over," Applejack firmly said, voice approaching ahead of the hat. "Ah'm calling it for both of you. Don't even try t' make it into town, Fleur. Y'sleep here." The furspot-freckled face managed to push through. "Unless y'like the idea of havin' Rainbow carry you all the way back, an' since it's a ways to your place an' you're kinda on the big side --"
"-- I could totally distance carry her!" immediately broke in. "I wouldn't have to stay low or anything! Want to see how far we could each get with her? Whoever drops the unicorn first --"
Which was as far as what would have been the next disaster got before the herd began to react.
"They're closing?"
"I made an appointment!"
"I've already been here for an hour!"
"My cat -- she's been hacking up double-sized hairballs for a week -- wait: just give her a few seconds to finish, and I'll show you this one --"
From somewhere behind Fleur, just about on the worst possible cue: "...what? I thought I heard all of you, but... what? We can't just shut down, Applejack. There's so many companions waiting, and all of their ponies, and --"
" -- an' everypony can jus' stop. right. there."
The farmer reared back, just enough, and powerful orange forehooves crashed into the floor.
The herd, which knew a lead mare when it saw one and was trying to figure out who was going to complain to her first, fell silent. Fluttershy had quiet as her most natural state. Fleur was briefly grateful for a moment when she didn't have to do anything.
"Listen up, everypony!" Applejack called out. "Ah --" The right forehoof began to raise, moving towards a gesture -- then paused, and the earth pony briefly glanced down at where she'd failed to clear her own fresh dent. "-- Ah'll fix that... Ah ain't sending y'out without gettin' your pets the help they need! Jus' ain't gonna be these two today, and if y'want t' know why: have y'looked at 'em? Got two mares 'bout t' fall over where they're standin', 'cause y'all won't stop an' so they haven't neither! An' --" the fur spots scrunched across the span of the hard wince "-- speaking as the area's local expert on what happens when y'don't get enough sleep --"
Several of the waiting ponies now looked distinctly awkward, as opposed to the two whose skin had just flushed green.
"-- yeah, glad y'all remember," the farmer reluctantly said. "Sorta. Least so far as it proves mah point. They can't keep this up, everypony, an' y'know it! So today, it's gonna be somepony else. Twilight sent a bunch of scrolls t' Canterlot's veterinary school. They're gonna hold practical classes here, today. Five students, two teachers, an' they all jus' got off the train. Be here in a few minutes. It ain't Fluttershy, but it's the best five in senior year an' a couple of ponies who've taught in the capital for years. Can y'settle for that? Just long enough t' let these two get some rest?"
There were a few mutters, all of which stopped at the moment when the ponies who mostly had their heads down managed to raise them enough for the halting glare.
"...it has to cost," Fluttershy weakly argued. "Just bringing them out here..."
"Rural practice before exams, jus' before winter break starts?" Applejack broke in. "We jus' had t' cover their travel expenses. For the seniors, it's a full day in a real office, an' that's more than they could hope for this time of year. They get t' review for real. An' the teachers are here, so there ain't gonna be no mistakes. Again, anypony ain't comfortable, we'll help y'get set up somewhere else. Make sure you're seen today, one way or another. But Ah can see that y'all remember the Baked Bads. An' Ah wanna think y'know your pets are more important than a bunch of flour."
Multiple sets of hooves awkwardly shuffled. Nopony left.
"Pets are more important than flour?" a smiling Pinkie asked. "You're sure?"
"Most of 'em," Applejack allowed. "Wouldn't trade a bale-sack of the good stuff for Thistle Burr's dog. Your gator's worth a few."
Fleur had been trying to track most of it.
Applejack just said Pinkie has an alligator.
She wasn't sure she'd succeeded.
"...but..." came weakly from behind her. "...but..."
"Ah. Said. Go. To. Bed."
And then the farmer was pushing both of them up the ramp. The hard head shifted from one pair of buttocks to the other, switching so quickly as to keep the shoved mares in perfect pace.
Fleur's saddlebags had been placed on her back. They were more or less balanced, although some of the shoves were making the contents slosh.
"This is a today thing," Applejack told them once the herd was out of sight. "Ah know you've got your own arrangements for the party. An' we might be able t' get the students back twice a semester or so, 'cause it is good practice. But that's the max, you two. Gotta find a real solution. Soon. 'cause having you both fall apart ain't it. Y'can't keep this up. Hear me?"
Fluttershy, who needed less sleep than most, managed a reluctant nod. Fleur, dealing with needs that were closer to pony-normal, decided that raising and lowering her head constituted too much work.
"Right," the earth pony firmly stated. "Pinkie's checking the appointment book. Ah can pull files, for the ones who've got 'em. Feedings get managed, an' the cottage is gonna be cleaned. We'll sort it out. All the two of you are gonna do is sleep. Y'get up when your body says it's ready. An' that's it."
