Breakfast had been a simple affair, more frozen fruit served with cottage cheese, and all the oatmeal a pony could care to eat. The foals complained bitterly about the oatmeal, except for Graves, odd little Graves that prefered to eat his oatmeal plain.
Something was wrong with that little donkey.
True to her word, Holly had harnessed Noctilucent. The harness was something new to him, it went around his neck, looped around both of his front legs, and left the foal slung right over his chest, just below his neck and head. The foal responded quite well to being slung and then hung around Noctilucent’s neck. Quite well meaning she only screamed bloody murder for several minutes until Noctilucent angled his head downwards and kissed her on top of her head. Then, she quieted and seemed content to make cooing gurgles and to drool copiously.
After breakfast, Holly had taken the fillies off to the basement for a much needed bath, leaving the colts in Noctilucent’s care. Graves occupied himself with a book, Biscuit was having an after breakfast doze in a patch of sunlight from a narrow window that shone into the playroom, and Noctilucent found himself in the company of Arroyo.
The pink unicorn colt.
Arroyo was busy trying to colour in a colouring book, using his magic to hold the crayon. He wasn’t very good at it, and his approach seemed odd. He held the crayon in place and moved the book around underneath it.
“How are you Arroyo? Did you get enough sleep?” Noctilucent asked, feeling oddly out of place for trying to create small talk with the colt.
“Yeah,” Arroyo said, his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth, his face pinched in concentration. “This is really hard.”
For a moment, Noctilucent considered telling the colt foal that it would be easier to move the crayon and hold the book still. I mean, that seemed like the reasonable thing to do. “I hear you can summon dust devils,” he said, looking at Arroyo’s cutie mark, which was a dust devil.
“Yeah I can. Holly uses me to clean the sand out of the common room. I create a whirlwind and poof! I can blow all the sand up the stairs and back outside. Doing that makes my horn hurt though. That’s a lot of magic for a colt my age. Luna said so,” the pink colt answered as he continued to colour.
“It must feel nice to be useful,” Noctilucent said.
The crayon dropped. Arroyo halted, looking very puzzled. His eyes blinked rapidly and his muzzle scrunched as his thought processes tried to work with this information. “Useful?” Arroyo asked.
“Being able to help out. To have some way to contribute. To be able to do something nice for Holly and the others,” Noctilucent explained.
“Oooooh,” the colt replied slowly, realisation finally dawning upon his face. “I never thought about it that way. I usually do it to show off.”
Well, there was something to be said for honesty. Noctilucent slowly realised that Arroyo was using one crayon to colour everything. A brown crayon. The haybale was brown. The pony was brown. The apple was brown. One of the clouds was brown, the others left uncoloured. “Why is everything brown?” Noctilucent asked.
Arroyo froze, everything once again shutting down as his mind tried to process the information that interrupted his task. “Why isn’t everything brown?” Arroyo asked, attempting to be clever.
From behind his book, Graves snorted.
“I don’t know why everything is brown,” Arroyo confessed. “Life gets like that sometimes. Stuff happens and you can only see one colour.”
Graves set down his book and glared at Arroyo, his face softening slightly.
“I think I understand what you mean Arroyo,” Noctilucent replied gently, casting a glance at Graves.
“There is no point in noticing any other colours,” Arroyo said, struggling with a difficult concept. “Like here, in Mustang Springs. Everything is adobe and sand. Whoever made this place used only the brown crayon.”
Graves snorted in amusement and resumed reading his book.
“And once you begin colouring, you just sort of get comfortable using only one crayon. It works on everything if you don’t let it bother you, and you can fall into a, uh, a…”
“A groove?” Graves suggested, interrupting Arroyo.
“Yeah!” Arroyo agreed.
“Yes, settling into complacency is so terribly easy,” Graves acknowledged.
“What is complacency?” Arroyo asked. “Is that like an exit dental crisis?”
Graves moaned, as though he was in great pain, his eyes clenching shut.
“Complacency is feeling good about how things are and not wanting to make them better. Where you feel secure or good about life and settle into one spot and never move. Or you select just one crayon and keep colouring with it,” Noctilucent said. From below him, the foal blew a slobbery raspberry, her lips flapping and spraying drool.
