House of the Rising Sunflower

by kudzuhaiku

Perchance a pegasus

The first thing that Sundance saw emerging from the fortress of fuzzy pillow blocks happened to be two ears. Long ears that were vaguely rabbit-like in appearance. These were followed by more ear—considerably more ear—and then he had his first good look at Flax. She was tiny—far too much so—and his heart skipped a few beats. Her head was oversized compared to her body, and she teetered and tottered about on teensy-weensy legs the size of clothespins. Upon closer inspection, he found that her ears were longer than she was tall, and that her head and her body were closer in size than first thought. But she clearly hadn't grown into her true form just yet, and little pony foals had the same problem.

But like a pony foal, she was immensely cute at this age.

Painfully so.

Her stumpy clothespin legs didn't really allow for much of a gait, so she half-walked half-pronked as she emerged from the hideout. But she came to a sudden and abrupt stop when she saw Sundance though, and with her eyes impossibly wide, she stared at him with frantic horror. Quivering with terror, her lower jaw trembled, her nostrils flared wide as she inhaled, and then with a volume that seemed far too impossibly high for having such a small body, she shrieked as she came to a skidding halt.

After her shrill screech she screamed, "STRANGER DANGER!" She then beat a swift and hasty retreat. In mere seconds, she was gone and Sundance could not help but feel that things had gone horribly wrong, and that somehow, it was all his fault. It was a crushing blow to his confidence, and his ego would need to be nursed back to good health when all of this was over. But this was far from over, and as awful as it was, it got worse. Much worse.

A pegasus colt stepped out of the fortress. Young, small, and rather slight of build, the colt poked his head out and then turned his baleful gaze upon Sundance. And what a horrible sight to behold this gaze was. There was such fury contained in those pale grey eyes, and in such concentration, the likes of which Sundance had never seen. Unable to help himself, he shied away and somehow felt even worse for scaring the little donkey filly. The full force of the colt's glower power turned Sundance's heart to mush and before the older pegasus could defend himself from the younger, the little colt retreated back into the fort with a dismissive snort.

"I'm sorry," Sundance squeaked, and he very much wanted to bury himself in a hole in the ground. It was exactly what he deserved. While he didn't know what he'd done wrong, he did feel rather awful about it, and he couldn't help but think of the stares Officer Mom gave him. Her stares were magical in nature, and so were his grandmother's.

After a few seconds, he recovered somewhat and gave himself a shake.

"That was about a four," Pluck remarked with casual disinterest, the same sort that one might have when one mentioned that it was raining.

"Four? What? What?" Sundance scrambled to fully recover his senses.

"That was about a four," the earth pony colt said again, echoing his previous words. "You've been thunderstruck. It can go as high as ten… and for special occasions, Captain Thunderpants can crank it up to eleven."

"Eleven?" Sundance struggled to cope with this new reality in which he found himself.

"Captain Barf Buzzard got himself a faceful of eleven when he almost dropped Flax in the toilet. She got scared, because of course she did, and she screamed. And even though no real harm was done, Captain Thunderpants cut loose and gave Captain Barf Buzzard a massive faceful of eleven. Maybe out of spite, it's hard to tell. Captain Thunderpants is mute, so understanding his motivations is mostly guesswork. If it ever happens to you, there's a good chance that you deserve it. Consider yourself warned."

"Toilet?" Sundance somehow managed to say as some of his trembling subsided.

"Flax is kind of little, if you haven't noticed. She needs help to go potty. Captain Barf Buzzard has hands." Pluck gesticulated in the general direction of the fort with one foreleg and a half-smile lurked on his muzzle. "There is no crime greater than dropping a foal in the potty. It pays to remember that."

"I feel bad," Sundance said, almost stammering out each word.

"I know, right?" Pluck focused his surviving eye on Sundance. "It'll pass. Eventually. All things do. Especially gas. It was made to pass."

Utterly perturbed and more than a little shaken, Sundance did his best to recover himself. A few deep breaths helped, and rather than be upset about what had happened, he chose to see it as an asset. One day, that stare might come in useful. Oh, there could be no doubt that the pegasus colt's soul-piercing gaze would be a boon for the barony. Still, seeing it as a boon and surviving the aftermath were two very different things, and Sundance was left unsettled.

"How did you get so canny?" asked Sundance.

"Canny?" With a slight turn of his head, Pluck cast a glance at the mirror.

