Carrot Top awoke with a start. Lying stock-still under the covers of her bed, she didn’t so much as move a muscle, her breath caught in her chest. For a split second, she prayed she was just imagining things, or maybe waking from a particularly vivid nightmare. A moment’s concentration, however, confirmed that this was more than her imagination. There was no mistaking it: someone – or something – was downstairs.
Her heart thumped in her chest faster than a train’s pistons going full-speed, and she almost started hyperventilating. However, despite her initial bout of panic, Carrot quickly got a grip of herself. She was still scared out of her wits, but she wasn’t about to just stay in bed and do nothing while some stranger ransacked her place; her mom and pop hadn’t raised no pushover, after all. Trying her best not to make a sound, Carrot slowly crept out from beneath her covers and lowered herself to the floor. Rummaging beneath her bed, she emerged with a wooden bat which she kept for just this sort of situation.
OK, mister burglar, let’s see how you like this.
Tiptoeing out of her room, Carrot carefully inched her way down the stairs one step at a time. She’d worried about something like this happening for a while now, the way things had been around town lately. Now that it was happening, though, it still didn’t seem real. How could this happen to her, of all ponies? She wasn’t very wealthy, and she certainly didn’t do anything to flaunt the little money she did have. Then again, maybe whoever was burgling her figured that some no-name earth pony who lived by herself in a rented cottage was a lot easier of a target than some of the wealthier ponies in town.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Carrot scanned the living room, eyes peeled for any sign of trouble. Even in the darkness she could tell that, oddly enough, there were no signs of a break-in. The front door was shut, and none of her windows had been broken either.
Weird… maybe he came in the back.
Carrot almost jumped with fright when a noise came from down the hall, and realized that the intruder was in her kitchen. She wondered if perhaps it was some homeless pony just looking for a meal, but she knew that even if it was, that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t dangerous. Taking a deep breath, Carrot crept as stealthily as she could. When she came to the kitchen, she could just make out in the dark a figure rummaging through her icebox. Flipping the kitchen light switch, Carrot raised herself on her hind legs, both forehooves gripped tightly around the bat, ready for anything. At least, so she thought.
“Alright buster, don’t do anything stupid now, just turn around nice and easy– wait, Derpy?” she stammered in disbelief upon spotting an all-too familiar cutie mark. Turning around to greet her, Derpy gave her a friendly wave.
“Hey Carrot, long time no see!” she said. Carrot just stared back at her, her mouth hanging open wider than a dragon’s gaping maw. The pegasus before her was filthy, covered in all sorts of dirt and muck, and on top of that was wearing some kind of strange black armor Carrot had never seen before, but it was Derpy all the same. Derpy, her old friend and housemate. Derpy, who’d disappeared more than a year ago without a trace. That Derpy, the one and only Derpy Hooves, was now standing here in her kitchen munching on some bread and cheese like she’d never even left.
“Uh Carrot, you don’t look so good,” Derpy remarked. “You wanna maybe sit down? I could fix you a snack, if you want. This cheese you got here’s pretty good, what is it?”
Carrot just remained perfectly still, eyes wide as melons and the same jaw-dropping expression fixed on her face, but finally managed to mouth, “It’s… Baltimare blue.” It was at that moment that she keeled over.
“Oh horsefeathers,” Derpy uttered.
Carrot Top’s face scrunched up as she felt something cold and wet on her forehead. Coming to, she opened her eyes to find two yellow irises directly overhead staring right back at her. She was still trying to recall what she was doing on the floor of her kitchen when a voice spoke up.
“Hey. Uh… sorry about that. Guess I should’ve known this would come as a shock to you, seeing me again and all. You OK?”
“Yeah, I’m alright,” she said automatically. She still felt pretty lightheaded, so she gave herself a moment to get her bearings before trying to get up. Rubbing her temple, Carrot felt a damp cloth placed there, evidently the source of the wet sensation she’d felt before.
That was awfully nice of Derpy to get that for me. Wait… ohhhhh, right, that’s how I got on the floor.
Looking her in the eye, Carrot’s eyes widened once more and she took a sharp breath. When she started inhaling and exhaling rapidly, Derpy realized Carrot was on the verge of panicking once more, though this time she might be a little louder about it if she didn’t do something fast to prevent that. Thinking fast, she backed up a bit to give Carrot some space and hopefully put her mind at ease a little.
