Roseluck Fries an Egg and Asks You About Your Day
The streets of Ponyville are bustling with ponies returning home from a long day at work. You saunter purposefully towards your own home in the dimming, afternoon sunshine, intending to quell the rumbling in your stomach. Even though you're eager to get home, you don't break into a trot like some of the ponies rushing past. You savor your walk home. It's one of the only times in your day that nopony is expecting something of you. You can walk just as fast or slow as you want and be alone with your thoughts. It's a necessary period of transition from your hectic, buzzing workplace to your peaceful, serene home.
Your hoofsteps against the cobbled road resound with satisfying clip-clops. You tune out the wagons rumbling by and the ponies chattering idly in cafes. You stop only for a moment as a street vendor calls out to you, asking if you'd like to purchase some flowers.
"Fresh cut orchids and daffodils! Surely a stallion such as yourself could use a bouquet for that very special somepony in your life? I can't think of a mare who wouldn't love flowers so beautiful!" You examine the contents of the stand. Flowers have never been your forte, but you do agree that the flowers this vendor has are exceptionally beautiful. Part of you wishes you could pick out an orchid from a daffodil, and in reality you should be better at identifying different flowers at this point. Somepony is always pointing out the different kinds of flowers wherever you go. How she remembers them all, you hope to one day find out.
"What do you say? I can send you home with a nice bouquet for just two bits," the vendor offers. You shake your head to decline and head on your way. There are always fresh cut flowers at home, regardless of whether or not you provide them. They're everywhere. Bringing home a bouquet is like bringing sand to a desert. You wonder if you should stop and get some water, so to speak.
A possible answer appears as you round the corner. You round this corner and see the liquor store everyday when you come home from work, but you've never stopped by. You slow down your pace a bit as you approach it, trying to decide whether or not you should go inside. You don't really come to a concrete decision, but when you reach the door you open it and enter the store.
It's cold inside the store. The tough looking stallion behind the counter eyes you when you enter. He doesn't stare too long, opting to return to his newspaper after a second or two. You walk through the lightly populated aisles over to where the wine is and begin perusing the different bottles. You aren't a wino by any means, but you know more about wine than you do about flowers. Considering how much you know about flowers, you realize you haven't said much about your knowledge of wine.
You select one bottle and take it over to the counter. The clerk collects your money with just about as much interest as he'd shown the entire time you'd been in the store. He doesn't even say "thank you" or "have a good day". For a moment, you wonder if he ever brings flowers home.
Exiting the cold store reminds you of how warm the weather has been lately. Even know, as Celestia is getting ready to begin dropping the sun behind the horizon, the warm air persists. That's how summer has always been around Ponyville. Maybe the nice, warm weather is good for the flowers.
It's all just idle thoughts about the weather, but it makes you realize that fall isn't far off. You want to take some time off in order to take advantage of the warmth. Maybe you should get out of town for a while, go experience summer someplace else. There must be other nice places out there. If Ponyville had the best summers, wouldn't everypony flock here when the weather turned warm? You haven't been on a trip outside of Ponyville for a while now, and you know you've got plenty of vacation days. Going somewhere is highly possible.
Before you can mull over any destinations, you arrive on your street. From this point, you can practically count down the steps until you arrive at your front porch. You pass your front gate and start up the walkway to your door. The garden in front of your house is in full bloom. Even though you don't know what more than half of the flowers are, it's been expressed to you over and over that most of them are roses.
When the garden first appeared, your neighbors kept asking you about it. They always wanted to know what this flower was or what that flower was, and each time you had to regretfully explain that you had no idea. They never asked about the flowers you knew the names of, but you assumed that was because you only knew the flowers everyone else knew. You'd then go on to explain how the garden got there, which at the time was slightly more embarrassing to confess.
You open the door and enter your home. The house is silent as you walk in. For a while now, you'd been wishing for an enthusiastic greeting the moment you walked in the door, but that was proving to be an impossibility. Missing her cue, the pony who never seems to be in the den or the kitchen when you come home sticks her head out of the laundry room.
"Oh! It's you!" Roseluck has always had a way with greetings. You inquire if she was expecting somepony else.
"I was actually!" You urge her to continue. "I was waiting for that pony you hate so we can go to that place you don't like and do all your least favorite things." She starts laughing at you as if she were an evil mastermind. You join in with the best fake laughter you can muster. After a few moments of shared, fake mirth, Roseluck fully emerges into the den and properly greets you.
