Once in A Blue Moon
Prodigious Peddler, Sales Record 324
The wasteland is a hard place for ponies these days with Red Eye’s forces growing every day. I can’t make ends meet. Damn slavers. Doesn’t anypony trust an honest salespony these days? Tsh; Red Eye is such a bastard. He’s pushed us so far off our usual route, we’re forced to go through the Badlands. I’ve only got Domino for company. Pretty good pony to have around, if you don’t mind the smell. Not everypony likes ghouls, but he’s a good sort. For now...
He’s been acting strange ever since we entered this place. Picked him up near Tenpony. Insisted he come along. He’s been with me for a few months now. Used to be a jazz singer if you let him tell it... Not sure if he has the voice for it now, though...
“Where are we, Peddler?” scratched a voice from around the corner of the cart. Old instincts, forged from countless wanderings and just as many gunfights, forced his hoof to the holster across his flanks. It would have been a fine pistol in its prime.The sleek, battered, and scratched revolver handle had seen better days and many better caretakers. To this very day, Peddler still wasn’t sure if the white material screwed into the handle used to be ivory or simple marble. Two hundred years of travel and grime had made the distinction impossible.
Domino’s face peered around the edge of the cart carefully and gingerly, well aware of his companion’s twitchy tendencies concerning surprises. His disarming smile, disarming only because his few remaining teeth were visible behind where his cheeks used to be, was comforting. Also terrifying. His eyes had sunk into their sockets and looked like if he so much as rolled his eyes they would disappear forever. What were once brilliant blue eye were milky, and his equally blue mane and tail were little more than a scant few strands of hair attached to a dry, pale-gray coat.
Peddler sighed wearily and took his hoof off the gun. Domino’s eyes followed the movement but said nothing. It wasn’t the first time Peddler had almost pulled a piece on him, and he doubted it would be the last. “That’s Prodigious Peddler,” the earth pony drawled in an accent he could only describe as ‘Wastelandish.’ “It doesn’t work if you don’t say the whole thing. And y’know damn well where we are! Asking won’t get us out any faster, so zip whatever little lip you got.”
The ghoul scoffed contemptuously, releasing a wave of rancid air that almost made Peddler gag. “Aw, Pedals, don’t get mad about it.” Domino walked out of sight and Peddler rose to his own hooves. Domino had begun rooting in the rocky sand and dirt. Nothing was there other than even more sand and dirt, so it it was best to chalk it up to some strange ghoul thing. Or unicorn thing, not that it mattered; Domino’s horn was cracked off at the base, something Peddler didn’t know the story behind and knew to not ask about.
“Just askin’,” he continued to croak. “Can’t seem to keep focused. Everything looks... familiar... Are we going in circles?” Domino, upon finding the exact same nothing that was in every other single grain of sand in the Equestrian Wasteland, looked up across the wide, dead landscape.
“Everything looks the same, if that’s what you mean.” Everything always looked the same after the bombs fell, after war erupted and ended over the course of a few days. Great cities, now cancerous eyesores littered with rust, decay, and bones. Stout towns were lucky if there was a stone foundation or withered remains of the old wood housing frames. At least outside the Badlands there was the chance of finding some sort of decent landmarks or ruined housing from before everything went to hell. Something. In the Badlands, that special something that separated the unofficial districts apart from each other was a great big helping of nothing. Little more than a vast spread of sparse scrublands and rocky plateaus defined the expanse.
“We’re lucky the damn cloud cover isn’t as thick out here. I can... kinda,” Peddler added, believing the words no more than Domino did, “see where the sun is. If we just keep headin’ that way, we oughta be fine. And don’t call me Pedals! Yer dead, and I can bury you too if you want.”
“Fine, Prodigious Peddler,” the ghoul grunted irritably. He waited until Peddler strapped himself into the cart’s harness, their momentary reprieve from a morning’s walk now over. “I’ll just be quiet then.”
Peddler’s cart jangled and clanked with a cacophony of loose parts and unoiled hinges. Having retrieved the old thing after its original raider owner died suddenly and left it ownerless, Peddler had repurposed it into his mobile trading post. Iron and steel equipment, pots, pans, a broken toaster, some baubles and miscellaneous salvage from one of a thousand abandoned homes scorched to ruins, and likely a far bit of just plain junk shuffled against each other in a rather noisy advertisement of wares. One of the downsides of a peddler was the need to carry trade goods, and those goods always made ponies look like mighty fine targets.
