Before Dark

by Rambling Writer

5:41 PM - Food

We’d stopped by a grocery store to pick up some food for our picnic. Yeah, we could’ve gotten food from my stand for free, but I’d closed it down for the night and didn’t want to put more work into balancing my checkbook than I had to. I could afford to lose a few foodstuffs for one night; I was just lazy. Besides, the grocery store had a lot more variety — grains, sweet stuff, drinks, condiments, all that jazz — and we like variety. Mare cannot survive on greens alone, after all. In particular, there was one very important type of food that my stand was sorely lacking.

“Come on, chocolate chip is way better,” I said.

“But they’re frosted sugar cookies!” protested Aegis.

“Sugar cookies are boring. Chocol-”

“Frosted!”

“There’s barely any taste besides sug-”

“Frosted!”

“And besides, they’re expen-”

“Frooosteeed!”

I moaned and rubbed my head. “If you care so much about the frosting, why don’t you get some frosting so you can spread it on whatever cookies we get yourself?”

Aegis opened his mouth slightly, tilted his head and paused, then said, “There is so much sugar involved in that I think I’m already going into a diabetic coma. Let’s do it!” He was off like a shot to whatever aisle the frosting was in.

I huffed. Sheesh. They were just cookies. It wasn’t like this was the end of the world.

As I slipped a small box of chocolate chip cookies into the basket around my neck, I thought: did coltfriends and marefriends go grocery shopping together? Grocery shopping was so… dispassionate, I guess. I couldn’t think of a better word. Banal. Trite. Whatever. Coltfriends and marefriends were romantic. Grocery shopping wasn’t. It was domestic.

And yet, Aegis and I were doing it like it was nothing. We weren’t doing it because we had to, picking the bare minimum and leaving. We were actually debating over brands, foods, flavors, that sort of thing. Almost like we’d skipped over the romantic part of the relationship and gone straight to the daily grind.

But the really weird thing was that I didn’t mind. Grocery shopping is normally one of those things that’s drudgery, but now it was just sort of a thing that happened and I had no opinion on. It might’ve just been the company, but while I was hardly enjoying the shopping, it didn’t pull me down like it usually did.

A clip-clopping of hooves made me turn to look. Aegis was slowly walking around the corner, levitating a can of vanilla frosting in front of him and giving it a very strange, very involved look.

“What do you think, Aegis?” I asked. “Hayseed chips?” I pointed at the bag.

“Uh… nah,” Aegis said distantly. “We don’t want too much stuff.”

Fair enough. We already had quite a bit of food for one two-pony picnic. “What’s up with you?” I asked. “It’s frosting, not antimatter or sunstuff or solidified orgone.”

Aegis looked up at me and lowered an ear. “Solidified what?”

“Orgone. It’s an obsolete scientific theory of… universal life force or something.”

“Where did you get that from?”

Scowling, I flicked my tail. “From the look you were giving that can. What’s up with that?”

“Well, it’s…I just realized,” said Aegis, his gaze drifting back to the container. “You can just… go out and… buy frosting. Like, on its own. In an easy-open can.” He looked up at me like he’d discovered some deep mystery of life. “And there’s even, like, different flavors and stuff. It’s like they want you to eat it straight.”

“Oh, Celestia, no,” I said, grimacing. “That’s too much sugar, even for me.” Funny; growing up on a farm, you’d think I’d have really good eating habits. Nope. I’m a bit of a slob and not particularly health-conscious when it comes to food. But I do a lot of manual labor, so I’m not fat.

No, really. I’m not.

“Too much is not enough,” Aegis said. He dropped the can into the basket. “I can stomach one or two of those.” He paused. “Orrrrr… one chocolate-chip-cookie-and-frosting sandwich.”

“Sweet Luna, Aegis,” I said, swatting at him. “Shut up. At this rate, I won’t be able to eat anything come dinner.”

“Fine. Shutting up.” Aegis made a zipping motion across his mouth.

“Where did this come from?” I asked as we walked down the aisle. “The sweet tooth, I mean. Didn’t you order a plain salad at dinner last time?” Okay, wow. How could I remember that?

“I blame college,” Aegis said quickly. “I had easy access to sweet foods, so I got used to them, and when I was done, I just kept it up even though I had to go out of my way for it.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged.

Ah. That explained a lot. I could relate to that. “Weren’t you taught discipline to avoid this sort of thing in the Royal Guard?”

“I was taught discipline in following orders,” said Aegis, “not eating healthy. I didn’t avoid cookies and cakes because I was told to, I avoided them because they just weren’t available. Then suddenly they were available, and I just… yeah.”

“Oh.” I glanced at his trunk. It wasn’t fat. Maybe a bit plumper than it had been last time, but still pretty lean. “No freshman fifteen, though. I’m impressed.”

“You just missed it. Gained five pounds, started going for runs in the morning, lost them, kept going for runs.” Aegis rubbed his stomach self-consciously, even though there wasn’t really anything to be self-conscious about. “I eat bad, but I exercise well.”

“Right. That’d keep you slim.”

We turned a corner (wow we were going slow), and Aegis looked into the basket. “You know, we’ve got quite a variety of stuff in there.” Indeed, the contents of our basket more resembled something you’d snack on during a lazy afternoon than an actual dinner, even if that dinner was a picnic. We didn’t have a lot of any one thing, but we had lots of one things. “And most of it was picked out by you.”

I shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, nothing, it’s… you’re a greengrocer, I thought you’d go for greens.”

“Why? I always have greens. They’re ordinary to me. Not like, say…” I fished a random box out of my basket. “…fruit snacks, which I don’t have often a-” I did a double-take at the box I was holding up, then shot a Look at Aegis. “Fruit snacks? Really?”

“Fruit snacks are good,” Aegis said defensively. “They’re tasty and something vaguely resembling almost healthy.”

“They’re fruit snacks. They’re for foals.” At least he had the decency to get the ones shaped like the fruits they were supposed to taste like, and not the ones shaped like cartoon characters or anything.

“I like them,” said Aegis. He looked about ready to pout. “And I’m secure enough in my maturity to admit I like them. Stallion walks down the street with that snack, ponies know he’s not afraid of anything.”

That made sense. But they were still fruit snacks. “Fine,” I said, dropping the box back into the basket. “The point is, this is all stuff that I normally don’t have. I’ll get it for special occasions, but not much else.”

Aegis’s face remained steady, but his ears went straight up. “Special occasions… Like-”

“Yeah, this is special. You and me-” I pointed between the two of us. “-together again. It’s special. Maybe not marriage special, but it’s special. Special enough to let you get fruit snacks, at least.”

“O-okay.” Aegis paused, nodded, then paused again. “S-so, um, I think we’ve got enough food. Maybe we should buy it and leave now.”

I looked down at the basket one last time. Yeah, we probably had enough. “Yeah, let’s get going before we spend all our time in here. You wanna pay, or should I?”

“I’ve got some bits. Split the bill?”

“Split the bill.”

Comments

[lambda]

“Orgone. It’s an obsolete scientific theory of… universal life force or something.”

Excuse me what the frick . I literally got into orgonites 2 months ago, built myself some, have yet to see the effects but they're so pretty to look at. I put one at my work place and every day people come ask me what it is. It's pretty funny.