Chapter 33
The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
“Where are you going?”
“Work.” I didn’t want to get up; the house cooled down overnight and Milfoil didn’t. Still, a hot shower helped, and as long as I got dried off and dressed quickly it wasn’t too bad.
“You don’t have to work today.”
“I don’t?” My mind was fuzzy; I still hadn’t gotten entirely used to our new sleep arrangement. And then I remembered. “It’s the weekend.”
“Yup.”
“So I can be lazy all day.”
“No.” She grabbed the covers with her mouth and pulled them back up over me. “But you can be lazy for a while longer.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” I said. Then, since I was already awake, “That set of cups you have, do you think she’d recognize them?”
“I’d be surprised if she didn’t. She recognized her blanket, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the same thing. I don’t think it’s the same thing. Maybe we should bring them over, and . . . well, I don’t know, set them where she can find them, or maybe have another tea party with all the cups.”
“Hmm.” Milfoll had tucked her head just above my shoulder, and was tickling my neck. I didn’t want her to move, though. “I could do that, if you don’t mind if I borrow some of your teacups even though they’re a mismatched set.”
“Bachelors don’t worry about matched tea sets,” I told her. “You can drink coffee out of whatever, that’s a rule.”
“Bachelors, huh?”
“Well, I mean until recently. I haven’t had time to shop for a new set of teacups.”
“And lace curtains.”
“What?”
“For the windows.”
“I don’t need lace curtains for the windows. I don’t need any curtains for the windows except in the bathroom in case a pegasus happens to be flying by. You don’t think I need lace curtains for my windows, do you?” I’d been in her house plenty of times, and she didn’t have lace curtains on her windows.
“The fancy kind, that have a top curtain that’s always over a window and matches the wallpaper.”
“You don’t have them on your windows,” I pointed out. “Not lace, anyway.”
“’Cause I’m an uncaught mare, and I don’t need curtains.”
“You . . .” I leaned over and bopped her lightly on the nose. “Really, though, I don’t need lace curtains, do I? Because I will buy them. There’s this old pony at the market—”
“Chantilly.”
“—yeah, and she totally checks me out every time I walk by.”
Milfoil rolled her eyes. “Don’t be too full of yourself.”
“I promise, I’m not. I will buy you a matching tea set, though.”
“Your cups are just fine. I’m not some snobby Canterlot elite, you know.”
“I know.” I rubbed the sweet spot just behind her ear. “Well, I mean, I don’t know for sure because I’ve never met a snobby Canterlot elite, but there were some ponies in Manehattan that were really stuck-up. Ponies out here are more down-to-earth.”
“It’s ‘cause most of us have our noses in the ground half the time.” She grinned and rubbed her muzzle across my face. “Do you want to make a snowpony with me?”
“Have we come to the sleeping in but not too much part of the morning?”
Milfoil thought about that for a moment. “Not yet—let’s sleep in a bit more.”
•••••
It was unfair that she made an objectively better snowpony. She had a few advantages, I thought: it was daylight, for one; secondly, the pegasi were dropping fresh snow; and finally, she probably had more practice making snowponies than I ever had making snowmen. And I could have done a better job if I’d really tried hard. I could have spent more time shaping the rolls that made up his body and head, and I could have searched around and found some more arm-like sticks.
Even if I had, it still wouldn’t have looked as good as her snowpony.
She’d taken the snowboots off her front hooves to more easily shape it, and she’d also sat in the snow more than once as she worked on her sculpture. I felt cold every time I saw her sit on her bare rump in the snow.
“It only needs one more thing,” she said. “That’s a tail.”
“A branch?”
“Brooms are traditional,” she said. “Can I use yours?”
“If you don’t complain about dirt on the floor.”
“Have I ever?”
“Not yet,” I admitted. “It’s in the kitchen.”
“I know, I saw it on my way to the yard.” It only took her a minute to grab it, and she lined it up and then shoved it into the snowpony’s rump until only the bristles were sticking out. “There we go. Now it’s got a spine, too.”
“Are all pony spines wooden?”
“Probably—I’ve never seen one.” Milfoil stepped back and studied her creation. “I haven’t made a snowpony in a few years. Putting the broom in is sometimes tricky—when I was a foal, I couldn’t always push it hard enough to get it all the way in. Some ponies like to put the broom in early, ‘cause it helps hold the barrel in place.”
