4:Of Poems, Paintings, Secrets and Cyber men
I woke up with the sun the next day. I was tired but it was something I was used to doing. I stretched, knocking off my blankets and looked out the window as I got out of bed.Bright red hues accented the few clouds in the sky. The dark indigo of night had yet to fade away and was instead turned orange where the light of the sun hit it. I smiled, remembering all the sunrises and sunsets I had ever seen from the desert sunrises near Dodge Junction that seemed to make the earth catch fire to the misty mornings of Vanhoover that made the hills look like a painting instead of real life.
I cracked my back and stretched, yawning. I reached over to my suitcase with my magic and took out my most prized possession, a red sheathed katana I got from a Japamareies trader when I was a colt. I drew the blade. Brilliant white steel flashed in the morning light. A sun was engraved on the left side of the blade, and on the right, it was tempered so that it appeared indigo with a silver moon engraved directly across from the sun. Sky Dancer, my sword. The instrument that had saved my life, more times than I could count, and not just in a fight either.
I got in the ready position. I used my magic to grab the hilt of the blade instead of standing on my hind legs and using my fore legs like I did when I was a colt and didn’t really have control over my magic. Ever since I was a colt, I had read every book and studied every manual on how to use this sword. I had gotten pretty good. I have only had to use Sky Dancer four times in my life thankfully, but now most raiders out in the Bad Lands were starting to use guns. If I ever went back there, I would have to get a handgun and retire Sky Dancer forever. Now is an age of transition. Vinyl’s laptop is a perfect symbol. In a few short years, ponies in Equestria went from using the most basic implements and technology to railways crisscrossing the nation and high speed computers in homes. I was a perfect symbol of the old age, and I would have to advance if I wanted to stay alive and continue my life style.
I was practicing for ten minutes when there was a knock on my door.
“Come in.”
Vinyl popped her head in then opened the door all the way. “Morning.”
“You’re up early,” I said raising an eyebrow.
“Never slept.” She walked over. “Whatcha got there?”
“A sword.” I quickly sheathed the blade.
“Wow, a warrior poet.” Vinyl smiled. “Epic. Hey, I have breakfast downstairs if you want to eat.”
“Sure,” I said and followed her after carefully putting away my sword.
I sat across from Vinyl who took nearly three quarters of the hay bacon and proceeded to wolf it down. I took mine more carefully, taking small bites, trying to remain somewhat neat.
“So,” Vinyl said before swallowing a mouthful of hay bacon, “I saw you dancing with somepony. Who was she?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “She never gave me her name.”
“Describe her to me. I probably know her.” Vinyl leaned her forelegs on the table using her hooves to prop up her head. “But don’t go looking for her or anything. Trust me. If mares are like stallions, they hate it. I mean I met this awesome guy once, and I showed up at his door the next day to see if he wanted to hang out, ya know? But he totally snubbed me! Can you believe that? What’s so weird about knowing where somepony lives?”
“No clue,” I said humoring her.
“Anyway,” Vinyl leaned back, “you were describing her.”
I described her best I could. When I was done Vinyl tapped her chin with her hoof. “Sounds familiar, but I can’t put a name to her, but I know I’ve seen her before.” She shrugged. “Ah well, if she really wants to see you again, she’ll find ya.” Vinyl stood up and stretched. “Well I’m crashing. I’d go around and see the city today, before all the tourists get here. You know with the Wonderbolts show and all.”
I assumed she rolled her eyes under her sunglasses by her posture. “Really they need a better soundtrack, less trumpets, more wubs.” She took a few more steps towards her bedroom, then fell on the floor and started snoring.
I shook my head and used my magic to carry her to her bedroom down the hall from the kitchen. She snored obnoxiously loud as I pulled the blanket over her. When I heard that, I was glad she slept during the day. I can’t stand snoring.
I waited a few hours before heading out. I decided to take a few of my notebooks when I went around the city. I never knew when inspiration could hit, and I didn’t want to lose a potentially great poem. I decided instead of heading along the main roads, to instead go see the gardens. I had heard so much about them that I had to see them for myself.
