//------------------------------// // 4. Rain // Story: Workhorse // by Apple Bottoms //------------------------------// The next morning opened with rain. Rain seemed to suit everyone’s mood, exhausted and worn out from the pen. The simian troops ran for cover, hooting and hollering with excited dismay, and the ponies had no choice but to stand in the rain and bear through it.  “Ain’t got no pegasus ponies on the job to kick these clouds away,” one of the farmer ponies yelled over the rain. His symbol was a leafy head of chard; he would know what he was talking about, Mel supposed. “It might take days to pass.”  Big Caramel wasn’t feeling good, to say the least. He wasn’t a farmer pony, he was a town pony. Sure, he was built as solidly as Big Mac, but he wasn’t someone who woke up before dawn and spent his days doing back-breaking labor for the love of it, come rain or shine. Oh he worked, he wouldn’t deny that, but when it got too rainy, they simply canceled deliveries at the flower shop he worked at, and he’d stay inside and help with the trimming. He liked that part more than he should, he supposed. He was good with the cart, but he hoped sometime they might let him try arranging. Wasn’t it funny, the things he thought were important back then. Wasn’t it funny how “back then” had only been last week.  The morning was shaping up to be boring, cold, and miserable, until Mel caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The neighbor stallion was on the run again, charging through the rain to slam his body into the opposite side of the fence once more. Mel had hardly heard him, over the steady patter of the rain, the rumbling of the thunder. He couldn’t smell it, but Mel could remember the scent of the singed fur, and it drove him to action.  “Hey! Neighbor!” Mel shouted, trying to get his attention over the thunder. “Why don’t you stop with that? You’re just going to hurt yourself.”  The stallion gave no indication that he had heard him and continued his latest run, slamming into the fence. The blast shot him back, and he skidded in the mud that his pen had turned into, his side heaving as he panted.  “C’mon, give it a rest, will ya?” Mel tried to cajole him the second time, tilting his head as he stared down at him. “You can come talk to me for a bit, take a rest. C’mon.”  “The rain will only be here for a few days. It’s not nearly cold enough to last,” the stallion panted, meeting Mel’s gaze for a moment before he staggered to his hooves once more, swaying until he found his balance.  “I know, so why don’t you just, I dunno, take a rest? You should try to find somewhere to stand, maybe you can keep yourself warm if you can set your head away from the rain.” That was pretty useless advice, once Big Caramel said it out loud. Still, he felt bad, like he should have something better to suggest. But what was there to say? He was alone, in the rain. He didn’t even have a herd to cuddle up against for warmth, like Mel did.  Mel wasn’t sure he wanted to cuddle up with his own group, but he wasn’t going to admit that out loud. The group had been distant once he’d placed himself between them and Ramblejam, and things hadn’t gotten any friendlier in the days since.  “No. I have to hurry,” the stranger insisted, his eyes rolling and wild. The muddy stallion snorted and tossed his head, pawing at the ground before he took off on another wild dash, slamming into the fence again. He was blasted backwards, same as before, landing in almost the same place as the first time, chest heaving as he laid in the mud.  “You - I can’t watch you do this. You’re just hurting yourself!” Mel protested, ears flat, and turned away. After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder, hoping that his dramatics might have some effect. The stallion hadn’t even seemed to hear him as he teed himself up for another run. With a heavy sigh, Mel turned his attention to the daily breakfast delivery - apples, this time, from the Apple farm they’d just pillaged. Those, at least, were easier to rub the mud off of before you ate them, Mel supposed. Mel rolled half of what he got over to the stranger, and his neighbor ate them from where he laid in his latest mud puddle.  “D’you think we’ll ever g-get a warm breakfast?” chattered Ramblejam, trying to finish his breakfast around chattering teeth.  “Why don’t you join the group? They’re all hanging close,” Mel spoke to him quietly, already finished with his half rations, desperate for something else to focus on.  The look Ramblejam shot him spoke volumes.  “Right. That’s the vibe I got, too,” Mel admitted quietly. “Was sorta hoping I was wrong.”  “Why do they dislike you? You seem - n-nice.”  “C’mere, at least we can stick together,” Mel instructed him softly, pulling the smaller stallion close enough to press his side against Mel’s. He felt the bead of his cold skin when it pressed against him, and it worried him. Mel’s coat was thick enough to withstand the rain, but it didn’t feel like Ramblejam’s was. “Get a group of ponies together, and they start looking for someone they can have fun disliking together. If somepony interrupts their game, that’s no fun.”  