“I admit that it’s better than mine. I don’t want you to think that I won’t admit it.”
“I knew you would. I’m pretty decent with my hooves.”
“I think with lots of practice,” I said, “it would be easy. I always thought of hooves as a disadvantage, but you guys make it work.”
“I don’t think I’d know what to do if I had fingers. You make it look easy every time you move your hand.”
“Like this?” I reached down and brushed her forelock back. “I suppose when we’re babies we don’t know and figure it out, but I can’t remember that far back. I remember being clumsy holding a pencil in kindergarten, though.”
“I can remember when my teacher was trying to tell me how to hold a quill and write letters with it, and I thought I’d never figure it out. I wasn’t very good at it, and my mom made me practice and practice until I could make letters right.”
•••••
I brushed all the snow off her before we went back inside to warm up and eat a snack, then she put on her front boots and we went into town so I could make good on my promise to buy more teacups, even though she said it wasn’t really necessary.
“Does it bother you that you cook most of our meals?” I asked. I’d meant to ask her that before. “Or that you’re doing the shopping for food?”
“Not really. You’re still bad at cooking.”
I nodded—that was true.
“And you don’t know all that much about vegetables and fruits and pasture grasses, and it makes sense for a pony who’s good at something to do it instead of a pony—a person—who’s not. You don’t have to feel bad, a lot of stallions are bad at cooking. And pegasi, most of them are, too.”
“I just really never had to learn.”
“A lot of chefs at famous restaurants are stallions, though. So it’s not like it’s just a stallion thing.”
•••••
We were in one of the second-hand shops. I’d visited it once and then decided not to come back because it was too cluttered and I couldn’t find what I was looking for.
Milfoil liked it, though, and if she was happy roaming around the crowded store, so was I.
“What do you think about this?”
I looked at the object she was pointing out. It was a strange contraption of thick wires with some sort of a hoof-friendly handle on it. “What is it?”
“A potato masher. And you can mash all sorts of other stuff with it, too: turnips and rutabagas and I think I’ll buy it.”
“Don’t you already have one?” I vaguely recalled seeing her use something like that before.
“It isn’t as nice. Do you have a potato masher?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, I’ll give you mine and I’ll use this one and we can both mash potatoes.” She grabbed it in her mouth and put it in her saddlebags. If somebody had done that on Earth, loss prevention would be following them around, making sure that they emptied everything out of their bags before they left.
I assumed that ponies were more trusting than that, but maybe they put spells on things instead. Maybe if you tried to walk out of a store without paying for something, you’d set off a magical trap.
“You really ought to have a toaster, too,” she said. “I like toast in the morning.”
“Find one and I’ll buy it.” I’d never found anything that looked like an Earth toaster, and I was too much of a guy to ask what a pony toaster looked like. It was easier to just live without, or cook it on the stovetop which worked decently well as long as I remembered to flip it before it burned.
•••••
“I sometimes wonder how humans know what they’re good at. Without having a cutie mark.”
“We just muddle along, I guess. Sometimes—some people know right away what they want to do, and learn that, but sometimes people don’t figure it out until they’re in college or maybe even after. Have a bunch of jobs and then finally find the one that’s right for them.”
“And how would you even know if another human was good at something if you didn’t know them first? It’s usually pretty obvious when you look at a pony.”
“Is it?”
“Well, if they’ve got the right cutie mark.”
“How do you know what the right cutie mark is? You’ve got a flower—half the ponies in this town have a flower or a fruit or an ear of corn or a stalk of wheat.” A lot of them had blended together in my mind. At first I’d paid attention to them and tried to figure them out, but now they didn’t tend to stand out unless they were something really strange. There was a younger stallion I saw sometimes that had what looked like a paper bag as his cutie mark. Did that mean that he was destined to be a bagger at a grocery store?
“Well, you just do. When I’m at market, and I go to a stand—”
“You expect to see the food in question, I know, but what if I’m at the carrot booth and there’s a colt with a wheel for a cutie mark selling carrots.”
“That’s Oxheart’s son. He’s gonna apprentice to a wheelwright starting in the spring.”
“But if you didn’t know him, would you buy carrots from a pony who had a wheel for a cutie mark?”
To her credit, she thought about that for a little bit before shaking her head.
