Chapter 40
Buttermilk fanned away with her wings while Copperquick lay gasping in the grass with his tongue lolling out. A five-alarm fire raged along his sides and white-hot stabbing pain caused his legs to jerk. Mighty Midge’s attempts to hold the crowd back were almost drowned out by the roaring in Copperquick’s ears. At this point, his thoughts were a jumble and he could make sense of nothing.
Flashbulbs popped, an endless stream of brilliant blue-white flashes. Flying reporters circled overhead, kept at a distance by Mighty Midge. Somepony was shouting. Crying could be heard. Writhing in the grass, his body cramping and aching, Copperquick could see the mysterious mare curled into a fetal position less than a yard away. Butter Fudge stood over her, trying to hold back the crowd.
Somepony dumped a bucket of water over his head. Shocked, drenched, Copperquick spluttered and coughed. It was wonderful and just what he needed. Licking his lips, he tasted salt and something that could only be described as metallic. His hooves were full of searing-hot needles and his clenching guts demanded food of some sort. Still coughing, he somehow managed to get his hooves beneath him so that he might sit up.
The tent smelled of mildew, old, musty canvas, and disinfectant, no doubt sprayed to get rid of the funky smell. Sunlight streamed in, yellow-orange through the thin, worn canvas, bringing with it unwanted warmth. Not a large space to begin with, the tent was absolutely crowded with ponies, and one griffon, a ship’s sawbones who had once been a Doctor of the Equestrian Guard.
Copperquick was feeling better, but the mare, who had struggled twice as much, was slow to recover. The griffon had her laid out on a folding table and was currently feeling her neck, trying to find her pulse with his thumb-talon. Buttermilk plunked down a steel bucket filled with lemonade and Copperquick’s mouth began to water.
Almost right away, he began to drink while Buttermilk flew off to fetch another bucket.
“Can you tell me your name?” the griffon asked the heaving, hitching mare. “My name is Geoffruez.”
“My name… is… Sodalite,” the mare panted, her voice a landslide of gravel.
“Well, Miss Sodalite, you’ve experienced a bit of a miracle. Very exciting. Do try to slow down your breathing, if you can. You make me worry.”
“I don’t… think… I won.” Sodalite struggled to turn her head to look at Copperquick, did so for a moment, closed her eyes, and then held still while the old griffon took her pulse, pressing his thumb-talon hard against the soft of her neck.
Buttermilk returned, carrying another glistening, sweating steel bucket filled with lemonade. This was set down on the table and then the attentive pegasus pulled out a steel dipper from the bucket, held it up to show the doctor that it was there, let it go, and then landing on the crowded floor, she made her way over to Copperquick.
With his muzzle in his bucket, Copperquick continued to drink, alternating between greedy gulps and careful sips. He wanted to know what had happened. What had just gone on? He felt as weak as a newborn at the moment and it was difficult to even sit up. Fatigue robbed him of strength, sapped him of his vitality, and no matter how much he drank, he could not make the dry scratchiness in his throat go away.
“The both of you ran five miles in five-point-eighty-eight minutes.” The griffon pulled his thumb away. “I don’t think I need to tell you how impossible that is. Well, under normal circumstances. With magic, anything is possible. And the two of you shared the most curious magic. An expert is being brought in.”
“It’s a photo-finish,” Butter Fudge said, her voice soft, firm, and reassuring. “It’s being looked at right now. My guts tell me that the both of you crossed the line at the same time.”
“What happened?” Buttermilk asked, the corner of her eyes crinkled with worry. “What happened and how is this possible? What did we see on the track? Copper and this mare here, they were on fire.”
“I’ve seen this in the trenches.” Geoffruez lifted out the dipper and held it up to Sodalite’s lips so that the parched mare could drink. “Though nothing quite like this. You get two emotional earth ponies with a like minded goal… such as surviving and going home… things happen. Strange things happen. Don’t know why it happens. Earth pony magic is not well-studied or understood.”
“I thought we only had strength and our connection to the ground.” Butter Fudge leaned in a little closer to Sodalite, her face curious, and then she turned to look at Copperquick. “Though Copper isn’t what you’d call strong. He’s a bit of a wet noodle. What was that, anyhow?”
“Two earth ponies united with a common cause?” Geoffruez waited patiently while Sodalite slurped lemonade from the dipper he held up to her lips. “Both of you clearly wanted to win. No doubt, both of you were emotional. At least, that’s my experience. I might be wrong. Don’t correct me, keep drinking, both of you.”
“She has a son,” Copperquick said, his muzzle dripping lemonade back into his bucket. “We spoke to each other on the track. She probably needed to win for the same reason I needed to win.” When he was done speaking, he dipped his muzzle back into his bucket and continued to attempt to drown his thirst.
“If you have a son, where’s his father?”
Ears pricking, Copperquick heard Butter Fudge in an entirely different way—an unpleasant, dreadful way—and he thought back to their first meeting. Lifting his head, he turned to look at Sodalite and saw a hard, bitter expression upon her face, as well as a bit of exasperation. How often did she hear this? Without even knowing the circumstances, it seemed as though Butter Fudge stood ready to cast judgment.
