Rose and Sam
Chapter 8: Morning
Admiral Biscuit
Waking up was normal until it wasn’t. I stretched out, already getting an uneasy feeling that there was something pressing against my back that shouldn’t have been there, and something else wrapped around my barrel.
Did I fall asleep in the woods? That didn’t make sense, it smelled like my bedroom and my head was on a pillow, so I cracked open my eyes to see what was around me, expecting to see a twisted sheet but instead finding an arm and then the last vestiges of my dream were gone in an instant. I tensed, and then I remembered yesterday and last night.
“Good morning, Sam.”
I felt her move and I thought she was awake, but she didn’t say anything. “Sam?” I rolled on my belly and turned to face her. Maybe she wasn’t all the way awake yet, maybe she was just moving around in her sleep.
Her hair was mussed up just like mine, although she didn’t have fur or a tail to contend with. I could feel swirls of clumped hair on my side, while her skin was nearly fur-less.
As she stretched, I barely registered her good morning: my eyes were drawn down to her bare hip. I hadn’t expected to see a cutie mark there; she wasn’t a pony and everypony said she didn’t have one, but it was odd just the same. I’d imagined how it might look, but hadn’t actually seen it.
She seemed naked without a cutie mark. “So it is true.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of sad.” I’d never stopped to wonder before what other species thought about not having cutie marks. Were they jealous of ponies for having them? And how would they know what they were good at, what made them different from anypony else? How would they know that they had a special talent at all? Sam was good at weeding and preparing flower beds, but was gardening her talent? She was good at chopping wood, but was that her talent? It could be anything, and she’d never know.
That was too deep a subject to ponder in the morning. She’d rolled on her back, so I rested my head on her chest, on an udder, wondering too late if it was rude to rest my head there. Sam didn’t pull away; she reached up with her paw—her hand—and brushed my mane back behind my ear. “It’s a human thing.”
Most of her was bony and muscular, but her udder was soft. “No wonder you keep your flanks covered.” I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, in case it was insulting but I did. Then I noticed something else—she also had a patch of fur below her belly button that was almost the same as the hair under her arms. “How come your coat—”
She could see where I was looking. “Also a human thing.”
That wasn’t much of an answer, but it was probably the best I was going to get. She shifted around under me, moving her hips and rump, then relaxed again.
We’d pushed off the covers during the night. Sam’s lower legs were still covered, but I was completely exposed. Not that it mattered, I was still warm enough, although Sam felt cooler than a pony would have. “Are you cold?”
“A little, but you were keeping me warm,” she answered, and put her hand back in my mane. I tensed until she started scratching alongside my ear, then down my neck. It was really relaxing.
When she’d first loaded the firewood on my back, I’d been nervous about her talon-like fingers and what they might do; I hadn’t thought of how gentle they might be, how relaxing her touch could be. Ponies might pay her to groom them, and I told her so.
Although they might not be happy about her lack of coat.
I rested my hoof on her belly and started tracing it around, studying what she’d kept hidden from nearly everypony. Her stomach was too flat, and I could clearly see the outline of her hip bones, which I didn’t think was right. Daisy was about the skinniest pony I knew and she wasn’t that thin, although her ribs were more pronounced than mine. I thought back to the last time I’d helped her put on a harness—I couldn’t see any bones on her flank or rump.
Maybe Sam’s pants helped protect them, even if the fabric was thin. The triangular patch of fur concealing her marehood and under her arms, were they the last vestiges of a proper coat? Had some magical mishap caused her to lose everything else, or was it something more mundane? Could it be related to how she’d gotten to Ponyville? Nopony knew for sure, but everypony knew that powerful magical spells could singe your fur off.
I’d seen how her body was positioned when she sat down, and both her crotch coat and the hair under her arms might have been protected from whatever could have happened. Did she have a powerful mage as an enemy? Was she hiding from him?
Her skin was paler where her shorts had been, too, almost like she was wearing ghostly shorts. That didn’t seem like something I should ask about, especially since I was content for the moment to let Sam scritch my ear and run her fingers through my mane.
It was tempting to just stay in bed, to let her scritch behind my ears and relax, to just forget about everything else except the moment, and I might have been able to, but my bladder had other ideas.
Sam looked comfortable and I didn’t want to ask her to move just because I had to pee, so I carefully planted my hooves, accidentally pushing down on her belly as I caught my balance. She didn’t protest, though. Then it was an easy hop out of bed and onto the floor. She said she had to go, too, but could wait until I was done.
Was I going to go back to bed when I was finished in the bathroom? If she wanted to laze about, I might join her, even though I wasn’t tired at all. I’d slept really well, and that despite drinking too much wine and still being half-convinced Sam was a monster. Sometimes gut feelings were right; other times careful thought was.
As I made my way downstairs, I thought about yesterday and last night, and decided that the warnings my mind was still making were false alarms. Sam wasn’t a pony, Sam was different than a pony, but she was like a pony when it counted, and I was sure that I could trust her.