True to his word, Domino was silent, quietly keeping pace with Peddler as he hauled his wagon across the bumpy ground. The great iron wheels were wonderful at steamrolling their way across any obstacle, but had a terrible tendency to be useless in sandier environments due to a lack of traction. That made traversing around the occasional Badlands dunes an easy but relatively time-consuming task. The Badland winds were notoriously vicious as well. A sudden burst of wind as the pair crested a hill made Peddler scramble for his cloth Stetson before it vanished into the sands. The oilskin duster took much out of the wind’s bite, but Domino wasn’t blessed with better fortune. He always prefered to travel with nothing more than a hat to shield whatever was left in his head. Bits of sand were gathering in his jaws and a few open wounds across his barrel and flanks, but he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.
In fact, whatever was on his mind still nagged at him. Peddler had to repeatedly see Domino stop and start as he would suddenly become immobilized as he stared out into the vast nothingness.
“Um... Can we... Can we put on my old record?” Out of nowhere his gravely voice came as he cantered to catch up for the fourth or fifth time. Normally Domino’s voice carried well, but was now soft enough for the wind to carry it off.
“I thought yous bein’ quiet?”
The ghoul seemed taken aback, which surprised the peddler. It wasn’t the jab to keep quiet; it seemed like Domino was surprised he made the request himself. “I just want to hear it. Please?”
Peddler couldn’t help but sigh. “Fine.” He didn’t blame him. He really didn’t. As vast and endless as the Wasteland was, as grand and inescapable as the endless clouds and the even more endless desert, the sense of loneliness dominated it all like a titanic monolith. It was hard to shake, even after so long moving from town to town, settlement to settlement. The world was so big... and so very empty. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he had grown fond of the ghoul’s company. The loneliness was a monster as great as any crazed manticore.
Without another lick of an argument, Peddler detached himself from the harness with practiced ease. Rearing on his hind hooves, he balanced a rickety device on some chipped plates and a couple old books. The record was still on the phonograph, so all it took was resetting the needle before soothing saxophone jazz poured from the horn.
♫~Blue moon, you saw me standing alone~♪
We found an old phonograph a while back. Poor ghoul’s been obsessed with the damn thing. Still, keeps him quiet at least. He calls it “his” record. Whether that’s true or he’s trying to impress me, I don’t know. And for that matter, I really don’t fuckin’ care.
Peddler had to admit, there was worse music out in the wasteland. It was certainly better than listening to the same damn music those spritebots kept playing at every opportunity. If March of the Parasprites didn’t somehow manage to haunt his dreams or play during a shootout, he considered the day a success.
“Mhm mm mmm hm mm hmmmm...”
“No hummin’; ya hear?”
“Sorry...” There it was again. Domino seemed completely off guard at something relatively insignificant. He had closed his eyes as he begun to hum, his head bobbing to the slow, melodic tempo and soothing baritone. “Peda—”
“Yes?”
“Sorry. Prodigious Peddler. Remember that time in Argo?”
“Yeah.”
“How you hid under the tarps so those cannibals wouldn’t eat ya?” The tongue visible in his gullet flapped to and fro as he talked. It really was kinda disgusting.
A bark of laughter crossed the Badlands before being swallowed by the howls of nature. “I had to drop anchor and leave the cart afterwards. Hide in some old houses for the next day after that. Yeah, I remember. What you goin’ on about?”
Domino shook his head slowly. “Nothing, nothing... Just remembering is all.” He wheezed, expelling a fly and some dry dust. It quickly became a chuckle Peddler followed with his own. “You let me drive the cart after we thought we lost ‘em. Chased us across the next five miles before we finally shook them off our tail. They didn’t like ghouls that much.”
Good times. It was almost strange, looking upon a memory that involved such life and death with tender fondness.
“This place looks so... familiar...”
His clanking footsteps, the remnants of the horseshoes that had fused into his hooves due to the extreme heat and necromantic radiation from the balefire bombs, had stopped again. Peddler stopped the cart. Domino always seemed to be a bit of a dreamer, but this was something else entirely.
“Domino, you alright?”
♫~I heard somebody whisper please adore me, and when I looked the moon had turned to gold~♪
Peddler could only watch as Domino shook his head and a hanging chunk of his ear flapped and separated from his head with a disgusting noise. “Yeah, yeah... I’m fine. Just give me a second.”
With a swiftness that surprised Peddler, the ghoul galloped off down a small embankment and out of sight. Domino was well aware of how fragile his body could be, even if he forgot at times. Running into trouble was never a smart thing, ghoul or otherwise.
Keeping an eye and an ear open and on his flanks, Peddler worked the harness and tore it off. On occasion he’d practice taking it on and off in a jiffy for the rare occasion when doing so would mean the difference between life and death.
“Hey, where you goin’? Don’t run off like that!”
