The Talented Mr. Murphy.
Chapter 16
The Talented Mr. Murphy.
Twilight and Spike have left me alone for the first time...ever. To me it is most likely the biggest step in the right direction that we can take. It is a sign that she trusts me. I sigh and roll my eyes. “The last people to trust me got hurt so badly that they felt the need to reject me out of reality." I frown. “Seriously, brain? Stop that. You need to stop focusing on that. Start focusing on other things. Important things. ‘Cause really? This isn’t just a day by day thing. We’re here for a long haul, we need to make long term plans," I reply out loud.
I toss my head to get some of my mane out of my face. Disappointment is what I am feeling when I look at the drawing in front of me. It’s just crap. It barely looks like Spike. I can see a vague collection of lines forming his head, his upper and lower body, and what-have-you, but it looks like an eight year old drew it.
“You might think this is improvement, Spike,” I say taking a sip of my tea. “But that isn’t saying much." This tea is fantastic. It almost tingles as it runs down my tongue. The flavors are concentrated and vibrant. There are a great number of citric flavors going around there. Red brush, orange, lemon zest and blueberries. I fucking love blueberries. The vanilla and liquorice pair off nicely together in this melody. But there's that nagging feeling of the two things I can’t quite identify.
I shake my head. “Right, more focus, more practice," I tell myself. I apply the pencil to the paper. Trying to draw something I notice something any artist worth their grain of salt would notice. “Fffff-” I stop myself knowing that I am only going to get frustrated at my inability to say a simple four lettered word. I grasp for something else to use.
“Fiddlesticks?” I chuckle. Awesome. ”Fiddlesticks, all my pencils are dull." I should have asked Twilight to sharpen my pencils before she left. But it is too late for that now. I look at the pencil sharpener that she got from Ghost Writers Pen & Quill shop. It’s a turn crank sharpener. Obviously made for creatures with either magic or hands. I sigh, remove my hoof from the tea cup and pick up the pencils in my mouth. Sticking the pencil into the hole is easy enough.
“Alright, H.B., push the pencil in with one hoof, turn the crank with the other. Easy!” I tell myself. The ‘yeah, right’ factor kicks in as I try to grasp the crank with my ‘ankle’. “Sorta...Got It..," I then push on the pencil end with my other hoof. Clumsy turning the crank, I attempt to sharpen the pencil. It doesn’t go well. When the crank turns, so does the pencil. I scowl at the pencil sharpener. “Fet. Locks." Alright, try something else. I bite down on the pencil in the sharpener and then awkwardly turn the crank. This goes a bit better, but the feeling of the pencil being ground is going through my teeth and setting me off edge.
After a few turns of the crank, I pull the pencil out. It’s sharpened but the lead was slightly askew. “Ffffffet. LOCKS." And I have five more pencils to work with here. “Darn it. I wouldn’t have this problem with a mechanical pencil. The only thing I would have to worry about is putting the graphite in. After that, it would just be a matter of clicking the end to keep the lead going..," I sigh. “I doubt that they have mechanical pencils in equestria, let alone the graphite leads for such a device.”
After finishing sharpening the rest of the pencils like that, I return back to the easel and take another sip of my tea. I close my eyes as the tea plays over my tongue. They snap open and I get an idea of what I want to draw. “I think I’ll try to draw Twilight. I mean it’s something that I can try doing after she got me this tea.”
I attempt to draw a basic head shape. Just a simple circle. That’s all I need. Again it comes out looking almost like a circle, but not. There are several factors getting in the way of me making just a proper circle. I have covered the fact that my mouth just doesn’t operate the same way as a hand, despite it being the most dexterous thing on an equine body. But there is another thing bothering me. And it’s something that shouldn’t bother me. It’s something that one would think that shouldn’t bother them while drawing. But for some reason or another, it is.
Wider field of vision.
On the show they showed ponies with their eyes mostly in the front of their faces, but they also showed them from the side. And when it comes to it. Equines are a prey species. Prey animals tend to have their eyes set mostly on the sides of their heads for a greater field of vision. I wasn’t really noticing this until right now. If I focus, I can just look straight ahead, but other things are in my line of vision. It shouldn’t really matter, but it is a slight distraction.
“Heh. Maybe I should ask Rarity about those blinders." Then I roll my eyes. “But knowing my luck, she’d make new ones for me that look like marshmallows." I continue drawing a line. I take a step back to see my progress in this piece, which isn’t much. The lines are still wobbly, the shapes are still squished looking and I am unhappy with the overall result.
