There’s no pretending that Pinkie Pie didn't dance atop reason and orderliness. It was hard to schedule fun, but it could crop up if a pony let it happen. So she did just that, with great gusto.
And yet for all of it, few ponies had as orderly - if strange - a morning ritual as Pinkie Pie. Ever since the Cake foals had been born, the mornings around Sugar Cube Corner had been punctuated with jazzy, energetic music. Even those ponies who tended to avoid Pinkie Pie and her wild energy couldn’t help but bob a bit to the beat as they passed by.
After a warmup of silly faces, Pinkie Pie moved onto the next stage of the exercise.
“Happy! Sad. Happy! Sad. Happy! Sad.” The moves were grooving, the grooves were moving; all was good.
Stretches! “Eyep-yep-yep-yep-yep-yep! Nope-nope-nope-nope-nope!” She moved to rock the crib, but a gasp much too deep for either of the twins interrupted her rhythm. Besides, she could see Pound and Pumpkin sitting right there, so it probably wasn’t them.
Stopping the music, Pinkie poked her head out the window. Of all ponies, it was Big Macintosh she saw, wide eyed as he stared up at her.
“That...was amazing. Do that again.”
Pinkie leaned out the window, between her flexibility and his height, she could’ve reached out and touched his mane. “Do what?”
“You know. What you did there. All them Ey-ya-ah...ah...ahs!” Big Mac hunched up nervously, looked to the mostly empty street and hurried away. “Got to go! Sorry!”
The mare twisted around to watch him beat his hasty retreat, to the point that she hung upside down by the tips of her rear hooves. She prodded at her chin thoughtfully as Big Mac rounded the corner. It certainly left her something to think about, namely how she was going to get back up into the room. The tickles of a foal gumming at her hoof made for a treacherous ascent indeed. After a valiant effort, the pink pony gave in to the giggles of tickling and fell with a thud to the doorstep.
Big Mac slowed to a brisk saunter, then to his usual calm walk. That’d been close. Too close. Eeyup, much too close. Nope, thoughts inside his head didn’t count for the bet, and Eeyup, he was finding it harder to deny to himself he might have something of an attachment to the two words. Applejack had been insidious indeed.
He still felt embarrassed that Eeyup and Nope were somehow his words, like how his littlest sister had figured out the bet so easily. He’d never tried to have a catchphrase, or two, but they were just so perfect.
Big Mac knew he was a simple pony. He liked being a simple pony, and his lifestyle fostered a steady, well grounded frame of mind. Those two little words divvied the entire universe into neat halves and managed to leave no room for miscommunications. Got the north field done already? Eeyup. Think Apple Bloom’ll get her cutie mark in yoga? Nope. What kind havoc would it wreak on his life if maybe - terrible, monstrous maybe - managed to slither into his vocabulary?
He knew where he stood with Eeyup and Nope, and the great thing was that everypony else did too. He wandered as he pondered, finding himself at the library of all places. Ah yes, this is what he’d been thinking...even if he hadn’t been thinking it exactly.
Big Mac didn’t really know Twilight Sparkle that well, but when she wasn’t unleashing madness and mayhem she seemed a fair decent sort. She’d helped the Apples out of a bind or two, and if that were not enough to sway it, then a certain secret Smarty Pants doll placed the unicorn well and truly in the ‘Eeyup’ half of the universe.
She might be Eeyup, but she wasn’t up. Amongst the shelves it was quiet and orderly. To hear it from Applejack, Twilight was a bit obsessed with such things, possibly because she so rarely had a chance to enjoy them. Applejack brought home story after story of how the mare’s life was like a snowglobe in the hooves of a gleefully manic foal.
In a selfish way, it was nice to see that Twilight hadn’t come down yet. He wouldn’t inadvertently slip up if nopony spoke to him. Eeyup, he couldn’t slip up. Not at all, Nope.
The two magical little words itched restlessly inside his skull. It was like the time he’d been injured and forced to rest; not a day had gone by before his hooves had tingled with the urge to buck trees. These things weren’t just habit, they were part of who he was.
“Oh, hey bro, what’s up?” The pony blinked free of his reverie to find Spike addressing him.
Just like with Twilight Sparkle, Big Mac didn’t have a lot of first hoof experience to go on. What could a simple farm pony like himself have in common with a high flying - not literally - fast talking Canterlot dragon?
Besides having overbearing sister figures, the brunt end of responsibility in their respective homes, a deep and unspoken need to stand by their masculinity in a mare dominated town while also reconciling their poorly concealed shameless delight with certain girly fru-fru things...
Right.
“Nothing much.” Spike nodded with concurrence and shrugged nonchalantly. It helped to just accept the little apron and leave it at that. “Good thing you’re an early bird, like me. If Twilight knew we had a visitor she wouldn’t be happy until you took out half a shelf.” The dragon scratched at his chin. “You want a book or something? Woah, you alright?”
Big Mac’s brow knitted over his eyes. “Just...fine. Sore jaw...is all.” It was miserable to have to say that, because even though it was the truth - biting back those certain two wily words was a workout and a half - it worked like a lie.
But yeah, a book. As fine a way to spend a morning as any. It wasn’t sunshine and breezes, Nope, but he could read about sunshine and breezes in other places. Then find out where those places were. Then find a book on the curiosities and history of such places.
Big Mac let his trailing thoughts peter to a halt. That’s what’d happened to Twilight, wasn’t it? He borrowed of the silence to make a moment of his own for respect and consideration for the mare. He only had a fling with two words...how must it be for a pony who was keen on all of them?
Let sleeping mares lie, he decided.
