#7
Cozy was really, really good at learning English. Scarily good.
Those long stretches of the journey between stops in villages and hamlets when they were sufficiently out on their own for her to sneak out of the crate and sit just behind him or along from him she’d be forever pointing to stuff and getting the English word for this or that or the other. And at night, when they camped up (at a safe distance from anyone and anything), she pretty quickly got a handle on actual structure.
Couple days like that and they even started being able to have actual conversations. Faltering at first, but only at first, and then pretty fluid. Paul had been staggered.
Sharp kid.
“You picked all this up bloody quick,” he said to her one night as they sat opposite ends of a log facing the fire he’d put together.
“It’s because I have such a good teacher,” she said, sidling a little closer and giving him the Big Eyes again. Paul, scowling, hawked and spat into the fire, which was disgusting enough to entirely undermine anything she might have been trying to go for.
“You’re so full of shit, Cozy. Urgh, don’t swear in front of kids you’ll give them bad habits. You’re so full of it, Cozy, give over. There’s no-one here to fool so just drop it,” he said.
“Fine. You’re a terrible teacher, I’m just smarter than you. Better?”
“Much better.”
This was all doubly good too because Paul’s ability to learn Mareain was appalling. Almost as bad as Cozy’s ability to teach it. Neither had the patience required, and the results had been halting and unproductive at best. Both had reached the same conclusion pretty quickly and that was that there was no point.
So Cozy just got better at English, while Paul remained just as bad as he had with Mareain. For reasons she couldn’t fathom he seemed to find something about this oddly amusing.
On and on they went, further and further. The plan had been to head out a little and find the first place that didn’t seem to be aware of what it was she had done, but this was proving tricky. Everywhere they went had some of those posters, and the reward being offered seemed to just get bigger and bigger.
“This is intolerable! How can it be everypony knows?! Even out here? Come on!” Cozy groused after they’d had to move on from yet another initially-promising dropping-off point when it became clear that she was notorious there as she had been at the last however many places.
Paul had stopped the wagon a few miles further up the road and started another fire, the wagon shielding them from anyone who might have felt like taking the road at night. Cozy was pacing, Paul was sitting.
“Guess you pissed off the wrong people,” he said, unstrapping his leg, grunting in annoyance a moment later over having immediately forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to be swearing.
“It wasn’t that bad!
“Maybe they’re unhappy you stabbed them all in the back.”
Being the one to venture into the various places they passed through - for supplies, directions, whatever - Paul had had ample opportunity to learn more about what it was Cozy had actually done, and while the details tended to vary quite a bit (and get a bit more lurid as the days passed) he liked to feel he had a reasonable picture of things now.
Not that it really changed his opinion, much. He still didn’t care.
Cozy blew a raspberry.
“Oh please, don’t be so dramatic. If someone can’t see they’re being used then they deserve to be used. I mean, so I’ve heard.”
“Heh, like me?”
“No, you know what you’re doing, that’s different.”
“So I’m an idiot but I’m a self-aware idiot?”
“Well I wouldn’t be thaaaaat mean but yes! Exactly.”
“Good to know where I stand.”
“The next place we stop should be better, I think. No! It will be better! And once I’m there I can start again! Get revenge, start again! Yeah! Positive thinking! That’s the thing!” She said, pumping a hoof. Paul, setting his leg beside the camping chair he’d settled in, raised an eyebrow.
“Getting right back to it, huh?”
“Yeah! My thinking was fine, my plan made sense. The execution was just unsettled. Sometimes things go wrong, things outside my control. That’s all that happened, some things went wrong! If I just make doubly sure this time that nothing will - and put backups in place for if they do - it’ll work perfectly!”
Paul looked distinctly unimpressed. So unimpressed that Cozy double-took as she paced.
“What? What is it?” She asked.
“Too clever by half, that’s your problem, Cozy.”
“How is that a problem?”
“‘Cos it tends to mean you miss obvious stuff of think other stuff isn’t important when it actually is. All the gear and no idea.”
Cozy growled, pounding her hooves into the ground.
“Stop saying these things! I don’t know what they mean!”