“Darn. It!” I growl, stomping my right hoof down. “It’s just not right!” I look at my right hoof. When it was my hand, It was always my dominant. For everything. So much so that my left hand barely got to do anything. It was there mostly for support and the like. Which is weird due to the way that computer keyboards are set up. All the popular letters and keys are on the left hand side, while the less popular keys are on the right hand side. Well, most of the popular keys were. But, how my creative muse would push itself into the world was really through my right hand. I shake my head looking at that hoof at the end of it.
“You’re still such a useless thing, you know that right?” I ask it, sighing and taking another sip of my tea. I notice that my cup is finally getting a bit low, just barely ducking below the halfway point of the tea cup. “Hmmm, I better fill you up. I’m sure the bag in there is still good, and that water in the teapot is still hot.." I start to turn in the direction of the teapot, but stop midway. I pick up a pencil and add a line to the ‘Twilight’ drawing. “There. Now to that teapot.”
==============================================================
Twilight walked merrily down the lane with Spike. “I knew getting her that tea was a good idea!”
“I’m just glad that you didn’t blow up right when you walked into the library. Knowing you Twilight, that could have been really ugly," Spike replied, as they started heading into Ponyville.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “I almost did. Had it not been for me talking myself down from a conversation with myself, I just might have.”
“You were having a conversation with yourself?” Spike asked.
Twilight glared at Spike. “I wasn’t having it out loud, if that is what you were implying.”
“Alright,” Spike replied. “I think the last thing I can do in this situation is write a letter to Celestia.”
“Seriously, Spike? That was one time," Twilight said, as they approached the Paladin Platter, a local Ponyville eatery.
“One time, Twilight? What about the time parasprites invaded Ponyville? Or how about when Celestia gave you only two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala? Or when you tried to figure out Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense?” Spike replies counting with his fingers.
“Ok, Spike-” Twilight says.
“Or at the Gala itself?” Spike interrupts. “Or when Discord turned the world upside-down? And then there was that one time where you went back-”
“Alright Spike!” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I get it. Sometimes I freak out about little things. You don’t have to name them all in a list!” “Though if Heartbreak were here, she could most likely name them off all to. And she would comment that I would be the one making a list about the times I freaked out.”
“Just saying, I was surprised that you didn’t freak out back there,” Spike said, pointing out an empty table. “In fact, there’s lots of things that you’ve been doing that I haven’t expected you to do.”
“Such as?” Twilight asked, as the two of them sat down.
“Well, the first being that you gave her an entire week before you actually said anything,” Spike picked up his menu. “Normally, you would have demanded that start on getting into harmony right away.”
“With how much she had been through, I thought, well, it might be healthy for her to have a ‘little’ time to process what she could,” Twilight responded looking at her menu. There were a few things that looked good. Maybe a nice salad would do the trick. Then again, her stomach growled at her for more than just a salad. “I mean, I don’t think either of us knows what she has been through. She hasn’t told me anything, but the way she described her eviction from her world. I would say that was pretty traumatic.”
“I’d say so with the way she reacted when I got her to explain what was up with her and Rarity,” Spike said, focused on his menu.
“Oh? So..," Twilight started. “You actually got her to open up a little?”
“A little, I might have gotten a little further had you not interrupted at the time you did there Twi’,” Spike replies.
Twilight’s face drooped. “Oh,” she replied. “Well, what did you learn?”
“Nothing that we didn’t already know,” Spike looked at the waiter that stopped by.
“Are you ready to order?” he asked, a note pad floating in midair with a small stubby pencil at the ready.
“Yeah,” Spike paused. “I think I’ll have nachos.”
Twilight looked at Spike. “Nachos? Really?”
“Yeah really,” Spike replied. “And a tall glass of sparkling cider.”
Twilight shrugged her shoulders and put her menu down. “I, however, am going to have a simple Waldorf Salad and watercress sandwiches please, water to drink.”
The waiter nodded and took some other orders.
“Nothing like?” Twilight asked, fishing for more.
“Just the basics of what happened that night. She got banished from her reality, her name stolen, she was given a new name and then branded. She explained that the reason she nearly attacked Rarity was because she had just been branded and that somepony named Kylie, well I guess they wouldn’t be a pony now, but this Kylie character was using the name given to Heartbreak again and again.”
