Painting
Dinner with Rose
Chapter 3: Painting
Admiral Biscuit
I headed across the market with an extra spring in my step. Things were looking up; I was starting to fit in. And now I had a nice bottle of apple brandy, too. I could give it away, perhaps, or maybe sell it, but that would be rude. It would be better to share it, and I knew who I wanted to share it with.
I made a beeline for the flower trio's stall. Like everyone else, they were packing up for the day, selling their remaining stock at a discount. I waited in line behind Apple Cobbler, who bought five bunches.
“Hi, Sam,” Daisy and Lily said in unison.
“Do you want to buy some flowers? The chrysanthemums are really tasty.”
“Sam only likes roses,” Lily said, and the two snickered.
“She's not here, is she?”
“Nope. She's at home. It's her turn to make dinner.” Daisy eyed the bottle in my hand. “Ooh, apple brandy.”
I nodded. “Could you ask Rose if she wants to come over to my house for dinner tomo—I mean, Sunday?” Tomorrow was out; I'd be covered in sweat, grime, and paint for the next three days, and wouldn't want to do any more than just rinse off until I was done.
“Sure.” Lily nodded. “As long as it's after market.”
“After market's good,” I told her.
As I walked away from their stand, I heard them whispering to each other. Probably at my expense.
At least they'd gotten past the 'fleeing in terror' stage.
Still, I thought I should stop by their house and invite Rose personally. I could do it tomorrow, on the way to Rarity's. A personal invitation was always better.
• • •
There was always something inviting about home, no matter how modest it was. It was my sanctuary, the place where I controlled everything. I wiped my feet off on the doormat as I opened the front door. It reminded me I'd want to come up with some kind of boots for the winter, too—bare feet weren’t going to cut it. I'd seen a pair of fillies on roller skates, so they had some concept of complete foot coverings. I'd just have to find some pony who knew how to make them without wheels.
I set the bottle on the kitchen counter, and then went to hang up my wet underwear and shorts, before getting undressed. It was still warm enough to go without the robe, at least until sundown.
I cut a couple of slices off the loaf I'd gotten at the mill and spread on a little bit of marmalade. When I'd finished the bread and was brushing crumbs off my chest, I snickered. I guess they were big to a pony, but nothing much back home. Ah, children and their questions. Even Tenderheart hadn't brought the subject up, once she'd established that I wasn't sick.
Usually—understandably—they were more interested in my facial features, and my missing tail. None of the ponies I'd talked to had ever seen a creature without a tail.
I took a glass of water with me into the living room, and sat down on the couch, where my third attempt at a scarf mocked me. With a sigh, I began pulling out the stitches, winding the wool back onto the skein as I went.
The fourth try wasn't the charm, either, but I was getting a lot better. The sides were even, now, and the rows almost all had uniform thickness. It was still a bit hideous, but if push came to shove, it was something I'd wear outside. I ran out of wool before it was long enough, and made a mental note to get more next time I was at market. Or maybe I could buy some from Rarity tomorrow.
Since there wasn't any TV, I'd been toying with the idea of knitting simple scarves and selling them. Rarity had a couple, so I guessed ponies would wear them. I could use the money I made to buy more wool for my own winter clothes.
I got up and held the scarf in front of me, examining it carefully. A few dropped stitches here and there, a slightly uneven border—but overall, it was a scarf. And I still had a couple of months left to hone my skills, before the weather turned cold.
I yawned and tossed it back on the couch. In the kitchen, I refilled my glass with the hand pump, and then headed upstairs. I could read a couple more chapters of Daring Do, and then sleep—tomorrow was going to be a long day.
• • •
Painting was just as horrible and miserable as I'd remembered. The only sensible way to go about it was to start from the top and work down; that way if I accidentally made any drips, I could fix them later. So I started my day perched on the roof of Rarity's boutique, along with a collection of brushes and paint cans I'd humped up the rickety ladder one at a time.
The first hour went well enough, and then I accidentally hit a beehive with a brush.
Until then, I hadn't known that I could run off a roof and down a ladder faster than bees could fly.
