Red & Black
Somewhat acidic, the polluted rain cut gouges of cleanliness into the filthy, begrimed, soot-encrusted windows. As Nut stared absentmindedly out the window, the brief but intense storm neared its end and the defiant sun showed a courageous willingness to shine once more. Lost in thought, he did not pay his schoolwork the attention it was due because his mind would not settle on any one subject.
It was quiet in this particular reading room of the library, and he was alone, which suited him. This room was only available to university students, and while it was quiet now, there were times when it was a busy, somewhat noisy place. Not that his fellow students were rude; far from it, but the sound of turning pages, scratching pencils, along with the shift and settle of bodies was greatly amplified when the room was crowded.
But for now, and the foreseeable future, he was alone; ‘twas summer, afterall.
The university reading room was an odd mix of industrial and scholarly. Rough brick walls shared space with well-polished, dark-hued wooden bookshelves. Overhead, there were support struts, steel girders that were only slightly rusty, steam pipes, an industrial coil radiator that kept the room moderately toasty, ductwork and vents, along with serpentine segmented electrical conduits. The old factory floor was scuffed, had a fine patina, and the high traffic areas of the room had threadbare, faded, somewhat tattered rugs. All of the tables were factory tables, great massive slabs of hardwood meant to endure abuse and never need replacing. As for the chairs, they were a ramshackle, eclectic assortment of things too old, too out of fashion, and too beat up to be sold in thrift stores.
Overall, Nut rather liked the room; he found it comfortable and suitable for study.
There was a warning creak from the brass hinges as the heavy double doors opened. Nut did not look away from his window gazing, but his ears did pivot about as another student entered the private reading room. He was somewhat surprised to see a fellow student, but he supposed there were others who used the precious summer months to accumulate extra credits. Surely, he wasn’t alone when it came to ambition.
When he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he recognised her; she was Viridian, and her name suited her. She was a fantastical bluish-greenish colour, and her intense colouration made it easy to remember her name. Like him, she was a biology student, but she had not yet declared a specialisation. Her coat had an almost metallic sheen to it, very much like the shimmering, oily, slick, over-saturated iridescence of dragonflies. He was almost certain that she’d gone home for the summer.
While she hadn’t declared a specialisation, she had a knack for predation factors; bites, claws, she had an intimate knowledge of predators by studying the injuries they left behind in their prey. This stood out in sharp contrast to her mark, which was an eye dropper and a chemist’s vial. Given her current interests, he suspected something a bit more… bitey.
Her voice was intensely nasal: “Hello, Nut.”
“Salutations, Miss Viridian. Come to join me in study?”
“Sort of,” she replied as she sat down in the other chair near the window. “I understand that you recently studied some peculiar trolls.”
“Indeed, I did.” With a slight turn of his head, he gave her his attention.
“I looked at the samples you returned just this morning. The bones bear markings consistent with troll teeth, only tiny… really tiny. Blunt, crushing teeth. So these took the guise of vegetables?”
“They did.”
“You study mimics,” she said; this wasn’t a question.
“Mimics, in whatever form they take, are fantastic examples of the evolutionary arms race. I was just studying a report on changelings when you came in.”
“Oh, I thought you were looking out the window.” Her broad smile revealed teeth too perfect to be natural, and the pull of her lips suggested that she’d worn braces or a retainer for a long, long time. There was also a faint bald patch on the bridge of her nose where her glasses rubbed—glasses that she was not wearing at the moment.
“I was busy thinking.”
“You really do like mimics.” It was obvious that she was trying to stoke up a conversation. “So what was the report about?”
Yes, she had worn braces or some kind of dental appliance, and the way she kept her lips pulled away from her teeth was distracting. Nut allowed his gaze to drift out the window so that he would not be distracted by her every spoken word. Had some dreadful overbite or underbite been corrected? Crooked teeth? A fortune had been spent, no doubt.
“The changelings face extinction,” he said as he recalled what he’d read. “Chrysalis, their former queen, she modified them to be better slaves, and to make them entirely dependent upon her. They cannot breed with one another—each and every one of them is an intriguing incompatible match with one another—but they can, in some rare instances, still breed with other creatures and create hybrids.”
