Fluttershy’s bedroom was spick and span. So too was the first floor. But there was still the attic, and the kitchen only had a day’s worth of food. Well, two days of pony food, but only one day of bunny. Angel sat cross-legged in the center of the counter—having taken a full stock of the cupboards—and pondered his next move.
The week wasn’t even half over, and groceries needed to be obtained. Angel couldn’t do it—he could never carry the heavy bits there, let alone the heavier groceries back, and he could never communicate such a transaction to the grocer anyways. This meant that Fluttershy would have to go. That’s right, Fluttershy, off on her own to the marketplace to be pushed, talked at, and haggled until everything they’d worked for came undone, and all she would have to show for it was overpriced food that she was too exhausted to cook.
Angel’s pocket watch ticked to 6 o’clock PM, and he realized that the sounds of cleaning from upstairs had disappeared. The silence clutched at Angel’s little heart, and he shot to his paws, bounding up towards the attic. He found his owner safe and sound behind a stack of boxes of old school supplies. Her nose was nuzzled in Twilight’s book.
“Uh—!” she stammered, stashing the book away, taking flight, and dusting off the top of the box of old school supplies. The box Angel had asked her to find a way to dispose of.
Angel leapt onto the box and stared at the shrinking Fluttershy until she was on the ground.
“I’m sorry…” she said. “It’s just really, really good. It sounds like Daring Do might settle down with this stallion! That would be lovely.”
This plot element registered somewhere in Angel’s brain, but not in a very important spot. With a sigh, his eyes wandered to the single open flap of the box. Inside, he saw a stack of cue cards, still wrapped tightly in plastic. He gasped, ripping them out of the box, kissing them all over, snuggling them close.
“…Are you okay, Angel?”
In quick, assured motions, Angel withdrew his pocket watch and pointed towards it, tracing it ten notches along the edge.
“Ten minutes?” Fluttershy asked. “Okay! Meet you downstairs?”
But Angel was already gone.
***
The plan was perfect, if only Angel knew how to write in Ponish. But he had a plan for that, too.
At one end of the kitchen table sat Fluttershy, and at the other, Angel. Between them were six cards, spread out randomly over the tablecloth. Each card had a distinct drawing on the front, which Angel had made with his trusty pencil, and colored with a new set of pencil crayons Fluttershy had gotten him for his birthday.
Fluttershy’s eyes had been lighting up gradually as she looked over the cards. “Is this like Pictionpony?” she asked.
Angel held one paw flat in the air and wobbled it back and forth.
“It’s… kind of like Pictionpony?”
He flipped over one of the cards, revealing a line on the back. He pushed the pencil towards his owner.
“Oh, I have to guess them all? And write it in?”
Angel snapped his fingers, then sat back and waited, the palms of his paws pressed together in front of his little pink nose. Fluttershy picked up a card. The drawing showed a paper bag with a baguette, a cucumber, and several carrot stalks sticking out of the top.
“Um… Groceries?”
Angel applauded, and then turned over the card for Fluttershy to write the word on the back. She did so with glee.
She got the next two rather quickly. A picture of a pony shaking her head and frowning was simply the word ‘No’. The drawing of an eye, was an eye. Then she picked up the drawing of a large tent, adorned with colorful stripes and flags, with ponies mingling all around it.
“Hmmm…”
Angel had to stop his foot from tapping impatiently.
“A circus?”
Angel shook his head vehemently.
“A… carnival?”
Angel cringed, then started rotating a paw in a forward circle.
“Close, so… a fair? Or…?”
The snapping of Angel’s paw startled her into a giggle. She turned the card over and wrote ‘fair’. She made to pick up the next card, but Angel waved his paws in front of her face and pointed back down at the card, at the space before the word.
“Oh… you want the ‘a’?”
A snap, an applause, and a point at the card. Fluttershy rolled her eyes and scrawled in the extra letter.
Angel braced himself with a short exhale. This next one she’d chosen would be tough. It depicted two stallions with boxing gloves on their forehooves, glaring at each other through bruised eyes, and snarling through cut lips.
“Boxing?”
A good start, but Angel shook his head.
“Hmmm… a fight?”
Angel made a tsk sound. He held up one paw and darted out of the kitchen, returning with a thesaurus. He opened up the page to ‘fight’, and then pointed at the plethora of words underneath it.
“Uhhhh…” Fluttershy began reading. “An altercation…? An argument? A battle? A bout?”
Angel smacked his paws together.
“A bout!” Fluttershy celebrated.
Angel put on an open-mouthed grin. He threw his paws up in the air, and then pointed them at the card.
As Fluttershy scrawled both words onto the card, Angel snatched at the last one on the table. It was his finest work, a mean-looking stallion with a brown pelt and a stubble, wearing a flat cap and sucking on the end of a corn pipe. Angel shook his head. This one would be impossible, but the card wasn’t meant for her anyways. The pony he’d be playing with tomorrow would know what it meant.
Fluttershy glanced to her left and then her right. She put on a coy smile. “So… Did I win?”
Angel glowered and pointed up the stairs. Fluttershy marched.
***
That night, Fluttershy let it slip that she had sent a letter to Bookface.
“I didn’t leave the cottage,” she explained to his frantically tapping foot. “I just put it in the mailbox…”
Angel sighed and applied his paw to his forehead.
“I’m almost done my book,” Fluttershy said. “And I was wondering if she could give me another one!”