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// An eventful day and night 
// Story: My little dream girl 
// by Slick Dash 
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The next couple of days continued with no truly spectacular incidents, I explored the town on my own for the first time. Yes I received a few confused glances from those ponies who hadn’t heard of me, but in general most of the gentle ponyfolk around town simply smiled and greeted me as I was one f their own. I was looking for work, to either help the community or to pay for my share of the bills now I was living with Twilight for ‘Celestia knows’ how long. I chuckle to myself at my adoption of the usual pony speak around Equestria. I really am starting to fit in around here, if not in appearance, then at least in attitude. 

To my joy I discovered on the 3rd day of job hunting, how the Apple family was short hoofed this harvest. So eager to help my country friend I rushed to sweet apple acres to volunteer. I was surprised to see Applejack so eager to have me help, either she has seriously low on staff, or I would actually be more help than I thought. She told me at nearly a thousand miles an hour how if I wanted I could get paid daily or weekly, flustered beyond all belief I quickly blurted out “Daily?” and surely enough the country pony let out a huge “YEEEHHAAAAWWW!” as she pushed my straight out into the apple orchard with her head pushing into the small of my back.  

Soon I was helping around the farm as if i had been for months. My opposable thumbs where a great advantage, where as ponies like Big Macintosh had to lift the barrel up with their heads and then onto their backs, then spend a few moments balancing them before moving on, I on the other hand simply had to bend down, and lift it up. The barrels were no bigger than a small beer keg back home, so I was able to take more than one at a time. For the entire day I simply moved to the barn, picked up a few barrels, and took them up to the farm house at the top of the hill. I then descended the hill and repeated the process all over again. 

At first the task wasn’t that daunting, but after a couple of hours, my newly healed muscles began to creak with the sudden large amount of exercise after such a long rest. Gritting my teeth, I bore through the pain and continued until my 5 hour shift was over. It felt good to be doing something, anything which had the slightest amount of meaning. And as I sat there on the grass just outside AJ’s family home, I rested my arms on my knees and watched the sun begin to set. The orange hue tinted the tree’s to make them look as though they were ablaze! The sight was magnificent. Had I ever seen something so beautiful back home? If so I sure as hell couldn’t remember it. I heard the soft opening and closing of the wooden front door behind me. And soon enough an orange coated pony in a cowboy hat came beside me. She didn’t say anything; she simply looked into the orange ball fast dropping out of sight over the horizon. 

“It sure is beautiful out ‘ere huh?” she asked me as she dropped to sit on her haunches. “I was silly to think I could leave this place forever...” she murmured, more to herself than me. Now I don’t know if it was the sheer exhaustion or the serenity surrounding me and the orange mare, but I took a deep breath of the thick country air and sighed.
“Same here...”  At that moment both our eyes widened at my strange comment. We looked at each other for a moment, and then AJ’s surprised expression melted into a warm smile. I returned it, realizing that what I said was fast becoming true, the longer I stayed the more I realised I didn’t want to leave. AJ stood up suddenly “Don’ worry nothing sugar cube, I won’t go blabbing telling everypony if you’re staying or not, I’ll leave that to you darlin’.” 

The mare turned to head back inside, but then stopped. She took her hat from her beautifully blonde main, and nuzzled her muzzle inside it for a moment, and when she withdrew she was holding a small pouch in her teeth. “I almost forgot your pay!” she hollered at me as she flung it into my hands. “Now that’s a lotta pay, and that’s because of the dang fine job you did here t’day, now it won’t happen very often but I think after all you’ve been through, doing what you did today must have some real hard work.” As I felt my muscles agree with every word she said I smiled and jingled the purse at her in thanks, and with that she opened the door and entered her home. 

I stood, knowing that if I didn’t move soon I could very well stay here in the warm field all night. I placed the pouch and my hands in my pockets and began the journey home to the library. As I passed under the apple tree just by the farm entrance I heard a shout, I turned to see Applejack leaning out of her bedroom window, her hoof held to her mouth so I could hear her. “I forgot! You have little visitor!” she then proceeded to giggle, and shut the window once again. I frowned for a moment, and in that same instant I heard rustling in a tree just halfway between me and the house. And as I squinted, I saw the unmistakable shape of a Pegasus suddenly fly out from its foliage and burst off into the night sky... I stood there for what felt like hours, Dash? I actually hadn’t have thought about her for the whole day, but this sudden strange behaviour of hers simply struck me dumb! 

All the thoughts over the last week that had passed through my mind flashed by as fast as the speedy pony had flown away. That terrible sense of dread -in the fact that I had come to the conclusion that I loved the rainbow Pegasus- began to grow once again, it wasn’t fear out of meeting her, or the possibility of goofing up around her. It was the same reason why I had said what I had on that hill in the glow of the sunset. I didn’t want to leave, but it was inevitable, this dread was a simple thing. I didn’t want to leave a world with her, and enter a world without her. All this time, as i thought the terrible thoughts to myself, I didn’t realise the smooth and gentle patter of drops on my face. It had begun to rain, almost as though the heavens sympathised with my plight and wept for the man below them. I closed my eyes and let the cold refreshing downpour run over my face. I must have looked like some character from a John Cusack movie. 