I wasn’t disappointed. To call them gardens would be an understatement; it was more like a forest. Small oak and maple trees grew gracefully in a checkerboard pattern. In the center, rested a large pond or a small lake. Weeping willows surrounded it. Paths cut through the trees and flowers seemed to sprout up everywhere along them. I followed a smaller path, admiring the flora. I had spent the last two years in the desert, so the lush green almost seemed foreign to me. I found a bench near the lake and sat down. I felt inspired so I took out a note book and started writing.
I was there for about ten minutes when somepony said, “Whatcha doing?”
I looked to my left and was surprised to see the mare from the club hovering next to me with powerful down strokes from her wings.
“Hey,” I said and moved over so she could sit down.
“I didn’t mean to stalk you or anything.” She alighted on the bench next to me. “I was just flying over and saw you so I decided to say hi.” She waved her hoof. “Hi!”
“Hi!” I quickly laughed.
She looked at the notebook I was holding with my magic and smiled mischievously. “What are you writing?”
“Nothing.” I tried to hide the journal, but before I could, a streak of orange shot past me and grabbed it. She flew a few feet above me holding the papers in her hooves.
“Hey!” I yelled, throwing my quill aside. “Give those back!”
“Oh if only you could fly,” she mocked playfully and started reading. Her playfull smile slowly disappeared and her eyes slowly widened as she read page after page. When she finished, she landed softly and handed the old leather notebook back to me.
“Wow,” she said looking at me with wide eyes.
“Yeah, I know they’re not that good,” I grumbled and started to hide them again.
“No! No I thought they were amazing! You wrote all these right?”
“Yeah…you really think they’re good?”
She cocked her head to the side and raised her right eyebrow. “If I had thought they were good, I would have said good, these are amazing!”
“Thanks.” I blushed a little.
“I mean most poems you read and you know exactly what the author means, but like this stanza.” She grabbed the book back from me.
“Across the glowing fields
And under the azure sky
A black crow flew
And together we stared eye and eye.”
She looked back at me. “The narrator must have been depressed or something. I mean he keeps going on about all the beauty around him for four stanzas before this and he sees the crow eye to eye.” She handed me my journal again and I looked at the poem she was talking about. “That’s deep,” she finished.
“I was really young when I wrote that.” I looked at the poem, “A Song of Autumn.” “I had just left home actually.”
“When was that?”
I huffed. “I guess I was six.”
“You left home at six? I didn’t even have my cutie mark then! Why?”
I shrugged and tucked the book behind me on the bench. “It’s a long story; you don’t want to hear it.”
“Yeah I do.” She sat down again and motioned for me to continue.
I took a deep breath and sighed. “Well, my parents weren’t exactly the greatest. My dad was a former royal guard gone mercenary, and my mother…” I paused remembering the only memory I had of her, a smiling face above my crib. “She left when I was young. I don’t know why, but she did. My dad was gone most of the time anyway, so I was already fending for myself. I left, though I doubt he noticed and stayed with family in southern Fillydelphia for high school, and then I just kept moving.” I shrugged and looked at a scar on my right shoulder from a bar fight I tried to break up a few years ago. “I guess I became my dad in the end.”
The Pegasi looked at me, her eyes full of concern. “No,” she said, “you would never abandon a colt. I may not know you that well, but I can tell that much.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“Sometimes I wish I had left. My parents pushed me through flight school the second I got my cutie mark. But I guess they were right for doing it in the end.” She stared off into the distance.
“Why? What did you want to do?”
She smiled. “Wait here.” With a flash, she flew off.
I waited for about ten minutes, rereading “A Song of Autumn,” embarrassed she had read that poem, which I hated with a passion. With a flutter, the Pegasi appeared behind me. I started to turn around but she said, “Close your eyes.”
“Why?” I turned more so I could see her, but she kept avoiding my gaze.
“Just close them.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll leave and never come back,” she taunted.
“I doubt that.”
“Just close your eyes.” She laughed.
I sighed and complied.
