Whooves, Doctor of Psychology

by nowego


Chapter 12: Day 12

Day 12

BOOM!

The crack of thunder shot me out of bed in a flash. But not into the headboard thankfully.

I got up and trotted over to the curtains, sweeping them aside. I sighed. The overcast skies of yesterday afternoon had been precursors to the unrelenting rain that pelted down now, shot sporadically with lightning and corresponding thunder.

Across the gap between our houses, Lyra was looking at the sky in a similar manner. I retrieved a dry-erase whiteboard from the closet, and hurriedly wrote on it, “Now what to do?” and held it up.

Lyra peered at it for a moment before breathing on her window and making out with the tip of her hoof, “Back to the bedroom!” She gave me a half seductive, half teasing look before disappearing into the depths of the house.

I was getting slightly worried about them. They had been going at it pretty hard for two–and today would make three–days, and tonight marked the start of a weekend. I had gotten Lyra to stop obsessing over humans, but was this the cost? Well, at least Bonbon was involved.

Oh, who am I kidding? They’re adults.

I returned to the kitchen and began rifling through the icebox and cabinets. Luckily, there was a few eggs left and some cheese that was still good–the basics of an omelet, which I decided was worth a shot. Retrieving a pepper and onion which were to be diced, I added the eggs to the pan on the stovetop.

What was that strange noise? There it was again!

“...oh. Doorbell. Coming.” I looked out the window quickly, which confirmed that it was still raining relatively hard. Who would be out in this weather?

I answered the door.

“Ditzy?!” I exclaimed, pulling her inside. She was soaked to the bone and shivering with her forelegs wrapped around her torso.

“Please tell me they don’t have mail deliveries scheduled for today,” I said, retrieving a towel.

“N-n-no,” she managed.

Well that was good. If it had been otherwise I would have had to go buck somepony in the face, which probably wouldn’t have been healthy for my career.

Meanwhile, I rubbed Ditzy thoroughly with the towel, simultaneously drying her and warming her via friction. “What are you doing out in this then?”

“I... w-wanted to s-see you,” she said, sniffing. I couldn’t tell if it was from her cold trek or if my voice had been harsher than I intended. To insure she knew the latter wasn’t the case, I ceased drying her for a moment to lock her in a hug, which she returned.

“It’s j-just... I thought... with Dinky rained in at Sparkler’s and no m-mail... I’m sorry-”

“What are you apologizing for? I just asked why. And remind me to dig out one of my extra umbrellas.”

She started to apologize for apologizing, but was quick enough to catch herself. Instead, she simply nodded.

“Thanks for starting a fire,” she said after a while, shaking off the towel.

“Fire? I didn’t start a-” I sniffed. “Ponyfeathers!”

After we got the smoke out of the kitchen (during which Ditzy’s wings were quite useful) and discarded the omelet, which was far beyond saving, we considered what we should have instead. I elected that whatever we decided, Ditzy should be the one to do the actual hooves-on stuff.

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” I said after a minute of thinking.

“But you haven’t suggested anything yet.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ditzy tapped her hooves on the table for a moment. “What about your recipe box then?”

“My what?”

“You don’t have any recipes?”

“Well, come to think of it... I do have one.” I went and slipped the index card from the Cakes out from under its magnet on the icebox and hoofed it to Ditzy. She took a moment to focus on the title, before letting out an adorable squee and accompanying full smile.

So we baked. I trotted over to the oven and started it while Ditzy extracted ingredients from my disorganized and chaotic cupboards. Twisting the knob to the appropriate temperature (I double checked), I suddenly caught the reflection of my record changer in the glass of the oven’s control panel. I looked back at Ditzy, who was absorbed in untangling the lanyards on my measuring cups, taking advantage of the moment to slip into the other room and select a peppy instrumental jazz track and set it spinning.

Ditzy had paused in her fiddling and was staring at nothing in particular when I returned. Her ear twitched and swiveled.

“I felt like some music... if that’s okay?”