As thirsty as he was, he remained distracted from his need to drink.
Buttermilk was staring at her mother now, but said nothing. Mighty Midge, who had Esmeralda hanging from his neck, had retreated into the corner. His ears rose and fell, his expression alternating between two unreadable faces. Geoffruez took a moment to study his claws while still holding the dipper. Butter Fudge, ignoring her husband and her daughter, kept her attention locked on Sodalite, one eyebrow held high. Copperquick didn’t like the look on her face, not at all. Not in the slightest. He found it rather infuriating, but his need to keep things civil kept him from saying anything.
At least, not yet, not at the moment.
Sodalite raised her head and lemonade dripped from her chin. Her ears quivered and anger, like furious thunderheads, flashed in her eyes. For a moment, Copperquick thought about saying something, but then he changed his mind; Butter Fudge deserved whatever was about to happen next.
“His father… who totally wasn’t… my… husband…” The mare’s slight barrel heaved with every breath and her cheeks jerked, contorting her face in unpleasant ways. “He is over… in yonder… cemetery.” She took a deep breath to calm herself, then another, and then a third. When she spoke again, her hitching voice cracked multiple times. “He made promises… I was in love… I wanted him to love me… he signed up to be a soldier… I foolishly made… I foolishly made his goodbye memorable… I had hopes that he’d marry me before he left… he proposed… but then he left.”
Copperquick saw Butter Fudge’s expression soften.
“What happened, if I might ask?” There was no hardness to be heard in Butter Fudge’s voice.
“Training accident.” Sodalite’s anger dissipated and was replaced with sorrow. “Mid-air collision. Fleet never was one for listening… or being told what to do.” The mare looked away, her eyes narrowing, and she pushed the dipper away with one hoof while she struggled to rise into a sitting position.
Geoffruez plopped the dipper back into the bucket and then helped the sad mare sit up.
“I can’t pay the bills… I can’t even keep a job… ponies keep telling me I need to be a better mom and they send me home. Others tell me I brought this on myself. Because Fleet and I never married, I don’t even get a widow’s pension. I tried… I begged them for one, but they flat out refused me. I need the money to move away from this place.”
Reaching out, Sodalite grabbed the dipper from the bucket, lifted it to her lips, tilted her head back, and emptied it in a gulp. Licking his lips, Copperquick contemplated saying something, but what could be said? His own situation would take too much explaining, and if he said anything, he feared it might sound patronising.
“I’m sick of everypony telling me that I’m a bad mother for trying to work… if I don’t work, I can’t pay rent or bills or buy groceries. Lots of marriage proposals though to help me fix my ‘problem.’ Pfah! Most of those proposals come from stallions old enough to be my father. It’s like they all got together and concocted a secret plan to keep me desperate so I’d give in and say yes to one of them. Well, I’m not doing that.”
“That’s probably exactly what they are doing. Mares too. All of them deciding what is best for you.”
Copperquick’s ears went rigid with shock, and he was not alone. In absolute astonishment, he stared at Butter Fudge, scarcely believing what she had just said. Buttermilk too, also gaped at her mother, and Mighty Midge as well. The pegasus looked ashamed for a moment, his mouth opened as if he was about to say something, but then he turned all of his attention to Esmeralda, who snoozed in her carrier.
“So I’m not crazy?” Sodalite leveled a deadpan stare upon Butter Fudge.
“I might be guilty of doing that very thing,” Butter Fudge confessed. “Lot of us talk about how things ought to be. Most of us tend to think we know best. I’ve recently had my eyes opened by my daughter. I’m so focused on how things ought to be that sometimes I’m blind to how things are.”
“Moomy…” Buttermilk’s eyes fluttered a bit, and then, her barrel rising and falling, the little pegasus yanked off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her foreleg.
“I need some air,” Butter Fudge announced, her voice raspy. “That mildewy smell is getting to me. I’ll be outside.”
Before anything could be said to dissuade her, the stout mare departed, stepping out of the tent while her daughter, Buttermilk, continued to rub at her eyes with her foreleg. Copperquick wanted to say something, anything, but it seemed that he was tongue tied. Wickering, his eyes flashing, Mighty Midge took off after his wife and he took little Esmeralda with him.
“Keep drinking,” Geoffruez said as Mighty Midge slipped out the flaps.
Everything about the photographs upon the table were astounding. Copperquick saw himself and Sodalite, both of them were ablaze, and practically levitating across the finish line. Nose to nose, it was clear that they had crossed together. The second camera, which snapped a picture from a different angle, confirmed this, and the overhead camera on the hot air balloon, though not zoomed in, showed that he and Sodalite moved as one, streaming trails of light behind them.
“There is no way to determine a winner.”
The pony speaking was a wizened, wrinkled old mare with crooked reading glasses perched on her nose, and her name was Tulip Twirls. A unicorn, she had magic to almost bring the photos to life, causing the images within to leap out so that depth could be discerned. Tulip was a forensic photographer, whatever that was, and was the local photographic expert.