“Okay,” she said galloping around in front of me, “open them.”
I opened my eyes slowly and was met with one of the most beautiful impressionist paintings of an ocean at sunset I had ever seen.
“So?” she asked poking her head over the canvas. “What do you think?”
“Wow! You’re quite the impressionist.”
“What if I was going for realism?” She glared at me.
I gulped. “I stand by what I said.”
She giggled and sat next to me. “You’re lucky.”
“I wish I could say more about it, but I’m not an artist.”
“Yeah you are. You just use a different medium.”
I shrugged and looked closer. “Pegasi write and paint with their mouths right?”
She nodded.
“Then I’m even more impressed. The brush strokes on the waves, it makes them come alive, and the sun,” I looked closer, “it actually looks like the sun at sun set. How many different colors did you use?”
“Eight,” she said proudly. “26 on the sky.”
I looked at her cutie mark. “Is that supposed to be a paint brush?” I asked jokingly.
“Nope, it’s fire,” she laughed.
“Still,” I looked back at the painting, “this is really impressive.”
“Thanks,” she said smiling, “most ponies don’t think I should paint,” she muttered sadness in her voice as she placed the painting beside the bench. “They say it’s ‘not my thing.’”
“Then you need to start talking to better ponies.” I smiled at her.
She moved closer to me. “Where would I meet these better ponies?”
My heart started racing and I could feel heat on my cheeks. “Well you know they’re all around.” I stammered.
“I think I know where to start looking,” she whispered.
Our lips almost touched when her eyes widened and she shot into the air, grabbing her painting on the way. “I…I have to go!”
“Wait!” I called jumping to my hooves. “Will I get to see you again? I mean, I don’t even know your name!”
She bit her bottom lip. “Meet me at the Golden Horseshoe, tonight, 6 p.m. I’m sorry, I have to go!” With a crack she flew off.
I shook my head. Mares. I started to pack up my things when I noticed somepony running down the path.
“Hey!” he shouted running over. I turned and saw the brown earth pony. He was wearing a fedora and a tweed jacket. A camera hung from around his neck, the light reflecting off the flash bulb kept hitting me in the eye as he ran over.
He stopped just in front of me a little out of breath and pulled a notepad from his jacket. “Speedy News,” he said introducing himself, grabbing and shaking my hoof, “with the Wonderbolts Illustrated. Tell me, how does it feel to be Spitfire’s new beau?”
“What?” I took my hoof back, my left eyebrow raising.
“Spitfire, captain of the Wonderbolts, you two almost kissed,” he said rapidly.
“Oh no, that wasn’t Spitfire.” I realized this is why she had bolted. “That was a friend of mine, uh, Misty Doo! Yeah, couldn’t be Spitfire,” I said backing up. “Misty Doo’s blind, afraid of heights, I got to go.”
I galloped back to Vinyl’s house as fast as my legs could take me. I needed advice and fast.
I burst through into the dark entryway and galloped to her room. The door was still open and she looked as if she hadn’t moved, but the pile of energy drink cans had grown and the entryway was cleared of them, so she must have gotten up at some point and cleaned up. I threw the thought aside and said loudly, “Vinyl!”
“Cyber Men!” she screamed and shot out of bed, her green sheets flying everywhere. She fell over to the side of the bed I couldn’t see, and then jumped back up, only this time she was carrying a large black box. She smashed a red button on the top of it and before I could react, I was thrown against the wall, the deep resonance of a bass speaker filling my ears.
“Iron!” she exclaimed when she saw it was me. She hit the top of her box again and with a click it stopped.
I slid down from the wall and landed face first into the green carpet. Despite Vinyl trying to clean up, it still smelled like sour energy drink. I started to get up, but a picture of her parents fell and hit me on the head, knocking me down again.
“Sorry, dude.” She trotted over and helped me up. “I should have warned you to wake me up slowly.”
“You weren’t lying about the bass cannon.” I watched all three of her as I stumbled, trying to regain my bearings.
“Epic, right!” She finally turned back into one pony. “I tried them at my club once, but according to the royal guard, they’re too ‘dangerous.’”
