Chapter 6: So Long Old Friend
Chapter 6
So Long Old Friend
After the walk through the town, Odie and his friends made it to the gilded archway of Canterlot castle. The guards had been told about the business with the Bearers, and allowed them to enter.
Odie tried to follow suit, only to be blocked by one guard's hoof.
"Sorry, but no dogs allowed," the guard said to Odie.
Odie whimpered quietly as he looked past the guards.
Fluttershy heard him, and left her friend's side to talk to the dog.
"Don't worry, doggy. I'm sure it won't take very long," she assured him, before Odie's tongue extended past the guards to lick her face. "Could you please wait here for me until I get back," she politely requested after she shook all of the drool out of her fur and feathers.
Odie responded with an energetic nod of his head.
"Alright. Thank you for understanding, doggy," and she left to rejoin her friends.
Odie had done what he was told, and sat in front of the archway before the guards.
For several minutes, he remained motionless, making the guards gradually grow uneasy under the unblinking gaze of the yellow canine. After so many minutes of being watched by the dog, they began to feel their bodies work in rhythm with its heavy panting.
They could feel their eyes dry out and freeze so that they stuck wide open. Then their breath grew short, their mouths began to fill, and their tongues slowly stuck out of their mouths. It was only the rapidly increasing heartbeat of the older guard that let him become aware of the horrible transformation he was undergoing.
"For Celestia's sake! Why don't you do something," he snapped at the dog, which in turn brought his colleague back to his senses.
"Whoah...I think I could feel my IQ dropping," the younger guard shuddered as he tried to regain his poise.
As the guards recovered, Odie heard a noise come from past the archway. A familiar 'dingle-dingle' noise that came from his favorite toy, only this time, it was coming from a strange twinkle of light that was hovering in the courtyard.
Odie watched it intently, completely taken in with the noise it was making. Strangely, the guards acted like they couldn't hear it. What was wrong with them? Anything the made a 'dingle-dingle' noise had to be fun! He was tempted to run over and play with it, but he promised Fluttershy that he would stay put, and that was exactly what he was going to do. Then the dingle-ing light started to move.
It drifted past the guards in front of Odie, who started jumping and playing with the light. As he played with it, the guards watched him as if he were only doing normal dog-like behavior, although cautiously.
"Coat of Arms," the older guard said to the other, "If I start jumping around like that, would you give me a good, sound smack?"
"Will do, buddy. Will do."
Odie jumped up and caught the light in his mouth, but the light wouldn't go down so easily.
As he savored his victory, Odie became aware of a dingle-ing din inside his mouth. The next thing he knew, the light moved behind his eyes so that it was visible behind his pupils. At least, it would be if anyone else could see it.
He shook his head back and forth to get the thing out, and the guards watching slowly began to sway with his rhythm as they stared dead-eyed at him. It ended when the light flew out of Odie's ear and around the castle wall, with Odie chasing gleefully after it.
He followed it around the perimeter of the castle wall, hopping and skipping as he tried to catch the light again.
One of his jumps ended with him splashing in the moat, and the light stopping to see if he'd come back up.
He did indeed.
Odie came flying out of the water like a dolphin performing for a crowd, and tried to catch the light again.
The light continued along the length of the wall, until it dove under the water with Odie paddling after it.
He swam deeper into the moat, and followed the light to an aqueduct.
Then he felt the water flowing rapidly into the open space, and start to pull him in.
Odie didn't like the idea of being pulled into a small hole, even if a fun light was in there, and started rapidly paddling his legs to escape its pull. His efforts were in vain, as he was sucked into it, and dragged through the plumbing of the castle.
In the laundry room, a maid was washing a load of curtains until the water stopped flowing from the spout she was using. She tried to fix it by pumping its handle a few times, but when that didn't work, she looked directly into the spout.
Unwise on her part, since all of a sudden, an entire dog came flying out of it, and shook off its fur all over her before running away.
Odie ran and jumped all around the laundry room, spreading his wet dog stink all over the clean linens. Some sheets that were hung up to dry were soaked once more by his excessive drooling.
Chaos followed in the dog's wake as he rushed through the room, but he as long as he was having fun, he didn't notice. In fact, he was having too much fun to notice that he was headed right for a laundry mangle.
