//------------------------------// // Rocky Relations // Story: Taking A Job For Granite // by xjuggernaughtx //------------------------------// Rocky Relations Trixie’s hooves turned white as she tightly gripped the rickety ladder. “Hold it steady!” she hissed to the farmer as he stifled a yawn below her. “You’re supposed to be keeping this thing on the ground!”   Humble tapped his hoof impatiently against the hard-packed earth of the storage cellar as he frowned up at her. “Trixie, if you’d just shake a leg, you’d be done by now. Any longer and I’ll be fixin’ to charge you rent!”   Trixie gulped, staring at the huge wheel of cheese. She winced as she noticed the slippery sheen of oil that coated its rind. “I’ve already told you! This is a terrible idea!”   Humble’s eyebrows slammed together and he snapped his mouth open, only to close it again. For a few moments, he closed his eyes and laid his head against the smooth rung before him. Trixie wasn’t certain, but she thought he was counting. Finally, looked back to her, rubbing his temple. “We’ve been through this. That there is Rockfort cheese. It’s needin’ a female touch to be at its best. Now, just grab it and get yourself on down!” Humble pointed up at her. “For Celestia’s sake, you’re only five rungs up!”   “And I’ve already told you that this is an exceptionally bad idea, even by your standards!” Trixie yelled back. For a brief moment, the ladder swayed backward and Trixie threw her legs around it, her heart racing. “You did that on purpose!” she spat at Humble as he applied more pressure to the bottom rung with his back hoof.   “It wouldn’t be a-swayin’ if you weren’t up there carryin’ on with your nonsense! Now, shake a leg! I got a field of hungry rocks clamorin’ for their supper!” he said through gritted teeth. “Seems I’ve a memory of the two of us talkin’ about hard work and cooperation. What happened to that, huh?”   “But it’s a wheel of cheese, Humble!” Trixie returned. “A wheel!” Trixie bit her lip, fighting to stem a rising tide of panic. Her heart was racing, and she was beginning to feel a little light-headed. Gripping the ladder more tightly, she turned to face him. Humble leaned slightly away as sweat from her brow dropped down toward him. As the ladder swayed slightly to follow him, Trixie gave a little scream.   Sighing, Humble shook his head. He’d raised three girls, one of them very silly, and he’d never run into a pony as stubborn as this one. “A wheel of cheese is not a proper wheel. It’s just round like a wheel,” he said, glancing up at the entrance to his cellar. He could just see sky from his position, and it appeared to be getting darker. “Do you reckon a leaf of paper’s actually a leaf? It’s just called that!”   “But I’m telling you, they’re out to get me!” Trixie cried down to him, her eyes bulging. “You don’t know how many times they’ve attacked me!” She whipped her head back around, certain that he wheel had moved slightly closer to her when she had taken her eyes off of it.   “‘I don’t know’?! How could I not know?!” he yelled. “You’ve been carryin’ on about it for three hours!”   “Then you get up here and do it!”   Humble swept his hat from his head and through it to the ground, wishing he could kick something. Trixie watched as he took a few deep breaths, ready to grab onto the aging racks if he looked like he was going to pull the ladder out from under her. Finally, he looked back to her and she noticed how tired he seemed. “I’ll go through it once more, but please, we need to get a move on. The rocks can’t wait forever.” Humble shifted the pipe to the left side of his mouth, and Trixie sagged a bit where she stood on the ladder. She knew that it was his lecturing side, as he preferred to speak out of the right side of his mouth.   “Rockfort’s a special kind of rock cheese. You gotta culture it just so and serve it under special conditions. Above anythin’ else, the one thing it can’t tolerate is a stallion’s touch. It’s got somethin’ to do with chemicals and pheromones and somesuch. If a stallion tries his hoof at it, the cheese spoils.” Humble rotated his head left and right, making a show of surveying the cellar. “And what do you know? Seems there’s only one female here, so the job falls to you.”   Trixie gulped, wishing he hadn’t used the word ‘fall’, and turned back to the greasy wheel. Biting the inside of her cheek, she took a few deep breaths and carefully wrapped her legs around the cheese, shuddering as her hooves tried to grip its slippery surface. As she pulled the cheese toward her, it let out a sinister squeaking sound. Trixie whipped her hooves away, scuttling back down the ladder and running directly into Humble’s upturned face. “You heard it, right?!” Trixie managed, breathing heavily. “That’s proof! It’s after me!”   “Of all the—confound it, Trixie!” Humble mumbled, pushing her off of him and back up the ladder. “You know good and well that’s just the sound of that cheese sliding on the steel shelving!”   Her eyes irresistibly drawn to the lurking horror above her, Trixie could just see the rind’s oily outer edge. Slowly, she forced her hooves to ascend the ladder once again, pausing after each rung to attempt to stop her knees from shaking. I can do this! she thought as her heart raced. I can do this! After what seemed to Trixie to be both an eternity and the blink of an eye, she drew level with the monstrosity. As she reached for it, she gasped, and pulled her hooves away with a hiss. For just a moment, she was sure that she’d seen a mischievous, smiling face in the rind’s greasy surface. I-it was just a trick of the light, that’s all. Just my overactive imagination… she thought, swallowing hard. Trixie jumped as Humble loudly cleared his throat at the bottom of the ladder. Reaching out her shaking hooves, she tried to snatch the cheese up quickly, but the wheel was deceptively heavy and slick as ice. Groaning, she carefully maneuvered the cheese off of the shelf, trying to grip the ladder as tightly as she could with her rear hooves. The wheel was so large that she had to hold it over her head. Trixie said a prayer as her knees began to tremble. How am I supposed to get down? she thought.   Trixie could feel each second as they slid by her through time. Hyper-aware, she could smell the dust on the shelves and she could see each individual cobweb up near the ceiling. Danger could come from anywhere, and her body was ready. I know it’s coming! she thought. What are you planning, wheel?   “HUMBLE PIE, WHERE ARE YOU?!”   Trixie let out a shriek as she plummeted off of the ladder and fell straight into the startled farmer. They both crashed into the earthen floor and Trixie’s cries were cut brutally short as the wheel of cheese slammed into her ribs and rolled away. Coughing, she tried to pick herself up, but both her balance and her breath seemed to be elsewhere.   “So, I take leave of this farm for a few days and you fall straight into sin, Humble?!” asked a severe voice. Trixie and Humble attempted to get free of one another, only to knock each other’s hooves out from underneath them and fall again.   “Trixie, get yourself off me!” Humble sputtered, pushing on Trixie’s rump before quickly snatching his hoof back, blushing furiously. “Now, Mag,” he said, retrieving his pipe and inserting it into his mouth upside down. then scowling and correcting it, “this isn’t what it looks like.”   Trixie finally got her hooves under her and stood up, massaging her sore ribs. She’d never seen Humble flustered before, but she had to admit she could understand his concern. He was shying away as a matronly pony with a chained pince nez advanced on him. Her iron-grey hair was stretched so tightly across her scalp that Trixie’s own follicles began aching in commiseration.   “Oh, It’s not, is it?” the pony said, scrutinizing the furiously blushing farmer with one squinted eye. “I’m gone a few short days and I find you in the arms of this hussy!”   Trixie inhaled deeply, preparing to unleash a verbal tirade on the mare, but ended up in a coughing fit instead. Her ribs were still aching from the impact of the cheese and they stabbed her painfully whenever she breathed in too deeply. “Him?” she managed to croak out. “With me? Nothing could be farther from the truth.”   “A likely story,” the mare sniffed, looking down her nose to giving Trixie a cursory once-over. Humble absorbed himself with retrieving his hat, taking what appeared to Trixie as a rather long time correcting its shape. “Well,” the mare said finally, “let’s hear it!”   “Mag, I told you before you left that I was goin’ to be bringin’ on a hoof to help out,” Humble said, sighing and placing his hat back on his head. “You know what time of year it is. I need somepony to work with the Rockfort.”   “And you just thought you’d bring in a fleshy young filly for the job instead of one of our girls, eh?” she replied, spitting the consonants out like arrows. “I’ve been breakin’ my back for forty years haulin’ them wheels of cheese over hill and dale to feed the young rocks, and it seems to me I’ve missed the part where you wrestle on the floor like a hot blooded colt and his new filly-friend!”   “Now, see here, Mag—” Humble began, his face falling into its familiar scowl.   “No, you see here!” the mare shrieked. “You’ve done your darnedest to shoo me off to that Rock Roundup for years! I finally go, just to be done with your constant badgerin’ and…” Trixie rolled her eyes as the mare’s voice began to hitch, “…and t-this is what I c-come back to!” Tears began to pool in the bottoms of the mare’s eyes, but she blinked them back, staring ferociously at Humble. “You’d better have a rock solid excuse for this one, Romeo!”   Trixie clenched her jaw. This has gone on long enough! He and I? The very idea! Trixie stepped forward, eyeing the mare disdainfully. “I’m not going to stand here and—”   “You stay out of this!” they both cut across her.   “Mag,” Humble said gently as Trixie spit out incoherent syllables of protest. “I wrote to the girls and Pinkie was the only one who had time off right now, and, well, she’s just not one for farm life.” Humble threw his hooves out wide beside him. “What’s a body to do? Let the rocks starve? You weren’t supposed to be home for another three days!”   “Oh, you would have liked that, wouldn’t you, Casanova!” the mare said, her eyes narrowing. “What about Sandy Shale? I suppose she just slipped your mind!”   “That dusty ol’ wreck of a pony?” Humble said, his mouth dropping open. “She’s not worked a rock field for twenty years! She’d be lucky to hold a conversation, let alone a wheel of cheese!" Humble dropped a hoof onto the mare’s shoulder, drawing her in close and nodding his head in Trixie’s direction. “Mag, she’s workin’ for ten bits,” he whispered.   “You’re payin’ this wet-behind-the-ears floozy ten bits an hour?! Well, that just seals—”   “Not ten bits an hour!” Humble barked. “Ten bits a day!”   The mare drew back, her hoof resting on her chest as her mouth dropped open. “Ten bits a day?” she said, beginning to smile. “Well, that’s a crackin’ good bargain, ain’t it!” She arched an eyebrow at Trixie. “You must have been good and desperate, filly!” Humble winced as the unicorn’s teeth ground together.   “What I was and what I am is no concern of yours!” Trixie spat out, her mane bristling. “Oh, and let me put your little fantasy to rest! Maybe I was desperate, but I’d sooner swallow live scorpions or saw off my horn than spend any more time in your oafish husband’s company than absolutely necessary! I cannot wait to leave this wretched farm!”   Trixie lip curled into a savage grin as the mare’s eyebrows rose sharply and she took a step away from the unicorn. Trixie opened her mouth to launch another salvo, but snapped it shut when she caught Humble out of the corner of her eye. He was looking off into a corner of the cellar, but it seemed to her that his eyes were shimmering. He looked at her briefly, and, catching her staring at him, he flicked his eyes away quickly.   “Come on, Mag,” he sighed after a moment. “Help us get these supplies upstairs and I’ll fill you in on what’s happened.”   “Humble, wait,” Trixie said, raising a hoof to the farmer, but he quickly busied himself with loading his saddle bags. Soon he was climbing the ramp back to the surface. The mare followed, throwing a cool look back over her shoulder at Trixie as the unicorn hung her head. ~~~ Trixie flopped down onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling of her trailer. She gritted her teeth as her stomach lurched uncomfortably yet again. It’d had been twenty minutes since she’d last seen Humble’s hurt expression, and her stomach had been unsettled ever since. Of all the—how dare he try and pull that on me?! she thought, punching the bed with a hoof. Pretending I’d hurt him! How could I? It’s not like we’re friends! As if The Great and Powerful Trixie would ever been friends with some backwoods clod like that!   Trixie hopped off the bed, snatching her cape from its hook on the wall. With a practiced flourish, she magically undid the clasp, and whirled the cape around her shoulders. Elegantly, it came to rest on her back. Nodding to the other side of the room, she sent her nearby hat spinning through the air to land on her head precisely the way that she’d practiced so many times in the past.   Trixie turned around, admiring the effect of her costume in the mirror. Oh, it’s been too long! I’d almost forgotten how magnificent I look when I’m properly attired! Her horn began to shine brightly as she summoned up an illusionary crowd to stand before her. “Behold, The Great and Powerful Trixie has arrived to astound and confound! Yes, Trixie the Magnificent! Known throughout Equestria as the greatest showmare of our age! Courted by the elite and beloved by millions of ponies everywhere!”   Grinning, Trixie tried to bow, but in the cramped quarters she only managed to hit her hat on the mirror, knocking it to the floor. As she leaned down to retrieve it, her cape slipped, sliding sideways across her body. Pursing her lips, she slammed her hat back in place, and then froze.   