She smiled and nodded, hoof tapping to the beat. Turning toward the counter to retrieve the baking soda, she impulsively did a twirl in time with music. She scooped up the box, literally not missing a beat, easily continuing on her way, mixing, blending and stirring, all with a kind of grace I hadn’t seen in her before. I joined in, albeit with less twirling and such; my movement mimicked a not-so-square waltz.

Together, I imagine we looked like what would happen if swing and ballroom waltzing were combined into a low-budget cooking show.

I think I actually do better at cooking with music on and pseudo dancing at the same time. I only messed up once; Ditzy caught me measuring out one and a half cups of her baking powder.

Seamlessly, we slid the filled muffin tin into the preheated oven and flowed into a continued into a fuller form of dance, taking each other’s hooves. Improvised still, but nonetheless we had nothing to focus on but each other.

A minute later, the music ended. By mutual consent we both came to a pause at the apex of a dip.

The next record dropped in place, the needle touching back down. For a brief second, I wracked my brain trying to remember what was next in the stack...

“You’ve been... *bumbumbum* ...thunderbucked!”

That was anti-climatic. And slightly awkward.

I grinned sheepishly and slipped into the other room, removing the record out of the stack. I looked at it again. I didn’t even know I owned this one. Turning off the record changer, I went back to the kitchen.

“So, uh,” I coughed self-consciously. “Should we... check on the muffins or something?”

We mutually shared unspoken consent not to say anything. I’ve given up calling these gaps in conversation ‘awkward silences,’ because it’s really not the same with everypony across the board. Ditzy and I didn’t have anything to say about what happened...

...or what almost happened the moment before. I tried to shake the thought out of my head, but found that not only I couldn’t, but I didn’t want to.

We sat in silence in front of the oven’s glass door, watching the confections rise, absorbing the excess warmth given off, inhaling the aroma.

Finally I looked over at her, which she also returned as best she could.

“Since we have nothing else to do for the moment, if you’re willing, maybe I could hear that cutie mark story?”

She looked at her flank. “Oh. Yeah. I guess it started-”

At that moment the timer (which come to think of it, I didn’t set, so she must have when I wasn’t looking) went off. Ditzy looked at the oven, and then back at me. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

She tossed a blanket into a picnic basket (I have one of those? Apparently I do), and clustered the piping hot muffins on top.

“One other thing,” she said, trotting into my bathroom, returning a moment later with something under her wing. She happily caught up the basket in her mouth and trotted out the door.

“Ditzy...” I started, about to protest that we needed an umbrella, but I discovered that the weather conditions were changing. The stratocumulus layer was rapidly breaking up, giving glimpses of the fair blue sky above. The precipitation had taken a turn for the lighter, opting for a small-sized rain, drops being just large enough to still be classified as rain.

I ceased contemplating the sky and galloped for a few yards to catch up with Ditzy. I followed her, not having the slightest idea where she was going with our breakfast. Around us, Ponyville passed by, still seemingly deserted as most ponies had yet to realize the storm was winding down. Soon, as we continued, we passed Ponyville’s borders and kept going into the rural areas nearby. Trees above us filtered the rain into a mist as we passed under them, before eventually we emerged from them as well at Ditzy’s destination.

It was a lake. Not a huge one, but larger than a pond... had a small sandy edge and a flat, smooth rock like an island out at one end; it also seemed to have a relatively deep center considering the surface size. I looked at Ditzy questioningly, who had set down the basket, and produced the object under her wing: bubble bath. I tried to recall why I had had bubble bath in my bathroom, and the best explanation I could come up with was that it had been there before I came to own the house. It did, after all, come with cabinets and the more permanent furniture. Anyway, back to Ditzy’s use of it.

Using her mouth to grasp the bottle, she deposited a significant amount along the feathered edge of her wings, shuffling them afterward to rub it in. She winked and took off.

A few flaps took her above the center of the lake and gave her a bit of altitude, where she...

...snapped her wings to her sides, throwing her into a sharp dive towards the rain-dimpled surface of the lake. I gasped and was on my hooves in an instant, but inevitably she collided with the water and disappeared beneath the surface.