“OK, you’ve got questions. Lots of questions I imagine, but hey, I don’t blame you one bit, I’d be the exact same way I’m sure if I were you. Before we do anything else, I just need you to calm down and listen, hear me out. Can you do that?” Carrot’s breathing seemed to slow down a touch, and she gave a quick nod. For now, that was good enough for Derpy. “Alright, awesome. That wasn’t so hard. Now, I’m gonna answer whatever questions you need to ask to put your mind at ease, OK? So fire away, I ain’t gonna hide anything, not from you. You’re my friend Carrot, and the first pony in town I’ve seen since I got back, so I owe you that much.”
For a while, neither said a word, but just stayed where they were staring at one another. Derpy was trying her best to appear relaxed and at ease, as unthreatening as possible, but she knew given her present garb and travel-worn appearance that that was no easy task. Carrot was still eyeing her with a watchful expression when she suddenly beckoned her over with a wave of her hoof. Hoping that was a good sign, Derpy gingerly approached.
When she was close enough, the still-wary Carrot raised a tentative forehoof toward her, carefully prodding it into one of Derpy’s cheeks as though she were examining a piece of fruit to see how ripe it felt. At first Derpy recoiled slightly at the unexpected motion, but swiftly relaxed and let Carrot carry on if it meant gaining her trust. Carrot continued to explore her features, running her hoof over Derpy’s face and through her disheveled mane, and slowly but surely appeared to calm down.
“So… you- you’re real? I’m not just imagining all this?” she asked, her voice still a tad shaky.
“Yep, real as you are,” Derpy affirmed, grinning. Carrot smiled slightly in return, but a moment later that smile was replaced with a frown.
“Could you, uh… could you maybe go over there?” she requested, pointing to the kitchen table. Derpy nodded, unsure where Carrot was going with this, but not wanting to lose what little trust she’d managed to regain. Trotting over, she pulled out a chair and took a seat, glad to give her aching hooves a rest.
Carrot herself finally managed to get up from the floor and, though still looking somewhat discomfited, seemed to be holding steady for the most part. She did not, however, take a seat, and Derpy also noticed that she seemed poised as though ready to bolt any second now. Fixing her eyes on the floor, Carrot bit her lower lip, clearly troubled about something. With each passing minute she only seemed to struggle even more with finding the right words to say, but finally broke the awkward stillness that’d risen like a wall between the two.
“So… this is going to sound weird, but… you’re ‘you,’ right? I mean, really you?” Derpy blinked, unsure how to respond to that, or what exactly Carrot was expecting her to say in response.
“Uhhh… yeah, I’m me. Pretty sure I am, at least,” she replied, chuckling. Carrot, however, wasn’t laughing, and stared hard at Derpy, clearly unsatisfied with that answer. “Sorry Carrot, I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not even really sure what you’re getting at.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t, but… horse apples, it’s not like I can just come out and say it!” For another moment that seemed to drag on far longer than it did, Carrot searched and searched for something, anything else she could say. Finally, however, it became clear that there was only one thing left to say, and unfortunately it was the last thing she wanted to ask. Pinning her ears and swishing her tail in agitation, Carrot took a gulp of air to calm her nerves before churning ahead. “Oh buck it, guess there’s no beating around the bush, is there? Fine, I’ll be blunt: are you a changeling?”
Derpy almost fell out of her seat at that. “What? No, of course not!”
“Well you wouldn’t exactly tell me if you were a changeling, now, would you!” her friend retorted.
“Come on Carrot, you can’t possibly think I’m a changeling. How could you even think that?”
“How could I not?!” Carrot shot back, her voice still shaky but considerably steadier than it had been before. “I mean, think about it; you’ve been missing for over a year, nopony’s had the faintest idea where you’ve been, and now you show up out of the blue (in the middle of the night, no less) as though it were nothing, looking half-dead and wearing Celestia only knows what! So come on… you, whoever you are, help me out here; if you’re really who you say you are, give me a reason to take you at your word. Otherwise… well, I’ll just assume the worst.”
