Apropos of the Sinners

by SpitFlame

Part VII – Chapter III – Latent Untruth

This shouldn't take too long, and besides, Feelgreed seemed like a nice enough guy, concluded Airglow on her way down the gravel path, yet she did not seem particularly pleased by this conclusion.

She felt the weight of the big coin pouches on her. The filly had no idea on what grounds Sharp stood with the muddleheaded Feelgreed; the thought sprung up in her mind when she turned around a hill and viewed his house in the distance, seemingly nestled into a dirt depression by the base of an elongated valley, which was located in the far south of Ponyville.

But upon further contemplation she reasoned it did not matter in the least. Her opinion was irrelevant. She was there to make a delivery and nothing else.

The clouds at this time of season were grey, heavy, and enormous. A few large ones in particular looked like they could host a small party of pegasi, or were about ready to rain. Airglow craned her neck up and stared for a long time into the sky as she walked onwards.

Despite the fact that she was a pegasus, as well as a perfectly adequate flyer, Airglow never found much joy or motive to fly. She was what some call an "earth-pony" pegasus: born with wings, but functionally an earth pony in almost every aspect of life. Not a derogatory term, but no compliment either.

Not that you could blame her: apart from a lack of necessity, throughout her entire life the encouragement to fly from others was absent. She would much rather sit back and watch the other pegasi at work. She was even thankful she didn't have to apply for weather patrol; it simply did not feel like the right thing to do.

Sometimes she loved the feeling of wind blowing through her feathers. At other times, her wings were an obnoxious inconvenience when the time for preening came. She really hated preening, especially since there was always that one feather that gets stuck and hurts when you pull it out. Maybe if flight was a regular practice for her she would not mind, because then the benefit would largely outweigh the cost. It didn't help that no pony she knew in her personal life was a pegasus like her.

It was in these moments of wistful introspection that Airglow regretted her asocial disposition.

But it's always like that, isn't it? The asocial lot will invariably have those moments where they wish to not be asocial, to garner a larger group of friends and associates, yet nevertheless will continue the way they are, because the thought is a lot more appetizing than praxis.

As she entered the front view of the sunken little house, she heard some sort of discussion between two voices from within. She quickly jogged down one side of the depression, automatically finding her balance on a narrow stone path. She paused, listened to the "discussion" for almost a minute, but could not make anything out, only that it sounded hasty and personal. She went up and knocked on the door with her usual light knocks.

"Oh! It must be...!" She made out those exact words, and took two steps back.

The door opened and out came Feelgreed, with his expected countenance of nervous excitement, his mildly unkept mane, parted more on one side than the other, brushed side whiskers, and a crooked smile which vanished as quickly as it appeared.

It was obvious that he had anticipated to see captain Sharp Heat at the front of his abode, but upon seeing Airglow he cocked his head back, looked behind him, waved his hoof to the sound of another voice (which sounded young and female, probably his daughter), likely conveying all that needed to be said, then softly closed the door behind him. An expression of the most genuine amazement washed over his features.

"Why, it's you!" he exclaimed. "Sincerest apologies, miss, for catching me in such a state as this. My little castle here isn't clean in any sense of the word. Are you in search of something, miss... eh... Air..."

"Oh, it's Airglow. I'm here in place of Sharp. Sharp Heat, I mean. He wanted me to give you something, on account of some... 'personal matter' he had with you? His words."

"The air is fresh today, isn't it, miss Airglow? Come, walk with me, let's walk slowly, we have such sublime views here. I'm very glad you of all ponies came, because I should very much like to enlist your interest, miss."

"But I..." she let fall, but he started walking and she automatically followed him. "I'm not looking for anything else. I just have this one business with you, nothing else as far as I know."

"Didn't I know you had business with me, miss? The good captain I expected, but for some utterly astonishing reason, in the back of my head, I was expecting you; perhaps it was providence, like at the Flying Rift, yes?"

"I guess. If you want to put it like that..."

"Without business you never would have come, or is this business about an even more personal matter, with my children, that is?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't know anything about that. I'm only here to make a delivery."