•••
I’d forgotten that Sam had left her clothes in the bathroom until I stepped inside. She’d wadded them up into a crumpled heap against the wall, and even though I had more pressing business, now that it was daylight I couldn’t help but give them a closer look. Not only the pants I’d seen her wearing, but the second set of pants that fit under them. They were left inside the pants, satin under-pants with Rarity’s monogrammed sigil. What they were for, I had no idea. I hadn’t known that she was wearing them; they were completely invisible under her shorts. What was the purpose?
Snooty unicorns in Canterlot wore clothes as often as they could to show off their wealth, but all of it was meant to be seen. What was the point of clothes that didn’t fill out a dress and which were hidden from everypony? I thought about it, but I couldn’t come up with an answer.
I didn’t know if Sam had fallen back asleep, so I was careful on my hooves as I went up the stairs. She said she had to use the bathroom, too, so I didn’t think she had dozed off again. Once I knew I had to pee, that always stayed on my mind until I had, but I couldn’t assume she was the same.
When I got to my bedroom she was down on all fours, her rump facing the door, looking under the bed for something. She must not have heard me, or else she was completely focused on her exploration. Her ears were fixed to the side of her head and as far as I could tell they couldn’t move at all, so maybe she wasn’t good at hearing things coming up behind her. Or else she knew it was me, and wasn’t worried that I was sneaking up on her, and I wondered if I should tell her I was behind her. Just in case she got alarmed and kicked.
WIthout a tail for cover, I could clearly see her vulva, not exactly like a mare’s but similar. More like an ewe’s than a mare’s.
An instant later I felt heat rising in my cheeks: was she presenting? I didn’t think she was, she wasn’t winking, just focusing her attention under the bed, so much that she hadn’t noticed me yet. I wondered how she’d react if I goosed her, and started snickering, which made her snap her head around.
“What’s so funny?”
I didn’t want to admit what I was thinking. Goosing a mare might earn a bloody nose or worse. “You look like a tail-less mare with no coat when you’re standing like that.”
“I can’t find my shorts,” she said. “I don’t know where they went.”
“They’re in the little filly’s room.” How had she forgotten? I couldn’t imagine having clothes and caring so little for them I wouldn’t know where they were. But then I remembered we’d had plenty to drink; maybe she’d taken them off and couldn’t recall when or where. And I thought about chiding her for not taking care of her clothes like she ought to, but that was her business. I wasn’t always as good as I should have been about cleaning my harness or hanging it back up neatly, that was something that Daisy always chided me for.
Still, for as paranoid as she’d been about wearing them, she had forgotten pretty quickly about where they were. Even if I didn’t care for it like I should, I knew where my harness was. “I—do you need me to get them?” Maybe she was comfortable in my room without wearing them, but not in the rest of the house.
She stood up and scratched herself before looking towards the door. “I’ll just go, and use the bathroom, and get my shorts.”
•••
She was still in the bathroom when I came back downstairs, so I knocked on the door and asked her if she wanted breakfast. Hopefully she wouldn’t want anything complicated, although it might be good bonding time to make breakfast together. I wasn’t sure if I would have been bold enough to have her spend the night if we hadn’t worked together making dinner.
Maybe I would have been; ever since I’d decided to go down to Ginger’s woodlot to see for myself if Sam was a monster or not, I’d felt bolder, more confident. It was almost a pegasus way of thinking, living in the moment and letting whatever happened happen. That was no way to run a garden; we’d hardly sell any flowers at all if we didn’t know what we were going to get until they bloomed. It could have been the spring in the air, everypony knew that made a mare giddy, made her willing to take a chance she might not have otherwise.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I’d been nervous around her at all, and then Sam came out of the bathroom which caught me by surprise—I hadn’t heard her move to the door. Her footbeats were very quiet.
As soon as she’d opened the door, I realized she wasn’t wearing her clothes. Instead, she was holding them loosely in front of her, partially covering herself, and I could tell she was nervous, so I folded my ears back and stepped away, wondering what she was scared of. She also stepped back and the hand gripping her clothes fell to her side and I realized I was being a silly pony again. “You’re just . . . I’m sorry, but you know that monsters come out of the Everfree sometimes.”
She rubbed her free hand in my mane. “I know.”
“How come you didn’t put on your clothes?”
“I didn’t feel like it.”
“Okay.” I took one more look at her bare hips, considering. I’d thought that Sam wore her clothes all the time because she was vain or she was hiding something, but since she was willing to not wear them in the house it must not have been to keep a secret from me. It must be vanity.
And she surely didn’t wear them at home. It felt like she was trying to be more approachable, less nervous around ponies, or at least around me.
It was too early in the morning to think too much about it. It would have been easy to get myself stuck in a loop trying to work out her motivations, or to try and figure out my own, from when I’d agreed to let her help with the flowers until now; it was better to just think of her as a funny-looking pony who sometimes behaved like my weird Aunt Moomin, and just have a normal morning.
As normal as I could.
With only a moment’s hesitation, I turned my back to her and walked into the kitchen with Sam following.
She set her clothes on the counter and then started getting out the bowls while I rummaged through the cupboards and icebox for breakfast. She didn’t need to do that, but I felt like she wanted to and would have been upset if I tried to stop her or discourage her.
We didn’t talk while we were eating. I had a lot of questions for her still, but answers would come in time.