He followed the light through it, and came out the other end thin as a sheet of paper. In less than a second, he re-inflated himself and resumed his playful chase.
The light darted to the next hallway, and darted to the side so that Odie missed catching it again.
The dog liked that the light was a challenge to catch. It meant that he could have fun with it forever.
He jumped again, and this time ended up falling down a flight of stairs. He tumbled all the way to the bottom, where he quickly sprang to his feet and gave chase, only to fall down another flight of steps.
Finally, at the bottom, Odie was on solid, level ground. The light dingled in front of his face, and he continued to follow it.
The new room was dark, and piled with junk, which made keeping up with the light difficult, but he gave it his all and kept pace behind it.
One more leap, and the light began to dim, then it faded out of existence.
Odie was sad that the light was gone, but when he saw what he stopped in front of, it stirred a new emotion in the canine.
Where he stopped was in front of picture of a yellow, two storied house with a brown roof in a suburban neighborhood. He couldn't quite put his paw on it, but that picture reminded him of something. A fond memory that he almost forgot about, but knew that he needed to hold onto, for the small sense of belonging it created within him. And then his attention was drawn by a new noise.
Somewhere in the room, Odie could hear someone coughing quietly, and went to investigate. He navigated through the various sundry items that had been placed down there in that room, and after rounding a stack of old books, Odie saw a mare sitting at a candlelit desk, with an unopened book.
What someone was doing down there all alone was beyond him, but he knew that anyone who was alone like that was in need of company. He trotted up to the desk and whimpered quietly.
The mare jumped slightly before turning to face him.
"Oh. Hello there," the mare said to Odie, "What brings you down here?"
Now that he had her attention, Odie trotted up to introduce himself. He relished how readily she reached down and scratched his ears. It was that which let him know that he was right about her wanting company.
"Don't tell me that a nice dog like you has been forgotten too," she said, eliciting a confused look from Odie, "Don't look so surprised. That's just what happens to all the old junk down here."
She looked up from Odie, and scanned the room slowly, lingering on seemingly every item in the room.
"So many memories have been left here. Heirlooms that are no longer cherished. Toys from sompony's foalhood," slowly, she stopped scratching Odie's ears as her face turned forlorn, "Sometimes...even ponies get forgotten here."
Odie didn't know much about anything, but he knew when somebody was feeling sad, human or not. He decided that he was going to put all of the other things out of his mind until this mare felt better.
The mare at the desk sat quietly for several seconds. Finally, she sighed and turned back to Odie. She hadn't seen or spoken to another pony in years. In fact, she often suspected that nopony knew there was a mare in the castle basement who organized the storage space, and now there was a companion for her down there for her to finally spout off to.
"I wasn't always alone, you know. I had a friend named Lucky Star. He and I spent our entire foalhoods together. We even made a promise that we'd create as many memories together as we could. And when we did, we wrote them down in our journal."
Briefly, her gaze shifted to the book she had on the desk.
"The only time that we were separated was when I took this job. But even then, he got a job here as a librarian, and he visited me every day. We didn't have the time to fill our journal since then, but still, we had each other. But then one day...he just stopped coming."
The mare let out a sorrowful sigh, which somehow passed along her lonely feelings to Odie, making his ears droop.
"I never knew the time would come when I'd lose him. But he forgot about me, just like everypony else. The only thing I have to remember him is our journal, but ever since he left, I haven't had the heart to open it again." She paused once more, and wiped her eyes with her hoof. "But, I suppose that it's just the way it was meant to be. All I can think is that I was meant to be down here...alone."
She finally broke down and buried her face in her hooves.
It was too much for Odie to bear. He knew that she was wrong: nobody was meant to be alone. Especially if they were as close to each other as the mare said they were.
He wanted to help her, but he didn't know how to do it. The only thing that he could conceive was to make the two of them friends again, but he didn't know where Lucky Star was, or how to contact him. But he had to do something, and he had an idea of where to start.
He poked his nose over the desk, and started sniffing the journal. It smelled strongly of dust and old paper, but carried very faint traces of the mare he was with, along with another scent that he didn't recognize.
