Afternoon
Rose and Sam
Chapter 6: Afternoon
Admiral Biscuit
We’d spent more than an hour at lunch but I wasn’t going to count that against her. It was my responsibility to tell her when to work, after all.
Against my protests she’d cleaned up the dishes and even wiped down the kitchen table, then gone off to the bathroom and given me a few moments alone to reflect. Sam was polite and helpful, as good as any day-laborer I’d hired before, and the more we talked the more curious I got about where she’d come from. I still wasn’t sure I should ask directly, although I didn’t know why. Sam seemed guarded, wary, not like how I imagined a pony on the run would be, but like there was something in her past she’d rather not remember. Was it some tragedy she’d escaped from?
Daisy got that way sometimes, she hadn’t had the best foalhood. I knew she’d been teased at school and she’d moved out to Ponyville to get away from her past. Maybe Sam had, too. Maybe that was why she talked to Nurse Tenderheart all the time, just like Daisy had.
I got the idea she didn’t have many friends in town and wondered if I could be her friend. Everypony needed friends; friends would help you and keep you safe. I didn’t know anypony who didn’t have friends, who stuck to themselves all the time. Well, Berry Black did but he was a donkey, and Zecora did but she was a zebra.
Neither of them had tried to live in town, though. Sam had rented a house.
When I thought about it, it troubled me that ponies hadn’t reached out to Zecora more, maybe invited her to live in town. I didn’t know much about zebras either, some ponies said they were solitary and other ponies said they lived in tribes. Next time I saw her at market, I’d give Zecora a flower.
•••
I wasn’t as conversational as I should have been at first. We had a lot of starter trays that needed to get filled with dirt and then the stratified seeds we’d been preparing. I was intending to do that on my own, although I thought she was smart enough and her paws were clever enough she might be able to do it herself.
And if she did, I could help out with Lily and Daisy’s flowers. I hadn’t wanted to let Sam touch Lily’s flowers especially, lest she have a complete meltdown and rip them all up. So once I set Sam to her task, I moved further across the yard and started weeding Lily’s flowers.
I was thinking of more than the flowers at the end of my muzzle, I was thinking about Sam and how my opinion of her had changed from when I’d first heard about her to when I’d first seen her chopping wood for Ginger Gold, to my hesitation when she’d appeared on my doorstep to help out, all the way to the present. There was something about her that just kept my attention and it could have been fear or curiosity or pity and I wasn’t sure which it was.
Daisy would understand, maybe more than most ponies. Lily would shriek and run off or tell me that I was being a foal and maybe I was.
I must have been completely lost in thought, weeding by instinct, because all of a sudden Sam spoke right behind me and of course I jumped, I hadn’t expected her to be that close. I even almost nipped off a bud by mistake when I clenched my jaw and tensed for a kick.
I think if she’d touched my rump, I might have kicked her.
Sam must have realized, because she crouched down to be at eye-level, almost sitting on her hind paws, and her hand reached out and I moved back then let out a breath and leaned forward again, just as she was taking her hand away. “Sorry, I was lost in thought.” I wasn’t sure if her kind nuzzled, but it felt like the right thing to do, and I brushed against her cheek.
“I guess so, I . . . I shouldn’t have sneaked up on you like that.”
“Your paws are too quiet.”
“Feet.”
“That’s what you call them?”
“Feet and hands.” She pointed to each in turn. Her hands were streaked with dirt and compost, and some of it had stuck to her skin, too. And her pants as well. “What do you want me to do now? All the starters are full of dirt, should I help weed these plants?”
“No, that’s not a good idea. You—we could either go in the greenhouse and start moving flowers from starter trays to pots, or I can show you how to plant roses in the trays you just made. It’s probably best to start with the seeds, we can work together and it’ll go faster.”
Sam nodded. I didn’t have to show her where the greenhouse was, she knew it right away. The door was too low for her and she crouched down until she was past the frame, and I followed her in. I could clip my head on the doorframe if I didn’t duck, too. A lower door was cheaper and also helped keep more heat in, so it was worth the occasional bonk.
