Chapter 10: The World Cup
IT’S NICE to have something to wake up to. In college, I had friends who’d brag about all their classes being after noon. I was the opposite—I liked making sure I had a class to wake up for each morning. (And yes, even though I went to college I still wound up with a working class job. I’m not the best at self-promotion, and it’s not like a bachelor’s degree gets you that much these days, anyway.)
After college, for a while—a short while—I had Cindy to wake up to. Not to say staying in bed didn’t have its merits too, but when I was living with her, one way or another, I was gonna wake up bright and early. It felt good, from my side anyway. I got pretty decent at making breakfast—the kind that involves heating food up. You know, fancy breakfast.
Waking up for work doesn’t have charm like that—not by a long shot. The best I could do was set my alarm clock to WFUV and make cranberry pancakes now and then.
But then Peach started making daily blog posts, and I started to remember the feeling of getting out of bed knowing that in just a minute, I’d be smiling.
[Posted: 6/18/18 by Peach]
So, guess what I found out today. Humans play polo—but get this: They do it while sitting on horses! The horses do the running and the humans do the swinging.
I don't know whether to feel upset or delighted. Are the horses being exploited, or is this just a cooperative sport? Should we be flattered that horses are pretty much the only animals humans play sports with?
Poem of the Day: For Humans Who Like Sports
If you get your biggest thrills
from other people's skills
You're probably a fan.
But I say: Play if you can!
And if you’d rather give a ball a whack
While on somepony else’s back,
You may as well play polo.
But I say YOLO.
2 COMMENTS
Yeah. That left me snickering, all right. I left a comment:
“Love your Poems of the Day. For the record, I don’t know whether polo horses like playing or not. Their owners probably say they do, but who knows? By the way, does this mean ‘polo’ stands for Ponies Only Live Once?”
And since I wasn’t scheduled until 3p.m. that day, after breakfast I set to work putting my bills in order. Not the most exciting task, huh? Good thing I had something to wake up for.
Then again, my news app reminded me that the U.S. was taking on France in the World Cup Round of 16 that morning. Of course, international football wasn’t like real football, but I’d been following the group stage, so why not? I turned on the TV at 10:30 and settled in with pork rinds and cola to root for the Stars and Stripes.
Knock knock knock. For just a moment, I panicked. It’s sad when your social life is so thin that a knock on the door makes you nervous.
But then again! “Peach, is that you?” Probably should have just looked through the peephole, but the thought of a certain peach-colored unicorn in my apartment had me excited.
“Yep!” answered Peach. I opened the door and she ambled in cautiously, but happily. It was only the second time she’d visited me at home.
I was cheerful already. “What’s the occasion?”
“I’ve got the day off, that’s all! We’re between projects and HR’s been bugging us to use vacation days, so I figured I’d be a good employee. Even though I’m not an H.”
I took a moment and still didn’t get it. “Huh?”
“You know, like in HR? Human Resources?”
“Oh.” I flushed a little. “Well, that’s always been a dumb name. You’re not really a resource either.”
“Eh! That’s debatable. So whatcha watching?”
I gestured at the screen. “Soccer. It’s the World Cup.”
“Ooh!” Peach skittered over. “I heard about this but I haven’t seen any yet. You saw my post on polo today, right?”
I walked back to the couch and sat down. “Yeah—commented on it, even.”
“Oh nice! Well, polo was a shock, but I was almost as surprised when I found out you have soccer here. I mean, since you only have two feet each. That must make it a lot harder!”
That was a weird way of thinking about it. “Uh… well that’s kind of the point.”
“How is that the point?”
“The idea is that it’s tricky. If you could just throw the ball from one player to another, it’d be too easy. So they made the rule you can’t use your arms.”
Peach was sitting in front of me, staring at the TV. I saw her ears shift. When she looked back at me, her expression was… I don’t know. Curious, and hungry, but with an edge. “So we’re playing the easy version of your sport?”
Danger signals flashed in my head. “I guess?”
