Whooves, Doctor of Psychology

by nowego


Chapter 8: Day 8

Day 8

We’re back to crazy.

I stretched my hooves over my head, yawning. Blinking a few times, I found myself on my back, looking up at a ceiling that was bathed in golden, early-morning sunshine. I contemplated it for a moment–something seemed a little different about the ceiling this morning–before trying to sit up on my elbows, only to discover I had a soft weight on top of me. I looked down to see Ditzy sleeping comfortably on top of me, faint smile lingering on her face. If I had stopped to consider it for a second, I probably would have indulged in the bit of happiness that was so rare on her face.

Instead, my brain froze, until a flood of memories from the night before rushed to the forefront of my mind. And then, all I could think was, Oh, B-bu-bucking HORSE A-APPLES...

She stirred slightly, eyelids fluttering open. She brushed her mane out of her face with a hoof and blinked again, focusing on me. What really worried me was the fact that she didn’t make any move to get off. We looked at each other for a few minutes, my eyes dilated, hers with a more typical half-lidded lazy look. Eventually she raised her head, crossed her forelegs where it had been, letting it rest on them instead.

“...morning, my little stallion.”

“Um, yes. G-good morning. Wait. What did you just call me?”

“Well, I’m not calling you your last name, and you never gave me your first. So I came up with a pet name I liked, ‘cause the usual ones just didn’t seem to fit.”

I started, sliding myself out from under her partially and recoiling to my side of the loveseat. Good grief, that name will now forever have other connotations attached to it now.

She sat back on her haunches, allowing me to draw back, but obviously regretting the cessation of the semi-snuggle, as evident from the look in her eyes. “Something wrong?”

Oddly enough, the logical side of my brain saved me here. Think about what you say next carefully, I thought. It will likely determine the status of this relationship for the foreseeable future. You can only test thin ice so many times before it cracks.

Ha. See? Logic and reason saved me when my initial emotional response would have blown the relationship asunder. Then again, why did I care about the relationship at all unless I was emotionally attached? Whatever. I’ll sort that out later.

“What? No. I just, um... don’t want to make you late for your deliveries.”

That actually came out smoother than I expected.

“Don’t worry,” she said, waving a hoof dismissively. “They have to bring the day’s mail first. And with all the extra pegasi on cloud duty cleaning up the storm, I don’t think it’ll get here too soon.”

“...Oh.”

We sat there for a few minutes, with her looking at me, and me finding a sudden interest in my hooves.

Finally, “What is your name?”

I grimaced. “Let’s just say there’s a reason I go by Doctor Whooves.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” she replied, sidling up next to me. “Pleeease?”

“No. I’m not telling anypony. Ever. And no amount of pouting is going to get it out of me.”

I shouldn’t have mentioned that. She donned a blatantly exaggerated pout face, sticking out her lower lip and looking (approximately) up at me. It actually looks really cute with crossed eyes.

“Nope. Sorry. Talk to the hoof.”

“Well then, ‘my little stallion’ will have to stay.”

“Yeah, whatever. But, could we keep it to ‘Whooves’ in public until... um...” I’d put my hoof in it now. The implications of what I’d left unsaid were as bad as saying them.

We sat there for a bit more. Eventually, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

Anything that would get me off the couch. I followed her into the kitchen, where she pulled off her stockings off awkwardly with her teeth and started opening cabinets.

“I don’t have anything fancy... no muffins... maybe cereal?”

“Excellent.”

As we were getting it out, the door burst open, a familiar purple-tinted unicorn filly hopping in.

“Mommy! I’m back! Sparkler and I... we, uh... Doctor Whooves?”

I set the milk jug I was holding down with a testing twist of the neck. Curse all unicorn milk jug designers in history. “Good morning, Dinky.”

“Hi,” she responded, startled back into shyness at my unexpected presence. I looked at Ditzy, who looked at me as well, from the rim or her cereal bowl. She finished chewing her latest bite.

“You were saying? How was your visit?”

“Oh, it was... good.”

I was about to assist in the conversational effort, when a large duffel landed with startling velocity on the doormat, coming out of the sky above, apparently.

“That’s the mail. I better get going,” said Ditzy, slinging her mail satchel over her neck and transferring the first section of mail out of the bag. “Don’t forget to take lunch to school, Dinky,” she reminded, before stepping out the door and taking off. I looked back at the filly, who had walked a half circle around me, looking me up and down.