It had been a good few days now, and quite a lot of things that Paul had been keeping a lid on during that time chose this moment to finally bubble forth. It had been a bumpy ride today, and his leg hurt to boot. Both of them, actually.
“That’s kind of the point, Cozy. You. Are. A. Child. I know you don’t like me saying that but you are. You’re a smart child, but you’re still a child. You know all this stuff - fuck, way more than me - but you have no context, no experience. You have no real idea how any of it works. Worse, you have no idea what works for you. Because how could you? You’re only four years old or something.”
“I’m twelve,” Cozy said through gritted teeth.
Paul recoiled.
“Seriously? Fuck,” He hissed, bit his tongue. “But you’re so small.”
She glared at him so hard he was wondered whether his beard might ignite. It didn’t though, thankfully. He waved a hand at her and leaned back in the chair, cradling his head.
“Well anyway my point still stands. You’re whipcrack smart, could probably do anything you put your mind to, but you just...you don’t know anything. You know things, but you have no, ah, appreciation of them. You need to grow up, basically.”
“Grow up?!” Cozy spluttered. “Grow up?!”
Paul, not for the first time, sighed. He’d probably sighed more since Cozy had intruded upon his formerly-quiet life than he had in however many years he’d been here. Something about her was just so draining.
“Whatever. Fine, don’t listen to me. This isn’t a fucking road trip anyway, this isn’t a bonding experience, we’re not discovering ourselves out here. I’m just taking you from here to there so you can do whatever it was you wanted to do somewhere away from me. Yes?”
“That’s right!”
“Good. Glad we sorted that out.”
With that settled Cozy stalked off to sulk and Paul had an angry smoke.
Cozy’s chosen spot to sulk was around the wagon, hidden from view from the road and also hidden from Paul, all on her own. Once there, she pulled out the toy that Paul had given her. Keeping it under her cloak (which she still habitually wore, you could never be too careful these days) wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she couldn’t think of where else to put it.
Setting it down in front of her she looked at it. It, in turn, looked up at her, smooth, featureless little head cocking, waiting for instructions.
“You listen to me, don’t you?” She asked.
The toy nodded.
“Good. Stand up straight,” she said.
And it did what it was told!
Was that so hard?!
“If only everypony could be as clever as you,” she said, giving it a pat.
For a split-second Cozy then experience a blinding moment of clarity where she realised she was patting a toy on the head and congratulating it for doing what it had been made to do. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this.
Hurriedly tucking it back under the cloak she returned to pester Paul, if only to have some noise to help her keep her mind occupied.
“So…” she said, clambering onto the unoccupied camping chair that he’d set up a healthy distance away from his own. “You said that it was mainly clockwork that got the toys to move, right? And-”
“No, Cozy,” said Paul.
This didn’t annoy her unduly. She’d rapidly discovered on their little trip that Paul was very cagey about these sorts of things, and that the key to getting around this was constant pressure. A teeny, probing query here or there had allowed her wheedle out of him, for example, that the magic involved in the toys largely took the form of little engraved chems set inside them - that thing he’d been using the little hissing, smoking tool to fiddle with.
Cozy had of course been quietly delighted, because that sounded like the sort of thing she could do on her own, once it came to it. She could have taken apart the toy he’d given her to investigate further, but she was worried that if took it apart she might break it and she broke the toy he’d given her then…
...then…
Then he’d known she’d been poking around and he wouldn’t answer anymore of her questions! Yeah! That was it.
So that was fine. For now she decided to go in a different direction.
“Heh, sorry. Let’s talk about something else! Back in your shop you said you arrived with some friends? Were these friends from when you were making that stuff for the army or…?”
“I’m not telling you about my life, Cozy,” Paul said, projecting smoke sideways out of his mouth. Cozy groaned. What was wrong with this alien thing? Most ponies loved talking about themselves! Why couldn’t he work right?!
“Come on! I couldn’t get you to shut up about yourself the other day! Back in your shitty little shop!”
Paul, more annoyed at himself for having let his bad habits rub off on Cozy than on her for actually using his favoured language, glowered and wagged a finger at her, scattering ash as he did so.
“Don’t swear,” he said.