Spike gave the stallion a look, one to say ‘you sure you’re okay?’ but said nothing more, as per the honourable unwritten code of masculine males.
Maybe it was the unfamiliar ground, maybe it was practice, or maybe it was the weight of so many words to muffle...
Maybes! Big Mac winced, cringed and stifled a whinny under his breath. Three in one thought, at that!
He flung his bright eyes about ‘til the clock was found. Half ten. Half ten and three minutes...four. Four minutes.
Ten thirty four. That left him - he applied quick and fancy mathematics - thirteen hours twenty six minutes.
The red pony grabbed the first book to cross his gaze and stepped promptly into the reading room.
Anecdotes of the great Accountants, Vol. III. Nnope nope nope.
The second book to cross his gaze then...
Daring Doo and the Serpent’s Shrine. Eeyup flared up within him - this was Eeyup indeed - Daring Doo was not the ‘maybe’ kind of pony! Nope! Eeyup!
The reading room was small - which Mac didn’t mind in the slightest, but so was the couch, which made him the tiniest bit self conscious. He sat down...it was more of a wide chair, really. Another pony on there with him would have had to be very close indeed to fit at all.
He was a chapter in when the soft mumbles of “Oh, hello,” drew his attention. Twilight Sparkle, yawning and rubbing her eyes, nodded to him. “Spike said you were here.”
“YE-es,” he mumbled in turn. At this rate, he was going to have jaw cramps something awful. The unicorn looked at him curiously, but made nothing more of it. The words wanted to be spoken.
Put that aside however, and the stallion found the unicorn completely at ease with him. She hardly lifted a droopy eyelid beyond the greeting, casually asked what he was reading, and offered him a cup of coffee.
A cup was magicked to him; it looked like Daring Doo would have to hold off on her adventure for now. Twilight scooted onto the couch and Big Mac realized he had been wrong about the whole thing. It didn’t force them very close, it forced them very very close.
As if things weren’t enough, and it wasn’t an hour ‘til noon yet. Twilight sat back and sipped at a concoction possibly more caffeine than water.
“I haven’t been up this early in a while,” she began. She didn’t seem oblivious so much as just unfettered for the proximity. The stallion could feel more heat from her than from his mug. He was fettered. He was very fettered.
“I forgot just how nice it is to have an hour of nothing much at all before the day starts.”
Big Macintosh caught himself, ready and waiting. “Mhmm.” That was a Eeyup substitute, wasn’t it? Right?
“You must be up before anypony else, now that I think of it.” Twilight let herself fall all the way back, her head lolling on the cushions, her hooves placid at her sides. Big Mac was acutely aware of it. And she was cute, too.
Three days, he thought. Three days, and every second of it would be cherished, because of what it took to earn them.
“With the sunrise,” he struggled to say clearly, but his teeth were having none of it.
Now, Big Macintosh had no way to know this, but he was entirely right in his apprehension - but for the wrong reasons. Were Twilight Sparkle’s mind a chalkboard on display, amidst all the equations, notes, scribbling-outs, D.N.E’s and at least one ‘Celestia is best pony’ scrawls, the one that would be presently written in thick text and thrice underscored would be ‘Friendship Problem.’
“You don’t usually come around here,” she hinted, and turned to him. She was very small and he was very big, but somehow she seemed to fill all the space. “In fact, I don’t think you’ve come here ever.”
“No...phrr...grr..urk....arrck.” the stallion heaved a breath, then another.
If anything, Twilight’s eyes lit up. The cup disappeared entirely in a flash and sound of magic.
“Is there something you want to talk about, Big Mac? Something that I, as an undergraduate of friendship, could help with?”
There was a certain hungriness to her eyes that was most off putting and unsettling. All her former ease was burned up with sudden interest.
“No-” Big Mac bit his lip and chewed, just to stop there. Oh, and Twilight apparently had forgotten the meaning of personal space. The lion’s share of his distress, however, was still in a four letter word battering his brain, not the four legged unicorn near-straddling him.
That was pretty awkward in its own right, though.
“A relationship problem then? I’m doing secondary studies on that! Don’t you want to talk about how you and Caramel had a quarrel and now the morning seems so lonely at the farm that you came to talk out your problems with somepony who cares and listens and can help?!” Twilight was wheezing and huffing by the end of it, but on the upside the stallion recognized the short-fused, ominously fizzling sparkle-sparkles of Twilight Sparkle’s usual self.
Also: Caramel? What?
“Caramel has a marefriend,” the red pony said slowly, his every syllable enunciated with the utmost care.
There are few times that a look can convey so much, but Twilight’s eyes were mere inches from his own, so that probably helped a great deal.
“He does?” Twilight blinked, and the cogs of her mind were so apparent at work that they would not have been any easier to see if her head had been opened up.
“Then you’re not... But they said... And there was... Hearts and Hooves...playing the other team!... And I- ” She looked down at herself, halfways climbed up over the Apple, the blush rising so fiercely in her cheeks her head looked fit to explode.
“I thought you were-” then she did explode. Magically, leaving no trace. The teleport was a crackling, noisey affair.
For a long, and long needed moment Big Mac sat there. Eeyup and Nope were as dumbfounded and silent as he was. Then, quiet and polite as he could - and the stallion could manage very quiet and very polite - he took his leave of the library.
No wonder Twilight was the way she was - trying to read was a dangerous, deranging activity.
Every mare in this town is crazy, he thought to himself.
Then he had a brief yet severe coughing fit because he had to fight ‘Eeyup’ from usurping his voice. A few ponies stopped to look, and some eyes lingered longer than others.