Hobbling around on three legs, Tarnish watched as Maud sniffed a rock. He stopped hobbling around, sat down, and continued watching as Maud sniffed, prodded the rock with her hoof, flipped it over, and sniffed again. Up to this point in his life, Tarnished Teapot was unaware that rocks even had a smell.
There was a dull throb in his leg that he ignored. Maud had made plaster somehow. He wasn’t certain how she had managed to do it. But the mare had made plaster from some rocks she had found. He had no idea how she had done it, he had woken up in the back of the wagon with Maud holding a bowl of somewhat sparkly powder that she had said was plaster. She had removed his splint and then had made a cast out of another roll of bandages and the plaster she had made.
The air was much cooler now, and the rich smell of moist earth was a welcome smell. Tarnish watched as Maud moved around the campsite, stopping to look at rocks.
“You keep looking at me,” Maud said, her words coming out as slow as molasses. “Why?”
“I’m trying to figure you out,” Tarnish replied, being honest.
“Most ponies look at me for a while, get confused by me just being myself, and then they turn away so they can pretend that I don’t exist. They don’t get me and don’t wish to acknowledge me. But you… you haven’t stopped watching me. Should I feel flattered?” Maud’s eyes narrowed somewhat and one ear twitched as the breeze hit it.
“You are the weirdest, most interesting pony I’ve ever met,” Tarnish blurted out, knowing that honesty was the best policy. “You sniff rocks and your poetry… your poetry is the most unique thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve never really been interested in poetry before.”
Maud’s stony expression remained unchanged. She stared at Tarnished Teapot for a moment, saying nothing, and then she turned away, walking away in a slow, steady gait. She picked up a bucket in her teeth and headed in the direction of the creek.
Tarnish wondered if he had said the wrong thing as he watched Maud go.
Maud was quiet. Too quiet. Even by her standards. She pulled the wagon in silence, and Tarnish felt a fretful sense of worry, he wondered if perhaps he had said something to offend her. She wasn’t even stopping to look at rocks, and there were rocks everywhere. Big rocks. Little rocks.
Tarnish wished that Maud would say something. Anything. This was torture. He was certain that he had offended her somehow, and he sat in silence, not knowing what to say or do as the chasm of silence grew wider and wider. The sound of the grass growing was deafening compared to the silence that blared off of Maud.
Contemplating his own stupidity, Tarnish thought about his time in Dodge City Junction. Longhaul had warned him that it was a bad place that was full of bad ponies. Tarnish had made a little bit of money, and, as he reflected upon it, had gone looking for a good time. The city had chewed him up and spit him out. He had purchased alchemically laced salts. He had drank whiskey. He had watched a bawdy musical show. He had gone to bed with a painted mare, a painted mare that had been another pony’s wife, and she had robbed him blind. A day’s pay had been his undoing.
He resolved not to make those mistakes again. He thought about his mother and wondered what she might say about the whole thing. He felt anger stirring in his heart as he thought about it, his mother… she couldn’t or wouldn’t say who his father was. She spent her life in bowling alleys and came home late at night smelling of cheap beer and cheaper coffee if she came home at all. She had given him a spare key for the front door one day and had told him not to burn the place down.
Tarnished Teapot wondered if the fact that the place had in fact, burned down was actual irony. Well, not all of it had burned down, just most of it, along with about half of Ponyville in one spectacular conflagration.
“OH MY GOSH! I CAN’T TAKE IT! IF I SAID SOMETHING THAT HURT YOU I’M SO SORRY!” Tarnish cried out.
“Took you long enough,” Maud replied.
“What?” Tarnish felt the corner of his eye twitching as the wagon rocked back and forth.
“I said, ‘Took you long enough.’ I wanted to see if you would talk to me if you thought you did something wrong,” Maud explained.
Feeling just awful, Tarnish’s words came out as a whimper. “Why would you do this to me?”
“Because. I had to know,” Maud replied.
“Know what?” Tarnish asked, his voice a sad, pathetic squeak.
“If you were interested in me or I was just a way to pass the time.” Maud turned her head around and looked at Tarnish, who was sitting in the wagon. “If I was just a way to pass the time, you wouldn’t be so worked up and worried about having hurt my feelings. You feel guilty, and you’ve been worrying this whole time that you hurt me.”
Tarnish’s mouth hung open.
“You were actually worried about my feelings. Huh.” Maud turned her head back around and looked ahead as she made her way down the road. “Close your mouth. You might eat a bug. If you ate a bug, I might have to make my first poem about something that wasn’t a rock.”
“You… you… you…” Tarnish said, stammering as he attempted to speak.
“Nopony has ever been interested in me before,” Maud said. “But lots of ponies have watched me to ridicule me. You’ve been staring at me nonstop. You have been watching everything I do. You’ve been nice, but a lot of ponies have been nice to me and then made fun of me when they had the chance. Or they carelessly say something about how I am and give no thought to my feelings or how their careless words might make me feel. Just because I don’t look like I react doesn’t mean I don’t react. I just have trouble showing my feelings… my enthusiasm, my anger, my amusement, my everything, it has trouble showing so ponies think I don’t have feelings. You… you thought about my feelings. You never made the assumption that I don’t have feelings. Even Pinkie Pie’s friends were careless with some of the things they said.” Maud paused and was silent for a few minutes as she walked. Then, she cleared her throat and said, “Thank you.”
Staring at Maud, Tarnished Teapot struggled to think of something to say, some means of acknowledging her, something witty, something clever, something meaningful in response. He opened his mouth, drew in a deep breath as he prepared himself to say something, and sucked in a beetle that happened to be flying past. He coughed, started choking, and felt the wagon come to a stop.