//------------------------------// // Story 4: Polka Dots // Story: Flashfics, Gifts, Scraps, etc. // by ViTheDeer //------------------------------// "Taffeta Epiphany Sundae, you get down here this instant, or you'll be late for your first day of school!" Taffy started when she heard her mother's voice. She was still staring into the mirror on her dresser table, still in shock at what she saw. She knew she was going to be late to school, but she couldn't stop staring. There was no way she was going to leave that room, not today, not ever again. Even drawing the curtains was more than she could handle. So she stared into the mirror, muttering the same phrase to herself over and over "Polka dots. Why did it have to be polka dots?" ----- Taffy carefully climbed the ladder to the treehouse outside her family's back door. It was late afternoon on the last day of summer vacation, and Celestia was readying the sun for its slow descent below the western horizon. The schedule called for a light drizzle in the early evening, but the clouds were only just being corralled along the horizon by the teams of the Manehatten Municipal Weather Authority, so Taffy knew she still had a good hour or two before the rain started to come down. She planned to be cuddled up warmly in a blanket in Shenzi's treehouse by then, giggling and listening to the rain's pitter-patter on the corrugated metal roof of the shed that somehow never leaked, despite its makeshift construction. She could almost smell the air as the first drops of rain hit the ground dry from a week of sunny skies, as she reached for the next rung of the ladder. The treehouse was not designed for earth ponies, of this she was sure. Pegasi, sure, and even unicorns that could, like her green-maned friend, teleport themselves at will - or, as seemed to be the case with Shenanigans, at whim - but the ladder was tilted almost vertically, with nothing in between the rungs, looking like something a monkey in a zoo would have for climbing, rather than the types of ladders normal ponies used. Still, this WAS Shenzi's treehouse, and the arduous ladder into it was the least strange thing about it by far. Taffy could list more, such as the way it seemed to be bigger on the inside, or the way the tree seemed to shift a little each night, or the way all the windows seemed to have an amazing view of the East River, no matter which wall they were set into. But doing so for too long made Taffy go dizzy, and losing her balance while hanging precariously from the ladder was something she could ill afford. Besides, she knew full and well if she ever asked her friend to explain these strange phenomena, she would get a one word reply: "Magic!" Well, either that, or an immediate, gravity-defying struck pose and the phrase "Shut up! I'm Pony Gaga!" After all these years of knowing her, she still was no closer to discovering who or what a "Pony Gaga" was, but the utterance made her giggle each time. With a grunt, she cleared the final rung and pulled her hindquarters to the shallow dock outside the front door. She didn't knock, since she knew Shenzi wouldn't be expecting her to, but instead walked right in through the door, wiping her hooves, hanging up her scarf, and closing the door behind her. The sun was still bright in the autumn sky, but the wind was already starting to pick, giving the day the bite of autumn. Soon it would be time for the Running of the Leaves, and she and Shenzi would be right in front of the crowds cheering at the finish line in Central Pasture as her brother Spumoni hopefully took first prize again. As she looked around the four-room treehouse (with attic and, somehow, basement levels), she found no trace of her friend, but Taffy was used to Shenzi being off on adventures of her own. Sometimes she would come home with wild tales that were too impossibly crazy for Taffy not to believe. Other time, she wouldn't say a word about what had happened. In most of the latter cases it seemed that Shenzi was covered in some substance or another, usually smelling either extremely sweet, or extremely unpleasant. Taffy found her favorite spot on couch, grabbed a warm comforter, and curled up looking out the north window, inexplicably seeing the clouds rolling in from the Appleantic. She wasn't aware she had dozed off until the crash of thunder woke her from her snoozing. Taffy was confused, the weather schedule called for a light drizzle, not a thunderstorm, unless she had read the chart wrong. But once her eyes adjusted, she realized the source of confusion. The loud sound wasn't thunder, but instead Shenanigans bouncing around the kitchen, no doubt trying to make one of her favorite ketchup-infused after-lunchtime meals. Taffy just grinned as she watched her friend alternately use frying pans as hats, then as shields, then, finally, as cooking utensils, frying up a delicious-smelling Ketchup Stir-Fry. "Mmmm, that smells delicious!" The sound didn't seem to register with Shenzi, who continued her mock kitchen-utensil battle, shouting out narration and battle orders while this stir-fry slowly sizzled on the stove. Finally, with a mighty stab at the dragon who, if Taffy had been following correctly, was also a policepony from the moon, Shenzi struck the pan on the handle and sent it flying... somehow managing to make the food land evenly in two plates that had landed on the floor during the epic battle. Shenzi took a plate in each forehoof and, somehow ignorant of the effects of gravity, walked on two legs into the living room, setting the plate down in front of Taffy. "Thanks Shenzi, it smells delicious!" Taffy eagerly started chewing the saucy red vegetables. "Hmm, no, it's still missing something. Oh, I know!" Before Taffy could finish chewing to ask what it was missing, Shenanigans returned with a small metal shaker in her mouth. "Here we go." She shook the shaker, and a small amount of ruddy brown dust emerged from the opener. The smell of it reached Taffy's nose at that moment, and she only had the chance to get out the words, "Shenzi, that's Cinna..." before