The Oldest Lullaby

by flutterdash1

Off To Sleep

Tail Wind and his friend Pipsqueak were just falling asleep while Shut Eye began to clean up the play room. Pipsqueak was particularly tired, not having had as much fun as tonight in a while. After lunch he had met up with Tail Wind and his mother to go to Shut Eye’s, who proceeded to play cops and robbers with them in his backyard. That, then tag, then hide and seek, then just some general running around and faux-racing took them to dinner, after words he got to play with Shut Eye’s toys for a while before they watched a Daring Do movie.

Pipsqueak did not remember falling asleep. The next thing he knew, he was running through the jungle, following a faint trail in the shrubbery and brush. The large and crumbling Temple of Arakinus Fobus loomed ahead of him, and in it was a thousand thousand doubloons. Those doubloons were all Pipsqueaks. He was the first one to find the Temple so he had Finders Keepers rights to the loot.

The temple inside grew darker and darker as he walked, and the echoes of his hooves fell flat. A dim red glow appeared in the shadows around Pipsqueak and a black menacing thing started to come to him. The young colt ran. He ran from the cave of the monster. He ran through the jungle. He ran up the mountain. But no matter how far her ran, the many eyed black beast chased him.

“Help!” he cried into the darkness all around him. The spider legged monster just laughed a deep, rumbling laugh that brought to Pipsqueak's mind the image of boulders falling down a mountain. The laughing was stopped by a loud boom. Something had come down on the great beast that shook the world and caused Pipsqueak to bounce on the ground.

Looking up, Pipsqueak followed the massive tan pillar that had squashed the monster like a bug and saw a titanically large stallion. Clouds floated around his head and the sun rose over his horn.

“Whenever you see a big bad bug, just squish it” Shut Eye said, looking down at the ant-sized Pipsqueak.

“M-m-mister Shut Eye?” Pipsqueak asked, both surprised and in awe at his foalsitter’s sudden appearance.

“Fee Fi Foh Fum!” Shut Eye roared before lowering his head and kneeling down so that his eye was on level with Pipsqueak, who had suddenly been elevated by a hill. “I spy a teeny tiny pony.”

“I’m not teeny tiny!” Pipsqueak said.

“Then why were you running from an itsy bitsy spider?” The gargantuan stallion asked.

“It wasn’t itsy bitsy,” Pipsqueak argued, “It was ginormous!”

“It didn’t look ginormous to me” Shut Eye said, “It looked like any itty bitty spider.”

“Because you’re ginormous too!”

“I can’t be ginormous,” Shut Eye said, “You were able to put me in jail earlier.”

“That’s because you’re a robber and I’m a cop” Pipsqueak said as he walked around Shut Eye’s jail cell, clanking each bar with his night stick. There was a loud DING DONG that shook the entire world.

“What was that?” Pipsqueak asked.

“Sounded like aliens” Shut Eye lied as he began to recede from the dream, “Looks like a job for Superpony!”

Pipsqueak flew off into the sky as the dream faded around Shut Eye. Shortly he found himself standing in the guest room beside the bed where Pipsqueak was sleeping soundly. Shut Eye smiled, glad he stopped the colt’s nightmare before it got out of hand. He glanced over at Tail Wind to make sure he was sleeping well as well. The doorbell rang again and Shut Eye left the guest room, casting a muffling spell over the door so that the doorbell would not wake up the foals.

Shut Eye walked down the hall and out into the main room to open the door, wondering who was ringing the bell at midnight. Don’t they know how late it is? Shut Eye thought in a rhetorical manner. Of course they would know what time it was. At the very least they would know it was after dark. That was just… plain obvious from the lack of sunlight. When he opened the door, though, he was less surprised at who his guests were.

Standing on the doorstep was a rather tired looking little Berry Pinch, and a laughing, swaying Berry Punch.

“Shug Eyyyyyyyyyyyye!” Berry Punch said, wrapping one foreleg around Shut Eye in a hug while the other held a bottle of wine that she took a long drought from. “I did think you’d be here *hic*.”

