11. Pets and Pinkie Pie
Octavia experienced a moment of panic when a shadow fell across her. She relaxed when she realised it was a pony, only to freeze up again when he spoke.
“Pinkie Pie?”
“Hmm?” Pinkie looked up sleepily. One of the upswings of her head wound was that she slept a lot, which suited Octavia, since it gave less opportunity for her to say something incriminating. Not that Pinkie spilling the beans was the thing she should have been worried about, apparently.
“Is that you?” The stallion was barely out of colthood and sported a pair of buck teeth that made him look more like a rabbit than a pony. When he spoke everything came out slightly lispy and fringed with delight, as if he couldn’t believe his luck at finding somepony he knew. His accent marked him as definitely not part of the usual Canterlot crowd, which fitted in with that idea. “It’s me, Hayseed.” He swung sideways to show off his cutie mark: three ripe turnips. “Hayseed Turniptruck!”
“Huh” Pinkie blinked at him. “Sorry, mister, but I think you’ve got the wrong pony. My name’s Jubilation.”
He frowned, clearly disheartened. His eyes travelled to her cutie mark and the frown deepened. “But–”
“Good sir, do you want something with my friend or myself?” Octavia interrupted. “Only we are trying to rest and preserve our strength, since we have yet to be fed or watered, as you well know.”
“Oh.” He fell back, disappointment hunching his shoulders and shortening his steps as he backed away. “I … I guess not. Sorry, ladies.” Yet he continued to look over his shoulder at them as he returned to his corner. A circle of empty space around him made him look like an island in a sea of upper class fretting.
“Did Ritzy or Vainglorious come back yet?” Pinkie asked with a yawn.
Octavia scanned the crowd. “Not yet.”
“Oh.” Pinkie grimaced. “Octavia, do you believe in bad feelings?”
“Excuse me?”
“My tummy feels funny, but not like before. Kind of … tingly-tumbly. And my knees ache.”
“Did you hurt yourself when you knelt down?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know how I know it, but I know a funny tummy and hurty knees mean something … bad. I just don’t know what.” She looked up at Octavia with a combination of worry and adoration, the way a small child looks up at an older one it idolises for guidance. “Does that make me weird?”
“Not at all. I have a bad feeling too.”
“Do your tummy and knees feel ooky?”
“Ooky?”
“Yeah, it’s a word I made up; a mix of spooky and icky. I feel all ooky.”
“I think we all feel a bit ooky,” Octavia said consolingly. “It’s to be expected.”
“I guess so.” Pinkie poked experimentally at one knee and then the other, as if trying to force the hurt out through the backs so it could soak into the floor and leave her alone. “I don’t like it. It feels worse whenever I think about Ritzy or Vainglorious.” She gave a melodramatic shudder. “See?”
“Then don’t think about them,” Octavia advised, though even she knew that was close to impossible. The ponies around them had talked of little else since they were taken away. “Think of something else; something happier.”
Pinkie scrunched up her face in thought. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Octavia watched the stallion, Hayseed Turniptruck he had called himself, as he continued to watch them. She went on absently, “Finally achieving first chair cello in an orchestra.”
“That’s something that’d make YOU happy, Tavi, not me.”
Octavia blinked. “What did you just call me?”
“Uh, Tavi?”
“Why the dickens would you call me that?” Irritation skittered through her; nopony had called her anything except her given name since … well, for years. “My name is Octavia,” she snapped.
“It just … it just sounded … right.” Pinkie quailed and tried to curl up into the tiniest ball she could. “I didn’t mean to make you angry – ow, my nose!” With her injuries she cut a pretty pathetic figure.
Octavia’s irritation instantly melted away. Pinkie Pie could not have known why she preferred to use her full name. Before today they had never actually spoken, after all. “It’s all right, Jubilation. I’m not angry.” When Pinkie stayed curled up, she added, “Why don’t you think about, uh…” She tried to think what would make a pony like Pinkie Pie happiest. “Fluffy kittens?” Was that saccharine enough? “Or, um, little yellow baby chicks.”
Pinkie sniffed. “Puppy dogs with waggy tails?”
“Yes, of course. And bunnie rabbits with wiggly ears.”
“And baby alligators with snappy nippy teeth.”
“Baby alligators?”
“Yeah, they’re super cute too. Haven’t you ever seen one?”
“I can’t say that I have,” Octavia admitted.
“When I grow up, I want to have a baby alligator as a pet.” Pinkie uncurled so she could look Octavia in the eye. “Do you want a pet?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I guess a cello could count as a pet. You have to look after it just as much as an animal.”
“That is … a remarkably astute observation.”
“It’s a what?” Pinkie tilted her head in confusion.