Even in his drool-soaked brain, he knew that it had to be Lucky Star's scent, and he set off out of the basement in search of where he disappeared to.
The light stung his eyes after coming out of the dark basement, blinding him briefly. But he only needed a scent to follow.
Odie sniffed the air, trying to pinpoint the direction to turn, but the scent was so old that there was almost no trace of it in any direction. But there had to be someplace that he spent most of his time. Odie then remembered that the mare said her friend worked as a librarian.
And where were librarians found?
Odie didn't know, but it sounded suspiciously like the word 'library' to him, so that's where he decided to begin his search.
The library was easy enough for Odie to find. They always had a distinctive smell of paper and old people, and it was easy enough to follow, even though it was on the other side of the castle.
When he arrived, he immediately set to work on finding something that belonged to Lucky Star.
From where he stood, it all looked the same. There were shelves and shelves of books that were indistinguishable from one another, and a desk with two stallions behind it. One was filing through the catalog, while the other was simply eating a salad, but neither smelled like the pony he was looking for.
Still, Odie decided to investigate the desk area to search for any clues to the missing pony's whereabouts.
"That was it," one of the librarians suddenly exclaimed, making the other one jump with a start and turn to face him.
"What the hay are you yelling for!? You know I can't take much after I had to stamp every book in the library by hoof last night! You know what happens in this library so late? Nothing! There's nopony to talk to, the books never end, and all you can hear is the incessant thump, thump, thumping of that evil rubber menace that I swore started fusing with my hoof after the three hundredth book," the other stallion ranted.
"Sorry. I was just trying to remember what that book I was reading a few weeks ago was called. It was Myths and Legends of the Elder Beings. It's pretty much a collection of things ponies believed before we learned how the world works. Like how at one point, the world was almost devoured by an orange beast with an insatiable appetite. Of course, these days we know that it was actually a demon who absorbed all the magic in the world," the second librarian explained, unaware of the dog who was sniffing around his hooves.
"Ponies were pretty nuts back then," the first librarian answered, as his salad was eaten by Odie behind his back.
When the dog was finished, he resumed his search, leaving the pony dumbfounded when he found his food had disappeared.
Though the scent was strongest around the desk, it was still very, very faint.
Odie poked his nose into a drawer, and rooted around the papers, still coming up short, and moved away when one of the librarians looked to investigate the noise and found nothing but the mess the dog had made.
Odie was beginning to grow frustrated by the lack of results, until he found a lead.
Under the desk, there was something that smelled strongly like dust, but had faint hints of Lucky Star on it.
The dog reached a paw under the desk, but couldn't quite reach what was there. He doubled his effort to reach it, scratching loudly on the desk as he did, and prompting the pony whose salad he'd eaten to investigate the noise under his station.
With one furious swipe of his paw, Odie flung the thing under the desk out the other side, right into the peering pony's mouth.
The pony stood up, sputtering in surprise.
The other librarian looked to his colleague to see what was wrong, but instead of the expected worried frown, a smile spread across his face.
"I don't believe it," he said when he saw what was in the other pony's mouth, "I haven't seen this book in ages." He yanked the book out of the other pony's mouth and examined the cover. "This has been overdue for almost a year! Who'd have thought it was right under our noses?"
"What the hay was it doing checked out so long," the other pony asked after he wiped out the dust from his mouth.
"It was checked out by the guy who worked here before you replaced him. I guess he forgot to check it in before he got transferred. Funny he forgot, since he checked it out so much."
The other librarian looked at the cover, and found it to be an anthology of foal's fairy tales. "What was a stallion his age doing with a book like this," he asked.
"He said it was his and his friend's favorite book when they were foals. Apparently they'd go to his place in the east wing and read it together. My guess: he was trying to woo this mare."
"Yeah, nothing says 'be my marefriend' like a story about kissing frogs."
"Come on, I think it's nice. You know, taking a mare to your place late at night and reading sweet, simple story about two ponies falling in love by lamp light, while you're both huddled under a blanket and sipping cider."
"Were you ever a stallion?"
"ARF!!"
The stallion who had stayed up all night clutched his chest and fell over backwards in his seat.