Domino hadn’t gone far. The embankment had led to the base of a rocky outcropping, the rocky formation looming over the pair like a wave frozen in time. Twigs were gathered in a few places in what once might have been avian homes in days long passed. Scorpions skittered away while a few bared their pincers and tails in challenge at being interrupted.
“Las’ thing I need is a bullet in mah ass, Domino. Right now I’m lookin’ at offering one with your name on it.” Peddler halted at his companion’s side. The ghoul was looking at some fallen rocks propped against the tall outcropping—no. Not rocks. They were so desolated they may have looked like it, but it couldn’t be. Domino walked up and placed a hoof against a thin piece of wood on a flat wood platform. It was dry and gnarled, sand-encrusted firewood after having spent ages in nothing but desert. Looking around, Peddler spotted other bits of wood shielded in the cliffside shadows. The rocks must have shielded them against the vicious winds that tossed his own duster about. Over time, the vicious winds stripped everything down. Wood decayed, metal crumbled. Even bones were lost to the sands.
“I remember this place. There,” Domino pointed into the barrens and Peddler rolled his eyes. That didn’t exactly narrow down where he was pointing. “That was some burger joint. And next to that was a cheap motel. Daisy’d get a lot of strange customers there, lot of drifters coming through. But this...” Domino brought his hoof back to the leaning wood frame. The touch was enough to make it snap and clatter, scattering a few scorpions and a lizard. The wind seemed much louder now that it had something to rub against, and it drowned out the record.
He looked down upon the fractured frame. Emotion clung to his dessicated face. “This was a club. I’m sure of it. I... I recorded my record here.”
“Domino, this is the same barren nothing we’ve seen countless times. It’s the Barrens. Hell, some of those houses we was talkin’ about just now were in better shape. Nothin’ here, and nothin’ worth taking. Let’s get.”
“No,” he replied with conviction. Domino never stuck up for anything. “I was here. With the boys. You remember the boys? We was famous, you know.” Domino chuckled once more. A scorpion took the initiative and sunk its stinger into his hoof only to get it stuck in the hard keratin. The ghoul didn’t even mind. “We got customers all night, even if we weren’t on stage. Mostly they’d make special requests, usually that gal Sweetie’s old singles. Still, we loved it, every moment. The smoke, the cigars, the music, the fillies...”
“I remember now. Not strangers. Soldiers. They booked the place and half of everythin’ in town. Made Daisy at the motel mighty happy. Wasn’t a big town, but it was a big show. They loved getting a bit of home after... after...” Domino trailed off, something he was doing with more and more frequency since they entered the Badlands. Cautiously, Peddler took a half-step back.
“They weren’t supposed to be there, you know. The soldiers.” The wind quieted down just enough to catch a few more lyrics to grace their ears and the ghoul that loved them with so much tender care. Whatever objections Peddler had of the situation—the interruption, Domino running, his constant fussing—dimmed. The red desert skies cast a glow about the place as the sun struggled to cast its warm rays through the pegasi-created cloud cover that enveloped the globe. Even though it interrupted a normally very strict schedule, Peddler... stopped, listened to something that was important.
Domino rasped for a few moments before continuing. He had closed his eyes again. Well, one eye. The other was missing a lid. “Them ponies had come back from something Somewhere. They wanted some music, and we gave it to them. Damn. Daaaaamn...” Rather than curse, he praised what deluded memory his rotten brain had given him. The appreciation was thick in his tone.
“...You sure you’re alright?”
Domino nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah... She was there, too. Spades.” He looked up and lifted a foreleg. It jangled back and forth to the beat of the record, dancing on a stage that had fractured and collapsed centuries ago. “That was my girl. What a day it was.”
“Your filly, huh?” A good, stable romance in the wasteland was a treasure as valuable as fresh water or a trusty gun, something you knew would always be there when it was needed. Rampant pillaging, murdering, raping, and looting, especially in raider territory like the remains of Ponyville, had enforced a paranoia of outsiders and fresh faces. To be able to trust someone implicitly, to have a mate to love and be loved by to stave off loneliness...
“Spades...” interrupted Domino fondly, snapping Peddler out of his thoughts.
“Domino,” he warned. There was daydreaming, and there was something worse. Domnio had reached towards the wooden platform, desperation and passion in his voice. There wasn’t much separating a ghoul from a murderous zombie, and that difference could vanish in the blink of an eye.
The warning joted Domino out of the funk he was in. “Are you a waiter?” Or so he had thought. “A martini, please. This one tastes funny. And get me a round of bourbon for my friends here.”
“Domino!” Peddler shouted, taking another step back. Don’t you be losing yourself on me just yet, ya silly ghoul, Peddler thought.