Our starter trays were next to a workbench we’d gotten cheap from Applejack when she reorganized her barn. “That’s where we’ll work,” I explained. “I have to get the seeds from our icebox, and you can carry in some of the starter trays you made, not too many or else it gets crowded. We don’t want to get confused about what’s got seeds in it and what doesn’t, I have a hard time sniffing out newly-sprouted seeds.” I’d spent a whole week watering and caring for a rack of trays I thought I’d planted, and didn’t want to make that mistake again. Daisy had jokingly called me the Princess of Barren Soil, which I didn’t mind since she’d done the same thing the year before and I’d twisted her tail for it a time or two.
•••
I hadn’t thought about how close we’d have to work. Both the corner that the workbench was tucked in and the need to show Sam exactly what to do necessitated it. The roses could take some variation in depth, but not a lot if I wanted them to be at their best.
And without thinking about it, instinct insisted that Sam was against the wall, in an awkward corner where she needed to reach over me or across me to get seeds or a new tray when the old one was filled and at first we did our best to keep our personal space but before too long we were like a pair of ponies in harness.
Some of it was my fault, but if Sam made a mistake I’d be the one watching a tray not sprout while she was on to her next job, my bits in her hand. That was always the risk with day-laborers, and I think she understood that I wanted to make sure she was doing what she was supposed to and didn’t complain about the tight working conditions.
By the time I was sure she didn’t need close supervision, that she’d learned what she was supposed to do, we were already practically harness-buddies and I’d stopped focusing on her hands or the occasional brush of fur against flesh. There’s always a point when two mares hitched in tandem get a rhythm, and we had. It wasn’t as speedy as it would have been with Lily or Daisy, but it was close, and by the time the racks were full I was starting to wonder if she might make a good apprentice.
•••
For all her artfulness at planting seeds, she wasn’t as good at transplanting. She was clumsy with roots and bruising on stems, and even if her ears weren’t drooping, I could tell she was upset that she couldn’t seem to get it quite right. I didn’t dare trust her with the sprouting starters, but those could wait if we split our tasks, that would put me ahead on my flowers and there’d be plenty of time tomorrow to get Lily and Daisy’s plants in their new pots.
She moved to carrying and fetching supplies and if she was disappointed by what some ponies would consider a demotion, she didn’t show it. Plenty of eager fillies had apprenticed for a short while, thinking they were ready, and they’d found out that there was more labor than glory, especially just starting out. Some of them understood and willingly did the boringest tasks, and others complained and muttered and I knew they’d grow up sooner or later but flowers didn’t transplant themselves.
I kind of lost track of time, and didn’t realize how late it was getting until I went into the house to use the bathroom. There were clouds building overhead, too; there was an evening rainshower scheduled.
I hated leaving things half-completed, and decided that we could finish the shelf that we were working on and then I’d pay her and send her on her way.
But that was kind of rude, by the time we were done it would nearly be dinnertime, and if I was going to keep her late I ought to provide dinner, too. There was plenty of food in the house and I knew some things she liked, I could easily make a salad. Or—”Sam, do you like cheese?”
“Cheese?”
“Do you know what cheese is?”
Sam set down the pot she was working on and nodded. “It’s just, sorry, that caught me by surprise. Yes, I do. Haven’t seen any at market, though.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know, Cascaval, she’s the cheesemaker, doesn’t sell at market. She’s got a store over on Terret Street.” I felt a blush creeping up my cheeks. DId she know what cheese was? She wasn’t that ignorant. “I was going to make dinner, do you like casseroles?”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.” She was too skinny, anypony could see that. If she was still working for Berry Black she couldn’t have been making all that many bits, and now that she was paying for a house, too. Daisy might have thought she was showing off her money by carrying it around and wearing clothes, but I didn’t think she had all that much. Maybe she had to skip meals sometimes, I could see that her pants didn’t fit her right, she kept tugging them up.
Was it vanity? Had she fallen on hard times but didn’t want to give up the last dregs of her former life? Was that what she was hiding?
Why had she come to Ponyville, and why hadn’t she moved into town right away but lurked in the woods through the winter?
I was sure there was a reason, but I didn’t know her well enough to ask. But I could be sure I was a good host, that I paid her what she’d earned, and that I made sure she had food in her.
And a bath, too. Besides the dirt on her, she had a thin sheen of sweat. I couldn’t help with the dirt-stains on her clothes, but I could send her away cleaner than the rain would make her.
•••
We finally finished the shelf and carried all the castoffs to the compost pile in the corner of the yard. I scrubbed my hooves on our mat, and she did the same, not digging in as much. The bottoms of her feet were smooth and looked soft, and her hoof boots were not in good shape, so she’d decided to leave them off while she worked. There wasn’t anything sharp in our garden, we made sure of that.