After hearing what he did, Odie knew where to look next, and exclaimed his discovery in no uncertain terms. With his new lead, he ran off to his next destination.
"Hm. I didn't know dogs were allowed in here. Are they," he asked as he looked to his colleague on the ground.
"Thump...thump...thump..."
He wasn't going to get an answer out of him. "Guess I better ask one of the security guys, huh?"
Odie hit a problem. He didn't know which way east was. He ran into the same problem as before, where there was no scent to follow, and the halls all looked the same. He would have to take this issue up with the architect, should he ever meet him.
He ran in circles, trying to find east, but only ended up dizzy and nauseous, and with a heavy thump, he fell to the ground.
As he lay on the floor, his answer came to him. He saw a mural painted on the wall that showed a white horse with wings and a horn juxtaposed to a gorgeous sunrise.
Odie once heard that the sun rose in the east, so that had to be the direction he needed to take. He shook all of the dizziness from his head, and trotted down the hallway past the mural. He was merrily on his way, when he suddenly bumped into someone's knees.
"So, you're our canine intruder," a gruff voice said. Odie looked up to see the scowling face of a large unicorn in gold armor. "Let's get somethin' straight, pups: I been workin' this job for thirty-two years, and nopony's gotten past me. Not even a dust bunny. It's that kinda thing that has me documented in the kingdom's historical records. So we can do this two ways: I can take you outta here, kickin' and screamin', or we can respect history, and you can walk outta here nice and quiet," the stallion lowered his head to Odie's eye level, boring his intense glare into the dog's mind, "So what's it gonna be, punk?"
For as long as he lived, the only things that scared Odie were the dog catcher, and Garfield's temper. And this pony before him was like a terrifying mix of the two. He wanted nothing more than to oblige the pony, and leave out the castle gates, but he had a mission to fulfill, and he wasn't about to duck out on it. But first, he had to get past the pony, and he defended himself the only way he knew how.
His tongue shot out and he licked the pony off his hooves. After he retracted his tongue, he shot down the hall and left his adversary behind him.
"So, that's how it is," the unicorn grumbled, "Well, pooch, two can play hardball."
His horn glowed as he readied a spell that would send Odie flying out of the castle, and shot it down the hall toward the dog.
Sensing danger behind him, Odie jumped, and the bolt of magic went sailing underneath him, collided with a statue down the hall, and sent it flying through the ceiling.
The guards on the roof were all given a thorough shock when they saw the marble sculpture burst through the ground beneath them and drop into the moat.
Odie rounded a corner, and charged through the castle's innumerable halls, while the stallion followed close behind. He dodged, jumped and rolled to avoid the eviction spell, sending all manner of things flying out of the castle.
One misfire hit a vase that a maid had just finished placing, and after all the time she spent with the floral arrangement, she wasn't about to let it go. She grabbed in her front hooves, and clasped the table it was on with her rear hooves, as Odie ran past her. Next came the guard, who she asked for help, only to be told that he was a 'pony on a mission,' and couldn't stop.
Something had to be done about the stallion, and soon. Otherwise, Odie was never going to help his friend in the basement. He had no idea where to even begin investigating, but he knew he was being led far off any possible trail. Or maybe not.
Up a flight of stairs, he caught the faintest scent of what may have been Lucky Star. Having nothing else to go on, he stopped abruptly to follow it.
When he did, his pursuer tripped over him and landed face first in the rug, and Odie ran up the stairs toward his objective.
At the top, he bumped into a pony who was pushing a piano across the hall, who lost his balance and fell down, pushing the piano toward the stairs.
The unicorn pursuer stopped dead and quickly tried to use his magic to send the piano away, only for the metronome to bounce off the instrument and hit his horn, and negate his spell.
Now that it was so close, his only recourse was to run back downstairs. The piano clanged and crashed close behind him, and with a dramatic dive at the bottom of the stairs, he narrowly avoided danger.
"Sweet Celestia, that dog's a maniac," he grumbled to himself, now more determined than ever to get rid of the canine.
Odie followed the scent to a nearby room. One had clearly been uninhabited for years, but carried faint traces of the missing pony. He frantically searched the room, knowing who was behind him.
