Summer (The Fence)

by 206-Ginge

Chapter 3

The couch was comfortable enough, I guess.

Lyra sat next to me, still grinning her goofy grin, while Bon Bon sat on what griffins would call a love-seat but seeing as ponies sat in a way that took up twice as much space I guess it was just a regular chair for them. Various pictures were scattered about the room, some of Lyra and Bon Bon together, some of what I assumed were their families, all of which framed elegantly. Beat the hell out of my apartment, I’ll tell you.

“So...” Lyra said, once we were settled in and the standard pleasantries about entering a new home were exchanged. She pursed her lips slightly and looked down at the rug, obviously holding something back. Suddenly she burst, “How does it feel to have talons? They’ve got to be incredibly useful. I mean, look at them! It’s almost like you have-”

“LYRA!” Bon Bon cut her off. Lyra smiled sheepishly as I relaxed from the drawn-back position I had taken as a result of the sudden outburst.

“Hehe, sorry,” Lyra apologized. Bon Bon gave her a slightly disapproving glance as I gathered myself again.

“Um, well, to answer your question,” I began. I hesitated as I saw Bon Bon look at me as if to tell me not to encourage Lyra any further than I already had. Still, the unicorn had asked a simple enough question, and I certainly wasn’t going to encourage here with my response. “It kind of sucks to walk with them. Whenever I walk on a grass field I sometimes accidentally pull up a chunk of sod. Plus, I can’t really use them for much outside of just gripping things.”

“Oh,” Lyra sighed. Bon Bon continued to gaze at me, evaluating my behavior. She appeared to think I didn’t notice her judgemental stare, and I didn’t give her any hints that I did. Lyra, on the other hand, looked slightly dejected, but managed to continue the conversation. “Still, they’ve got to be much more convenient than hooves.”

I gave an amused chortle. “I’m sure of that,” I said. “I mean, I couldn’t imagine playing guitar with those-”

“YOU PLAY GUITAR?!?!?” The turquoise pony immediately returned to her wide grin, again filled with enthusiasm. “Ohmigosh, this is awesome! I play the lyre! We should totally have a jam session while you’re here!”

“Sounds fun,” I replied, though it really didn’t. So not only was her cutie mark related to what she did, HER FREAKING NAME WAS ONE LETTER AWAY FROM THE DAMN THING. I’d never actually heard of a lyre before, but I assumed it was the harp-like instrument emblazoned on her flank. It looked like it was designed more for classical music than my usual up-tempo modern style.

“I’m sure that would be a great time,” Bon Bon said, obviously trying to regain some control of the conversation. “But Jack’s on painkillers right now, Strings, he probably just wants to mellow out for a while.” Truer words have never made me so uncomfortable. “So,” she said, turning her gaze towards me, “Twilight told us you were from Baltimare.”

“Twilight told you the truth,” I replied, my own gaze turning towards their coffee table. A stack of magazines lay on one end of the table, while immediately in front of me was a simple-looking marble-based game that I guessed was designed to keep the more introverted house guests entertained. I was tempted to pick it up, but hesitated since I was currently the center of attention. Ignoring my manners, I grabbed the wooden device and started twisting and turning it with my talons, much to the silent delight of Lyra.

“I had a friend who came from Baltimare,” Bon Bon continued, ignoring the fact that my attention was now split between her and the game. “Strings, you remember Chrysanthemum?”

“What? Oh,” Lyra had been paying close attention to my maneuvers, studying the way I used my talons to grip the wooden object. At this point I had gotten one of the three marbles into the center chamber of the game, and I was working on the second. “Yeah, wasn’t she that florist?”

I saw Bon Bon roll her eyes, and she brought the conversation back to me. “What do you do, Jack?” A good question for a pony to ask a griffin, I guess. It’s not like we gave ourselves tattoos on our asscheeks when we got hired. I briefly wondered what my cutie mark would look like if I had one. What was the symbol for office worker? A padded chair? A cubicle? A gigantic “in” box?

“I work for a publishing company.”

“Ooh, so you’re a writer?” Bon Bon asked, either interested or simply trying to be polite.

