I spent my twenty-fifth birthday feeding the ducks and fish at Reservoir Park. It only cost two bits’ worth of seeds and pellets to let me sit on the bridge for an hour and feed the animals their dinners, but it was well worth the expense.
It made me smile.
Smiling was easy, because over time, it got easier to do. The grins I delivered the sergeants’ mail with made things happier around the Farrington Guard’s Citadel, which in turn made me glad—I didn’t fix everything, but positive changes usually began with a good mood!
Below me, the ducks started to get ornery over their floating seeds. I tossed a few more hooffuls left and right to disperse the crowd, and their cute little quacks were all the thanks I needed.
Some ponies thought I was weird. They were so concerned over growing and gaining—and I wished them the best; every pony deserved to be happy—so they wondered how I could be happy where I was. And sure, if I looked at it from their point of view, I could see it. I had a low-paying job that often sandwiched me between angry criminals’ families and Guard infighting.
If I looked at it like that, it’d be harder to smile.
That’s why I looked at it from my point of view, the Memo perspective. I saw the job as a necessary one for Farrington, and since I got picked for it, I did it as best I could at it. The money wasn’t as much as some council members or blacksmiths in the town, but it let me do my favorite things—like feeding the ducks.
Daddy always taught me it was the little things in life that counted, and that made it easy to follow my mom’s advice of “always bring a smile” with you. Their card sat on my dresser, and I counted myself lucky that we were as close as we were.
If you looked hard enough, there was always a reason to smile, and I’d gotten pretty good at it during my life so far.
Now, that wasn’t to say I didn’t want anything more. Wants were a normal part of life, so denying them wasn’t going to make me any happier in a real way. However, with most of the things I wanted in my life, I gave a little tug and waited to see if they’d follow along.
Sometimes, I doubted my convictions, since my nights always seemed to end days in the same way: me, in my affordable apartment, in a lonely bed.
Each year, I started out with resolve to find that special stallion. Usually by April, I’d gone through two or three attempts to date someone; the stallions I always found seemed to be either assertive jerks who didn’t care about my front half, or worse, the self-proclaimed “nice guys” who weren’t as “shy” as they were self-absorbed and tactless.
It usually hurt to break things off—temporarily. I’d rather endure a week where it was harder to smile than end up trapped in a lifelong relationship I didn’t want. Usually, the stallions understood, and some of them were still friends with me.
One of my first and worst experiences with dating was the spring before I turned seventeen, when a guy wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. After I told him I didn’t think things were working out, he’d crept around and followed me places, like where I shopped, and my parents’ house. Those were some of the scariest, sleepless, tear-streaked weeks of my life, since I didn’t know where he was going to show up.
It’d all ended when he cornered me, one time, in an empty street in the Business District. Things escalated, and I grew more and more afraid of what he was going to do to me…
Then, he hit me.
A bolt of blue and silver flashed down from the sky like lightning. I’d barely blinked away tears, and in front of me, one of the six A.P. guards had pinned my ex-boyfriend and current-stalker up against the building by his neck.
Very plainly, over my ex’s whimpering, that guard told him that if he ever laid a hoof on me or anyone else, he’d be lucky if he ended up in Farrington General.
That was when I both met and fell head-over-hooves for Sergeant-turned-Lieutenant-turned-Acting Captain-turned-Lieutenant-turned-Officer-turned-Special Sergeant Starfall. Those were all of his official titles I could ever remember his mail being addressed to, anyway; whoever planned things out in the Farrington Guard hadn’t done a very stable job with him.
At least they were nicer than the names his wife called me.
And I knew it was wrong, having a crush on a married stallion. Heck, it was unfair to him, with how rough his relationship with his wife had been ever since her accident. I tried to keep my feelings under wraps, but after Starfall got promoted to lieutenant and we started being forced into contact more and more, he immediately caught on that I “acted weird” around him.
It wasn’t until the end of the year, at the Hearth’s Warming Eve party where I loaded up on punch and kissed him under the mistletoe, that he realized why.
Despite the guilt, I smiled at the memory of that kiss and the sudden, shocked, cute expression he’d made.
The aftermath had been profound. After a few awkward months of neither of us talking to each other, I broke down and apologized. He’d scooped me in a friend hug, as he’d called it—and I remembered how good he smelled—while giving me a long explanation of why things couldn’t and wouldn’t work out between us.
In the years after that talk, I’d tried to abide by his rules. My crappy dating luck hadn’t quite helped me move on, though, and even almost five years after that Hearth’s Warming party, I still felt butterflies in my stomach whenever he so much as walked by my desk and said, “Hey, Memo.”
I tried to think of things in a positive note. Part of me was glad that I knew him, even if we could never be together. Even if it hurt, he still made me smile—just once we were apart. And certainly, someone out there was waiting for me; I just had to find him.
I tossed the rest of my fish pellets down to the pond. Below the surface, a frenzied swarm of fins rushed to the sudden boon. They were so pretty like that, especially when the sun caught their scales and they glistened. It made me smile, and that was enough to get my thoughts back to bright places—like the weather.
Farrington got most of its weather naturally, since the Sharptalon Woods to the east and south were big and wild enough to make it hard for any long-term weather planning. When it was the best type of sunny bright, breezy cool weather on my birthday, it made me feel blessed. But even rainy days could be good, if I sat by the window to watch the rain pattering against the glass.
The clock tower struck six, which told me I’d been in the park for close to an hour. I liked feeding the aquatic animals, but now it was time for my dinner. My favorite restaurant was offering “super salads” that week, as kind of an inside joke about customers who got confused about the available options for the first course.
After throwing my seed and pellet bags away, I sauntered out of the park and made a beeline for the Business District. The whole way there, I got to watch the various ponies as they went throughout the city for their evening activities. I liked the smiles and general warmth of almost everyone; of course, in the entire city, a few individuals and couples weren’t enjoying my birthday as much as I was.
“Hey, Memo!” A familiar voice stopped me in my tracks. I turned to find Starfall, off-duty and naked, waving at me from the side of the road.
I walked over to him, trying to tell my face to stop flushing and my belly to stop doing flops. No part of me listened except my hooves, when I stopped three feet in front of him—conversational space, but not too personal. I forced myself to mumble, “Hi.”
Starfall raised an eyebrow then bobbed his head. After his little deliberation, he asked, “How’s your evening going?”
The back of my throat dried out, painfully. I didn’t want to make things awkward or sad for Starfall by telling him I was going to a restaurant, alone, on my birthday. I hadn’t made a big deal about the day to any of my friends or coworkers, but I was okay with a good meal at my favorite restaurant.
I didn’t know how much of that Starfall would understand. I wasn’t going to test it, either. He’d asked the question platonically, like we were friends.
But… I couldn’t do that. Not with him.
The best happiness I could give him was to nod back a lie. “Y…yeah, I’m meeting up with some friends for dinner. After that, I dunno…” I shrugged. “But it’s a night out with friends, right?”
Starfall smiled. “That it is.” His eyes moved up to the clock tower behind me. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going… I’m late enough as it is.”
Through the nausea, I grinned and lifted a hoof to wave a tiny goodbye. “Good evening.”
“You too.” He nodded before walking away from me. Then, from behind me, he called out, “And Memo?”
I turned around.
He grinned at me. “Happy birthday.”
It made me smile.