The Bargain

by NorsePony

Frog's Story

My name's Frog. It's a strange name, I admit. It had a lot to do with my choice of profession, but that's not really what this story is about, although it's at the heart of it. This story here is about how I started being a blues man, and how I stopped being a blues man.

Years back, when I was just a young thing, wet behind the ears and still unbruised by life, I took a liking to a pretty little filly by the name of Thistledown. I couldn't get enough of looking at her, though I hadn't ever had the gumption to get up and talk to her. Foolishness is the prerogative of the young, after all, and I was taking full advantage.

Now, Thistledown was a singer. Not just any singer, either, but a jazz singer. She'd go down to smoky bars and unleash her smoky voice and bring every mare and stallion in the place to their feet or their knees, depending on how kind she was feeling that night. And I was a . . . fan, you might say. I was a fan of hers like a sunflower is a fan of the sun, if we're being truthful, and there's no reason not to be.

And me, well, I was just a gangly kid called Frog, on account of how sensitive I was, jumping this way and that from every poke. Every little harsh word or irate glance salted me like I was just one big raw wound. It made life kind of tough when all I wanted was to swagger around like I owned the place, wherever place I happened to be, and have everybody think I was hard and hard-bitten. Yeah, that was never a look I was able to pull off, to put it kindly.

So one night, I was sitting in a smoky bar, listening to Thistledown's smoky voice and drinking some smoky whiskey to drown my cowardice and get me talking to her. It wasn't the first time I'd used that plan. It never worked out too well. See, it turned out my cowardice needed more drowning than my brain could take, so just as I'd get up the courage, I'd wake up outside the bar the next morning with a pounding head and a lightened wallet. Didn't stop me from trying it again, though. Ah, youth.

Anyway, getting back to the story, I was swigging whiskey like it was going out of style, watching Thistledown walk that stage like a queen, and next thing I know there's this mare at the table with me. She was gray-brown, with a waterfall of shiny black hair that I wanted to swim in. And she looked at me, and it was like I was sitting on a live wire. I went stiff and wide-eyed, couldn't move, couldn't blink, couldn't do anything but stare back at her, right into her eyes. She just kind of looked at me that way for a while, coulda been seconds, coulda been hours, and then she nodded and kind of muttered to herself, saying, “You'll do.”

The electricity-feeling stopped all of a sudden, and she leaned in across the table, getting real close to me, so close I could smell her, all strawberries and brimstone, and she said, “You want the singer, don't you?”

And I leaned back in my chair, taking me out of the burning sweetness of her scent, before my brain got around to telling me what she'd said. When it did, I leaned back in, close enough so if somebody were looking on from the other side of the room we'd have looked like we was muzzle-mangling, and I said, trying to be smooth and slick and sounding instead like I'd just swallowed my own gizzard, “What singer?”

And the gray-brown mare raised an eyebrow like I'd told a great knee-slapper of a joke and she breathed on me as she answered, and her breath made me think of campfires, and she said, quiet as a knife, “I can give her to you, in exchange for a trifle of payment.”

Now, I knew that Thistledown wasn't one of those kind of girls, so I had no idea what this mare was on about. “Who are you?” I demanded, sounding about as stern as a churchmouse.

She smiled like a wolf seeing a three-legged deer, and I shivered. “Octavia,” she said, and her name rattled around in my head like somebody was throwing dice. “I can do what I say. Do you want her, or do you not?”

I was plenty young at the time, and the thought of having Thistledown on my arm without me having to figure out how to get her there was mighty appealing. Mighty appealing indeed. Being a coward was a whole lot lighter a load, so my evening's hard work at the whiskey bottle had braved me up enough to grab this chance. I nodded at Octavia, and I said, “I want her.”

I've had a lot of years to regret those words.

She smiled bigger, and I almost didn't see that she had fangs, so wrapped up I was in the visions dancing in my own fool head. And she just tapped a hoof on the table and said, “It is done.” She grabbed my shot of whiskey and downed it in one quick gulp. I blinked in surprise and went to object about that, but she was gone. And even before the scents of strawberries and brimstone and exhaled whiskey had floated away, my hooves started itching something fierce.

Before I knew it, I was up and walking to the stage, right in the middle of a song, and I tell you, I was mighty confused, and not a little bit scared, too. I hopped right up on the stage and shoved the big stallion at the piano clear off the bench, and sat down like I owned the place. And one part of my brain was happy to finally be that kind of guy, and the other part was tearing its hair out over how much trouble I was in, and what was I thinking, and Thistledown was staring at me like I'd grown a second head, and I didn't know how to play piano—

—I touched my hooves to the ivories and out poured soul, like somebody had bottled a hundred percent pure liquid beauty and buckets of it were gushing right out of that piano. I ain't got shame enough to try to deny it. I was a musical genius, and I was as surprised as everybody else in the place. I tickled those ivories like I'd been at it for my whole life, like I'd been born to it, made just for it, and the band picked up my lead and then Thistledown was singing along, and the whole bar was up on their hooves hooting and hollering, and more folks were piling in off the street outside to hear what we had going on. It was glory itself, I tell you now, coaxing that soul-stuffed music out of that piano.

At the end of the night, the band fired the old piano player and hired me on, and Thistledown and I started making beautiful music together every night, her voice riding along on the waves of my music, the highs and the lows, as I put a lifetime of raw sensitive nerves into the smoky air of bar after bar.