Derpy rubbed her temple, tired and irked, but she couldn’t really blame Carrot for her suspicions after hearing her reasoning behind them. She figured ponies would have noticed she was missing, but she hadn’t considered until now that anypony might be wary of her showing back up. The more she thought about it, though, the more it made sense; she hadn’t been around town long after the changeling attack in Canterlot the previous year, but from what she remembered before she’d left, everypony had been on edge, to say the least.
Suddenly, anypony could be a changeling for all anyone else knew, and that had made Ponyville’s residents scared out of their wits. In order to address these admittedly legitimate concerns, as well as alleviate everypony’s fears, new security policies had been implemented, and an entire company of Royal Guard had even been transferred to Ponyville. Granted, that last provision might have had something to do with the fact that the keepers of the Elements of Harmony themselves happened to all live in town, but all the same, nopony could ignore the fact that considerable precautions and security measures had been put in place as a result of the shocking assault on Canterlot and the fear it had engendered nationwide in the entire populace.
Derpy thought that after more than a year fears must’ve died down to some extent by now, and had no idea how many of those new security measures were still being practiced, but evidently changelings were still on at least some ponies’ minds. Given the circumstances, however, Carrot’s unease was especially justified, and Derpy knew it; if any pony could possibly be suspected of being a changeling, it’d most definitely be one who’d just turned up after missing for over a year. It certainly didn’t help that Derpy looked as outlandish as she currently did either. In fact, just about everything about her sudden reappearance smelled rotten at first glance, and she couldn’t very well have that. The whole town delving deeply into her mind-boggling experiences in the past year was the last thing she needed, so right now, she had to come up with an out that wouldn’t lead anypony back to the Order.
“OK, how’s this? When you were a teenager, you once spent a whole year eating nothing but apples in a show of ‘rebellion’ to your parents: by the end, you were so sick of them that you haven’t been able to touch apples ever since. Your first crush was on a unicorn stallion, and to this day you harbor a hidden predilection for unicorns and what you call their ‘horn-y talents in the bedroom.’ And finally, the pièce de résistance; your legal name for the first six months of your life was ‘Golden Harvest.’ Your parents only changed it to Carrot Top after your grandma threatened to disown your father if they didn’t change your name to something with the word ‘carrot’ in it. There, that prove I’m me?”
Derpy smirked and Carrot’s goldenrod face noticeably reddened after hearing her list off one secret of hers after another, each one more confidential than the last. She knew that Derpy alone was the only pony who knew all three of those embarrassing tidbits about her, so that right there was a fairly convincing bit of evidence. After getting over her initial embarrassment, however, a new thought occurred to her.
“You just might be who you say you are, but… you also could have gotten all of that from Derpy if you were a changeling and holding her prisoner,” she noted. “And then there’s your eyes; how do you explain that? As long as I’ve known yo– Derpy, her eyes have always been cross-eyed.”
Horsefeathers, she’s really covering her corners, isn’t she?
“C’mon Carrot, it’s me, you’ve got to believe that! I know that’s a lot to ask for, given the circumstances, and I know how this might look, but you’ve just got to believe that it’s really me. What do I have to do to prove that to you? Please, tell me,” Derpy pleaded.
Without missing a beat, Carrot answered, “Tell me where you’ve been.”
“Huh?”
“Where have you been for the past year?” she firmly clarified. Derpy bowed her head and closed her eyes. She’d been afraid this is where their conversation would go. She’d also told Carrot that she wouldn’t hold anything back from her, and she’d meant it; Carrot had been her housemate and best friend for years, and she was willing to do whatever it took to regain her trust. She had to, needed to; she needed at least one confidant around town who knew everything, and who better than her best friend. If earning her trust meant sharing everything with her, every last bit of it, then so be it. This was going to be one tough cookie to sell, though, and she knew it.
She’ll believe it. She knows me, and if I tell it right, tell it all and explain everything, she’ll understand. Gotta have faith she will. Friends are supposed to be there for ya when no one else is, right? Well, she’ll be there for me, I know it. She’ll believe it, no matter how unfeatheringbelievable it may sound, because she knows me, and she’ll know… she’ll know, after hearing it all, that it’s really me.
Or, maybe she’ll think I’m nuttier than Pinkie Pie’s Pecan Pie Surprise. But hey, no risk, no reward, right? Here goes nothing.