There was a delay while Fluttershy was rounded up, as well as profuse apologies from Rarity. But no harm was done, and I had company for the first part of the day: Fluttershy sat up there with me, in case the bees got riled up again.
She wasn’t much of a conversationalist. She spent more time talking to the bees than to me. Occasionally, a bird would fly by, spot her, and come land on her head or outstretched wing. That was weird.
When the cupola was finally finished, Fluttershy flew off, and I came down the ladder with my paint buckets in tow. Rarity paled when she saw how much paint I'd gotten on my pants—as careful as I'd been, there were still splotches all over them and me. It was some kind of oil-based paint, so it probably wasn't going to wash out.
I'd anticipated that going in. When I'd been in college, I'd been suckered into one of those house-painting companies that advertised all over campus. It was a better job than working at McDonalds for the summer, at least. But most of my co-workers were complete potheads, and getting the company to actually pay what they'd promised was like pulling teeth. I'd had the foresight to wear Salvation Army clothes, with bike shorts and a halter top underneath. At the end of each day, I stripped off next to my car and tossed my paint-covered clothes in the trunk, where they'd be ready for the next day's work. When summer was over, I just pitched them.
Here, I couldn't afford to do that, but I was wearing my worst pair of pants. Nonetheless, I let her talk me into accepting a fourth set of clothes to make up for ruining the ones I was wearing.
• • •
The second and third days were pretty much a repeat of the first. Rarity measured me before I went to work on the second day, remarking that I'd lost an inch around my waist. I'd noticed that already—it was hard to lie to myself about my weight when I was half-naked all the time.
If I ever get back to Earth, I think I'll write a book about the Equestrian diet. Lots of hard, hands-on work, walking everywhere, and a vegetarian diet just melt the pounds off. I hoped that I was nearing the end of that trend—much more, and I’d be into malnourished territory.
I finished the boutique mid-afternoon, washed up using Rarity's hose, and cleaned the brushes with the paint thinner she had. A little bit of it on a rag cleaned most of the spots off me, too—I hadn't done that the previous two days, because I didn't think paint thinner was good for the skin.
She told me that I could pick up my new clothes at the end of the week. I was just on my way out of the shop when Sweetie Belle came trotting in.
“Hey, Sweetie.” I crouched down and gave her a hoof-bump. “Off from school?”
“Yup.”
“No crusading today?”
She shook her head. “Apple Bloom's gotta help out at the farm. They're mowing hay.”
“What about Scooby Doo?” That joke never got old, even though the ponies didn't get it.
“Scootaloo?” Sweetie shrugged. “She said something about Rainbow Dash, and took off on her scooter as soon as class was over.”
“Well, don't touch the outside of the boutique,” I warned her. “I just got done painting it, and you can't get a cutie mark in tracking paint across the floor and having your big sister murder you.”
“That already happened once,” Sweetie mumbled. “Except for the murdering. She made me scrub the whole floor, even the parts that I didn't get paint on. And I didn't get a cutie mark, either.”
“Good. You've already tried it. No need for a second attempt.” I liked Sweetie. She wasn't the sharpest filly in town, and like her friends, she could turn anything into a disaster, but she had a good heart. “Rarity's in her sewing room. I'd love to stay and play, but I have to get ready for a dinner with a friend.”
I gave her a wave and headed out of the boutique.
I didn't have to go to the market to get supplies for dinner—I'd taken care of that last night. But I did need to bathe and put on clean clothes before Rose came over.
I stopped by my house just long enough to grab a pair of trousers, clean underwear, and my towel, then headed to my favorite bridge.
For the first time ever, it wasn't deserted. Apple Flora was there, waiting in the little clearing, with a towel on her back.
“I wanted to go swimming,” she announced. “I knew you were coming, 'cause I saw you come out of your house with a towel and pants.”
“Didn't your mother say that you weren't supposed to go swimming without your friends?”
She nodded. “They're all haying. But I don't have to, 'cause I did it yesterday, when all of them got time off. Mom said that having too many fillies helping during haying is like herding cats, which is stupid because everypony knows that cats do whatever they want.”
