//------------------------------//
// Art! 
// Story: Bon Bon dates a Seal 
// by Violet CLM 
//------------------------------//

Bon Bon stomped one hoof and glared at the blurry greenish blob that was her marefriend. “Lyra, you can’t spend the entire day shopping! We’re going to the Ponyville Pet Center fundraiser tonight, remember?”
“Aww, Bonnie!” The green blob drew closer to her, and Bon Bon felt its hoof rest reassuringly on her shoulder. Despite her anger, she smiled a little and leaned against the hoof. “Come on, Bonnie, it’s not the entire day. I’ll be back in time to take you to the fundraiser, I promise!”
“I just don’t understand why you can’t stay here with me,” said Bon Bon. She scowled and turned to a murky orange blur on a tall white blur, which she was reasonably certain was a clock hanging on the wall. She squinted, but it was no use trying to read it. “I’m sure it’s absolute hours until then! And I refuse to spend the whole day by myself in my… condition.”
Lyra sighed and pulled out a golden blur, which she began to run through Bon Bon’s curly mane. It felt like a hairbrush. Bon Bon sighed contentedly. “It’s not really a condition, Bonnie. Lots of ponies lose their contact lenses sometimes. You’ll be fine!”
“Lyra, I cannot see anything more than an inch in front of my face.” She sniffed haughtily. “I am so near-sighted that the optometrist had to invent a new classification just for me. I am perfectly justified in calling it a condition!”
“Yeah, but…” Lyra seemed to struggle for words for a moment, and her hairbrush caught in a small snarl in Bon Bon’s hair. “Okay, okay. What if I made my shopping trip really really fast, and I come back for you in half an hour. Would that be all right? Just half an hour, and then we can spend the whole day together before going to the fundraiser?”
Bon Bon looked down toward the pastel pink blur she liked to think of as a floor. Half an hour? Surely she could find something to do by herself for half an hour. Reading was out of the question, and making new candies wouldn’t be safe, but oh, maybe she could work on her etchings. Those always looked better with her contacts out anyway! Hooray!
“All right, half an hour,” she said. After a little trial and error, she managed to approach Lyra and bring their faces together, so that Lyra’s brilliant golden eyes were almost nearly somewhat distinct from the rest of her face. “I love you, Lyra.”
Lyra nuzzled her affectionately. “Love you too, Bonnie. See you then! …uh, sorry, didn’t mean to use the S word there.”





“Bonnie, I’m home!”
Bon Bon gasped in excitement. Her etchings had been going all right, she guessed, but she was stuck trying to decide how to depict a rushing river of ketchup without using any colors. But Lyra was back, so she could spend the day with her marefriend and get shamelessly pampered like they’d been doing all week. Hooray!
Very, very carefully, Bon Bon set her drawing tools down on the table and began the walk toward the front door, reaching one hoof in front of her every few seconds to check if she was about to hit anything. She did knock over an old cleaning bucket along the way, but only one, and honestly, if Lyra didn’t want to knock things over then she shouldn’t leave those things lying around in her way.
The front door made a closing sound as Bon Bon made her way into the living room, and she frowned. “Lyra? Did you just go out again?”
“Uh, nope!” Bon Bon frowned, for Lyra’s voice was oddly faint and sounded almost as if it was coming from the window. “I’m standing right in front of you right now!”
“Oh, hooray!” Bon Bon squinted into the blurriness and was just able to make out a dark shape standing between her and where she remembered the front door being. The shape was a little shorter than Lyra, but maybe she was sitting down. Bon Bon broke into a smile and rushed forward to hug her marefriend and welcome her home.
Lyra felt wrong. Bon Bon wrapped her front legs around her in a hug, and was disturbed to discover her coat had taken on an almost slimy texture. What kind of awful weather had she gotten into out there? Bon Bon clucked her tongue in disapproval. Her own coat was perfectly well groomed. If only Lyra had stayed with her instead of going out for half an hour, she wouldn’t have gotten into this awful slimy state.
Although she also felt somewhat, well, fatter than usual. Bon Bon gulped. Had Lyra been putting on weight from spending so much time pampering her? That wasn’t right. And her coat looked darker gray than usual too, not her regular vibrant green. Bon Bon’s poor marefriend had clearly been working herself into exhaustion and sickness trying to take care of her, all because she’d lost a measly little pair of contact lenses! That wasn’t right! Bon Bon would have to make it up to her somehow.
“Aww, there, there, Lyra,” she said, and ran a hoof along her marefriend’s long dark gray back and nestled against her prickly whiskers. “It’s okay, you’re home now. Relax!”
