A Year of Derpy

by Sleepy Panda

March

This time, she came with a foal.

The weather that day was amazingly horrible. It was windy; so windy, in fact, that the bush I concealed myself behind kept whacking me in the face. It was also extremely cold, almost cold enough to be freezing. In addition to that, it was wet, as it had rained the previous night. The ground was a giant field of squishy mud, mud that splashed everywhere with every step one took. It had been years since I'd seen a day as bad as this one.

Naturally, Derpy chose this day to have a picnic in the park.

She sat on a large, red-and-white checkered blanket, she on one side and the foal on the other. In between them sat a pair of leather saddlebags. The poor saddlebags were splattered with mud, surely ruined. Either Derpy didn't care or she hadn't anticipated the horrible weather.

The foal - a colt - was greedily digging into the bags, his grumbling stomach making his motives apparent. He was a cute little thing, although he had a rather dull color scheme of a light gray coat, a dark gray mane, and violet eyes, as well as a splash of red ketchup on the corner of his mouth from the huge bite he had just taken out of his sandwich.

"Oh wow, this is really good," he said when he finally managed to swallow his huge bite. Derpy giggled.

"I should hope so, seeing as I made it." Derpy took a small, more dainty bite out of her own sandwich.

"Oh yeah, thanks for that! And for taking me here and stuff. I would've been home alone all day with nothing to do," the colt said gratefully. There was a long pause where he went to take another bite from his sandwich, and Derpy eyed him curiously.

"Rumble," she asked cautiously, "don't you think it would be a good thing if you found some friends of your own age?" Rumble tried to speak, but couldn't due to the food in his mouth, so he held up a hoof and continued chewing.

"I'm fine, though," he finally responded. "I have you to hang out with, and Thunderlane plays with me when he's not too busy."

"But what if I'm not always going to be around? What if I break up with your older brother?" Derpy asked.

Rumble nearly choked on a tomato. "Break up with Thunderlane? But why? You two are supposed to kiss a lot and get married and stuff! Do... you even love him?"

"Of course I do," Derpy exclaimed. "It was just a hypothetical question."

"Oh." They continued eating in silence.

So... if I'd been hearing things right, Thunderlane had a younger brother. A younger brother who possibly considered Derpy to be his only friend, and Derpy was aware of this fact. Was Thunderlane?

Probably not. Thunderlane was an awful, smelly, horrible pony who should go and-

Suddenly, a juicy chunk of watermelon hit me right on the muzzle. I pursed my lips together and went cross-eyed as it slid down my face, doing my best to keep as silent as possible.

Keeping silent is really hard to do, by the way. The watermelon on my face just felt wrong.

"Woah, the wind totally just stole my food!" Rumble exclaimed, with the same amount of enthusiasm he might have if Princess Celestia were to knock on his door and offer him cake. The foal must not have seen much excitement in his life.

"No kidding. Don't worry, there's plenty more," Derpy reassured him.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and wiped the watermelon juice off of my face, wincing slightly when the fruit hit the muddy grass with an audible splat. Good, he wasn't going to attempt to retrieve his lost food. Some foals do that - I did, when I was a young colt.

Considering who his older brother was, Rumble seemed like a pretty good colt. I didn't see any of Thunderlane in him, so I figured that he must be left alone for most of the day. I felt really bad for him. He seemed to be having a good time right now, but I suspect that's only because he was with Derpy. Something about him just seemed... sad. I suspect that it was the same sadness I saw in Derpy.

Why did Derpy have to be so sad? All I wanted was for her to be happy, but I didn't know how to make that happen. When she was sad, I was sad. Her sadness was infectious. But if she was happy, then would I still be attracted to her? Her sadness gave her depth, and that's what I think made me feel this way about her.

No... I think I would still have loved her. My heart filled with joy when she smiles, and a little more sunshine was let into my life. If sadness gave her more depth, then happiness surely did too.

The warm smell of muffins broke me out of my thoughts, and my eyes refocused on the scene in front of me. Derpy, having finished her sandwich, had filled her paper plate with a pile of muffins.

"Hey, give me one," I heard Rumble say.

"Of course. Take your pick." Derpy offered the plate to the younger pegasus, who inspected the variety.

"Ooh, are those lemon poppy seed muffins?" he asked. Derpy nodded in confirmation. "Don't mind if I do." He grabbed a few of the lemon muffins off of the plate, licking his lips in anticipation as he did so.

"I like the blueberry ones," Derpy told him.

"I can tell," Rumble laughed, noting that the majority of the muffins were of that type. "Hey, did you get these at the Cloudsdale Muffin Factory?"

"I sure did."

"Sweet! Their muffins are awesome." Rumble then proceeded to practically inhale his entire muffin, but stopped when he noticed Derpy's raised eyebrow. "What? They smell good!" he insisted. Derpy shrugged and, after unwrapping it, took a bite of her muffin. Rumble stopped inhaling his and followed suit.

If I was to... no, terrible idea. If I was to quickly snatch a muffin, then they would definitely have noticed. But the muffins smelled so good. They almost smelled as good as Derpy looked, actually.

Almost.

"So, how did your math test go?" Derpy asked.

"I did okay." Rumble shrugged. "I guess I was stressed out for no reason."

"Don't worry about it," Derpy assured him, "everypony gets stressed out now and then, myself included."

"Really? You get stressed too?"

Derpy nodded. "Yep! It's perfectly normal. Did you have any trouble with any of the problems?"

"Not really, although there was one that was kinda tough and I couldn't solve it. They wanted me to find out the area of a trapezoid, but I couldn't remember the formula," Rumble admitted.

"So what did you do?"

"I wrote the words 'right here' inside the trapezoid." Ha. Cute. That tiny pony was pretty smart.

"Clever," Derpy praised.

"Yeah, I was proud of myself too, but the teacher marked it as wrong. Can you pass me another muffin? Chocolate this time."

Derpy obliged. "Well, if I was your teacher, I would have given you an A+ on the test for that answer."

"Thanks."

"But Rumble, back to what I said earlier: I really do think that it would be a good idea for you to make some friends your own age," Derpy said gently.

"I know, I know, but I don't know how. Everypony already has their own groups of friends and I can't just walk up and join them," he grumbled.

"Sure you can," Derpy said, surprising him.

"Um, no I can't. They'd laugh at me and turn me down," Rumble argued.

"If they do that, then they're not the right group of friends for you. You move on and try again with different ponies." Wow, Derpy really had some good ideas. Rumble was lucky to have such a great mare in his life. But on the other hoof, I wanted to have her distanced as far away from Rumble as possible.

"Okay, I'll try that. Thanks for the advice."

Things were getting to be too confusing for me, so I sat down and stopped observing.

Comments

[DismantledAccount]

Seems pretty good so far. I'll keep an eye on this.

[CoffeeMinion]

I've been enjoying this thus far. Your Derpy is great, and I wanna see who our narrator turns out to be.

[Old Diggy]

Yeah. Definitely stalker vibes.