“And you’re good at other stuff besides flowers,” I said. “You make really good pies.”
“You’re just saying that. They’re not as good as Razzleberry’s.”
“No, it’s true. Have you ever considered that a cutie mark might hold you back? Make you do something that you don’t want to do?”
“A pony can’t get a cutie mark in something she doesn’t want to do. That’s just how it is. You can try lots of stuff, and some ponies do, especially ponies who don’t get their cutie marks until late, but you can’t get one in something that you don’t like.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. If—if you could feel magic, you’d understand.” She stopped walking. “I don’t know how to explain it better. Maybe it’s something that you just can’t understand as a human, and if that’s true, it’s sad. Did you feel anything during the Running of the Leaves?”
“Pain? As I got tired, like I couldn’t get enough oxygen?”
“You didn’t feel the pull from the trees at all? Or the magic radiating from all the ponies?”
“No, not really.” But was that true? Had I felt something? Something more than being freshly in love?
“I don’t want to think that you can’t,” she decided. “Maybe you really haven’t, or maybe you have and just don’t know what it is yet.”
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Is his specific job irrelevant to the story other than to eat up part of his time? I’m curious what he actually does.
This is 100% something I would say, I've had a few lines like this.
A lot of people think of men cooking their own meals as a bit unusual, while also simultaneously seeing nothing odd about a male chef cooking for others. It's interesting.
Part of me also wonders, by Milfoil's description, whether ponies actually always truly enjoy their cutie mark, or if magic is just effectively giving them feel-good juice when they do things related to their mark. Most ponies get their cutie marks in what amounts to elementary school, and almost none get them any later than highschool I would think. Do any of you ever remember really enjoying something when you were younger that you don't get a lot out of now? Because I'm wondering if any cutie marks are like that.
Also interesting that Milfoil acknowledges she wouldn't buy something from someone with a non-matching cutie mark if there was a matching pony nearby. Which I guess makes sense, but still interesting to note.
Most bachelors usually don't have tea sets at all... usually they have a random selection of mugs and glasses that strangely enough can be used for almost any beverage from coffee to alcohol (maybe even things that have both coffee and alcohol in them at once!)
*Starlight Glimmer wants to know your location.
Fits better in this context, I feel.
Also, Haunting got featured.
The hook is set. Face it, you're donezo.
As you described Cutie Marks it is both frightening and enlightening. It makes me wonder just how important the CMC’s Cutie Marks are and just how screwed up Starlight Glimmer really is.
Reminds me of a story that the last several chapters where done in a choose your own adventure style where the fate of Cutie Marks was left up to Twilight. She had to make a snap decision in a fast deteriorating situation with only three options.
And that probably the heart of the matter. Though I know some people who simply are not good (or at least are pretending) at cooking, for the most part we simply go to the grocery, buy whatever is there and cook okay-ish. Without bothering for more.
I'm sure that if we moved to small town equestria we could adapt, maybe even better then your protag, but we would still pale compared to ponies who are use to this for years.
I remember that in a lot of Naruto SI fic, it was a common trope to have the SI being hyper-sensitive to chakra (local magic thingy) on the basis that it would be something obviously contrasting with their previous life.
I've rarely seen something similar in the MLP fandom, we do not have magic in our world, who know how we would react to it if we got sudden exposure?
Does it take a special organ to feel magic?
I can easily see a warm pony making getting out of bed considerably more difficult.
The line "A pony tail hangin' down" takes on new context in Equestria.
Given the talk of cutie marks, I have to wonder if Windflower's blank flank might be part of what's keeping her from passing on. Obviously it's not the only factor; otherwise Equestria would be infested with the spirits of lost foals. But given this discussion, it certainly seems like a form of unfinished business. I suppose we'll see in time.
As for magic, asking someone to sense something that doesn't exist in their home universe is asking a lot... though who knows? It might not be completely impossible.
Chantilly lace, an a happy face, with a wiggle in your walk and a giggle in your talk?
Most older males, that Ive seen in the UK, are like gorillas. Theyve got everything they need, so why bother putting effort forward thats just to improve the others standing in the wally waving contests?
At this rate of aquiring teacups, hes going to be attracting feral Trixies.
Delightful little look into their lives.
I wonder what Windflower does when she isn't visiting...