“You can take a bath if you want,” I said as we stepped into the house. “Wash off the sweat and soil while I get dinner ready.”
“I can wash off in the creek later.”
“You don’t have to, you got dirty in our flowerbeds so you can get clean in our bathtub.”
“I don’t have any soap.”
“There’s plenty in there, soap and shampoo and mane conditioner, it’s all good and it’s all from Salsoa, you can pick whatever scent you want. I’ve even got peppermint and lavender. The left faucet is hot water and the right faucet is cold, and there are plenty of towels, too. Just don’t use the raspberry-colored one, that one’s Lily’s and she won’t like it if your scent is on her towel.”
Sam hesitated, as if about to protest again, then turned and went into the bathroom while I started preparing dinner.
Sometimes I only focused on dinner, especially when I was alone in the kitchen. I’d keep my ear turned for conversation, of course, but we had a rotation with who cooked dinner most days, and so two of us would be working while the third prepared the meal.
I could hear water running and splashing as she bathed. Our shower was too low for her unless she crouched down and I felt bad about that; some days after hard work it was really relaxing to take a shower, it was like a rain shower but could be made any temperature. Did she know how a shower worked? I could go in and show her, but I was making dinner and she was pretty clever and could probably figure it out. I hadn’t had to explain how the valve on the spigot worked, just pointed her in the right direction.
Did Berry have a shower? Did Sam? She said she bathed in the creek, and if that was true hot water must have felt like a luxury.
I didn’t know how long it would take her in the bath. Her hands were clever and she hardly had any fur to wash, just the small patches under her arms. I suppose not having a coat would be an advantage when it came to bathing, and I did know some ponies who kept theirs trimmed really short if they were doing hot work like baking.
•••
I had the casserole in the oven by the time she came out of the bath, wearing her dirty pants. I didn’t like that, it didn’t seem right that she’d get dressed in sweaty clothes after a bath. Was she trying to impress me? There wasn’t any point.
I could have asked her about it, but instead decided I had time for a quick shower and I trusted her enough not to steal anything or break anything.
•••
Even though I’d told myself that, I hurried in the shower, barely getting clean or dry before coming back out. I thought I’d left the water on as I was drying off; the pegasi were really working hard on the storm—or else it was getting out of control. Sometimes that happened around season changes, and sometimes we’d have to rush out into the garden and protect our flowers from heavy rain and flooding.
Sam had picked up Lily’s conspiracy newspaper and was reading it. I couldn’t remember if that issue mentioned her. Hopefully not, that could really change the mood. Maybe she wouldn’t ask anything about it.
She got up as soon as I came out of the bathroom and folded the paper and put it back where she’d found it, then followed me into the kitchen. I was expecting her to ask questions about what she’d read, but instead she asked if I wanted any help, if there was anything she could do.
She admitted that she couldn’t make the casserole cook faster, then set the table, and after dinner she insisted on helping me clean and then did most of the work herself. She was a lot quicker than I was.
I hadn’t intended to offer any of our wine, but the day had gone really well and I was still a little tense from my morning hesitations about working with her. It would do us both some good, I thought, so I stuck my nose in my wine rack and considered what would be the right choice for today. “Would you like some wine?”
“What kind is it?”
“We’ve got a lot of options, but I was thinking of Red Clover”
Sam looked at the bottle. We’d gotten it in trade and it didn’t have a label; we didn’t bother with those since it was obvious by sight what it was. We occasionally sold some at market, and those bottles we did label. “I didn’t know you could make clover into wine.”
“Just the flowers—you can make all sorts of flowers into wine,” I said. “We make some of our own, but we bought this one.”
“Well . . . if you think it’s a good choice.”
I remembered that she was nose-blind, and might miss some of the nuance. And did she even know what wine was? “Is there something you like better?” A good hostess would have asked, yet I was just thinking of myself.
“You said you make some of your own, if it’s not too much bother I’d like to try that.”
Rose wine was too much, but we had some daisy wine we’d made, and I got out the bottle, then we sat on the couch to make a proper evening of it.
The wine loosened her tongue some, and mine as well; I admitted to following her around at market and buying the same kind of soap she had and she said that it was taking some of the ponies in town a lot of time to get used to her, but she understood. She said that she came from Vancouver, which was a place I’d never heard of, and then wouldn’t answer any other questions about where it was or what it was like. She said that nopony had believed her when she said and so it was better to not say, because maybe it wasn’t true after all, maybe it was something she’d imagined.