Taking a deep breath, Derpy sat up straight in her seat, looking Carrot square in the eye. It was now or never. “Alright, you win. I’ll tell you everything. But before I start, I need you to understand something; it’s a long, crazy story. Like, really crazy. We’re talking ‘more of a stretch than a lord of chaos turning our town literally upside down’ crazy. So… yeah, this is gonna be a bit of a hard sell. I just need you to hear me out, listen to everything I’ve got to say, and then make of it what you will. If you still have questions, or doubts, I won’t blame you. But please just listen to what I have to say. Will you do that for me?”
Carrot Top scrutinized the mare in front of her with stony eyes, trying her best to discern the slightest hint of a deceptive undertone in her words or bearing. For a moment, Derpy feared she just might make a run for it, but finally, albeit with apparent reluctance, Carrot nodded.
“OK,” she said, “talk. I can’t promise I’ll believe you, but I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
Derpy flashed a grateful smile. “Thanks Carrot. Alright, where to start? Remember that delivery I had to make to Manehattan last year right around the time I disappeared? Well… you might say things went a bit south….”
“When I came to I’d washed up on a riverbank north of Manehattan. That was just over a week ago. Made my way from there to the city’s freight yard and been train hopping my way home ever since. Hasn’t been easy, that’s for sure; didn’t want anyone asking questions about my getup for fairly obvious reasons, so I had to go to some pretty great lengths to stay out of sight the whole way back. Only traveled the rails at night, snuck food from the galleys when I could, and had to keep switching cars to avoid being discovered. Just got back tonight and came straight home. Got in with the spare key we kept in that fake rock out back by your carrot patch, and thought I’d grab something to eat before waking you, but, well, you kinda beat me to that, and now here we are. That’s… basically it, really.”
Just like that, it was over. True to her word, Derpy had told Carrot everything that’d happened, from her greatest milestones to the foulest events of the past year. She’d expected numerous times during her recounting that Carrot would suddenly interject with some question, or just up and leave even, but much to her surprise she’d kept quiet the entire time. In fact, the earth pony had managed to remain peculiarly unreadable, keeping a calm, neutral expression on her face from start to finish. Hopefully the fact that she was still apparently giving Derpy the benefit of the doubt was a good sign.
The two sat in total silence for a few minutes, the only sound the steady ticking of an antique cuckoo clock that hung on the kitchen wall, a family heirloom of Carrot’s. Derpy gave it a sideways glance as the tiny wooden cuckoo bird popped out of its little door and produced its melodic cuckoo call.
Sheesh, 5 a.m. already? Didn’t realize I was talking so long. Sure hope she doesn’t have too many questions still, ‘cause laying down for a nice, long nap sounds mighty fine right about now.
Finally, Carrot (much to Derpy’s relief) spoke. “You… you really did all that, didn’t you?”
“Ummm… yeah,” Derpy replied, stunned at Carrot’s words. “Wait, wait, wait, you believe me? You’re able to accept everything I just told you after one telling just like that?” Much to her surprise and disbelief, Carrot simply gave an easy nod in response, even laughing quietly to herself as though she herself were surprised.
“I know, crazy right? In fact, every logical bone in my body is telling me that there’s no reason I should believe one word of this. But I’m from a family of farmers, Derpy, we haggle. My brothers and I had to learn very early on how to sniff out dishonesty in any pony lest those we bargained with tried cheating us. I can spot a lie quicker than a jackrabbit lands a summer date. That was no lie.” Derpy was worried she might be trying to pull her leg, but for the first time since they’d reunited, Carrot actually looked comfortable and at ease. “Besides, the more you talked, the more I just… well, the more I knew it was you. You think I’d forget all about you in one measly year, you crazy featherbrain? Nopony could forget you, especially not after living with you as long as I have.”
They both laughed at that, and finally the invisible barrier that’d hung in the air between the two all night dissipated, replaced by the true cheer of two long-lost friends sharing each other’s company. “Thanks Carrot, just… wow, thanks, you have no idea how relieved I am to hear that. If there was anypony I knew I could count on believing me, it’s you.”
“So… what now?” Carrot asked, evoking a snort from Derpy in response.