After only a brief scan, he began to search more thoroughly, and taking what little he found, in case it would be any help. A picture of the mare, and a stallion that Odie thought may have been Lucky Star, which was wedged in a corner of a very dusty drawer; a necklace that was buried in dust bunnies under the desk; a tiny figurine that looked like a ballet dancer inside a trunk. And then he heard hooves approaching the door behind him.
Worried as to who they may belong to, Odie jumped into the trunk, and cracked it open to peek out.
Sure enough, the unicorn who was following him barged in and started scanning the room.
The guard knew he was on the right track. The dog's paw prints were everywhere in the room. Slowly, he walked around the room, stepping just loud enough for Odie to know he was in there, wherever he was.
Odie shrank down when he passed by the trunk, but he encountered a new problem when he only lowered himself into the dust. The particles all trailed into his nose, making him quietly snort.
The guard turned his head in the direction of the trunk, and began slowly approaching that area of the room.
Odie knew he was coming for him, and needed to escape. He was about to leap out of the chest and out the door, but the mass of dust in his nose kept him from doing anything buy snort and twitch.
The lid of the trunk burst open, when he sneezed violently and sent all of the dust flying out of the trunk and into his pursuers face.
The cloud of dust did help to fog his vision, but it made things more difficult for Odie, when he couldn't see which direction the door was. Even worse, the unicorn was blindly firing his eviction spell in any direction.
Odie picked a direction and ran, and thought he could see the door through his still slightly clouded vision, but that didn't matter when he was finally hit by the eviction spell, dropped what he collected, and was sent hurtling out the window. But he wasn't about to let his hard work go to waste.
Odie dug his claws into the carpet, and with his free paw, he reached for the picture. Once he had hold of it, he reached for the figurine. That was collected, and all he needed now was to grab the necklace.
Before he could, he felt the unicorn grab his waist, and start pulling him from the carpet.
"Oh, no you don't," he growled as he tried to yank Odie free, "There's never been an intrusion on my watch, and I'll be darned if the first one's a mangy dog!"
Odie could feed his claws being pulled free of the carpet, and the necklace was beyond his reach. For any other canine, this would be a problem. But for a dog who was half tongue, it was a cinch. He licked up the necklace, and held it tightly in his teeth. Now that he had everything, he let go of the carpet, and went out the window.
Unfortunately for the unicorn, he was still holding onto Odie when he did, and was sent flying as well. He ended up landing beyond the castle wall, and Odie went sailing back to the front gate.
Both ponies at the front gate yelped loudly when they saw the dog land in front of them, but eased when they saw who it was. Then the older guard noticed what the dog was holding.
"Well, there's something I never thought I'd see again," he said with a chuckle.
"You almost sound like you're glad to see him," the younger guard answered, still unnerved by the power the dog had over him.
"Not the dog. That necklace he's got."
"Huh?"
"See, before you got this shift, I worked here alone. The only visitor I had was a librarian named Lucky Star. Nice guy. The kind that took the time to be there if you needed somepony to talk to. Anyway, one day, he goes to town and comes back with that necklace. Says it's for a mare he knows," he finished with a grin.
"But if it was for his friend, what's it doing in that drool-beast's mouth?"
"Don't know. Thing's got pretty crazy when he got transferred. Apparently, he spent all of his spare time in storage, and missed the news he was moving. What he was doing down there, I don't know. But he sure had to leave in a hurry. You'd think he'd have told his ladyfriend he was going, but nope, he got rushed out too quickly for even that."
That was it! Odie now knew that he had what he needed. Sure, he didn't have it with him, but he knew exactly what Lucky Star had done to say goodbye to his friend.
With all haste, he dove back into the moat. In another moment of suspended consciousness, the younger guard tried to follow him, only to have his tail caught by the older guard, and pulled back to safety.
Under the water, Odie shook his head, after colliding with a marble statue that was in the moat of all places. Once his senses cleared, he went paddling back toward the aqueduct.
The water spout in the laundry room stopped flowing once more, and the maid operating it dove for cover.
Odie came flying out of it once more, only this time, he ran straight for the door, and traversed the halls back the way he came when he first arrived.
