Derpy Heart

by Tired_eyes

Chapter 2 - Missteps and Crashes

Over the next few weeks I saw Derpy pretty regularly. Of course, a gentlecolt doesn’t go around watching a mare from a distance (at least once he notices he’s doing it), but despite my first impressions of Ponyville, the town just wasn’t very big, so if you waited a long enough you’d run into anyone now and again.

Since I was still getting myself and my little shop set up, I had to order a lot of things through the mail, which meant I got to see her once every few days. I’m not ashamed to admit that even after a couple of weeks my heart leaped into my throat and my hooves got restless every time I saw her. Of course, between still being embarrassed about how we met, and being so taken with her, I hardly said anything to her longer than “Good morning Miss Derpy,” and, “Thanks for the package, Miss Derpy.” Even so, she always had a smile for me, and seeing her was the best part of my day.

One day she told me, “You’re so polite all of the time! You know, you don’t have to call me ‘Miss’ all of the time, Dovetail. Just ‘Derpy’ is fine.” When all I could get out of my stupid mouth was, “Sorry Miss...” she gave me a playful shove, giggled like she does, and flew off. It’s funny, the things that stick in your head.

- - -

A few days after that I found myself at the schoolhouse, doing one of my first proper contracts installing some cabinets. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was anyway when as I was finishing up and packing my tools in my saddlebag, Derpy’s daughter Dinky trotted up to me and said “Hey Dovetail!” in that relentlessly cheery way little fillies have.

I figured I wasn’t at risk of a kicking this time, but wasn’t sure what was expected of me. What do you even say to a little kid? “Uh, hey there,” was the best I could do, feeling a little silly at being intimidated by such a young filly.

Thankfully, she went and solved my problem of not knowing what to say right quick once she stared talking. “Thanks for being nicer to my mommy. She says you sure do get a lot of things through the mail, but she says that’s okay because you’re nice. I think you’re nice too, but why do you have a tree as a cutie mark? Don’t you only use dead trees? Shouldn’t you have like a hammer or something? I s’pose its okay though, ‘cause Applejack’s cutie mark is apples and she likes apples when they’re growing and when you cook ‘em or eat ‘em which I guess makes them dead too. Do you know Applejack? Aren’t you related or something?”

Now, I haven’t spent much time with foals since I was one, so I was amazed at how much she could talk on one breath, and how many questions she could ask at once. I dropped my last couple of tools into my bag while I tried to figure out which question I was supposed to answer. Then it hit me.

“She says I’m nice?”

The little grey unicorn laughed and smiled, just like her mom. “Yeah! She’s talked about you a few times and how you're one of the nicest ponies in Ponyville, and how you always seem happy to see her and super SUPER friendly. When I met you I thought you were mean but then you got all nice and she likes delivering things to you so that’s okay. I guess nice people do mean things sometimes. My friend Sunny Daze once said something REALLY mean to me but then later she said she was sorry and wasn’t mean anymore so it was okay.”

I had to think a moment and play that all back in my head before getting the sense of what she was saying, but I was starting to get used to how she talked.

“Uh, Dinky?” I said, my heart feeling like it was stuck in my throat. Confound it, if I couldn’t talk to her daughter without feeling like I wanted to bolt, how was I ever going to get the nerve to talk to Derpy herself?

“Yeah?” she said, and cocked her head curiously. She was quiet for longer than I’d ever heard her be while she waited for me to talk, though she did fidget a bit.

“I think your mom is nice too. Really nice. But you two are a family, and I know I got off on the wrong hoof with you. Do you, err... would you mind it if I asked your mom out? You know, for a grown-up date?”

When I asked this, her face got all serious for a bit, so I was relieved when she brightened up and said “Sure! You should totally do that! Just don’t be mean about her eyes like that other time, okay? Cool! I think that would be...”. Just then the teacher, Miss Cheerilee walked into the room, and Dinky interrupted herself. “Whoops, gotta go. Bye Dovetail!” She trotted off to to her seat.

I nodded to Miss Cheerilee and took my leave, chewing my lip in thought. I was relieved that the little one didn’t hate me anymore, and at the even better news that Derpy thought I was “nice”, but now I had a whole new thing to be scared about.

- - -

Once you’ve set out to do something hard, like moving to a new town or talking to a mare you like, it’s hard to hold back from doing it immediately. No matter how much you might put it off, once you’ve well and truly made up your mind the thing wants to get done right away.

If I do say so myself, I think I put forth a heroic effort by waiting until the next morning to go to see Derpy. The town was just waking up and the shadows were still long when I made my way to the post office at a jaunty canter. I knew if I waited too long she’d be out delivering, and I didn’t want to have to wait until the afternoon to see her.