“So they run the risk of extinction from a lack of breeding, or potentially breeding themselves out of existence. Either way, they are destroyed. That’s… I don’t know what to say.”
“Princess Celestia has vowed to help them recover their reproductive freedom.”
“She’s real nice like that, Princess Celestia. How many princesses other than Princess Cadance would help a whole species get their fronk on?”
“Oh, verily.” Relaxing a bit, he settled into his chair and decided that he rather liked Viridian’s company, even if her face was somewhat distracting. That was just a quirk, and it could be overlooked, he supposed.
“Your love of mimics must lead to exciting field work,” she said, still trying to strike up a conversation with some degree of meaning. “I don’t deal with excitement well. Lab work is ideal.”
“To each their own,” he replied, unsure of what else to say.
“It is really kind of terrifying that such small creatures showed so much remarkable bite strength. The marks left behind by the teeth suggest that they are quite small, but the fact that they can still crunch bones to get to the marrow…” Her sentence, left unfinished, trailed off as she shook her head from side to side.
The ball was in his court now, and he was obligated to return it. “For their diminutive stature, they showed exceptional fierceness.” Then, remembering the photographs he’d taken, he wondered aloud, “I wonder if the film has been developed?”
“I don’t know.” Her shrug somehow made everything so much more awkward. “Plants don’t have muscle structure like we do. They must have amazing specialised cell structures. I wonder if they use electrical energy and turgor pressure to assist their bite, like flytraps do.”
“Electrophysiology is only something I’ve studied independently. I do have a class on it in the autumn, however. It is theorised that some plants can conduct electrical signals through specialised phloem—”
“It’s so amazing, what plants can do. Even without magic… just through mundane physiological means.” She clopped her front hooves together, inhaled sharply, fell back into her chair, and slumped over. “When I was a little filly, I won the school science fair with my telegraph plants and I created a detailed diorama that showed off how the leaves adjusted themselves to follow the angles of the sun as it moves overhead. It was electrical and the fake plants I created mimicked the movements of the real ones as the overhead light above the diorama was moved about.”
“Impressive.”
“Thank you. That’s really very kind of you to say.” Tapping her front hooves together, she added, “While I like plants, I like puzzles more. Figuring stuff out. Like trying to determine what took a bite of something… and making sense of how something bites, because there are so many ways to bite, and each of them can be so specialised… like the extendable pharyngeal jaws of certain eels. Sometimes, it feels like I am a detective, and I like that. There needs to be a series of books about a biologist detective who solves crimes using biology. More foals might take an active interest in biology if there was, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I suppose it is possible,” he replied, though he wasn’t sure what he was responding to.
“Everypony is going into archeology because of Daring Do, and biology is neglected.”
“Indeed, that does seem to be the case.” His non-committal answer was polite at least, and he somehow refrained from bringing up the tired old argument about correlation versus causation. Biology didn’t seem particularly neglected; it was just boring for most ponies, and most of the time, there was very little action involved. Biology was not the stuff of Saturday matinee serials.
Unless, of course, one found themselves in an archive full of hungry mimics.
Then, it became the stuff of Saturday midnight-showing horror double features.
“You just shivered,” she said, intruding upon Nut’s introspective cerebrations.
“I did?” Strange, he must have had an involuntary reaction unawares.
“You did,” she insisted.
“I wish I could study evolution in a world without magic,” he said with sudden abruptness. “Without mimics. Without fantastical creatures. Such worlds exist, you know. I would give almost anything to study biology on a world where there was no magic to muck things up.” So self-absorbed in his own thoughts was he that he failed to notice the round ‘O’ of horror on Viridian’s face.
“My family studied survivors from such a world. They destroyed themselves with a plague, they did. The very best and brightest among them tampered with life itself. In the end, they were too successful. They didn’t destroy the minority lifeforms among them that they wished to be rid of, but the whole of their species. I understand that they went to war over skin colour… a whole species gone because of skin colour.”
He sighed, a weary sound.
“But not all of them died. There were survivors. When there were but a few left, perhaps a hundred or so, Princess Celestia intervened. She sent emissaries to their world that sought out the survivors, and brought them here. They were a primate species, but upon coming here, they became equinoids. I am not sure why. My grandfather, Gestalt, and my grandmother, Lambda, they studied the primate species and determined that they could integrate. I met a few when I was quite young and small. From what little I know, their world is still a living planet, which now recovers from all the terrible things the primate species did to it.”