It was all there, right there in the mirror. With her hat askew and her cape dangling awkwardly, she watched as the illusionary fans continued their applause. Rows and rows of ponies, slamming their hooves together in complete silence. Trixie’s cheeks grew uncomfortably hot as she bit her lip and looked away. She’d never gotten the hang of the auditory portion of the illusion spell.   Who in their right mind would cheer for that mare in the mirror? she thought, lowering her ears and peeling her hat off. With a sigh, she sat, placing the hat on the bed beside her. I can’t even wear my ensemble correctly. The only times I’m beloved by any pony is when I’m leaving town. As tears started to well up in her eyes, she bit her lip, determined not to cry. Looking for any distraction, she glanced out the trailer’s window at the hulking rock tumbler that Humble had thrown her into. For a moment, she thought she spied Humble standing up on the tumbler’s ramp, but after wiping her eyes with a hoof, she could see that it was only the yellow control panel.   He threw me in there when I was hurting. Because I was hurting. she thought, gripping the bed’s blanket tightly in her hooves, then releasing it. He… helped me. He’s the only one who ever helped me, and I…   Forcing herself off the bed, Trixie began to pace a cramped circuit in the trailer’s limited space. Stepping on the trailing edge of her cape, she stumbled momentarily, then snatched it from around her neck. With a snarl, she threw it at the wall where it missed the hook and fell the floor. Glaring at the cape, she kicked it into a corner.   But he wasn’t doing it for me! she thought. He just wanted me to give a lecture to those stupid rocks! Just making sure he got his ten bit investment out of me for the day! He was just... Trixie stopped and closed her eyes as his sad face returned unbidden to her memory. “Why, Humble?” she yelled at the rock tumbler. “We just agreed to get along. We didn’t say we were friends! I didn’t want…” she said as her voice began to tremble. “I don’t need— ”   “Humble Pie, are you in there?!”   Trixie jumped, slamming her head into the low ceiling. Mag’s deafening cries continued to hit her like a bomb blast, even through the walls of the trailer. Outside, Mag was banging on the trailer door with such intensity that it was bending inward. Furiously wiping her eyes, Trixie wrenched the door open. “What is your—” she began.   “Where is he?!” the wild-eyed mare spat out, thrusting her head into the trailer. “I heard you sayin’ his name? Where’s he hidin’?" Knocking Trixie to one side, she threw open the trailer’s closet and began sliding the hangers back and forth. “You’ve done it this time, you two-timin’—”   “Will you get out of my trailer?!” Trixie yelled, slamming her closet door closed. Mag had pulled her head back so quickly that a few strands of her tortured hair had escaped their bun and hung down her cheek. “Your husband isn’t in here!”   Mag pulled off her pince-nez, wiping the small flecks of Trixie’s saliva off of them. When she glanced back up, she settled them on her nose and squinted at Trixie, thrusting her nose directly into the unicorn’s face.   “Not here, eh?” she said, turning her head to closely regard Trixie with the squintier of her eyes. “Then who were you a-talkin’ to, hmmmm?”   “Not that it’s any of your business, but, uh…" Desperately looking around, Trixie lunged for the wooden chest that sat next to her small work bench. “I was… acting!” Trixie replied, opening her chest of half-finished scripts. “I’m a playwright, amongst other things. I was merely rehearsing a scene.”   “Is that so?” Mag said, regarding her with a cool stare. Trixie gave a little shriek as the matronly pony suddenly lunged, but Mag jumped past her, ripping up the bed skirt to peer underneath it. “A-ha! Oh,” she said, dropping the bedding with a disappointed sigh.   “Yes, it is so!” Trixie said, opening the door once more. “Now, if you don’t mind—”   “Oh, I don’t mind at all!” the mare said, a wide grin spreading across her face as she dug through the chest. “Playwright, you say?” she continued, clasping her hooves together under her chin briefly before pulling out one of the many dog-eared scripts in the chest. Leafing rapidly through the pages, Mag’s eyes darted back and forth so quickly that Trixie experienced a wave of vertigo. My, my, my! The theatre! Don’t that beat all?!” As Mag looked back up suddenly,Trixie quickly pulled her head back, narrowly avoiding a painful headbutt. Only inches away, Mag’s huge eyes sparkled like sapphires. “Ooh, that sounds excitin’!”   