(BONUS) At The Theatre
They ended up arriving at the theatre a bit early for the community play to start, as they were still setting up the stage for the performance, but as this wouldn’t take too much longer and the previous play had concluded, they were still permitted to enter and take their seats if they were willing to wait a few more minutes before the performance began. Having nothing else they could do to kill the time remaining though, Smolder and Gallus decided they might as well.
The theatre itself was no overly elaborate affair, not that either of them were experts on the subject, but it was a fairly sizeable room housing a moderately-sized, professional looking, stage and capable of seating easily over a hundred creatures. For this performance though it didn’t look like it would need to, as only a smattering of attendees had arrived as of yet. It was possible this was because they were still early, but it didn’t seem like there would really be that many more coming. The point was that Gallus and Smolder pretty much had their choice of seating as the rows of long bench seats promised to remain mostly empty.
“I guess that means we could sit in the front row if we want,” Smolder reasoned aloud as they idled in the aisle, considering their seating options.
“True,” Gallus agreed, rubbing the underside of his beak as he surveyed the still half-empty front row. “But most everybody else coming to this will probably think the same thing, so I imagine it’ll fill quickly.”
“Yeah, but so what?” Smolder replied with a shrug. “If we claim a seat now, then we’ll have beaten them to the punch.”
“Yes, and also have to rub elbows with them too,” Gallus added smartly, “because you can bet that’s the row that’s going to fill up the fastest and become the most crowded.”
“Ooh, that’s a good point,” Smolder relented, looking back at the front row as she reconsidered it. “Honestly, I’m not sure I wanna put up with that.”
“I figured you wouldn’t,” Gallus said with a nod, and instead led her towards a row more towards the middle of the theatre, which was staying fairly, but not totally, empty. “So I say we sit here. It’ll still give us a good view of the stage but also not leave us feeling crowded or as easily noticed.”
“Mmkay,” Smolder readily agreed and plopped down on the edge of the seat before scooting over so to make room for Gallus too. “I guess now we just need to wait for the show to start.”
They sat there on the bench idly for a few moments, looking around as a couple other ponies leisurely took their seats, in no hurry to do so as it was still some more minutes until the play was scheduled to start. Smolder started swinging her legs back and forth while Gallus tapped out a quiet rhythm on the bench seat with one of his talons.
Finally, Smolder let out a groan. “Ugh, this is boring, sitting around waiting for this thing to start,” she muttered. “It needs to hurry up and just start already. Waited long enough for it as it is already tonight.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s something we can do to preoccupy ourselves until then,” Gallus assured.
“Oh yeah?” Smolder asked, folding her arms. “What do you suggest, then?”
Gallus glanced at her briefly but didn’t respond. When Smolder glanced back at him, he averted his gaze suddenly and shifted awkwardly. Taking that to mean that he didn’t actually have any ideas, she went back to gazing around, bored. But then she noticed him slowly and cautiously lift a foreleg with the clear intent to wrap it affectionately around her shoulders. Partway there, though, he seemed to chicken out as he paused for a moment, then, apparently reconsidering, reverently lowered it again. She wondered if he decided that was being too forward.
Regardless, Smolder had to grin at Gallus’s surprisingly gentlecreature-like behavior, but despite quickly glancing around at the other audience members filing into the theatre around them, aware any one of them could notice what they were doing, she ultimate decided she wasn’t going to let herself care about that. So to silently convey that she didn’t mind, she grabbed his foreleg and wrapped it around her shoulders for him anyway.
“You know, another advantage to us sitting further back like this is that we’re less likely to be noticed doing things like this during the show,” she reasoned softly, affectionately, as she snuggled into his soft and warm side.
Gallus gave her a surprised look for this unanticipated show of affection, but he didn’t resist and instead leaned into it. “You know, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to,” he whispered back to her regardless. “I haven’t forgotten how you feel about public displays like this.”
Smolder sighed in agreement, but persisted anyway. “Yeah, but maybe what I need to do is to just dragon up and bear it,” she reasoned. “I’m a big gal, I really ought to be able to handle this. Besides, I think I already made it clear how much I hate how that bugs me anyway.”
Gallus opened his beak to retort immediately but again paused and reconsidered, choosing his words carefully. “Just so long as you’re okay with it,” he stressed. “I don’t want you thinking you have to be forced into it.”