That was probably why she saw Nurse Tenderheart so often.
Some ponies would have been frightened by that, but I was sympathetic. Daisy used to sneak off to see her, worried about what we might think if we knew she was talking to a psychiatrist, but it seemed to be doing her good and after a while she became more friendly and outgoing.
Sam needed a friend.
•••
We talked well into the evening, and I’d almost forgotten that she was a hired worker and I ought to pay her. She hadn’t asked, she probably thought it was rude to ask.
Sitting on the couch and talking almost made me forget that she wasn’t a pony. At first it was disconcerting to see her sitting un-ponylike on the couch or grabbing the bottle with her hand, and I think I went through about every emotion a pony can have as we spent the evening and listened to the rain fall and chatted and every now and then I’d focus on her bare skin or fine hair or skinny belly and then she’d be telling me about working at the mill or in the woods with Berry and at some point it started to feel like we were old friends catching up. It was only as I got up to get the bottle of daisy wine again that I remembered that I’d hired her and she would want to be paid before we parted ways.
And a part of me thought that if I didn’t, we could keep the night going as it was, and I didn’t know if that was being hopeful or being selfish.
I was muzzy with drink and still not sure how the day had taken the turn it had, and it took me longer than it should have to calculate out how many bits she’d earned. I knew when I gave them to her she might see it as her cue to depart, and I hoped that she wouldn’t. I felt like if I said it just right as I gave them to her, she’d understand that I was paying her before I forgot, but I wasn’t trying to push her out the door.
And I must have said it right, because she put the bits in the pocket of her pants and then we had another glass of wine.
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Rose seems much less racist than the other ponies. Lily makes up for Rose with extra xenophobia.
When Rose mentioned cheese, I could sense the the excitement of Sam. As an omnivore, cheese is a real treat in Ponyville.
As magical creatures, ponies would understand how Sam got to Equestria better than we would.
Aaaaaargh the dialogue doesn't match up which means neither narrator can be trusted aaaaaaaaargh
Aaaawww, Rosie. You sweetheart. You absolute sweetheart.
11074577
Worse. Wine doesn’t match ;p
(timeline of events doesn’t match either)
It could be unreliable narrator, but just as easily it could be a retcon, an AU, actual language differences(kinda contrived, but could be possible - after all, their writing system is different enough and that should have affected how language changes over time) or them simply being drunk and remembering/narrating things in a “close enough” fashion.
11074630
After you drink enough wine it is possible to not know what you're drinking.
11074577
Funnily enough, there are actual studies of this, in terms of how trustworthy eyewitness testimony is for court cases. If memory serves, humans aren’t great at it, and I would assume the same extends to ponies.
11074630
As the evening got going, who’s to say that they stuck with one kind of wine?
Probably a combination of the three (assuming we aren’t going down the path of ‘unreliable author’
What events of the night they each remember and how those events are fixed in their mind is going to vary--our two narrators are a pony who’s trying to come to terms with what she thought was a monster and a human who’s stuck unexpectedly in a new world and trying her best to fit in, both of them are going to tell the story in their own way and it might not all line up perfectly in terms of dialog and the exact order things happened. Not to mention there was alcohol involved. . . .
11074550
I think there are likely varying degrees of xenophobia throughout Ponyville, and some ponies are more willing to give a newcomer a chance than others. Lily . . . well, she probably would give Princess Celestia a side-eye if she saw Her.
Hated by unicorns, loved by the other two tribes, and that’s basically show canon.
This is true. On Earth, “there was a magical portal” would hardly be an explanation; in Equestria, that would be a good enough explanation.
11074608
And then another, and another, and...then Rose woke up with a Sam in her bed.
11074655
Plus there was legit a story in one of James Herriot’s books where he tried one sample of a farmer’s home-made wine and then another and then another, and I don’t recall if Mr. Herriot specifically mentioned how many different drinks he’d tried, but he certainly didn’t itemize them all.
11074674
That’s how it happens and sometimes that works out for the best.
Your fics always give off a very comfortable feeling. I love it.
Aw Roseluck you're such a sweetheart.
do i see the beginning's of a friendship?
a grate chapter.