Trixie snatched the script out of Mag’s hooves, thrusting it back in the box and twisting the latch closes again. “Yes, it’s very exciting, but I don’t share my work with ponies I don’t know. Confidentiality is—”   “Oh, pish-posh, honey!” Mag said, grabbing Trixie’s hoof and pumping vigorously. “Let’s not let a little thing like that stop us! Why, you’re practically family! I’m sure you picked up on it, but I’m Magdalena Anastasia Pie, Humble’s wife, but folks around here just call me Mag. Humble and I run this here farm together! Been at it nearin’ forty years now." Mag smiled brilliantly, but her eyes grew unfocused as she looked away into the distance. “My, how time does fly, don’t it?”   Too flabbergasted to pull her hoof away, Trixie stood blinking. Wha-what just happened? she thought, as Mag dropped her hoof and began rummaging through Trixie’s nightstand, humming to herself. She came in ready to rip our heads off and—   “My, my! Is this real? Why, I’ve never seen the like!” Mag cried out, pulling her crystal ball from its case in the closet. Wiping a thin layer of dust from the ball’s surface, the matronly pony peered at Trixie through it. Trixie could feel the muscles in her eyebrows bunching as Mag’s magnified eyes swam before her.   “Yes,” Trixie said through gritted teeth as she snatched the ball out of Mag’s hooves, “It’s for my stage show and it’s very delicate so—”   “So, you write plays about magic?” Mag said, picking up Trixie’s cape and eyeing the threading.   “No,” Trixie replied, trying to get some of her equilibrium back. Mag’s questions were coming at her so fast that she’d completely lost her bearings. “I’m a magician, but I write plays in my—”   “Well, that’s just a delight!” Mag cut across, throwing the cape around her shoulders. “Say, are you still partial to this? It was on the floor, so I thought maybe you were gettin’ rid of it. Looks mighty fine, dontcha think?" Admiring herself in the mirror, she turned to catch the sun’s rays on the cape’s metallic stars, watching them shimmer. “I could wear it to that play about Humble—now you just wait a hot minute, filly!”   Trixie took an involuntary step back. In an instant, Mag’s smiling face transformed again, and she whirled on Trixie, snarling. “Just why are you writin’ some sort of play about Humble, hmmm?” she said, advancing steadily on the unicorn. “Tryin’ to woo him away with your pretty words?" She poked Trixie in the chest with her hoof as she backed the unicorn up against the wall. “That’s your plan, ain’t it?!”   Trixie placed both of her front hooves on older mare’s chest and shoved. Startled, Mag reeled backward, and finally fell onto the bed. “Trixie would ask if you were born in a barn, but that’s a self-evident in this part of Equestria!” Trixie said. She could feel herself trembling. Humble got on her nerves, but it had been some time since she was this angry. “Who do you think you are, barging into my trailer and demanding answers from The Great and Powerful Trixie? Your fool of a husband isn’t here!" She threw open the closet door, sweeping a hoof across the open space for emphasis. “So kindly get out!”   “Well, if that’s how you want to be about it, fine,” Mag said, rising from the bed with a sniff. Tucking her loose hair back into their bun, she thrust her nose into the air and turned for the door, stopping just as she got to the threshold. “But Humble told me to tell you that you need to meet us in the south field in thirty minutes. Well, it was thirty minutes, but then you had to show me all of your odds and ends and now it’s down to ten.”   “Wait a minute,” Trixie said, raising one eyebrow. “How could Humble be hiding out in my trailer if he sent you here in the first place?”   Mag put a hoof to her mouth, a slow flush beginning to creep up her cheeks. “Why, I reckon you’re right! I just heard his name and, well, I just thought…" She turned to give Trixie a bright smile. “Well, what’s done is done. Water under the bridge!" Mag called out cheerfully as she trotted down the trailer’s steps and back toward the farmhouse. “Don’t worry, I’m not one for grudges!” Trixie heard her call back.   For a few seconds, Trixie just stood by the door, trying to process what happened as Mag’s hoofbeats receded. Suddenly she lunged for the door, leaning out and cupping a hoof to her mouth. “Hey!” she yelled at the retreating mare. “Give me back my cape!” ~~~ As she trotted through the stile that led into the south field, Trixie began to break out in a cold sweat. Some distance away, she could see Humble fussing with the contents of a large wagon, and her stomach began to knot.   What am I going to say to him? she thought, replaying their encounters of the last few days in her head. Just when you’ve written him off as an insane hillbilly, he says something caring and wise, just to go back to go back to crazy two seconds later! But... he tried to help me! He listened to me!   