"Well, my two sons already left; my daughter, who is the oldest, is leaving tomorrow, so I spent all day yesterday and now hopefully today with her. What about you, dear miss? Did you provide the time of bonding to your dear old father when you had the chance?"

"Y-yeah..." Airglow almost winced at her response.

"Good, good! All is well is the world then! See, the proceedings of this 'business' which I had anticipated from you must come only from the nobility of your fervent heart. Allow me to elaborate on the matter of the highly soldierly spirit of my late wife's brother and their extended family, who of course have all the need in the world to step into these worldly affairs which are not of their own, for reasons borne out of their chivalrously intentions. So they look at me, and at the mother who had just died, and think, 'Well, this unseemly sod just isn't fit to provide,' do you get me? And so they take me to court, and all the bureaucracy that come along with it. 'You,' says my late wife's brother (I refuse to call him anything else), 'are a pony of trade, and I am too; I will not throw you to rock bottom, though you might deserve it!' That is what he told me, miss. Truly a chivalrous spirit! My kids and I withdrew then, but this genealogical family picture forever imprinted itself in the memory of our souls. No, it's not for us to stay gentry, miss. And judge for yourself, miss, you were just so good as to visit my castle."

Airglow blinked heavily a few times. Her head started to dip. She was beginning to feel impossibly tired, precisely because she had only slept in intervals of about twenty minutes every twenty-four hours for the past few days now. That is to say, she would feel exhausted, lie down to rest, wake up again twenty minutes later, and from then on she'd be incapable of sleeping any further until the next day.

These instances of drowsiness would wash over her unexpectedly, and now, as she listened to Feelgreed prattle on, it was coming over her that morning.

"Oh, but you don't know all of it," the good and sincere Feelgreed went on, as if dictating. "Allow me to explain the story more particularly. The thing is that my sons, and especially my daughter Penni, can barely attend school due to concerns of bullying; they all make fun of them for their familial situation, as if they had any control on the matter whatsoever! Children are merciless; individually they're angels, but together in groups?—utterly merciless. Just last week they were teasing Penni; an ordinary filly would have accepted it, would have given in to the shame, but not my Penni, no, she stands up to her disgraced family, as if bound by the heights of honour. She got into a fight and got suspended for the week. Recently she was asking for my forgiveness, because her two younger brothers are now in the care of my late wife's brother, and she knows I only have her, and she does not wish to leave!

"Now she's come down with a fever of sorts, she was in a bad state all night. All that day she hardly spoke to me, but she kept leaning more towards the window, pretending to be doing her homework, but I could see she didn't have homework in mind. Last night I did some drinking, miss, and forgot a lot, because that's my sinful nature, miss. I had a dot on my last few bits. Please don't despise me, miss; in these parts of Equestria, the drunks are the kindest ponies.

"I remember when Penni arrived home after the suspension. 'What's wrong?' I ask. Silence. Well, there was hardly any need to speak of it. I understood why she was so upset. Love for your family can drive you to much short-sightedness, wouldn't you agree, miss? But I could tell she was awfully angry, and that she hated every pony at her school, even the teachers. So, miss, I took out my girl for a walk. And you should know, miss, that even before that, we would often go on walks together, just like how we are now, from our gate to that wattle fence down there, where the town common begins. You see, I usually prefer talking to fillies; I find females vastly more empathetic than the males, their company puts me at greater ease. A family without any females, not even one, is truly a sad state of affairs."

Jeez, I guess I wasn't "female" enough to help them, thought Airglow in a sort of dismal self-deprecation, the image of her own family flashing in her head.

"We were walking along, Penni and I, her little hoof in mine, as usual," Feelgreed went on. "She has such a tiny hoof, her arms are thin and cold—my girl suffers quite a bit, I can tell. 'Papa,' she said, 'papa!' 'What?' I said to her, and I could see that her eyes were flashing. 'Papa, why do they say such mean things about you!' 'It can't be helped, Penni dear,' I said. 'I don't wanna ever forgive them!' she said. 'No, Penni,' I said, 'there's no need to forgive right now, just forget about it.' Then she started shaking all over, and seized my hoof with both of hers. 'Papa,' she said, 'one day I'll get back at them, I'll make them pay for what they said, I'll hurt them bad' And her eyes were flashing and shining. Well, I'm still her father for all that, I had to tell her the right thing. 'Violence is wrong,' I said, 'even for the sake of revenge. Violence only breeds violence.' But I could tell she was not very satisfied by that.