The rain continued, and I still stood there. As I stood looking up into the dark swirling sky, the rain intensified I saw the perfect fork of lightning flash in the distance. The soft approaching rumble of the thunder shook my from my deep thinking, now being caught in the rain was one thing, but being caught in a thunder storm was no help to anybody. So I hunched my shoulder to shield myself from the full force of the cold wind and moved off towards the town. My thoughts... as always, returning to Rainbow Dash.

I eventually trudged through the door of the library, the storm was well underway by this point and I had caught the full force of it on my short journey back. A studying Twilight looked up at me as I entered, her eyes filled with immediate concern, “OH MY GOSH!” she squeaked, “Hurry before you catch a cold! I guessed you must have been staying at the orchard until it stopped raining, but for you to be walking home in this weather!” she magically handed me a thick blanket from the cupboard just inside my room whose door was ajar, I hadn’t recalled leaving the door open, after all I am a very private person. I paid no attention to it however, I was just glad to be in a warm place and being shown such kindness. It hadn’t even been an hour since Applejack had given me my pay, and a huge bonus but I found myself craving more kindness. Was it because of the sombre thoughts that had passed through my mind during my journey back? Was I that infatuated by Rainbow that the thought of leaving her made me feel this helpless? 

Twilight fussed around me, she guided me over to my usual place on the sofa. Only now that I was in the warmth did I realise how truly cold I was. I shook from head to toe violently, huddled up for warmth in the blanket. Even its smell seamed to warm me, it smelt of lavender. I didn’t know when i had closed my eyes but I now opened them to look up at the small purple unicorn frowning at me a look of true concern on her face. I was still shaking, but as I did a dawning idea struck me. “S-Sp-S-Sp-p-piiiik-k-ke!” I whispered to Twilight, her frown now became one of sheer confusion. She really wasn’t the best pony to have in a crisis, but I understood her confusion even in my freezing state. I moved my hands over my mouth, and exhaled loudly into them, trying to give her a hint as I could no longer bring my voice to do any work. Then suddenly something clicked inside Twilight’s mind.
“SPIIIIIIIKE!” she yelled loudly up the wooden steps, luckily the dragon hear the urgency in her voice and rushed down imedietly.
“What’s the matter Twi”- his gaze fell on me, what a sight I must have looked like.
“Use your dragon breath!” Twilight urged him, the dragon frowned in confusion as he tried to understand how that would help. But with the same dawning comprehension spreading across his face as Twilight had shown mere seconds ago, he rushed to my side. 

“Right, I want you to stand up if you can dude.” I did as I was told. “Now put the blanket over your head, and wrap up tightly!” The small dragon commanded of me. “AND I MEAN TIGHTLY!” So I did. I was feeling rather ridiculous standing with a blanket over my head like a child while shaking all over.

All that embarrassment melted away however as I felt warmth seep in through the material on my left side, understanding what would happen if I stayed on the same spot for too long with fire being gently blown my way, I turned on the spot. To my overwhelming joy I felt the heat moving up and down as well as I turned Spike knew what he was doing. My shaking ceased quickly, and the little dragon took that as his cue to stop roasting me. I took off the blanket, feeling as warm as I had out in the sun earlier that day. I beamed at the little purple and green reptile in front of me. He smiled back at me, bouncing on the balls of his feet with pride. I took one long stride over to the little guy and pulled him into a hug and lifted him high off of the ground! Spike chuckled, at first he weakly protested with “Come on man...” and “Awww dude!” but he eventually laughed strongly as I swept him up onto my shoulders and took him for a lap of honour around the library as i cheered and chanted his name. 

Eventually we stopped our horseplay (No pun intended) and Spike beamed at me before returning to his room. With sudden realisation, I jogged up alongside the steps so that my head was level with Spikes as he was about to pass me with my substantial height difference. “Look little guy, sorry for waking you for all that nonsense!” I half smiled apologetically at the little purple and green guy. 
“Hey, no problem! After all what’s the point of having dragon breath if you’re never gonna use it besides sending letters!” he chuckled again, and with that I moved my head away from the steps to let the dragon pass and go back to bed. I turned and picked up the smoky Blanket from the floor, it wasn’t damaged I was grateful for that. I didn’t want to be even more of a burden than I already had been on my unicorn friend. As I folded it I looked around, where had Twilight gone? Had she gone to bed? Or was she angry with me for causing such a fuss. To be honest I expected the latter due to my experience with other girls. But as I entered my room to place the blanket back into the cupboard I truly saw for the first time what the big difference was between female humans... and female ponies.