Smolder, however, had to grin more at Gallus’s thoughtful concern for her wishes though, and rewarded him by snuggling even closer. Everypony else in the room suddenly seemed irrelevant and she found she preferred it that way. “See, this is what I like about you,” she murmured back. “You care about these sort of things.”
Gallus snorted. “I’ve seen plenty of griffons back home who didn’t, which made them such…” he trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished, but it was still clear he didn’t think of such griffons highly.
It surprised Smolder a little, not used to Gallus leveling such serious criticisms on other griffons. Normally, if he chose to make any sort of complaints, it was more petty and sarcastic, not with such clear, albeit repressed, emotion. She realized at that moment it was a point that Gallus privately felt strongly about. “Such what?” she prompted, not wanting him to hold back on her account.
Gallus sighed wearily, the tense coil of emotion building in him unraveling as quickly as it had appeared. “I’d rather spare you the details, honestly.”
Smolder made an amused laugh at that. “I’m not a namby-pamby pony, Gallus, I can handle it. So what were you going to call them?” When he still didn’t answer, she made a guess. “Jerks?”
Gallus winced faintly. “I was thinking of something a bit more vulgar,” he admitted, a little uncomfortable.
Smolder’s eyebrows slyly went up. “We talking something like, say, a reference to certain male anatomy?” she guessed next.
Gallus had to smirk a little at her frankness. “More like certain rear-end orifices.”
Smolder covered her mouth so to hide her wicked cackle at that. “I don’t doubt that they were, then,” she remarked.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Gallus replied knowingly. She again could tell the griffon was holding back some his true thoughts on the matter, but now she didn’t need him to elaborate to have an idea of what they were.
It did lead her to sigh a little heavily though. “I feel like I owe you then, making you put up with my…dumb slag.”
“You owe me no such thing,” Gallus immediately replied, and patted her reassuring on the shoulder with the paw he still had wrapped around her. “Just being here with me tonight is more than enough.”
Smolder couldn’t help but grin big at that, heart feeling warm. “Yeah.” She lovingly snuggled closer still. “I’m glad you’re being so understanding about this.”
“Hey, just trying to be a good boyfriend,” Gallus said, casually shrugging it off. He nudged her gently. “Besides, I could use some adjusting time too. It is still kinda weird seeing you so snuggly like this.”
“Eh, what can I say?” Smolder replied as she rubbed the side of her head against his blue plumage, “you’re soft, fluffy, and cozy. I sort of wish we’d started snuggling sooner.”
“And you’re comfortably warm,” Gallus added, letting his head lean on top of Smolder’s, dodging her purple crest and savoring the muted warmth the dragoness perpetually emitted. “Where were you when I needed you all those cold winters I spent in Griffonstone?”
Smolder chuckled. “In the Dragon Lands, where it’s actually warm year-round, as it should be,” she teased.
“Lucky,” Gallus snickered in the same teasing tone.
They remained like that for a few more minutes, snuggled close as they watched the other attendees slowly file into the theatre and pick out their seats. True to their predictions, the front of the theatre filled up fairly quickly, but it thinned out more towards the middle where they sat so that while it was certainly not empty, they were able to retain a fairly respectable amount of space between themselves and the next attendee sitting on their bench. Beyond that, other than that they were all ponies, there didn’t seem to be any real trend amongst them, though Gallus did point out a few who appeared to be mare and stallion couples out on dates like them, which helped them a little because then it made it feel less like they were the only ones.
Finally, as it grew time for the show to begin and the staff made final preparations to get the audience settled and raise the curtain, Smolder realized something. “You know, throughout all of this, I never did catch just what the heck they’re performing,” she remarked aloud. “Did you?”
“Uh, sort of,” Gallus admitted. “Judging from the title, though, it seemed like it ought to be at least somewhat exciting and interesting.”
“Really. What’s it called, then?”
“Some play called The Tempest. I think it deals with a wizard guy and a storm.”
“Ooh. Sounds modern.”
It wasn’t modern. Not in the slightest.
“What is’t?” a young actress on stage was in middle of speaking in heavy Ergothan Ponish, “A spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, it carries a brave form. But ‘tis a spirit.”
“No, wench,” an older, bearded, actor replied, “it eats, and sleeps, and hath such senses as we have, such. This gallant which thou see’st was in the wreck: and, but he’s something stained with grief—that’s beauty’s canker—thou mightst call him a goodly person: he hath lost his fellows and strays about to find ’em.”