Domino blinked ruefully, his eyes trying and failing to get the hat-wearing pony in focus. “Sorry Peda—, uh, I’m sorry. You don’t like it when I call you Pedals. Sorry, must have drifted off there for a moment.”
“Nah, i-i-it’s fine. Come now, Domino. We should be goin’.” It certainly wasn’t fine, but anything to get Domino moving. Peddler nudged his head towards the hill they just descended, urging him back to the cart and his record.
♫~And then there suddenly appeared before me the only one my arms will ever hold~♪
Domino shook off the scorpion and followed Peddler upwards. The arachnid strafed the pair and hurried away to the dark shadowy rock.
“There was a sound before it came. Sounded like whistlin’.”
“Oh goddamnit Domino, let’s just hook the cart back up and listen to your record. I’ll even restart it if you want.”
Domino was slipping back into that place close to sleep, a place Peddler had been to many times. That place where he’d wake up, and yet still not know if he was awake or still in the land of sleep. When memory and dreams blended together and it became too hard to tell them both apart.
“Whistin’... Don’t rightly know how we heard it over the racket. My record was playing, and Spades was on the stage. Too much noise. Shouldn’t have heard it, but we did. We didn’t care. Damn good cider...”
“Come off it, Domino.” Peddler broke his one rule just then: never touch anypony without asking. As dull and boring as the Wasteland could be, ponies, griffons, mutants, and the very rare zebra were all still them deep down inside. One touch could bring a thousand suppressed memories and high tensions to the surface in an explosion that could leave a broken beer bottle lodged in some poor pony’s throat.
Still, Domino was lost in his own thoughts and memories that plagued every ghoul’s mind. Ghouls didn’t age, but the magic that reanimated their body always did... strange things. Domino never trusted magic on principle.
“The alarms came next. Maybe that’s why we all heard it. Yeah... everypony shut up after that. My record was still playing, though.”
“Didn’t think they’d do it!” The burst of anger forced Peddler back a few steps. He flung his duster over his holster, clearing it of any obstruction. Domino wasn’t angry at him; he was still lost in the past. “The bastards... I didn’t think they’d do it! What pony did!? The whole world’s gone to hell, and for what!”
Peddler took another step back, for Domino took one forward. “Got a hold of yourself! The quiet’s just gettin’ to you. We’ll be out of the Badlands soon.”
The ghoul did not see reason. He shook his head angrily, now focused entirely on the trader. “The whole world’s gone to hell!” He took another step, his single cheek pulling back to bare his teeth as if he still had all the flesh around his muzzle. “Hell...” Step. “To HELL!” Step.
Domino growled, a faint trail of spittle dripping from a single, desiccated lip. “It’s your fault, isn’t it...?” Domino slung low, hunched in a stance ready to spring. “Why did you do it! I saved up for so long just to get a place for us! I had... I had gotten ready for that night... Give her back, give her back!” Domino launched.
Bang!
The shot echoed across the wastes, and in a single moment, the wind had ceased. The gusts that had tossed his coat and threatened to whisk away his treasured hat into the Badlands were cut by a single shot.
Domino was lying on his side, powderburns on his chest around a wound leaking black ichor. He gasped, his breath rattling uneasily as rotten fluid flooded his lungs. His legs twitched weakly and drew lines in the sands. The acrid scent of death and iron flooded the air.
“Spades...” he hissed. He voice was tender once more. He coughed, blackened blood splattering the ground. He tried to get up and only succeeded to fall back on his side with a pained thud. His head was cradled against Peddler’s hooves. Looking up, he saw the trader’s face.
“Oh... hi, Pedals.”
It would have been a mortal blow to any pony, but Domino was already dead. Just not buried. Domino had stuck around for so long, far longer than most.
“...Hi, Domino...”
♫~Blue moon, now I’m no longer alone~♪
Domino shuddered as fluid poured into his throat and caused another round of coughing. “I’m... sorry... I know you don’t like it when I... call you...”
Peddler opened his mouth to speak, his voice catching momentarily. “I-it’s okay Domino. I-I really don’t mind.”
♫~Without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own~♪
Prodigious Peddler, Sales Record 325
Traveling alone in the Badlands...
Damn...
Our lovely musical number for this chapter happened to have been sung by the master of swanky, swingin’ jazz, Frank Sinatra, and his rendition of Blue Moon.
Tales of a Junktown Pony Peddler was written by Squeak and produced by the Pony in a Box Productions team.
Fallout: Equestria was written and produced by Kkat.
This has been a literary reproduction of Tales of a Junktown Pony Peddler by Journeyman You can find him on Fimfiction and Tumblr, and please visit this link here for the commentary concerning this chapter.
Let’s not forget those editors who helped put this fanfiction together. Give a round of applause to: Softy8088