//------------------------------// // SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 5:43 AM // Story: Analemma, or A Year in the Sunlight // by Dubs Rewatcher //------------------------------// Question: Why does the neon sign say ‘Hoofington Free Clinic’ if they’re still gonna charge me $45? How much work does it take to stick a thermometer under my tongue and tell me, yes, a 100 degree temperature probably means I’m sick? “Rest and drink water” headasses. Could’ve at least given me a damn lollipop. Not that I’d be able to keep it down. The point is that I’ve got food poisoning. My tummy is growling louder than Spike at the vet, but even the slightest foodie smell sends my stomach flipping. When Applejack, Twilight, and I got back from the clinic, I collapsed into the stiff motel bed and closed my eyes. But it wasn’t enough — I got barely two hours of sleep. I spent the rest of the night sweating and cursing and craving the sweet release of death. By the time morning came, I actually felt good enough to eat some white bread and plain crackers. But I still wasn’t anywhere near healthy enough to spend a day rocking out and partying my ass off at Sunfest. So I looked up a bus schedule and bought a ticket for the first trip back to Canterlot City. Applejack volunteered to drive me, but I insisted that she stay. No need to miss the second day of Sunfest for my sorry ass. Then Twilight volunteered to stay with me on the bus. And she bought her ticket before I could say no. That’s why, an hour later, we’re huddled in the back of the CC37 bus from Hoofington to Canterlot City, sitting on stained fabric seats and breathing in bus fumes. Well, I’m breathing them in, at least. Twilight’s wearing a face mask. I don’t know if food poisoning is contagious — though my stomach hurts enough that if you told me my burrito was alive and evil, I’d believe you — but she’s smarter than me, so I’ll trust her. She’s wearing headphones, too. And she’s been quiet the whole time, staring off into space. I rest my head against the cool window and close my eyes. But the old highway road is covered with bumps and grooves. And I still hear Wallflower’s voice. And see the fear in her face. And I get queasier with every mile. Fluttershy apologized to me. “I didn’t mean to make you upset,” she said. And I believe her. She didn’t think about how I’d feel. They never do. Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I just played a sold out concert in front of thousands. And after what I did to Fluttershy — hell, after what I did to Wallflower, demon I am — I deserve some comeuppance. Be grateful. Be nice. That’s why I’m here. We hit a bump. My skull clacks hard against the window, and my stomach twists. Screw this. I need a distraction. I turn to Twilight. She’s still looking blankly ahead. I nudge her. She doesn’t respond. Nudge again. She jumps and takes off her headphones. “Yeah? Are you okay?” “Talk to me,” I say. I barely have the energy to speak over the bus engines. “What are you listening to?” She looks at her cans and pauses for a moment before saying, “Nothing, actually. It’s just really loud in here, and I’m trying to block some of the sound.” “Oh. Sorry. You can put them back on if you want.” “No, no!” She stuffs them away in her bag, but recoils when we hit a bump. “Let’s talk. How are you feeling?” “Like absolute garbage. But at least I’m not puking anymore.” I cross my arms tighter. “You didn’t have to come back with me, you know. You could have stayed and partied with the rest of the girls.” “I’m not just gonna leave you to suffer alone. Food poisoning’s no joke.” She smiles and shakes her head. “Besides, I wasn’t really in the mood for a big festival like that. No offense to the other artists.” Not in the mood. I know she’s not into loud music, but that sounds... deeper. And it hits me. “Did Timber end up coming?” I ask. It takes a second for me to remember that I’m not supposed to bring him up. My diseased brain is moving sixty frames behind my mouth. Her smile shrinks. “No.” Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything. “What a dick,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Yeah.” Yeah? “I know he’s busy, but you’re his girlfriend. And we’re literally in his hometown.” “Mhm.” I lean against the window again. “He’s a douche, Twi. I’m sorry, I know you love him, but I have to say it.” “Right.” Okay, what the hell. “Why are you agreeing with me all of a sudden?” I ask, closing my eyes. My stomach is still flipping, but getting pissed at Timber is a nice distraction. “Are you two fighting or something?” Her breathing picks up, and I wait for the response. We drive another mile before it comes. “Timber and I broke up two weeks ago,” she says. Eyes snap open. I lift my head to look at her. She’s gazing straight ahead, and her mouth is a hard, straight line. I search for words. All I come up with is, “What?” “The night I tried to call you.” Her fingers are twitching, and I can tell she’s trying so hard not to wring them. “I was going to ask you if I should leave him, and how. You didn’t answer, so I did it myself.” Are you blaming me for this? “Oh.” I blink, then