“Yeah, what now, that is a good question,” she said. “Honestly, I have no idea. I mean, there’s gotta be something I can do with what I’ve learned, right? But what that something is, well, I haven’t really worked that out yet.” She shrugged, sagging in her chair, her weary senses screaming at her not to trouble her mind with such thoughts at the moment. Carrot too noticed her friend’s exhausted state and quickly fetched her a glass of cool water, which Derpy gratefully accepted.
“We can worry about that later. Right now, we need to figure out how to break the news of your return. It’s hard enough for me to accept all this, and I know you like a sister. The rest of the town, they’re going to have a hard time swallowing all this.” Gulping down the last of her drink, Derpy emphatically shook her head upon hearing that proposition.
“Actually… well, I was sorta thinking we… not tell them everything,” she carefully suggested. Carrot raised a puzzled eyebrow at that.
“Well then what would we tell them?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but not that,” Derpy replied.
“Derpy, we can’t just lie to the whole town! What, you expect us both to somehow keep up some sort of intricate charade around everypony we know for the rest of our lives?” she asked with incredulity, prompting Derpy to wave a placating hoof.
“Listen, just calm down. I don’t like the idea of lying any more than you do, but do you actually think everypony knowing where I’ve been is the answer? Most would probably think I’m just crazy, but those who didn’t, who knows what they’d do? Trust me, the less ponies know where I’ve been, the better. It’ll just be easier for all of us; fewer questions for me to answer, and a far easier time for everyone else accepting that I’m back, same old, same old.”
Carrot grimaced, uncertainty clouding her features, though she appeared less alarmed than she had a moment ago. “OK, sure, I can see what you’re saying. Probably would cause us more problems than solutions just going around town telling this to everypony. But I’m not so sure about ‘same old, same old’ going over so well,” she commented. “If everything you’ve told me is true, then you’re not the same old Derpy Hooves that you were when you vanished. Not even close. Horse apples, just look at your eyes! That alones going to raise a lot of red flags and suspicions around town, unless you can explain it away, of course.”
“Ohhhhhhh perfect.” Derpy buried her face in her hooves, the full measure of the cumbersome chore that lay ahead really starting to sink in. Her eyes alone were indeed going to raise more than a few questions that would need to be answered one way or another, and that was just for starters. In the grand scheme of things, they were second rate compared to some of the other questions the townsfolk would no doubt have for her.
Where had she been? What was she doing? Why didn’t she give any notice before she ran off?
Suddenly telling the truth seemed a far more preferable option, or at least an easier one, than the proposition of having to craft on the fly a completely fictitious account of an entire year of her life that somehow everypony in town would buy, including some of her closest friends.
This just keeps getting better and better.
It suddenly dawned on Derpy, however, that there was one bright spot in all this; she no longer had to worry about concocting and selling a false narrative to all of Ponyville alone. When she threw herself at a task, one could always count on Carrot to, if nothing else, give one hundred and ten percent from start to finish. Ever since they’d started living together as housemates, the earth pony had always been the calming, orderly influence of the household, and was probably more capable than most ponies in Equestria at minimizing the effects of Derpy’s formerly clumsy nature. On top of keeping their shared residence in impeccable order (for the most part), Carrot also at the same time managed to operate her own vegetable stand in the town market, selling produce that she grew in the garden patch which she maintained outside their cottage. To say she was normally on top of things was an understatement, and Derpy was sure that together they could surely come up with something.
“Carrot, can I count on you?”
“For what?” her friend asked.
“Can I count on you to help me do this? Keep what I’ve told you from everypony else in town, our friends, family, everyone? You don’t have to say yes if you don’t want to, but if you do, we’re stuck in this together come what may. You know that, right?”
A distant look fell on Carrot’s face as the full weight of what Derpy was asking of her really started to sink in. Even Derpy couldn’t say for sure how heavy the burden would be, and she was ready to go it alone if she must. But a moment later, her friend seemed to snap out of her contemplation and gave a reassuring wave of her hoof.
“We’re already stuck in this together after what you told me. Not much I can do about that now except make the best of it. Whatever happens, I’m with you.” Words couldn’t really express the flood of gratitude that overwhelmed Derpy upon hearing that, but she knew just from looking at her that Carrot was putting on a braver face than she felt at the moment. She could only imagine how scared Carrot had to be feeling right then and there, and she’d just have to pay her friend back for the chance she was taking on her by translating her gratitude into meaningful action. Seeing as the stakes had been raised considerably now that the two of them were in this together, she had some extra incentive to do just that and ensure that her secrets remained hidden away from the rest of an unknowing Ponyville. The trick now was simply figuring out how exactly to do that.