For a moment, he thought of the Gallopagos, and shivered. Pensive, lost in his own thoughts, distracted, he was almost alone with himself. To study evolution without magic was almost as impossible as studying evolution with magic. But to stand upon another world, one filled with mundane, ordinary species, and then to figure out how all of the life forms led to one another—it would be ideal. But Princess Celestia restricted access to other worlds, and for good reason.
“Skin colour?” Viridian asked.
He made a circular gesture with a hoof and thought about his response before saying, “They believed that such a trivial thing as skin colour made them different species. It was a quirk of their biology. They had different skin colour, to be sure, but they were all of the same species. Somehow, they failed to see this, to understand this, and accept this before they released the plague that was their destruction. From what little I know, they were very silly creatures. Quite confident in their belief that magic did not exist simply because they lacked any form of it on their own world.”
“Oh, that is silly. Everypony knows magic exists. It just has a hard time reaching some places.” Viridian’s hooves continued to tap-tap-tap together, a soft muffled click that was almost like a mechanical clock. “So you would give up your own magic to go and study biology on a world devoid of magic?”
“Indeed, I would.” His answer left him with a sort of curious resolve, and he realised, he knew that he would do exactly as he had said. It would certainly be easier to do than his planned trip to the Gallopagos, but it was no less impossible, no less difficult. Why, he had no idea how to even begin to sneak off of his world of origin and gain access to another.
But the idea, like a seed lodged in his mind, germinated.
“A world without magic would be a world without mimic-type predators,” she said.
To which he replied, “You say that as if it is a bad thing…”
Mrs. Oleander handed him a folded, creased sheet of paper as he entered the garage, with an advertising seal of the Royal Telegraph Company. Which wasn’t, in fact, the Crown’s prefered telegraph office as one might be led to believe, and Nut had always thought the name to be a bit deceptive. The logo had a crown with two highly stylised wings sprouting from each side, and a company motto that read, ‘A solis ortu usque ad occasum’, which might have been the most honest thing about them, as they truly did cover the nation from east to west.
LOCAL AIRSHIP OFFICE -(STOP)- SECOND EIGHT -(STOP)- COME HOME -(STOP)-
He gave Mrs. Oleander an apologetic glance while he restored the fold in the crisp—if somewhat fibrous—paper. Her expression was neutral, which made it rather hard to tell how she might feel about this. He was leaving. Again. Abandoning his post. All because he’d made his life complicated. Such was the cost of nobility, and making an oath based upon the fact that one had, through fortuitous circumstances, won the birth lottery. Self-resentment left a fever in his thin neck and he suddenly felt very much ashamed of himself.
“Stop that,” the stern widow instructed.
“Stop what?” he dared ask.
“That. What you’re doing right now. You look like a foal expecting a life sentence in a penal colony for stealing a cookie.”
“I what..?”
“Mister Riddle and I spoke of this at length. Everything will be fine. Go home, Nut. The world won’t end while you’re away. If it does, however, at least you’ll be at home with family. Just don’t be gone for long.”
Dismayed, though for reasons he could not explain, he knew that he couldn’t be gone for long. Black Maple wouldn’t take very good care of herself and would neglect the care of her stumps. She would sleep with her legs on. The hot self-resentment he felt kindled and became a blaze that threatened to consume him from within. Why wouldn’t that mare care for herself?
“Please, pardon me, Mrs. Oleander, but it occurs to me that I have much to accomplish before eight of clock this even. I need to contact our local courier service. There is something I must do. Something dreadful.”
“Have a nice time at home, Nut. Try not to worry.” Mrs. Oleander allowed herself a rare soft smile. “Your rooms will be here when you get back. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to file permits and forms to conform to new city regulations. Have fun at home, Nut.”
“Why, thank you, Mrs. Oleander, and thank you again for your understanding.”
“Think nothing of it, Nut. You’ve done right by me, so I’ll do right by you.”
Now imbued with a certain smug sense of satisfaction, Nut enjoyed a foamy mug of smoked Black Maple Ale. Some of his schoolwork was spread out before him, a way to pass the time, as the show would be starting soon. How soon was unknown, but he was certain that it would start. He was boxing clever, so he was, and goodness, this ale had never tasted better.