She paused. “The childish version?”
I spread my hands. “I’d have to see Equestrian soccer in action. Maybe.”
She snorted. “Heh.” And she turned back to the game. France had possession and was meeting resistance on the attacking half of the pitch. Ten minutes to halftime, one goal apiece.
“So that’s it? You’re not gonna wring your hair over it?”
“Nah, I’m used to it by now.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. My eyes caught the bag of pork rinds and I realized I was embarrassed by them. I didn’t want to have to explain pork rinds to Peach, so I smuggled them into my kitchen, keeping one eye on the game through the doorway. “Hungry at all?”
“Sure!” She sat forward eagerly. “What’re you having?”
I suggested a sandwich, and my ingredient ideas satisfied her. So I made one for each of us and strolled back just in time to see the U.S. goalkeeper absorb a powerful last-second shot on goal to the chest. Peach was standing and pawing the floor as time ran out, her face just three feet from the screen.
“Nice! So now it’s a halftime break, right?”
“Yup. Fifteen minutes.” I took a bite of my baba ghanoush, onion and alfalfa sandwich. Somehow a vegetarian lunch didn’t seem as out of place for soccer as it would for some sports.
Peach ambled back to join me on the couch. “Who do you think’s gonna win?”
I smiled wryly. “France are the favorites. We were lucky to score at all.”
“Really? That’s too bad.”
“Well, they’re saying anything can happen this time around. Germany got knocked out on Monday—they were the defending champs. Sudan qualified for the first time ever, and Romania made the quarterfinals for the first time in twenty years.”
I saw Peach’s ears quiver, and I realized I loved that about her. “Huh! Is there some reason things are weird this time?”
“Well, yeah! Russia was going to be host until they invaded Eastern Ukraine. So FIFA gave the Cup to Belgium and the Netherlands, and they didn’t have much chance to get ready. Less than three years.”
Peach made a face. “Less than three years? Like you need three years to build a few stadiums?”
“Uh, yeah, you kind of do.”
“Haven’t you been watching TS?” She meant Life in Equestria, featuring Twilight Sparkle. The show’s title was a mouthful, so it had a slew of nicknames.
“Yeah, most of the time.” Recent episodes had been about Twilight’s work preparing Cloudsdale for the Equestria Games.
“Well, the city that hosts the Equestria Games only gets six months to get ready! And Cloudsdale has extra challenges. All those cloud-supported fields they’re putting in!”
“Well… to be fair,” I pointed out, “the Equestria Games aren’t nearly the size of our own Olympics, or even the World Cup. Your population’s a lot lower.”
Peach sighed. “Yeah, I guess so. But wow. Three years isn’t enough? It seems like such a long time.”
I waved toward the TV, now showing a sweeping helicopter shot of Rotterdam. “Well, it was enough! Even if they didn’t get all the stadiums ready in time and had to reschedule.”
Peach was thoughtful as she ate. I sat and watched the commentary for a while.
“Hey Pepper? Do you think ponies are better are improvising than humans?”
“Improvising?” I asked with my mouth full. I thought while I chewed and swallowed. “Maybe! Why do you say that?”
“Well, I get the idea we don’t do nearly as much planning in Equestria. But maybe it’s because we don’t need it!”
That was an interesting idea. “You just wing it if problems crop up?”
“Sure.” It was Peach’s turn to talk with food in her mouth, and for a moment I wondered whether I should set a better example, until I remembered this problem wasn’t unique to Earth. “Or heroes show up and save the day.”
“Heroes? Like Twilight and her friends?”
“Or some kid about to get their cutie mark. Or whoever. Everyone has their day to shine!”
“If only,” I said.
“You don’t think so?”
I looked at her straight-on. “You think everyone gets a day to shine?”
“At least!” She studied me like she was trying to pick something out. “Everyone knows that.”
“That sounds like something parents tell their kids.”
“Well, sure! How do you think everyone knows it?”