“My sense of complacency allows for my heightened sense of self assured satisfaction regarding my superiourity,” Graves explained.
“I don’t understand Graves sometimes,” Arroyo confessed. “It is like he is speaking a different language.”
“Yeah, I don’t speak stupid,” Graves retorted.
“That is completely uncalled for!” Noctilucent chided.
“But I am stupid. My mother drank too much when she made me,” Arroyo muttered, looking very depressed.
Noctilucent glared daggers at Graves, who responded by hiding behind his book. He reached out with one foreleg and gently patted Arroyo, who looked very distraught. “All Graves said is that he is insufferably smug and a real pain in the plot,” Noctilucent explained.
Graves snorted in disgust but said nothing.
“Both of you have something in common, and Graves shouldn’t be lording himself over you Arroyo. He’s just as hurt about life as you seem to be. He’s just acting like he is above all of this so he can feel better,” Noctilucent said, still gently stroking Arroyo.
“Really?” Arroyo asked.
Graves sighed and set down his book. “I apologise. I spoke out of turn,” the donkey foal said, expressing regret.
“You use words like I use the brown crayon. Don’t think about it, just do it and keep going,” Arroyo said, his face pinched in intense concentration.
“Yeah, actually,” Graves admitted, looking somewhat confused and impressed, his long drooping ears that framed his face twitching slightly.
“I know what is means to be stuck in a rut,” Noctilucent confessed. “Sometimes, you fall back on the only thing you know. A brown crayon, words, certain behaviours.”
Graves peered at Noctilucent, his eyes narrowed. He nodded faintly in acknowledgement. For a moment, Noctilucent worried that Graves could see into his soul and know his secrets.
Donkeys were fiercely intelligent creatures. They did not have magic, or members of their species that could fly, or great strength like earth ponies. All they had as a species was raw intelligence, and Noctilucent realised that Graves was an excellent representative of his species.
There was a shriek that came from downstairs, followed by Cactus Blossom’s shrill laughter that came floating up the stairs and lingered in the room.
“I would bet a carrot that she made bubbles in the tub,” Graves guessed.
Arroyo shuddered. “She scares me,” he admitted.
“Scares you?” Noctilucent asked.
“Cactus Blossom kissed him one day,” Graves said in teasing haughty tones.
“Yeah she did,” Arroyo acknowledged, turning even pinker than he usually was. “She said she only did it to make me feel better. She’s strong. Earth ponies are so strong. I feel so bad for her. She’s blind. That’s not fair. At least she cannot see how pink I am,” Arroyo said, shame evident in his voice.
“Nothing wrong with being pink,” Noctilucent said.
“Says you, you’re dark blue. I’m pink! Ponies think I am a filly! I almost got adopted by a nice older couple until one of them actually noticed that I am a colt. And then, it was over,” Arroyo complained. “Sassy keeps pinning me down and tying ribbons in my mane.”
Graves snorted and chuckled.
“That’s awful,” Noctilucent said, shaking his head.
The foal slung on Noctilucent’s chest gurgled a few times and waved her forelegs around. He reached around with a wing and gave her a tickle, and she squealed, kicking and squirming, her eyes wide with foalish alarm. He withdrew his feathers and the foal quieted. A look of intense concentration appeared upon her face. She grunted a few times and there was splurgle-gurgle sound from her belly. Then, she relaxed and made a contented coo.
Noctilucent’s nostrils flared. Oh no!
“Malodorous!” Graves cried, dropping his book and fleeing rapidly, his hooves clattering over the slate tile floor. He vanished down the stairs, his long cord-like tail waving behind him.
“Whatever he said,” Arroyo agreed, abandoning his art efforts and running down the stairs and into the basement.
Noctilucent was trapped. He could not run, the source of the stench was slung from his neck, directly below his nose. He did not know what to do exactly. He had certainly never changed a diaper before.
“Hrrrunk!” he hrrrunked, staggering from the stench.
Biscuit awoke, sniffed, and immediately began to snort in panic. He fled the room, running down the stairs, leaving poor Noctilucent all alone.
