Potato salad. Tarnished Teapot peered into the bowl sitting on the table. He liked potato salad. Now he understood why his mother had been peeling potatoes earlier. The potato salad had a lovely yellow colour, which meant it had mustard. There were big cubes of pickles in there. Black olives. Pimentos. He looked up from the bowl to see Cloudy staring at him.
“Don’t you dare,” Cloudy said in a low voice. “Stay out of there. We’ll be eating soon.”
“Where is my mother?” Tarnish asked.
“Off with Maud, Marble, and Limestone,” Cloudy replied. Her eyebrows furrowed as she gave Tarnish a wary glare. “Did you have a nice nap?”
Something about his mother spending time with the Pie sisters worried Tarnish a great deal. Fear prickled along the back of his neck. “I had a nice nap.”
“A fun bit of trivia. Pie shells used to be called coffins a long time ago. Well, pies that were sealed off and had top crusts. Open pies were called traps. A long, long time ago, this family was called the Coffin family,” Cloudy said to Tarnish as she watched him back away from the potato salad.
Looking at Cloudy, Tarnish tilted his head, wondering what was the point to what she had said, curious if he had done something that deserved him being stuffed into a coffin. “What brought this up?”
“Family history.” Cloudy’s stern face melted into a soft smile. “You’re one of us now. You should know these things.” Cloudy cleared her throat. “The oldest spelling of our name was Coffyns, spelled C-O-F-F-Y-N-S. In time, it modernised into Coffins, with an I. Some of our family took the name Pye… P-Y-E… others took on the name that we have now, Pie. Our family goes back before the founding of Equestria, we’re as old as the Apples.”
Cloudy began to step around the table, walking towards Tarnish, peering through her glasses at the colt. “There have been very few unicorns in the Pie family. I want you to know, we are proud to have you.”
“Thank you,” Tarnish replied, feeling flustered and not knowing what to say.
“Your mother is very, very happy that you have joined a family with a sense of history. It was something that she wasn’t able to give you… but we most certainly can. Now we can have little teapots to go along with our pies… and this makes me happy,” Cloudy said as she looked Tarnish in the eye.
Tarnish, not the smartest colt in the world, but far from stupid, could not help but feel that Cloudy was after something. There was something she wanted. Tarnish’s eyes narrowed and he thought about Cloudy’s words… Now we can have little teapots to go along with our pies. Little teapots indeed. Tarnish’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows lifted.
“No need to hurry,” Cloudy said to Tarnish as she watched him processing everything being said. She knew what he was thinking. “Take your time and just spend some time being happy with Maud. Just try not to keep me waiting for too long, okay?”
The sky was overcast, dark, and full of gathering clouds. There were no pegasi in sight. Staring upwards, Tarnished Teapot watched the natural storm as it brewed, gaining strength. No doubt, the unstable magic of the nearby nexus contributed to this storm’s development.
Tall black thunderheads swirled, supercells, there was a name for them but Tarnish could not remember what it was. He had learned it in school, but had long since forgotten it, and he had dropped out of secondary school. Something he now regretted.
Without warning, lightning ripped open the sky, there was a piercing flash of eerie blue light, and then, a second later, there was an almost deafening clap of thunder that made Tarnish’s ears ring in a painful manner.
The storm was growing in intensity. In the distance, there was a glow, a fierce purple-blue light. Curious, Tarnish left the back porch and began heading off into the field towards the glow, heading to where he knew there was a minor nexus on the Pie farm.
The stack of rocks over the ley line intersection was glowing. Tarnish approached, overcome with curiousity. He could see dust devils racing around the field, little gyres of wind that swirled with dust and debris. Tarnish could feel every hair on his body standing out, filled with electrical current. It tickled.
Looking down at his amulet, Tarnish noticed that it was flashing, going from blue to faint purple. Something was happening, something that he could not calm, and he felt thrilled to be observing it.