I adjusted myself on the couch as if stabilizing for battle. “But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“No… but it’d be kind of silly for parents everywhere to tell their kids something that isn’t true.”
“Really? Don’t you have myths like the tooth fairy?”
“Like what?”
“The tooth fairy. Parents tell their kids if they lose a tooth, they just have to put it under their pillow and the tooth fairy will come and exchange it for a coin or something while they’re sleeping.”
Peach leaned in credulously. “Really?”
“No! I mean, yes, we really tell our kids that. But the parents change out the lost teeth themselves.”
She sat gaping. “But that’s… why would they do that?”
“To… give the kids something to believe in, I guess? Oh, that’s right. We decided you don’t really have fantasy, do you?”
“Why do we need fantasy to give foals something to believe in? They can believe in their own futures.”
“In which everyone has their day to shine.”
“Exactly!”
I knew I was getting macabre, but I couldn’t stop myself. “What about if a kid dies when they’re just a baby? Before they learn how to do anything?”
Peach sat back, stricken. “That’s horrible!”
“I know. But still.”
“Well okay, so maybe not literally everyone shines,” she conceded, still upset. “But aside from some tragedy like that…”
“I don’t think so, Peach.” I saw her sit further back in dismay, crossing one front leg in front of the other. “People on Earth can work their whole lives in coal mines or tiny farms or huge factories and never get anywhere.”
“But… you don’t necessarily need to get somewhere in order to have just one important day,” Peach pointed out.
“Most people have at least a few important days in their life, sure. But there’s no guarantee of even that.”
It looked like she was being convinced. “But you don’t know it’s not true, do you?”
I considered. “I guess I can’t tell you the name of someone who lived their whole life and never had an important day. Because if there were people like that, I would never have heard of them. You get what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” said the pony in front of me. “You know what I think?”
“Yes?”
“I think you earthlings need destinies.”
The whistle for the second half kickoff kept me from having to figure out how to react. We broke off from our debate and turned to the tube. As the minutes rolled by, the two dominant French forwards got a little too aggressive and started racking up fouls. The Americans started taking shots and the crowd was getting excited.
“You think they’ll let Equestria play in the next World Cup?” asked Peach out of nowhere.
Oddly enough, I’d heard some of the Germany-Czech Republic game on the radio at work, and the commentators had discussed just that. “I don’t think so,” I told Peach. “Probably just friendly games. There’s just too much that’s different for it to be fair.”
Peach nodded, accepting this. “Well, if you want to see Equestrian soccer in action, just watch the Games. Cloudsdale’s team may actually have a chance this year.”
I cracked a smile without meaning to. “Home team advantage, you mean?”
“Yeah, that and the fact that the field is built on clouds. They say the turf feels different. Squishy, I guess. Cloud walkers should perform better on it. And they’re used to the high altitude air, too.”
This was so weird. The details of pony sports were so much wilder, and funnier. “I think you’re right,” I decided. “Ponies are better at improvising.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
I waved my hand. “With all the weird random stuff you’ve got to deal with, you’ve got to be.”
I saw a little smile creep onto Peach’s face. She swept her tail in front of herself.
Twenty minutes later, a little-known American wingback created a moment of glory for himself with a sudden forty yard goal. The crowd went crazy, his teammates went crazy, the announcers went crazy. I thumped my fist into my hand and Peach stood up on the couch. I glanced over for a second and saw her beaming. I knew what she was thinking—one more light had had its chance to shine.
Like you can get to the level of international football competition without having shined a bunch of times already. But I wasn’t going to say that.
France regained its discipline in the game’s last stages, and they scored with nine minutes left on the clock. I didn’t take it hard—I’d been expecting it. I just grimaced as I stood. But Peach? She somehow managed to tumble over the back of the couch!
I raced around. “What happened?”
Her legs were scrambled, but she straightened up without help. “I just got upset,” she said.
“How did you fall over the back? That’s ridiculous.”
