//------------------------------//
// Tea With Tealove 
// Story: Keep Calm, Canter On 
// by Ink Swirl 
//------------------------------//


~ Keep Calm, Canter On ~
A MLP:FiM fanfiction by Ink Swirl


Fancypants sat on a posh, heavily cushioned chair in the den of his house, sipping tea, feeling completely and utterly bored. The slow, methodical sound of Frederic LePony pounding on keys coming from the weather-worn, wooden gramophone set on a table beside his chair filled the air. Fancypants himself had never been much of a fan of Frederic's solo work, but it was better than listening to silence mingled with the sound of the unending rain pouring down outside.

The rain, yet again, was the cause of his current vacation into the doldrums. Most of the upper-class were currently locked up inside their homes, almost every single major event in Canterlot was cancelled due to the constant onslaught of rain, and Fleur-Du-Lis was visiting family in Manehatten, so unless he wanted to trudge through the rain and mud just to barge in on somepony who was probably busy, or grow wings, he really had no one to talk to. And Fancypants, unsurprisingly, was a rather socially-oriented pony, so being trapped inside his home with absolutely nopony to talk to was a rather unfortunate situation to be stuck in.

"Isn't that right, Mr. Miggins?" Fancypants asked the sock wrapped around his right forehoof. It was adorned with two button eyes and a "mouth" drawn in marker, with a small top hat haphazardly glued to the top of it's woolen "head". In an odd falsetto voice, Miggins responded, "Oh yes, bloomin' terrible."

Fancypants sighed, removing the sock from his hoof. He was getting a bit desperate.

A loud series of dings! in various keys suddenly overtook the recording, indicating that either somepony was at the front door, or that Vinyl Scratch had somehow possesed Fancypants' gramophone and was about to tear the air asunder with a blaring cascade of wubs and wobs. Ignoring the latter possibility and burying Miggins under one of the chair's cushions, Fancypants trotted over to the door, flicking it open with a quick burst of magic, coming nose-to-nose with a lime-green, psychotically grinning mare. Fancypants, having had years to build up an immunity to Tealove's antics, was mostly unfazed.

Mostly.

"Wow, Fancypants, I don't think I've ever seen you jump quite like that before," Tealove said, giggling.

Fancypants pulled himself off the floor. "Well, I-"

"I like what you've done with the place," Tealove said, waltzing inside, ignoring her friend's possible spinal trauma. "Very...rustic."

Fancypants dusted off his suit with a hoof, before trotting over beside Tealove, "Yes, I suppo-"

"Ooh! Tea!" Tealove suddenly transformed into a green-and-blue blur that propelled itself towards the kettle of tea resting on the kitchen counter at mind bogglingly fast speeds. Stopping at a speed that should've logically caused severe neck damage, Tealove snagged a teacup from somewhere and poured herself some delicious, warm, spine-tinglingly delectable tea.

Fancypants sighed. Tealove, as her name and cutie mark (a steaming, pink cup of tea with a heart emblazoned upon it) implied, had a downright disturbing fondness for tea. Fancypants himself had never quite been able to pinpoint exactly when his childhood friend developed her obsessive interest in tea, but he presumed that, given that her parents had been expert tea brewers, she may or may not have been born with the addiction crammed into her brain somewhere.

"So, Tealove," Fancypants said, magically levitating Tealove's umbrella off her back and setting it down beside the door, trying not to get water all over the carpet, "What brings you by my humble abode?"

Tealove stopped vacuuming tea out of her cup long enough to face Fancypants. "Well, it's been raining for a couple days, and I know how crazy you get when you're locked up in your house for too long without anypony around."

Fancypants glanced around nervously, trying to subtly stuff the sock puppets he had scattered throughout the den under one of the couch's cushions with a few gentle shots of magic. "C-crazy? Why, Tealove, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Tealove gave the blue-maned stallion an accusing stare.

"At all," Fancypants continued, stowing the last puppet underneath the couch itself.

Tealove walked over to the couch, grabbed a cushion, and tossed it aside, a look of annoyance never leaving her face.

"...I'm not very good at being subtle, am I?"

"Not really," she said, taking another sip of tea. 

Fancypants heaved a sigh, and flopped back down into his chair. "How many times has it been now, Tealove?"

The green mare dragged enough socks out from beneath from one of the couch's cushions so that she could comfortably sit on it. "I'm not sure. Around five, I believe."

"Somewhere around that," Fancypants said, setting his monocle beside the gramophone, "Have I ever explained why I...'wig out', as you would probably phrase it?"

Tealove blinked. "Well, you're usually a bit too incoherent for me to ask..."

"My father used to tell me, "son, you were born to be somepony important". They were the biggest socialites of their time, so I made it my sworn duty to follow in their hoofsteps. My mark represents my innate ability, and need, to lead; to make trends, to impress, to be somepony important, like my father would want. So, when there's nopony around, I have a tendency to...improvise."

"Fancy," Tealove said, sucked almost entirely into the overly posh couch, "I think you might have some issues."

There was a pause, only broken when Fancypants snickered darkly.

"Probably."

And so, the duo (once Tealove had been rescued from the clutches of the villanous couch, and it's cushions had been fully freed from the tyrannical rule of the Sock Militia) drank tea, chatted, and attempted to think of solutions for Fancypants' disturbing over-dependence on others well into the evening. And all was right with the world.





Except in Ponyville. They were dealing with the second coming of Nightmare Moon which had been caused by a human materializing through a portal and accidentally injuring Angel Bunny. But that's not important.