It had cost him a few precious coins, but he no longer cared at this point; Black Maple was about to get exactly what she deserved. He’d done what any reasonable, responsible pony would do in this situation; which meant that he’d gone and told her mother. Oh, not in pony, not face to face, but he’d paid for a courier to go to Cliffside and deliver a note to Red Maple.
Pegasus ponies flocked together, and he was counting on that.
Right now, Black Maple was down in the cellar with Tater Blossom, and the pegasus pony had no notion of the trouble to come. And that… that made Nut feel good. A tall Black Maple Ale, served with a side of savoury, satisfying comeuppance. It was his sincere desire that Black Maple would rue… well, whatever there was between them to rue, for surely there was something to rue, even if he couldn’t quite put his hoof on what it was, exactly.
He was not a vindictive sort, and this was his first dabbling in rue, which made this a fine opportunity to learn. With Black Maple properly rued, was he being rude? This might well be construed, for it might be rude to leave one rued. It could start a feud. He might end up eschewed, a risk one pursued when they were rude and sought to leave another rued, with or without the potential feud, which might result depending on how one’s actions were construed.
Or worse, there might be no feud; when left properly rued, Black Maple might be offensively lewd. That pegasus could be quite rude. Was this how she might feud? Nut was a prude, and took offense to the lewd, which he found rather rude. As it turned out, he was ill-prepared for this feud, no matter how it was construed, and as he sipped his ale, it was he who rued his actions most rude.
It wore down his fortitude.
Was this moral turpitude?
Alas, there was no time left for contemplating his sins, because a red mare sauntered through the door. To say that she was red was understatement. She was red, red as red velvet cake. Not a bright, vivid red, but a dusky, almost smoky, dark, deep, and disturbing hue of red. She was dried, scabbed-over blood mixed with sawdust on a barroom floor red. Mrs. Maple was the colour of past tense violence and moved like a knife honed too sharp to cut cake—which is to say, she never encountered resistance.
This mare knew how to enter a room just like her daughter did.
She did not walk, but sashayed. Her movement was like the silkiest griddle cake batter ever mixed in all of existence, and then poured out on a smoking hot slab of iron. Just looking in her general direction caused one’s eyes to sizzle. Nut suddenly found himself in need of a sizable gulp of his ale, and he did so before she drew too close. Red Maple was Celestia’s sun on four legs and given wings.
“Hello Nut,” she said in a voice entirely too much like her offspring. “You fronked my daughter yet?”
Ah yes, ‘twas the season for regrets already. Why had he asked for help again? Most mothers would rush to defend their daughter’s virtue, but not Red Maple, oh no. He found it quite disconcerting. In fact, he found pegasus ponies in general quite disconcerting. For a mother and daughter to be so much alike. Mrs. Maple sat down, and that in and of itself was quite an act, practically a show stopper, and several of the barflies almost fell right off their stools.
“No,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster.
“Well, why not?” Red Maple demanded. “I made that little minx. She almost wrecked my figure. A lot of work went into her creation… a whole lot of enthusiastic effort—”
“That’s more than I need to know!”
Mrs. Maple giggled, and it caused her barrel to hitch up and down. She rested her forelegs upon the table in very much the same manner as her daughter, leaned forward, and with her eyes twinkling, she said, “I just want to know that my hard work is appreciated. Is that too much to ask? Do you need permission? If so, you have it. Rusty Dusty won’t be mad, you have his permission too. You’re allowed to tap that.”
Nut felt his mouth grow dry.
A little more ale gave him courage. “We need to talk about your daughter—”
“Which part?” Red Maple asked.
The question left Nut’s ears ablaze.
“Nut, I would very much like it if you would tap my daughter’s bung. I can’t think of anything more flattering to me… and you do want to flatter me, don’t you? My self-esteem depends upon knowing that you appreciate what I’ve brought into the world. I mean, she’s a little version of me, and not to brag or boast, but I’m perfect.”
“Red Maple, please… this is important, and serious. I must speak to you about Black Maple.”
“Alright then… if you insist on being boring, I’m listening.”