“Ditzy!” I yelled. I had no idea if she could swim or not, and whether or not this was on purpose. I was about to rush headfirst into the lake, my hooves already at the edge before she emerged, using speed gained underwater to give herself a push into the air. I halted my advance.

As she rose again from the surface with flaps that she kept strangely close to her body, I noticed a shimmering soap-bubble tube trailing her, but it was too far away to make out clearly–I could only tell it was about the width of her torso.

After she gained some height, she stopped flapping and extended her wings to their fullest. I fell back on my haunches.

The tube’s diameter expanded with the tips of her wings, seeming to draw it’s mass out of the trailing bubble to eventually disconnect with the surface of the lake, morphing into a gigantic pony-sized bubble. It quivered slightly from the breadth of wind in the air, the semi-transparent prismatic reflection that made up its surface shuddering as Ditzy used her extended wings to glide back to the earth next to me.

“That’s... it’s... you’re... amazing.” I didn’t have any other words to describe it. Beautiful? Awe-inspiring? Brilliant? All of the above!

From insider her bubble, Ditzy giggled, a distorted sound that had a resemblance to someone singing into a bottle. But it was her giggle, nonetheless.

After a moment, she shook her wings violently this way and that, the bubble wobbling dangerously before winking out of existence.

“That... makes some more sense now. But how did you discover you could do that?” I asked after I had recovered somewhat.

“Heh... it was kind of a miniature disaster, actually. Like most things.”

“How could any type of disaster result in something as stupendous as that?” I retorted, unconvinced.

“Back when I lived with my parents in our cloud home... before I had my cutie mark, obviously... I had just learned how to stay aloft with my wings, but still had trouble gaining height... so one day, while my mom was taking a bubble bath upstairs, I built a... contraption to give me some lift. It worked, a little too well, and threw me against the ceiling hard enough to poof the cloud-tub. Next thing I knew, I was falling through the atmosphere covered in bubble bathwater. I flapped my wings... and this happened. I’ve been perfecting ways to get it to form ever since, even at Flight Camp...”

At the mention of the Flight Camp she drifted off, spacing out slightly.

“Ditzy?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. See, after I... broke the house, my parents sent me off to Summer Flight Camp. Some of the other pegasi there didn’t... didn’t...” She dropped the subject and looked at the ground.

I sat down next to her and put my foreleg around her. “Muffin?”

Above us, the sun emerged, clouds drifting off, even though residual rain still fell on us, sparkling with glints of colored light. And so we ate our late breakfast on a beach, in the rain with soaked manes and coats, insulating ourselves from the world with each other’s company.

Time passed.

After a period of comfortable silence had passed, both of us with our backs on the blanket looking up at the newly cloudless sky, Ditzy sat up.

“I should pick up Dinky.”

“Oh... okay.”

She shuffled her hooves a bit, and then hugged me quickly but tightly, and flew off without another word. I watched her disappear beyond the tree line, before retrieving the remnants of the meal, folding the blanket into the basket as well, and setting off for my house again.

Ponyville was bustling by that time of day. Through the business district, ponies traded, bartered, and haggled for goods. I waved to Applejack as I trotted by, and was happy to see Lyra and Bonbon had abandoned the house for the time being and were enjoying some drinks at a cafe–it was around lunch time, but as I had eaten late, I wasn’t hungry again yet. I turned my head to try and see around the basket in my mouth while still looking at my neighbors.

I ran into somepony. Or they ran into me. Probably both.

Pulling the basket off my head with my hooves as best I could, I turned, apologizing to my unidentified victim (or assailant).

“I’m so sorry, see, I usually have the luxury of using saddlebags when I- oof!” A telekinetic force yanked at the wicker basket, snapping it off my head.

“As I was... Twilight?”

“Doctor!” said the lavender unicorn, whose face had adopted a smile. “You’re just the pony I was looking for!”

“I... am?” She hadn’t seemed to take any particular interest in my activities before.