“I can see how you wouldn't understand the expression,” I said dryly. Her face was eager, expectant—she was bound and determined to swim.
“Besides, you’re my friend,” she insisted. “Mom likes you, too. She doesn’t give out her apple brandy to just anypony.”
I could stay in my panties—I could get clean enough with them still on. That was a safe choice. It would avoid further corrupting an innocent filly.
“Okay,” I said. “But we can't take too long. I need to just wash up, and then I have to have dinner with a friend. I told her I would, and you know how important it is to keep a promise.”
She nodded eagerly. While I was getting out of my pants, she hung her towel up over a branch, and then bounded into the water, leaping off the bank in a majestic bellyflop.
Her head popped back above the water, and she shook her forelock out of her eyes. “If you've gotta go, go downstream, okay?”
She didn't know why I wore pants. She had no understanding, beyond that it was a 'Sam thing.' I'm sure if I'd asked her, that's what she would have said. The concept of body modesty was beyond her understanding. She'd never had her mother yelling at her to not sit in a skirt that way, or to pull down her dress, or do you know what boys will do to you if they see your panties? She was freer than I was.
That's what I told myself, as I folded my pants neatly. That's what I kept telling myself as I moved to the water's edge, her innocent ruby eyes regarding me as I touched a toe in the water.
“You forgot something,” she said, pointing a hoof at my panties.
And she was probably better off for it.
The only other possible excuse I could make that she'd understand was that it was 'that time of month,' and I wasn't really sure exactly how pony menstrual cycles worked—if they even had them. It wasn't a subject that had ever been broached. I was vaguely aware that back on Earth, mares went into heat in the springtime, but I'd never known more than that. Was it a continuous thing, or did it come and go?
The worst thing was, if I'd asked her, she probably would have told me. She probably knew all about it. But I couldn't.
“I forgot,” I said, my hands moving to the waistband of my panties. “They're just so comfortable.”
“They'd be inconvenient whenever you had to go.” She dove back under the water.
This was it. In one smooth motion, I slid them down, flicking them up onto shore even as I jumped into the water.
Success! I made it in, deep enough that my waist was covered, before her head broke the surface again. As long as I got out of the water before her, she wouldn't see anything but my butt, and that was okay. I could live with that.
She broached the water right next to me, splashing spray all over my chest. “I'm a seapony,” she announced, diving again.
My smugness lasted until she came up for the third time. That's when I noticed that my bar of soap was still on the shore, well out of reach.
I could tell her to look away while I got it. She probably wouldn't, of course. I could tell her that it wasn't polite, but she wouldn't understand why. Or I could wait until something distracted her. A floating stick, maybe. Or stomping her hooves in the riverbed, to watch the puffs of muck come up and flow downstream. That had distracted me often enough when I was a kid. I could even tell her to see how long she could hold her breath underwater, and I'd be back in the stream before she brought her head up.
Or I could just stop acting like an immature child, and go get the damn soap.
“I've got to get my soap,” I told her. “Keep where I can see you, okay?”
She nodded eagerly.
It wasn't easy. If she'd been a colt, I don't think I could have done it. The worst part was that half my brain wanted her to disobey my instructions, wanted me to not see her head or her curious eyes looking my direction when I walked back to the water. Years of mental conditioning were telling me that if anyone saw us, I'd be going to jail for sure, and while the rational part of my mind kept telling me that wasn't so, it was no less uncomfortable.
But I did it.
And once I'd cleaned off all the paint, and washed my hair, we just played around in the water. I even gave her a piggyback ride, finally carrying her all the way out of the water onto shore.
I could tell by the way she was gripping my head that she wasn't comfortable with being that far above the ground, so I knelt down and let her climb off my back.
She shook herself off, then wrapped the towel efficiently around her mane. I used the normal human method of drying, then draped the towel over my shoulders, where it would help dry my hair, and keep the drips down. I'd never liked the feel of wet hair dripping down my back.
She nuzzled my leg, and I reached down to scritch her damp mane.