Lyra snorted loudly and licked Bon Bon’s face from bottom to top, and Bon Bon shrieked.
“Lyra! Ooh, you naughty girl, you haven’t done that in years!” She patted Lyra’s smooth, hairless head and backed up a few steps. “What did you have to go shopping for, anyhow?”
Several seconds passed while Bon Bon stared in Lyra’s general direction expectantly. Then Lyra snorted again and growled “Arp!”
“…arp?” Bon Bon frowned. Lyra’s voice suddenly sounded a lot deeper than usual, too. She was clearly coming down with some horrible illness, but then Bon Bon was too considerate to mention it. “Oh, a harp! Did you lose your old one? I guess we’re both really good at losing things, aren’t we?”
“Arp! Arp!”
“Yes, your musical instruments are all very lovely.” Bon Bon smiled absently. “So, Lyra, what do you want to do today before we go to the fundraiser? Something relaxing, maybe?”
Lyra let out another series of strange grunts and snorts, clear symptoms of some miserable disease brought on from excess busywork and that horrible slimy weather she’d run into. “Art!”
Art? Bon Bon frowned. Lyra certainly had a lot of pride in her musical abilities, as well as disdain for everypony else’s, but calling it ‘doing art’ was an awfully strange way of putting it. Besides, she knew full well that Bon Bon couldn’t hold a tune to save her life, and surely Lyra would be thinking of something that they could do together, with Bon Bon’s contacts still missing and Lyra clearly falling ill…
Oh, but of course! “Art… you mean my etchings?” Bon Bon smiled widely at the long gray blur of her marefriend. “You want to look at my etchings with me?”
Lyra clapped her hooves excitedly. It sounded a bit strange, like her hooves were wide and flat and slapping together, but Bon Bon wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the hooves.
“But… are you sure?” Bon Bon felt her face fall a little as she tried to look at the proposal rationally. “Lyra, honey, you don’t have to look at them if you don’t want to. I know you’ve been very critical in the past, and…”
“Art! Art!”
“Well, all right!”





The next few hours passed in purest bliss. Bon Bon brought out blurry etching after blurry etching, explaining the pictures and her thought processes and inspirations in loving detail, and Lyra was endlessly supportive and enthusiastic. She slapped her hooves together, and licked Bon Bon without any warning, and called everything “Art!” with barely any prompting. It had taken a while to get into her art room, since Bon Bon was still mostly blind and Lyra had adopted a bizarre walking style that was more like waddling than anything else, but it was completely worth it. Bon Bon couldn’t think of any time in the last five years that she’d been so happy.
“And then,” she said, “here’s one that I’m still working on! It’s about Celestia raising the sun and inspiring fear of her power in all our enemies! I’m going to add a lot of really horrible ponies cowering on the ground before her and renouncing their awful ways, but I can’t decide between fillies who sell apples or fillies who put on spontaneous fencing demonstrations. What do you think?”
“Arf!” Snorting sound. “Arf!”
“Half and half? Oh, Lyra honey, you’re a genius!” Lyra licked Bon Bon’s ear in approval.
Suddenly the sound of Bon Bon’s father’s old alarm clock rang through the house, and Bon Bon nearly dropped the unfinished etching in surprise. “The fundraiser!” She turned to the wobbly gray blur that was her marefriend. “We’ve got to get ready! Lyra dearest, do you remember where I put my saddlebag? Was it the downstairs closet, or upstairs?”
“Orp!”
“Yes, that’s what I thought. I’ll meet you at the front door!”
Lyra took off in her distinctive waddling motion, slamming heavily against the floor with every stride and snorting frequently, and Bon Bon smiled to herself and began her ascent of the stairs. Climbing stairs was easy, really, since she knew how high each one was and didn’t need to be able to see them very clearly to get to the top.
The closet had to be that tall dark brown blur set against the broader pinkish beige blur, and somewhere in there was her round blue saddlebag. Carefully Bon Bon lowered herself to the floor and crawled into the closest, looking very closely at everything around her. It took her a couple minutes of pawing through shoes and old sheet music, but eventually she found her saddlebag propped up against one corner, and in front of it… she gasped.
Her contact lens case! There was no way to misidentify its hot pink color or unique infinity symbol shape. She picked it up in both front hooves and was about to open it when a thought struck her. She’d been doing just fine all day without her contacts, really, and it wasn’t as if she needed to see in order to enjoy a Ponytones concert. If anything it might be better that way, since there’d be fewer distractions! And then when they got home again afterwards, she could surprise Lyra with the news as the perfect end to a perfect day. Yes, that was a good plan. She left the lens case where it was and picked up the saddlebag instead.
