Navigate

by Sleestack

An Opportunity Arises

Rose had meandered about until she had found a flower shop. It was like Trip’s nightmare. Not only was he in a world which he didn’t want to be in, that world that seemed to want to destroy him. And just to make it worse, he was forced to listen to discussions on fertilizers. And seeds. And watering. Trip would have considered this torture even as a human. Not having fingers to put in in his ears only made the situation more frustrating. He had to settle with just tuning them out.

“So, is this your um... friend?” One of them asked Rose. Trip tuned back in as they all laughed.

“Yes, I would say we’re friends.” she responded, oblivious.

“Yes. Just. Friends.” Trip interjected. It was the first he had spoken to them since he had been standing there. His voice was much deeper and intimidating than he had meant for it to come out. The gaggle of flower sellers were a little jarred by this.

The same one spoke up. “Oh, okay. Sorry, I was just joking around. I didn’t mean anything by it-”

“Oh, ignore him. He’s just a little bit cranky. We walked here all the way from Canterlot, he didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Canterlot? You walked?”

“Oh, yes. We didn’t have train tickets, so we had to...”

And just like that, Trip left the conversation again. He looked away from the group and looked into the street. More of them walking. Talking. Shopping. It depressed him. How many of these ponies even had names? He knew some of them did. His sister would point out some of the recurring background characters. Apparently the writers gave some of those ones names. But even the ones that had names, how many had what could be called a life once the camera was off of them?

Trip, you are waxing existential about cartoon horses. He told himself. Stop it.

But it was hard not to. What else was there to distract himself with? He was not going to talk about flowers. He was keeping whatever little dignity he had left. He scanned the crowd to see if he saw any of the mentioned recurring background characters. It was hard to, on account of him mostly ignoring his sister whenever she talked about those kind of things. He did see something strange, however.

There was one of them standing in the midst of all the commotion. It was wearing a hat and some sort of trench coat, designed specifically for a pony's body. For Trip, this strange figure stood out to him as the most obvious creature in the vicinity, but none of the other residents even seemed to notice him. Their eyes would slide right past him, and the only time any one of them interfered was when a younger one accidentally walked straight into him, not looking.

“Oh, sorry mister!” It had said, and continued walking around him.

Trip turned his body towards the creature, and it smiled at him as he did.

“What kind of cutie mark is that, if you don’t mind me asking?” One of the flower shop owners asked. Trip looked back, annoyed.

“Oh, this old thing? It’s a birth defect, actually.”

The shop owner gave him a perplexed look. “You were born with your cutie mark?”

“What? Oh, no. The skin in that area is just... you know, defected. It’s supposed to be a fish. I’m a fisherman. Fisherpony. Yar. It’s just messed up.”

She turned her head and looked at his side again. “I... I think I can see how that’s supposed to be a fish, I suppose. You should really get it checked out by a doctor.”

“I’ve seen enough doctors, thanks.” He nodded and turned back to the hat-wearing pony. “I’ll be back in a second, ladies.”

As he walked into the crowd, he heard behind him “I can see why you two are just friends.” followed by a chorus of hushed laughter.

He confronted the mysterious pony. It snickered at him and said “You aren’t from around here, are you kid?”

“No. How can you tell?” Trip responded, intrigued.

“Your cutie mark is one clue. Your use of the word ‘man’ is another.”

Trip went wide eyed and looked around. He leaned close to the pony and asked “You know what people are?”

“I have... a vague idea.” It’s smile had vanished, replaced by a look of solemness. “But I also know that it’s not good to know too much, you know?”

“How did you find out?” Trip asked intently.

“I know a place.” It’s smile came back. “You go there and you learn things. Usually, small things, but usually even the small things are pretty big. You get me?”

Trip shook his head slowly. “Not really. I’m not fluent in riddles. Where is this place?”

The pony snickered again. “I can take you. But not now. A little later.”
Trip groaned. “Why? Why is it always later with you people?”
“Hey, calm down. I can only take up groups of four. And you’re only the third one I got, so you’re gonna have to wait until I can-”

“No! Wait a second. Just wait.” Trip ran back to the group, where Rose was still chattering along. “Rose, you need to come with me right now. I think I’ve found something important.”

Rose rolled her eyes and laughed. “He’s always doing this.” She turned to him. “Let me guess, you know how something ‘needs to be done’, right?”

Trip’s face went flat. “No, I just think I’ve found an opportunity to solve my little problem that might not present itself again ever. And I need you to be there with me, okay?”

