Before Dark

by Rambling Writer

5:29 PM - Stupidity

Halterdale wasn’t much of a town, but it was nice enough. More than big enough to wander through (because what else would we do?). I know pretty much every inch of it, so as we started wandering, I was kind of made the leader between the two of us. Not that it mattered much; we had nowhere to go and all night to get there. We were mostly content to just walk and talk. It was what we’d done last time, after all, and that had worked out well enough. Ish.

And then, about thirty seconds after we’d started meandering, realization struck. It struck hard enough to hurt.

“Hey, Aegis?”

“Yeah?”

“Why the…” I kicked at a rock on the side of the road. “For the love of Celestia, why didn’t we exchange addresses?” I wanted to hit myself. And then him. And then myself again, twice as hard. So much could’ve happened to make this not work, we were lucky this was it. But all that would’ve been avoided if we’d just given each other our addresses. It was so, so stupid of us.

“W-well…” Aegis rubbed the back of his neck. “We, we, uh, kinda agreed that-”

“That was the excuse,” I said. “Not the reason.” I thumped my head. “What were we thinking when we decided not to learn where we were living? Seriously, why?”

Aegis frowned and flicked an ear. After a long, long, long moment, he tentatively said, “Love?”

I frowned. “Love? Really?” I snorted.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “We could’ve agreed to not write unless something came up, but just meeting back later without addresses was…” He gazed out into nothing with a spacey look and a clueless smile on his face. “…oh! so romantic.” He turned back to me. “We were totally in love right then. And love makes ponies do stupid things like that.”

“Actually, no,” I said. “We weren’t in love.”

“But… but we-”

“We were-” I wrapped my forelegs around Aegis’s neck, yanked him close, and mushed his cheeks into mine. “-in lurrrrrrrrve!” I let him go as he massaged his face. “You know, that stupid mushy kind of love teenagers always have.”

Aegis laughed. “Okay, yeah, that’s right. You’d think we’d’ve outgrown that, right?”

“Yeah, but we said we were fifteen-year-olds in twenty-three-year-old bodies, remember?” I kicked at another rock. “And my brother, he put this real well, he said adults are just kids having kids.”

“Ooo. I like that line.”

“That’s how you can tell it’s not mine.”

“Aw, come on.” Aegis lightly nudged me in the shoulder. “You got good lines.”

“Not the, you know, concise, philosophical kind,” I said, waving a hoof. “Mine’re the kind that are memorable but don’t actually say much.”

“It’s more than I got.”

“Doesn’t make them good. Just less bad.”

“Eh, true.”

We kept walking. I couldn’t help but notice that I almost had a spring in my step. It was nothing huge, but I felt… light. Not butterflies-in-my-stomach light, just kind of calmly contented. The same kind of feeling you get from hot chocolate. It might’ve just been Aegis’s presence, but I think it was years of borderline hatred I’d never even noticed just draining away. He hadn’t shown up, but he had a good reason for that, and I couldn’t hold it against him, and my grudge just sort of melted away. I still had a few nagging feelings, but I knew they were irrational, and I tried to ignore them as best I could.

Aegis spoke up. “Do you think we should keep it up if tonight works?”

“Hmm?”

Aegis waved a hoof. “You know. Swap addresses and write letters and stay in touch and stuff, but not actually visit each other for another year,” he said. “We’d jump over all that stupid lovey-dovey stuff where we’re doing nothing but staring into each other’s eyes and using saccharine pet names like ‘schmoopy-doopy sweetie-weetie pootie-pie’.”

“Oh, sweet Celestia,” I muttered, “I know you’re joking, and I still feel ready to puke.”

“Exactly! We skip that bit completely. Ponies in that stage spend all their spare time together, but we can’t actually spend all our spare time together if simply getting together takes up more spare time than we have.”

“You know, I think I’d like that,” I said. “Kinda force us to realize the universe doesn’t revolve around us two. Be more forgiving when circumstances intervene.”

“And if we ever do consider actually moving together, it’d be more tolerable for the ponies around us.”

“You ever know any ponies like that? There was this couple like that in high school that…” I cringed. “I still feel like my teeth are rotting from their sweetness.”

“Nah, never that bad, thank Celestia,” said Aegis. “Some excessive public displays of affection, yeah, but nothing that bad.”

Already, it felt like that night. We were rambling, talking about random junk to fill the time. Any other pony, and I’d probably be annoyed at how boring this was. But with Aegis, I don’t know why, it felt almost fun to talk about annoyingly lovey-dovey couples. Maybe it was his company again, maybe it was the way he talked, maybe it was just putting down something I hated, but it was going a lot better than I thought it would.

“But getting back on track,” said Aegis. “What do you want to do until I have to leave? And, no, you are not allowed to say, ‘I dunno, what do you want to do?’ You know this place better than I do.”

“Well, what kinds of things do you like to do? I’m open to anything.”

“Yeah. Same here.” After a pause, Aegis smirked. “Y’know, if nothing else, this is already like that night.”

“The worst part of that night.” But he had a point. This was how that night had started. It was a shame it’d started so slowly.

“But it doesn’t really matter to me what we do,” said Aegis. “Just as long as we spend some time together.”

Wait. We hadn’t actually done much that night, had we? We’d just sort of walked and talked. So what we needed was something that would allow us to walk and talk again, and… Idea. “Aegis, what time’s the last train out?”

“Uh…” He pawed at the ground. “9:27, I think. Something like that. Why?”

9:27. I ran a few numbers in my head. Yeah, that, that could work. He’d have the time. “I got an idea,” I said. “You see that mountain over there?” I pointed. It wasn’t big, as far as mountains went, but it still sat conspicuously on the outside of town.

“Yeah,” he said as he squinted at it. “Why?”

“Let’s climb it. Watch the sunset. Maybe pick up some food before we leave and have dinner there. If we book it on the way back, you can make your train.”

Aegis looked at the mountain for another moment, then turned to me. “You sure we have enough time?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding. “It’s pretty short for a mountain and closer than it looks. We can take it nice and slow on the way up and have time to spare.”

“Alright, then,” Aegis said, returning his gaze to the mountain. “Mountain it is. Wanna get some food first?”

“Sure. What do you like?”