“Yes! I...” She paused, fishing something out of her saddlebags with her magic levitation. “...finished these books of yours. Psychology is very interesting! Thanks for letting me borrow these.”

“Oh. No problem.” I placed my books in the abused basket, and turned to leave.

“And I’ve picked up another topic... one I think you can help we with, Doctor.”

“Oh?” I asked, interested. An opportunity to spend time on my actual mission here. “What’s that?”

“I’m studying the processes and behaviors associated with romantic love.”

She said it without even flinching, as though she was discussing quantum mechanics or interstellar travel of photons. Scientific. Calculating. I suddenly got a mental image of a terrified stallion strapped to a table, with Twilight in a laced up black leather corset with dark leggings standing over him... and a clipboard and quill floating alongside her, ready to record observations of changes in his behavior.

“Uh, Doctor? Doctor Whooves?”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Sorry. But why do you need me again? I’m a psychologist, not a sociologist.”

“Well, you’re in a relationship, right?”

“Sure, but-”

“Perfect! I’ve just got a few questions...” She produced a three inch scroll and began unrolling it.

“Look,” I said, still staring at the huge checklist. “Why me? There’s lots of ponies here that have been dating for longer than me. Besides, why don’t you ask your brother? Isn’t he getting hitched soon?”

Twilight got a slightly irritated look on her face. “Everypony thinks it’s their business...”

“He is the Element of Magic’s brother, and marrying an alicorn princess. Kinda hard to miss.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just not used to ponies I don’t know personally talking about him like that.”

I rubbed an itch behind my ear. “I guess I never really thought about it. I’m sorry too.”

She smiled. “Don’t mention it.”

“So... what can I help with?”

She looked back at her checklist and took a deep breath, about to begin her interrogation, before I held up my hoof. “Ever consider essay questions?”

She blinked. “Uh, actually no, I didn’t.”

“Seriously? Why not?”

“Well... they’re not quantifiable. You can’t publish statistics or poll results with essay questions.”

“True... but here’s the problem. If you think it’s hard to classify ponies–physical attributes, reactions, thought patterns and the like–realize that it’s at least twice as hard to classify two ponies together... and that’s not even accounting for how the relationship they have is going to influence them as individuals. With that many factors, it’s not possible to figure it out based on some true/false and scale questions.” I looked at her list again. “No matter how many.”

“Oh, phooey. You’re right, of course. I just have a hard time with anything that isn’t a scientifically validated theory or a star pattern I can memorize.”

“This coming from a top fan and series owner of the Daring Do novels? Horseapples!”

“Actually, that title goes to Rainbow Dash now,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But anyway, point is I end up reading those like textbooks too. I have to be fully awake and aware when reading them, and often have to go back and reread parts. And, I kinda...” She looked away. “...take notes.”

“Well, I guess that explains the weather recently.”

Twilight giggled. “Well, maybe just a little bit. But the weather team always has trouble with spring storms.” She put the now-obsolete questionnaire back in her saddlebags. “So... maybe you could come by the library sometime?”

“Sure! How’s next week, if I get a light day?”

“Perfect! See you later, Doctor!” she called as she trotted away cheerily.

Pondering if Twilight would actually want me to write an essay when I showed up, I leaned back in the shade of a cool stone pillar that was part of a lattice surrounding the outdoor portion of the restaurant Lyra and Bonbon were enjoying themselves at. Aware of their voices, my brain automatically sorted them out from amongst the chatter of the place.

“-I had actually forgotten. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to invite anypony to a party or something,” said Lyra. “My parents think I’m in Canterlot on music business, and yours...”

“Don’t approve of fillyfoolers,” finished Bonbon bluntly.

“...yeah.”

“What about friends? My co-workers at the shop have pretty much adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on those issues, but maybe some of your fans...?”

“As much as I love music, I’d prefer to keep them fans. And bringing... us... up to them might turn a few of them off, and my career can’t afford another scandal again right now. We should just stay at home and do something.”