“Mommy lost the key to the house” Berry Pinch said before yawning, “And I accidentally let the door shut behind me when I came out to let her in.”

“Yeaaahhhhh, little pipsqueak ‘ere locked us out.” Berry Punch said, rolling her eyes and giggling “But foals will be *hic*” she lifted the bottle to her mouth and poured the last few drops down her throat before tossing the bottle away. “Aaaaaaaanyways, I was wonderin’ ef you shtill had the spare *hic* I gave you.”

“Yes I do,” Shut Eye said, stepping to one side, “Come in, come in.” He let both mother and daughter enter before shutting the door behind them. “Berry Punch, why don’t you have a seat at the table and I”ll get you a drink” He said while gesturing for Pinch to head down the hall.

“That’s *hic* shwell of you Shug Eye” Berry Punch said as she hobbled over to the table. He followed Pinch down the hall but stopped her as she made to open the door to the guest room.

“Pipsqueak and Tail Wind are here tonight” he said softly, guiding her into his room. Shut Eye helped her up onto his bed and pulled the blanket over her as she shut her eyes. This was not the first time she had come over to his house in the middle of the night when her mother was drunk and she no longer put up a fight about wanting to get back home.

Once she was sleeping Shut Eye shut his bedroom door and returned to the kitchen where he found Berry Punch looking through his refrigerator.

“I can’t find your stash” she complained.

“Don’t worry, I have some vodka for you” Shut Eye said as he closed the refrigerator door. “Come on out to the living room and have a seat.” As he helped her out to the living room to get her laying down on the sofa, he used his magic to fill a glass with water from the sink and place a couple of alka seltzer tablets into it.

She was sipping the water while laying down, thanking Shut Eye for his hospitality. He walked across the room to the large closet and used his magic once more to fetch a blanket and pillow from the top shelf. He did not give them to Berry Punch just yet as he knew she would resist “bed time” since she was an “adult”, but he put them on the chair nearby before taking a seat on the sofa beside her.

“Mmmmm this’s like when we firs’ did it” She said with a mischievous smile. She rolled over from her more prone position to lean against Shut Eye. Shut Eye rolled his eyes but smiled.

“Yes it is,” he said, “But I think I was a little more drunk then.”

“Ha!” She laughed, slapping her hind leg with her hoof, “You shure were! Ahh college. Those were the best years’v m’life.” Shut Eye watched her wave a hoof in a grandiose manner as she fell over, her glass empty.

“Let me get you another drink,” Shut Eye said. He used to ask her about Pinch whenever she brought up the ‘best years of her life’ but he had long since gotten tired of the tirade of self pity that the subject brought up. He returned to her with a fresh glass of ice water, and slid a small wastepaper bucket by the sofa in case she started to lose what little she may have eaten that night.

She was laying down again when he got back, though, and looked sleepy. He set the glass down beside the sofa. Seeing his horn glow, Berry Punch muttered, “You’d better not be tryin’ to put a sleep magic on me. I’ll go to bed when I damn well want.”

“I’m not,” Shut Eye said, pulling the blanket off of the chair and sliding it onto the couch, covering Berry Punch with it.

“Just resting my eyes” She muttered. Shut Eye carefully used one hoof to lift her head and slide the pillow under her. She pecked him lightly on the lips as he did this and he put that down to her misreading his intention. He kissed her forehead in return and took a few steps back, waiting until he heard her breathing start to even out.

Shut Eye used his magic to loosen the bulb in the lamp near the couch so that it was a lot dimmer of a light but still enough to see by should she wake up. Walking back to his room, Shut Eye looked in on Berry Pinch. She was sleeping soundly, and he probed her dream for a moment to verify that she was not having a bad one. He double-checked on Pipsqueak and Tailwind since he was still up and then returned to the living room, making himself comfortable on his recliner so that he, too, could fall asleep.