She turned. Stomped back down the ramp. And then it was just the two of them on the upper level. Just barely standing, almost on the verge of making eye contact if either one could have found the strength to move their heads.
She's right.
We can't keep this up.
"...they're good friends," Fluttershy softly told her. "They really are..."
It almost made her smile. "Yes." She knew about people like that. The ones who kept trying to save you in spite of yourself --
-- I need to sleep and the dreams are already --
-- no. She was in the cottage. She seemed to be luckier in the cottage. But luck always ran out.
I could try to make it back into town.
She started to turn. Her left foreleg came within five degrees of buckling. The escort immediately revised her priorities based on available resources.
I could try to reach an open section of floor.
"...Fleur?"
"We're both tired," the unicorn reluctantly admitted. The soundproofing on the blanket. It has to be enough. "They're right. We need rest."
Her charge slowly nodded. "...I'll get you into bed..."
They each used the restroom, and then both moved. It was slow, careful, took most of Fleur's concentration, and kept her from noticing a single small detail.
Fluttershy had to help nudge her into the bed, and then that turned into more of a push because none of Fleur's knees wanted to assist. The pegasus left, Fleur half-cocooned herself under the enchanted blanket and --
-- lay there.
Staring at nothing.
Because she was exhausted to the point where numbers and time blurred, and all her body understood was that she'd had far too much wake-up juice.
She was literally too tired to sleep.
Buck this.
She'd been sleeping at the cottage, far more than she should have. It meant she'd been bringing the last resort with her. And when she was this tired, barely able to think about possible consequences, not really thinking at all...
Her horn ignited, opened the right saddlebag. Glow delved within, and a vial eventually floated out.
The potion tasted --
-- and it was dodgy, was her first thought when her eyes finally opened again. It wasn't a particularly happy one. She'd been trapped in that dream for...
...she turned her head just enough to look at Fluttershy's clock (which required clearing the shrew), then checked Sun. Daylight still, but not for more than another ninety minutes...
...for just about the entire time she'd been asleep, from the feel of it. A new dream: that was her only consolation. It hadn't been one of the standard replays to mount productions on the stage of her nightscape. Instead, she'd gotten something... weird. It had been long, consistent, she'd been aware she was dreaming for the whole time, nothing about that had let her get out of it, and... there had been a strange biped...
She would review the dream later: she just about always remembered them, this one was especially clear, and there was no particular rush. Right now, she'd turned her head to look at the windows, it was something which let her vision cross the desk, and she'd just spotted the tray.
It was laden with food. Some of it was still lightly steaming, there was the freshest of bread, and the fact that it all smelled edible meant that no combination of Fluttershy and fast-cooker had been involved. It was a welcome sight, and it also worried her because it meant somepony had come into the room and Fleur still hadn't woken up.
She decided it had been a combination of exhaustion, sound-dampening blanket, and dodgy potion. Fleur couldn't do much about the first two, and the return policy for most purchases in the Tangle ran out at 'And here's your change.' Assuming you got change. She just might not be able to risk using the remaining vials.
The unicorn slowly, carefully tried to get up and found that the count of limbs which were willing to put in some work had gone up by four. Reapplied her cosmetics, because saddlebags ideally needed to have their loads balanced and she had to carry something. Ate for a while, absently gave some of the food to the shrew, then glanced back and let her field start making the bed --
-- Fleur froze. The blanket locked position in mid-straighten to suit.
I slept in Fluttershy's bed.
...there isn't enough space in this bed for two. She couldn't have slept here when I was already --
-- she just about pushed me in --
-- where did she sleep?
She'd put her charge out of her own bed. Fluttershy was probably curled up somewhere in the center of a warm nest and the blanket was likely composed of purring kittens, but she'd displaced Fluttershy from her bed because there hadn't been any chance to get a new one, she'd left her charge to sleep on the floor --
-- and she was moving for the door, she got it open as the released blanket dropped and now she could hear noises on the lower level, ponies moving around, there were still clients being seen and Fluttershy needed less sleep than Fleur did, the pegasus was probably already up and trying to assist the students with a '...can I please see how you're doing it?' She had to apologize, and then she had to recognize that they were at the point where it was going to have to be a catalog and the palace could pay for overnight shipping on a Cumulus.
She'd put Fluttershy out of her own bed. A Cumulus was just about the only possible apology. Given that the palace was going to be paying for it, her only regret was that the cloud mattress didn't weigh more or, given a Cumulus, that it didn't weigh something. Fleur moved for the ramp, heading for the too-soft babble of voices, started to go down --
"SURPRISE!"
-- and for the second time, realized she'd completely forgotten about Pinkie.