Chapter 17
“—so I thought we’d do some ice sculpting!” Tarnish stood in the snow and his chocolate pelt had a light dusting of white flakes. “It’s a little chilly, but it isn’t that cold out here. I thought a little creative expression would be good for all of us. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
In response, Octavia lobbed a snowball at Tarnish, and it struck him in the neck.
Sensing brutal conflict that would claim many lives and friendships, Lemon Hearts made her feelings known. “I think it’s a fine idea. A little time spent outside won’t be so bad and this sounds like a great idea, Tarnish.” While she spoke, Twinkleshine gave her a sour look, but Lemon just ignored it. She, Lemon Hearts, was the undisputed Queen of Sour Looks, and Twinkleshine’s attempt just wasn’t that impressive. Twinkleshine just wasn’t that powerful of a lemon-sucker.
Another snowball struck Tarnish, this one thrown by Pebble.
“Why would anypony sculpt ice?” Maud asked. “It just melts. Stone is a better medium.”
“Well, Maud, darling, stone can melt too,” Tarnish said, making his rebuttal.
“Tarnish… you make an excellent point, but I am going to throw a snowball at you just the same.” And so, Maud did throw a snowball, a rare outward display of her playful side.
Laughing, Lemon watched as Tarnish gave himself a shake, shedding the snow that clung to his pelt. Others were laughing too, and there was a crackle of magic as Vinyl began making blocks of ice for them to carve. These are good times, Lemon thought to herself, and good times had been in short supply. Trixie too, got involved in the ice production, and Tarnish revealed a stash of chisels that he had procured for this occasion.
Somewhat worried, but still laughing, she glanced over at Sumac, who was sitting on his sled so he would haven’t to sit in the snow. He was sitting up on his own, holding himself up, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Lemon felt an immense feeling of pride while she gazed upon him, little Sumac, her little Sumac, showed so much promise with magic, and he had held his own in Twilight’s impromptu class. The worry departed, and Lemon felt her spirits soar. Sumac was happy, he was enjoying himself, and that is all she cared about.
Overcome with feeling, Lemon reached out one foreleg, hooked it around Trixie’s neck, hauled the startled mare in close, and kissed her on the cheek. Trixie sputtered, confused, a little embarrassed, but recovered. A warm, ruddy blush made the snowflakes on Trixie’s cheeks melt, and Lemon’s heart thudded against her ribs when Trixie did not pull away, but remained close.
“Hey,” Lemon whispered, her lips brushing up against Trixie’s heated cheek, “if you pose for me, I’ll immortalise you in ice. Or try to.”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie will strike a Great and Powerful pose for her loyal subject.”
“Hey!” Lemon squeaked in protest, and this got Twinkleshine giggling.
The tip of Sumac’s tongue protruded from between his lips while he concentrated, trying to shape the ice with his chisel. He was completely and thoroughly engrossed in what he was doing, and because of this he did not notice Boomer and Megara trying to chomp the falling snowflakes. He worked alone, but was having a wonderful time.
Maud also worked alone, but had no chisel. Every now and then, she would reach out with one front hoof, strike, and chip away a little more ice from her sculpture, which just so happened to look a lot like Pebble. It was a logical extension of Maud’s behaviour; she had already made Pebble once, and therefore, due to this fact, she had experience in her daughter’s creation.
Sumac paused in his efforts and pulled the chisel away. His sculpture was a fish coming up out of the water, something he had decided to do on a whim. Fishes didn’t have complicated bits like legs, wings, horns, or difficult to make parts. So far, he had something that almost—but not quite—looked like a fish. Perhaps adding details like the scales would make it more fishy.
Tarnish worked with Pebble, he was armed with a chisel, but Pebble used her hoof like her mother. Their combined efforts had made something monstrous, a bugbear. If only everypony else could tell what it was. The pair of chocolatey brown ponies made a good team, however, with frequent, well-spoken communications and a clear plan of what needed to be done.
Lemon Hearts chipped away at her block of ice while Trixie stood in a dramatic pose. The task would have been easier, but Twinkleshine was being a pain in the plot, and she kept throwing snowballs at Trixie, who made horrendous faces in return to express her displeasure. Lemon Hearts, the patient one, continued chipping away with a warm, sunny smile that kept away winter’s chill.