“You swear all the time!”
“Yes but I’m allowed. When you’re an adult you can be as hypocritical as you like. Right now no swearing for you. I’m going to have to watch myself now, aren’t I? And no, I was talking about work and that was because I thought you were just some kid interested in the toys. Then I kept talking about it because I thought it might be relevant to your situation, might help you out a little.”
“Oh, so you’re interested in my development now are you? Thought you said that wasn’t what this trip was about!”
Paul stubbed out the smouldering remains of what Cozy had learnt was called a cigarette on his (metal) leg - something which, if the burn marks were anything to go by, he did more than he should - and threw up some defensive jazz-hands.
“Ooh, look, you got me. I don’t give a fu- I don’t really care about you or what you want to do, Cozy, I just think that you probably should, being as how you’re the one who’s going to have to live with it. Well, one of the ones, given the scope of what you apparently like to do. But whatever. Who cares about them, right?”
“What does that mean?” She snapped.
“Even if I could explain it - and I can’t - would you listen to me?”
She didn’t really have an answer for that. Well, she did, but she and he both knew what it was already, so saying it out was kind of redundant. Instead, sullen silence descended once more. The fire popped. Paul lit up again.
Cozy was the one to get things going:
“How would what you did be relevant to me anyway?” She asked.
“Because we did bad things. Both of us.”
She looked at him sideways.
“That’s debatable,” she said. Paul rubbed his temples.
“No, no it isn’t. If what you did wasn’t bad you wouldn’t be on the run, would you? We can split hairs on the difference between law and justice and blah blah whatever but, typically, doing the right thing doesn’t result in everyone hating your guts and banding together to bring you down with peace, friendship and hugs for all. Yeah?”
“~Still debatable~!” She said, sing-song.
“Fine. You tell yourself that. But still, just think about it. Yes it’s relevant. Best years of my life wasted making things that made the world worse. What a load of toss. I used to like doing those things, you know? And I was good at them. Guess that’s why they scooped me up. Wasted, fuc- just wasted!”
“Well, I mean, you did say they made you, right? Would have, uh, shot you otherwise?”
One thing she had learnt in her time with Paul was that to be shot was not a good thing where he came from. Apparently it was rather like being shot here, only messier, if what he said was anything to go by. And didn’t involve arrows or bolts, often as not. He hadn’t gone into details.
“Okay fine. Best years of my life stolen, better? Still gone, that’s the point. Years I should have been doing anything else. Could have been doing anything else! Gone. But that’s me. I didn’t have a choice, fine. You do! But you’ve locked yourself into this one line of thinking! It’s like, uh - wagon rolls down a dirt road, leaves something in the ground? Uh…”
He ran a finger back and forth through the air to indicate lines.
“Tracks?” Cozy suggested, but he shook his head.
“No, deeper, like the kind the wheel gets stuck in,” he said.
“Rut?”
He clicked his fingers.
“Yeah, that’s the one. A rut. Heh, look at you, helping me out in English now! That’s some scary stuff. How’d that even happen? Smart kid, smart kid. But yes, it’s like there’s a rut, and you’re tiny, right at the bottom. Can just see behind and ahead, so you just think there’s two ways to go, forward and back. But if you climbed out you’d see all these other directions! The whole fuc- the whole world! So much you could do if you just put a little effort in! Just looked up! It’s fucking miserable, Cozy. I don’t know you and I don’t pretend to know you but it’s clear you’re a bright, driven kid but you’re just pissing it all up a wall going after the dumbest, pettiest shit. What a fucking waste.”
He took a steadying breath then a steadying drag. Got a bit carried away there.
“Still. Your choice. If that’s what floats your boat you go for it. Once you’re off somewhere you can keep doing whatever it is you feel like doing. Maybe you’ll win this time, who knows? Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
“It’s not dumb…” Cozy mumbled.
She kind of wanted to be angry with him - would have preferred feeling angry with him - but every time she looked at his face she didn’t see him being angry with her, he just saw him being disappointed. And not in the betrayed and hurt way she’d seen from everypony else, that she was used to, that she could have handled. This was something else.
