//------------------------------//
// It's chilli outside 
// Story: Head over heels 
// by Cackling Moron 
//------------------------------//

Phil sat. Phil scrolled. Phil did his best not to think about how chilly he was.

He was succeeding in two of these three things.

This latest cold snap was yet another in a series of cold snaps, each one just as miserable (and cold) as the last one and, in all likelihood, as miserable as the one to follow. Nothing about them was good. They made going outside even more unpleasant than it normally was and they made staying inside not all that much fun, either. These were not the good times.

It was why Phil was wrapped in two of his blankets, trying to ignore it all, tough it out and let it pass. It was why he was there in his chair, systematically telling the algorithm what he wasn’t interested in seeing, all the while not actually looking at anything he might want to see.

He wasn’t having the best time. As said, not the good times.

Phil was also sitting by a window. This is important.

Being as how his flat was on the ground floor he was in the unenviable position of having to have his blinds closed more-or-less all the time, to keep the passing public from peeping. This particular evening was no exception, but something flicking back and forth kept catching his attention, distracting him from his content curation. Once or twice would have been shrugged off, but this kept happening - back and forth, back and forth.

“What’s going on out there…” he muttered, lifting a slat and having a peer.

He saw what was going on out there.

Outside, pacing, was the girl who lived upstairs. The pony who lived upstairs.

Phillip had no strong feelings about the ponies one way or another. Ever since that thing had happened - the big thing, the famous thing, the thing that meant ponies and humans intermingled now and it wasn’t that big of a deal; you know, that thing - it wasn’t uncommon to see them around the place. Just one of those things. 

Ponies were a fact of life now, albeit not typically a fact of his life. He had very little interaction with them. Excepting those rare occasions he happened to glimpse the one from upstairs or she saw him and waved at him. She always seemed to make a point of waving and smiling at him on those rare occasions their paths happened to cross. He had no idea why, they never spoke, but she did it anyway.

But that was all by the by. Right then what mattered was what she was doing. Sitting up a little straighter he leaned closer to the window so he could peer better, and see what was up.

He could see her issue.

She had a bin bag with her, sitting, waiting. Clearly she would have liked to put it in the bin so that the bin could then be emptied and all could be well. However, she could not do that because, in preparation for collection in the morning, the bins had been placed at the bottom of the driveway of the building. 

Normally not a problem. With the current weather? A problem.

The driveway of the building was lovely, smooth, recently freshly-relaid tarmac that, owing to the plunging temperatures, was utterly slick with frost. Phil could tell just by looking that this was now as close to a frictionless surface as was feasible under the circumstances, and he guessed that hooves didn’t have all that much grip.

And so there she was, hemming and hawing at the top of the drive, shivering a little, breath misting, rubbish sitting patiently in the bag, bin tantalisingly out of reach.

A piteous sight and no mistake.

There was a part of Phil that urged him to just pretend he hadn’t seen anything. He was cold, this part said, and it wasn’t his problem. This part further went on to say that the issue would probably resolve itself somehow with or without his help, and that in the scheme of things missing a single bin collection wasn’t the end of the world. This part made some reasonable points.

Mostly though, he knew he had to do something about it. He’d seen her in dire straits, and acting like he hadn’t just wasn’t tenable. And in the scheme of things, being a bit cold and putting himself out there to help someone he’d exchanged maybe five words with wasn’t the worst thing.

Shrugging off the blankets, he headed outside.

When he got outside he regretted going outside, but it was too late for that. He found her still stuck at the top, shivering a little, plainly still working out what she was going to do. As he sauntered closer he saw her venture a single hoof only to quickly withdraw it on contact with the drive. A no-go, plainly.

“Hi,” he said, making her jump and whirl around.

“H-hi,” she said once she’d got over her surprise, teeth-chattering. Phil nodded and pointed to the bag of rubbish, and she looked too.

“You need some help with that?” He asked. Best to get to the point. It was, after all, bloody cold.

“Yes please!” She said immediately and with overpowering, palpable gratitude, only realising afterwards that perhaps she’d imposed too much too quickly. “Um, if that’s not too much t-trouble, I mean.”

“Wouldn’t have offered if it was trouble, don’t worry about it,” Phil said.

“If you’re sure.”

“Totally.”

“Thank you,” she said, slumping with relief a little before straightening up again to say: “I’m Plum, by the way. Plum Pudding. I think you live underneath me? Like, in the flat underneath me, I mean, not actually underneath me, heh. That would be, uh, well, I mean, I don’t. Yeah. Heh.”