Bon Bon made her way downstairs, smiling a secret smile. The living room was fairly easy to find, and she could just make out an indistinct grayish mass by where she thought the front door was. “Ready to go, Lyra?” she asked, with a hint of girlish giggle infiltrating her voice.
Lyra slapped her front hooves.
“Oh, Lyra dear, why don’t you take my saddlebag instead? It’ll be easier for you to get things out of it if you need to.” Lyra didn’t voice any objection, so Bon Bon tossed the bag over to her, and gasped in wonder as Lyra managed to catch it, but not with her magic, since even without her contacts Bon Bon could tell that there was no distinctive golden glow holding up the bag. Somehow Lyra had caught and was balancing the saddlebag on her nose! Living with an earth pony was clearly rubbing off on her.





The walk to the fundraiser was slower than usual. Bon Bon was very careful where she stepped, not wanting to hit anypony else or fall into a river or something, and Lyra was still doing her strange waddling. Bon Bon hoped that whatever she’d come down with wasn’t contagious, or else a whole bunch of ponies at the fundraiser were going to start looking gray afterwards. And since she’d found her contact lenses again, she’d be able to see them for herself on the next day, and tsk tsk sympathetically and maybe ask if any of them wanted to see her etchings…
They were also delayed by several ponies who stopped her to ask her questions. Carrot Top was first, as far as Bon Bon could tell from her orange coloring and familiar voice, but oddly enough all the conversations seemed to fall into the same rough pattern:
“Bon Bon! Is Lyra not feeling okay tonight?”
“Oh, hello Carrot Top! I think she’s caught some odd flu or other, but she’s in a really good mood and we decided to come hear the Ponytones sing anyway.”
“You did? Um, both of you?”
“But of course! Come on, Lyra love, try to waddle a little faster, we’re going to be late.”
Bizarre grunting noises.
“So, um, Bon Bon… are you feeling okay?”
“Never better! Sorry, Carrot Top, but we really must hurry along...”
The fundraiser was absolutely packed when they did get there, but the Ponytones were starting a little late, so Bon Bon and Lyra were able to get to the stage before the music began. For some reason the crowd of colorful blurs of the audience seemed to part a little before them, giving Lyra an excellent place to watch the singers from, even if Bon Bon couldn’t appreciate it properly without a sense of vision.
The voices of the Ponytones quartet washed over them, singing beautifully of music and trust and love and other such virtues, and Bon Bon sighed in contentment. She idly scratched Lyra’s whiskers. “Isn’t this just a beautiful concert, dear?”
“Art!”
“You think so?” Bon Bon looked at Lyra’s indistinct grayness in surprise. For the first time she noticed that Lyra’s bright golden eyes were nowhere to be seen, so she guessed her marefriend had to be enjoying the concert so much that her eyes were closed. “I’m surprised! You’re usually so picky about other musicians, always telling me how much better you are than any of them. Art? You really think so?”
“Art!”
Bon Bon shook her head. Lyra was really in a spectacular mood that night! And oh, she’d be even more excited when they got back and Bon Bon showed her that she’d found her contact lenses! Hooray!
The pony in front of them suddenly slumped to the ground, and Bon Bon leaned forward to get a better look. Cheerilee, she thought it was, by the color.
“Ort?”
“Yes, out like a light, I’d say.” Bon Bon smiled wryly and looked back up at the blurs of the Ponytones. “You know, I’ve been wondering why they replaced Big Macintosh with Fluttershy for this concert… I guess the shock must have gotten to her.”





There was detail in the world again. Bon Bon returned her lens case to her vanity cabinet, where it belonged, and gazed around her contentedly. Wood had grains. The walls had beautiful spirals and floral patterns. Everything was itself again, more than nearly indistinguishable blobs of color. The perfect end to a perfect day.
“Lyyyyyyyyyyra!” Bon Bon sang the name as she skipped down the stairs. “I’ve a surprise, Lyra! Guess what I—“
The last word died in her throat as she stared, the sudden visual clarity of the world around her making all too little sense. There was Lyra, standing awkwardly at the front door, which was just swinging shut behind her. There was a little golden package on her back, but more importantly, she was definitely her normal shade of green again and not the sickly dark gray she’d been for the last several hours. Her golden eyes shone worriedly, she stood at her normal height, and her legs looked like they were in perfect working condition.
