Rose and Sam
Chapter 10: Fallout
Admiral Biscuit
I’d known that this was going to come, and I’d already decided that there were three outcomes. One, Lily would gallop up to her room and barricade herself in. Two, she’d run out into the garden to make sure all her flowers were okay. Three, she’d just started yelling at me.
I hadn’t thought of that when Sam was first at the doorstep; I’d only thought of how I would deal with her, and it wasn’t until I’d really noticed how Sam was leaving her scent everywhere that I started to consider how Lily would react to knowing Sam had been in our garden and house.
To her credit, her flowers actually came before personal safety; she took a deep breath and I thought she was about to tear a strip off my hide, then she shot into the backyard like her tail was on fire.
Both Daisy and I flinched as the back door slammed open hard enough to rattle the windows. Daisy’s ears perked right back up, no doubt expecting a scream of anguish. I had no doubt that once she saw that nothing obvious had been destroyed, Lily would examine every one of her flowers before coming back inside to yell at me, so I turned to Daisy instead. “Tea?”
It took her a moment, and then she nodded.
Once I got the kettle on, she suggested I make enough for Lily, too, who might need it to calm down.
“Maybe if I spike it with brandy,” I muttered. “A lot of brandy.”
“Just brandy with the tea infuser in it,” Daisy said. “That might help. Her flowers are okay, aren’t they?”
“I didn’t let Sam touch them, nor any weeds that were around them.”
“How about mine?”
“Sam handled some, but not until I could see she knew what she was doing.”
“It must have been scary.”
“At first.” I sat down across from Daisy and traced my hoof across the table. “When she was at the door . . . I knew she was seeking jobs on the board, but didn’t think when I put it up. And then I didn’t want to be rude and turn her away, plus I needed the help.” Daisy was pro-Sam generally, but that didn’t mean she really wanted her in the house or garden. “Everypony says she’s a good worker.”
“Is she?”
“We ran out of starter trays,” I said. “Once she was taught what to do, she was quick.”
“You don’t think Lily will smell her on the trays, do you? She might dump them out.”
“She’s not that paranoid.” If she did, I was going to make her replant every single seed, no matter how long it took.
“I hope not.”
•••
It was easier to gossip with mugs of tea in front of us. Lily was still out back inspecting her flowers; we’d taken turns looking through the window at her to make sure she was okay. It was hard to tell if she was frustrated or relieved that all of her flowers were unharmed. Sometimes a pony is upset and wants a reason to justify her anger, but Lily wasn’t going to find that out in the garden.
Maybe I should have let Sam use her towel, that would be something she could be angry about that didn’t matter at all.
Lily didn’t need to know that I’d made three meals for Sam and paid her extra for her work. Lily didn’t need to know that I’d let Sam spend the night, nor that I’d let her share my bed.
But I was still turning some of that over in my mind, and I could tell Daisy. That was what I told myself, but it was easier to think about it than to say it aloud.
“I kinda lost track of time,” I said. “We were in the greenhouse planting starters and had a rhythm going, and then it was late and raining, so I decided that I ought to offer dinner.”
Daisy nodded.
“And a bath, since she got dirty.”
“Did you treat her to the spa?”
I shook my head. “I could have, I suppose, but just offered our bath. Do you think she’d like the spa? I’ve heard from some ponies she’s visited before but only once or twice, and they said she didn’t seem to like it.”
“I heard that, too. And that she wore under-shorts into the soaking tub and in the shower so that nobody could see what her cutie mark was.”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“I heard that, too.” Daisy’s magic flashed, and she lifted her teacup and took a sip. “So it’s true?”
“Both things, she has under-pants that Rarity made and she doesn’t have a cutie mark. She does have a crotch coat, though, it’s just like the fur under her arms and it goes down to her vulva.”
“I wonder why?”
“She said that’s how humans were, which isn’t much of an explanation. Why only have a little fur, have you ever heard of anything like that? I thought maybe some mage cast a spell on her and burned most of it off, and she’s just embarrassed to say so.”
“That could happen,” Daisy said. “If a spell misfired or something. Mom says that I singed all the fur on my foreleg off when I was a little filly and cast a wild spell. Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t have a horn, I could have burned myself bald. If I did it to myself as an adult, I’d be embarrassed to admit how it happened.”
“I don’t think she can do casting magic, she used her paws—hands—for everything.”
“What about her back paws? I heard that under her boots those are paw-like, too.”
“Her talons were stumpy, so I don’t know how much she could do with them. She didn’t wear her boots while she was working, not until she left, so I don’t know if she could for sure.”
•••
Talking with Daisy helped get some things clear in my mind, but it was only an interlude before Lily finally came back in from the garden, now assured that her plants were all unharmed. Her mane was frazzled, the flower behind her ear was missing, and her coat was glistening with a faint sheen of sweat.
She did stop long enough to scrape her hooves clean on the mat and I thought about mentioning that Sam had used it, too, but it wasn’t smart to poke an angry bear.