Another sip of ale moistened his leather tongue, but offered no courage. He felt sweaty now, a little too hot beneath his tweed, and something about the way that Red Maple fidgeted in her seat he found entirely too distracting. Like her daughter, her mane was the colour of maple syrup whipped into clouds, and her eyes had the same hue as pale ale. If Black Maple aged like her mother did…
He almost choked on his ale, which left him coughing and sputtering.
Red Maple, a helpful sort, clapped him on the back and almost snapped his spine like a toothpick. A lifetime of rolling around ale casks and brewing had transformed her into something terrifying, something almost inequine. He coughed a bit more, caught his breath, and then turned to face her, which might have been a mistake, but getting involved with Black Maple was already grievous error that he deeply regretted.
“Your daughter,” he began, whispering in a low, muted voice, “doesn’t do a very good job of taking care of herself.” A bit more ale moistened his lips, but his throat stayed dry. “She doesn’t want to ask for help… it’s her stumps. Her wooden legs rub her raw. She sleeps in them, and goes out in the rain with them, and she has trouble taking them on an off. All of this is quite complicated, and I’m not really sure where to begin. She can’t ask for help, or at least she feels that way, because she can’t appear weak. Which might be true. Her reputation keeps this place safe. But, there is more to this than that.
“Quite honestly, I think part of the reason why she does it is to manipulate me. I go off for a few days and I come back to a mess. She hasn’t taken her legs off, she hasn’t applied her salve, and she has sores from friction. I hate to second guess, and to make accusations, but I suspect that she is intentionally making things worse so she can lure me into giving her my attention. It’s not like I’ll tell her no. But this self sabotage is really messing her up. I contacted you because I’m about to go home for a few days, maybe longer, I don’t know, and I don’t want to come home to an infected, smelly crisis in need of urgent care.”
“Aw… shit.” It was almost as if Red Maple was popped with a pin. She slumped over, everything sagged, she rubbed her fuzzy cheeks with both of her front hooves, and made tight little circles. Round and round her hooves went, messaging her cheeks, with her ears bobbing up and down like two velvety semaphore flags. “Shit.”
“I do… apologise for being so blunt, Mrs. Maple. You seem to be taking this hard.”
“It’s alright,” she muttered, her utterance more of an exhale rather than actual words.
Something else needed to be said, but what?
When Mrs. Maple sighed, she seemed older somehow and her delightful sex appeal deminished. Perhaps it was the way she rubbed her face, which left everything wrinkled. Maybe it was the sudden fatigue in her eyes. She seemed more maternal somehow, no, not just maternal, but pegasus-maternal, which was quite a different thing entirely.
No species held a monopoly on exceptional motherhood, but pegasus mothers were storied creatures. Fierce brutes that would pick a fight with a wyvern without hesitation. There were legends, stories, folktales, myths about the pegasus mother—whole story books just waiting to be read at bedtime.
Nut had once waltzed into a whole colony of basilisks—but he did not feel back then the clammy terror that he felt now. As a biologist, he knew and understood that some species were intrinsically more dangerous than others. The females of the Pegasus Pegasos Equus species were long considered as the Ursus Arctos Horribilis of the skies.
Red Maple’s feathers had been ruffled.
“Do you love my daughter, Nut?”
He didn’t know how to answer this, and worse, he feared his own honesty.
“Look, I like you. So you can tell me anything. Anything at all, Nut.”
“Miss Maple and I have a complicated relationship,” he replied. “We’re friends, but also enemies. She makes it difficult to like her.”
“Like the shit she’s doing right now.” Red Maple closed her eyes, pulled her hooves away from her cheeks, and her ears hung limp over her downcast face. “I’m gonna be honest with you, Nut. I want her with you because you bring out the best in her. Well, except for right now, at the moment… she’s better than this. That dumb orca did more than steal away my little girl’s legs… that big bastard fish stole her dignity.”
Knowing that now was not the right time, Nut did not correct Red Maple.
“She met you and all of a sudden, she was the little filly I remember before the orca. Some of her self-respect came back. I don’t want to say that I gave up on her, but I’ll be honest, I thought I lost her. At the time, I was busy trying to come to terms with everything that was taken on that day. But you… you came around and suddenly she’s a bit like her old self again, and I had my hope again. Nut, I hope you never know the pain of being a parent that has their foal crippled. Things can’t go back to how they were, but it sure is nice to see little glimpses of the filly I remember.”