Before too long, Thistledown and I were making beautiful music of a different sort, and it was good, at first. But it turns out, getting what you wish for, especially when what you wish for is a person you don't know anything about, ain't always a good thing. Things turned ugly in just a few years, but we couldn't leave each other, not when we were baring our souls together every night into another smoke-filled room. The money was good, and doing that was a kind of love, even if it wasn't the love we wanted.

Finally, though, twenty years on, or thirty—I've lost count, don't you know—I couldn't take it anymore. We were fighting, as usual, and we were throwing stuff and breaking stuff, as usual, and cursing each other out and worse, as usual, and I looked into Thistledown's eyes. And I swear to you, it was like I'd never done that before, not in those good nights in the beginning or in all the bad ones after, and it froze me to my bones, stiff and staring, like I was standing on a live wire. There behind her eyes, she wasn't just angry. Anger I was used to, I took that for normal by then. But no, she was sad too, oh my soul she was so damn sad it tore my heart clean out. And I just put down the whiskey bottle and walked out into the night without even giving her a word, not the apology she needed or the fare-thee-well that I needed. And you know, I've done a mountain of regretful things in my life, but that one stings at me sharp.

Now, I've made more than my share of stupid decisions, but I'm not a stupid pony. I'd figured out long before what it was I'd agreed to pay that Octavia for the questionable privilege of having Thistledown be mine for good—or for ill, as it turned out. So I walked through the greasy night fog, my hooves chilled to the marrow, and I thought awhile. I thought about how the only way Thistledown had a chance to be happy was if I was out of the picture for good and all. And I figured that there was one thing I could maybe offer Octavia beyond what she'd already been promised. I figured maybe I could do right by Thistledown one time, one time when it counted.

I stopped in front of a row of bars, dim yellow light and dark blue music staggering out through their filthy windows to be sick on the cobblestones. I thought her name like I was calling across a crowded room, and when I turned around there she was, standing under a streetlight, gray-brown with that shiny waterfall of hair, not an inch different than she had been all those years before. I wasn't surprised by that. I wasn't surprised neither by the silence all of a sudden, like the world was down to just me and her. I nodded at her, said, “Octavia,” like I was greeting a friendly neighbor.

She tapped her hoof on the cobblestones, all impatience and anger, and asked me, “What have you called me for?”

“I'm gonna make you an offer.”

That took her aback, and I let myself feel a little bit of satisfaction at that. She frowned. “What could you offer me?”

“I know what I sold you. How would you like to collect right now, right here, in exchange for a second favor?”

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, and the foggy breeze brought me her scent, that hackle-raising mix of strawberries and brimstone I remembered so clearly, like it'd been only yesterday when that stupid young kid ruined two lives for the price of one.

She smiled, nodded, and said, “Very well, your offer amuses me. Agreed. What is it you wish?”

“I want Thistledown to be happy for the rest of her time.”

Octavia thought a moment, her eyes calculating. Then she nodded again. “We have a deal.” She raised her hoof to point at me.

I watched that hoof come up, so slow like the world was moving through molasses, and I hoped my wish would come true, for Thistledown's sake. She deserved better than a guy who had been willing to bargain for her like she was a poker chip. Then I felt my heart stop, and as cold spread through my limbs just ahead of the pain, I had just enough time to think that I must be the only pony who'd ever sold their soul twice, and wouldn't that make a great story where I was going?

Author's Note:

This story was originally written way back in July of 2012(!) in response to a Thirty Minute Ponies prompt (number 33!). I happened to remember it recently and went back and read it again, and found that I still liked it a great deal, mainly thanks to being proud as hell (no pun intended) of the conversational narrative voice I managed to pull off. That's outside my usual comfort zone, but for whatever reason, Frog the self-flagellating blues musician had a voice that came to me easily.

And since this story ran quite long for a TMP entry (I was probably a dirty cheater on the time limit), it didn't require any adding-to in order to make it long enough to post on the Fimfics. This version has received some spit-and-polish, but it's mostly unchanged from the original version that was written back in the stone age. I hope you enjoyed it. : )

Comments

[Pharaoh Hound]

Entertaining read. I like the idea of Devil Octavia.

[Headless]

You actually earned an upvote.

Congratulations. I don't do that often.

[NorsePony]

6299123 I will cherish it forever. : D

[Headless]

6299382 As you should.

In all seriousness, though, very good. Reminded me, for various reasons, of Charles Beaumont's "Black Country" - which I consider to be the best short story ever written, so good on you there.

[the dobermans]

Wonderful!

[Mcstuffins]

I don't know how to word this exactly, but this story had a lot of charm to it. The narration just had this really special voice, and everything felt sooo... I dunno, stylized? I'm no good at this reviewing thing, but basically the story was super cool 'n stuff. Favorited for sure.

Thanks for the read!

[NorsePony]

6301696 Thanks. : )

6303118 I appreciate the praise a bunch, thanks for saying so.

[kris664]

I like it a lot... I won't go out there and make a big thing about it and use '!' to say that, but rather than like it... I love it... simple as that. (I heard What a wonderful world while reading this... I don't know why but it struck a cord when mixed with this... didn't cry just got a bit emotional... and it was liquid pride.)

[horizon]

“I want Thistledown to be happy for the rest of her time.”

Thirty minutes later, Thistledown -- having decided on a whim to stop at an unfamiliar restaurant, and now in the midst of the best meal of her life -- leans back in her chair with a blissful smile, and closes her eyes.

Right before a ceiling support beam detaches and plummets straight toward her head.

[NorsePony]

6306297 I'm not saying it was devils... but it was devils.

[mastermenthe]

The number of human(unponified) words renders it confusing if the main character is a pony or human before the Octavia Deal.