“So how do I compare?”

She stopped. “To what?”

Oh. Maybe this wasn’t such a good topic. “Well... your father.”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember him.”

Something about that wasn’t right. “What do you mean? I thought you were sleeping over at his house with Sparkler.”

She shook her head. “No, Sparkler lives with her mom, like me. But she’s old enough to remember. Maybe I should ask her.”

Dinky began to make herself a sandwich. Meanwhile, the cogs were turning in my brain. “Did Ditzy- uh, your mom ever say what happened with your dad?”

“Yeah, once- wait. Why the sudden interest?”

“Well, your mother and I are going to be spending some time together,” I said. Might as well get the filly used to the idea. “And I want to know what I can about her.”

That seemed to satisfy the filly. Surprisingly, she didn’t ask any questions, just went back to spreading the mayonnaise, and finishing her reply. “Oh. Okay. Anyway, Mom said that he went six foot under, so I looked it up in one of the Library’s geography books. I think she meant the ‘land down under,’ which is Australia.”

Ooooh. Sure.

The filly finished packing her bag, and I accompanied her out the door.

“Well, I’m off to school.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know if a pegasus named Scootaloo goes to your school, would you?”

She blinked. “I thought it was the only school in Ponyville.”

Oh duh. “I think I’ll come with you, if that’s okay.”

“Fine with me.”

We walked in silence. About half way there, I noticed Dinky was beginning to drag a bit. I offered to carry her books, but she refused. “I do this-” Huff. “-every school day-” Huff. “-it’ll make me-” Huff. “-stronger eventually.”

I know how exercise works, but foals can only grow so fast. Unfortunately, by the time I got done explaining that to her, we were at school.

“Have a good day, Dinky!” I said over my shoulder, catching sight of Applebloom, whom I trotted after.

“Hey Doc!”

“Hello, Applebloom. Is Scootaloo around?”

“No, Ah don’t think she came today. You still tryin’ to track her down?”

I nodded.

“Well, when in doubt, find Rainbow Dash. Scoot’s always followin’ her around.”

“And where would I find her?”

Applebloom looked at the sky. “Now that the sky’s clear an’ all, she’s probably conked out on a cloud somewheres napping.”

“Okay, thanks for the help,” I grunted, leaving.

Hours later (during which time I did stop off at my place to set events of the previous day down on record), I had finally tracked down Rainbow Dash’s cloud home, which floated a bit beyond the outskirts of Ponyville. I was tired and a bit worn out from the rigmarole I had gone through to get there, but on the up side, Rainbow was sure to be awake by now.

“Rainbow Dash?”

No response.

“Rainbow Dash!” I said again, raising my voice.

Still no response.

I took a few seconds to suck in my breath and brace my diaphragm. “RAINBOW DASH!”

“Geez Louise, what? What could possibly be so important that you had to wake me up?” said a sleepy voice from behind (and above) me. I whirled around to see Rainbow peering lazily over the edge of a smaller cloud that hung off by itself. “Wait, Whooves?” she asked rhetorically, becoming alert. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for a filly named Scootaloo, and I was told she hangs with you sometimes. Any idea where she might be?”

Much to my surprise, an orange face peered over the edge next to the larger cyan one.

“Well?” Scootaloo asked, the tone practically simmering.

“Oh, there you are,” I said, blinking stupidly. Her stoic face hinted at a frown. I glanced over at Rainbow before continuing, deciding that Scootaloo seemed to have told her everything that happened thus far, and it was probably just as well that she was here to hear this.

“Look, I’m sorry if what I said yesterday scared you. It’s just that I’ve had a bad sample for representation of ponies in general in my lifetime; I’ve learned to presume selfish until proven otherwise. I guess this is where the silver lining is; there are exceptions out there. I’ve known a few–and only a few, unfortunately, but the point is we can always be better than we are. To be better, so that, um... that is, for the good of...” I admittedly don’t argue well for something I don’t fully agree with. Be that as it is, I expected some kind of reaction from Scootaloo by this point, but her face hadn’t changed. Am I forgetting something? I thought.

As if in answer, the small pegasus said, “You said you didn’t care about our cutie marks.”