“OK, where to start?” Derpy thought out loud. “Well I can’t just start walking around town like nothing happened, that’s a given. Ponies need to learn that I’m back before they see that I’m back.”
“Agreed,” Carrot concurred. “A story in the Ponyville Express might do the trick, but we’ll need to reach out to the right ponies to set something like that up. As it so happens, I might just know the right ponies for doing just that. We’ll need a cover though before we meet with them. Got any ideas?”
“You got me,” Derpy shrugged. “I was thinking about that the whole way back, but when you’ve gone through something as life-changing and outlandish as I did, it’s kinda hard thinking up how to lie about it. It doesn’t help that, like you said, I’ve clearly changed. Whatever I tell everypony needs to somehow explain why I’m so different from before.”
The two separately considered a number of possible solutions before Carrot had a lightbulb moment. “What if you just told a… you know, a ‘half-truth’?” she suggested.
“What do you mean?” Derpy asked, tilting her head.
“I mean, why don’t you tell everypony that you really did set out to change your life, that that’s why you’ve been gone? Just don’t go into the specifics, is all.”
“That’s… huh, that’s actually not a half-bad idea,” Derpy admitted. “Yeah, yeah I could see that being believable. Lots of ponies go on journeys of self-discovery all the time, right?”
“Absolutely. Plus you can’t always explain them, a lot of the time they come out of the blue, and they vary enough in length that a year away from home’s not a stretch for something like that. You’ll still need a pretty good story for it to work, but hey, it’s a start.” Derpy nodded in agreement, a meager but also encouraging sense of relief washing over her. A start it was indeed, and that was more than she’d had a few hours ago. A start she could work with, a start she could cultivate and grow into something tangible, concrete, a fabrication that could pass for reality as long as she needed it to.
She wondered how long that might be. How long she would have to lie to so many ponies, neighbors and friends she cared about. How long Carrot would be stuck lying right along with her, putting her own friendships and dreams on the line. But most of all, she wondered what it would all be for in the long run. If they were going to do this, she had to make it worth it, had to make sure this wasn’t all just done in the name of self-preservation. If she didn’t, the risks and costs would never feel justified.
For now, however, Derpy resigned herself with taking things slow, one step at a time. Yet even as she and Carrot dove into concocting their deception, that last thought remained, scratching incessantly in the back of her mind, an itch she knew wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, not until she found an answer. The sooner she found one, the better, for at the end of that road lay peace, content, and a sense of purpose.
Peace… content… purpose… it will all be worth it. I swear it.
“I still think we oughta say you’ve been in Manehattan, it’d be the perfect place to blend in and go unnoticed.”
“I get what you’re saying, but it’s too suspicious.”
“How?”
“There’s just too many ponies there. It’s a bit of a stretch to believe that I could’ve been in the biggest city in Equestria for an entire year without running into or being spotted by somepony I know.”
“Well I’m still not crazy about telling everyone you’ve just been wandering around up north instead. It just leaves too many questions unanswered, and those’ll lead to even more questions, and more, and more.”
“I’ll admit, there’s a risk, sure, but you have to admit there’s tons of places up north that aren’t very settled or developed. It doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to believe I could’ve been there for a year without anypony noticing.”
“Alright, fine, that might actually work,” Carrot finally conceded. “But how’d you get out there in the first place? Your nervous breakdown spiel is buyable enough, but that doesn’t explain for one second why you didn’t just come straight home right after that.”
Derpy groaned, leaning back in her chair and chewing her bottom lip in thought. They’d been trying to devise the perfect cover story for at least an hour now, but it seemed like every time they figured out how to cover one corner, three more would pop up in its stead. A pale grey light steadily crept through the kitchen windows, marking the coming dawn’s approach, much to Derpy’s mild surprise and dismay. Between convincing Carrot that it was really her and coming up with this cover story, it’d been a busy night to say the least, but only now did she realize just how fast time really had flown.
