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Chapter One1,370 words
Chapter Two1,799 words
Chapter Three2,114 words
Chapter Four1,564 words
Chapter Five2,383 words
Chapter Six3,853 words
Chapter Seven3,261 words
Chapter Eight2,064 words
Chapter Nine2,184 words

Chapter Nine

I walked straight up to the castle of the royal family, with the map that had fallen into my head leading me to an out of the way office, where a stallion was looking out at me.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” he asked me, frowning as he started to push himself up from his chair.

“Fall Harvest, sir,” I said, bowing my head. “I’m here for the new gardner position.”

His frown deepened, staring harder at me. “How did you hear about this; I only started posting news for this opening yesterday.”

“I have good eyes and ears, sir,” I told him. “I listened when somepony told me about the opening earlier today and I wish to apply.”

He continued to stare at me before shaking his head and walked past me. “Follow me, kid,” he said snappishly, leading me out a very long and dull path that made me think he was trying to lose me or something. Little did he know that I was determined to have this job and was very stubborn so I kept up with him all the way until we got outside. He turned around in surprise that I was still there but he tilted his head to beckon me on forwards to a more secluded part of the gardens that was highly unkept and had a large hedge that was begging for somepony to turn it into a sculpture.

Causality made a large coughing sound that suspiciously had the noise of ‘dork’ in it, and Fall Harvest gave her a pointed look while the mares began to snicker.

“Okay, let me see what you can do,” he told me, tilting his head towards all of the mess, not that he needed to as it was really annoying for me to see. With my horn glowing in my alive magic color, I began to fix up the garden, adding my own personal touches to it while I trimmed down that darn hedge into something more appropriate and don’t ‘cough’ again Causality, I know how it sounds and you don't need to say it.

The head of the grounds, Hedge Clipper, kept his eyes on me as I did my work, finishing with making the hedge much smaller; despite how much I wanted to fix it up into something more fancy-looking, I needed to show I could be reasonable.

He kept quiet the entire time until I was finished and placed my tools to the side, giving him a hopeful look as he began to inspect my work. He got low to the ground, muttering to himself as he made his way slowly around the garden before he stopped at the hedge with a ruler levitating in his magic. He placed it on the hedge and leaned in close before shaking his head which was when I started to get worried.

“It’s fair,” he said, turning to face me. “You managed to tame the ground and flowers fine, albeit not to our standards and the hedge is uneven.” I must have frowned or something because he softened his eyes at me. “But it is good for somepony as young as you and you are the first to truly apply for this position.” He then frowned at me again and flicked his wings. “How did somepony as young and talented as you wind up needing this position?”

I froze as I wasn’t expecting this line of questioning even though it made perfect sense for him to ask me that. Still, I was very talented at lying my plot off so I said, “To be honest, good sir, I was sick for a long time when I was younger so I had a lot of time on my hooves to tend my craft, and you can see the results, yes?”

He looked at me, taking a step backwards. “Are you healthy now, kid?”

“Of course, sir,” I took a deep breath in to show that I could. “I can promise you that I would not ever get ill or sick if you do hire me.”

He continued to look at me, shifting on his hooves as he tried to decide what to do with me. “You have your own residence, I presume; we do not have room for any colt that will get underhoof and we do not wish to see any indecency if I choose to take you on.”

“I promise you sir that I would do nothing of the sort; you can trust me to do my job without fault or any issue whatsoever,” I promised him, holding my hoof out to him.

He shifted on his hooves before he sighed, and shook his head. “I will let you on for a week to see how you do; if you do well, we will see if we keep you; we might even assign you a place here.”

“Thank you sir,” I said, a smile breaking out on my face with him doing the same. “I am ready to work right now, sir.”

“Good lad,” Clipper said as he placed his hoof on my shoulder. “Come, let me show you more of the grounds and what will be your assigned area to tend to.”

From that I-

“Fall,” Causality whined, sprawling outwards on the floor. “You’re not going to bore us with a yammering story about how you started to weed the grounds, are you?”

Fall blinked, a hoof raised in the air. “...Maybe?” Causality let out a louder groan, throwing her skull backwards.

“Come on, it can’t be that important, right?” Dash asked. “I mean, about the only one here who actually cares about that sort of thing is Applejack, and maybe Fluttershy, since I know she’s got a small garden of her own for some of her animals.”

“Ya pardner, and no offense, Ah kinda want to hear you and the princess got together,” Applejack said, her eyebrow raised.

“Fine,” Fall pouted, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’ll condense it, seeing that none of you care about gardening.”

“Very astute, Fall Harvest,” Helheim said with Fall huffing loudly.

Well, as nobody - pony or otherwise - cares about my time as a gardner, I’ll summarize it. I kept to my area more or less for the first week, with Clipper keeping an eye on me, giving me a few praises and a coupleof critiques - stay quiet Causality, you wanted me to skip this part so you don’t get to interject now.

During that week, I saw Celestia from a distance mostly, nearly every time from her window. No wait, not like that; I mean I saw her through the window of the room she was in when she was working with her tutors and a few times in the window of her bedroom.