Plum clamped her mouth shut with a fixed grin, as though afraid if she didn’t she might just keep talking. The sight was enough to nearly have Phil smiling. Nearly though, not quite entirely, but nearly.

“I do. And hi, I’m Phil,” he said.

“Hello Phil.”

That was introductions out of the way. Phil hated introductions.

With no sense in wasting time Phil bent and picked up the bag of rubbish, then looked at the task ahead of him. The descent to the bin. It was - what? - ten feet down the driveway? Twelve? Certainly not a considerable distance, certainly shouldn’t have been a problem, were it not for the frost. The shiny, foreboding frost, twinkling with menace in the glare of the streetlights.

It looked pretty slippery, but how bad could it be, really?

As it transpired, pretty bad.

Phillip’s first footfall fell flawlessly, foot finding firm foundation. After all, this wasn’t the first time he’d taken a step forward. He was a pro, a veteran, an old hand (or foot, in this instance). He’d been walking places for years. No biggie. It was the next step that was the problem, or rather when he went to take the next step and so all the weight went onto that firmly founded first foot.

Which promptly shot out from under him, causing him to immediately fall flat smack onto his back on the driveway.

The whole thing was over more-or-less instantly, with no obvious transition between standing and no-long-standing. So fast was it, in fact, that Phil’s brain had to play catch up on a whole lot of things all at once. It had to note that he was now horizontal, not vertical, and that this was new. It then noted that he was in pain, a fair amount of pain, and from a fair amount of places. His brain ran through all the places that were in pain but quickly gave up on specifics and just informed him that all of him was in pain, which it was.

He was also cold. He’d been cold before, yes, because it was cold outside, but lying on the frosty, frosty ground really added something. The something that it added was more cold, delivered directly through his clothes and into his back and buttocks. His back and buttocks, already suffering from impact, did not appreciate this.

“Ow,” he said, feeling it summed recent events up nicely.

He would have moved, but right then he just didn’t see the point. He needed a moment.

“Oh stars! Are you alright?” He heard from somewhere north of his head, followed by a scampering and clattering.

“Stars?” He had about enough time to think, confusedly, before the scampering and clattering went all wrong, there was a ‘Whoa!’ noise, he caught a brief sight of pony cartwheeling gaily across his vision, and Plum executed a spectacular and entirely unplanned belly-flop right on top of him.

His brain helpfully informed him that he was now in more pain. Useful things, brains.

“...ow…” he said again, perhaps a little more strained than last time.

“Sorry! I’m so sorry! I - whoa, agh - I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine, really, just please stop moving,” Phil said, wincing. Plum’s efforts at straightening herself out and standing up and attempting to clamber off of him had mostly involved inadvertently treading and stamping on various parts of his person, and it really hadn’t been helping things. Realising that this was what had happened Plum perhaps overcompensated by flopping down again and while she wasn’t heavy, being a dinky little pony, she also wasn’t light.

Phil winced.

“...thank you.”

“I’m really sorry!”

He considered giving the increasingly-frantically apologetic pony a friendly pat on the shoulder to try and reassure her there were no hard feelings, but he couldn’t actually see where her shoulder was and didn’t feel they’d progressed enough together for him to be able to make a mistake when it came to blindly patting her.

Instead, he just gave a thumbs up, hoping she’d see it before his hand went back down.

(She did, and was reassured.)

“It’s fine, fine, not your fault, accident, these things happen. Let’s just - ow - let’s figure this out, okay. Rubbish is - rubbish is here, yes,” Phil said, feeling around with one hand and finding where the bag had fallen, thankfully not that far from his fingertips. He grasped and grabbed. “That’s one thing,” he said.

The other thing was, of course, her, not that Plum realised this quite yet.

Chewing through the widespread reports of pain and the throbbing in his head and the cold chilling his bones and buttocks, Phil could see, going by where the building was, that he’d managed to slide down the driveway when he’d fallen over, ending him at the bottom of it. This meant that, if he stood, he’d be standing on the pavement.

This was a key detail.

This was a key detail because the pavement was, helpfully, mercifully, made of grippier stuff than the driveway. Lovely jagged, gravelly tarmac rather than the chocolate-torte smooth tarmac of the driveway. The pavement was the kind of tarmac you could reliably stand on, and this was good, because Phil was going to be relying on the pavement to stand on.