"You see, miss, you see what a process went on in her little head over that day! Day and night she was thinking precisely about revenge, and that must have been her fever, miss. I suppose she won't go back to that school anymore, she will move out of Ponyville altogether. When I learned that she was going alone against the whole class, and that she was so bitter, that her heart was burning—I was afraid for her. Again yet we still went on our walks. 'Papa,' she asked, 'papa, is it true that the rich are stronger than anypony in the world?' 'Yes, Penni,' I said, 'no pony in the world is stronger than the rich.' 'Papa,' she said, 'I'll get rich, I'll become an important pony, and I'll beat everypony, and Princess Celestia will reward me. Then I'll come back, and none of them will...' She was silent for a while, then she said, and her little lips were still trembling as before: 'Papa,' she said, 'our town isn't that good.' 'Yes, Penni,' I said, 'it's really not a very good town.' 'Papa, let's move to another town, a good one,' she said, 'a town where they don't know about us, so I can stay with you.' 'We will,' I said, 'we will move, Penni, as soon as I save some money.'

"I was glad to be able to distract her from her dark thoughts, and so we began dreaming of how we'd move to another town, how we'd buy our own place, and all the like. We went over many details. She was overjoyed with that, most of all because we'd have our own place and a new school for her to attend. It was around that time when I met the exquisite captain Sharp Heat, he noticed my situation, and offered to help me; he struck me as incredibly well put together. Perhaps he offered to lend me some money, thought Penni was against such a proposal. Perhaps moneylending is seen as humiliating on some intuitive level. But, well, I must do what I can miss! I miss trudge through, for the sake of my family, I must show them that I can be a good father!"

He ended on a cracked note of spiteful derision. Airglow, despite her weariness, still made an effort to listen to Feelgreed, though she did not understand all of it. But she knew that he already trusted her, and that if somepony else were in her place, then this "talk" might not have taken place at all.

"Well," she said, "I really wish you luck on that."

"Right, miss," he muttered.

In any case, a bout of sympathy struck her, dampened though it was by her own familial situation. She considered that perhaps, in helping out some other pony with their own family, it might lead, by way of encouragement or the realization of a new idea, to improve the relationship between Cluster and Nova.

But that consideration immediately fell to the wayside of pure reason, because frankly, it did not make much sense. Airglow had spent so long wrestling with her father's death, and Nova's imprisonment, and Cluster who was still such an enigma to her, that she now wished to forget about it all, only that was clearly impossible.

"I..." she started, twisting her mouth to one side. "I really wish I could do something for you. Maybe this errand will. You said Sharp was going to lend you a hoof; well, that's why I'm here. Take this." She took out the three coin punches. "He said it's three hundred bits. It's for you."

The pouches seemed to make a terrible impression on Feelgreed. He started, at first from astonishment; he did not expect anything of the sort, nor such an outcome. He might have expected a sum of money to be lent to him, but never so much. He took the three pouches, and for a moment could not reply; something new flashed in his face.

"is it for me, miss, these three hundred bits? For me? By Celestia, I haven't held so much in my hooves in years! And captain Sharp Heat... is it true... really?"

"Yeah, it's the truth, it really is," she said in a livelier voice than before. She detected his increasingly hopeful disposition, which started to animate her. "It could really do some good on your part. Sharp is a great guy, he wants to help those down on their luck, like you. Please accept it."

"Listen, miss," he said, blushing, "if I do accept so much, won't that humiliate me? In your eyes, my good Airglow, would it dishonour me? But, no, wait, Airglow, listen to me, miss"— he was hurrying, touching Airglow with both hooves —"here you are offering me three hundred bits, persuading me to take them, because, in your words, the captain is a 'great guy' who bears a willingness for welfare, but inside, in your own heart—would you consider me dishonoured if I accept, miss?"