“It is obvious to me that your mutual magic wanted the both of you to win together, though I’m positive that there will be some debate about this later. The Derby Commision is dirty, I’ll tell ya that much, and there is a chance that both of you might walk away with nothing at all, as no clear winner can be determined. Or they might accuse you of cheating, because of the spontaneous happenstance of magic that took place.”
“Spontaneous happenstance is an odd turn of phrase,” Copperquick remarked.
Tulip Twirls stared through her crooked glasses, her expression weary, and she had a light sheen of perspiration that left her face and neck damp. “I can’t think of a better way to put it.” The older mare sighed, rested one foreleg upon the table, and then added, “The Derby Commision has already declared all wagers invalid, so if you had any bets riding on the outcome of the race, they’ve been zeroed out. Without a clear winner, there’s no way to cash in on those bets.”
“That’s just dirty.” Sodalite crossed her forelegs over her barrel and her lips puckered into a sullen pout. After a moment, her lips unpuckered, she wickered once, and then added, “The last bit of money I had, paid the fees to enter. I should’ve known better. I was a fool to gamble. With all these plough ponies, I thought I had a sure thing.”
“Yeah…” Tulip drew the word out considerably, almost to the point where it became a groan. “This happens. Nothing is ever a sure thing.”
“What if one of us ceded to the other so that one of us—”
“No!” Sodalite held up her hoof as she interrupted Copperquick. “I’ll not let that happen. That’s not winning. I couldn’t live with myself.”
A bit dejected, Copperquick slouched, having accomplished nothing even though he tried. The old mare glanced at him, then at Sodalite, and then her eyes angled back down to the photographs on the folding table that stood in the middle of the mildewed tent. It pained him to know that he had put out so much effort only to achieve nothing. Sure, he had a victory of sorts, he’d been part of a miraculous display of magic, but that was cold consolation.
He was tired, weary, hungry—no, he was ravenous. All of his muscles ached and had annoying, irritating twitches that he could not control. The small of his back felt like it was on fire and all four of his fetlocks felt as though they had been crushed. His frogs were swelling—and for what, exactly? A tie with no payout.
“Ceding wouldn’t work.” Tulip Twirl stacked the photographs atop one another and then slid them into a folder. “There’s no provision set up for ceding. No legalese. There’s never been a tie before. Ever. At least not here in this district. The Derby Commision for this district tries to keep things as simple as possible, and only ever adds provisions after something has taken place. Otherwise, everything would be mired down with bureaucracy and that’d be bad. Ponies would constantly be trying to contest the rules so they could get a leg up.”
Sodalite heaved a sigh and replied, “That actually makes sense. But I still don’t like it.”
“How… how could ceding be exploited?” Copperquick watched as the old mare tucked the folder with the photos into her bag. “I don’t see how that could be a bad thing.”
“A faster more capable pony might cede to the crowd favourite that has higher returns on their odds, and then the both of them might split the pot. If there is no provision for ceding, this can be avoided.” Tulip Twirl slipped a canvas strap through the brass buckle on her bag and then cinched the flap in place. “I have to go and get these notarised as evidence. Excuse me.”
“Thank you,” said Copperquick, though he wasn’t sure why he was thanking her.
Sodalite had the last words before the old mare departed: “I’m starving.”
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Wicked unfair.
Emphasis on wicked.
I have a feeling that a certain Mrs. Velvet would find this case VERY interesting. Or know ponies who do.
So, referring back to a previous post of mine... it was synchronicity. Very cool. While I definitely agree with AD here, TV would definitely find this interesting, I definitely think that a potential herd is before us. It may be more along the Tarnish/Maud/Octavia/Vinyl pattern, but I'm just getting the vibe from this grouping.
9225509
Is this the New England/Bostonian 'wicked', or the Elphaba 'wicked'?
9225509
And I have a raging flame burning in my gut. Emphasis on RAGE.
God, imagine if Tarnish were there.... I can hear it now...
That's not fair.
I’m so, so very tempted. I’ll try to resist.
It would be too easy to declare a tie and split the winnings of first and second place evenly in two equal sums.
Of course, I'm waiting for some pony to show up, declare both winners as cheaters and demand they be locked up for daring to ruin a traditional event.
Come to think of it...couldn't they get married, but only do it on paper? That way neither of them would have ceded to the other. After wards they could split the prize money on their own and go their separate ways. Of course....this would likely introduce several NEW complications....FUCK. There's just no easy solution to this one....On one hand, I'm super pissed about this, but on the other hand, I'm amazed, because that means Kudzu made a universe that almost feels REAL. WHY DO YOU TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS, KUDZHU!?
9225614
Heh. How about both?
Sodalite, hmn.
Wow, that's an impressive speed.
Someone stop Butter Fudge from ruining this.
Huh.
Argh, figures.
I hope Sodalite sticks around in the Copperquick stories in some fashion. The connection they made with each other out on the track feels important.
9226176
Yeah, this won't lead to more corruption.
It’s hard to constantly have to wait for the next chapter. I totally understand that someone might want to wait for a story to finish before binge reading the whole thing.
Damn...sad to see that backfire so spectacularly.