The Cousins
“Princess Twilight was really there when I was born?” L’il Cheese chriped from Pinkie’s shoulders, “and you really broke Dad’s hoof?”
“Yeah!” Pinkie laughed, and Cheese Sandwich puffed his chest out, “He was so brave.”
“Wow! And did I really come out in a big burst of confetti?”
Pinkie nodded. “You did!”
Cheese’s expression turned sage, thoughtful. He stroked his Dad-goatee, the chin scruff he’d been trying to pull off that he thought made him look wise - he’d been trying for it ever since he saw Sunburst a few months ago. Pinkie gave it another month before he wordlessly shaved it off. “I still say it was all the polka.”
“It was probably all the polka.” Pinkie agreed.
They had plenty of time to fill, riding Gummy from Ponyville all the way to Maud’s place.
“What’s Aunt Maud like?” L’il Cheese asked, tugging the top of Pinkie’s mane.
“You were too-Little Cheese to remember her, huh?” Pinkie looked up. “You liked her a lot. She’s really nice.”
“They’re very... quiet,” Sandwich offered diplomatically. “Not really like your mum at all.”
“Huh,” Pinkie frowned, “ponies keep saying that, but I think we’re super clearly sisters.”
“If you say so,” Sandwich trailed off.
“You’ll see,” Pinkie prophesied, “you tell your father who’s right when we get there.”
“Father?” Sandwich clutched his heart, “not Dad?”
“That is how serious I am right now.”
“Woah,” L’il Cheese said. Then a pause. “Are we nearly there yet?”
“I think so!”
The door opened, and Maud stuck her head out to watch them pull in on their giant alligator... thing. “Pinkie,” she said, and L’il Cheese could hear the smile in her voice, “you’ve arrived.”
Maud walked out on to the front porch of the little rock farm homestead. Mud Briar followed close behind, with his big bushy Mountain Man beard down past his chest. Cheese Sandwich scratched his chin, and Pinkie moved the one month calendar up a few weeks with a giggle.
“Pinkie, Cheese Sandwich,” Mud Briar nodded, “It is always a pleasure to host you.”
“I’m so glad Maud found someone so good for her,” Pinkie whispered to her husband. He nodded. Not because he understood, mind, but you didn’t need to understand to agree. “Where are the twins?”
Mud opened the door a little wider, and Sediment and Pediment slunk out, staring at their hooves. L’il Cheese gasped, and bounced off Pinkie’s shoulders - he was getting a bit too big to keep doing that, but Pinkie would just have to remember to mention it later - and ran up to them.
“I have!” he shouted, “Cousins!”
Sediment and Pediment looked up just in time to see Cheese fly into them, one arm around each of their necks, squeezing them into a tight hug. Briar looked Concerned, in a way that looked very Dadly of him, Pinkie thought to herself.
Pinkie went up to hug Maud herself, as Cheese Sandwich tried to find a place to hitch Gummy for a while.
L’il Cheese sized them up - one was a greyish-purple filly, and the other was a purplish-grey colt. Neither had their cutie mark yet, either. “Okay, which one of you is Pediment, and which is Sediment?”
“I’m Pediment.” “I’m Sediment.” They said at the same time, and fortunately because L’il Cheese was standing directly between them - still hugging them - he managed to work out which said which.
“Okay!” he took a few steps back, and looked at them with a serious intensity. “Can I call you Seddie and Peddie?”
“We don’t like it when other ponies call us that,” Sediment, who was the greyish-purple filly, said.
L’il Cheese stuck out his bottom lip, and made his pupils go all big. “But can I call you that?”
Sediment and Pediment looked at each other thoughtfully. “He did ask nicely.” “We did say other ponies.” “We are in agreement.” They looked back at Cheese and nodded as one. “You may call us that.”
“Yes!” L’il Cheese shot into the air with a whoop. “What do you want to do first? C’mon.” He started running off, and the surprised twins took a moment before running off after him.
Cheese Sandwich watched them shoot past him as he walked up to the front door. “Well, they seem to get along like peanut butter and jelly, huh?”
Mud Briar nodded. “Yes.” There was a few seconds of Mud Briar staring at Sandwich’s chin. “Are you trying to...?”
“Fine! I’ll shave!”
Mud Briar nodded. “You have a very square jawline. It’s a good look. A clean shave makes it more pronounced.”
“Oh. Uh, thank you?”
Mud nodded. “Maud and I baked bread today. It might not be as good as Pinkie Pie’s baking, but I hope you might enjoy it.”
Cheese Sandwich lowered his voice, and pulled Mud into a whispered huddle. “So you used salt, instead of sugar?”
“Yes. This is the optimal way, I find, to bake bread.”
“My man!” Cheese started off towards the kitchen, “Cut me off a fat slice then.”
Mud smiled.
“So this is our treehouse.” Seddie swung open the hatch. The tree it had been built into was long dead - like, hundreds-of-years dead - so it was kind of a fossilized tree house. Which was super cool. “We come here to be alone.”
“More alone.” Peddie clarified, “Since we live on a rock farm.”
“Yes,” Seddie nodded, helping pull L’il Cheese up after herself, “mostly away from our parents.”
“Why would you want to get away from your parents, though? They seem nice.”
“They are,” “we love them very much,” “but we still want some privacy some times.” “Does that make sense?”