“But Lyra,” Bonbon practically whined, “it’s our fifth! Five years! And doing something has been getting a little repetitive recently.”

“I could find a few ways to spice it up.”

“Oh shut up, you perv.”

There was silence for a bit, before Bonbon continued. “Hey, what about Whooves? He’s okay with us being us.”

“We can’t have an anniversary party with just one guest. That’s just... awkward.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I suppose we don’t have to tell him... we could just invite him over for dinner.”

“That’s... slightly retarded. But better than not doing anything I guess.”

“Whatever. Just remind me to tell him sometime today.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I’m done. Ready to leave?”

I double-timed it out of there, fleeing down a side street and back into the business district, where I slowed back down to a comfortable trot. I felt kind of bad for eavesdropping, but it wasn’t intentional... and besides, I was getting a few ideas right about then.

Every couple should get something on such an event. But what? I wondered as I looked into the stores, shops, and stands that passed me on either side, discarding one after the next.

No, no, no, no... wait. I backed up, taking a second glance through the window of a shadier shop. Something to shake it up... I’m willing to bet they haven’t tried this before. I looked to either side before entering, and reemerged shortly with a new acquisition hidden away in the basket.

Every couple... Every couple. Every couple! I suddenly realized that I could now also get Ditzy something... since we were ‘official’ and everything.

Ugh, I’m getting tired of that. Why does everypony assume relationships have to go through stages, rather than seeing it as the continuum that it is? Nevertheless, there’s not much one pony is going to do to overturn social norms. And I’d been wanting to get her something for a while anyway.

And after our morning today, I knew just what to get for her.

I headed for the spa. If anypony should know anything about products, ponies running a spa would be the ones.

A wave of humid air rolled out when I opened the door. I guess with some classical conditioning, it could be associated with some nice bath time. For me, it just felt like some of the sticky days some of the southern cities can get. I entered dutifully anyway.

“‘ello sir, and welcome to ze spa! My name tiz Lotus! How can help ‘ou today?” inquired a voice before I had so much as set hoof inside the door, much less had a chance to identify the speaker. I looked to the side to find a blue earth pony, displaying a shiny smile, and accented very fashionably with a headband to keep her mane back and a sweat collar as well. She also had a slight amount of (presumably waterproof) eyeshadow on, but not enough to be over the top. And I say waterproof because both her tail and mane were slick from the atmosphere. Not sweaty slick, but sporty slick. Not that that would be avoidable in here.

I shook my head. Gosh darned humidity’s getting to me.

“I was actually wondering if you sell any of the stuff you use.”

“Oh...” she said. “Well I see no reason why we should not. What specifically is it ‘ou require?”

I couldn’t quite place that accent. Something out of the East. Germanic of origin, maybe. Stalliongrad, even.

“Bubble bath. The sudsiest, soapiest, most bubbly stuff you have.”

She blinked twice. “Oh. Eh, of course. I’ll be jez a moment.”

Lotus departed into one of the wings of the spa, which presumably held a section for a specific treatment. A moment later, a nearly identical pony, except sporting a reversal in coloration, put her head out and looked me up and down quickly, before disappearing again. I looked myself over to make sure there wasn’t something obvious about me that I was missing.

In a few seconds, both ponies emerged at once, with the pink-coated one carrying a bottle with her. She set it down in front of me.

“‘ou were looking for somet’ing like zis , yes?”

I tried to read the label, but to my dismay it was in a language I didn’t recognize. “I... guess? You tell me.”

“Oh,” she apologized, and then giggled slightly. “Please excuse me. My name tiz Aloe.”

“We are twin sisters!” offered Lotus.

“Really? I never would have guessed,” I replied sarcastically. I’m not sure they caught it though... what with the accent hinting that this wasn’t their first language.

“Oh yes! We are similar in many ways. Even our marks are nearly identical.” The other nodded in agreement as the both advanced on me slowly, with myself retreating proportionally.

“We do ze same things...”

“...have ze same preferences...”

“...see ze same stallions...”