“Alright, here we go. You’re going to need to hold on, I’m afraid.”

“Hold on? To what? Why- wah!”

Phil had started to rise. He did so with caution, care, and calm. To try and do it with anything else would likely have meant falling over again, and he hadn’t enjoyed it the first time. Finding the ground (such as it was) shifting beneath her hooves, Plum did as she’d been advised and held on. Though given the scarcity of things to hold onto, what this meant in practise was she just clung to Phil, somewhere between his head and his chest.

“There’s not a lot of dignity in this, I’m afraid, but it’s better than falling over again,” Phil said, heaving delicately forward and onto his haunches, thence back to standing. His core was most certainly engaged.

“It’s okay! You’re doing great!” Plum said, giving a supportive hoof-pump before quickly regretting having let go and equally quickly clinging again.

“Just hold on…” Phil said, balancing his way forward and finally disposing of the rubbish. The bang of the wheelie bin lid sounded deafening, but such was life. Now was the harder part, going back up the drive.

This time, Phil was prepared. He went up it sideways, and he went up it very, very slowly. He also hung onto the fence that ran up alongside the end of the thing like a drowning man clutching onto some wreckage. It wasn’t fun and it certainly wasn’t easy (especially with a trembling, frigid pony hanging off him) but it worked, damnit, and he got back up without falling over. Success!

“Thank fuck for that,” Phil breathed, then adding: “You can get down now.”

“Oh, yes. Thanks. Um, you couldn’t, uh…”

He got the point and bent forward a little, giving her a more reasonable distance to turn and drop, and turn and drop she did. Following this the two of them wasted very little time in getting the hell back inside, where it was not freezing cold.

Standing for a moment in the little lobby/foyer/hallway zone of the building to enjoy not being all shivery they luxuriated in the slight increase in temperature before looking at one another. What were you meant to do after something like that? If it had all gone smoothly and without a hitch then they could have just said thank you and bye and gone about their business. But that hadn’t happened. Something else had happened. Something weird.

Phillip was the first to make a move, being as how he was still suffering from having gone arse over teakettle and wasn’t enjoying standing upright.

“Well that was exciting. I am going to go and lie down,” he said, leaving out the part where he was also going to take some painkillers. That was just unnecessary detail for her, she didn’t need to know that.

“Do you like soup?” Plum blurted out of nowhere. Phil blinked.

“Uh. Yes?”

He had never had cause in his life to form any solid opinions about soup, and it was difficult coming up with a definitive answer when put on the spot like this.

“I can make soup! I mean, uh, I made soup. Earlier. You can - would you like some?”

Phil had the oddest feeling that this was some kind of trick question, given how straightforward it was. He felt he was missing some sort of key context that would get the question to make sense to him, because right then it just seemed inexplicable. 

“...sure?” He ventured.

“Okay! I’ll be back.”

And off she raced up the stairs. Watching a pony climb stairs (human stairs, no less) was not something Phil had ever done before, and now he was doing it he didn’t know what to think. She did well enough, even in her haste, only slipping once and playing it off pretty good.

“Excitable lady…”

Phil stood awkwardly by his door for a few minutes, thinking longingly of his sofa and of ibuprofen, wondering what he was doing. Waiting for soup, apparently. The question was why. Two questions of why, in fact: why was he waiting for it, and why was it being provided in the first place?

Perhaps the gift of soup as a means of expressing thanks was a pony thing? Could be? How would he know? Look it up online? In this economy? Phil thought not, and he continued waiting. 

Some minutes later there came again the sound of hoof on step and, momentarily, Plum reappeared, tupperware balancing incongruously on her back. If watching her ascend the stairs sans soup had been an experience, watching her come back down them while somehow not spilling a drop or even so much as seeming to worry about it slipping was something else entirely. Phil was dumbstruck.

“Back!” Plum grinned, and she wasn’t wrong. She was back.

Phil, being dumbstruck, had to restart himself to respond.

“Ah, right, yes. Hello.”

Pause for awkward pause.

“...you were lying down?”

“What? Oh, I was, yes. Inside. Hang on.”

Phil faffed fleetingly, and then they were both into his place, him continuing to wonder what he was doing and how things had gone this way. After closing the door he found himself herded - in his own home! - inward and sofaward, and following this found himself being forcibly (in a delicately forcible way) sat down.

