Before leaving to go and see her friends, Cozy had (at Paul’s insistence) written down the actual address she would be going to. The rationale for this (and the reason for Paul’s insistence) was that it might be necessary for him to go there for some reason. An emergency of some kind, say. That had been his line.
Cozy had been willing to go along with this. It made some measure of sense, and seemed a small price to pay to be allowed to leave - though, of course, she could have left without doing it if she’d really wanted to, she could just tell that the idea of her going somewhere and him not knowing where made dad uncomfortable, and she didn’t like that.
Thus. Address on a piece of paper. Sitting on the kitchen table.
And Paul. Sat in the kitchen. Doing nothing. There was nothing he could be doing. Normally, on a normal day, he’d have made lunch for him and Cozy but, since she wasn’t around, he hadn’t. And so he’d walked from room to room instead, seeing if there was anything else that needed doing.
There wasn’t.
And so he’d gone back and had a cup of tea. This he chased with another cup of tea. Both had been thoroughly underwhelming.
Perhaps he could work? It was generally what he did to fill those empty hours in his life when Cozy was either taken care of or otherwise not around. He just didn’t feel like it though, and besides if it was coming up on lunchtime it was too late to get started anyway. Too late in the day for work. So that was off the table.
He stared into his mug angrily, as though it was somehow to blame for this.
What did he normally do when Cozy wasn’t around, as she sometimes happened to be (or not to be)? Worked. But that was because those times she left she usually left earlier. Today she’d been laggardly and so it was now lunchtime and too late for work and all that, leaving him at a loose end.
So what had he done before then, back before? Back when this house had been where it had been originally and he’d been living on his own? Back then, if he’d been at a loose end such as this with the long hours of the day looming ahead, what would he have done?
Seemed a long time ago now. Paul had to actually think about it.
What he got was that, back then, he likely would have smoked a bit and then gone to sleep, waking up early the next morning to start the whole thing over again. And again.
Now that he saw it laid out like that it just made him cross, but he didn’t want to dwell on why. Cursing, he hauled himself upright, aggressively washed his mug and stalked off to do something. He would find something in the house to do and if he couldn’t he’d make something to do.
To this end he clomped up the stairs, hoping that once he’d done that he would spot something there that could occupy his attention. Given that had already gone up earlier with this exact same plan in mind, he did not.
He looked down.
“Well. Least I can take the fucking frame off if I’m not going to be leaving the fucking house,” he said to himself.
This would be the making something to do.
Moving to the bathroom - where he continued to sleep, much to Cozy’s initial bemusement, amusement and latterly to her frustration and concern - he settled himself on the edge of the tub and set about unstrapping himself.
“Ow. Ow ow ow. Ow,” he said, gritting his teeth.
The frame he’d made was very practical and not wholly uncomfortable (even Paul wasn’t so openly masochistic as to make something for himself that would actively hurt him), but wearing it for an extended period of time was still more unpleasant than not wearing it. Even wearing it the relatively short period of time he’d been wearing it that day hadn’t been all that enjoyable.
He wasn’t looking forward to removing his leg later, either. For now though just the frame. Didn’t really need it around the house anyway. There were walls to grab in an emergency, and it ate up time removing it. This was, of course, the main thing.
And indeed time was eaten up. Just not all that much time. Still sitting on the tub, now sans frame, Paul sighed.
“Well this is shit,” he said, rubbing his face, wondering whether a few days had elapsed yet.
Probably not.
He got up again - slightly more unsteady than he had been when he’d sat down - and set off in search of a window to close or something. Cozy was always leaving them open upstairs. Or she did sometimes. Had once. Didn’t matter, it’d be something to do.
Pottering his way across the landing he passed by Cozy’s room and it’s almost perpetually ajar door, and there he paused, in the perfect position to see the stuff left scattered around inside. For a girl with such a reputation for meticulous planning she didn’t half hit like a bomb when it came to personal organisation.
Supposedly - according to Cozy - some parents (which he wasn’t) or parental figures (which he wasn’t either) or caretakers of children (which he grudgingly admitted he now was) made it a point to go in and tidy the rooms of their children (she was not his child) and charges (she was this) when they saw them in such a state.
As much as the mess annoyed Paul he found the idea distasteful. The thought of someone coming into his space and fiddling around? Not a fan. Hell, the reality had been bad enough those few times it had happened to him. It wouldn’t feel right to inflict it. If Cozy wanted to store things on the floor or over the back of chairs or hanging out of drawers rather than inside them, well, she could do it in her room if she felt the need. Outside her room was a different story on his watch, but inside it Paul would let her do as she felt best.