I felt on top of the world when I opened that door and stepped in, casual as you please with a big smile on my face. After that, things kind of went downhill. You see, I threw the door open a mite harder than I meant to, and it hit the stop pretty loudly. The next thing I heard after that was a yelp and a crash.

“Derpy, are you okay?” I said, rushing in and not seeing her.

It was my turn to be startled when she pulled herself up from the floor behind the counter with a loud, “Yup, I’m fine!” She planted her hooves on the counter and blew her mane out of her eyes. “Oh, hi Dovetail!” she said. “You startled me. People don’t normally come in this early. What do you need?”

Looking into her eyes (well, one of them anyway) like that while she smiled at me and kept trying to get her mane out of her eyes was just too much for me. All of that confidence I’d been building since the day before just melted away and I just stammered like an idiot. Once I managed to get some words out, I rambled. “Well Miss Derpy... Err, I mean Derpy, I, uh... well I really like you, and you’re always so happy. It’s amazing to see how, well, with the eye thing and all, you never let it get you down, and I know it must be hard...”

I knew I had said something wrong; first her smile went away, and then she planted her face in her hoof with a sigh. Luckily for me, she stopped me from making things worse by interrupting me.

“Oh my sweet Celestia, don’t do this.”

I think she may have rolled her eyes, but frankly I wasn’t entirely sure.

“Do what?”

“Make me into somepony ‘inspiring’ or ‘brave’,” she said, “I get enough of that around town, and it’s kind of insulting.”

She didn’t look mad, just a touch annoyed. I still felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Frankly, I couldn’t have felt any worse if she’d yelled.

“I’m sorry, I just meant...” I trailed off, because I really didn’t know what to say. She’d already put her hoof on what I'd meant.

When I didn’t say anything for a few seconds, she sighed again, then grinned wryly. Her voice took on a dramatic tone, like a ham actor delivering a line.

“Well I think you handle your disability well too. You never let it get you down. Somehow you manage to get up every morning and live just like a normal person. How brave of you.”

“My what? I don’t...”

“Your wings.”

“I don’t have wings. I’m an earth pony.”

“Yeah, I know. I don’t know how you manage when you can’t fly like me. You’re so brave!” She reared up and beat her wings to make the point. It would have been a lot more dramatic if she hadn’t been right next to a free standing shelf... which stopped being free standing, right on top of her.

It was probably for the best, because she let me help her clean up. By the time we were finished I’d gotten enough sense back into my head to apologize without rambling like a damned fool, as we sat on the floor.

“It’s okay,” she said, “and I’m sorry I got mad. I just get really sick of being ‘poor Derpy, with the eyes’ or ‘brave, tragic Derpy’. Can’t I just be ‘Derpy, who brings the mail’ sometimes?”

“Or how about ‘Derpy with the really nice mane’?” I said, grinning sheepishly. She laughed when I said that, and finally started to smile again.

“What about ‘that clumsy Derpy’?” she said, throwing her front hooves in the air and falling over sideways with a dramatic squeak.

“Naw, I prefer, ‘Boy, that Derpy makes clumsy work!’” I said and offered her a hoof up. She took it and heaved herself up, giving my shoulder a playful shove.

“You’re too nice. I r...” A clock chiming interrupted her, and she folded her ears back. “Oh feathers, I’m late! I should have been delivering a half hour ago! I’m sorry but I really have to go!”

While she scrambled to get her saddlebags on I got up and opened the door. She took to the air while still inside the room, and I heard a quick “Thanks! See you later!” buzz by me as she literally flew out the door.

I waved at her back, like a fool, until she was out of sight. Then I dropped my rump down on the ground and sighed. I knew I’d made a damned fool out of myself again. I seemed to have made it right, and gotten some food for thought out of the deal, but if this was going to happen every time I tried to talk to her, giving up seemed like the only sensible thing to do.

- - -

And I kind of did. Don’t misunderstand me; I didn’t avoid her, and I still got butterflies in my stomach every time I saw her, but I didn’t try to talk to her about anything with substance, and I surely didn’t ask her out on any dates. I just plain didn’t dare. She always seemed pleased to see me, and was as friendly as ever, so I knew she wasn’t still mad at me. Still, I just knew something stupid was going to come flying out of my mouth if I tried to say anything with more meat than smalltalk.

I got close once, that Sunday. I ran into Derpy and Dinky at the Cakes’ bakery. Dinky was the only one who saw me come in, because her mother was busy buying a box of muffins. The little unicorn fixed me with an unsettling look and cocked her head expectantly at Derpy. This rattled me pretty bad, so I just backed out of the shop and took off running. As the door closed behind me I heard the petulant stamp of a little hoof and somebody asking the filly what was wrong.