"Of course not, why would I? When is it ever humiliating to accept help from others? I mean, if it really bothers you, no pony has to know about this, no pony but me, you, and Sharp. But it's really not humiliating at all, at least I don't think so."

"Forget the captain! Listen, my good Airglow, listen to me, miss, because now is the time of all times for you to listen, miss, because I'm not sure you understand what these three hundred bits mean for me," the stallion went on, gradually getting himself into a sort of confused, unconstrained fervour. He was almost disoriented, as it were, and was speaking with incredible haste, as if he were afraid he might not be able to get it all out. "One time the excellent Dr. Tubercuhoofis came to examine my kids, and he offered a prescription for mineral water, which would do them good. The mineral water is awfully expensive, it costs twenty bits, because of how rare it is, because of its low supply and high demand. The prescription is still there, it may help with Penni's fever, and now I can buy it. I can rent a new place for a few months now, and in that time acquire a new job, and make more money that way. The only thing I would need to worry about it food. So now, with these three hundred bits, I can do so much, I have a new opportunity to stay with my daughter, to prove that I am able to provide. Do you understand that, miss Airglow? I can undertake treatment for my dear ones. Goodness, am I dreaming?"

Airglow smiled at last. She was glad that she caused so much happiness and that the poor fellow agreed to be made happy.

"Goodness," he said again, "if I could pay off even one lousy debt, then maybe that would be enough for that, miss!"

"It should be enough," she said brightly and openheartedly. "And if you need more, I'll ask Sharp to send more, or my brother Cluster, or anypony who'd listen. I could lend to you, too, and you can pay me back later. You can write to me, too, wherever you go; there's nothing wrong with dreaming, right? Not everything has to fall apart. You can prove to everypony that just because a family hits rock bottom, it doesn't have to stay that way forever. S-so... please accept this, and more if you need it."

Perhaps that previous consideration wasn't entirely senseless: it was possible, through encouragement at the happiness of others, to improve one's conditions. She wanted to believe that. Airglow was very pleased and was about to embrace the stallion, but she suddenly stopped.

Feelgreed stood there, pale in the face, with a wild look in his eyes, the sort of look of a pony who has decided to throw themselves under a train track, yet at the same time was smiling, but only with his lips.

"I... you... listen, miss Airglow," Feelgreed broke off in a mutter, staring her straight in the face. "Would you like to see where things stand?" he said suddenly in a low voice, this time without falter.

"Huh?"

"I just want to let you know where things stand, like the end of a show," he went on in that same low voice, one of his eyes squinting, almost as if it was riveted on Airglow.

"What're you talking about? Things stand where?" explained Airglow, now quite alarmed.

"Like this!" Feelgreed suddenly cried and, holding up the coin pouches, he threw them onto the ground with all his strength. "Well, so there, miss! There's your money!" he cried again, pointing at the bits on the ground.

He then leaped back and straightened up before Airglow. She took his whole figure to represent some picture of extreme pride.

"Report to the one who sent you, and anypony else who would send you, that I won't be humiliated for your own altruistic feelings!" Then he quickly turned around and broke into a fast gait the opposite way they were walking.

But after not even ten steps he turned around, and now there was no twisted or frenzied mockery on his face, only tears.

"And how could I face them, telling them that I relied on so much from so many?" Having said this, he went on his way, for real this time.

Airglow looked after him with real sadness on her face. She instantly came to understand that Feelgreed was genuinely ready to accept Sharp's delivery, and that perhaps her mention of receiving even more from others, herself included, is what set him off. She knew he would not look back.

Why did I mention other ponies helping? she chided herself. Why did I do that? I only made it worse.

When the stallion was out of sight, Airglow stared down at the coin pouches. She bit her lip, then bent down to pick them up. At first she thought about keeping the money, but shook her head. She decided to go back and return the bits to Sharp Heat. If he was no longer home, then...

Well, she didn't know what then. Those feelings of utter despair, the ones she was trying so hard to forget after her father's death, was again creeping its way inside.