//------------------------------// // Chapter 12: Love // Story: The Pony Who Lived Upstairs // by Ringcaat //------------------------------// [Posted: 6/26/18 by George] A big hello to all my fine friends, along with those who aren’t yet.  George Harrison at your service—I think our darling Peach has mentioned me once or twice, so it shouldn’t be too great a shock to see my byline here.  Like her, I’m an explorer here on Earth.  Full disclosure: Peach is a native Equestrian through and through, but not me—I was born in Carnation Town, Summerset, not far from historic Grayvale; spent several of my formative years in Grundle’s Grotto, then took to my hocks and the vicissitudes of strangers for two years and washed up in Galloping Gulch, for all I know because it also began with a ‘G’. I was a pretty ripe fool by that time, but not too foolish to know a good situation when it bit me, so I got by on odd jobs while currying the companionship of those I personally fancied the brightest lights in a settlement on the savage edge of Equestria. Once I’d gotten to know art and culture a bit, I set out to know the world, and naturally, when the world grew a new frontier, I had to poke my nose through and sniff out what was on the other side. That’s the short version, as I know you don’t visit this website to hear a divvy like me prattle on. Just wanted to provide a splattering of background for my perspective before I started in on the topic before us. And that topic, friends, is Love. Seeing as how Peach posted the other day about friendship and what it means to folks, and seeing as how Her Highness Princess Cadance is going to be gracing the Capital of the World next month—that’s New York, New York, for those keeping score—I thought it just might be the next logical step. Now love is a slippery word, as poets know better than lovers, and it’s got a hundred definitions, each one of which feels right the moment you hear it. But it’s not just a bundle of ways of saying the same thing over and over—’love’ refers to multiple concepts. Find some bloke who’s just said ‘I promise to love only you’ and ask him whether he doesn’t love his mother and his father, then, and why exactly not? Ask yourself, while you’re at it—can you love a friend while harboring no intentions of anything beyond friendship? Can you love a place? A concept? Is there a different kind of love for each of these things, and if so, what’s the thread that ties them all together? Is to love something just to like it more than the norm, or is it more than a matter of quantity? Forgive me if I ask a lot of questions—I’ve got a blooming question mark on my heiney. I may have some glimmer of an answer—my own credo on the subject is that love is simply what keeps you going, whatever you may be after. At the lowest level, there’s the love of life we’re all born with, and that keeps us after sustenance and out of most harm’s way. Whatever else we do beyond survive, that’s one stripe of love or another in action. Liking something makes you choose it over something else; loving something is what makes you go out of your way for just a glimpse. But that’s just how I see it, and your perspective’s every inch as valid. What I wanted to mull over is whether love is a different beast for human beings as it is for us. (Not to exclude Peach’s human readers—be great to hear from you too!) Now, I’m not green enough to claim there’s such a thing as ‘human culture’. The Earth’s too large and global perspectives too recent for any single culture to have permeated worldwide. My point of view is limited to places I’ve been—the American Northeast, Toronto, Vancouver, Denmark, Ile-de-France and Champagne, the United Kingdom, Saint Louis, Reno, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. And even among this meager fraction of the Earth’s lands, there’s more diversity on the subject of love than I bargain you’d find from Dream Valley to Manehattan. The Danes love without walls—they talk plainly about it and aren’t afraid to show tenderness. Salt Lakers seem to have two sides to their love—on the outside it’s a testament to community and Heavenly Father, like a candy shell, but on the inside the juice runs thick. Humans from Paris—that’s the City of Love, so they say—draw a line between emotional love and physical love, and to be frank it lets them run a bit wild. Irish folk, on the other hoof, are cautious about love, and that allows them to glimpse more of its branches but climb fewer, or so it struck me. Frisco once hosted a Summer of Love, and while the love there isn’t free anymore, I got the sense it now flows in every flavor like a whopping rainbow factory. Here in the Big Apple, I don’t even know what to think about love, and believe me, that’s the way I like it. So is there anything humanfolk have in common when it comes to love, aside from what’s blissfully universal? Well, my gig over here is as an art consultant, which is a step or two below that of actual artist.  