I shook my head. “Vinyl I have a problem.”
“Cyber Men!” She made a break for the bass cannon.
“No!” She stopped in her tracks. “I don’t even know what those are! Anyway this is worse.”
“What could be worse than Cyber Men?” She tilted her head to the side.
“Will you please stop with the Cyber Men,” I begged, hanging the picture of her parents back up using my magic. “Remember the mare I met at your club?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t meet her, but continue.”
“I was at the park and she came up to me.”
“Didn’t I tell you not to snub her? Just because she wanted to talk doesn’t mean she’s a stalker.”
“No, I didn’t snub her, she left on her own.” I explained tapping my hoof.
“You told her she had bad breath didn’t you?” Vinyl narrowed her eyes and glared at me.
“No I didn’t!” I stomped my left fore hoof.
“Then it must have been something about her weight, huh? Never comment on a mare’s weight.”
“What? No! She’s not fat! I didn’t say anything!” I had to try to not beat my head against the wall.
“Well no wonder she left.” Vinyl shook her head, her blue hair splashing around her face.
“No, we talked and she tried to kiss me.”
Vinyl gasped and covered her mouth. “And you found out she was your cousin.”
“No!” I rolled my eyes
She backed up her right foreleg raised like she had just stepped in something nasty. “You found out you weren’t cousins and it turned you off?”
“No, where are you getting all these cousin ideas?” I pointed my hoof accusingly at her.
She shrugged. “I dunno. I just get the feeling family was involved. Happened to me before.”
“Vinyl”
“Didn’t find out till the sixth date.”
“Vinyl,” I said louder.
“I guess it should have been obvious though.” She tapped her chin with her hoof. “We did have the same last name.”
“Vinyl!” I shouted desperately.
“Yeah!” She snapped back to the present.
“It turns out she’s Spitfire!”
“Your cousin?” Her jaw dropped.
“No, my great Aunt Daisy Springs, from the 51st century,” I said sarcastically. “Spitfire’s the mare I met at your club!” the picture on the wall fell down again, screeching against the wall papered dry wall, as if were trying to make as much noise as possible.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Vinyl held up her hoof. “You’re telling me that Spitfire, captain of the Wonderbolts, greatest flyer in all of Equestria, and one of the most decorated soldiers of all time, tried to kiss you?”
“Yes!” I was relieved that she got the entire story. “And she invited me to dinner at the Golden Horseshoe tonight at six.”
“We’re talking about the restaurant Golden Horseshoe and not the shoe store on 36th right?”
“Wouldn’t that be copyright infringement?” I asked.
Vinyl shrugged. “I dunno, guess not, but dang! She must be making some serious bank! I don’t even make enough to afford that place!”
“What do I do?” I begged.
“How exactly did she tell you her name?” Vinyl asked.
“Well she didn’t tell me, but a reporter ran up after she left and asked how it felt to be Spitfire’s ‘beau.’ ”
“What did you say?”
“I said she wasn’t Spitfire, that it was a friend of mine I had known for a long time.”
“Good,” Vinyl said, “you did the right thing there; she obviously wanted to avoid the reporter. She still doesn’t know you know who she is?”
“Yes.”
“How come you didn’t recognize her earlier?” Vinyl asked.
“I don’t follow the Wonderbolts; the last Captain I heard about was Skysplitter.”
“He retired like ten years ago. Well, do you at least own a tux? One does not simply stand up one of the most famous and deadliest mares in Equestria, and you have to wear at least a tux to the Golden Horseshoe.”
“I don’t own a tux,” I said sadly. “I don’t even have enough to rent one. All I have is next month’s rent money. That’s not enough to rent one.”
“Hey remember what I said about the rent,” Vinyl laid her hoof on my shoulder. “I can spot you the money you need for the tux.”
“You’re the best, Vinyl.” I hugged her quickly.
“Don’t mention it,” she said waving her hoof. “Anyway I can’t have Spitfire bursting into my place and killing you for standing her up. You know how hard it will be to find a roommate then?”