- - -

They say the world works in mysterious ways. I think they’re right, whoever ‘they’ are, because just when it was becoming clear as anything to me that I was never going to approach that confounded grey mare, the solution fell out of the sky. No really, fell out of the sky.

It was the day after I chickened out at the bakery and I was on my way to Sweet Apple Acres. The Apple family had told me they were pulling down some trees that were too old to give good fruit anymore, and I wanted to get my hands on some of the wood for inlays and whatnot. Apple wood isn’t much good for big jobs, but it makes a plenty fine inlay, because the grain... well never mind that.

I was minding my own business, enjoying the bright sunshine and cool breeze as I walked along the road that led to the orchard, as peaceful as you like. Then, out of the clear blue skies there was a quiet thump sound far above me, and something that sounded like a voice getting closer very, very fast. I looked up, but before I could see what was happening the world spun and went black for a second as it felt like the sky fell on me.

I came to just a moment later, flat on my back, with a heavy weight on top of me. When I had blinked the stars from my eyes I looked up and saw a familiar face looking down at me, just as addled as I’m sure my own was. I heard a crash in a nearby tree and some colorful language, but paid it no mind. The only thing I had a thought for was the fact that Derpy had quite literally fallen out of the sky into my mildly concussed embrace.

She smiled sheepishly down at me and said, “Whoops, my bad. Are you okay?”

I’ve already told you that I’m not a lecherous pony, but I challenge any stallion to tell me that finding themselves in such a compromising position with any pretty mare (or stallion I guess, if that’s how they trot) wouldn’t get their heart running a gallop. I don’t know what got into me, but a flood of words came out of my fool mouth to rival Dinky’s rants. “Hi there, I’m okay, are you okay, wow, this is a surprise, I didn’t expect you to drop in on me all unexpected ha ha...look I really really like you and will you please go out with me, I mean it’s okay if you say no but I’d really like to take you on a date this Saturday please?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a rumpled blue pegasus who I thought I recognized as one of Applejack’s friends fly down from the tree and bark, “What the hay, Derpy? Can you please look where you’re going? Derpy? Derpy, are you okay?”

My blonde and grey meteor paid her no mind, but just stared back at me, her face slowly breaking into her trademark grin. “Yes, of course I will!” she squealed and hugged me so tightly she crushed the breath out of me. I didn’t mind one bit, of course. I’d finally done it, and she’d said yes, and not even the lack of air and the growing lump on my head could make me feel anything less than perfectly contented.

Rainbow Swift (or whatever her name was) seemed to have calmed down, and I heard her let out a quiet “Aww...” before she flew off, leaving us alone.

Comments

[MclarenMP4-27]

This story rocks and gives me a warm feeling inside. Please add more soon!

[Tired_eyes]

272158 Aww, thanks. That was my goal.

[thewaffler]

I really liked this chapter and thought it was diabetic levels of d'awww. I know you probably put a lot of effort into this, but the part that sticks in my head the most out of all the lines of dialogue and monologue is the part when Dovetail is like "Rainbow Swift or whatever." That part made me laugh my ass off for some reason, I like the idea that Dovetail is like Rainbow = meh.

Peace Out and I look forward to more fic.

[Tired_eyes]

272228

Thanks! I've always been fascinated by stories set in a universe that the viewers or readers know, where the minor characters are featured, and they don't know the primary characters nearly as well as we do, like the "Lower Decks" ST:TNG episode.That was what I was going for... but now that you mention it it's nice to see somepony not being obsessed with Dash.

[LIGHTNINLANDEN]

Please please more soon! I love it!

[RealityCheck]

warm fuzzies. Yay.

And Dinky is just adorable in this...

[Wind Whistler is love]

Oh my gosh, I love this. You really make these characters come alive. This is how I saw Derpy when I first saw TLR, a happy, vivacious mare that doesn't let anything get to her and doesn't need any pity. Dovetail has such a unique perspective and way of speaking, and it's such a pleasure to read. He just tells it like it is. And the way he's so grounded and practical but maybe a bit naive makes it even cuter and funnier when he gets all flustered about Derpy. And Dinky reminds me so much of how I was when I was little! It's so rare to see a child actually act like a child in any kind of fiction. I think people forget what it's like or focus too much on making things clear enough for their readers to understand (and grossly underestimate the intelligence of their average reader).

This story is awesome, and happy Derpy is best Derpy!

[Starfall]

Hee, that was very very cute. Looking forward to reading more!

[bucknorris]

272159
This story makes me feel warm inside + 1 Like for you