A slapping sound caught her attention, and Bon Bon turned. There was a large gray seal sitting on their best couch, clapping its flippers with a big smile on its face. Bon Bon felt her head spin.
“Lyra… why is there a seal in our house?”
Lyra’s ears flattened adorably against the sides of her head. “Oh! Uh, hey Bonnie. What seal? Why would there be a seal here?”
Bon Bon tapped her hoof. “Lyra, I found my contact lenses.”
“You did?! I mean, of course you did! That’s great! That’s… yeah, um, the seal.” Lyra backed slowly against the solid wood of the front door. “Fluttershy told me seals were great company, and I needed something to keep you occupied while I was out, and—“
“You mean that seal has been here…” Bon Bon stopped, a dozen suddenly obvious clues coming together in her mind all at once. A blush engulfed her face, and she glared at Lyra, hoping to pass it off as anger and not embarrassment at her own cluelessness. “What I mean to say is, of course I knew that! How could you think I’d be fooled by something like this? What kind of horrible marefriend are you to set me up with a seal?!”
Lyra continued to shrink down and back, her eyes flicking from side to side as if looking for ways to escape. “I wanted a quadruped at least, really, but Fluttershy swore that this was the best she had on such short notice and most of her bigger animals had gone to the pet center to be adopted! Come on, Bonnie, I’m sorry, don’t be a grouch…”
Bon Bon stomped down the rest of the stairs and sat down beside the seal, who licked her ear affectionately. “Lyra, I have every right to be a grouch. I’ll have you know this seal has treated me wonderfully all day long, and appreciates my artwork far more than you do! What in Celestia’s name was so important that you had to go shopping for, anyhow?”
“Oh, uh…” Lyra grinned awkwardly, and floated the golden package off of her back with a bright glow from her horn. “Here. I got you some glasses.”
Bon Bon’s eyes widened and she accepted the package from the hold of Lyra’s magic. There were indeed glasses inside, sharply angled glass lenses with beautifully dark blue frames engraved with pink curls reminiscent of her mane. They rested on a delicate plush cushion, and on the underside of the package’s lid was nothing more than a single huge heart symbol.
“Lyra…” Bon Bon put a conscious effort into tearing her gaze away. “I haven’t worn glasses since we were fillies.”
“Yeah, but these are different.” Lyra came and stood between her and the seal, obviously trying to distract her from it, though Bon Bon was too entranced by her present to object. “Apparently it’s a lot easier making glasses for adults than for kids. These aren’t huge and ungainly like your old pair. Just try them on, okay?”
Reluctantly, Bon Bon pulled her long-missing contact lenses from her eyes and set them on the back of the couch. She lifted the glasses and placed them on her muzzle. The world looked perfect. Everything was even clearer and more distinct than it had been with her contacts. She could read the anxiety and eagerness to please written on every inch of Lyra’s face, and granted her a reassuring smile.
Lyra smiled too. “Here,” she said, “I’ll get you a mirror.” Her horn glowed again, and a small mirror floated between them. Bon Bon gasped. She looked amazing. The glasses were perfectly suited for her face, matching her every color and fitting so smoothly she could barely feel them there at all. She didn’t need to ask Lyra how long it had taken her to design such perfect frames, or how well she’d needed to known every last intricacy of Bon Bon’s face to get them so right. The look of pride in her marefriend’s face, and the evidence that was her work, were answer enough.
“I look beautiful.”
“You’ve always looked beautiful.”
Bon Bon dimpled and swatted the floating mirror aside to give Lyra a kiss. “Thank you, dear. I love you.”
“I love you too, Bonnie.” Lyra coughed. “So, uh, the seal…?”
“You’re forgiven this time. But take it back to Fluttershy’s right away, all right? I’m afraid it’s gotten rather attached to me…”





“Lyra?”
Lyra groaned and rolled over in her mass of covers, mostly stolen from Bon Bon as she twisted and turned through the night. “Yeah, Bonnie?”
“That seal liked to lick my face. Do you think you could do that sometimes?”
“…sure, Bonnie. Good night.”
There was silence in the dark bedroom for some minutes. Bon Bon’s new glasses lay on the bedside table, where she’d very reluctantly agreed to leave them while she slept, and Lyra’s harp—not missing at all, despite the seal’s claims—sat next to it, resting from a late night solo concert with a solo audience. Bon Bon had a good life, and there was nothing she needed to add to it, and yet…
“Lyra?”
“Yeah, Bonnie?”
“Do you think you could learn to balance things on your nose?”