Of Night and Stone
By Kirb
Chapter Twelve
Realization
“Who are you?” asked Maud to the unicorn in front of her, still trying to break free of his grasp.
“You can call me Mr. Goodfellow,” the unicorn introduced himself. His horn glowed brighter. “Oh, do not try to resist, Maud. We only want to ask you some questions.”
Maud couldn’t move her hooves now even an inch, so she gave up. That’s when a thought hit her. “How do you know my name?”
“We have watched you for several days now,” Goodfellow replied. “We know, for example, that you have a strong bond with a gargoyle named Brooklyn, and that you and he have spent time together for the past few nights.”
“So you are some kind of weird stalker?” asked Maud.
“No!” Goodfellow shouted in frustration. “Just come with me. We will ask you some--”
Before he could continue, Goodfellow was knocked over by a foot to the face. He let go of Maud with his magic grasp, causing her to fall to the ground. When she looked up, she saw Brooklyn was standing in front of her, growling at Goodfellow, who was now leaning against a tree. She rubbed her head as she tried to comprehend what was going on.
Goodfellow opened his eyes and looked at Brooklyn. A smirk came on his face. “Hello, Brooklyn.”
“Who the hell are you and how do you know my name?” Brooklyn asked, standing in a fighting pose.
“As I told Maud, I have been watching you for several nights now.” Goodfellow stepped forward. “Though you may not recognize me, I know you very well, and you definitely know my boss.”
Brooklyn growled and his eyes glowed. “Enough talk!”
He lunged at Goodfellow, who raised his left hoof and smacked Brooklyn in the chest. This knocked the wind out of Brooklyn, and it felt like a large rock had been slammed into him. He fell down and caught his breath, but managed to grab Goodfellow by the throat as he was trying to sneak away. Goodfellow tried to slip out of his tight grasp, but Brooklyn’s claw left no method of escape.
Out of nowhere, Goodfellow’s horn began glowing, and in a few seconds a white light surrounded the three. When it died down, Goodfellow was gone. Brooklyn growled and unclenched his fist, then turned around to Maud.
“That was a close one, Maud! Are you okay?”
The pony shook her head. “I’m fine, Brooklyn. Th.. thanks for saving me.”
Brooklyn reached a claw down and helped her up. “I had to, Maud. That stallion was attacking you.”
Maud grabbed onto Brooklyn’s claw and stood up. “I know. Thanks.”
Brooklyn took a deep breath and then began. “Look, Maud--”
“I’m going to take the first train back to the rock farm,” Maud interrupted. “There’s no reason for me to stay in Ponyville anymore. If we’re lucky, we can both forget about the events that happened tonight and the last few nights too.”
She looked into Brooklyn’s eyes. “Goodnight, Brooklyn.”
And with that, she turned around and walked away. Brooklyn frowned. This didn’t go as he’d planned at all.
…
Maud somberly walked up the stairs of Sugarcube Corner to the guest bedroom. She had never unpacked, so all she had to do now was say goodbye to her sister before she left. Upon opening her door, she was greeted by the blue eyes and widely grinning face of Pinkie Pie.
“Hi, sis!” Pinkie cheerfully greeted.
“Oh, hi Pinkie,” Maud replied without enthusiasm. She walked towards her bed.
“How did the concert go?” asked Pinkie.
“It was okay,” Maud said.
Pinkie’s smile faded. “What’s wrong, sis?”
Maud sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m leaving tomorrow, Pinkie.”
Pinkie gasped. “Tomorrow? Why? We’ve barely been able to spend any time together!”
“We’ve spent plenty of time together, Pinkie.”
Pinkie hesitated, then nodded. “You’re right, we have! But I was hoping to spend more time with you, Maud! Why are you leaving?”
Maud looked down. There was a long silence before she finally spoke. “Brooklyn turned me down.”
Pinkie let in a long gasp and grabbed Maud by the shoulders. “WHAT?!”
…
Brooklyn was on his way back to Town Hall, gliding through the air, when he felt it. His heart started beating faster than it usually did when he was flying. He felt a warmness enter his face. He looked around to see if something was approaching him--he often would feel an adrenaline rush if someone was about to attack. But nothing was there.
Am I having a heart attack? he thought. Maybe it’s just an after-effect of the fight… yeah, that’s probably what it is.
But suddenly, a searing feeling swept through his chest, causing him to drop in altitude, and he realized what was happening.
Oh god, no! Not now! Damn it, why couldn’t this have happened BEFORE I left Maud? Why couldn’t I have realized this sooner? Gah!
Thankfully, he was right in front of Town Hall, so he descended to the building. Elisa was standing outside with her arms crossed.
“Hi, Brooklyn,” she began. “How’d it go?”
“Not well,” Brooklyn quickly shot back as his feet touched the floor.