“No, I just manage finances.” The second marble made its way into the center chamber.

“So you’re in management?”

“Not exactly, I just do what they tell me to do.” Managing finances wasn’t exactly the best description. I was basically the grunt guy of the business end of the company. If they needed something done and everyone else was busy, I did it. It was a 9 to 5 job, not a huge part of who I was. Mostly I just liked the payday.

“Do you ever write anything?” Lyra asked, still focused on my talons with an intensity that would’ve made me slightly uncomfortable if I cared.

“No,” I answered. I had fancied myself a writer in college, and I had written a few short stories on the side of my studies, but, critics being critics, no griffin at the office was too interested in my creative writing. I couldn’t exactly blame them. There were much better writers in the griffin world than myself, and they owned the rights to most of them.

I succeeded at getting the third marble into the center chamber and put the game down, straight-faced as I ever was. I was determined to make it through this question-and-answer session, and I knew I didn’t need to impress anyone. They’d already agreed to take me in, and I was sure in their minds they couldn’t toss a cripple out on the streets unless I did something actively awful, which I was not planning to do.

The three of us sat in silence, Lyra still staring at my talons, her hooves crossed across her chest. It occurred to me that I had never seen a pony sit the way she was sitting, like she was a griffin. Ponies I saw on television sat the way Bon Bon did, their legs relaxed underneath them, almost lying down. Lyra sat on her flank, her hind legs dangling over the side of the couch. It didn’t look particularly comfortable for her, the way she had to bend her neck to compensate for the back of the couch. Did she have an auxiliary reason for letting me stay here? Was she...

“You said you played guitar.” Bon Bon’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Yeah,” I replied, snapping my head back to the cream-colored pony. Actually, I just said I couldn’t imagine playing guitar with hooves, but the assumption wasn’t too risky on Bon Bon’s part.

“Are you in a band...?” Her voice trailed off, waiting for me to pick up the conversation.

“No, I just play on occasion.” A gross oversimplification.

“What kind of music do you play?” Bon Bon seemed to have given up on bringing Lyra into the conversation. She had used her magic to pick up the game I had put down.She held her hooves up to the game and was staring intensely at the marbles.

“I play whatever, really...” She was talking to me like I was an intense guitar player. I guess she had to extrapolate from what she knew about me. “Some modern stuff, some older stuff...”

“Do you write any songs?”

“Nah, I’m not into composing.” I was feeling myself getting slightly less comfortable with the turquoise pony to my right. She was tearing up as she placed her hooves on the side of the game, despite the fact that the wood was not easily manipulated by the flat surface. She wanted something, badly.

Bon Bon noticed this as well. “Strings, maybe you could show Jack some of your music?” she said. Lyra snapped suddenly out of her moment, returning the game back to its original position in a flourish.

“Yeah, I’d be happy to play a song for him. Lemme go get my lyre.”

Bon Bon sighed as Lyra exited the room down the hall. “Sorry about her, she-” Bon Bon cut herself off, not letting me in on whatever secret she held. I appreciated that; it’s not like I wasn’t doing the exact same thing with the questions she was asking me. I was answering like a student would answer a teacher, never giving more information than was required. After a few moments of silence, I made my move.

“Well, these painkillers are making me really drowsy. Maybe Lyra could pick out a lullaby and I could turn in?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” answered, a hint of exasperation in her voice. She obviously was not the driving force behind my stay. She gave hints of being hesitant ever since we left the hospital, from the stares she gave me when I was talking about my talons to the concerned looks she gave to Lyra as we stepped out of the room, both of which she thought I hadn’t noticed.

Lyra entered, smiling. I saw that her instrument was indeed the one emblazoned on her flank. “Strings, why don’t you play a nice, slow song? Jack’s thinking about turning in soon.”

“Oh, okay,” Lyra said, obviously disappointed that this was going to be a short concert, but still eager to share with me some of her music. Considering the mood she’d left the room in, this was a great turnaround.

Lyra began to play, using her magic to pluck the individual strings on the instrument. She plucked masterfully, obviously with the skill and precision of somepony with experience. The melody was soft, and I listened intently. Wasn’t my style, but I could appreciate the artistry. When she was finished, I asked her, “You wrote that?”