“I’ll get you a bowl. They’re in the kitchen?” Plum asked.

“Yes,” said Phil, wondering what she would have done had he said no.

After she disappeared there came the sounds of clunking bowls and beeping microwave and soon after this Phil found himself the proud possessor of a steaming bowlful of soup. Or something purporting to be soup.

There was an awful lot going on for soup. 

Phil would be the first to admit he wasn’t an expert on the subject but he was fairly certain there was at least a soft limit on the number of lumps soup was meant to have. Lumps and other visible ingredients. He wouldn’t stake his life on where these lines were drawn, but they were drawn somewhere he was fairly sure.

“This is soup?” He asked, as politely as he could.

“Yes!” Plum said, only to fold immediately: “Well, no. It’s, uh - it’s actually something else. I don’t know why I said it was soup…”

Plum seemed a little ashamed at having lied, but this brought Phil no closer to a greater understanding of what was currently steaming in his bowl.

“...what is it?” He asked.

“Three-bean chilli?”

Phil wasn’t sure why she was asking him. This would explain some things, though. Such as the profusion of beans, at least three kinds of beans that Phil could see. He prodded it with his spoon and everything seemed to be working properly.

Acutely aware he was being watched he tried some. It was scaldingly hot but, excepting that, it was perfectly pleasant. It was definitely something he could see himself eating. Once it wasn’t scaldingly hot. And once he’d had some painkillers.

“Is it good?” Plum asked.

“Very,” Phil said. “Just maybe a little hot. And I need to get something quick.”

He tried to rise, but did not get very far before Plum intervened.

“No no, you sit! I’ll get it!”

“You don’t know where it is. Or what it is.”

This was something she hadn’t considered.

“Oh. Uh, you could tell me where? And what?”

Phil liked to think of himself as a patient man, or at least a man so numb to life he could roll with just about whatever it chose to throw at him. But he had limits, and while Plum meant well (and was profoundly adorable, even he couldn’t deny that), her well-meaningness was also standing - literally - between him and pain relief. 

The look on his face apparently conveyed a lot of this to Plum, who wilted.

“I mean, uh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have - I’ll - I’ll just go.”

Her profound dejection was painful to see, and hadn’t been Phil’s intention at all.

“It’s okay. Look - you get yourself a bowl, I’ll get what I need. Alright?” He said. Plum perked up, at least a tiny bit. Her ears stopped drooping, which was the main thing.

“You’re sure?” She asked.

“Wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t. Back in a tick.”

Phil went off to see to his pain-relief needs, and when he returned to the sofa he found Plum now sitting (like a person, catching him off-guard), cradling her own bowl in her lap. When he offered her a blanket for the chill she accepted it happily. Phil, with his own blanket (for he was a man of many blankets) took up his bowl, now cooler, and sat beside her, keeping a companionable and polite distance between them.

As attractive as the prospect of sitting and eating in silence with a near-stranger was to Phil he didn’t quite feel up to it, and so for some background noise he turned on the television. Thankfully, the channel it turned onto wasn’t awful, and in fact had something semi-worth watching on it. Fortune smiled.

“What’s this?” Plum asked, swallowing chilli.

“Crystal Maze,” Phil said, bringing chilli to his face.

“Ah, cool,” Plum said, not understanding what this meant but not feeling the need to ask further questions. They watched, they ate. Onscreen, simple tasks were fluffed miserably. When the ads rolled around Plum found her voice again and asked something that had the tang of a question she’d been sitting on for some few minutes:

“Why’d you help me?”

Phil shrugged.

“Looked like you needed help,” he said.

That really was the long and the short of it, at least to him. Plum took this answer to her bosom and silently plucked at it for hidden mysteries. She could pluck all she liked, it wouldn’t get her anywhere, at least not anywhere Phil would wish her to go.

“Why’d you bring me chilli?”

“Because you hurt yourself,” Plum said instantly.

“Oh. Sure, cool,” Phil said. He had to admit it wasn’t one of his finer moments, shitting the bed like that - with a girl watching, no less - but it certainly wasn’t one of the worst moments either. And he felt better now, her efforts being a part of that. Not as big a part as the painkillers, sure, but a part all the same.

Definitely a pony thing, he reckoned.

“And because - well, uh, heh - because you helped me,” Plum added, stirring her bowl and glancing his way once or twice. Big eyes.

“Well, thanks,” Phil said.

Ponies. Strange creatures. But weren’t we all?