frown. Whatever respite trashing Timber gave me is gone, replaced by boiling anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She shrugs. “I was a little embarrassed, I guess.” You guess? You lied to me for two weeks, and you guess it’s because you were embarrassed? Hold it in, hold it in. “Why?” “Why what?” Oh my goddess. “Why did you break up?” I ask, trying to keep a straight smile. “You always said that you guys were doing great.” “We were! Kinda.” She shrugs again, but her posture is tighter, smaller now. “We liked each other a lot. And he’s a cool guy. But we just weren’t into the same things, you know? And he lives far away, so we didn’t see each other much. We just weren’t meant to last.” She glances at me. “I guess you were right about him being my ‘first’ boyfriend.” “I didn’t mean for it to be a prediction.” “I know.” She smiles, but it’s wistful. “Honestly, it’s for the best. I was never cut out for the whole ‘girlfriend’ thing. Way too stressful for, y’know, someone like me.” “You’re great,” I say, but it’s totally automatic. I’m running with half-a-brain, and it’s not anywhere on this bus. It’s traveling two months back, to our double-date on the beach. “What was with you and Timber at the arcade?” “The arcade? What about it?” She’s trying to sound confused, but I see in her eyes that she knows exactly what I’m talking about. And I’m not in the mood for this shit. “Timber kissed you, and you freaked out.” She flinches. “I didn’t ‘freak out.’” “Well, you did something! You froze up. You looked like someone stabbed you.” She opens her mouth, then closes it again, then turns away and says, “I don’t want to talk about it.” I scowl. “Come on, Twi! You can’t lie to me for weeks, drop a bomb on me, and then start hiding things again. That’s—” A spike drives through my stomach, and I have to stop to hold down a burp. “That’s bull.” “I don’t want to talk about it,” she repeats. She clenches her fists. “I’m serious.” Oh, you wanna get mad? “Timber kissed you, you bugged out, and I wanna know why. What happened to sticking together? Why won’t you—” “I’m not telling you because if I say it, I’m going to sound like a psycho!” She says that loud enough that her voice echoes through the bus’ aisle. In the front, I see the driver look at us through his rearview mirror. She curls in on herself like a dying insect, head hanging low. I lay a hand on her back. When she doesn't move away, I say, "You're not a psycho. Whatever it is, I won’t judge. Promise.” Her heart is beating quick. She loosens her fists and sits up a tiny bit straighter. “He kissed me without asking first.” I wait for more. Nothing comes. “That’s it?” “Yes, that’s it. I don’t like it when people touch my face without warning. I panic.” She spits her words at me. “I told you it would make me sound crazy.” “No, no, it’s just—” I try to find a nice way to say it, but I come up blank. “I thought he was, like, abusing you.” She actually chuckles at that, though dryly. “Nope. Just freaking out over nothing. Because I—yeah.” “Because what?” She looks away. “Because I’m autistic.” “C’mon, that doesn’t mean anything.” “It means that I’m too weird to keep a boyfriend like him.” I smile and shake my head. “We’re all weird, Twi. You can move stuff with your mind. I was born a horse.” “You don’t get it!” Anger flashes in her eyes. “When you take off your amulet, you can just be a regular girl. That’s not how it works for me!” She motions to the headphones sticking out of her bag. “I wear headphones without playing any music, because loud noises make my brain feel like it’s snapping. Half the food at every restaurant is off-limits because the texture freaks me out. Back in middle school, Indigo Zap could make me cry just by knocking one of my pencils on the floor. Can you relate to any of that?” My mouth's as dry as it was before I threw up. I shake my head again. “Yeah. Of course.” She rubs her eyes. “I’m not saying that I wish I wasn’t autistic. I’ve lived like this for so long, and it’s what makes me, well, me. I just — ugh, I don’t know! I wish I could stop being so neurotic, just for a second! When I met Timber, I thought I could handle things. But it turns out I’m too anal even for him.” “Screw Timber!” I say. My throat burns with the effort, and the driver looks at us again, so I duck in my seat. “You’re better than him in every damn way. He’s nothing compared to you.” “Maybe,” she says, sighing. “You’re right, I freaked out when he kissed me. And I was mad, because I’d already told him not to do that.” “You see? Absolute scumbag.” “But he’s never gonna get it! No one ever does.” She furrows her brows. “I can tell him all about my tics and triggers, but it’s my body, my messed up brain. I can’t make him feel what I feel.” We quiet down as the bus turns off the highway and into the outskirts of Canterlot City. Cricket chirps and bird songs replace our voices. Farms and forests slowly give way to neighborhoods, lit in dim orange hues. I come up with an idea. And it’s stupid. Really stupid. But the part of my brain that’s supposed to incinerate the bad ideas — I’m pretty sure I’ve puked it out already. I offer her my hand. “Would