I’ve been working with museum curators—helping them assemble collections relating to Equestria or advising them on how ponies are likely to take their exhibits, and one such establishment—the Metropolitan—is planning an exhibit on love throughout the ages to coincide with the Princess of Love’s appearance in town. So the Equestrian Curator asks me what the Equestrian attitude toward love is, and she’s really asking what ponyfolk in particular think of it. I’ll tell you what I told her, though it may sound like I’m being unkind to my human friends, and though I haven’t yet found a way to put it adeptly into words. I feel like humans are given love, or they find it, or create it… whereas with us ponies, it’s simply part of us. We don’t talk much about Love, compared to humans, but as it’s in us from the outset, we don’t need to. Mind, human mothers and their babies seem to have love for each other built in, just as does every other creature under any sun, but that’s not enough to get you through life. That’s just a well-timed push along the way. Why do I feel this way? Well, when I tried to explain to my friend the curator, it all came out in a big muddle. But if I’m right about love being what keeps us going, and if it’s true every pony has a destiny, and if a destiny is anything like a destination, then we’ve got to have love built right in, or we’ll never get started. And folks, that’s about the best I can do. If I’ve hurt any feelings, I apologize, and if I’ve opened any doors, I pray they’ll remain that way long enough for someone to slip through. A little final food for thought: If friendship is magic, what does that leave for love to be? 29 COMMENTS Oh god. Seriously? My stomach felt queasy. I should have known better than to read that before breakfast. At this point, George’s sentiments to the contrary, I did not want food for thought. A long tract on what George thought of love was about the last thing I’d needed to read, and now I just wanted a blank mind and a new start. I wanted to forget about Peach. I wished it were football season. I even wished I’d been overscheduled for work so I could throw myself into it angrily and blame my boss for my troubles. But I was underscheduled. After working Monday, I had Tuesday off again. I had an impulse to bake another cake, like the one I’d made for Peach all those weeks before. Learn a new recipe, start fresh, and share it with Peach if I felt like it. But a healthier part of my mind told me I needed to talk to someone. Trouble was, I’d never been terribly popular and I’d lost most of the friends I did have when I left college. I was friendly with a few of my coworkers, but there’s a difference between having friends and being ‘friendly with’. I kind of wished I could see Kellydell and Seaswell again—they’d seemed nice enough, even if Kellydell was a little snobby--but I didn’t have any way to contact them. I did call Laurie to thank her for hosting and to apologize for it getting weird. She brushed it off. “The longer I live with Jack, the more used I get to things like this being weird,” she told me. “Really?” “Yeah,” she sighed. “I mean, he doesn’t really let things go. Not easily. But that just keeps things interesting.” “You think there’s any chance you two might set a date?” I ventured. “I really don’t know, Ron. I feel like… I’ve just got to give it time.” “Have you talked about marriage?” “Yup. It just doesn’t mean that much to him. Jack says the way he sees it, we’re committed now. But commitments can break. I said, ‘But marriage is a commitment for life’, and he said ‘But it can still break! Look at the divorce rate.’ And I mean, I had to admit he had a point.” “Not very romantic.” “No, but I can’t complain—I’m not really the romantic type either. So we’ll just keep on until something happens or it doesn’t.” The conversation didn’t last long and Peach didn’t really come up. I wondered what George would think of Laurie and Jack’s arrangement. I then drove it from my mind by throwing myself into a search for a better job out there somewhere. I signed up for services and newsletters, I familiarized myself with listings. I spent the morning feeling like I was getting farther afield from who I was—looking into more and more unlikely-looking jobs and considering ever more intimidating measures to become qualified for them. It felt strange. But then again, I told myself, I know my cutie mark isn’t a god-damned