Stretching her limbs, Derpy gave a powerful yawn, her eyelids fluttering lethargically. Noticing her friend’s tired state, Carrot cleared her throat a tad louder than was necessary.
“I know it’s been a long night, for both of us, but we’re almost finished,” she said in gentle encouragement. “Come on, let’s wrap this up. The sooner we do, the sooner you can get out of that, er, outfit of yours.” Sitting up straight, Derpy shook her head and rubbed her bleary eyes, fighting to keep her mind roused and alert.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, sorry about that,” she apologized. “OK, um, how’d I get up north? What about I met a guy?”
“A guy?” an unamused Carrot deadpanned, raising an eyebrow. “Might need a little more than that.”
“Hold on, I ain’t finished!” Derpy hastily reassured her. “Let’s see… I met a guy on the… on the road. Yeah, that’s it. After my nervous breakdown, I met a guy on the road, we got to talking, and he happened to be a really perceptive and charitable stallion, you know, one of those ‘self-help’ types. Offered to tutor me and everything, mentor me and help me gain control over my life, renew my inner peace, that sort of thing. I went with him to a remote location up north, and that’s where I’ve been the past year. That’s pretty much the truth even, if you think about it; I’m practically not even lying.”
“Ehhhhhhh… kind of. From a certain point of view, I guess,” Carrot reluctantly agreed.
“What do you think about that?” Carrot mulled the question over for a moment before finally nodding.
“It’s risky, but… I think that might actually work. We’ll need a name at least for the guy, and you can’t exactly verify that that’s where you’ve been, but nopony can really prove you haven’t been there either, so we’ve got that going for us. Keep your cool and don’t jumble your story up, and the town might just buy all this.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Derpy slumped in her seat. They still had a long uphill climb ahead, but tired as she was, this was good enough for now.
“Well, now that that’s over with, how ‘bout some breakfast? I’m starving!” she suggested, patting her growling belly.
“Sure, I can cook something up,” Carrot said, though the next instant her face scrunched up as though she were being assailed by something especially revolting. “But first things first, you might want to get out of your gear and clean up. No offense, but you kind of smell like a pack of diamond dogs that just spent a week in Froggy Bottom Bog.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah.”
To be honest, Derpy hadn’t really noticed her steadily worsening body odor during her journey back home. But taking a whiff now, she realized just how rank of a stench was emanating from her. On top of that her coat and mane were absolutely filthy and matted with dirt, grime, and sweat, so a shower (or three) right about now sounded like just what the doctor ordered.
“OK, yeah, it really is that bad. I’ll be back in a bit; feel free to eat without me, this could take a while,” she quipped, making her way upstairs.
A couple of showers later and Derpy felt brand spanking new. It took some hard scrubbing down to rid herself of the funk built up on her journey home, but she didn’t mind considering she couldn’t even recall the last time she’d had a hot shower. She’d definitely need a good preening as well, but that could wait for the time being. Between showers she wiped some of the mud and filth from her chest plate and hammer hooves, and internally thought to herself that she’d have to remember to find something to polish and maintain them. After drying off, she hefted the armor up into the small attic above Carrot’s closet and carefully concealed it beneath some old blankets she found up there. She figured that might be the best place to store them for the time being, especially assuming lots of ponies would be coming and going a lot in the next few days once word spread of her return.
As she made her way downstairs, a savory smell wafted up from the kitchen, eliciting an involuntary grumble from her stomach. She spied Carrot sleeping on her couch and figured she must’ve already eaten. Quietly entering the kitchen, Derpy found, much to her delight, a plate of scrambled eggs along with buttered toast and blackberry jam waiting for her. She ravenously dug into the first real meal she’d had since fleeing the Order; it was a bit cold since it’d been sitting out for a little while, but she couldn’t care less. As far as Derpy was concerned, it might as well have been divine ambrosia, and the only thing that could’ve possibly made this breakfast any better would’ve been the addition of a muffin.
After gobbling up her breakfast faster than a parasprite, Derpy cleaned off her dishes in the sink and opted to follow up breakfast with a much-needed nap. Cleaned up and belly full, the pegasus grabbed a wool blanket in the living room, curled up beneath it in an armchair adjacent to the sofa on which Carrot Top was already dozing, and in no time at all fell into a deep, peaceful slumber.