That said, he could still see the mess, and it rankled himin the way that mess always rankled him. Standing there on the landing he frowned and shook his head. And then his eyes alighted on one piece of mess in particular. A hat, left carelessly atop a pile of things that were not hats. There it sat, forlorn, forgotten and alone. Not on Cozy’s head and in no position to be on her head anytime soon, even if she needed it.
This would be the finding something to do.
She had left without taking her hat. Clearly this constituted an emergency, albeit a minor one. It would be quickly rectified. He would take it to her. Simple. He did after all have the address. Swiping up the hat he returned downstairs, leaning heavily on the bannister all the way.
Though of course, a flaw in having Cozy write the address down was that she had written it down in Mareain, and Paul had some difficulty in parsing what it was she’d written. The flaw on top of this flaw was that when he had finally worked out what it was she’d written, he hadn’t the foggiest fucking idea where it was.
Paul had not spent the years since having his house dragged South learning the geography, local or otherwise. He knew how to get to maybe a handful of places, and none of the knowing involved remembering street names. He just knew where to go if he needed this or that.
This presented issues now he wanted to get somewhere specific.
Oh well. He’d figure something out. Hadn’t got this far in life without being able to make it up as he went along. Casting about for his now rather neglected walking stick and finding it in the last place he looked (as is the nature of looking for things) he struck out to find his d-
His charge. His hatless, crafty ward. Cozy. Her. The child.
Stick in one hand and hat in the other he hit the streets. He very quickly discovered that he had no idea what these streets were. The signs were, if not gibberish, as close to gibberish for him as to be completely useless. He held the note Cozy had written up against them for comparison but got nothing out of the experience.
More time than he’d care to admit was spent in this manner, going up and down streets and around corners and getting quite thoroughly lost before finally gathering up the resolve to swallow his pride and actually ask someone. In the even, the first horse he saw.
“You,” he said, pointing and limping over to some hapless citizen of Canterlot who’d frozen in place as having this big, gangling, hair, limping thing coming at you wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to happen when you just popped out for a pint of milk. “You. Where this?”
This Paul asked while holding up the piece of paper in front of him.
The poor sod was so blindsided by this turn of events that it took them longer than it should have done to realise they were just being asked directions. When they did, their relief was palpable. Directions were simple. It could have been much worse.
A quick peer at the paper and a quick wrack of the brains and they said:
“Uh, i-it’s just up the street, kind of. Go that way, go left, along there there’ll be a, uh, another street with like a kind of star and moon banner hanging over it? From one side to the other? It’s that one.”
Paul took a second to parse and memorise this and then he nodded, pocketing the paper.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding as well as speaking thanks.
It was proper to be polite to strangers if you spoke to them first. If they spoke to you first fuck them, that’s on them, but if you made the first move you should be polite.
“No problem?” The pony said, not sure how to phrase it and delivering it to Paul’s back anyway as he was immediately stumping off, heading the way he’d been directed, fist clutching a hat.
The hat was of course a transparent excuse to show up and make sure Cozy was doing alright, but Paul hadn’t realised this consciously. In his head it was entirely reasonable what he was doing. Had anyone else done it, of course, he’d have seen through it in an instant and pointed it out to them, loudly. Since he was the one doing it, however, it was utterly without ulterior motive.
Her head might get cold! What else had he been supposed to do?
Walking up the street and taking a left Paul immediately spotted the moon-and-stars banner that the random horse had spoken of and made a beeline for it. To his satisfaction he saw that what Cozy had written on the piece of paper matched with the sign he could see naming the street. Now it was just a case of finding the right number!
The numbers Paul could recognise, it was just the rest of the address that had been the issue, so now that he was on the right street actually finding the right building wasn’t all that hard. And he did find it and in short order, too, slipping in just as some other pony resident was slipping out and so the door was still open.
“Um,” said the pony as he moved in past them.
“Here to fix stove,” Paul said, not stopping, not looking back and heading straight up the stairs.
“Oh. Um. Alright then,” said the pony, carrying on their way, fighting down the vague feeling they probably shouldn’t have accepted this answer so easily but feeling that it was now too late to do anything about it and also that that thing looked kind of scary whatever it was.
Climbing the stairs was harder work than Paul had expected it to be and so his progress slowed a little, but not by a lot. Inside of ten minutes he was standing outside what he determined to be the right place, and after taking a moment to catch his breath he knocked.
