1. The Rhythm of the Falling Rain

“Goddamn garbage,” he muttered to himself as he walked toward the door. When he opened the door, he saw that it was beginning to rain. “Because of course it is.” But the garbage truck would come before he woke up tomorrow morning, so the it had to go out now. He should have taken it out yesterday.

He went down the steps, around the corner of the garage to the alley, looked toward the big, communal garbage can, and that’s when he saw her: Someone was sitting on the bus stop bench, all alone, at night, in the pouring rain.

The streetlight in the alley cast an unnatural amber light onto the scene below. “Lyra?” The mystery pony had a hoodie up over her head, but he was pretty sure it was her. There aren’t a lot of mint green ponies partial to black hoodies in town. Her horn made a noticeable peak in the hood. Most tellingly of all, nopony else in town ever sat like that. He walked a few steps closer, in the direction of the garbage can and the bus stop. The rain started to come down heavier.

“Ah, you know the buses stop running at nine, right? It says so on the sign…” He gestured toward the bus stop sign with his free hand. She didn’t say anything. She didn't make eye contact. She didn’t even move. It was like he wasn’t even there.

"Lyra–" He fought the immediate, irrational urge to say 'sweetie,' "–are you OK?”

Only then did she turned her head to look at him, and he could see that even though her face and mane were dry, her eyes were rimmed with red, and wet. He felt an immaterial twinge in his mind, as if someone had poked his conscience with a pin.

“...Are you OK? Are you ... waiting for Bon Bon?”

And then Lyra started to cry. It made the boy want to lay down on the ground and die.

He wasn't conscious of letting go of the garbage bag, but anyone nearby would have heard it hit the ground behind as the boy immediately took two quick strides to close the distance to the pony. He knelt down on the muddy gravel alley in front of her and barely had the presence of mind to stop himself from taking her hooves in his hands.

"Oh my god, sweetie, what happened?" He spoke immediately, without thinking, but Lyra didn't seem to notice the slip at all.

"Bon Bon and I had a ... an argument. I, uh, stormed out of the house... I said some mean things and she said some mean things. It's nothing I can't make-up for, but I think we both needed to cool down before it went from bad to worse."

"...And where were you going? It's the middle of the night."

"I forgot that Octavia & Vinyl are out of town; I know they would have let me sleep at their place, but I don't have a key."

The boy tried to think as quickly and clearly as he could in the rain. "Ooooo-kay... Well, we probably shouldn't be searching around the outside of their house for a spare key, at night. That's gonna look ... extremely suspicious and I doubt we'd be able to find it. If they even keep one outside..."

Lyra turned her gaze away from him, and seemed to stare at nothing.

"You can crash at my place, actually; I can sleep on the sofa. And you can call Octavia first thing tomorrow morning and ask her if they'll let you stay with them for a while. Does that sound OK?"

"Yeah, I guess... Thanks."

"Of course. You're welcome. I live right there." He turned and pointed unnecessarily at the garage apartment across the alley. "It's not much to boast about, but it's a damn sight better than sitting out in the rain all night."

The pony turned back to look at the boy, and the apartment behind him. Her expression was unreadable.

The boy in the rain turned toward the apartment, and the pony in black followed. Stepping under the partial cover of the eaves, he flipped on the light switch at the base of the stairs. Leaving it on at night tended to attract moths, which easily got in when he opened the door, but did not easily find their way out.

"Watch your step going up the stairs; they're a bit wet." Lyra said nothing, but glumly followed carefully behind him. Once they were both at the top of the stairs, he flipped off the outside light with the corresponding switch, waited a moment for any moths to disperse, and opened the door.

“'Be it ever so humble.' Sorry about the mess – was not expecting company tonight. The bathroom's over there, on the left, bedroom's on the right... We can hang your hoodie up and see if it dries out by tomorrow morning. If it's not, we can just throw it in the dryer.”

The pony walked into the bathroom, and closed the door, and the boy quickly pulled the rumpled sheets off the unmade bed and replaced them with clean ones from the nearby chest of drawers. He sat down on the couch, unsure of what to do next. After about a minute of speechless rustling, Lyra came out of the bathroom with her coat and mane looking fairly disheveled, but significantly drier.

She didn't say anything, and she didn't sit down: she just stood in middle of the living room, her gaze slowly wandering around the apartment. "Can I get you something to eat, or drink?" he asked. "Or would you just like to go to sleep?"

Then she turned and looked at him and asked, "Why did you do this?"

"You looked like you needed help," he said. "And sitting in the rain all night sure wasn't going to improve things. Just because Octavia and Vinyl are out of town doesn't mean you don't have anyone to turn to, either. If no one else, you could have gone to Twilight's place, assuming she's there. Or Pinkie Pie. They're all pretty big on friendship... Even if you think you're alone, I'll bet you're not." He paused for a moment, and then added, "Nothing good ever came from not asking for help... I have that feeling, sometimes: that telling other people my problems only adds to the net unhappiness in the world. But I now know that not asking for help when you need it doesn't improve anything."

The green pony looked away and seemed to be considering his words.

"So, what happens next?" she said.

"Well, Lyra, that's up to you. What do you want to happen? What do you think needs to change?"

Author's Note:

A while ago, I tried to cheer up someone on the internet. They seemed like they could use it. It seemed like the right thing to do. I felt good doing it, and I think they felt better, too. And a few weeks later, another situation presented itself, and I did it again.

Later, I thought that maybe I could distill some of my thoughts into a coherent, cheery story. Though the real world conversations, and the hypothetical ones I have in my head cover a fairly broad swath of related topics, boiling them down and then building a narrative for them was extremely difficult. Perhaps a Socratic dialogue would have been easier.

This was deliberately written to be as ambiguous as possible in setting and characterization of the narrator. I leave much of that up to the reader’s personal preference. The narrator is designed to be a blank slate.

And Holy Tartarus, this was difficult... You see a 200K word piece of 'fine erotic fan-literature' and think, 'how hard could that be? I know all the characters, their personalities, the setting, etc.' I thought I had a passable skeleton of a story here, but putting any meat on the bones was like pulling teeth. Apologies for the mixed metaphors. Lots of trouble getting from Point A to Point B in a believable fashion. I hope too much of that doesn't show.

The song referenced in the chapter title is this one. Thanks for reading. Feel better?

With gratitude,

M. Tabula Rasa, 2016.

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