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// Hansel and Gretel 
// Story: Bad Horse's Bedtime Stories for Impressionable Young Colts and Fillies 
// by Bad Horse 
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Hey. Kid. What’s with the long face?

You want your mommy? Yeah, I want my mommy too. Dam owes me money.

I hate to see a foal cry. Tell you what, I’m gonna tell you a story.

You comfortable? I want you to be comfortable. We could be here a long time.

Again with the crying. How are you gonna hear the story while you’re crying?

That’s better.

So once upon a time there was this brother and sister. Names Hansel and Gretel. Nice kids, mostly, but they got on their parents’ nerves sometimes. Like, they liked to run around the house, up and down the stairs, playing games. You do that a lot, I bet.

You don’t?

Gretel used to sing around the house, things she heard at school, things she made up. You do that?

Okay, that’s enough, stop, stop, you’re killing me. That gets on your dad’s nerves, I bet.

He likes it? Eh, if you say so.

Also Hansel and Gretel used to fight with each other, all the time. Call each other names, fight over toys. You do that with your sister?

Oh, come on. What are you, a saint? You must do something to get on your parents’ nerves.

His best pipe? Oh, I bet he was mad. Probably madder than he let on. So you never found it?

Probably he’s still mad about it.

In fact Gretel was a singer too, but not a very good one. Her dad would be sitting there relaxing and smoking his pipe when Gretel would start up like a pig gargling, and her dad would gasp and choke on the pipe smoke. Just killed the moment. He was too nice a guy to say anything to Gretel. Pretended he liked it. But secretly it drove him crazy. Every time Gretel sang her dad would sit there and grin like an idiot, but really he was holding onto his chair trying not to scream.

How about your mom? You ever done something that just pinned her ears back?

Oh, that’s rough. Mares like their flowers. I bet it took a year to grow those flowers. Years, maybe. Sometimes longer than it takes to pop a foal.

I'm just saying. So, anyway, Hansel and Gretel’s dam, she liked flowers too. She spent years making these special flowers grow a color nobody else could get them to grow. Blue, I think. So she had these blue flowers, and they were gonna take first prize at the town festival for sure, only Hansel trampled them chasing a hoofball. I mean he got every last one of them. Didn’t even slow down. His mom yelled at him and sent him to his room. Then he came out for dinner and pretty soon he forgot about it.

But his mom, she didn’t forget about it. Just like their dad didn’t forget about his pipe.

Oh, yeah, Gretel lost her dad’s favorite pipe, just like you did. I forgot to say that.

So one day their dad saw this fancy pipe in a store in town. Mahogany, with a pearl stem. I tell you, it was a beauty, and he knew that if he had a swanky pipe like that, all the other stallions would look up to him. But he thought, No point in buying a fancy pipe like that with Gretel around. He couldn’t enjoy smoking it, what with the singing, and Gretel would just lose it anyway.

His mom, around the same time she got the new seed catalog and figured out a way she could cross some of the flowers in it to make an extra-special color that would be sure to win at the town festival. But she thought, No point growing those flowers with Hansel around.

The two of them got to talking, and they decided they’d had enough of Hansel’s flower-stomping and Gretel’s singing and pipe-losing. So they said they’d take them out into the forest the next day, tell them they were supposed to gather wood, and lose ‘em.

Only Hansel heard ‘em talking, see. So he loaded his pocket up with all the white pebbles around their house, and next day when his dad took them out into the forest, he dropped a pebble every few steps, sly-like.

His dad stopped deep in the forest and told Hansel and Gretel to go get some wood. But when they came back with the wood, he was gone, see?

Gretel started sniffling. Yeah, just like that. Quit it.

No, I’m sure your parents wouldn’t do that to you. Probably. Unless they were really mad about something.

Did he say it was an expensive pipe? Oh, he did?

Anyway, Hansel told her, Don’t cry, and showed her the trail of pebbles. So they followed them back home.

Their parents were happy to see them again. Mostly. At first.

But time went on, and their dad kept thinking about that fancy pipe, and their mom about them flowers. Before long there they were again, going out into the forest with their dad to gather wood. But Hansel had used up all the pebbles last time. All he had was a piece of bread for lunch.

But he was sly, and every few steps, he’d break off a crumb and drop it. Finally they stopped the in the woods, and his dad told him to go get firewood. When they came back, he was gone.

So they started following the crumb trail back. But wouldn’t you know, these dumb birds had swooped down and eaten the crumbs the second Hansel and Gretel had turned their backs, every last one of them. And Hansel and Gretel were lost in the woods.

So their dad, he went to the store and bought that new mahogany pipe with the pearl stem. Then in the evenings, he would sit back and relax, smoking it, not thinking about anything at all, and it was the best feeling in the world. He got a promotion at work, on account of he looked so classy with that pipe.

Their mom, she got those seeds and started growing her flowers, and when she’d grown them and crossed them and grown them again they came out with a brand new color, one nobody had ever even seen before. They didn’t just win at the town festival. Word of 'em went all the way to Canterlot. She went and showed 'em to the princesses. The princesses, they said they were the prettiest things they’d seen in a thousand years.

Hansel and Gretel? I dunno. Probably bears ate ‘em.

There you go crying again. That’s what I get for my trouble.

What’s that? You want to go home?

I don’t believe you really want to go home. You ain't crying much, for somepony who really wants to go home.

Now that sounds more like somepony who wants to go home. Do that again, just like that, but into the microphone here.

There. That’s great. Don’t worry. You’ll be home in no time. You want a soda or something? I think we got some soda for you.

Hey, Bats! Take this tape to Slick. Tell him to cut out the good part and send it to the parents. And get this colt a soda. He deserves it. Don’t you, kid?