After a bit of a repressed shudder, Sundance lifted up his head enough to nod. "Yeah, canny. The way you are. The way you talk. Everything you do."

"Oh, that." The colt's gaze remained upon the mirrored glass. "I watch the watchers. It's this place. All the therapy and all this focus on empathy. I watch… and I mimic. This place is like a school, only I didn't learn the lessons they expected."

"Like what?" asked Sundance.

"Take Captain Thunderpants for example," the canny colt replied. "All that raw intimidation. I understand how he does it. How it is done. I've picked up on all the bits and bobs of empathy when I eavesdrop on the adults as they train each other and give each other advice.

"Like, with Captain Thunderpants, it's all in the eyes. And I don't mean just his stare. It is how he looks at you… or doesn't look at you. Thunder never looks down. He never allows himself to be cowed or shook down or intimidated. He will either look you in the eye, or he will look away, like off sideways, but never down. By looking at you, he establishes dominance. But by looking off to the side at something else, he's telling you that he doesn't see you as a threat, or even something worthy of his attention. It unsettles the grown-ups something awful."

Something of a revelation sparked within Sundance's mind, and he wondered how much time he spent looking down. He thought of Hollyhock and how she'd called him wishy-washy. There was also his own natural submissiveness, and the way he kept his ears back, apparently. That made him a nice guy, maybe, but now he wondered how many of his problems in life were due to how he looked at things. As far as revelations went, it was a big one.

He spent an awful lot of time with his eyes on the floor.

"I can't help but notice that you call each other Captain… but not Flax."

In response, Pluck grinned, and his scarred face crinkled. "Each of us is in charge of our own lives. We sail our own ships. It is up to us to decide our own future… together. Flax will get promoted, eventually. Captain Thunderpants used to be Cadet Thunderpants. He got his stuff together and suffered through a lot of foalsitting duty."

"Oh, I see."

"Flax, do you want to come back out?" asked Pluck.

"No," said a voice within the fort.

"Please?"

"Stranger danger."

At the mention of the words 'stranger danger' Sundance feared that Silent Thunder would emerge and do that thing he did. When it did not happen, Sundance was silently relieved and only shuddered a little bit as he thought about getting thunderstruck once more. Back home, the others would have to learn to be respectful and good, or else they too would get eyeballed into submission. Why, even Corduroy was bound to be vulnerable, Sundance suspected, and he wasn't sure if Hollyhock would be able to exert her usual level of control. Intimidating the colt probably wouldn't work—adults tended to do that even if they didn't mean to do so—and so other means of making the colt obey would have to be found.

But a part of Sundance wanted to see The Scrub versus The Stare.

"Flax?" Keeping his voice as low and as soft as equinely possible, Sundance called out for the tiny tyke. "Can you come out so we can meet each other? Please?"

It wasn't Flax who came out, but Silent Thunder. The smallish pegasus colt's face wore an expression that made Sundance think that the little guy had eaten a crate of lemons. It was an exaggerated expression, but that made sense because Silent Thunder was mute. Of course he made faces to compensate. Everything about him was the colour of a thundercloud, all soft grey-blues in his mane and a sooty grey hide. His wings were dull white that wanted to be grey, but wasn't quite. After he snorted, he sat down and focused his thunderously silent gaze upon Sundance.

"We're pegasus ponies," Sundance said to the colt. "You and I, it is in our nature to be protective. That's what we do. When I was about your age, I kept my toys safe. Flax is so much more important than a toy, isn't she?"

The mute colt made no attempt at response and sat as still as a statue.

"You probably don't even understand why you're so protective." As he spoke, Sundance thought back to his own foalhood, and the many confusing moments. "I never understood it either… until I got older. Just recently in fact. I learned an awful lot about myself when others I cared about were in danger. I was capable of shocking things. Awful things. Still sorting it out, actually. A lot of it is still hard to understand."

Some of the hardness on Silent Thunder's face softened into something else.

"It's probably harder when you think or feel that nopony cares about you," Sundance said to the colt in the most sincere and warm tone he could muster. "To have all those feelings when they're not shown to you. That's kind of true for me, too. But for different reasons, I suppose."

Much to Sundance's shock and pleasant surprise, the colt nodded.

"I grew up with parents," Sundance was quick to say, "but I was still pretty isolated. I hid away for a long time to do a project. It was… it was an excuse to hide away from the world so I wouldn't have to face all the confusing feelings I had. And it is really hard to sort everything out now that I'm starting to have friends and get to know others. You have friends now, and Flax, and I bet everything is all topsy-turvy right now. Am I right?"