I considered my options. First, I could lie and say I was sorry and smooth over the conflict (which is the exact opposite goal of psychological therapy, I should point out). Alternatively, I could go with the dangerous but probably preferable route: tell the truth.

“Because, frankly, I don’t.”

She retreated out of my view back onto the cloud. Rainbow looked from Scootaloo to me, and then shook her head before following the other pegasus.

Buck mottos.

I sat down, stomach grumbling. The cloud was by itself, so nopony was leaving it without my knowing as long as I stayed there. There was only one thing to do.

I waited.

Fortunately, my time of depravity of sustenance was shorter than I expected. Five, or maybe ten minutes later, Rainbow appeared from the cloud and descended to earth.

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Are you kidding? Nothing bothers that kid. She’s just not talking to you for a while.”

I don’t know which made me doubt that more: the fact that she wouldn’t look me straight in the eye when saying it, or the matter of her skipping school to come talk to her closest mentor. Hmm. Surely there’s an awesome, modern version of that word. Anyway, it seemed obvious something was going on that I was missing, even if it was unrelated.

“So... do you want to talk over lunch?”

“Yeah, gre- wait. You buying?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, of course.”

Minutes later, we were sitting under a restaurant overhang, waiting for our orders. I looked around uncomfortably. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to leave Scootaloo alone?”

“Relax, Doc. She hangs at my place whenever she’s not off crusading. She knows her way around.”

She paused, studying me for a moment. “I just don’t get you. It’s like all you ever do is run around breaking things and trying to fix them afterwords.”

“Yes, it seems like that at times. It’s rather taxing.” I sighed. “It wasn’t always this way, though.”

Rainbow perked up. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “Back in my Canterlot life, I would burn bridges and not bother with trying to build them again.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped and an unimpressed look crossed her face. “Aha. I gotta wonder though, why the change?” she asked, then clarified, “But don’t bother answering that if it’s just gonna be some vague theoretical-psycho-whatever answer.”

I chuckled. “I have very concrete reasons, but all the same, I can’t tell you what they are.”

“Figures,” she replied, pausing as a pony hastily delivered our orders and continued on his way. “But all I can tell you without that info is to... well... stop being a jerk.” She forced a smile and a half chuckle, as though laughing it off.

I rolled my eyes. “Even I have gotten that much figured out.” I sighed. “What gets me, is that for all my books and understanding of how ponies think, I can’t keep a civil, casual, relationship going.”

“Well actually, that’s probably your problem.”

“What?”

“Yeah. You’re an egghead. It’s almost like you’re trying to find a, um, quantifiable? Quantifiable, universal response to a given situation. Sometimes, you gotta go with your gut feeling. I know that when you’re flying, books and calculations ain’t gonna do you no good. It’s you, the wind, and split-second decision making based on nothing but in- inte- intuition.”

“That’s right, you never finished Flight Camp, did you?”

Her unimpressed look returned. “If your gut told you that was the nice thing to say, then I guess you’re screwed.”

“Huh? Oh! I mean, that was very sage advise, Rainbow Dash.”

She groaned, licking her lips from her recently devoured hay fries. “Anyway, I gotta get going. Give Scoots her space for a while, and try to at least act sensitive when you apologize.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I answered, lost in thought. She shrugged and took off.

I thought about what Rainbow had said as I munched absent-mindedly on my salad. Gut feelings. Of course I had them, but most of my problems seemed to come about when I listened to them and lost self-control. My outbreak at the Cutie Mark Crusaders, retracting from Ditzy, even my annoying habit of telling the truth to ponies’ faces was a form of it.

My train of thought was interrupted as Colgate sat down heavily in the chair across from me.

“Wow, you eat at this place? The coffee shop is way cooler than this old joint.”

Without fully meaning to, I asked the question that had been building in my mind. It must have been really out of the blue for her.

“How do you be nice without blindly agreeing and withholding all of your personal opinions? I mean, I can’t listen to my ‘gut feelings’ without offending everypony on the block and ruining the friendship.”

She blinked in surprise, but answered coherently after a moment. “Those two questions aren’t related like you seem to think they are, ya know.”

It was my turn to blink. “Come again?”