Also like when he first arrived, he fell down both flights of stairs to the basement, but that didn't stop him. He ran back through the clutter, and back to the desk where the mare was sitting before, only now, she was gone. But her journal was still on the desk.
He collected the book, along with all the other things he had, and went searching through the storage to find his friend. Sure enough, she was nearby, arranging some items. She was snapped out of her work when she heard Odie quietly bark behind her.
"Well, hello again, dog," she greeted him. She reached out to scratch his ears again, but stopped when she saw what he had in his mouth. "What's this?" she asked as she took the necklace out of his mouth.
She examined it, but didn't recognize it from anywhere. Then she gasped when she saw what else Odie had.
"Where did you find this," she said when Odie gave her the ballerina figurine. "I gave this to Lucky star for his birthday. It was the only dancer in the set he didn't have. I remember, I loved this one so much that I almost kept it for myself..."
She paused to collect herself, until she saw the picture Odie gave her.
Once again, she was left breathless by the dog's find. She hadn't seen her friend's face in years, and now there he was again, with his hooves around her, smiling widely. She forgot when that picture was taken, but looking at it now, she remembered how she felt that day, and she smiled almost as widely as her friend.
Finally, she saw Odie place the journal on the ground, and start flipping through the pages. She glimpsed at each page, seeing a flash of one paper, then another, each one returning a long-forgotten memory to her.
"Please, stop. I don't think I can stand to see any more," she quietly pleaded with Odie. But her curiosity rose when she found something new in her journal. A written page that hadn't been there before, in hoofwriting that she knew from the pony who made her happier than any other.
"Hey, Violet
The mare smiled sweetly at the greeting. It was so like him to give a casual greeting in a letter.
I'm sorry that I had to tell you like this, but I'm being transferred to the Crystal Kingdom in the north. I mean it when I say it hurts more than anything that I couldn't tell you goodbye in pony. But what hurts even more than that is knowing that I can't be there for you anymore.
I know how little you've had in your life, so I can't blame you if you're mad at me for leaving so suddenly. I don't want the last memory you have of me to be how I left you alone. But, even though you won't be with me, I'll hold onto your memory forever.
My time with you was the most precious I ever spent in my life. I know that since I met you, my life has been infinitely richer and fuller in ways I can't describe. In a way, you're my lucky star.
It's going to be difficult being here in the north, but as long as I remember you, I'll never be alone. And until the day comes when we see each other again, I can only wait for you. And it doesn't matter how long it takes. I'll wait forever if I have to.
I love you, Violet. And when we see each other again, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Until then, remember what I used to always tell you: Don't stop dancing.
--Lucky
The mare looked at the necklace she was given, and tears flooded her eyes when she realized what it was meant for. "He was going to..." She was so overcome with emotion that she couldn't finish her sentence.
She remained quiet for what seemed like an eternity. Odie offered his comfort by nuzzling her shoulder, which earned him a warm embrace from the mare.
"Thank you," she whispered to the dog. Were it not for him, she would have likely forgotten him the same way she thought he did her.
Violet took her journal, and looked once more at the cover. Here was a compendium of the most precious times of her life. And now, it was time to make more.
She placed the book on her back, and walked toward the stairs, followed by Odie.
When she reached the bottom step, she hesitated and looked up towards the light at the top. It had been so long since she had seen that world up there, and she didn't know if she could face it. Violet placed one hoof on the step, and a vision of her future with Lucky Star flashed into her mind. All doubts left her, and she strode up the steps, out of the darkness and into the world that had forgotten her.
Back in the basement, Odie sat proudly, happy that he had reforged the bond that two friends shared. He almost ran up after Violet to see her off, but he knew that what Lucky Star wrote was true. He would be there, waiting for her.
And then the dingle-ing noise happened again.
He turned to see the light from before hovering behind him, as if beckoning him toward it. A compulsion that he obeyed. He stopped short of the light, strangely void of the desire to play with it. He never knew much of anything, but this light was different, special even. It was what led him to his adventure, and made him curious as to where it would take him next.