“Oh my, you are a little stinker,” Noctilucent said to the foal in nasal tones, trying to not breathe through his nose.
He wrapped a foreleg around the foal, hugging her to his chest. “Why did you do this to me? Haven’t I suffered enough?” he asked.
The foal cooed in reply, and then burbled a bit, making foal noises. “Blub blub blubblethubble,” she babbled.
Noctilucent made his way towards the stairs and began to climb his way down into the cool depths of the building, needing to find Holly. The stairs were broad, each stair quite wide, it was made to be easy for foals to climb up and down. The stairs were made from red terracotta tiles, which stood out in sharp contrast to the blue slate covering the floors. The grout between the tiles, once white, was grey-brown with age.
There were groans as he prowled through the hall.
“There is no escaping!” Graves cried in alarm. “The basement shall become our tomb!”
Holly stuck her head out of the bathing room door and sniffed. “Oh my gosh, that is feculent. I’ve smelled a lot of soiled diapers, but that has to be the worst. How are you still breathing Noctilucent? No, no, no stay back! Please, I can deal with that diaper from a distance, just stay away!”
Noctilucent halted his advance.
“Go back upstairs and wait for me,” Holly begged. “Uggleglurp!” she gagged, covering her mouth with a hoof.
Noctilucent turned and headed back up the stairs, the foal’s nostril punishing stench clinging to his nose. He could hear fillyish screams behind him and cries that the stench was even worse than Cactus Blossom.
“My little cookie made a crumble,” Noctilucent said in a ridiculous voice, attempting foal-talk.
He could taste it.
He stood in the center of the common room, not quite sure what to do. The foal kicked and squirmed, grunting and making fussy noises.
A moment later, the foal exploded.
Runny brown rivulets ran down the foal’s hind legs, splattering into a brown-green puddle on the floor. The previous stench was heavenly compared to the new one.
Unbeknownst to Noctilucent, foal formula did not agree with the foal’s digestive system. He stood there, the foal continuing to flood the floor around his front hooves with foamy runny feces.
After what seemed like a small eternity, she made a contented sigh and settled into her sling, smacking her lips noisily and making happy little foal noises, the painful pressure and discomfort finally gone.
It had started with a tickle that had removed the initial blockage, allowing the floodgates to open.
And open they had. Noctilucent suffered the horrifying realisation that most new parents discover when confronted with foal feces. There were more feces than foal… the comparative masses did not measure up to one another.
The foal farted again, sending a fresh squirt shooting out of her overflowing diaper, dribbling down her hind legs, and dripping on the tile floor.
“Oh my gosh!” Holly cried from the stairs.
“My cookie crumbled,” Noctilucent gagged.
“Did she ever!” Holly agreed. “Note to self, change out formula type.”
“Should it be this colour of green?” Noctilucent asked, making his best effort to not allow air to travel through his nostrils.
There was a terrified shriek from behind Holly, followed by gagging sounds. Only one foal stood by Holly’s side, undaunted. Cactus Blossom stood, pressed now againsts Holly’s leg, looking grim.
“Something kinda stinks,” Cactus announced casually.
“Cactus honey, stay back, the floor is flooded,” Holly said.
“Flooded with… poo?” Cactus asked.
“Yeah,” Holly admitted.
“Do we have a paddle?” The foal asked.
Holly sniggered. Noctilucent found himself grinning reluctantly.
“No paddle,” Holly chortled.
“We are screwed then,” Cactus Blossom confided.
“Cactus Blossom! Language!” Holly scolded halfheartedly.
The foal around Noctilucent’s neck gave a grunt and continued to dribble. A considerable stream of sludgy foam poured to the floor, sending droplets spattering everywhere.
“THAT does not sound good!” Cactus cried in alarm.
“Cactus, honey, go downstairs,” Holly said.
“No, I am here for moral support. Plus, I can’t see, and I like smelling things. And even though this smells awful, it sure is interesting,” Cactus explained.
Noctilucent could feel the heat rising from the poo lagoon on the floor before him.
“Wait till Luna hears all about this!” Cactus Blossom cried as Holly finally moved forward to try and deal with the mess.