As for Octavia and Vinyl, they too worked together on the same project, a pair of little ponies dancing with one another. So far, the details were quite good, Octavia knocked away the big chunks while Vinyl worked on the fine detail. Out of all of the sculptures, this one was the most promising.
Holding his chisel, Sumac was distracted by Boomer, and he took notice of her and Megara’s antics. The colt laughed, watching as they lept up into the air, trying to bite at the falling flakes. Over and over, Megara lept with her maw wide open, trying to catch as many of the offending flakes as possible. It didn’t look fun to him, but it looked fun for them, and he was glad that Boomer had found a boisterous playmate to keep her company.
Overhead, the skies were becoming a little less grey, and the sun made a valiant effort to shine through, producing a magnificent haze that dazzled the eyes even with the lack of direct light. The falling snow glittered like diamond flakes, refracting every bit of the available light into a brilliant display of winter’s glory.
And so it was that when the alarm went off for a second time on this perfect day, there was a minor panic. A long string of vile, vulgar expletives slipped out from Tarnish’s mouth, to which Octavia responded with a scolding glare. Maud lowered her chisel while her ears pivoted around, and she shook her head in disapproval.
“A pony goes through the trouble of building a wall… a fence… and has a gate… you’d think that ponies would get the idea that he wants to be left alone,” Tarnish said, enduring the withering glares now leveled at him. “I swear by Celestia’s cutie mark, if it is some salespony, somepony is getting cactused.”
“You stop conjugating nouns right now, Mister Teapot!” Lemon Hearts paused, looking confused, then asked, “Is that even a thing?” She blinked, shedding snowflakes from her eyelashes. “That’s kinda what he did, isn’t it, turning a noun into a conjugated verb? It sounds wrong and I don’t want Sumac learning it!”
“I’m gonna go and deal with our guests,” Tarnish snapped, and then he stomped off in the snow.
The guests, as it turned out, were family members, shown up unannounced. Sumac was almost overwhelmed by everything going on. Maud and Pebble were hugging Cloudy. Limestone was hugging Tarnish, causing his eyes to almost pop out of their sockets. Igneous was just standing there, looking gruff, and that was when Sumac noticed that the old stallion turned to look at him.
Much to Sumac’s shock as well as surprise, Igneous began to approach him, and the colt experienced a growing nervousness that threatened to overtake him. Igneous towered over him, which made Sumac look up, and when he moved his head, his neck crackled. His body went weak as a shudder shot through him, and he would have fallen had Igneous not caught him.
“Easy there, you’re the closest thing I have to a grandson.” While Igneous was a rough, gruff sort, his touch was gentle, and with a nudge, he set Sumac upright. With a turn of his head, he glanced at Pebble for a moment, then he looked back down at Sumac. “Does Pebble help look after you?”
“Yes.” Sumac felt nervous saying his reply, but he didn’t know why.
“Good.” Igneous’ utterance of the word was rough, almost guttural. “It means she’s being raised right. I’ve worried ever since she’s left the rock farm. I get afeard of what the big city might do to her.”
“Where’d my little Nutmeg get off to?” Tarnish grunted while Limestone almost juiced him.
Boomer pointed at the kitchen doorway, looking fearful. “Scared.”
Cloudy reacted, and with terrifying ease, she shrugged off both Maud and Pebble. “I want to see her. I’m dying to see her… where is she, I want to see her right now.”
“Mother, please,” Maud began, but she was cut off.
“Now hush, Maudlin, I want to see my granddaughter!”
“And that’s what we’ve been worried about.” Maud’s words made her mother’s head turn and her ears rose.
“Now look here, Missy… I won’t take your sass.” Cloudy’s brows furrowed into deep wrinkles and her thin lips clung to her teeth. “Tarnished Teapot is my son. My son…” She paused for a moment to allow her words to settle in, and her nostrils flared. “I don’t care how it happened, I don’t care about the details, I don’t even want to know, because I’m positive that it is an unpleasant story of woe. But none of that changes the fact that he is my son, and by extension, that makes Megara my granddaughter. Now… I wish to see her!”
“I don’t know what I expected.” Maud’s voice was a much quieter and flatter deadpan than usual. “We made such a big deal about it behind closed doors. We worried about it. We lost sleep over it. We both wanted her to know her grandparents but we were worried about what you would think about her.”