“I guess, but I like, never want to get away from my parents. I mean, I still do, sometimes, but it’s only because I want to do something else more. I never, like, want to get away from them just to get away from them, you know?”
“Huh.” “Weird.” “That’s actually really sweet.”
“You’re not going to make fun of me for that?” L’il Cheese tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. “Because, you know, some of the other ponies I know say I’m a ‘mumma’s boy’ or stuff like that.”
Pediment rolled his eyes. “Oh no, your parents love you too much, and you love them back.”
Sediment groaned. “Real character flaw you have there.”
L’il Cheese’s arms shot up. “Right??? You guys get it!”
They nodded. “Most ponies are mean to us, too.” “They think we’re boring. Or creepy.” “Can you believe it?”
L’il Cheese gasped. “No! You have, like, a treehouse that’s also a rock fort at the same time. That’s super cool!”
“Right?” “We think so anyway.”
“What do you do up here?”
Sediment’s chest puffed out with pride. “This is where I keep my rock collection.”
Pediment puffed his chest out pridefully. “This is where I keep my stamp collection, which is better.”
“Rocks are better than stamps.”
“You can find rocks anywhere. Stamps are much harder to collect.”
“Of course you can find rocks anywhere. That’s why it takes taste and education to know a good rock when you see it.”
“You think all rocks are good rocks.”
“That’s not true. I think arsenopyrite is a bad rock. I also think sandstone is not very good at all.”
“You like salt though.”
“Salt is the only rock we can eat, which makes it very interesting, in my opinion. I’d rather lick salt crystals than stamps.”
“At least stamps can send letters.”
“Oh yeah? Who would you even send a letter to?” Sediment and Pediment had their heads pressed together now, glaring hard.
“Me!” L’il Cheese jumped up and waved. “You could send letters to me! Letters about rocks and stamps!”
The twins disentangled, looking curiously at Cheese. “You’d really like to hear us talk about our collections?”
“Yeah! You both obviously really care a lot about it! And I think that’s really neat!” Cheese started sniffing around the treehouse. “You should get them out and show me your favourites! I want to know all about stamps and rocks and stuff.”
“You do?” they asked simultaneously, just as Cheese found the big fishing tackle boxes in the corner with their collections in them.
“Is this them?”
The twins went to snatch the boxes out of Cheese’s hooves. Looked down, realized they’d grabbed the wrong one, and silently swapped them with a nod. Some things were too sacred to fight over.
“So, are you going to show me or what?”
The twins looked at each other, and hesitated, one hoof each on the handles of their collections. “It’s just...” “... we’ve never shown these to anyone else before.”
“Really?”
Seddie and Peddie nodded. Seddie cleared her throat. “Well, Mum helped me with the rocks.” Peddie tapped his free hoof against the side of the metal box. “Dad helps me find the stamps.”
“But you’ve never shown them the collection, right?”
They both nodded again.
“Well,” L’il Cheese grinned, “Am I lucky that I’m your super duper favouritest cousin in the whole world or what, then?”
The twins looked at each other, and had a silent conversation with just a series of facial expressions that Cheese couldn’t understand. But they both looked back at him with determination.
“Alright.” “You seem cool.”
The latches unclicked at once.
“Oh my gosh, so, Seddie had this one crystal that was like, smooth black on the outside, but purple crystals on the inside! And Peddie had this one stamp that was on a three hundred year old envelope, and he taught me how to get them off without damaging stuff! And Seddie had this one rock which looked like when you spill cooking oil on the countertop and it catches the light, but it was made of metal and it was all made of squares!”
Pinkie nodded, “Uh huh?”
“Oh, and Peddie had this one stamp where they printed the head backward! They only made, like, fifty before anyone noticed!”
“And he had one?”
“He had two!”
“Wow.”
“Oh, oh, and Seddie also had this one rock where it looked like it was a flower growing out of it, but the flower was made of sapphire or something.”
Cheese Sandwich flicked Gummie’s reins. “You think he’s going to be like this the whole trip home?”
“Gosh, I sure hope so!” Pinkie beamed back, as L’il Cheese kept going on over her shoulders.
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Aww, this was sweet. Looks like both Pie branches get along famously.
Augh my heart
Ah, the feels. :-D Loved how Little Cheese is getting along so well with his cousins. And Sediment and Pediment showing Little Cheese their collections was great stuff.
Again, the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up were splendidly done. :-D
On to the next chapter (aka the last one for now)
Sediment and Pediment remind of the Huey, Dewey, and Louie, but there's only two.
9891566 As would be expected.
Isn't lil cheese a filly?
Sediment and Pediment remind me of the Zenos.
9892404
Nope. A colt with somewhat effeminate eyelashes.
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2019/10/lil-cheese-is-apparently-colt-not-filly.html
The twins remind me of a certain couple Water Tribe kids.
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/avatar/images/1/1b/Chiefs_Desna_and_Eska.png/revision/latest?cb=20140730174236
Excuse me, what.
Seddie and Peddie are adorable in a The Shining kind of way, but I'm still caught up on Beardbriar.
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/867/517/1ff.gif
Woah, isn't she a little young for that?
Where they get a giant alligator?!!?
Bismuth is the best rock.
9947984
That’s Gummy.