Rumble blinked and slumped against the basement wall, closing his eyes. Why does this happen to me, of all ponies?
Something moved, and Rumble’s eyes jerked open. He had a disorienting feeling that he had just woken up – the blurriness of his vision didn’t help much. A pale blue shape took form alarmingly close to Rumble. He flinched and sneezed. Shady Daze was standing in front of him, wearing a bemused expression and an ink-stained green cap.
Shady Daze stepped back, giving Rumble enough space to stand up. “Now really isn’t a good time to apply for the newspaper,” he said. “We’re sort of busy, and generally ponies shouldn’t go out in storms…” he trailed off as Rumble shook off his hood, exposing his face.
“Sh-shady Daze. I thought you were sick,” Rumble said, blurting it out before he could think of anything else. Something’s obviously gone wrong there.
“Wait – Rumble?” Shady Daze peered closer, narrowing his blue eyes. “Wow, you look weird with that hoodie on. We didn’t recognise you. Hey, do Pegasus feathers repel water?”
Rumble ignored the question, suddenly aware that he was completely dripping wet. He didn’t care so much about appearances, but not knowing how dishevelled he must look didn’t decrease his mortification. Shady Daze’s comment hadn’t seemed to be a jibe at Rumble’s bedraggled state, but Rumble was embarrassingly bad at judging ponies.
“Do they repel water?” Shady Daze repeated, turning to ask the other pony this time. Rumble turned to where Shady Daze was looking and immediately jerked away in shock.
“Y-yeah, sort of,” Featherweight said in a tiny voice, as if he couldn’t muster anything louder. Rumble felt shaky and realised the whip-thin colt was staring at him.
“Well, umm… anyway,” Featherweight said, “that’s irreverent. We need to find out… uh, I mean, why are you here? Rumble, I mean. I uhh… didn’t think you… what I mean is that I wouldn’t have thought you’d… I mean, why are you out in this storm?”
Featherweight spoke so little at school that Rumble wasn’t sure if this bumbling way of talking was usual for him, or if Featherweight felt embarrassed about cheating. Either way it made Rumble nervous.
He flicked his ears and smoothed back his sodden mane. “ A book,” he said slowly, not wanting to have to repeat himself. “I lost it earlier.” He paused for a moment, and then blurted out, “and the word is ‘irrelevant’, not ‘irreverent’.” Featherweight opened and closed his mouth like a stranded fish, speechless with either surprise or irritation. Rumble tended to have that effect.
Shady Daze tilted his head and frowned in sympathy, blind to the other foals’ awkwardness. “Such a shame. Any idea where you left it? I can help you look when the storm ends!”
The mortification of landing himself in this ridiculous situation lessened a bit with Shady Daze’s kind words and expression. Maybe this won’t turn out so terribly after all, even if Featherweight is here. Shady Daze seems alright, even if I hardly know him. Against his good sense, Rumble started to hope that maybe this chance meeting might result in a better relationship with Shady Daze, if not outright friendship. He’d probably just misinterpreted that comment about wet feathers.
A flash of light pierced the dim room, and the other two colts jumped in unison. The fact that Rumble managed to sit still and maintain his dignity buoyed his confidence a bit, and he decided to try and make the best of this situation.
“Well,” Rumble began tentatively, “I – I think I must have left my saddlebag open, and the book fell out while I was flying home.“
Shady Daze twitched his tail, his expression curiously intense. “You found it?”
Rumble shrugged. “I don’t know how long I was looking for, but I have no idea where it is. I’ll – I’ll probably never see it again, after this storm.” Rumble allowed himself a little sigh as he accepted that inevitability; he’d really wanted to finish that book.
Without warning Shady Daze’s expression changed from curious to exasperated, and before Rumble knew it he and the smaller colt were nose-to-nose.
“You left a book outside, in this weather?” As if to illustrate his words, a volley of thunder crashed around the basement. “It won’t even exist in the morning! How could you do something so careless?”
Rumble scrambled back into the corner and felt utterly confused. Hadn’t they just been talking calmly a moment ago?
“H-h-hey,” he said through freshly chattering teeth. “I didn’t l-leave it outside on purpose. And I went searching for it for… for ages! Even when it started raining, okay. So, don’t… oh, just, will you… ugh!”
Rumble caught himself before slamming his head into the wall, and just shuddered. He always sounded so eloquent in his head, then couldn’t get the words out properly.
Featherweight stepped between Shady Daze and Rumble, hovering nervously. “Hey, come on, it’s just a book. Don’t get so worked up.” The others kept silent.