“I can’t believe you,” she began, then turned to Daisy. “And you, encouraging her, drinking tea like it was normal to invite a monster over to touch our flowers and do who knows what to them? Put a curse on them, or something, just because everything looks okay doesn’t mean that it is, and you’re just pretending. Everypony is just pretending; the mayor never should have let her in town and any sensible pony should have run her back out.”
“She’s not a monster,” I said. I was suddenly feeling very tired. “If she was a monster, she would have done something monster-y by now.”
“Why doesn’t she have fur, then? Why does she have paws? Why does she live in the woods and stay away from other ponies?”
Daisy and I exchanged a look—we both knew why she stayed away from certain ponies, at least.
“She does live in town,” Daisy said. “She rented that house over on—”
“Now she does because nopony’s smart enough to stop her. She’s got everypony under an enchantment, but I can see through it, I read it in the newspaper and everypony says so and they can’t print it if it isn’t true.” Lily snorted. “And now the house smells like her and the flowers are all cursed and neither of you care, neither of you will do anything. I can’t trust you alone, next thing you’ll be inviting the manticore or a diamond dog into our house.”
I thought about telling Lily that she hadn’t said not to hire Sam, but that wasn’t going to be a winning argument.
“Maybe you’re the one who’s wrong,” I said. “If you’re not willing to get close to her, if you’re not willing to talk to her, how do you know? Has anypony in your newspaper ever talked to her?”
“They’ve seen her, and that’s enough.”
“You could ask Ginger,” Daisy said. “If you think that Rose is under a spell. Ginger wouldn’t let anypony put a spell on her, wouldn’t let anypony get close enough to try.”
“How about Teff and Einkorn?”
“Or the miller?”
Lily stomped on the floor. “How about how Twilight got caught by the cockatrice? She’s a smart pony, isn’t she?”
That was true, even if it hadn’t been in a newspaper. Little fillies made up stories all the time, but those three hadn’t been lying, even Fluttershy had been distant for a few weeks afterwards.
I didn’t have an answer and doubt crept in. Everypony knew that cocaktrices were sneaky and they’d hold your gaze even when you wanted to look away.
I had to trust what I knew to be true. If Sam had been trying to lure me in, she would have done something, she wouldn’t have behaved almost like a pony, and she wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to get me while I was sleeping.
“Everypony makes mistakes,” Daisy said. “Remember what happened when Big Mac got hurt, and Applejack was trying to run the farm herself because she was too proud to get any help. Even though anypony would have helped her if she’d asked.”
“What about Pinkie Pie?”
The two of them both turned to look at me.
“She hasn’t—” Daisy began, but I cut her off.
“If anypony’s a good judge of character in Ponyville, Pinkie Pie is. I know for a fact that Sam has gotten treats from Sugarcube Corner before. Ask her what she thinks.”
“She’s not always right.”
“No?”
Lily’s eyes darted back and forth and her ears flattened. “What about, she was wrong about—”
“Zecora?” Daisy finished. “Who isn’t a monster.”
“So she could be wrong about Sam, too.”
“She knew Zecora wasn’t a monster as soon as she actually talked to her,” I said. “Everypony did once they got over being scared.”
“You were scared, too.”
“And I shouldn’t have been, I was jumping at shadows and listening too much to what everypony said, and not seeing the evidence in front of my eyes. Monsters are always monsters, they don’t pretend not to be long enough to work chopping wood or moving flour or weeding flowers, and maybe if you stop worrying about her and just talk to her like she was any other pony, you’d see that, too.” I pushed my teacup away and stood up. “She got a lot of work done, she earned her bits, and I’m sorry you don’t want to see that. There’s more work to do. I’m going to go do it, and you should, too. Arguing gets us nowhere, and your flowers won’t weed themselves.”
•••
I knew that Lily wasn’t going to stay mad at me forever. None of her flowers had been harmed, after all, and I understood that it took time to get used to a new thing. Lily had had a thing or two to say about Sam getting a house in town, then she’d stopped talking about it. And when Sam had pushed our wagon out of the mud, she hadn’t been upset—she’d grown to accept Sam in town, at least, and she could get used to the idea of Sam working in the flowerbeds, too.
Eventually.
Until then, I had to put up with her sulking around the house and being snippy whenever she talked to me, but she’d get over it.
We were tending to Lily’s plants, they’d mostly gotten overlooked on purpose, and I knew she had mixed feelings about that. On the one hoof, the idea of Sam touching them offended her; on another, the fact that my plants and Daisy’s plants were almost all weeded and watered and hers weren’t felt like an insult, and I couldn’t blame her for thinking that. If I hadn’t had to teach Sam as much, I could have had Lily’s flowers all tended to. Next time, Sam would remember what she’d learned and be quicker, need less supervision, and I could make quick work of the other plants.
If there was a next time, if Lily ever trusted me to be left home alone.
What if I had to choose between them? What if Lily didn’t get over being mad, and gave an ultimatum? Who would I pick? The logical answer was the friend I’d known longer, the pony I lived with, but my heart had a different answer.