Just checked and realized A Sleeping Rose was written in 2014. These characters have been living in your head for quite a while.
Oof. Yeah, it's not intentional gaslighting, but when you're in a literal other universe, none of the locals knowing your hometown, country, or planet will make you ask some uncomfortable questions.\
In any case, wonderful example of social lubricant in action. And I dare not imagine what Sam made of the conspiracy rag. I don't know how much other pony media she's seen, after all.
Love Rose, this story and your take on her. Have some beautiful art.
64.media.tumblr.com/8419e11c32f7b99f9df1c5ced5b4be8b/b8a0f82af5984783-80/s2048x3072/8bfcd2fd1ff6846c97d1a1c260a898ba44cfdaf9.jpg
11075135
She really is. Might take her a bit to come around, but she makes the right choices
11075883
You do indeed.
Thank you!
11075922
They have. Obviously not the longest in terms of what you’ve seen published (or what you haven’t seen since it’s been ‘in progress’ since around 2013). I never intended for Sam to be in more than the first, and yet she grew on me and every now and again the muse takes me and I write another story with Sam and Rose.
Feels like I’d be jinxing myself to say it (after all, I first floated the idea of this story back in 2014), but I have a couple other ideas with Sam and Rose as well, and when the time is right . . .
11076311
And when you’re first meeting new ponies especially, it’s not the time to bring those wild things up, the self-powered carts that she used to drive, the library and telegraph office she could hold in her hand, a movie theatre in her bedroom that was so mundane she sometimes fell asleep to it . . .
When they know her and trust her, then maybe she can talk about it. Before that, best to fit in and be known as a good worker who does what she says she’ll do, because that’s something ponies respect, that’s something that opens doors and gets them looking past the fact that she isn’t actually a pony.
I’m sure living on Earth has on the one hand dulled Sam to the concept of newspapers like The National Enquirer or the various television/YouTube/internet equivalents, although being in Equestria has also likely opened her mind to ideas she would have thought fantastic previously.
And, in the words of Homer Simpson, “Alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.”
11076354
Thank you!
Thank you! Very pretty
Despite the xenophobia of the ponies, I do love this story. I fully understand why they are the way they are, living near a death forest full of monsters and facing disasters can do that. I dont agree with the xenophobia but I can understand it.
11081514
Exactly! If you don’t know what it is, it’s probably a monster. Not always true, but the safest first assumption to make.
As the seasons of the show went on, the ponies (in Ponyville, at least) got less xenophobic, perhaps in part due to Twilight’s friendship lessons.
11083192
I found it weird that they accepted Gilda without batting an eye but ran from Zecora.
11083324
Yeah, I think some of that built on learned xenophobia . . . I got the sense from the Zecora episode that Pinkie Pie inadvertently built on the townsponies’ fears with her catchy song; since Pinkie is so open and accepting of other ponies, if she thinks that Zecora is a monster, she must be a monster.
Iron Will was also generally accepted by the ponies, which I assume was due to him having good standing (of some sort) before he came to town, so he wasn’t something new and strange, he was more of a rockstar.
It’s also possible that a small town like Ponyville is on average more xenophobic than a larger town. We never really saw much of that in canon, though, so it’s hard to say. It’s been my experience in small towns they’re generally less accepting of outsiders (of whatever type), but if you’re accepted as a member, the whole town will stand behind you if/when the time comes.
11074671
Why do unicorns hate cheese in your version of Equestria? In show canon it was, as far as I could tell, a one-off joke.
11074671
"Both a horn and wings? It's unnatural, I say!"
"Oh. Came out in the Everfree Forest, I assume?"
"Uh... yeah."
Rose nodded. "Yea, that happens every now and then."
One way to test your intelligence, try to use a unfamiliar shower.
11086286
Because it smells spoiled.
EDIT: also, I think I had that as my headcanon before the show had Twilight fearing quesadillas because they were so cheesy.
11086602
She must have flipped out when Twilight became an alicorn
I'm sure somebody has done this before, but the idea of a human in Equestria just watching as the ponies more or less ignore a monster attack on Tuesday. . . .
"Eh, I'm not worried, it's on the other side of town, and somepony's already dealing with it."
11377726
I got to experience that first-hand when I was in the Netherlands. Very confusing; I think one knob was for water pressure and one was for temperature, but then one of the showers had two shower heads and one of the knobs controlled which head was active (and maybe volume, too).