Featherweight touched his slender hooves to the wooden floor and spread his wings in a gesture of conciliation. “Look, just forget about it. There are better things to worry about. Like for instance, what we’re going to do about Rumble.” Rumble ducked his head, scowling.
“Leave, right?” Rumble was glad that anxiety didn’t make him blush.
“Well, I’m no expert on storms,” Shady Daze said, eerily cheerful again, “but I think we’d be committing pony-slaughter if we let you leave now.”
He doesn’t seem too troubled about that, Rumble thought. Given how much conflict had arisen in only a few minutes, Rumble had doubts about surviving the night.
Infuriatingly, Rumble felt betrayed by Shady Daze. Another of his faults that Rumble was perfectly well aware of was his gullibility and trust; annoyingly, this only made him more aware of when things went wrong and added to his frustration. Rumble knew that he never seemed to learn from his social mistakes, and that only made it all the worse.
Rumble sat in the corner with an old, red woollen blanket draped around his shoulders. It wasn’t very good for soaking up water, and it itched, but he was warmer now.
He hadn’t moved at all since Shady Daze had backed him into this corner except to lie and down and get as comfortable as possible on the hard floor. The others had apparently been doing work for the Foal Free Press before Rumble catapulted down the stairs; they’d returned to that after finding the blanket. There wasn’t much else they could do, and Rumble was glad that all the attention wasn’t focused on him anymore.
Now Rumble watched as Shady Daze fiddled with his printing press and Featherweight read papers on his desk. Given nothing else to do, he theorised crazily about why Shady Daze was in the school basement when he should by all rights be sick and home. Maybe his parents had given him a day off, maybe he’d just skipped school, or become miraculously better and decided to come and help Featherweight. Maybe.
Rumble sniffled a little and tried to ignore the headache that was wrapping its claws around his skull. He was sick, hopefully with nothing more than a chill, but he was resigned either way; if he was going to experience consequences for going out in a storm, they may as well start and end as soon as possible.
“Bucking machine!” Shady Daze stamped his hoof on the ground and shook his head so violently that Rumble expected his flimsy green cap to go flying.
Featherweight looked up. “Wait, what? What’s wrong?”
Shady Daze collapsed onto the ground and put his hooves over his eyes. “It’s broken.”
Featherweight gasped.“Wh-wh – how? We’re supposed to have a new edition tomorrow! Can’t you fix it?”
“Yeah, unless Rumble over there’s an expert mechanic this isn’t going to get fixed. It’s like, I mean it’s really old; it’s just warn out.” Shady Daze raised his forelegs in a gesture of surrender.
Featheweight lethargically lowered his head and took a deep breath. Rumble thought he saw him muttering something before Shady Daze caught his eye.
The blue colt had his head on his hoof now and was staring at Rumble intently. “You wouldn’t happen to know how a printing press works, would you?”
Rumble shook his head and almost winced at the way Shady Daze’s eyes shuttered. It reminded him of Thunderlane for the first few months after leaving Cloudsdale – though a broken printing press seemed slightly less catastrophic then all Rumble’s brother had endured.
Rumble decided to try a joke. “Well, if it’s that old maybe you need an antiquarian instead.” Shady Daze didn’t reply.
Featherweight put his hooves to his head and seemed to think very deeply. “Shady.” He paused. “Shady, we’ll be fine. We can still work on the paper. We’ll ask the Ponyville Times if we can borrow a press tomorrow, or find someone to fix it.”
Shady Daze rolled onto his hooves, his diminutive stature hardly any taller than when he was lying down. “You’re way too optimistic; with our luck this storm will carry away every printing press all the way to Canterlot. But, if you want to, I’ll help.” The unpredictable foal determinedly placed his cap back on his head, and Rumble had the feeling he often got while watching other foals playing and having fun, the feeling that he was a complete third party, that he was watching from the outside; almost like reading a book.
Featherweight buzzed in the air, stirring dust motes around his rickety-looking desk. His expression could have brought the sun out even on a day like this. Rumble envied him, but only because of his current lonely position; overall, Rumble liked his life, his family (however strange), and the small beautiful moments throughout it. He could live without these two foals, and soon enough living with them wouldn’t be an issue.
Hunched uncomfortably in a corner, damp and itchy and catching a cold, unstimulated and socially awkward, he had a sudden confidence that just as he was he could survive this storm, and resume his course on the other side. A satisfied light had stirred to life in his brain.
Featherweight jumped over his desk and met Shady Daze with a disproportionate smile and a bro-hoof. A blinding light soared in through the high shuttered windows, followed almost simultaneously by a round of earthshaking thunder.
Rumble’s eyes stayed glued open, but the lights had gone off.
“Well,” Shady Daze's voice crept to Rumble through the darkness, “this sucks.”