//------------------------------// // 48: Winding Down? // Story: To Err is Equine // by RLYoshi //------------------------------// DATE: March 8th LOCATION: Ponyville [Perspective: Risk Reward] I rubbed my head with a sigh. The nap idea didn’t work out so well, so instead I had spent upwards of an hour just lying in bed in the middle of the day. Yet every time I thought about getting up and going downstairs, my body instantly became too tired to even sit up. Is this how Arrell feels when he gets lazy? I stared up at the ceiling, thinking things over. Judging by the conversation between Arrell and False that I overheard, the two of them had patched things up, and False in general was calming down. Add that to how Arrell and Asylum were apparently a thing now, along with the lack of obvious immediate problems involving Nimble or myself… It was as if things were looking up for once. But it didn’t feel right. Too quickly, everything that was broken had mended itself, and in the process, new things had formed. Every problem I knew about was taken care of, giving us a fresh start. So why did it feel wrong? Knock it off, Risk...you’re just being pessimistic. Am I, though? Things are fine. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying goes. This doesn’t look like a gift horse to me. Looks more like a gift metal box with a timer on the side. Arrell is happy. Asylum is happy. False is happy. Nimble is… … ...okay, so it’s hard to tell if he’s happy or sad or whatever. But he definitely seems to be well off, so I think it’s safe to assume he’s happy. Happiness shouldn’t ever be this easy… You say that as though this was easy. Maybe for you it was, but for the others? You don’t even know what happened in Cloudsdale. It could have been just a standard job for Arrell, or it could have been the worst thing he’s ever gone through. Just let them enjoy their peace and hitch along for the ride. I sighed, realizing faintly that it was the first real noise I had made since lying down. Arguing with yourself was more tiring than you’d think. Thankfully, I was interrupted from resuming it by a knock on the door. “Yeah?” I called as I sat up. The handle turned and a familiar pegasus walked in. “Oh...hey, Asylum. What’s up?” “Um...do you have a moment?” she asked, closing the door behind her. “I wanted to talk about something...” I nodded, shuffling to the side to make room on the bed for her. She took the silent invitation and sat down. “What is it?” She fiddled with her front hooves. “...what’s going to happen next?” I tilted my head. “What do you mean?” “It just...feels like everything’s resolved itself. I don’t know what’s happening now...” I blinked, surprised that she shared the same thought process as I had been running through my brain for a little over an hour now. “...well...I guess we just keep going after articles. Why?” “It seems too simple.” She sighed. “Arrell told me once that one thing he liked about stories was how they never had a strict routine, or even much of a pattern. Everything that happens in them is new from what previously happened, at least slightly...yet here we are, falling into a routine.” “Well...we’re not really in a story, are we?” I questioned. “Ignoring Arrell’s attempts to ‘break the fourth wall’.” I still hadn’t decided on whether to classify those attempts as him actually having multi-dimensional awareness, or just bouts of insanity. “Maybe, maybe not...but it feels strange either way.” She poked the bed. “It seems too good to be real. Something’s bound to go wrong...or maybe there’s something going wrong that we’ve missed...” I put a front leg around her comfortingly. “Hey...try not to think like that, okay?” I ignored my mental screams of blatant hypocrisy. “All loose ends are tied up...if more problems arise, then we’ll take care of them. End of story.” She shifted nervously. “There’s got to be something we’ve missed...something going wrong that we haven’t paid enough attention to...” I sighed. “You’ve been hanging around Arrell too much. His paranoia is rubbing off on you.” I pulled her into a full hug. “I promise you...nothing is going wrong.” [Perspective: Nimble Night] I waited until it was dark and the others were asleep. I crawled out of the house, using hidden passages I had dug rather than the noisy doors. Before long, I was outside. Using the one bit of magic I could harness, I focused and let my body fade into invisibility. Nopony would be able to notice me now. Walking around Ponyville, I timed my hoofsteps and breathing with those of the few other ponies who were out and about so I couldn’t be heard. All the while, I made my way towards a building I remembered as Carousel Boutique. I didn’t like doing this. But I hadn’t been given a choice. I snuck around to the back, letting myself turn visible again since nopony was nearby anymore. I squeezed through a hole in the ground up against the wall, dropping down into a small tunnel. It was barely large enough for me to crawl through; I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be long before even I couldn’t fit through. Moving as quietly as possible, I slowly trotted down the dirt corridor I had been down many times by this point. I heard the sounds of rustling coming from above me. I mentally cursed, knowing that meant I’d have to wait. I reached my destination and waited, just below the floor and a certain container. I had cut out a portion of the floor, then carved a careful hole in the bottom of the container not too long ago, replacing the piece I cut out and using a stick to hold it up from beneath the tunnel. Nopony ever noticed anything was off about it. I didn’t have to wait long; maybe fifteen minutes. I heard hoofsteps heading up a flight of stairs, followed by a door opening and closing. Just to be safe, I waited another five to ten minutes, then made my move. Reaching up, I put one hoof on the bottom of the container and used the other to remove the stick. I then carefully lowered my hoof, bringing the bottom of the container with me. I only brought it down a few inches so as to prevent the contents of the container from spilling out noisily. After putting the stick to the side, I used my now-free hoof to reach up, blindly plucking an object from the container. I brought it down and placed it beside myself, then reached up to repeat this process. I continued until I had about twenty to thirty of them, then replaced the bottom of the container and moved the stick back into place. Guiltily, I turned to the pile of gemstones I had just pilfered. Once again fighting away the urge to put them back, I gathered them all onto a cloth and wrapped them up before making my way out of the tunnel. There were ‘dropoff points’ in literally every town or city I had been to. Manehatten, Stalliongrad, Smooth Grove, Ponyville...there was even a place in Appleloosa, even though I hadn’t even been there for a full day. They kept careful tabs on me, it seemed. As I had done every other night, I walked along the path to the dropoff point for this particular town, silently depositing the makeshift sack of gems beside a stone marker. “If little pony want parent ponies to live, little pony keep bringing gems.”