“Kylie. But that sounds like a fillies name. I was under the impression that this, ‘Council of Nine’ was made up of Heartbreak’s bitter ends," Twilight mulled this over. “Wait. She did say it was seven of her bitter ends and two who she thought were her friends. Never mind, continue.”
“Right, So the reason,” Spike started, as the waiter brought them both their drinks. “The reason she may have attacked Rarity, was because once Kylie was finished with her,” Spike took a long drink of his sparkling cider. “Aaah, Rarity came in using the name she had just been given.”
“Alright, was that it?” Twilight asked.
“Yup. I didn’t want to try to get any more or ask about her world. Seeing that it just further upsets her. There was one other thing though. She did seem like she was really sorry about the situation," Spike said, looking around to see if his food had come.
“Did she say she was sorry?” Twilight asked.
“Not directly. It was more of a roundabout way of ‘had the situation been different or normal I wouldn’t, I couldn’t,’ but about that time is when she giggled and I started tickling her." Twilight gave Spike a disapproving look. “What can I say? I thought it would loosen her up. That, and she kinda had insulted both Rarity’s dresses and the apron she made for me.”
“Right, so that gets us nowhere in the realm of anything we didn’t already know," Twilight sighed.
The waiter brought out their food on a platter and set it down. “Nachos for the young dragon. And for Miss Sparkle, Waldorf Salad and Watercress sandwiches. If there is anything else, please let me know.”
“Thank you," Twilight replied, politely. She waited until the waiter was gone to continue the conversation. “I wish we knew more about her world, Spike. It could help in addressing some of her problems. Emotionally and psychologically. I mean the only thing that we know for sure about her world is that she wasn’t a pony before she came here. I’m not sure what she was, it had hands and fingers, but there are lots of animals with those traits.”
“What about those things from that one dream?” Spike asked. “Do you think that has to do with what Heartbreak was?”
“That’s a possibility, Spike,” Twilight mused, beginning to eat her salad. “But, what’s the connection? I barely saw any vast armies of machines, just monkey like creatures. Then there is the fact that I barely remember anything from that dream," Twilight said through bites of her salad.
Spike munched happily on his nachos. “With the way that she was talking about those machines, you’d think that there was a machine for everything.”
“I had the very same thought.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Energy drinks and machines for everything. That sounds like a recipe for a species to drive itself to extinction. I still don’t get how they don’t have magic. Or at least magic that isn’t well known about.”
“With a machine for everything, who needs magic?” Spike asked.
Twilight blinked at him. She hadn’t thought about it like that. Magic pretty much ran most of the more advanced devices here. Was there some sort of way that Heartbreak’s people had figured out that didn’t require magic? Twilight sighed. “This talk isn’t leading us anywhere productive, and only going in circles.”
“Well, until she decides to open up some more, it’s all we got to go on right? Otherwise, there is the other thing that surprised me that you did," Spike says, licking some cheese off his snout.
“And what’s that?” Twilight asked.
“You left her alone at the library. I’m sure it’s ‘cause you wanted to see what I learned. But to her, that most likely means the world. She’s used to doing things on her own. She doesn’t like relying on others or others relying on her too much," Spike explains.
“That could very well explain why she is so reluctant to let me buy things for her,” Twilight replied. “I just hope she’ll be alright.”
“Twilight, she’s happily drawing her little heart out,” Spike said, shrugging. “What’s the worst that possibly could happen?”
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YAY! Chapter without HB
:Clarification:
I've been wanting to back off alittle from HB and see what they do when left to their own devices, does (S)he figure out how to draw, does everything turn into a mess, do Twi and Spike come back to a disaster or a tidy library. I feel like while we're spending alot of time with Twilight and Spike but I wasn't really seeing it from their perspective at all. It's a welcome change.
Also first.
Oh God dang it Spike! Why did you have to say that?
569160 oh the irony
Why do I have the sneeaking suspicion that the next chapter...Anthony/Heartbreak is going to be a gibbering loon going as fast as Pinkie Pie on a double binge of coffee?
569160
My thoughts exactly;
Hey Murphy! Someone ain't followin' yer law again!
Murphy: zipmeme.com/uploads/generated/g1329130562292670843.jpg
Oh Spike...
I was going to go to sleep, but dat line from Spike. I must know!
and now Murphy is gonna show what could.
2211217 Im doing the same thing now, friend.
GODDAMNIT SPIKE!
RIP HB