"Welcome back! You hungry?" You confess that you're famished, sarcastically of course. She rolls her eyes and smiles as she goes into the kitchen, smacking you on the nose with her tail. She opens up the refrigerator and begins rummaging through it.
"Well... I hate to say it, but we've got next to nothing in here. We've got hay, but nothing to go with it..." You propose adding some of the flowers in the garden to it, only in jest. Roseluck shoots you a dirty look.
"There will be no eating of the garden," she warns. You know better than to tease her about it, but her reactions are always too amusing. This time you propose adding wine to the meal. When you produce the bottle you so thoughtfully obtained earlier, her expression brightens.
"Hay and wine? Oh boy, what's the occasion?" she pokes fun at your gesture. You act hurt that she's forgotten the incredibly important occasion that would require wine and fine dining.
"Oh, right. It's Tuesday, how could I be so forgetful?" She's too got at picking up on your sarcasm. You resolve to try harder. "Seriously though, if we're having wine we can't just eat hay. That's tacky." You complain that you've never heard of having wine with hay was tacky. You know deep down that it is pretty cheap and in reality you'd rather not waste wine on just hay. You ask what she'd like to do about the food situation.
"All we need is some supplies. If I hurry, I might be able to make it to the market before everyone breaks down." You ask her if she means "we".
"You wanna come? You'll have to carry everything." You tell her you have no problem with that. "Well then, you know where the saddlebags are, grab them and run." She heads for the door while you put down the wine and grab your saddlebags from the kitchen. When you get out the front door, you see she's already to the end of the block.
"C'mon!" she shouts to you. You grunt and shut the door to your home behind you before trotting to catch up with her. When you get within spitting distance, she picks up the pace to a canter and pulls away from you. Not about to be outdone, you canter right after her. She looks back at you, smiles, and breaks into a full gallop. You figure if she wants to play that game, she'd better be ready to lose. You're the stallion and you know you're faster, so you gallop and breeze right up to her.
"Hey, no fair!" she laughs as you pass her up with a smug grin plastered across your face. You keep just ahead of her as she tries to mount the burst of speed that will finally overtake you. It never happens as you cross the finish line into the market center. Roseluck gallops right past you after you stop.
"I win!" You remind her that she did, in fact, not win. "You stopped too early. That makes me the winner." You point out the fact that there was no determined finish line and accuse her of cheating.
"Uh! I did not cheat! You're just a sore loser." She taunts you, turning and heading into the market. You grumble and follow her. Even though it's silly, part of you wishes you'd won the race. It's quite possible that you would have had to run all the way to Canterlot before she would finally concede defeat.
You ask her if she had anything in mind for the menu.
"Not really." She was already busying herself with inspecting the stalls that were still open. "Got any suggestions?" You tell her that anything is fine by you. "Helpful." She sounds a bit annoyed, but she's the one who asked. You suggest a few things she's managed to make in the past, but she begins shooting them down.
"No one is selling the ingredients for that kind of stuff. Look around for yourself," she encourages you. Looking around, there is only one stall that catches your eye. You point it out to her.
"Of course you'd pick that. What is it with stallions and protein?" You don't have an answer for that question and you make the point clear by shrugging. Although your suggestion sounds rejected, she steers herself towards the stand in question. The owner looks like she's about to pack up, but stops when she notices the prospect of making one last sale.
"A carton of eggs please." Roseluck looks over at you for a moment. "Make that two." You feel insulted. On the other hand, you are very hungry. You ask her what she's planning on making with the eggs.
"Breakfast." It hadn't occurred to you that having no food for dinner meant having no food for breakfast. Leave it to a mare to think ahead like that. She pays the vendor and puts the eggs in your bags. "Do you see anything else?" You list the other stands that are around.
"What about the beet stand?" You tell her you're only pointing out items that aren't terrible. "Oh come on, beets are good for you!" You refuse to pursue the subject of beets and the possible benefits of consuming them. You point out the milk stand.
"Oh, I guess we're out of that too. You go get some, I'm going to run into the bakery for a moment." Roseluck doesn't ask for your opinion on the matter before dashing off. You go buy milk, which takes less than a minute. Since Roseluck hasn't returned yet, you decide to take some initiative and buy some other foodstuffs.
You swing by the spinach stand and get two bags full of the green leaves. You catch the stallion who sells strawberries right before he closes down. After making your purchase, you notice the kiwi stand is still open. It strikes you as such an obscure fruit, so you internally applaud the owner of the stand for staying open for so long. As you pass by the stand, you notice that the owner is much more persistent than you first thought. At some point in the day, he'd edited the sign to indicate he was having a sale. You don't claim to be an expert on the value of kiwis, but four for a bit sounded like a steal. Although you might not need them, you go ahead and take advantage of the slashed price.