flowerpot. Enough. I went for a stroll, got pizza for lunch, and tried not to think about ponies. I know it sounds impossible to try not thinking about something, but it can be done—basically, you just distract yourself until your mind finds something else to latch onto. But the thoughts were still there, waiting in the background, when I got back home. I sighed, surrendered, and gave my brother a call. “Ron?” “Hi Noam.” “You never call me. You always wait for me to call you.” “Yeah.” “What’s up?” I’d thought about how I was going to broach things on the walk back, but I hadn’t settled on anything. “I feel pretty terrible,” I confessed. “What? How come?” “I’m competing with a Beatle,” I blurted. “And I think I’m losing.” “…What?” “Sorry. You remember the pony girl I told you about?” “You didn’t really tell me much. Just that she was ‘fascinating.’ And what, she keeps magic beetles?” “No no. She’s dating a guy called George Harrison. A pony guy.” “Ooh.” My brother paused—I could guess that he was trying to figure out how seriously to take something he personally found very funny. And yes, there was a stifled chuckle. “That’s a funny name for a pony.” “He talks like George Harrison—kind of, anyway. Accent and everything.” Another pause. “Well isn’t that something! But so what? Good for her, right? You said you weren’t into her.” “I was wrong.” Now Noam sighed. “Obviously,” he said. He wasn’t trying to rub it in—he was trying to sympathize. “Well, Ron, maybe she belongs with a pony guy? I mean, I don’t know how things have been between you, but this might be a losing fight. And you know I’m not putting you down when I say that.” “Yeah. I know. But I can’t get over her. I wish I could like the guy, too, but I can’t.” “You want to tell me about it?” It was my turn to hesitate. “No. I mean, I don’t really feel like rehashing every little thing.” “No? So why’d you call?” “I just wanted to talk to someone, Noam. Just wanted to let you know what’s going on, that’s all. I don’t know.” “Well geez, Ron. Does she know you love her?” I started to say yes, but caught myself. “I didn’t use the word ‘love’,” I told him. “She knows I ‘like like’ her.” My brother laughed. “Well, isn’t that the same thing?” “You thought having an exciting new friendship was the same thing as love.” “I still think that. So yeah, let’s assume she knows how you feel.” “George thought it was a good idea to ask her to choose between us. We were all eating at a restaurant down in Red Bank and he just came out with it.” “You were all eating together?” “We were on a trip. To meet real ponies. I mean Terran ponies.” “Sounds complicated. So she picked him?” “She wanted more time to think. But the other day, we were having dinner with Laurie and her boyfriend, you remember Laurie?” “Yeah, I remember Laurie.” “Peach got drunk and called George her ‘special somepony’.” Noam was silent a moment. “So what does that mean?” he laughed. “It means she thinks of him as her boyfriend.” “You sure about that? Maybe it means something other than what you think.” I thought back to George’s post about a hundred meanings of love. “Maybe. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.” “Well, you know what you need?” “No. What do I need?” “You need a girl. I mean a real human girl. Go on a date.” I was immediately disgusted with his attitude, but at the same time I knew part of my disgust was because I’d been fighting off the same thought. “You think I should give up?” “Just go on a date and see how you feel. It’s not giving up. It’s… it’s a different viewpoint. Know what I mean?” Noam was in a long-term relationship that had hit some rocks. There hadn’t been any third party, so far as I knew. But they’d had fights over things I couldn’t understand, and I knew his girlfriend hated our mother. “I think I do, yeah. I really do need some perspective. I was thinking earlier how I wished I was working today so I could get distracted by all the little things that make me angry. But my hours are being cut.” “Uh oh. Cut for good?” May as well tell him. “Until winter. In theory. It could easily keep going.” “You don’t exactly have much of a buffer in your budget, do you?” “No.” “Wow, Ron. Sorry to hear it.” “Yeah.” “Maybe you should come move back to Trenton. It’s a lot cheaper here and I know a place I bet would put you up for a while.” I felt anger swelling. “You mean that crack house? With that guy you used to do car stuff with?” “It’s not a crack house just because a few drugs get passed around!” Noam objected. “Crack houses are filthy. I don’t think anyone even does crack there.” “I’m not ready to come back, Noam.” Funny how certain I was of that when I said it. “Well, what are you going to do? Find