I'm having a hard time getting back into this, as the chapter title so subtly suggests. This is a filler chapter. There is a certain amount of character development here but meh. But hey, I'll probably get another one up soon.
She’d managed to lose a little of the melancholy that had plagued her in the next few minutes, and now acted more akin to recalling a very vague, very sad dream. “It was…I can’t remember when it started, really….” she finally admitted, voice rasping gently over her constricted larynx. She was now hunched over the table, her shades clutched in both hooves under her chin, eyes succumbing to a gentle defocus through a combination of fatigue and recollection. “It all seems so long ago.”
Braeburn, similarly, was looking in her general direction, but not looking specifically at her. He would give an occasional nod to indicate that he was still listening intently. He did so now, and she misread the gesture as a prompting, shrugging in reply. “Take your time,” he murmured. And so she did. Time stretched from a minute to five, then ten, and then thirty. The silence, saturated with the white noise of soft cantina music, finally broke when Vinyl sighed. “As much as I’d love to tell you all about myself, Mr Braeburn, this just isn’t working. Aaaaa—AAAH!”
She aimed a frustrated kick at the round table’s metal support strut, inadvertently sending half a dozen beer bottles skittering about the immediate vicinity. Several patrons who had filed in a while ago turned at the clinks and clanks. Jug raised an eyebrow at Braeburn. For his part, the stallion shot upright and laid a hoof on her wrists. “Hey, take it easy,” he chided.
His touch seemed to leach all the anger from her, and she instantly reverted back to her sullen—though decidedly more docile—mood from before. She nodded drearily, sighed again and dropped her head into her hooves, rubbing her eyes. “You know what, maybe we should call it a night for now,” Braeburn concluded, hopping off his seat and offering her a helping hoof. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.” Vinyl was halfway through getting up when she paused and blushed profusely. “I….uh…forgot where I’m staying.” Despite himself, despite the evening thus far and the pony in front of him, he afforded himself the slightest of chuckles. Vinyl blushed even harder, pursed her lips, and directed her eyes towards the ground. “It’s alright,” he corrected quickly, upon noticing her reaction. “I have a pretty good idea of where to go.” She cocked a suspicious eyebrow at him but couldn’t be bothered to say anything. “Alright. Let’s go.” She shoved her glasses back on her face, tottered off her seat, barreling sideways back against the padded seats, before needing to sit down again. Braeburn trotted to her side, but refrained from reaching out to assist her. “I’m not even going to ask,” he stated blandly. Vinyl didn’t get it, but she tried to stand again, this time sending herself sprawling towards Braeburn, who caught her deftly and righted her, holding her steady until she got her footing. “Are you sure you can walk?” he asked skeptically. She grunted angrily at being questioned and shoved him aside, then stumbled and swayed in the general direction of the swinging bar doors. Then she stumbled into the wall next to the doors, cursed through gritted teeth, and went careening out after correcting her course. Braeburn recovered from Vinyl’s ‘assertive reassurance’ and trotted briskly after her, exiting through the still-swinging doors.
The sun had set, long ago enough that the sky was a glistering cobalt blue, recently enough that heat radiated off the unprotected desert terrain. The breeze couldn’t make up its mind whether to be cool or warm, and it blew gently and indiscriminate of direction in its indecision. Vinyl was having similar issues of her own. On one hoof, she wanted desperately to pull herself together and get back home, and maybe think hard and long after the effects of the alcohol wore off. On the other, she couldn’t stand another moment of lurching along while the world spun nauseatingly on its lateral axis. She couldn’t get up now, having fallen flat on her back when she tripped over the two wooden steps preceding the entrance, an unseen adversary which had unfairly ambushed her. On top of that, her head still hurt, her stomach churned, and she didn’t want to do anything more than lie where she was, where the breeze which could have been real or could have been her imagination blew apathetically over her failure, where the warm sands eased the dull throb and lulled her tired mind….
Braeburn chose that single contemplative, ethereal moment in time to flip her over so that she no longer faced up towards the sky. Perfect timing if he was thinking of shattering the surrealistic moment into more disjointed frames of intoxicant-induced mono-colour swirls. On any other day it would have been comically pitiful, funny enough even for Vinyl to spare herself a laugh, but tonight, it just made her want to cry. All the trying had got her no closer to home, and to her addled mind it seemed a fitting omen that no matter how she tried she would never get back on her feet.
And then Braeburn shoved his head under her abdomen. “What…what are you doing?” she snapped angrily amid a bout of sniffle. Braeburn dutifully ignored her. “I—urgh—trusted you, jackass!” Slowly, she felt her body tilt to the left, then experience the most peculiar sensation of seeming weightlessness. “I demand that you put me down this instant!” she slurred. Braeburn snorted in grim amusement. “Believe me, I feel like doing this even less than you do,” he told her quietly but firmly, “but we both know that if I let you down here and now, there’s no way you’re getting back up.” The harsh change of tone registered even to Vinyl. “In fact,” he continued, “I’d half expect to come back the next day and find you choked on a scorpion.” She felt her heart sink for some reason that she couldn’t recognize. All she knew was that suddenly, what this stranger said had mattered to her. Despite herself, she produced the tiniest whimper somewhere in the back of her throat.