As she neared, Humble poked his head up over the wagon. When their eyes met, he frowned and quickly lowered his head again, arranging the bundles with what, to Trixie, appeared to be excessive force. Unsure what to do next, Trixie stopped a few feet from him and cleared her throat.   “That’s, uh, a pretty nice wagon, Humble,” she began casually.   “Mmmm,” he grunted.   “Is it new? It looks new,” she continued, pretending to examine the wagon’s rough wooden bed.   “It’s the same wagon we’ve been usin’ all week, Trixie,” he said without looking up. Trixie squeezed her eyes closed, rubbing her forehead lightly with a hoof.   Get it together, Trixie! she thought, tapping herself with a hoof between the eyes. You’ve dined with Canterlot’s elite! Winning over one farmer shouldn’t be that hard! She reclined on the wagon beside Humble, crossing one hoof over the other. “So, where’s Mag?” she asked, running a hoof through her hair.   “She’s yonder,” Humble replied, waving vaguely at the farm house.   “She seems like quite a mare!”   “Mmmmm.”   Sighing, Trixie pushed herself off the wagon and sat down beside the pile of bundled packages Humble was loading. Swallowing hard, she hung her head low.   “Humble,” she said, sighing. Her words were little more than a whisper, “can we talk?”   The farmer grunted as he picked up another of the large bundles and hefted it into the bed. “Don’t see what we’ve to talk about, truth be told,” he said, stopping briefly to wipe his brow. “As I’ve said, rocks don’t much like idle conversation, and ‘sides, work gets done faster without all that jawin’. Celestia knows you’re eager to be on your way. Wouldn’t want anythin’ to get in the way of that!” Trixie winced at the anger in his voice.   “I-I didn’t mean that—” she began. As Humble whirled to face her, she involuntarily leaned away from him, her eyes widening.   “Is that so?” he growled. Trixie watched with concern as a vein near his temple pulsed. “Then what is it you’re meanin’? It’s been nothin’ but one attempt after another to shirk your responsibilities and shorten your stay since you got here!" He pulled out his pipe and jabbed it toward her for emphasis. “I’ve a mountain o’ sorrow for you, Trixie! You’ve probably never had it so bad as with me, doin’ an honest days work!" Snorting, he grabbed another bundle and slammed it into place. “Humble, I…” Trixie said, swallowing hard. “It just came out wrong! I don’t mean to be… to be like..." Humble paused, leaning against the wagon, but didn’t turn around. Trembling, Trixie slowly walked over to him. “Can I tell you something, Humble?” Trixie said, her voice shaking. After a moment, the farmer nodded curtly and sat down. “I-I…” Trixie managed before turning away.   Taking a deep breath, Trixie closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart. Why am I doing this? she thought as she tried to quell the tremors in her hooves. It’s really none of his business. What do I care what he thinks of me?   Trixie jumped as she felt a hoof on her shoulder. Humble was gripping it gently, but firmly, his face equal parts bewilderment and concern. “Trixie, you confound me, you know that?” he said, sliding his pipe to the other side of his mouth. “One minute you make me mad enough to spit, the next you make me smile." Trixie’s eyes flicked up to the perpetual frown the farm wore. “Oh, ayuh. I’m not one for grinnin’. Truth be told, your antics aggravate me somethin’ fierce, but they remind me some of my youngest. Both of you make me smile here,” Humble said, tapping himself on the chest, “even when your mule-headedness is like to make my head explode. Only Mag and the girls done that to me before. No denyin’ you’ve made my week here somethin’ of a mess, but somethin’ tell me there’s bigger things a-hoof here than harvestin’ rocks.”   Humble gently led Trixie over to an overturned wooden crate and motioned for her to sit down. “Trixie, I don’t know what you think of fate, but I think maybe you ended up here on my farm for a reason,” Humble said, catching her eye. Trixie caught herself shaking and was relieved that she was off her hooves. He really seems concerned! she thought, taking a few deep breaths in an attempt to get her emotions back under control. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest that she was beginning to feel a little faint  But… can I really trust him? Trixie looked up at him, twisting her hooves around each other. “I’m just guessin’ here, but I reckon you’ve a powerful lot of hurt piled up, and no pony to talk to." Humble released her shoulder and sat down across from her, gesturing with his pipe for her to continue. “So talk.”