“We should be swimming buddies,” she suggested. “You're big and tall and can go in water where my hooves won't even touch the bottom.”
“Yeah.” I felt so tired. So drained. “We should.”
“It's more fun when there are more of us. After haying is over, all my friends will be here, and you should bring yours, too.”
“Yeah,” I said noncommittally. “Maybe Rose would like swimming in the creek.”
“Are you special someponies?”
“No. Just friends.”
I got dressed and gathered up my dirty clothes while Apple Flora shot off into the woods. I thought about following her, but she fit a lot more easily through the underbrush than I did, and besides, her mother hadn't said anything about needing someone to keep an eye on her when she was in the woods.
She came galloping back out with a branch stuck on her towel and a bunch of flowers in her mouth. “It's wild aster,” she told me. “Just started blooming, so it should be tender.”
“Thanks.” I took the flowers and stuck them in my pocket. “Can I give these to Rose?”
She nodded seriously.
“Okay.” I looked up at the sky. “It's getting late. I have to go home and start dinner; you ought to head over to the market and give your mom a hand, right?”
“Right!” She gave me a mock-salute, and trotted to the top of the slope, before turning back at me. “Are—are you coming back here tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” I told her. I'd decided to take the day off. A nice break from manual labor. I could get to the school, see that drawing of me Cheerilee was showing her class, maybe go to the library and find a book on knitting socks, and just do whatever.
“How about the day after?”
“Probably the day after.”
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It's fun to see Sam and Flora interact. I enjoy seeing more of the everyday life, as well. Painting is a fairly logical job, though I don't know that I'd be willing to get close enough to a beehive to accidentally bump it.
5573332
Thank you!
I did once. That's how I know you can run off a roof and down a ladder faster than the bees can get you.
I enjoy this little story. Keep it up.
Seems like almost everyone is updating today....
Anyways, baby steps are still steps.
It's not corruption if the thing that's supposed to be corrupting isn't considered as such, right?
I think it just takes a few moments for the bees to initialize their attack to identify the target and then start attacking...
Keep going! ;)
5573371 One can also crawl out from underneath a pool deck faster than a wasp. Neither fact makes me at all comfortable around them.
5572690 Ah yes, I remember that one. Don't remember why I got disillusioned with it and got it unfaved, though.
5573371 i'm more curious as to why rarity hasn't noticed there is a beehive attached to her place and why it hasn't been removed from her "perfection"
5579783 That could make for a hilarious read.
5580331 I was thinking more along the lines Sam being forced to give the Talk, from human perspective just for an adult pony to pass by and first get worried before correcting her on a couple f things, to a bunch of curious kids.
5580415 Parents often dread the day when they have give the Talk to their own kids. Now think how you would feel giving it t bunch of kids that aren't your own or even the same species as you.
5580477 That would be putting it lightly.
5580495 My vocabulary lacks any words severe enough to describe her suffering. Maybe if I could curse in at least 12 languages I might have sufficient words, but unfortunately I can do so in only two.
5573907
Thank you!
5573940
Agreed. It's more an issue of Sam's social expectations. We can presume Apple Flora has seen plenty of naked ponies in her life, and a naked human isn't all that much different, when you get down to it. I doubt that the ponies have the concept that nudity = sex.
That would be my assumption. When we were spraying the barns, we'd just give any bees or wasps that got close to where we were working a quick coat of taupe paint. They'd fall to the ground, and couldn't fly until they got their wings cleaned off again, by which time they'd forgotten why they were upset in the first place.
What was more interesting about that painting experience, and I forgot to put it in the blog, is I was removing a light fixture from the side of the horse barn (live, because we didn't know where the circuit breakers were), and one of the horses came over and thought that my stepladder was a horse toy. The stepladder I was standing on.
5574083
I've made it a habit of trying to avoid bees ever since I had two yellowjackets fly up my pantleg at Boy Scout camp. That was not fun.
5575088
I kind of lost interest when the protagonist developed a relationship with two of the Mane 6, and then went down to the basement of Canterlot Castle and got a giant robot or something like that.