“...at ze same time...”

I was inches from dropping the bottle and turning tail for home right then, but then a most timely interruption came in the form of Rarity.

“-what’s taking so long... oh! Whooves, fancy seeing you here. Are you here for a treatment as well?”

The twins looked back at me and nodded encouragingly.

“Aheheh... no, thanks. Just picking something up for a marefriend.”

The twins’ smiles didn’t falter, as almost as if they hadn’t heard. Rarity, however, seemed to comprehend the situation from my emphasis.

“Well we wouldn’t want to get in the way of the Doctor here, would we? I’m sure he’ll be back soon, right?”
I was about to say ‘fat chance’ before I realized it might, in fact, be the best way to escape at the moment. Consequently, I nodded, deposited some bits and skipped out the door. Behind me, I heard Rarity saying she’d be a moment and hurriedly follow me out.

“Are you freaking out?”

“Just a little.”

“I understand... just please don’t get the wrong impression of them.”

“Oh? Then what’s the right one, if it’s not it’s not ‘spontaneous threesome with anypony because it’s Friday’?”

Rarity cringed. “I don’t know exactly what they said to you, but unless they actually said they wanted to do it with you... well... it may have been partially my fault.”

“Come again?”

“You’ve probably figured out that they’re not from around here, and... anyway, on one of my visits without Fluttershy, I got to talking with them. They asked what was different around here; wondered what kinds of things ponies talk about. You know me... I went and started talking about Canterlot scandals and-” She covered her face with a foreleg. “I gave them a Cosmarepolitioin!”

“Rarity...”

“Yes?”

“What in Equestria made you think that was a good idea?”

She gave me a flat look. “I know it probably wasn’t the best choice, but what’s done is done. Just realize they’re probably as confused as you were. And to top it off, they get many... okay, don’t get any stallions in there, so you could say they don’t have much experience interacting. They probably just thought they were having a normal conversation.”

“I know you were just trying to help, Rarity, but you really need to re-educate them. Somepony’s going to get their heart shattered if they don’t reign it in a bit.”

“I... I’ll work on it.”

“Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. I can’t keep this town sane by myself.” I gave her a smile I hoped looked encouraging. “I should get going though. Good luck!”

Rarity waved a hoof after me, turning and re-entering the spa.

That settles it. All the ponies in this town really are crazy. I looked at the sun’s distance from the horizon. Hmm. I’ve got time for another stop... I really should check on Colgate.

I trotted into the square her apartment building was on, which bore few enough signs of the party to be considered normal again. I found her button on the buzzer box and held it for a few seconds.

And then waited a few minutes, shuffling my hooves.

I pressed it again, holding for almost a minute this time.

When there was still no response, I turned my track toward home. She’s probably just out somewhere... she’s always out. Nothing to worry about.

Bonbon flagged me down before I made it through my door, but I pretended not to see her and quickly stashed the basket before returning and continuing to their house, where I ‘helped’ Lyra cook with Bonbon’s supervision.

I didn’t ruin anything. Or, if I did, it was in something I didn’t eat and they kept their mouths shut.

At a brief pause during the meal, I caught Bonbon giving Lyra a not-so-subtle wink.

“So, uh, Whooves, got anything interesting going on tomorrow?” the unicorn asked.

Let’s make this easy. “Well, nothing specific. I’ll probably see Ditzy, but I don’t have my dinner situation worked out yet.”

“Oh! Well in that case, why don’t you come here again?”

“Sure, as long as I’m not intruding. Anything specific I can bring?”

Bonbon and Lyra looked at each other. “Uh...”

“Salad, dessert...?”

“Oh! No, that’s okay. We have it covered.”

“Right then. Time?”

“I was thinking five, but whatever works for you.”

“Perfect.”

The rest of the meal progressed fairly regularly, which got me back in my house at dark.

I stowed tomorrow’s surprises better, writing myself a note to remember to get them wrappings or bags of some kind.

And now I’m here, tired but looking forward to the rising sun.

Goodnight.