Ramblejam huffed out a sound that Mel thought might be a laugh, but it was far too shivery. “How’re you so warm?”  “I’m bigger than you. Maybe my coat is thicker, too.”  “Fatter,” Ramblejam teased, very softly.  “What’d you say?” Mel demanded, but his voice was warm with amusement, and the instinctive nervous reaction faded from Ramblejam’s slim frame. “How very dare you.”  “If the Storm King’s troops try to eat us, I’ll tell them you’d be the most delicious,” Ramblejam teased, and he rubbed his cold face against Mel’s broad golden shoulder as he laughed.  “No one’s going to eat us,” Mel began seriously. “But if they did, you’d be last on the list, since you are technically classified as a string bean.”  “Hey!”  “And I don’t need to be a farmer to know that.”  Ramblejam tried to head-butt Mel’s shoulder, but Mel was as solid as one of Maud’s boulders. Ramblejam’s repeated attempts only made Mel laugh, and soon the pair were laughing together, soaked in the rain, their laughter lost in the thunder.  Mel felt a pair of eyes on him, and when he turned to look he locked gazes with the neighboring stallion. He watched them with some unknown emotion, but if Mel had to put a word to it, he would have chosen ‘confused.’ Wanting to be warm, no doubt, and Mel tried to shout to him again.  “Just give up the fence. Try to stand away from the rain - face this way, it’s better,” Mel called, but the stallion shook his head. “Please,” he added, and he meant it.  “I can’t wait for the next storm.” As if emboldened, the stallion backed up to the far end of the paddock once more and took off at a run, even faster this time. His crash into the mud was even more spectacular as a result.  “That guy has problems,” Ramblejam muttered, only loud enough for Mel to hear.  “He can’t help it; it’s this place,” Mel replied, his voice low as his ears fell back. “It’s changing all of us. Not for the better, I fear.”  “Maybe not them,” Ramblejam disagreed quietly, and pressed his face into Mel’s shoulder, turning it so the cold half could leech some warmth.  “You should stand under me, if you’ll fit. Kneel down or something. It’ll be warmer if you can stay out of the rain,” Mel called after a moment, turning his head to try and shield Ramblejam’s face.  “What about you?”  “I’m warm enough like this. Down you get.” And, surprisingly, Ramblejam figured out a way to fit under Mel. He wasn’t the tallest stallion there, but neither was Ramblejam, and the promise of warmth in a storm was enough to make anything worth trying.  “You’re so warm,” Ramblejam sighed, pressing his cheek against one of Mel’s front legs, trying to press himself everywhere at once. For all that Ramblejam wanted to pretend he was doing this only at Mel’s insistence, the way he immediately glued himself to every available inch of Mel’s coat confirmed the lie.  “And your mane is so wet!” Mel laughed, and Ramblejam laughed in reply at the way it made his middle bounce. “We should try to nap. Not much else to do in a storm like this, I think.”  “You can sleep standing up?” “Well, I’ve heard farmers can. Some of them seem to be,” Mel hummed, nodding over to the rest of the ponies in their paddock, several standing with their eyes closed. “No better time like the present to learn.” Mel let his eyes slip closed as well. It was calming, at least; he could focus on the sound of the rain, instead of the sight of his neighbor slamming into the fence, over and over.  “Then I must be able to, too,” Ramblejam insisted firmly, “since I’m a farmer.”  “Exactly,” Mel agreed, and sighed. Getting sleepy. Getting sleepy … This wasn’t working, but Mel found himself falling into a relaxed sort of meditation anyway, focusing on the sound of the rain, the gentle pressure of Ramblejam’s body beneath him as he settled.  Mel would have sworn he was mostly awake, but when he jerked back into alertness, it was much darker, and his legs were as stiff as if he’d been standing there for hours. Had he slept? Had to be; all of the other ponies were gathered on his side of the fence, and Ramblejam was still under him, too nervous to come out. It was still raining, but Ramblejam felt dry beneath him. Thankfully, the other ponies seemed to take no notice of them at all.  “Where is he?”  “Did they take him away?”  “Did they eat him?!” one panicked voice rose to a sharp whinny. “Are they going to eat us?!” “Shut up,” Jewelcrisp growled, “check the group, see if they put him in our pen.”  As the other ponies bickered among themselves, Mel slowly turned to consider his neighbor’s pen, his eyes scanning it rapidly.  He’d worn a furrow into the mud, running forward and getting blasted back; but the far end of the pen, the same spot he kept crashing into, was broken.  “He got out,” Mel whispered, and the pen fell silent. Then, the screaming began.