“Yep!” Lyra continued to smile. “That one was on my second album!” A recording artist. Neat.

“Strings, why don’t you show Jack to his room?”

“Sure thing, Sweets!” Lyra picked up my bags for me and started walking down the hallway as I hopped off of the couch and followed. I looked into the various doors on either side of the wide hallway. There were only four doors, one of which led to a set of stairs going downward, the other to a medium-sized bathroom, the third to a large bedroom featuring a double bed with a crimson bedspread, and finally one leading into a medium room with a single bed and a desk. My room.

Lyra entered first and set my bags down. She’d carried them in her mouth, probably for convenience's sake. I’d heard that a unicorn’s magic actually took quite a bit of concentration, and most only used theirs when necessary.

“This used to be my room, but Bon Bon and I decided to share a bed a few months after we moved in together.”

I nodded slightly. “Thanks for letting me stay here, then. Mind if I just go ahead and get some shut-eye?”

“Yeah, sure, go ahead,” she said as she stepped out of the room. When the door closed, I pulled back the green sheets and carefully lowered myself into the bed, trying to avoid bumping my casts. I somehow managed to get in without touching them, a feat that I made no effort to repeat in the subsequent nights after I found out just how stiff plaster was. I closed my eyes but didn’t go to sleep quite then. Instead, I heard the voices of my hosts in the living room.

“Twilight said he was a bit short but I wasn’t really expecting that little from him.”

“He’s just tired and drugged, don’t worry.”

“But I am worried, Strings, especially because you seem so excited. I just don’t want you to be let down if he isn’t exactly what you wanted.”

“He already isn’t exactly what I wanted, Sweets. And you say that like I’m looking for a boyfriend.”

“And that’s another thing. How do you think he feels about... us?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“You must have seen his face at the hospital when I said we shared a room.”

A pause. “Yeah, he actually just did the same thing when I mentioned it.”

“I’m not sure he’s supportive of our lifestyle, Strings.”

“Well, if he was one of those people I think he would’ve just said no.”

“True... just... don’t be too disappointed if he doesn’t stay around long once the hotels start to open up again.”

“I won’t, sweets.” The sound of lips smacking, hoofsteps down the hallway, a door shutting, and the rumble of a pony going downstairs. The house was quiet as I drifted off to sleep, paying no mind to the opinions of the couple. They had to let me stay. I was a cripple. They wouldn’t say no. I was sure of that.

---

That was the night “it” started.

I found myself in the backyard of my parent’s old house, the one I grew up in with Jen. I was fourteen. I had always been fourteen. Jen was with me, and she was five. This had always been true.

I looked down and saw that we’d been playing together, or at least as together as an older brother and a younger sister could play. She had out her shovel set, and I was holding a magnifying glass in my talons, looking for ants. Jen gave me a sad look whenever I found one, but she didn’t ever say a word of complaint. She wasn’t even angry. She had no power to be angry. She was younger and I was older. That was the way the world worked.

My search led me to the edge of the yard. A fence stood there. I didn’t remember a fence being at the edge of our yard. It was gapless, and if it wasn’t for a small hole at about my height you couldn’t see through it to the neighbor’s house. The fence was about three times as tall as I was when I stood on my paws. Without any holes to grip, there was no way I could climb over it, and my wings were too badly sprained from my injury at flight team practice to fly over it.

I peeked through the hole, curious as to what was on the other side. Three fillies, one turquoise, one cream, and one purple, played together in the next yard over. I had never heard of ponies living in our village before. I felt the urge to find some lumber, to build up the fence even taller than it already was. And thicker. I bet they could kick it over if they wanted to. I felt the fence grow taller and taller as I thought about it. Jen came over and watched as the fence grew. The hole through which I viewed the fillies disappeared. We were fully separated.

I woke up. It was still dark, and my wings were still in casts. I went back to sleep.

Comments

[Volscon]

Wow you updated quick!

[Zooty]

This is a good story so far, I like how Lyra's presented and I hope that Jack gets some character development where he opens up soon :3