“A clever thing to think of,” Octavia translated.
“Oh.” The compliment elicited a smile of such proportions it nearly stretched all the way around Pinkie’s head to meet on the back of her neck. “Cool! When I grow up, I want to be smart and use huge big long words like you, Ta- uh, Octavia.”
Octavia’s smile hitched a little at the near-slip, but remained in place. More remarkable, however, was that when she stopped to think about it, she realised that her smile was not fake, as it had been before. Somehow, this annoying pink pony had actually managed to make her smile for real in the middle of the worst situation in which she had ever been embroiled.
She looked up to see that they were still being watched. Hayseed Turniptruck looked away first after a few seconds of shared staring, and though Octavia’s knees and stomach remained pain free, she had her own bad feeling about what lay in store for them all.
Braeburn skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. Little Strongheart coughed, not because of him, but because of the other two massive stallions who had also skidded to a halt behind him. They pawed the ground as adrenaline continued to race through their systems from the gallop. Appleloosa wasn’t so very far away, but taking the journey at full tilt was enough to make anypony jittery. Her own legs felt like they were made from water and she had not been dragging anything behind her.
Two buffalo were waiting for them. Little Strongheart recognised Laughing Creek’s assistant and Talking bird, one of the bulls who had gone with her to find the fallen ponies in the first place.
“Any change?” Braeburn asked immediately. His nostrils flared and he was panting, but he barely paused to let his body acclimate to the sudden lack of motion.
Laughing Creeks’ assistant sadly shook her head.
“Ponyfeathers.” He turned to the stallions. “You fellers okay to stay hitched to the wagon while we help t’others unload?”
“Sure thing,” boomed the grey pony. His lustrous black mane reminded Little Strongheart of storm clouds, especially since his cutie mark was a bolt of brilliant yellow lightning. She wondered if that was a reference to how swiftly he could run. The orange stallion next to him bore a cutie mark of a hare at full speed, which seemed to support the idea. Even pulling their load they had kept up with herself and Braeburn.
“Much obliged,” Braeburn said as he moved to the back and unhitched the debarking board. A clutch of ponies, all much smaller than the stallions, got down with varying degrees of ease.
One mare in particular had trouble. She wobbled on stiff legs until Braeburn helped her down. “Thank you kindly, niblet,” she said in a voice like tumbleweeds fetching up against a wooden fence.
Little Strongheart had rarely seen the older residents of Appleloosa, since most were nervous creatures who hid inside in the shade whenever she and the buffalo came to town. This mare, however, looked her square in the face as soon as they were level. She had done the same back in Appleloosa, when Braeburn followed her out of her wooden house and asked five times between there and the wagon whether she was sure she wanted to come along.
“Of course I do!” she had finally snapped. “You expect me to sit here twiddlin’ my hooves while young Applejack’s in trouble? Use that there brain of yours, boy.” Her tirade had ended only because she had spotted Little Strongheart and hobbled right up to her. “You’re the one who found ‘em?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Little Strongheart had picked up some of the ways ponies talked to each other and understood this to be a term of respect when you didn’t know a mare’s name. For some reason calling a stranger ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ was frowned upon in pony society while it was quite normal for buffalo.
The old mare had nodded. “Thank you kindly. You’ve done the Apple family a great service an’ I hope we can someday repay y’all in kind.”
“You’re related to Applejack?” Little Strongheart had concluded. It wasn’t a great leap of logic, since the mare’s cutie mark was apple-themed and her coat a pale shade of orange that looked like it had only grown paler with age.
“Her grandmother’s my favourite cousin.”
“Grammy Apple Rose, we’d best get you outta the sun,” Braeburn had advised, ducking his head a smidge as if he expected her to swipe at him for his impertinence.
“Darn thing ain’t gone down in so long I’m beginnin’ to forget what the moon looked like. All right, niblet, help your grammy’s old bones on board.”
After they had finished loading up all the ponies who had volunteered to help, Little Strongheart had looked sidelong at Braeburn as they took their places at the head of the entourage.
“That is your grandmother?”
“Grammy Apple Rose ain’t my real grandmother,” he had explained. “But she raised me good as any ma or pa ever could. Most all ponies in Appleloosa call her ‘Grammy’ even though they ain’t related.”
“Oh.” It was such a buffalo thing to do it gave Little Strongheart hope for the future between their two communities. She had looked sidelong at him before they set off, however. “Niblet?”
His smile had been tight but genuine. “Hey, I was a late bloomer, okay? T’ain’t my fault if I was the smallest colt in my class at school. I’m still faster than anypony else now.” As if to prove it, he had let out a holler and galloped away, leaving her and the other Appleloosans to follow.