Perhaps not, but a pony can get a cutie mark tangential to what she wants to do. Just look at Rarity.
9421769
You need a cutie mark in dying in order to die properly?
Face it, filly, you're going to have to live with being complimented. He's not a pony, remember? So he's not going to expect you to bake like a baking-cutie-marked pony, or build like a builder-cutie-marked pony, and he'll be more than happy with that, because what you can do is plenty good enough for his unrefined, non-pony tastes.
...
I can't believe I just used genetic-factored(?) ignorance to explain away reasonable bliss...
9421516
What's the difference, really? In one case, you're getting "feel good juice" from your cutie mark, and in the other you're getting it from your brain. Because in a nutshell, that's all it is. You enjoy things not because they're enjoyable in a universal sense, but because your body has a generally positive reaction.
I don't think you could separate the two. At least not the way your comment implies.
Fantastic Chantilly Lace reference.
Really good Chapter.
9422394
The rubber ducky is the enemy. perfect for boarding or exchanging imaginary broadsides with... It squeaks when you land a shot!
9422465
There's a story in there somewhere. :)
9421802 Hovering sadly over her shattered remains.
So morbid.
9421632
yeah, and
Is not this whole bit with Cutie Marks defining you by what you are good at a very Western centric worldview? Do Equestrians tie their identity with their job? Are you your job?
"You need some lace curtains" Oh boy...
See, no longer being a Bachelor seems to have some potentially serious complications!
Snow doubt about it you are real sleet in how fast you get these out. Must be real ice to work so quickly. Truth be cold I wish I could write as easily, I know these puns are kind of flakey but hail with it I chose a winter weather theme and I'm going to stick with it.
9421480
His actual job is not relevant to the story, but if you really need to imagine exactly what it is, I lean towards accountant.
9421508
IMHO, running is dumb. Unless you’re running from predators, in which case it’s pretty smart.
9421516
It’s one of those weird dualities of Western society. At home, people expect women to cook, while at a restaurant the head chef is usually imagined to be male. I’m not sure why that is.
Last time I tried, I had as much fun playing with Legos as an adult as I’d had when I was a kid.
I think that in some ways cutie marks are sort of self-fulfilling prophesies. The pony decides the symbolism behind the mark, and goes from there; presumably if they’re not happy with what they’re doing, they move on to something else and then decide that that’s what their cutie mark meant all along and they’d just misunderstood it before. At least that’s my take on it, since I always thought Cheerilee’s explanation of her smiling flowers being the smiling faces of her students to be kind of BS.
I think that would be one potential drawback to cutie marks. I mean, imagine somepony who doesn’t know Rarity not wanting to buy dresses from her because she has a gem cutie mark, not a fashion cutie mark. Of course, that’s less of an issue in a small town, where everypony is likely to know everypony else.
9421517
I have a few coffee mugs--mostly Christmas gifts--empty glass jars, and red solo cups.
9421521
She can fix all those pesky cutie mark problems with her stick of helpfulness.
9421609
Correction made; thank you!
Every update it does. Feels good, man.
9421632
That may be so, but who among us would be upset that that had happened?
I’m betting nobody but Alondro.
9421650
I think that in general, ponies interpret them in the way that they want to, rather than there being some kind of heraldry to them that locks down a specific job in life, and I’d bet that how much destiny is involved with the cutie mark varies by the pony (in one of my stories, one pony mentions that a mark on her butt doesn’t make her, or something to that effect). I think that they’re in some ways the equivalent of puberty or adulthood for ponies, and I think it would be stressful for some young ponies to not have them yet (such as the CMC), especially if that’s something that they get bullied for. So regardless of what cutie marks actually mean, I can see how the CMC would be upset at not having them.
That sounds potentially interesting--got a link?
9421728
I think that’s the crux of the matter. You don’t have skills in something that you don’t practice, and there’s generally no shame in that. I’m an okay cook, haven’t accidentally given myself food poisoning or any malnutrition that I know of, but I could certainly do better . . . but I really don’t have to. When I want cookies, it’s easier to just buy them rather than learn how to bake them.
This isn’t cooking, per se, but in my experience working at a factory, when I started out at a new position, I had real trouble keeping up with the machine and it was a daunting task, but usually by the end of the shift, I could get ahead of it, once I’d figured out exactly what I needed to do and the most efficient way to accomplish it.