There just wasn’t enough ale in all of existence.
He gulped down the contents of his mug, but his thirst wasn’t slaked. Something lurked; something loomed—something that felt a lot like doom. Right now, he was dangerously close to feeling something that he was not at all ready to feel. He did not want to be friends with Black Maple’s mother; that was dangerous and disadvantageous. Yet, he could not deny that there was something shared between them that hadn’t been there just a few scant seconds ago.
“We have… a complex relationship, she and I.” Whilst he stared down into his now-empty mug, he licked the foam from his lips. Deep within his sinuses, phantom smoke tickled its way about, and the aftertaste of the ale remained strong in his still-parched throat. “I don’t want to admit it, but there is something between us.”
“But with the way she acting right now, you don’t want there to be. And that’s understandable. This is unacceptable. If she’d just grow up a bit, she might have what she wants.” Red Maple seemed to recover a bit, but whatever she might be feeling was, at the moment, unknown.
Unwilling to commit to an answer, he shrugged.
“I kicked her out of the nest and expected her to fly right. So far, I’m disappointed.” Red Maple sighed, shook her head, and slipped a scarlet wing over Nut’s withers. “Not about the whorehouse. There was a need, a demand in the market, and she stepped up to provide a service. It isn’t what I’d do… I separate tourists from their money. Bed and breakfasts are more popular than ever. Blackie is doing good though, keeping her workers safe and giving them a secure place to conduct their transactions.”
She pulled her wing away and folded it against her side.
“But Blackie could be doing better. Shit like she’s doing right now. And those legs of hers… antiques. For the life of me, I can’t talk her into getting something better. Blackie, she’s done pretty good for herself, but she could be doing better. I’m her mother, and as much as I want my daughter to be perfect, I know she isn’t. And if I can be completely honest, I’m kinda peeved with her, because she has an aristocrat right within her reach, and she’s letting him slip away. Sorry Nut, but a mother has aspirations.”
“Oh, understandable,” he said to be agreeable.
“See the thing is, I know I’m right… I had the sort of daughter that is worthy of an aristocrat’s attention. She has all this potential. Blackie is the total package, brains and beauty. Well, minus two legs. But that can be overlooked by the right fella. I’ve brought perfection into the world, and damnit, she keeps trying to prove me wrong and I hate her for it.”
The less he said at this point, the better. Pegasus ponies were vain creatures, so it was said, and Mrs. Maple certainly had a high opinion of herself. Even worse, there was a ring of truth to her statements, a sort of near-plausibility that gave weight to her words. Black Maple had brains and beauty. She had his attention—sometimes. Her missing legs didn’t bother him, except when she was trying to manipulate him, such as now. But was she perfect?
Nope, Nut wasn’t going there; he liked living.
“Excuse me, Nut… but I am going to pick a fight with my daughter.”
Right away, Nut raised and waved his foreleg around. “Gracie… ale… I’ll have another!”
The comfort in a mug failed to provide comfort. His relationship with Black Maple now felt more muddled than ever. Like a foal, he’d tattled on her. He quite literally went and told her mother what she was doing. Now, hunched over his mug, his back to the corner, he did not feel like an adult, not in the slightest. With his relationship with Black Maple even more unclear, so too was his association with her mother, Red Maple.
He didn’t want these relationships; yet here he was, drawn in deeper.
Yet, if this were true, then why did he get involved? Why contact Red Maple and alert her to the problem? Because, a quiet, yet audible voice within his head said, you wish to fulfill primordial biological imperatives with her. A violent and sudden exchange of genetic material followed by waiting to see whatever happened next.
“No I don’t,” he muttered aloud.
Oh, but you do, the meek voice suggested. You have a hankering for assault with a friendly weapon—
Interrupting his own thoughts, he told himself, “I do not. Besides, I do not hanker. That is beneath me.”
You want Miss Maple beneath you… so you can crash your custard wagon into her clap-flaps.
As the corner of his eye twitched alarmingly, he could feel the Disgustang rising within, unbidden. Stress affected different ponies in different ways and Nut began to wonder about the stress that he was under. He waited for further antagonistic quips, but the space just behind his eyeballs had gone silent. Good riddance.