Elisa raised an eyebrow. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.” Brooklyn opened the door and stepped inside to see everybody staring at him--Goliath, Broadway, Lexington, Hudson, Bronx, Angela, even Twilight.
“What?” Brooklyn asked. Lexington was the first to approach Brooklyn.
“I heard that you and your new marefriend went out to a concert tonight!” Lex said, playfully hitting Brooklyn in the arm. He winced, his arm still stinging from the fight with Goodfellow.
“Ow… she’s not my marefriend!” Brooklyn groaned.
Lex raised an eyebrow, since he hadn’t even hit that hard. “Well, how was it?”
“I already told Elisa, and I’ll tell you too. It was horrible.”
“Hey!” shouted an angry Twilight. “Dark Canter put on a great show!”
“I wasn’t talking about the show,” Brooklyn quickly replied, holding his hands up in front of him. “They were great. The rest of the night… could’ve gone a lot better.”
“How’s that, lad?” asked Hudson.
“Well,” Brooklyn sighed, “I found out for sure that Maud is in love with me.”
“Ha!” Lex shouted. “Knew it!”
Brooklyn glared at Lex. “Will you shut up?” he snapped. “I’m really not in a good mood right now.”
“Why is that?” Broadway asked.
“Because I had to let her down.” Brooklyn looked down. “I had to tell her to stop pursuing me, to let me be.”
“So… you’re lonely?” asked Broadway.
“I’M NOT LONELY!” Brooklyn yelled in response.
“Then why are you acting like this?” Angela asked.
“I’m paranoid,” Brooklyn lied. “Her sister knows where I live, and that I turn to stone in the daytime. She could come after me and kill me! That wouldn’t be good!”
“Brooklyn, I’m sure Pinkie won’t do that,” Twilight reassured him. “Is there something else?”
Brooklyn sighed. “Well, this is kind of hard to say, but I’m…”
“You’re dying?” Goliath asked in a concerned tone.
“No… not that I know of,” Brooklyn replied.
“You’re gay?” Lex guessed.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Lex? No.”
“Oh! You’re in love with Maud!” Twilight suggested.
Brooklyn blushed. “Yes, that one.”
There was a short period of silence… then everyone burst into fits of laughter.
Brooklyn glared at them. “What? What?!”
“Heheh, sorry…” Elisa collected herself. “It was so obvious to all of us for the longest time. We were wondering when you’d figure it out.”
Brooklyn shook his head. “I know, I’m really stupid.”
Lex grinned. “So you do have a marefriend! Congratulations!”
“You guys really aren’t helping,” Brooklyn groaned. He turned around to walk out.
“Brooklyn, wait!” Goliath commanded. Brooklyn stopped.
“Lemme guess,” Brooklyn began. “You all want to make fun of me now? Or are you past that point, and now you’re going to shun me?”
“Neither,” Goliath responded. “I was going to ask you, why did you turn her down if you loved her?”
“That’s just it.” Brooklyn shook his head. “I didn’t realize until after I left. When I left, I just wanted to get it over with, and put my mind at rest.” He turned back to the others. “But it didn’t, and I kept thinking about her, still sitting there on that lonely park bench. And I decided to turn around to apologize, to say I treated her harshly. Obviously we wouldn’t be romantically involved, but we’d still be friends. And that’s when I saw somepony attacking her.”
Everybody gasped.
“What?” Twilight interjected. “She was being attacked?”
“Yeah, some unicorn mugger was holding her captive with his magic,” Brooklyn tried to sum up. “He punched really hard, too--felt like I was getting hit with rocks. Long story short, I scared him away, but he could be back. He also claimed to know me from somewhere, but I think he was just crazy.”
Elisa frowned. “And he got away? So someone could be spreading word about you guys.”
“I don’t know. In any case, I saved her life. I guess it was then when I realized that I wouldn’t have gone back to save her if I didn’t care about her because I didn’t even know she was being attacked. I just wanted to apologize. But I think it really hit me when I was flying back here. I realized that I love her, too, and she had grown on me. I’ve grown used to her deadpan personality, and her love of rocks, and I’ve become fond of her company. And in her own way, she’s beautiful. Besides, think about it: she’s the only girl I’ve been attracted to who also likes me back. Every other time I’ve been snubbed because some other guy has gotten in the way. There’s only one problem, now, and I just don’t know what to do.”
“I think it’s clear what you should do,” Hudson replied. “Find the lassie and make ’er yours!”
Brooklyn shook his head. “No. As I said, there’s one problem, and it’s the big elephant in the room that we’re all ignoring: she’s a freaking pony!”
There was another short silence, then Goliath walked up to Brooklyn and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him around.