“I might call him a thing divine,” the actress replied, “for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.”
“It goes on, I see,” the actor remarked, “as my soul prompts it.”
And go on it did as a third actor standing off to one side of the stage began to regale the audience with his current condition of being. The others in the audience seemed to be soaking it in well enough, but they were probably already familiar with plays such as this. Gallus and Smolder, however, sat with heads tilted and jaws slightly agape as they strained their brains trying to follow along with the dense and old lines of dialogue.
“You getting any of this?” Smolder whispered to Gallus finally.
“…kind of?” Gallus whispered back, clearly unsure.
“Well, you’re having better luck than I am then. You wanna try and fill me in on what the heck’s even happening?”
“Well…” Gallus pointed with one talon, “…I think that guy there is part of the ship’s crew that were in the shipwreck earlier, and…”
“Wait, when was there a shipwreck?”
“At the very start of the play. Remember when there was all that shouting from off-stage…?”
“That was supposed to be a shipwreck?”
“Shh!” one of the ponies sitting in the row in front of them turned and hushed them with a cross look.
Gallus and Smolder both went quiet again and tried to watch the three actors now all conversing with each other, attempting for a few more minutes to enjoy something from the play.
Smolder was still finding most of it sailing right over her head, though. “Why can’t they just talk like normal creatures?” she muttered under her breath. “It’d be so much easier…”
“Yeah, well, I’m starting to think this play is old enough that it was actually written like this to begin with,” Gallus replied back, keeping his voice low.
Smolder shook her head. “There was a time when ponies actually talked like that?”
“So I’m told.”
“How the heck did they ever understand each other back then?”
Gallus shrugged. “I guess when everybody talks like that, you just adapt or something.”
They were again shushed by other members of the audience so they went quiet once more for a few moments, but not for very long as Smolder still couldn’t wrap her head around the antiquated language of the performance.
“Rocks, can you imagine going about your day and talking like that?” she asked, motioning with one paw at the performers on stage.
Gallus took a moment to envision it and had to stifle a chuckle. “It would make some of the more mundane parts of the day seem silly,” he admitted. He paused for a second before leaning close and continued, taking on a formal accent as he attempted to imitate the dated manner of speaking. “Hark! I shall depart hence to that fine seller of goods so to obtain thine milk as thou hast asked of me!”
Smolder let of a sputtering raspberry as she attempted to withhold her laughter at this, drawing more annoyed looks from those sitting around them for the disruption, but smugly choosing to overlook this, Gallus pressed on anyway.
“Berate me not, witch, for I hath heard thine rebukes the time previous you spoke!” he continued on melodramatically, still keeping his voice low, but not trying as hard as he’d previously done. “I will get thine milk, so cease with thine tongue-lashing!”
Smolder had to clamp both paws over her mouth to keep from being heard laughing, but still her giggles were muffled but still clearly audible, with the both of them drawing more dirty looks from the audience around them, trying to watch the play. Despite knowing they were making a scene though, Gallus was enjoying Smolder’s amusement too much to stop.
“Pah!” he declared, getting caught up in the moment that he was starting to forget to keep his voice down, “Thou wilt watch where you are driving, thou loathsome carriage driver! Canst thou seeth that I am attempting to cross here? I must go forth presently to obtain milk for my witch of a wife!”
Smolder let out a half-suppressed wheeze for air as she bent over trying to keep her amusement inside, visibly shaking from the effort. She made a feeble attempt to wave off Gallus, trying to get him to stop before she lost control.
Gallus chose to go for the metaphorical kill instead. “You there! Where canst I findeth the privy? I needth to make water!”
A loud hoot of laughter finally escaped from Smolder, loud enough it was probably heard in most of the otherwise quiet theater. This earned them glares from all over the audience surrounding them and a harsh series of shushes to try and get them to shut up. Still shaking with laughter, Smolder gave Gallus a shove.
“Stop it, stop it,” she giggled as she tried to reel it in again, swatting him playfully a couple time so to drive the point in, “we’re making a scene and annoying everybody—you’ll get us in trouble if we keep it up!” Despite that ominous claim though, she couldn’t stop giggling.
Gallus chuckled himself, trying and failing to stay composed too. “Well, it’s not my fault this is more entertaining than the play itself,” he argued teasingly.
Another round of annoyed shushes rang out around them accompanied by someone nearby shouting “Well, if you don’t like it, you can just go!” earning him another series of shushes too.