Again, the colt nodded, though this time rather reluctantly.

"I taught myself a bit of empathy," Sundance continued as he made an effort to win the colt's precious trust. "I tried to be a writer when I was younger. To find inspiration for stories, I would listen in on what the ponies around me said, and then I would try to make up the sort of events that make them say what they said. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I'm not as aware as Pluck." He made it a point to look the mute colt in the eye and added, "You and I, we can maybe sort these feelings out together. Even if you can't talk, I can still try to listen. Would you like that?"

With no words to be said, the pegasus colt shrugged.

It was not a no, nor was it a yes.

"Well, we've parlayed for the pegasus," Pluck announced. "And even if he doesn't know it yet, he's already said yes. Because he never says maybe. He's too decisive for that. The very fact that you've caused him to be unsure of his course of action means you've already won him over. But I think he wants this to be on his terms, and not yours."

"Thunder, is this true?" asked Sundance.

For a few seconds, the colt did nothing; but then, slowly, he nodded.

"Sincerity is a rare gift," Pluck remarked with casual disinterest. "This isn't going as I expected. Honestly, I thought that Captain Thunderpants would be the final holdout."

As if to explain himself, Silent Thunder gestured in Sundance's direction, shrugged once, gestured again at Pluck, shrugged a second time, and then just sat there with a neutral blank expression. His ears remained pricked, his spine straight, and his jaw parallel to the floor. Even in his moment of uncertainty, the colt's confidence did not waver, and seemed as steadfast as ever. Sundance found himself admiring the quiet little guy.

"Captain Thunderpants didn't want a little sister. He just wanted to be alone because he was already alone. Friends? He didn't need those either and he was determined to be alone. Nopony loved him, and so he didn't want to love nopony. Now, he has a sister… and friends. Or maybe we're brothers. We're probably brothers. Some bonds don't need to be said. But if I were to guess, I think Thunder probably wants parents next, just to see what he's been missing."

With a heavy, leaden sigh, the mute colt nodded whilst he rolled his eyes.

"He's taking quite a risk in trusting you, Sundance."

"I suppose he is."

"If you fail, it might be the last time he takes such a risk."

"Yeah," Sundance replied as the weight bore down upon him from the crown that wasn't there, "it might just be. But I'm going to try anyway."

"Why though?" asked Pluck, whose surviving eye had its scrutinous gaze now focused on Sundance.

"Because every life is worth saving… I don't know. I don't have a good answer. Because it is the right thing to do. Because if I don't, then who will? I was sent here to do a job, and no matter what, I will do that job to the best of my ability, because the fear of failure is too much to bear. If I just fail myself, then I am the only one who suffers. I no longer have that luxury now though. My every breath is taken for others and now if I fail, so many will suffer in ways that I can't even comprehend. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm doing it anyway, because there's no other choice in the matter. This is just one more thing I have to do, and I'll do it well, or else."

Pluck nodded knowingly. "That's pretty rough, Sundance. It is also incredibly honest. Most adults I know wouldn't be that honest with us. They want to protect us, but they lie to us to do so."

"A lie of omission is still a lie," Sundance said.

To which a nodding Pluck replied, "Yep. But we've already established that you're honest. You could have lied to me just then, and you didn't. So, I guess all that's left for you to do is somehow win over Flax. You have the buzzard and the mute. If you can get Flax to accept you, you'll have me. Sundance, you and I have something in common. We live for our friends. If they go, I go. It's that simple. I'm keeping us together. Where they go, I follow. So… good luck with Flax."

Jaw firm, his cheeks drawn taut, Sundance nodded.

Author's Note:

We'll be back on the redline express soon.

Comments

[A.P.O.N.I.]

In another universe, this story is entirely about those four. Oliver Twist, Treasure Island-esque shenanigans.

[King Kenya]

Do the children who come to the barony come as eventual serfs or as free-beings? I know they get educated, but what is their position in the grand scheme of things, legally speaking? I know Sundance wouldn’t make them stay, but still.

[King Kenya]

10107672
I was thinking more along the lines of The Famous Five, hence their need for a dog.

[kudzuhaiku]

10107758
They have a cat... sorta.

[terrycloth]

10107756
I don't think you're allowed to make your serfs stay. That's why the barony had so few left.

[harts fire]

a vary honest and reveling chapter.
i wish we had more pony emojis to work with. 😇