“Your ‘gut feeling’ isn’t the same thing as the first thought that pops into your head. You almost never want to say what you’re thinking with somebody you’re not really, really close with.” She scratched an ear and looked down at the table. “I’m not particularly good at that in practice, but I try to anyway.” She shifted her mane. “Anyway, a gut feeling is like the overall impression you get from a character. Like after meeting a pony and you walk away feeling like he was a slick slime-ball trying to scam you. Obviously you don’t say that to his face, but you use it in deciding on your actions and whatnot.” She paused, trying to think of a better example. “It’s like... like how you know when you’re in love.”

That put things in a different picture for me. One that was going to take a while to re-frame.

“Oh, and Pinkie and I are throwing a party at my place Wednesday. Open house, so bring a friend if you want. If you have any.”

Har har.

I waved my hoof  after her as she left. Eventually I followed suit, trotting back toward my residence.

In practice, I thought, words recurring in my head. Ponies don’t fit in books... stop treating them like they are experiments.

I knew just where I was going to start.

At that moment, I turned the corner on the street. A carriage was stopped in front of Lyra and Bonbon’s house, while they hauled luggage back into their house and dismissed the pulling stallion.

“How’d it go?” I asked, trotting up as said carriage rolled away. As far as I could tell, Bonbon looked happy, if a bit travel worn.

“Hi!” replied Lyra cheerfully. “You still coming for dinner?”

“Sure.”

“Okay! Be back here at four so we can start teaching you to cook for real,” she said, disappearing into the house.

“How did she-”

“I told her,” answered Bonbon. “Everything.”

“And?”

A smile crept up on her face. “Everything’s working itself out. She said all I had to do was say something in the first place.”

I walked calmly over to the side of the house and banged my head repeatedly on the siding. “Am  I the only pony who can’t say what they want without everything going to horseapples?

“Um, problem?”

I sat down and deflated. “I’m just getting a lot of mixed signals today.”

“Such as?”

I huffed. “My gut feeling tells me about a pony in general but shouldn’t influence my exact thoughts, but I’m not supposed to say those out loud, but apparently that does work for some ponies,” I said all at once.

“Wow, dude, you’re overthinking this,” said Lyra, startling me. She was leaning out of a ground level window next to me.

“I’m not sure exactly where all this is coming from,” continued Bonbon, thinking, “but just speak the truth in love. Anypony that hates you for that isn’t within your abilities to help.”

“Speak the truth in love?” How poetic. How cryptic. How completely useless.

Lyra nodded. “It’s your job to speak in love, it’s their job to tolerate the truth even when they don’t like it.”

A series of replays of my incidents played in my mind. Every time, I had been cold, cool, calculating. If I wasn’t blowing up completely. The other party had always retreated without returning offense, even if it was in various different states of emotion (okay, Colgate got a little angry, but I think most ponies would excuse her).

“Um, Whooves?” Lyra waved a hoof in front of my face. I snapped out of my trance.

“Okay, so speak the truth in love. That’s great, but I can’t fake emotion that well.”

Lyra facehooved. “You’re missing the point, idiot.”

Bonbon shot Lyra a look. “What Lyra is trying to say is, you need to feel what the ponies on the other side are feeling too.”

For some reason I can’t explain, my thoughts went back to this morning. She wanted a pony to hug, one that took the time to know her for more than the first look. Was I so blind not to see that? Obviously, a little voice in my head replied.

“I have some plans to make,” I said, getting up. “I’ll be back around four.”

Upon entering my house, I found a royally sealed scroll waiting. A reply from the Princess.

Most Esteemed-

Hey, wazu-

Whooves,

Is there a name four the fear of baseballs? You’re not ask- an- a’je   nf...
                     ^You spelled it wrong
Sincerely, Love,
Princess Luna Celestia Luq ae ag’a     apb  a,zqw e ; ___

I am still thoroughly confused. The style, the spelling, the frequent smears, inkblots, and careless sprawls... none of it was making any sense. There was no doubt it was the royal insignia on the seal, though. I guess I’ll ask for clarification in my next report.

I puzzled over that until four, when I went next door and got my unsuccessful cooking lessons from Bonbon while Lyra did the actual work. I turned out pretty good despite my few contributions, and so we ate and I went home. And this recording has sucked up most of my time before bed. Tomorrow... tomorrow I start thinking differently.

Goodnight.