Something she couldn’t quite put a hoof on, which only made it worse.
Paul held up his hands.
“Hey, look, that’s just me, alright? I don’t know you, like I said and like you said, too. You’re probably right. You’re a smart kid, you probably got a better handle on it than I do. So you do what you think is best. Seems to have worked out pretty well for you so far.”
Taking one last drag he flicked the remains into the fire (muttering to himself about “And that’s another fucking waste and all.”) and laced his hands across his belly, slouching deeper into the chair.
Another of the things that Cozy had learnt about Paul during this trip was that he could sleep sitting up if he wanted to. Or, also if he wanted to, pretend he was just to catch her out.
Difficult to tell those two apart, yet another thing she’d learnt.
“I’m turning in. Watch the fire. If you feel like trying to steal the wagon in the night could you at least be quiet about it so you don’t wake me up? Ta.”
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Woo hoo!
10061475
Not you. You're excluded.
10061476
Having them speak actual English now, kinda ruined the whole Russian Anon backstory, although I had a laugh imagining Cozy learning Russian and picturing what it would sound like with her voice.
I'm very curious to see how their future unfolds. Will Cozy keep on this path of revenge? Will Anon see how little the other ponies will accept Cozy due to her being a criminal even if she were to try and change?
Fun times ahead for sure.
Hmm, I thought she's a pony. Good to know.
Presumably that's because adults have more power --- that exact thingie that Cozy was out to get
10061511
If it makes you happier, just imagine the "English" bits as Russian, and now he's more erudite as he's speaking in a language he is comfortable with - here represented as Englishy English because, well, the whole story is in English. And I'm me.
Doesn't change the story, really, so whatever works for you.
Leave it to Cozy to learn a completely new language in just a few days. Already she's having such lovely conversations with the Australian guy. I do wonder if it'll matter if she does decide to change her ways though, seeing as she's wanted pretty far and wide.
10061522
She's actually a grape with cocktail sticks for legs, it's just no-one has the heart to bring it up.
10061528
She struck me as a smart kid. Also cartoons. Magic. Lazy writing.
And stay tuned...
10061524
Naw I get that, and it's easier to see him speaking English. It's just funny to think Cozy is speaking Russian.
10061551
Well you're not wrong!
Cute story! Paul is A Friend.
It must be noted that upon reading this line, I immediately sang "We can win any argument with: because we say so!!"
10061677
That's because it works! And it works because I say so!
I'm big and you're small, I'm right and you're wrong, I'm smart and you're dumb, and there's nothing you can do about it!
10061681
Dammit Matilda's Dad.
Also, I found a picture of Paul.
No wonder he's good with 'toys'.
10061797
Yeah! Someone got the reference!
And ya know, I never got around to seeing Dark Fate. I was torn. Heard it was pretty good as an action film.
Ok, first of all, love the authors note. Now I can have them talk true slav!
I remember when I was AN age. Those were the days.
Do you mean Gems or Charms?
10181612
I meant to say along across.
Chem isn't a typo.
oh shit. he's polish and was forced into working for either the nazis or the commies.
10182005
Let me make my own version of his life story:
He was a British-born guy living in Poland. Judging by his occupation and description of it, he was a well-off mechanic, maybe working for a British car company there. The war rolled on, Poland was occupied, and he was forced to work on railway guns. Soviet rolled around, and now he worked as a tank factory labourer. His time there humbled him, with the quiet and peace of Equestria being more than enough of a gift for his previously utterly miserable life in the Eastern Bloc. Simple man with simple tastes, but with street smarts to survive under the red banner.
"Magical mishap" might mean that he was eventually employed under one of the Soviet's numerous weapons program, and they were researching something akin to a nuclear power - but obviously not. The program failed, the entire thing blew up and got covered up by the Soviet officials - as per usual. He was sent into Equestria, where he was rescued by his boss and taught Mareain. In reverse, he learned magimechanical, and made toys for a living, possibly for them both.
Now he's with Cozy, going on a trip in his favourite
rocketshipwagon.10427938
Yeah i see... Soviet magical clockwork soldiers made by British engineer from occupied poland destroying cities to break walls in WW2...