“Why would you think that?” Cloudy asked, her voice soft, low, and full of concern.
“You don’t exactly approve of everything we do,” Maud replied to her mother.
The older mare’s eyes closed for a moment while she nodded, and when she opened her eyes once more, she had this as a response: “That’s fair of you to say. I haven’t always handled myself in the way that I should have.” She glanced over at Octavia and Vinyl, then looked Maud in the eye. “I’m right proud of you and what you are doing though. Not every mare would do what you have done. I am very, very proud of you, and I don’t have the words to express it.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Maud shuffled a bit on her hooves, a powerful, expressive reaction for her.
Sumac suffered a peculiar feeling of wondering if he belonged here. This was a private dispute, a family dispute, and it felt strange to observe it. There was a tension in the air now, uncomfortable, it was as if the chilly room had become far too warm and it was now difficult to breathe. Stuffy. He started to tip over again, his neck was cramping up something awful since trying to look up, and Igneous pushed him back into a sitting position before he fell over.
“I have something to say.” Octavia cleared her throat, and she seemed rather scared. Or maybe nervous, or apprehensive. It was hard to tell, because she was doing her best to hide it. “This is my home too… I helped to buy and pay for it. I live here… I work here… and I don’t want any fighting here.”
“I didn’t come to fight—”
“Cloudy, your advice and suggestions for how things ought to be aren’t always well received.” Octavia began tapping the edge of her right front hoof against the floor. “So I am asking for a truce during the holidays. I know what you expect from me and Vinyl. In the past, you and I have exchanged some bitter, heated words. I will not have this holiday ruined.”
“I understand.” Cloudy’s voice was gritty.
“As concessions for the state of ceasefire, this truce”—Octavia’s eyebrow raised while one eye squinted in a shrewd manner— “this foal of mine that Tarnish so graciously helped me to create through his contribution, he or she will know you as their grandmare.”
The tension in the room now was palpable, and Sumac could feel it, it was like humidity on a hot summer day, just before a thunderstorm happened. Cloudy had gone as still as a statue, not even blinking. When she did finally blink, Sumac saw a tear fall, and he felt himself growing emotional, as if he was about to have himself a good cry, which he didn’t want to have happen. It would be embarrassing.
Cloudy’s voice was thick, gritty, and she sounded choked up. “That’s all I ever wanted in the first place…”
“I know.” Octavia nodded, and while doing so, her face relaxed into a pleasant smile. “But this is being done on my own terms, in my own way. Now, I hope we have a pleasant holiday together.”
The older mare nodded. “I’d like that.”
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Will there be more nouns conjugated? If so, I reserve the right to panic!
Aaaaawww, good on you, Octavia!
I've always just called it 'verbing nouns'.
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The picture of everypony working on ice sculpture is priceless. Tarnish is really working on group dynamics with the birdhouses and the ice sculpture.
8269193
Took the words right out of my mouth
The repetition is on purpose?
Not in front of the children! They haven't even learned about the verbs and the ABCs!
Unexpected visit? Are the wards able to detect shapeshifters?
8272795
That would be the first thing they would notice.
No way! That's the most fun!
8270336
You ever watch the Animaniacs episode about conjugating?
Hm.
I've made it this far into this just off of this story, the end of the previous (Sumac's rescue), Eigengrau, and the one about Dim's (likely) half-demon sister in the frozen wastes (I can't recall the actual title off the top of my head. Blank, that's it.)
Sadly though I've hit the limit here it seems: I don't really know what's going on, and all the references go over my head. It was frankly kinda stupid of me to jump in at such a late point with only minimal knowledge of prior events.
I've had
Perticulture(Edit: Where the F did I get the idea Perticulture was Weedverse from? I confused it with Venenum Iocus for some reason, both involve Pies, rocks, and are on my read-later list I suppose.) and Twilight's School for Fantastic Foals in my "read later" list for absolute ages, guess it's time to finally crack them open, another with the rest of the "Weedverse" stories. Not really sure why I haven't until now, just inertia I suppose. It's somewhat daunting to get into a series that's so big and wide-ranging, with so many stories in it.https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=schoolhouse+rock+verbs+video&&view=detail&mid=2C4199AB53AF42B2356B2C4199AB53AF42B2356B&&FORM=VRDGAR
It's a legitimate part of the English language