them was a mighty flash accompanied by the one sound Taffy had come to dread hearing from her friend. "Ah-CHOO!" --- For perhaps the hundredth time she looked over her coat, fist in the mirror, then by craning her head from side to try and take in the scope of the damage. Her coat, once a pistachio green, had changed to a pure white hue, which itself wouldn't have been so bad. In fact, she and her friend Shenanigans would have matched quite well, had Shenzi's accidental magical outburst had no further effect than that. But, polka dots? Her coat was covered from head to hoof to tail in brightly colored spots, about the size of a hoofprint. Vibrant reds, yellows and greens dotted her fur, and her mane had transformed from its usual flowing pink to a bright, puffy orange-red. She looked nothing so much - and it brought a tear to her eye every time she thought this - like a circus clown. All that was missing was a bright red nose, but thankfully she had been spared that bit of embarrassment. Small comfort that may have been. The problem with living with a magically unstable unicorn like Shenzi was that, from time to time, strange things happened. And though they usually happened to her twin brother Spumoni, she did not escape their friendship unscathed. In her case, more often than not, it seemed to be sneezes that set it off. It seemed Shenzi only ever sneezed while she was standing nearby, and the explosive release of magical energy that accompanied said sneezes always tended to leave her... changed in the process. She had been unicorns and pegasi, red, yellow, brown and purple. A sneeze had made her the tallest filly in her class once. One unfortunately short-lived sneeze had had no effect other than making her eyes a bright yellow, incidentally curing her of her shortsightedness for the duration of that alteration. Unfortunately, it was the very next day that a sneeze turned her eyes, as well as her mane and coat, a deep lustrous black... and returned her need for wearing glasses. A sneeze had made her an alicorn briefly and once - and Taffy still blushed at the memory - she had spent a few minutes between sneezes as a colt. But this! All the other changes she could live with, get by with only minimal teasing by her classmates, who all knew Shenanigans and her talent for randomness well. But of course, she would have to sneeze on her on the day before she started high school, the day before her first day at the prestigious West Saddle Private School. And it would have to be polka dots. A banging at the door finally snapped her from her dreamlike state. "Taffeta, I know you're nervous about your first day at school, but you really must get going. Your father and I would be very disappointed if you began the new year with a tardiness record." Taffy sighed and gathered her saddlebags. Adding a few last minute necessities - spare eyeliner, lip gloss, not that anypony would be looking at her face, and the latest Filly Beat magazine, she slung the bags over her back, and headed out into the world. Covered in polka dots ---- The foals laughed, of course. Of course, they laughed. The laughed when she walked into the schoolyard. They laughed as she found her locker. They laughed before, after, and even during class. She had names, some original, but most some variation of the word "clown" hurled in her direction. She had to endure ponies trying to honk her nose and asking where her tiny carriage was all day long. If it hadn't been for Spumoni and Shenanigans flanking her every moment they were out of class, Taffy felt fairly certain she would have run, crying, from the school and never, ever returned, choosing self-imposed exile to somewhere, anywhere else, over the unrelenting humiliation she had to face. During lunch, she even tried to get Shenzi to sneeze again. She tried a feather under the nose, pepper, even a bit of cinnamon - a spice that elicited a particularly explosive allergic reaction from Shenzi under most conditions - that they were able to scrounge off a classmate's oat bar. But none of it had any effect on Shenanigans, somehow seemingly impervious to the necessity of clearing ones tickled nasal cavities. At the end of the day, Taffy was exhausted. She walked out the cast iron gates of West Saddle with her head lowered beneath her shoulder level, and finally broke out crying. As her friend escorted her to the subway, foreleg around her shoulder, Taffy let the tears flow freely. She was barely even aware of Shenzi pushing her onto the subway car, her body wracked with sobs as Shenzi lent what little comfort she could. At the next station, a mother and her foal got in and sat down opposite the two ponies. Taffy's eyes were too filled with tears to notice, until the young foal, after having watched her crying silently across the subway car, trotted over and tapped her on the knee. "Missus clown, why are you crying?" Taffy looked up, and into the deep brown eyes of the filly staring up at her, and began bawling in earnest now. "Pl-please don't cry Missus clown!" the young fillies' eyes began to water themselves. "here, want my dolly?" At this, Taffy finally looked up, choking back her tears. In front of her, she saw the young filly holding out her doll - a polka-dotted clown, with a coat the closely resembled her own, with a huge, friendly smile embroidered on her muzzle. Taffy looked back at the filly, then back at the doll. The filly's face looked hopeful and expectant, and suddenly Taffy felt a huge smile coming to her own face. The filly's face echoed her own, and taffy couldn't restrain a burst of laughter. The filly giggled too, just before her mother yanked her away at the next station. That evening, Shenzi and Taffy lounged in the treehouse once again, giggling and chattering. Shenzi was drinking Hot Cocoa with Marshmallows, and Taffy was practicing making balloon animals. Whenever the situation began to make her feel blue, all she had to do was remember that, though she may look like a clown, the look on that filly's face reminded her that being a clown had its upsides too.