The odd noise created a very tense, unexpected silence for the next few seconds. Then Braeburn sighed. “Look, I have a feeling I shouldn’t have said that,” he admitted in tacit apology, “but sometimes, it’s just not enough for one pony to try on her own strength. Right now, this is one of those times, but somepony as strong-willed as you are ain’t come to terms with that without a good, hard kick in the flank,” he explained with additional emphasis on the last syllable. In the time it had taken Braeburn to say all this, Vinyl had repositioned herself so that she wasn’t in a firemans’ carry anymore, but lying along Braeburn’s back. “Mhm. Do go on.” She was dozing off and didn’t really know how else to keep herself awake. “I’m going to ask you to give up for now and let me help you, alright?” Braeburn offered. A mumbled agreement and a yawn were offered in reply. He could feel her cheek rubbing against the base of his neck as she nodded. Half a minute later, it was replaced by a gentle snoring, and this time, Braeburn chuckled openly to himself.
It would take him another fifteen minutes or so of trudging through the now-empty town before he finally found his way to Vinyl’s property. In the silence of the night, he could hear Vinyl’s gentle breathing, punctuated ever-so-often with an unceremonious snore. Like the night breeze, it came in subtle waves with the movement of her chest as she inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled…
He was there before he knew it. It was a little awkward trying to position the pony on his back so that he could reach the saddle bag hanging over her sides, but he did it eventually, somehow ending up with Vinyl leaning her back against his neck while he unlocked the door. A flight of stairs later and he sidled up to a skeletal wooden cot in one of the four rooms in the home. He shouldered her off as gently as he could. Vinyl mumbled incoherently. He watched in silence for awhile. Then he pulled a threadbare single layer sheet of nylon quilt up over her shoulders. Leaving the way he came, he had the sensibility to lock the door and toss the key in through a window, naturally missing his mark when it slid off the table. Oops.
The following morning—as with most mornings following a night (or maybe several nights) of heavy drinking—was not easy for Vinyl. Especially with the sun beaming in seemingly mocking radiance from the closed windows, while the hot, stuffy air in the room seeming to gradually press in around her as the temperature rose. Finally, she opened her eyes slowly and carefully against the oversaturated morning glow and got her bearings, then counted down from ten. At the count of one, she rolled out of bed, intending to come out of the well-rehearsed maneuver standing upright. This time though, she lost her balance and stumbled diagonally, head bowed towards the floor; right into a waiting doorframe. The collision, though brief, was sufficient enough to disorient her. Something clipped her shoulder as she clumsily tried to side-stepped the obstacle, flipping her around so that she landed hard on her back. ‘Maybe I should have stayed in bed,’ she thought with a faint groan. ‘A full half-metre of clearance and I cleanly miss it, then I go off in the wrong direction. Stellar.’
While waiting for her stomach to settle, she looked around at what was supposed to be her property. It was a dusty, faded, sun-bleached piece of work that fitted right into the dusty, faded, sun-bleached western backdrop. There were several structures that were left over from the previous occupant, mostly threadbare compressed plywood furnishing. But like the house, it looked sturdy enough, if not a little old. Despite being larger, it just didn’t really feel like an improvement to her apartment in the big city. Everything seemed to be the same shade of light brown, and the familiar clutter—navigable only to her—was missing entirely. She’d need to spruce it up a little…
Something caught her eye, and as her eyes focused, the identity of her object bewildered her. ”What?” At that point, she wasn’t about to question her good fortune on finding it, but she still wondered how her keys had ended up under the couch. Their scratched and oxidized steel surface glinted dully. She reached over, and the tip of her hoof brushed over the top and managed to catch the key ring. She dragged it over to herself and tossed it towards the table that she had bumped into earlier. It landed on her nose and deposited some of its dusty exterior. For some inexplicable reason, the resultant sneezing fit nearly caused her to throw up and she decided not to move. Naturally, a doorbell that she hadn’t known existed rang mere moments later.
Swearing emphatically, she screwed her eyes shut and heaved herself up and in the general direction of the main door. “Whoever it is,” she muttered, “I am going to wring your neck until—“ she threw the door open and found Braeburn backing away slowly in panic, then felt her cheeks burn. “Is this a bad time?” he asked, voice more than a little strained. “Oh no, sorry.” She put a hoof to her spinning head and sighed. Not the best way to make a first proper impression, but then again it hardly mattered at this point. “Would you, uh, like to come in?”
Braeburn, apparently more at ease now, shook his head, but added “it’s alright” after he noticed that her eyes were shut tight. “I have to get to work, but I thought I’d check up on you first,” he explained wryly. “Nice to see you can stand again.”
Vinyl tried to put on her best lopsided grin, but she had a suspicion it looked more like a pained grimace. “No worries. I’m holding up just *urp* fine.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “And thanks. For last night and/ for today morning.” Braeburn grinned back and asked how she had found her keys. The pair laughed and settled into an awkward but comfortable silence. “So…see you later I guess?” she offered. “You bet. There’s a conversation we need to finish.”
He felt the somewhat light-hearted mood die as the look on her face changed abruptly. Vinyl, for her part, felt the pit of her stomach fall even deeper out from under her, and believed for a moment that she might even throw up. The hopelessness returned to her eyes. “I guess we do,” she conceded with a sigh. Then turned and shut the door behind her before he Braeburn could apologize. He was left wondering what he had to be sorry for. In the end, he got back to work but could never fully shrug it off.