Apple Rose now looked at the buffalo encampment with a critical eye. “Never would’ve believed it if I didn’t see if for myself,” she said with the candour of the old. “Y’all really do live in tents.”
Little Strongheart didn’t take offense at the statement. “Yes, we do.”
“Strange. Don’t y’all like solid walls around ya?”
“We prefer the ability to move whenever we wish. The idea of being tied to a place by wood, bricks and mortar is one we find strange.”
“I guess it takes all sorts.” The old mare licked her dry lips. “Go on then, niblet, take me to her.”
Little Strongheart led the collection of ponies to the two largest tents but it was Braeburn who nosed aside the flap for the old mare to enter. Talking Bird stayed to help unhitch the two big stallions while Laughing Creek’s assistant took a contingent of ponies to the Medicine Bull’s tent.
Apple Rose’s breath caught the moment she was inside. “Landsakes …” was all she could say.
The buffalo dabbing water on Applejack’s mouth looked up. Little Strongheart nodded that she could leave and she hurried out so the ponies could take her place. As if drawn by a magnetic force, Apple Rose knelt beside Applejack and nuzzled her cheek. Applejack, of course, did not respond. Dipping her head made Apple Rose’s tinted spectacles slide down her snout, revealing rheumy eyes that were wet with grief.
“What the heck did you get yourself mixed up in, young ‘un?” she murmured. Applejack’s breathing was rapid and shallow, as if she was having a nightmare. The pot of water was still by her head, the stick with a rolled scrap of cloth on the end soaking up water within. Apple Rose took the stick gently between her teeth dabbed water around Applejack’s open mouth as the buffalo cow had done, trying to keep the younger mare’s lips from cracking and bleeding.
The simple act resonated inside Little Strongheart like a crow’s call echoing down a tunnel. It spurred a long-forgotten memory to the front of her mind. She recalled when she was very young, no more than a calf really, and had spent too long out in the midday sun. Her mother had stayed with her throughout the subsequent fever, tending and comforting as she needed it. Little Strongheart rarely thought of her mother anymore. Heartache was too quick to take hold when she did. Her father had done his best, but he couldn’t be both parents. Watching Apple Rose and Applejack in that moment made her wish fervently that her mother was still alive.
“If y’all can pick a pony to tend, that’d be grand.” Braeburn allowed the other ponies to enter and drew close to Little Strongheart. “How are the princesses?” he asked softly so nopony else could hear.
“No change,” Little Strongheart replied equally softly; glad to have something else to focus on. “No better, but no worse either.”
“I guess we all should be thankful for small miracles,” he said, though his face didn’t match his words. Rather than thankful, he looked increasingly worried. “We get mail from outside Appleloosa once a week on the train,” he went on. “So if this hadn’t happened we wouldn’t even have suspected anythin’ had happened in Canterlot for another three days.”
“Do you have a way of contacting the place quickly? Or anywhere else?”
“Best I could say is to send a pegasus to check it out, but it’s a mighty long way to fly, an’ if sumthin’ bad really has happened there…” He trailed off. “Appleloosa’s a simple town. It ain’t really a place most pegasi like to live. The weather don’t change much an’ there ain’t much call for flyin’ jobs. We only got three amongst us so far, an’ one kinda ended up here only because her cousin’s our librarian an’ she had no place else to go, so I ain’t sure if we can rightly call her an Appleloosan. Thinkin’ about it, I ain’ sure whether any of ‘em could even make the trip to Canterlot an’ back, especially if it’s a dangerous trip. I ain’t sure what to recommend. Neither the sheriff nor the mayor could think of nuthin’ neither.”
Little Strongheart respected Sheriff Silverstar but disliked the mayor. He was a recently elected portly pony who tolerated the buffalo because he had not been around during the orchard crisis. She wondered how he had come to preside over the town and why it needed two leaders when the sheriff had seemed perfectly adequate before. Ponies certainly could be strange creatures. Right now the sheriff had stayed in town to keep order with the antsy citizens while the mayor did … whatever it was he did in his office all day while other ponies kept order in his town.
“Didn’t y’all say Applejack would be the first pony to wake up from this here sickness?” Apple Rose broke into their conversation.
“Our healer said it was the most likely outcome,” Little Strongheart replied.
“Hmmf.” Apple Rose looked back at the bedroll and sighed. “You better wake up soon, girl. You’re an’ Apple an’ Apple’s don’t quit when the goin’ gets tough. You hear me in there? Your granny an’ brother an’ lil’ sister will want you back soon as possible, mark my words, so you’d better darn well wake up, y’hear? Wake up, wake up, wake UP–”
Which was when the white unicorn with the purple mane on the other side of the tent sat bolt upright, eyes wide with terror, and screamed at the top of her lungs.