5576215
I have an idea that the ponies and the insects mostly have an understanding. Rarity stays down on the ground, and the bees stay in her cupola, and as long as everypony stays where they ought to, things will be fine. Heck, Fluttershy might have convinced her that the bees would make sure she always had nice flowers around her boutique.
5581643 Is that Hands?
Its always sad to see a parody of a genre become a parody of itself.
They can't help it! It's their default state!
*Nyerguds slaps Sam*
BAD Sam! You're still thinking like that!
Better
Hah! Caught.
Give her mom a what now?
5778519
It's true.
It's always the
childfilly who points out that the emperor is wearing no clothes (although in this case, it's the opposite).It would take a while to get used to pony lingo, I think.
5779086
Oh it was more the kid's lack of reaction on that that got me. I doubt the kid is familiar with the word, so I expected her to get an odd look and a glance at her hands at that. Especially since Earth Ponies seem to do most stuff with their mouth
Heh, the haying bit reminded me of a mainstay in the 'county. Potato harvest! Its like a month or so off from school and such to focus solely on harvesting all of the potatoes. I helped out once upon a time, it was different from raking blueberries.
They seem more the "fainting in terror" type.
[youtube=aYIHrY8K8Wk]
Maybe she could sell the scarves to Doctor Whooves:
8079867
Yeah, he doesn't seem too picky when it comes to his fashion accessories.
8083692
By the way, the scarf makes him look like the 4th Doctor:
I remembered that you are not an Whovian. Miss Lauren Faust based Doctor Whooves on the 10th Doctor. The personalities of the Doctors have a pattern of theme-and-variation:
The Doctor has a base-personality, but regeneration scrambles his personality a bit. The most extreme example is the Valeyard:
The Valeyard is a dying alternate 13th evil Doctor who tried to merge with and thus steal the remaining regenerations of the 6th Doctor. The Valeyard failed. The 6th Doctor took steps to make sure that he would never go bad.
When exposed to Psychic Pollen, the 11th Doctor hallucinated a dark version of himself called the DreamLord.
Mister M.A. Larson noticed that Doctor Whooves is brown. Mister M.A. Larson wrote Doctor Whooves as though he is the love-foal of Doctor Emmett Brown and the Doctor. Doctor Whooves wearing the scarf is a nod to the 4th Doctor.
All Doctors have been male because it is easier to cisgenderregenerate than transgenderregerate (the real reason is the 1960s-sexism at the BBC when the series started), but we have hints that the next regeneration will give to us a Docrix. Given that trasgenderregenerations are more dificult that cisgenderregenrations, we expect 5-10 Doctrices before another Doctor, so the show will Docrix Who for a decade to a generation before becoming Doctor Who again.
The name of the character is the Doctor. The name of the show, "Doctor Who", refers to the mystery of Who is the Doctor —— after 50 years, ¡we still do not know the name of the Doctor! A running joke is this:
Random Character:
"¿Who are you?
The Doctor:
"I am the Doctor."
Random Character:
"¿Doctor Who?"
The Doctor:
"No. I am just the Doctor."
Excellent story. The body phobias sure are strong with Sam.
9513981
Thank you!
A lifetime of experience on Earth has made her reluctant to fully commit (so to speak), but she’s working on it.
*sighs* Lily, that was bad joke. You're lucky you're cute missy.
Shoo be do shoopy shoopy do. Yes, I went there.
And once again you try to kill me with cuteness Admiral.
Apple Flora should have also gave us a squee.
11137773
Seaponies are cool.
Sam needs to pick up crochet instead! Much easier to hold and learn, easier to fix mistakes, and way more versatile, imho. Bonus! Crochet works can't be reproduced by machine because of their characteristic transverse chains. All crochet is literally hand made, a skill fitting of a human in Equestria.
... of course, this would make Sam a literal hooker.
11458243
I hadn't even considered crocheting . . . maybe somepony who knows how to crochet will teach her. Or maybe she'll accidentally figure it out on her own
Heh, I wonder if there are any crochet shops with names like "Happy Hookers" or something like that.