This whole unpleasant episode would soon be forgotten after a bit more ale.
THUMP-THUMP!
He looked up from his ale, his blood now the consistency of smooth frozen custard.
THUMP-THUMP!
It came from the stairs, the terrible heartbeat did.
THUMP-THUMP!
Black Maple could come up the stairs in a hurry—
THUMP-THUMP!
—so it was obvious that she wanted him to know that she was coming.
THUMP-THUMP!
Since had the time to spare, he downed some of his ale.
THUMP-THUMP!
Here she came…
THUMP-THUMP!
She had arrived. Black Maple strode into the common room, snorted once, and then went behind the bar. Ever-cautious, Nut peered at her over the top of his earthenware mug, but she seemed to be ignoring him at the moment. Maybe things would be fine between them. She was a grown, mature mare, and while she lacked resolve and sometimes had poor judgment, Black Maple wasn’t a bad sort.
“YOU SONOFABITCH!”
She punctuated this with a hurled mug, which flew in a remarkable arc right for Nut’s head. It would have struck him, too, but he was a pony of uncommon reflexes. With a little magical assistance, he yanked his own chair out from beneath him, and dove beneath the table where he was sitting. Less than a second later, the mug smashed into smithereens against the wall, in just about the same spot where his head had been located.
When he dared to peek over the table, he saw that she had readied another mug and held it in her wing. Something had to be done. Where was Red Maple? And for that matter, where was his ward? Down in the cellar? With no reinforcements, it fell upon him to de-escalate the situation before it worsened into something that destroyed a friendship.
That is, if there was anything left of this friendship to save.
“Miss Maple, you are behaving in an unseemly, unreasonable manner.” So far, so good. Nut saw that she had bared her teeth, but she had not thrown the mug. “Can we discuss this like rational adults, Miss Maple?”
“Sure,” she replied through clenched teeth.
He stood up, adjusted his collar, squinted his monocle back into place, and realised just a little too late that she had thrown the mug at him with a flick of her wing. As he dropped to the floor and took cover behind the table, the mug caressed his ear. In shock from the contact, he barely registered the mug shattering against the wall just behind him.
“Madam, that grazed my ear!”
“I was aiming for your face!” Black Maple spat out her response with considerable contempt as she armed herself with another earthenware mug. “Come on out, Nut… don’t you want to talk about this?”
“Fool me once,” he dared to reply.
Drinking their drinks, the other patrons watched all of this with great interest. This was drama. Free drama. Maybe not the best drama, but certainly cheaper than a matinee. Nut understood that this needed to continue behind closed doors, because certain things needed to be said. She was armed, but he could deal with that. Subduing her would humiliate her though, and if she lost face in front of her customers—well, he had no idea how she might take it.
In times of trouble, Nut resorted to The Slide. It was something of a signature move. It allowed him to cross distances at great speed, all without walking. Still as a statue, his legs rigid, he just sort of glided over the floor. Ponies and creatures who witnessed it were typically quite disturbed by it, as it was quite unnatural. Uncanny. He did so without the visible use of magic, because the magic did not come from his horn. This was a secret, one he zealously guarded.
Like an ice skater, he went shooting across the floor. She hurled a mug, but he caught it mid-air, arrested all momentum, and set it down upon a table as he went zooming past. He didn’t slow in the slightest, and bowled Black Maple over. Before she could hit the floor, he lifted her up in his magic, held her away from him, fearing that she might bite him, and then he vanished into the kitchen with the intention of retreating into the pantry.
Before throwing her down upon a pile of burlap sacks, he dislegged Black Maple. Which is to say, Nut disarmed her by yanking her legs off. She snarled, launched herself at him, and he gently pushed her away with magic. When she lunged at him again, he shoved her down a second time, and then a third as well. Her wooden legs were set down in the corner, out of her reach, and he took a moment to calm himself.
When she tried to rise, he pressed his right front hoof into her snoot and shoved her over. This made her tumble over onto her back, and so she brought her dangerous hind legs to bear against him. Unsure of what to do, because he couldn’t have her kicking him, he used magic to shove her right into the corner so that distance could be kept between them.