Rose smiled. “Okay, okay, fine.” she looked back at the shop owners. “It was nice talking to you. I’ll be back... whenever!” They all exchanged laughs and Rose walked away with him. “So, what is this little ‘opportunity’ you’ve-” she stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes fell upon the trench coat wearing pony. Her face sagged in discomfort. “Oh. Um, who is this?”

The pony smiled. “Name’s Stickler, sweetheart.” He stuck out his front hoof.

“Um, please,” she laughed nervously. “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

The pony snickered. “No, no. My name is Stickler Sweetheart.” he put his hoof down and looked at Trip. “This your mare friend?”

“If you mean girlfriend, no. She’s just a friend.”

“Aw. Such a waste. You comin’ along with him, lady?”

Rose looked at Trip, with a pleading ‘don’t make me go anywhere with this pony’ look in her eyes. “I don’t know, am I?”

He tried to show her that he understood she wasn’t comfortable. “Yeah. But we aren’t going to be able to go wherever you’re taking us very long. We have to be back here to meet someone.”

Stickler nodded. “I getchya, I getchya. You shouldn’t be there for more than an hour or so. Two hours, tops. The longest part is the trek up there.”

Trip looked back at Rose. “Two hours? Can it be so bad?”

Rose shook her head with an awkward smile.

“Alright. Meet me by the edge of the Everfree Forest in twenty minutes. I gotta go alert the other two volunteers.” with that, Stickler walked off, still evading the attention of all of the town’s residents.

Trip looked at Rose, who still seemed nervous. “Stickler Sweetheart kinda seems like a girl’s name, doesn’t it?” he laughed at his own joke awkwardly.

“Trip, whenever someone says ‘Can it be so bad?’, I feel like that’s when things will go bad.”

“No, listen. Everything’s gonna be fine. Two hours. And then you can go back to talking with your new friends.”

“What about you?” Rose asked. “What does this have to do with getting you back to Maryland?”

“Oh. Um, this guy knew about things about Maryland that no one else here would know. So something tells me he might know something about getting back.”

Rose looked at him, still not entirely convinced. “I don’t like his coat. It’s creepy.”

Trip nodded. “Where I come from, he’d strike me as the kind of guy who’d give candy to youngins.”

“He doesn’t seem nice enough to do that.”

“Yeah. You go say bye to your friends. I’ll meet you at the edge of the forest.”

Rose gave him an ‘Oh really?’ look. “You really think you can find the forest yourself?”

“Oh.” Trip laughed slightly. “I guess I’ll wait for you, then.”

Trip and Rose came up to the edge of the dense forest. Trip assumed by color shift from light to dark, and by Rose’s natural uneasiness that this forest wasn’t seen as a cool get-together place for all the local residents.

“I don’t like this,” whispered Rose. “I mentioned ‘a forest’ to the girls at the shop, and they all went quiet. That’s never a good sign!”

“Listen, if he tries any funny business, we’ll hightail it outta there.” He evaluated the words he said. “And by that, I mean run away. Don’t put your tail up high, that might send him the wrong message.”

“Hey there, kiddies!” Stickler’s voice came from the distance. “I got your new friends here!”

As he came into sight, they saw that he was leading two other ponies, who seemed just as nervous. There was a small light blue one, with a round face and lime green hair. That one really seemed the more frantic of the two. She tripped every other step he took. The other one was much larger, all white but with black hair, with a more angular head. While there was definitely fear in his eyes, he definitely held himself together better than the other one.

However, when the smaller one got a sight of Rose, She gathered herself, straightened out her posture, and put on a confident smile.

“Alright. We all ready?” said Stickler.

“Yeah.” said Trip.

“I guess...” said Rose.

The white one nodded.

“Indeed I am,” said the blue one, with a hoaky French accent that was definitely male.

“Alright,” said Stickler, as he reached into his trench coat and pulled out what looked like
a bundle of rope. As he unwound it, Trip saw that it was actually five ropes, all conjoined at one end to meet in a center. At the other end of all the ropes were loops, very much resembling nooses. “I’m gonna need you all to wear these. Don’t want anyone getting lost.” Without hesitation, he slipped one of the loops over his hat and around his neck. Everyone else looked at each other. “C’mon, we don’t got all day! Hurry it up!” he yelled.

The white one recoiled from the yelling and slipped his loop around his neck reflexively. The blue one cautiously put his on as well. Rose looked at Trip, scared. Trip looked back at her, unsure, shrugged, and put on his loop. Rose timidly followed suit.

“Alright, alright. Thank you. And just to let you know, you can take those off any time you want, but I wouldn’t consider it if I were you. Wouldn’t want to be left to the mercy of the Forest, if you know what I mean.” he snickered at this. The blue and white one gulped.

Comments

[skyscraper123]

wat?