a roommate?” I was quiet. I didn’t want a roommate. “I’m looking for extra work, or new work. I’m gonna keep looking, and Peach said she can help me out for a while.” A correction occurred to me: I didn’t want a roommate unless it was her. But if that wasn’t going to happen, maybe I would just have to get over her. Then the idea of a roommate might not seem so bad. “Peach? That’s your pony friend?” “Yeah.” “I dunno, Ron. It sounds slippery. Don’t get yourself in a hole, okay?” “Thanks for the concern. I’ll be all right.” A thought occurred to me. “In fact, I think you’re right about the date thing. I’ve got a girl’s number, I may as well call her.” “Well hell! If you’ve got a girl’s number, then yeah! Call her!” “Nice talking with you, Noam.” “Anytime, Ron.” It had been a frustrating conversation, as they often were with my brother, but it really had made me feel better. It’s funny how that works. Even so, it was a good few hours before I checked Turtlewood Coffee’s online calendar and settled my nerves enough to call the number Meg had given me. What did I even know about her? Well, she liked ponies, clearly. She was quiet but seemed to have plenty of spirit, enough to be excited about riding Peach. She’d been dressed in light fabric—I remembered reds and browns. Something seemed off about her too, but that wasn’t necessarily a negative. If I’d had to name one thing that had driven me and Cindy apart, it was that she was so… well, I didn’t want to say ordinary, but she’d always toed the line and didn’t have a lot of tolerance for the little things that made me different. Cindy was confident and solid, and thinking about her made me hang up the phone and wonder how I’d ever thought we could have a life together. It made no sense. I needed a girl with flaws, but with peaks too, and Cindy had just been… what the world expected of her. She’d liked me for being sweet and honest and kind of clever, but that was only ever just a starting point, wasn’t it? Why did it really fall apart? I asked myself. How am I a little bit off? What is my cutie mark? I stood there five minutes before calling the number. “Meg Dougherty,”said the little voice I remembered, not quite shy but very unassuming. “Hello—this is Ronald Pfeffer, from the trip to Murkowski Ranch. Remember me?” I heard a choked sound—a gasp? A snort? “I’d thought you weren’t calling. It’s been over two weeks!” Oh. Yeah, I’d said I would call, hadn’t I? I’d been thinking I might, but I’d done the dumb guy thing and said I would. “I’m sorry. I’ve had stuff on my mind and let it slip.” “Oh.” There was a lot of weight in that one word. “It was nice meeting you, though, and if you’d like to get together somewhere…” “I thought you were going to call me so your friend Peach Spark could introduce me to more ponies.” “Right, of course. Well, there’s this place in Lower Manhattan called Turtlewood Coffee… they have a lot of pony customers, and there’s a lunchtime meet-up most Thursdays. Peach can’t make it there without taking the day off work, but I’d be glad to go—I don’t work every Thursday, it changes around. That way it wouldn’t just be you and a bunch of strangers.” “Hm,” she said quietly, and then nothing. I waited. “Well, I’d have to get someone to cover for me. But I could do that. Would you want to pick me up, or meet me there?” Embarrassing. “We’d have to meet there. I don’t have a car, I take the subway.” “That’s fine,” said the small voice. “I haven’t had a car in over a year. I mean I have one, but it’s broken down. I never liked driving in the city.” “Do you… do you live nearby?” “Springfield.” That was near, yeah. “I’m in Elizabeth. I couldn’t do this Thursday, but next Thursday’s good.” “I don’t know,” she said. “I’d feel more comfortable if Peach could come.” Back when I’d gone out of my way to get Meg’s number, I’d been imagining that if things didn’t work out with Peach, here was a girl who might like me, who might go on a quiet little date with me and see how things grow from there. Now I wondered how I’d ever imagined pulling that off. “I can check with her,” I said, with a rising sense of wrongness and no intention of actually doing so. “That would be good, thanks. You can call me back when you find out.” I tried to disguise my sigh as an ordinary breath. “Yeah. Will do.” “All right. Thanks for calling.” I hesitated. “You’re welcome. Goodbye.” “Goodbye.” That had felt pitiful. I’d reached out to try and get myself in order, and now I needed someone to talk to more than ever. I could have gone online to see if Barrett was on. I could have done something productive—that new recipe I’d been considering, more job searching, even something like laundry. Instead, I ran a deep, hot