it help if you showed me how it feels?” She glances down at my fingers. Then she stiffens up. “No. I mean, I can, but — I can’t do that to you. It’ll be awful.” “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I say, lowering my arm. “But if it helps you feel less alone, I want to help. I don’t want to be Timber.” She purses her lips, studies my hand. Then she pulls some hand sanitizer out of her pocket and spritzes my palm. “Alright,” she says. She lays her hand over mine. “I’ll try.” My head’s still pounding. But I focus my power anyway, closing my eyes, letting the magic slip through my fingers and into Twilight’s, along her shaking arm and up her neck, into her mind. With my other hand, I grip the dirty bus seat. What I’m about to try — merging not only with Twilight’s mind, but her memories — I’ve never done before. I don’t know if it’s possible.  And Twilight’s mind is so much different than Pinkie’s. Pinkie is a living sugar rush: Every thought races at you like an excited puppy, begging to be heard. But Twilight is a dark forest. Her memories peer at me from a distance, vague shadows against shifting backgrounds, but then they scurry away whenever I get near. “It’s okay,” I whisper. Her breath hitches. “Whatever you want to show me, I’m here. And if you wanna back out, that’s fine.” Her mind keeps shrinking away from my touch, memories slinking deep into the undergrowth — but then I hear her voice. “One. Two. Three. Four.” Pause. Long exhale. Pause. “One. Two. Three. Four.” And with each beat, her mind grows smaller, less foggy. The memories crawl back into view. I feel the edges of her consciousness, rough and spiky. She interrupts her count with a gasp when I press against it, as I slip further inside, until our boundaries break— The sound of the bus snaps out. We hear the creak of a wooden bed, and the tinny jingle of a pop song playing out of phone speakers. We open our eyes to an unfamiliar wooden ceiling, cornered by cobwebs— No, not unfamiliar. This is Timber Spruce’s bedroom. It’s July, his birthday. We flex our hands, grasping at the soft fleece blanket beneath us. The fan is on, but we’re burning hot, sweat running down our stomach and thighs. We turn our head. Timber is laying next to us. His shirt is unbuttoned, and looks so good like this, rugged chest hair over toned muscle. We’ve only touched that chest hair twice, but both times it was an adventure, running our fingers through and savoring the tingle. Do we look good to him? Sweaty and frizzy and small? We try to stop trembling but we can feel his breaths traipsing across our neck, down our shirt. Fear and excitement and confusion and desire swirl around in our chest, and we have to open our mouth to breathe. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Yeah,” we say past a mouthful of spit. “Just, you know. Anxious. This is really new for me.” He shifts closer to us. “It’s alright,” he says, wrapping an arm around us. His forearm presses against our breasts, and our heart leaps. “You lead. Whatever you want to do.” We’ve spent so long wishing for this. So many lonely nights alone in our bedroom, longing for someone to love us, fantasizing about moments just like this, about hands like his touching us all over. And now we’re here. And we can’t move, can’t even speak. But he holds us like that for a few long minutes, silently nestling his face into the crook of our arm. He stays there even after the music stops. We close our eyes, count his heartbeats, try to sync our shallow breaths with his calm ones. Our legs are still shaking. But we swallow. We take his hand and lead it to our chest. He doesn’t speak, just cups our breast in his hand and starts massaging. We lose our breath again as pleasure arcs through us, sparks from a wire, making our toes curl and our thighs stick together. “God, you’re hot,” he whispers into our collar, and we bite our lip trying not to moan. “Can I take your shirt off?” We nearly pop the buttons off our shirt trying to get it off. He tears off his flannel too, throwing it across the room onto the book we bought him, then returns faster, more ferocious. His hot breaths travel down our chest, our stomach. With a shaking hand we take off our glasses and set them on the nightstand. “Is this good for you?” we ask. We don’t ask the real questions: Are we doing this right? “Def,” he says, nodding fast. His smile — wide, toothy, eager — we haven’t seen him this happy in weeks. We worried we’d never see this again, never earn it again. But he’s beaming. He’s beaming as we wrap our fingers between his and slip his hand down, along our side and under our waistband. And then takes the other hand off our chest and lays it on our cheek. And all the pleasure in us turns to lead. “I love you,” he says, and he kisses us, and we stop breathing. No time to brace ourselves, to prepare for the awful sensations. Our cheek is burning hot, and cold nausea roils inside our gut. We try to say “Stop,” we try to say “Please give me a second,” but the words won’t come out. He moves back an inch, takes a breath, comes back and kisses us again. His tongue slides against our teeth, prying its way inside. We’re recoiling as far as we can, back sinking into the mattress, but he’s swallowing us. His other hand is still sliding down. The world shrinks around us. Alarms going off, ears ringing, no, no, no, no, no. He pulls back again to wipe his mouth, and we use all our fear to push a hand hard against his chest. “Stop!”  