While thinking about how you're going to brag to Roseluck about the awesome deal you just got on kiwis, you stop in front of another stand that hasn't closed down yet: a flower stand. You're sure it's a certain type of flower being sold here, but once again you're at a total loss for the identity of the colorful flowers. The vendor is busy heckling with another customer, but you're not really looking to buy. You're more interested in getting some answers.
"You're not thinking about buying hollyhocks for dinner, are you?" Roseluck suddenly appears, carrying a baguette on her back. "I hear they taste really bland." She puts the bread in your saddlebag and begins to inspect the other items you've purchased. She smiles and begins nodding, looking increasingly pleased.
"Okay... I think I can work with this. C'mon, there's one more stand to visit," she beckons you to follow her. With the sun almost gone over the horizon, the market is coming to a true close. You glance over your shoulder and see that even the persistent kiwi vendor is closing up. Roseluck picks up the pace and you follow until you both arrive at a stand that is almost all the way closed.
"Excuse me!" Roseluck calls to the two stallions who are breaking down the stand and loading what remains of their small, orange fruit. One of them stops what they're doing, but the other one looks bugged that somepony is prolonging their time at market.
"Can I help you, little lady?" the stallion takes a bag of tangerines in his mouth, knowing exactly what you're bothering him for. Roseluck pays the pony after he puts the fruit in your bag. You and Roseluck thank the pony and you start heading home.
The walk home is peaceful. The only sound is that of two ponies walking side by side and the crickets chirping. The night air is still warm, but there's a breeze that carries a slight nip in it. You're reminded of the coming fall and you bring up the subject of taking a summer vacation.
"Why go somewhere else? Summer in Ponyville is the best," Roseluck explains. You counter her point, citing the fact that Ponyville doesn't see an influx of tourism in the summer.
"We get more than you think. I mean, we sure don't have much to offer any other season, except fall... maybe." You ask what Ponyville has to offer in the summertime. "We're a small, farming town so we have fresh produce to offer. I'm not surprised you hadn't considered that." You ask her what she means by that, but she just giggles. You attempt to pursue the subject further, but your traitorous stomach changes the stomach by growling audibly. Roseluck laughs even harder as you blush slightly.
"It'll take a while to prepare the Spinach Salad, do want me to fry up one of those eggs to hold you over in the meantime?" You accept the offer. You'd forgotten how hungry you were, but remembering wasn't exactly stellar. You break from thinking about your own hunger when the sound of somepony else's stomach reaches your ears. You look over at Roseluck, who is trying to pretend nothing happened. She avoids eye contact, but she's blushing in embarrassment. You keep staring at her, smiling smugly all the while.
"What?" You advise her to fry an egg for herself. "I'm on a diet. I've got to watch my figure." You disagree on all accounts, but it's futile and pointless to refute her on either point. You resign to let yourself laugh at her while she pouts.
The walk back is short and you arrive back home too quickly for your tastes. Even at a lazy and tired pace, the journey from your house to the market square is always a short one. The walk from work to home is far more satisfying.
You open up the door and, being a gentlecolt, allow Roseluck inside first. She widens her eyes and beams at you, pretending that it's the nicest thing anypony has ever done for her as she crosses the threshold. You set the bags on the kitchen counter and begin to unpack your bounty.
"You got four kiwis? Why so many?" You explain the amazing deal you got. To your surprise, Roseluck actually looks impressed. "That's a steal! Why didn't you get more?" You ask her what she would have done with so many kiwis. She thinks for a moment, but eventually nods in agreement with your choice. Your stomach grumbles again.
"Don't worry," Roseluck chuckles. "You've been a good bag carrier, so you just sit tight and I'll bring you your appetizer!" You ask her when your house became a five-star restaurant. "When I got here, that's when. Now do as I command and take a seat buster!" You fake a sigh and sit down at the table as Roseluck gets out a frying pan and sets it on the stove. She turns a dial and a ring of blue flames jump to life. You watch as she begins washing the spinach as she waits for the pan to heat up a little.
"How do you want your egg?" You request over easy, to which Roseluck makes a face. You ask her if she's not partial to runny yolks. "Not really," she confesses. "I prefer the yoke more done. Actually, I'm more of a fan of scrambled eggs than fried eggs. You want your egg scrambled?" You insist on over easy.
"Alrighty then."
*crack*
*tsssssss*
"So, how was your day?"