I think it would depend on what magic is. I’ve seen explanations between no effect (even to the point where spells just bounce off the human harmlessly) to it being fatal to humans . . . in CSI/OPP, strong unicorn magic directed at humans can be fatal, for example.
I think that would depend on exactly what magic was. In the CSI/OPP universe, people experience it as electricity, so they feel it the same way (and it has similar effects on their bodies).
9421735
Yes, I feel that it very much would.
9421769
It does.
She doesn’t have a back half, so we don’t know if she had a cutie mark before becoming a ghost. And you’re right, if it was just a lack of a cutie mark, there would be hundreds or thousands or more pre-cutie-mark ghosts drifting around Equestria, perhaps forever searching for their purpose in a life they no longer have.
It really depends on what it is. Asking him to use magic is probably off the table, but feeling it might very well be possible, given the right circumstances. He’s certainly not immune to it; he would feel it if a unicorn cast a spell on him, and Great Uncle Muzzlebreaker did give him a bit of healing on the nose (after breaking it).
9421785
Pretty much.
Here, too. I mean, on the scale of manliness, I’ve got a beard and several trucks (five, if I remember right), and plenty of power tools, so why do I need to learn how to cook?
All he needs is a pinecone Trixie feeder, and he’s all set in that department.
9421802
Thank you!
That’s a good question, isn’t it?
9421824
Agreed.
My own pragmatic explanation of that is cutie marks mean what a pony thinks they mean . . . which is why it’s impossible to get the ‘wrong’ one.
9421869
That would suck. Especially since most ponies don’t have death-related cutie marks. Unless, of course, they change right before they die.
Speaking of which! Apparently, when ants die, they release a chemical after a day or two (can’t be bothered to look it up) that lets the other ants know that they’re dead and so they’ll get carried off to the ant graveyard. I saw a video of a guy putting that on an ant, who then took himself off to the ant graveyard, presumably figuring that he was dead, and that was where he belonged.
9422149
Being better than him is good enough, it’s true. Sometimes I watch Gordon Ramsay and think about how unrefined my tastes are--he’d probably hate every restaurant in this town--and then I realize that I really don’t care. If I think it’s good food, that’s what matters to me. Our protagonist is happy with Milfoil’s cooking skills, and while she probably isn’t the best chef in Haywards Heath, she’s better than he is at cooking, and that’s what really matters.
Of course, we don’t know if this is actually the case with ponies--perhaps if they don’t do something cutie mark related a couple times a day, they start to get twitchy or something. But my own headcanon is that a cutie mark means what a pony thinks it means, which generally makes it really hard to be ‘wrong.’
9422248
Thank you!
It actually took me longer to think of than I’d like to admit.
9422255
Thank you!
9422420
That’s a very Canadian thing to say.
i.imgur.com/NbPQ1aE.jpg
9422470
True story, this one girl I was dating and her three roommates checked practically every ethnicity box on their census form. Census forms are complicated, and probably more so when you’ve got magic and various hybrids roaming around.
9422503
“Torn apart” might be more appropriate a description. Or, “scattered bones.”
That’s what happens when a dire wolf gets you.
9422582
I think yes and no. I mean, ‘job’ can be kind of fuzzily applied; Applejack’s cutie mark implies she grows apples (which she does), but to make money she also has to sell them, but I don’t think we’d consider her job as an apple salespony, even if that’s how she ultimately makes her bits. My own headcanon is that there are ponies with esoteric enough cutie marks that they do something else as a job, and pursuing their cutie mark is their hobby, and I also think that there are ponies who have interests outside what their cutie mark says (again, in my headcanon, Cherry Berry is such a pony).
I think it would be reasonable for a pony to wonder if a colt with a wagon wheel cutie mark is a proper farmer when he sells carrots at market--I think that a pony would prefer to buy them from one who had an actual carrot cutie mark. But I don’t think that ponies tie their identity to their jobs necessarily . . . although odds are that their cutie mark is related to their primary job, at least in the pony’s mind.
9422584
She’s a practical pony, she doesn’t really mean it. Satin curtains will be just fine
9422774
It’s true; a woman (or mare) adds in all sorts of complications with unreasonable demands like “you should have more than one bowl” or “haven’t you been wearing those pants for a week?”