She smiled and shrugged, straightening up the cushions with a blue glow. “I gots talents, I guess.”
“How come you’re getting into this so much?” I teased. “It’s not your country playing.”
She looked up at me. “I may not be a citizen, but this country still means something to me!”
Those eyes. I actually felt personally honored that she felt that way about the good old USA. As if I were its ambassador, or some kind of national treasure. “But you’re not gonna stay here forever, right?” I asked softly.
She glanced off to the side. “I don’t know.”
I knelt and gave her a hug.
France won in overtime. We made noise together.
Once we’d calmed down, Peach levitated her empty plate to the kitchen ahead of me. I grinned and gently dropped my own plate on top of her floating one. They both dipped a few inches, but bobbed back up. “Hey!” she objected.
I graciously took both plates and carried them to the dishwasher. “So that’s it for Team USA. France’ll go up against Argentina next week.”
“You don’t seem too disappointed,” Peach observed.
“Like I said, we weren’t expected to win. It was cool enough being up for a while.”
“Are you going to watch the rest of the games?”
“Probably not. I’ll check the results online, but I don’t think I’ll bother watching.”
“Aww. But this was fun!”
A thought occurred to me as I sat at my kitchen table. “So do you still look down on fans?”
“Hm?”
“Your poem of the day? Do you still say ‘Play if you can’, and ‘YOLO’?”
“Oh!” Peach looked embarrassed. “Well. I guess it’s a lot more fun being a sports fan if you have someone to do it with.”
I grinned and stroked my fingers through her mane before realizing that might be overstepping my bounds. “I think you’re on to something.”
She didn’t seem to mind the stroking. “You know what we should do?”
“What?”
“We should watch the next Twilight Sparkle together.”
I could feel my face light up. “You’re on!”
“I can root for the ponies being great improvisers, and you can root for everything falling apart,” she joked.
“Nah. I like improvisers. We’ll root for the ponies together.”
We hugged again. There wasn’t anything more to say.
At work that afternoon, I imagined legions of ponies in jerseys pouring into Brussels and Amsterdam from over the water, over the land, from portals in the sky. I imagined them populating the stadiums and fielding teams against the best the human world had to offer. I imagined insane bicycle kicks and scissor kicks and players landing flat on their faces and shaking it off. I imagined pony fans in the stands waving huge banners and wearing elaborate make-up and hovering over the highest bleachers to get a better view. I imagined games of soccer more amazing than any the world had ever known.
I didn’t even know if the pony teams were winning in my fantasies. It wasn’t about who was going to win the match. The point was that everyone was winning.
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Sweet it updated! and its featured
BTW your story is not giving me favorite update notifications maybe you have it turned off? If I did not see it on featured I would have mist it.
Hey, this isn't showing up in my favorites. Could you explain it somehow?
Destiny's a really heavy topic for humans, and Peach's ponycentric point of view is really showing. Sure, some humans would find comfort in knowing that everything is either laid out according to a plan (or at least is leading up to some defining event), but others would rather die in obscurity if it meant not being under the thumb of some inscrutable higher-architect. Hell, we dedicate entire epics of literature to fighting destiny. We're contentious like that.
And why can't they just kiss already? GOD.
So you're going to use the whole destiny angle? How much predetermination are you going to use?
4919917 Happen to me too.
4919051 I have no idea why this story isn't sending notifications to people who have it favorited when I update! Is that is something the author can control? I certainly never turned it off, if there's even a way to do that. Does anyone have an idea?
4923187 Just found this again (had the same problem). I'd suggest trying to get a hold of Knighty or one of the mods. Though, not sure if they can do anything about it.
hmmm i'm liking the story so far. i'm not sure where it going and most stories can't keep me guessing not sure why though
looking forward to more
stay classy
fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/084/6/0/mlp_resource__dinky_hooves_01_by_zutheskunk-d3ik05j.png
5063055
Bow down to you god, mortals!
Bwaahahahahaha!
You know, in less than a year that blog could technically be published...