“Brooklyn, listen to me!” he finally commanded. “You’re my second-in-command, and part of your job is to find errors in my judgment. Now obviously I cannot trust you to do that when there’s a big error in your judgment!”
“B-but s-sh-she’s a-a d-differ-rent sp-pecies!” Brooklyn tried to say while being shaken.
“So?” Elisa asked; Goliath stopped shaking Brooklyn. “Goliath and I are different species.”
“That’s different!” Brooklyn insisted, looking away.
“No, it’s not!” Goliath boomed. “Now go get her and apologize. If you’re lucky she will not have left yet.”
Brooklyn blinked a few times, then a determined look spread across his face. “You know what?” he said, looking up. “You’re right, Goliath. And when you’re right, you’re right. I’ll go! I’ll find her!”
He walked toward the door, then stopped and turned back to the others. “Is it normal for me to feel like the protagonist in a bad romance novel right now?”
Elisa chuckled. “It’s completely normal. Now go before it’s too late!”
“Right!”
Brooklyn smiled and opened the door. It was right then that a thunderclap boomed throughout the town and rain started pouring down on Town Hall. Brooklyn groaned and shouted up to the skies. “Oh come on! Rain? Really?! That’s so cliché!”
A gray pegasus mare with a yellow mane and crossed eyes stuck her head out from behind the raincloud. “Oopsie! Sorry, mister!” she called to him as she pushed it away and flew off.
Brooklyn watched the mare and cloud leave the sky and tried to figure out what just happened, but then realized it was useless and took off.
…
Brooklyn descended in front of Sugarcube Corner, the once-happy building now looking surprisingly gloomy. He walked up to the door and waited for a response.
“Hello Brooklyn…”
Surprised, the young gargoyle turned around to see none other than Pinkie Pie standing behind him. He sighed in relief.
“Hi, Pinkie Pie! Have you seen your sister by any chance?”
“Why?” Pinkie asked. “So you can hurt her even more?”
It was then that he noticed something different about Pinkie. She was slowly walking up toward him, and wasn’t smiling like she usually did but instead glaring at him. She talked in a harsh-sounding tone, unlike her normal happy tone. And to top it off, her mane and tail were both flat, akin to Maud’s mane and tail.
Brooklyn gasped. This isn’t Pinkie, this is Pinkie on drugs! Or maybe NOT on drugs. I don’t know, she certainly seems like she uses drugs.
“Pinkie, I--” Brooklyn began, but the pink mare interrupted him.
“Oh yes. Maud told me all about it. How you walked out on her because she’s a ‘different species.’ How you then came back to her, just to leave her again. She loves you, Brooklyn! Can’t you see?”
“Well, that’s actually why I’m--” Brooklyn again began.
“I know one thing, Mister,” Pinkie interrupted, now screaming. “And that’s that NOBODY MESSES WITH MY SISTER!”
Out of nowhere, she lunged at him and a hoof headed towards his face. Thankfully, Brooklyn had been in enough fights to know exactly what to do next, so he ducked… only for Pinkie to somehow follow him down and knock him over anyway.
“Ow!” he groaned as he hit the ground. A hoof to the face can be quite painful. He tried to get back up, but Pinkie stood right over him.
“YOU MEANIE!!” she screamed. “HOW COULD YOU?!”
Brooklyn saw an opening and tried to roll over, away from Pinkie, but her hoof came down on him and stopped him. He then tried to grab Pinkie by the neck with his claw, but her other hoof pushed it back down.
“How the hell do you keep predicting what I’m gonna do next?” Brooklyn asked.
“OH, WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW!!!” Pinkie screamed at him.
Another hoof was headed toward his face. Brooklyn winced. Taken down by ponies three times since we’ve arrived here? I’ll never live this one down.
“I came here to apologize!” he shouted.
Pinkie’s hoof stopped inches away from his beak. “What was that?” she asked.
Brooklyn, now having caught her off-guard, decided to take this advantage. With one swoop, his wings pushed Pinkie away, and he grabbed the pony by her tail, holding her upside down. As he stood up, Pinkie struggled to fight back and escape his grasp, but her hooves only hit air. He had to admit, that was pretty adorable.
“I said, I came here to apologize!” Brooklyn repeated. “And you’d know that by now if you didn’t keep interrupting me.”
Pinkie’s face stayed angry, but she was keener to listen. “Go on…”
Brooklyn sighed. “I feel really bad about turning down your sister, but I didn’t realize how much I really cared about her until too late. She’s a beautiful mare and has been a really great friend since we left New York, and I think I love her. So I came back to apologize, and…” Now he looked down. “I can understand if you and she don’t want to forgive me, but at least consider it.”
Pinkie’s voice now came from behind him. “And how do I know I can trust you?”
Surprised, Brooklyn turned around to see Pinkie. He looked back at his claw to see that she had somehow slipped away. His eyes widened as he tried to comprehend the situation.