bath for myself and settled in for way too long. I wouldn’t have minded falling asleep in the tub, if it had come to that. But then—knock knock. I hardly ever get visitors unannounced, but I recognized that knock as Peach’s anyway, just as I had the first time she visited. A surge of panic went through me. She was the one person I wanted most to avoid, but even as I had the thought, I softened and realized I couldn’t leave her standing out there. I got out of the tub—I was long since clean anyway—cracked the bathroom door and called, “Just a moment!” “It’s me!” called Peach. I wrapped a towel around myself and went to the door. “Gimme a minute,” I called. “I’m wearing a towel!” “I’m not wearing anything,” replied Peach through the door. “Am I underdressed?” “I’m just going to dry off and put some clothes on,” I told her. “Okay,” she replied. “Can you let me in first, though?” Um. She seemed to have missed the point. Still, I unlocked the door and cracked it open, and Peach came in. She looked fine, having had plenty of time to recover from our dinner outing the other day. Since my apartment was a studio, I didn’t have a bedroom to slip into, so I went to collect some clothes that I could change into in the bathroom. But Peach was watching me with interest. “Huh! So that’s how you look under the clothes.” I was equal parts mortified and titillated. “I’m just going to put something on…” She sat in the entrance hall. “You don’t have to. I kind of like this.” “Really?” I made sure to keep my towel tight with one hand while I pulled out a pair of pants with the other. “It’s funny. We’ve known each other over a month, and it’s only now I’m getting to see what you really look like.” Was that really how she felt? I suspected I was blushing. “Well, if I don’t get dressed, I’ll have to keep holding up my towel.” “You don’t have to!” suggested Peach. “I’m not wearing a towel.” “But you’re a pony,” I protested. “You don’t have to.” “I wonder if this is how Celestia felt with that Canadian girl.” “You mean Aislyn Wakefield?” A diplomat, famous for being the only human being Princess Celestia had ever seen naked. “Yeah, her! I like seeing how you move. Your back is pretty.” I held my bundle of clothes in my lap and sat on the edge of the couch. “No one’s ever told me that before.” “Well, maybe you don’t show it off enough.” This was awkward. “Look. Here on Earth, you don’t get to just see someone naked. Not unless you’re in a serious relationship with them.” “Oh. Yeah, I guess I suspected as much. Even so, aren’t we pretty much best friends?” Time to face the pain head-on. “The other night, at dinner, you got drunk.” “I’m sorry about that,” said Peach. “It was stronger than I expected.” “You said that George was your special somepony. Is that true?” Her ears went up and back, and she looked down. She didn’t say anything. “Right,” I said, heading into the bathroom. “I’m getting dressed.” It didn’t take long. I put on some simple clothes and came out, still a little wet. Peach was sitting on the rug in front of the sofa. “You’re still barefoot,” she said, looking up. “Well,” I shrugged. She watched my feet as I walked over and hurdled the arm of the sofa in order to sit down. “Know what I think about human feet?” I shrugged again. “They’re silly?” “They make you look kind of like dragons.” She looked up at my face. “Not what I expected to hear,” I admitted. I watched one ear swivel about. “The things about hooves is, they’re just as big as they need to be.” She lifted one of her own for a moment. “Minotaurs walk on two legs, but even they have hooves. But you… it’s like, when you walk, you’re claiming territory. This is mine, and this is mine.” She started stepping slowly around the sofa. I laughed. “That’s not the point of walking.” “But it feels like it to me, when I watch you! Dragons do the same thing—they clap their feet over the ground like they own it.” I put my feet flat on the floor. “It’s nice to see you happy about one of these discoveries for once, instead of upset.” “Why would I be upset? I like dragons. I mean, I’ve never met one, but… I’ve seen them now and then, and I like watching them.” “So tell me. If you like watching me so much, why am I not your special somebody?” Peach sighed. “You know, my parents would raise a fuss if they even knew I was dating an earth pony. I don’t want to think what they’d say if I told them I was dating a human.” I was a little shocked. Bigotry in Equestria? But then I remembered that unicorns were known for being snobbish sometimes, like the ones in Canterlot. “Is that it? You’re making relationship decisions based on what your parents would say?” Peach backed off a step. “No. No, I’m not. It’s just… that’s