He jumps back and holds his hands up. “Stopping, stopping! What’s wrong? What’d I do?” We turn away from him, curl up like a dying insect. We can still feel the germy outline of his fingers on our face. We try to say, “I told you, don’t touch my face without warning,” but half the words come out as squeaks. “What?” He crawls forward and leans over us, blocking out the ceiling light. “What’s wrong? I can’t hear you!” He’s loud, so loud. The air still won’t stay in our lungs. We curl up tighter, touching our chin to our bare chest and shaking our head. Our head’s spinning with panic and humiliation. Our eyes are closed. But we hear him sigh, and all the frustration in it. He backs off again, and the bed squeaks as he stands up. “Lemme grab your inhaler,” he mutters. Tears well in our eyes and run down our cheek into the fleece blanket, but we cover our face with both hands to hide it. And darkness eats at the edges of our vision. A sharp pain cuts through our brain, and seconds later I’m back on the bus to Canterlot City, collapsed against the window and panting. My face still tingles, and my ears still ring. The nausea inside me has turned into an exploding oil rig, and I have to close my eyes so I don’t hurl all over the seat. But as the thrum in my head fades away, it’s replaced by a frighteningly familiar sound that opens my eyes again. Twilight is hunched over in her seat, head in her hands. She spasms with every sob. Guilt coils around me like a snake. “Oh, goddess, Twi,” I say. I move to touch her, then freeze — but I’m saved when she sits back up and collapses into my arms. I wrap my arms around her torso and kiss the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you relive that, I didn’t know—” “No,” she says through hiccups, tears spilling down her face. “I think about it every day! I just—I loved him so much.” And her words dissolve again. “I know you did,” I say. “You were an angel to him. He didn’t deserve you.” “I tried so, so hard. But I was so tired. I couldn’t do it anymore.” She coughs, choking on her spittle. “He just kissed me, and I couldn’t handle it, I shut down, I feel like such a failure—” “You’re not. You’re the best. You’re kind, you’re caring. Unbelievably amazing.” She turns to drape her body over mine, burying her face in my shoulder. I wrap her in a tight hug and stroke her back. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m here.” We stay like that for miles, even as the suburbs turn to concrete city streets. The sun is rising. It peeks over the squat brownstones and corner shops, and fills the bus with light at every intersection. It glints off of Twilight’s tears. I curse myself, not only for dredging these emotions back up to the surface, but for pushing Twi so hard these past few weeks. I just wanted to know what was wrong. But I got so aggressive that I probably ended up pushing her further away. Another win for my wonderful personality. By now Twilight’s sobs have turned to trembling whispers. She uses magic to pull a pack of tissues out of her bag, but can’t open it — I grab the pack out of the air and tear it open. “Thanks,” she says through drool, and blows her nose. “No problem,” I say, brushing the ends of her hair. “You can keep crying if you want. As long as you need.” “No, no, I—” She hiccups, covers her mouth, and a few more tears fall. Then she shakes her head. “I’ve cried enough these past few weeks.” “I wish I could have been there for you.” “I wish I’d told you. But I was so embarrassed.” “No need. You were in a relationship that made you feel like crap, so you left. That’s brave as hell.” I chuckle. “And you know I love you. No shame, ever.” She sniffles and nods. “I did feel like crud. So why do I keep thinking about him? Why do I still miss him?” “Eh, our brains suck like that. I still have dreams about Flash Sentry, and I’ve got less than zero interest in going out with him again.” I pause. “Don’t tell him I said that. I think it’d break him.” “I won’t, don’t worry.” “Good, good.” I help her sit up. “Someday you’re gonna fall in love again. And it’s gonna be with someone who loves you and respects you. And he’s not gonna touch you like that.” She nods. And then a tiny smile grows on her face. “And they’ll be better at fighting games.” Remind me to invite her to the first Pride Alliance meeting in September. “Way better. And you’ll build robots together and raise stuffed animals and take over the world.” She giggles, then leans over and lays her head on my shoulder, nestling into the crook of my neck. “That’s be nice.” I tilt my head towards hers, but then stop. “Can I rest my head on yours?” A tiny jolt of surprise runs through her — then radiating warmth, hotter than the sunrise. “Yes, you may.” We ride like that for the last twenty minutes, keeping each other stable whenever we hit a pothole.