“How did you--” he began.
“Well?!” Pinkie asked, stepping closer to him.
Brooklyn blinked a few times, then shook his head. “Right, how can you trust me. Well, I did save her life earlier, so…”
Now it was Pinkie’s turn to be surprised. “You what?”
Brooklyn raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, after I left the first time, Maud was attacked by some stallion. He would’ve taken her captive, but I fought him off. Didn’t she tell you?”
Pinkie blinked. “No…”
The sound of a balloon inflating could be heard as Pinkie’s mane and tail poofed out and became curly once more. She grinned and jumped at Brooklyn, but this time to give him a tight hug.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” she asked, her voice returning to normal. “Any super-duper friend of my sister’s is a friend of mine! Especially if he’s her new coltfriend!”
Brooklyn smiled, but sweated in Pinkie’s tight embrace. God, I hope my ribcage survives this…
“The term where I’m from is ‘boyfriend,’ Pinkie,” he said, grunting it out due to Pinkie’s hug sucking all the air from him. “But I can’t be her boyfriend unless I… gakk!… catch her before she goes!”
Pinkie let go of Brooklyn and gasped. “Oh no! You need to stop her from leaving! She’s at the train station, hurry!”
Brooklyn wheezed to catch his breath, then stood back up and nodded. “Thanks, Pinkie.” He started to turn around, but then stopped. “Um, where’s the train station?”
…
Maud lay on the bench at the train station. She had checked the times and knew that the train she’d take wouldn’t arrive for several hours, at least until the sun had come up. She hadn’t even bought her ticket yet, but she waited anyway so she could be the first in line to leave.
“Maud?”
She turned her head to see her sister walking toward the station. Maud scooted over to make room for Pinkie.
“Hey, sis,” Maud said. She looked at Pinkie’s poofy mane. “I see you decided to give up on getting revenge on Brooklyn.”
“Yeah..” Pinkie sat down next to Maud. “I just wanted to spend these last few hours with you before you go back to the farm.”
Maud blinked a few times, then asked, “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Huh?” Pinkie lied. “Um, no! Nothing else!”
It was about then that her tail started shaking. She looked down at it. “Uh-oh, twitchy tail! Something’s gonna fall!”
She quickly moved out of the way. Maud, knowing not to question her sister’s body spasms, followed her. Within seconds, a crash was heard and when they looked back, the bench had been replaced by a mess of broken pieces of wood and a certain red gargoyle lying on top of it.
“Ow…” he groaned, getting up and brushing himself off.
“Wow, smooth, Brooklyn,” Pinkie remarked with a smirk.
“Hey! Not every landing is a steady one!” Brooklyn then looked at Maud and frowned. “Um, hi Maud.” He weakly waved to her. Maud stared blankly back at him.
“I think I’ll leave you two alone now.” Pinkie smiled and trotted away.
“So,” Brooklyn said.
“Yes,” Maud replied.
There was an awkward silence. Brooklyn looked at Maud. The moonlight cast shadows across her face. A bright glimmer reflected on her hair. Brooklyn looked away. Here goes… He walked up to her and squatted down to be at her height.
“Look, Maud, about earlier,” he began. “I’ve been doing some thinking, and it all keeps coming back to the same thing. I don’t know if you’ll forgive me, or if you’ll even believe me, but I realized after I saved your life that I was wrong about my judgment. So now, for what it’s worth, I just want you to know--”
“Brooklyn,” Maud interrupted. “Shut up.”
Before he could say anything, Maud climbed up onto Brooklyn and placed her forelegs around his neck. A smile briefly appeared on her face before she leaned forward and closed her eyes. Brooklyn could see her pursing her lips as her head got closer. He closed his eyes too, and tipped his head to the side.
Her lips, warm and moist, pressed against his beak. Brooklyn wrapped his wings around Maud and felt the tension drain from his body in this tender, loving kiss exchanged between the pony and the gargoyle.
After a while, the two separated and looked at each other, Brooklyn’s wings still tightly gripping Maud. He smiled.
“That was…” he began.
“Weird,” Maud interrupted.
Brooklyn raised an eyebrow. “What?” This wasn’t the response he was expecting.
“I’ve never kissed somepony with a beak before,” Maud replied, lightly tapping Brooklyn’s beak with her hoof.
Brooklyn rubbed the back of his head and smiled sheepishly. “Good point. That does make it a little different, but this beak would make it hard to make out with anybody, gargoyle or pony.”
Maud briefly smiled again and made a sound that sounded to Brooklyn almost like a giggle. “Then let’s make it work.”
And she embraced him and planted another kiss on Brooklyn’s beak--a kiss he was glad to return. His heartbeat increased and he felt the greatest happiness he had ever felt in his life.