The door took longer to answer than he might have thought normal, but he put this down to childish shenanigans, and it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be or anything else to do. He fiddled with the hat and waited. At length the door opened, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Applebloom all standing there, looking tense and doing a bad job of hiding it.
“Cozy forgot hat, head will get cold when-” Paul started, without preamble.
He stopped, looking at the three of them all lined up, doing their best to hide their nervousness. It wasn’t enough.
“Where is Cozy?” He asked, eyes narrowing.
“She’s, ah - she’s in the bathroom!” Applebloom blurted, quickly remembering the line she’d been fed. Paul’s eyes narrowed further, the merest slits of suspicion now.
He’d been good at spotting lies (typically by spotting them everywhere, agreeably, but still) even before living with Cozy, and Applebloom was not good at lying in the first place.
“No. She is not. Where is she?”
“She is! Honest!” Sweetie Belle interjected, leaping in to assist, achieving nothing. Paul’s suspicions remained.
“No. That is line she uses when she is doing something she knows she should not do. I know this. She tell you to say that. Where is she?” He asked.
“She- she…”
Paul loomed, and then realised he was looming when the girls cowered, and so took an unsteady step backwards. So unsteady, in fact, it became two steps and a sway.
“Girls,” he said, taking care to try and soften his voice - not the easiest at the best of times and infinitely harder for him when speaking Mareain. “Am not angry, just worried. I need look after Cozy, yes? If she is off, she might - might - where is Cozy?”
The three of them exchanged meaningful looks.
They were clearly weighing the option of grassing Cozy up against the option of denying the concerned questions of the scary alien - the scary alien who also happened to be their friend’s pseudo-father and caregiver and so who kind of maybe had a right to know where she was going on her harebrained, half-baked, possibly dangerous excursion.
That Paul was stood right there and Cozy was far away (and had had her plan blown wide-open anyway, making trying to keep it secret moot) clinched it for them.
“She’s going to the Crystal Empire,” Scootaloo said, her tone defeated, her shoulders sagging.
Paul didn’t like this answer. He didn’t understand it, but he understood that he didn’t like it.
“...the where?”
Another exchanged look.
“It’s…”
How best to explain it to someone who didn’t even know your name by now? The exchanged look was more helpless this time, as none of them actually had any answers available even if they’d wanted to provide them. Then Sweetie Belle had an idea.
“I think there’s a map book in here, I’ll go get it,” she said, dashing off and leaving Paul and the others standing around like sinking puddings.
“You children having fun until my ch- the child - until Cozy run off?” Paul asked, mangling the question and biting his tongue.
“Oh, uh, yeah,” Scootaloo said, bewildered, while Applebloom nodded. To the great relief of everyone concerned Sweetie Belle returned presently with the book she’d thought the place had possessed and, thankfully, had. A big, glossy, coffee-table type of book full of maps and other things to look pretty while it sat around taking up space.
The three girls opened it up between them and flicked hurriedly, arriving at what seemed the best map available, an Equestrian overview of sorts, with only the slightest of nods to artistic license. Had a scale and everything. Fairly useful, very well done.
“This horse land?” Paul asked, frowning. He’d managed to avoid all such maps until now. He hadn’t really wanted to know what the place looked like. All navigation prior to this point had been done on a local level when it had been done at all.
“Equestria,” Applebloom said, helpfully, and he forgot this immediately as she pointed to the map. “We’re here, see? And the Crystal Empire is up here. Uh, there’s a train that goes, um, from…”
She tailed off, as it was clear that Paul wasn’t really listening to her. He was just staring at the map with an utterly unreadable expression. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry, sad, upset - anything, really. He was clearly something, and that something was in all likelihood bad, but the exact flavour of bad was difficult to determine.
He stared at the book silently for a moment longer before reaching out and, before they could do anything, ripping out the page with the map on it. The girls gasped. Sweetie winced. That was going to fall on her, she knew it.
“I take this. Thank you,” Paul said, after the damage had been done, folding the ripped page and tucking it into his pocket before turning on his heel and leaving without another word. It was so sudden none of the girls really knew what to do, except Sweetie Belle, who was still mourning the damage to the book.
“Are we in trouble now?” Scootaloo asked Applebloom, who shrugged. Scootaloo then looked to the rapidly-retreating paul.
“Cozy’s not in trouble, is she? We’re not in trouble, are we?” She called after him.
But he didn’t stop.