Going cross eyed, Tarnish looked up to see that his own horn was glowing with a piercing blue light that was growing brighter by the second. He felt a peculiar feeling as his own magic flowed through him, acting on reflex. He had no control, his magic had a mind of its own. The pile of rocks vibrated and Tarnish could feel the vibration in his horn, in his bones, his whole body buzzed.
Something in his ears popped and Tarnish felt the pressure inside of his head easing off. Looking down, he could see that his amulet was blue now, he didn’t know what was going on, but it seemed that his magic was compensating.
Tarnished Teapot suspected that he was behaving in very much the same way as poison joke, absorbing and filtering harmful or otherwise dangerous magic. He felt most peculiar. Blue sparks flew from his horn now, arcing and crackling.
Beneath his hooves, the ground appeared to be freezing. Something shiny and reflective grew around him. Staring down, Tarnish saw that it wasn’t ice at all; it was a growing sheet of glass or crystal, thin, and full of cracks.
There was a flash of light, it was blinding, and a rush of immense heat. With it was a thunderclap that Tarnish heard between his ears. Now blind and deaf, seeing only blue in his vision while hearing a muted roaring in his ears, Tarnish could not see that lightning had just struck the pile of stones a few feet away from him.
Stumbling around, stunned, his ears now aching, Tarnish had no idea what was going on. Dazed, the feeling of his own magic was almost orgasmic now. Blind, deaf, Tarnish had no idea what was going on, or what the immediate area around him was doing.
Tarnish felt two legs wrap around his body, squeeze his barrel, and then he was lifted, carried off. He couldn’t see, but he knew who had him. He squirmed, not wanting to leave, wanting to be inside the swirling magic vortex, feeling a strange need, a compulsion.
Tarnish was tossed down into a chair like a sack of potatoes, landing with a heavy thump. He blinked, still unable to see. He couldn’t hear anything but a buzzing sound. Even with his somewhat distressing condition, he felt very much alive.
“Foolish colt, what was going through your mind?” Cloudy demanded.
“Mom, I don’t think he can hear you,” Maud said as she waved her hoof in front of Tarnish’s eyes. “I also don’t think Tarnish was in control of himself. When the lightning struck the rock pile, he didn’t even flinch or jump.”
“WHAT HAPPENED?” Tarnish asked in what he thought was a whisper.
“His ears are bleeding, somepony fetch me a clean cloth soaked in hot water,” Cloudy said. She watched as Pinny bounded off to the sink, pulled open the drawer beside the sink, pulled out a clean towel, and then began to soak it under the faucet.
“He was glowing blue,” Maud said to her mother. “I wonder what was happening.”
“I FEEL GREAT!” Tarnish said, whispering again.
Cloudy rolled her eyes. “I hope Igneous will be okay. He’s still out getting the bed.”
Pinny began scrubbing the blood away from Tarnish’s ears, her face pinched with worry. “What was he thinking? I mean, he was just standing there… not doing anything to take cover. What was going through his mind?”
“THE GROUND ALL AROUND ME WAS TURNING TO GLASS!” Tarnish said in what he thought was a low voice. “EVERYTHING FELT AMAZING!”
“I suspect that Igneous might be delayed getting home.” Cloudy, standing near Tarnish, looked at the table loaded down with food, looked at Tarnish, and then looked at everypony else in her kitchen. “Tarnish seems to be mostly okay. I wonder if we should sit down and eat.”
“I wonder if Tarnish is drawn to bad magic like a bug to a bug zapper,” Limestone said as she waved her hoof in front of Tarnish’s wide, staring, sightless eyes. “I think he’s okay… I don’t think it was the magic that did this to him. Call it a hunch. But that bolt of lightning got his eyes and his ears.”
“EVERYTHING IS BLUE!” Tarnish said, still whispering.
“Let’s have our meal. Maud, you might have to help feed Tarnish,” Cloudy said.