Point thusly made, Smolder and Gallus managed to fall silent again for a few moments, turning their attention back onto the play, which had been continuing undeterred despite the disruptions in the audience. A fourth actor had now appeared on the scene, but their antics had caused Gallus and Smolder to miss who he was and why he was here now, making them even more lost than they had been before. It wasn’t long before the play was yet again failing to hold their interest.
“For the record,” Smolder whispered with a snicker, “that was more entertaining than whatever the heck this play is supposed to be doing.”
“Oh, and we hadn’t even gotten to the ridiculous attires they’re wearing,” Gallus replied back, motioning to the era-appropriate but somewhat melodramatic attires the play’s cast wore. “I mean, look at that one’s cape!”
“I know, right? Where did they even get enough material to make it? Those big thick drapes in me and Sil’s dorm probably aren’t even enough, and you’ve seen the size of those drapes, right?”
“Oh, I’m sure they eventually found the right set of drapes for the job,” Gallus quipped with a snort.
Smolder suppressed a renewed giggle. “Think they told whosever drapes they were that they were taking them first?” she asked.
Gallus pondered it for a second, rubbing at the chin of his beak, before smirking and suddenly his faux-Ergothan Ponish accent was back again. “Prithee—doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”
Their peals of laughter that followed once again disrupted the play for the other audience members, and this time in continued until a bright magical light suddenly shone down on them. Surprised, they stopped and turned to face the annoyed theater stallion that had arrived at their end of the row. He was casting the light on them with his unicorn horn and was glaring at them. So was most of the audience around them.
“Hey,” Gallus greeted the stallion with a chill nod, before smirking unrepentantly and added, “best be careful with that magic there, bud—you might disturb the audience.”
But apparently his sass wasn’t appreciated because only a couple of minutes later found them both getting dropped unceremoniously out on the street outside by said stallion’s magic.
“Oh, you think that’s funny?” Gallus rolled over to shout back at the stallion’s retreating behind as he vanished back inside the theatre. “Then the joke’s still on you, mister, because I want my money back...not that I paid any since this was a free show and all, but still!”
Laughing still, Smolder gave him a swat to silence him. “You tightwad,” she cackled before pushing herself upright. “Ah well, it’s not like we were enjoying that play anyway.” She stood up and stretched, popping her back. “So might as well call it quits on that while we’re ahead.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right,” Gallus relented with a chortle as he also rolled over and onto his feet. He shook some of the dirt from their forced ejection of his body. “Okay, so no go on the play, then. Where to next?”
Smolder glanced up at the moon now hanging high in the sky. “Eh, it’s getting late enough, we might as well call it quits while we’re ahead.” She made a small yawn. “Besides, I think I’m just about ready for bed anyway.”
Gallus rolled his eyes but didn’t quite suppress his sigh. “All right then,” he relented and jerked his head down the street, “Might as well start walking back for the school.”
Smolder quickly fell in step with him, grinning. “If it helps,” she assured him, catching on to his repressed disappointment, “we totally gotta do this all again another night here soon.”
This caused Gallus to perk up again. “All right, then,” he remarked, pleased. “I’ll be looking forward to that.”
Smolder patted him on the back as they walked off. “Me too, feather butt, me too.”
Bit of a longer one this time, but I doubt anyone's going to complain. 
For those who don't know, the play is Shakespeare's The Tempest, which I picked because it seemed like a good play that could readily fit into the world of Equestria without need for drastic alterations so to "ponify" it, but also seemed like the sort of play that might be something Gallus and Smolder would be interested in at first glance, while also being confident enough that they'd still get totally lost as to what's going on even while watching it be preformed (as with all Shakespeare, it's best enjoyed seen performed than read from a book 
).
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If you see like one of those old movies or at least like try to look like old-time place or something like that they sometimes need to talk like that lol I seen plays like that
Lol this was pretty funny chapter I'm surprised that gallus and smolder wanted to see a theater play I guess for the experience just like how I did for my first experience with my family watching a theater some of them are good but some of the wore boring so basically those two got them self in trouble it got thrown out the theater not the good way to end the date night but at least I had a good laugh this was a pretty funny story although this would be very interesting what else can they do on there date night
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The original reasons they went to see the play were two-fold:
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Ohh ok got it
Well there's one bright spot of this experience..........they can cross out theater from any future dates!