something that makes it uncomfortable for me.” “Is that why you’ve barely mentioned us in your blog?” She gave a wounded little nod. “Your parents would be upset that George is an earth pony?” “I think they’d like him if they got to know him. But where I come from, ‘earth pony’ makes unicorns think of big, dumb farmers, with dirty hooves and glassy eyes, who never do anything but work and sleep and eat…” “Wow. Racist much?” She winced, and I regretted saying it. “You really don’t think I have an open mind?” “No, you definitely do. I guess I was talking about your community. Couldn’t you just explain he’s not like that?” “Yeah. Sure. Maybe they’d believe me, but then it’s ‘What will the neighbors think?’ and ‘What will the children be?’ Layers on layers.” “Children? You want children?” “I don’t know! I’m just saying, that’s where the conversation will go, and that’s just the start of it. I can’t even imagine what they’d say if I told them I had a human boyfriend.” I thought my heart had already sunk on this account, but I could feel it sinking now. “So where does that leave us?” “I wish I knew.” We were both silent for a while, and then she added: “Are you mad at me?” “I don’t think so.” I leaned back, unfocused. “No,” I decided. There was another silence before Peach produced another question. “Do you love me?” Despite Noam bringing it up earlier, I hadn’t been expecting it. My mind went back to George’s blog post that morning, and how love meant a hundred different things and there couldn’t really be any single right answer to that question, or if there were, it would take years of research to find it. So I decided to just give the answer I wanted to give: “Yeah. I love you. I do.” “Really?” The pony before me climbed to her hooves, her eyes welling with hope. I leaned forward and stared into her face. “Of course,” I said quietly. “Of course you do,” she repeated. We stayed there, watching each other. ‘Tender’ is the word for this moment, I thought. Like a wound, or a piece of delicious chicken. Well, that was a dumb thought. I knew the way to trap her—it was to ask her if she loved me. But I couldn’t do that. I knew she wouldn’t want to answer. “I’m sorry,” said Peach Spark. I got down on my knees and hugged her. Lightly. My arms in her hair. My chin touched her face and I drew back. “You don’t need to be sorry,” I said. “Don’t be sorry.” “I can’t choose either of you,” she whispered. “I called George my special somepony because that’s what I wished he could be. And I wish you were my special someperson.” “Can’t I be? Even if you don’t tell anyone?” “I don’t think so.” She sat down again. “But you’re the one who knows the rules around here,” she added softly. “I liked playing magnets with you,” I confided. “It was a really special moment.” “I had to give that kit back to Second Sight, anyway,” she murmured. I let her go and sat back on the sofa. “You remember that girl from the ranch? The one who rode on you?” “Of course I remember her. She rode on me!” “I called her up. If I can’t date you, I figured maybe I could date her.” Peach’s expression looked mixed. “You’d probably be better off with another human being,” she conceded. “And what about you? What if it turns out you really like George—what if you love him? Do you stick with him, or keep looking for a unicorn stallion you like?” Peach closed her eyes and shook her head. I sighed. I stood up and walked around behind the couch. “I’ve been a mess all day.” “Because of me?” she asked. I shook my head. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t get worked up so easily.” In a tone that suggested sudden fear, Peach asked: “We’re still friends, right?” I was nodding before I’d fully processed the question. “Yeah. Of course! Of course.” “Then we’ll be all right, won’t we?” The question came from a simple place, and it suggested that Peach had a simple faith. I could respect that. I wished I had that particular faith myself. “I guess if there is such a thing as the power of friendship, we will be.” Peach smiled as if she’d been crying. “Did Meg say yes?” I took the unexpected question in stride. “She wants to meet more ponies. I told her about Turtlewood Coffee, and she wants you to come too. You’d have to take next Thursday off work, though. Do you want to come?” Peach’s laugh was a beautiful one. It was the kind of laugh you could imagine bursting a window made of frost, sailing over a city and echoing everywhere. “Yeah! I’ll definitely come. I went to one of those meet-ups and I keep wanting to go to another.” “Then it’s a date,” I declared. “Is it?” “Might as well be.” Peach flicked her ears. “For who?” I shrugged. She smiled and walked over to join me. And that was Tuesday.