Even glimpsing her was a jolt of joy for me back then, but from both what is simply proper and a rule of my employment, I never really did anything to attract her attention.

Or so I thought.

One day, I was tending a small garden at the base of her tower; a small inlet really that had a tiny fountain, a few flower beds and a couple of other stuff, but I guess you’re not really interested in all of that. As I was saying, I was working in the field when I heard somepony coughing. Looking around me, I couldn’t spot the pony so I went to pick up my tools when I heard some more coughing.

Flicking my ears upwards, and I looked up to see Celestia stretch her head out of the window, leaning on the sill and looking down at me. “Hello down there,” she called out with a singsong tone.

“And hello up there,” I called back and due to her smile and the tone of her voice, I stupidly said, “Do you get a joy out of seeing those below you getting dirty for you?”

A moment later, I froze, my mouth hanging open as I realized what I had just said to her and was terrified that I had completely ruined my chances with her when Celestia started to laugh.

“Oh my father’s stars, that was horrible,” Celestia snickered before she launched herself out of the window and flew down in a graceful spiral before landing in front of me.

“Well, along with me being good with my hooves at digging this fine dirt, I am even better at verbal fertilizer,” I said without thinking again, and Celestia laughed more.

“You are awful,” she chuckled, clicking her tongue. “My name is Celestia, my good pony. And yo-”

“Really, I thought your name was Rose, young lady,” I said, picking one up with my magic. I leaned in close to examine it before I flashed her a grin and levitated the rose over to her. “Both are extremely beautiful after all.”

“Flatterer,” she said, taking the rose and batting her eyes at me. “Now, what is your name?”

“Fall Harvest,” I said, dipping my head to her. “I am the new gardner.”

“So I’ve seen,” she said, walking past me, examining the garden which I should have realized was her garden. “You've done a fair job here, mister Harvest.”

“Thank you very much, Celestia,” I said, and as per usual without thinking. She turned to face me as I hadn't used her proper title but she didn’t seem offended or anything.

“I should thank you, for taking care of my private garden,” she said, looking at the bed of rhododendrons and smiled. “The rhododendrons are really blooming; they usually don't do well.”

“That’s why I put a lot of attention on it,” I said, moving next to her with our sides brushing against each other briefly. “I didn’t want them to die and have you disappointed in me.”

“It is perfectly okay, mister Harvest-”

“Please, I prefer Fall,” I said with her giving me a smile. “Mister makes me feel so old.”

“I completely understand; being called princess all the time makes me far older than I am,” she said and then sighed sadly. “You cannot possibly imagine all the duties and responsibilities ponies expect of me.”

I frowned to hear her so sad and shook my head. “I can only guess,” I said as I pawed the ground - not hard enough to dig up the grass, luckily.

She let out another sigh before looking at me. “Thank you again for making this area so peaceful for me, mister Harv-, I mean Fall. I need to get back soon to eat lunch.” Her eyes darted to her room when I made my mind up.

“Wait; give me a moment. I know of this good little café, I will be right back,” I said to her with Celestia giving me a raised eyebrow.

“All right,” Celestia said to me, causing me to spread my wings and take off. I waited until I was out of sight before I teleported away to the place I’d told Celestia about, and quickly made my way into it and placed an order for the tastiest sandwich they had. On a whim, I bought her a tasty dessert as well. I didn’t know if she liked them but it wouldn’t hurt to try and it would be a nice gesture.

I then made my way back to the castle and to Celestia's private garden, only to see that she was gone. Frowning in disappointment, I was thinking that she had stood me up when I heard Celestia talking above me, to one of her tutors I thought. Turning my head upwards, I saw her back in her room, talking to somepony I couldn’t see. She turned her head in time to see me for a brief second before looking back into her room.

Seeing that she couldn’t come down, I placed the food I’d gotten her under the bench and placed a spell that would prevent others from seeing it except for Celestia. I then got back to work, tending to the grounds with a whistle on my lips while simultaneously doing a light review of my other selves taking in souls from the kingdom. I was doing a better job at reaping and hadn’t bungled up recently in what I said to them; and in the recent weeks, that bastard Kelvik had been telling me that he felt, based on what he’d seen, like I was made for this position. At the time, getting those types of compliments from other reapers, and especially from him, meant the world to me.

Still, what kept my attention was the hope that Celestia would have taken the food I got her. The next day, I went over to the bench and found the lunch I got her was gone. I then heard a singing voice from above. Flicking my head upwards, I saw that Celestia was there humming a song from her window, looking down at me with a smile on her face.

Smiling back at her, I tipped my head towards her, knowing that I’d made the first right step.

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Evilhumour

Evilhumour #1 · Mar 27th, 2018 · · ·

8823817

We'll be working on it soon enough.

PaintedPony

PaintedPony #2 · Feb 13th, 2019 · · ·

This is interesting. Thumbs up and followed. I see it hasn't been updated in a while which is sad, because I am interested in what is going to happen.

Evilhumour