"Of all the things we carry, memories are by far the most precious. And it is the memories we share with those closest to us that shine brighter than the greatest star. Without memories, without friendship, we ourselves begin to fade. And to those who have faded, they need only to realize that they are never truly alone. They only need someone to remind them. Stay true to your friends, Odie, they still have need of you."
And when the voice stopped, the light faded. Odie thought about what the light told him. He always understood the value of staying by your friends, but only now did he realize how important it was that he did. Jon was terribly dull and geeky, and Garfield was the most grumpy and self-centered cat he ever met. Neither one of them could keep any friends. If he wasn't friends with them, who would be? Without him, they'd both fade.
A new noise sounded in the basement, only it wasn't fun at all. It was more of a thumping noise, like something had fallen. When Odie investigated it, he saw a sight that excited him.
Garfield had somehow found his way to the castle, and was trying to squeeze his way into the basement through the window, likely to avoid the guards. Only, he had gotten stuck in the process of doing so.
"This is what I get for not hiring a stunt cat," Garfield grumbled as he struggled to shimmy through the narrow space.
"Arf! Arf!"
"Odie! Man, am I glad to see you buddy. Here, let me borrow this real quick," he said as he grabbed Odie's tongue and used it to lubricate his waist. Now soaked in drool, he squeezed right through the window, and landed with a thud on the floor. And then a bucket landed on his head. "You know, I'm starting to think there's a greater force out there that does these things to me."
Odie was going to offer his tongue again, and lick his friend's head out, but was stopped by Garfield.
"I've got this one."
After a moment of straining, Garfield pulled the bucket off his head, and was greeted by the sight of the painting Odie saw when he first came to the basement. After a moment of watching he felt something new growing inside of him.
"Odie, does that house look familiar to you?"
The two friends looked at the painting before them and took in the scenery of it. As they watched, they swore the painted door opened to reveal Jon in all his dorkiness.
After him, Garfield and Odie watched themselves run out and frolic on the lawn while he walked out to the mailbox.
They watched themselves run and play in the yard, until they both jumped the fence into the neighbor's flower patch, followed by a panicking Jon. When Jon tried to get them back into their yard, he fell over and landed in the flowers himself.
The elderly man who lived next door came out of his house and charged Jon with his cane. The animals had left, and Jon was chased back into his house. The pets realized why they were drawn to the painting. It was the place where they belonged, and hoped to return to.
Odie let out a quiet whimper, and Garfield understood exactly what he meant. They were both filled with the same feeling of longing and homesickness that they never knew they had before.
"I know. I want to go home too, buddy," he said as he patted the dog's head, "Come on. Let's go find those princesses."
And the animals walked out of the darkened room to their destination.
"You know something? Of all the things we left behind, I think I miss Jon the most," Garfield sighed.
Once he heard Jon's name, Odie's ears drooped, and he hung his head. Neither one of them knew what he was doing without them, but they could only assume that he was better off than they were now.
Once again, the sounds and scents of the place he left faded behind Jon as he walked through the starry tunnel to his next destination. But this time, there was nothing ahead of him. Not even a feeling of motion, which was a great relief after the train fiasco. Then he stepped in something.
Whatever it was, it was wet, and with it came the salty smell of the sea.
Finally, a lucky break. Hoping that he was headed to something pleasant, like a beach side resort, Jon sucked in his gut and strutted his macho stuff for the beach babes, only to yelp loudly when the ground below him disappeared, and he saw himself falling towards the open ocean.
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
880 users online
1,297,443 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
You know, It's kind of hard to imagine Fluttershy saying "You moved."
I guess Lucky Star is a unisex name.
Loved it sir!
I can't wait for Garfield to encounter lasagna...VEGETARIAN Lasagna!
:)
Thank You!
Awesome chapter
6895419 No problem. What did I do?
6896596
I like it when you show Odie and Garfield's compassionate sides.
What a sweet chapter, and Odie manages to mostly outwit the unicorn guard. The three visitors from the human world are sure to strike fear into all of ponykind even as they help a lot of ponies
. I was vaguely reminded of Secret of Evermore by this chapter: in one segment, you play a dog and you encounter a lady in a castle basement who's stuck there and hasn't seen anybody in years, similar to Violet here.
That's just precious.