“Fronk me if you wanna, but make no mistake, I’m gonna bite you!”
Snarling, teeth bared, she lunged again, and Nut was forced to repel her.
“I have no intention of doing anything but—”
“Then why drag me in here?” she spat while she tried to get her hind legs beneath her. “Go right ahead! Thrash my gash! But expect to be bitten.”
With his patience reaching a thin point, Nut put an end to the struggle. First, to keep her quiet, he jammed a sizable portion of an empty burlap sack into her mouth, stuffing it in nice and tight for good measure, and while she kicked, flopped, and squealed, he crammed her into a large burlap sack that reeked of rye. Then, with her still pitching a fit, he cinched the drawstring and tossed the sack into the corner.
He felt bad… but what could he do?
“Now you listen here,” he said in muted, measured tones. “You did this to yourself. What choice did I have? I have to leave… to go away… and I cannot spend the entirety of my time away worrying and wondering if you will care for yourself… if you will tend after your own needs.”
The burlap sack flip-flopped about, Black Maple clunked her head into the stone wall, and then went still. Nut did nothing to help her; for all he knew, it was a clever ruse. She might very well attempt to attack him if he came close. It occurred to him that she might be enjoying this, in some sick way, and that left him more than a little perturbed.
For the moment, perhaps suffering from a headache, she went still.
“I will not have my emotions manipulated by you.” It felt good to say this, as it needed to be said. “When you do this, it makes me think that you do it so you can force me to give you my attention. I will no longer be a party to this self-sabotage. Especially not now, not after your foalish little temper tantrum.
“Furthermore, while we are clearing the air… your legs are antiques. Your mother and I discussed this. They are ill-fitting, complicated to put on and to remove. Those legs of yours are heavy and obsolete. Are you trying to punish yourself with them? Do you wish to hurt yourself on purpose? Are you still the angry little filly that lost her legs, and are you now trying to self-flagellate with your prostheses? Because that is what I think. You don’t have to struggle with those awful, awful things. I can see no logical reason why you keep them.”
The burlap sack lay silent.
“Friendship cannot survive ultimatums,” he said, his voice cracking in such a way that it left him self-aware. “But this cannot continue. While I am gone, I want you to think about our friendship. When I come back, things must change, or our relationship must change. One or the other. That is, if our friendship survives this. I will not sit idly by and watch as you torture yourself and self-destruct. Allow me to be blunt: I like you. Sometimes. But when you chucked a mug at my head, that crossed a line. This crosses a line. You and your base manipulations cross a line. I find far too many lines crossed… so it has come to this.”
Still, the burlap sack remained silent; not even a whimper.
“I cannot have you be a bad example for young Miss Blossom. Please, please, I beg of you, do not make me choose between the two of you. I’ve committed myself to doing the best that I can for her. If you become a detriment”—he tried to swallow and found that he couldn’t—“I will do what is best for her without hesitation. You will not even be spared a second thought.”
With nothing left to say, he turned about and left the pantry.
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ooooooooooo I love this story. I'm glad he told her off. It's for her own good. I like Red Maple so far, too.
That made me think of relationships I’ve had with mothers
Damn. Well said but still painful to read.
We got so scienced in the first part there.
Then we got a full lecture on feeling rue, which was rather interesting.
And finally we finished with emotional turmoil, as it tends to happen in odd relationships.
All in all another wonderful chapter.
Let’s do hope he sends someone in for her, just in case. Unless you’re setting up a ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ situation.
I almost forgot the main theme of the Weedverse. Looks like maple has some personal growth in her future.
And dammit, kudz, if you sink my ship, I'm gonna... I don't know. I'll send you nasty pm's or something.
9737959
9738039
Amateur:
9738143
Mine is an established classic. I'll stick with it, thanks.
i.imgur.com/qSZ5cIY.png
Red Maple is a good bit more intimidating than her daughter. And Black Maple was kind of scary to start with.
Kudzuhaiku I really appreciate your writing style - it is like sitting in the same room and watching the action unfold
Just started reading this...
And I'm not gonna lie: that bit at the end felt very satisfying. I just hope she wasn't actually unconscious from hitting her head and did listen to everything he said.
This is the kind of drama one stays up all night reading for. I love it, even if my eyes don't after binge-reading.