#12
“No, you see, look: the line, yes? Need to be in a line, see? In a line, touching the line, like this? But not touching each other? Touching the line, not each other, yes? See?”
As Paul said this, he indicated what he meant, pointing out the relevant portions on the etched metal plate on the worktop in front of him. To him it was obvious, blindingly obvious. It leapt at him with a single glance. To Plum Pudding, the pony he was presently attempting to explain it all to, it was less obvious.
That, indeed, was sort of the problem.
“Line?” Pudding asked, brows knotted.
With far more patience than he might have ever imagined possessing, Paul didn’t so much as take a deep, steadying breath.
“Yes, line. The metal line, see? One you do to start? First thing I tell you about? This line. Con-duc-tive line, connects, yes? So they must touch line. The, ah, symbols, yes? Order not matter, not really, but must touch line.”
Technically the order did matter, but only for more complex stuff, so not at Pudding’s level. It would only serve to confuse the poor boy to tell him otherwise at this point.
“Oh that line! I thought it was just, uh, a guideline. So it’s important?” Pudding asked.
“Very, yes.”
As Paul had explained to both pudding and the whole class at the very start, in fact.
“So can I just scratch it out or…?”
“No no, start over, must start over. Fresh plate, new.”
“Oh…”
That would put him behind the others in the class, Pudding knew, a thought which did not appeal. He was already lagging slightly, this would see that he was lagging severely. Paul knew this as well, and knew that it wouldn’t be helping either Pudding or himself.
“I will do. Start over, do line, do these that you did, get you in right place so you are with the others. You understand now, yes? For going on? Going, ah, fore-ward?” He asked, fixing Pudding with a serious look, to make sure the boy knew this was an important question that he should say yes to.
“Uh, yeah! I get it now. So when I add new ones they need to touch the line, and not touch each other?” Pudding asked. Paul relaxed his serious look and nodded.
“Yes. Exactly. See? Smart boy,” he said, sitting back and wincing a little as he shifted his legs. Greater familiarity with the replacement leg meant that he didn’t need the frame or his stick anywhere as much as he used to, but that didn’t magically make him better either, and sitting for too long had a tendency to make him a little stiff.
“Thanks, Mr Paul! And thanks for helping me out with the plate, too!” Pudding said, beaming.
“Is no problem. ‘Mr Paul’? For the love of…”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing, is nothing. You get it now, all good. Ready for tomorrow. I will bring plate. You bring self, and remember what I say, yes? Maybe make note, yes?” Paul said, by way of gentle suggestion, pointing to the mostly-empty notebook that Pudding had produced and laid on the worktop and not touched since.
Pudding seemed to draw a blank for a second, then noticed what it was Paul was pointing at.
“Yeah! Notes! That’s a good idea,” he said, gleefully grabbing the notepad and pulling the pencil from behind his ear. This wasn’t what Paul had had in mind.
“Maybe make note at home, yes?”
Pudding, pencil poised, paused.
“Home?”
Paul gave the briefest glance around the workshop, hoping that this might remind Pudding that this was, in fact, Paul’s home they were in and now that his particular issue had been cleared up he might prefer to have it to himself again. It took him a second, but Pudding twigged it easily enough.
“Oh, oh right, yeah. Home. I got it, I can do that,” he said, sweeping the notebook into a saddlebag and slinging the saddlebag over himself.
“Good idea,” Paul said, his face bearing an expression that suggested he might be capable of smiling, should the situation warrant it. He then followed Pudding to the door and let him out, the pony, now brimming with energy, leaping gaily across the boundary and all-but skipping up the path.
“See you next week, Mr Paul!” He called out. Paul, gritting his teeth, waved goodbye.
“Next week, yes. See you,” he said.
“Hi!” Pudding said to Cozy as he passed her, Cozy by absolute coincidence just-so happening to be returning home at this exact moment. That it was coming up on lunchtime might have had something to do with it.
“Uh, hi,” Cozy replied, bemused, glancing back at him as he merrily made his way home and she herself continued to saunter up to Paul.
“Who was that?” She asked, once she’d sauntered into question-asking range.
“Pupil,” Paul said, turning around and heading back inside, Cozy following and closing the door behind her.
“Ah, one of your new ones, huh? What was he doing here?” She asked.
“I said to them they could come by if they had issues and he does so here he is. Or was. Only one who’s had to, so far at least,” Paul said. Having gone back inside he now realised he had no idea what it was he was meant to be doing, or even if he was meant to be doing anything at all. In lieu of certainty, he decided to go and make tea until he remembered something important he was probably supposed to be doing.
Cozy hopped up onto one of the chairs by the kitchen table as Paul busied himself with tea-making paraphernalia.
“Didn’t think you liked visitors.”
“I don’t, but if they need help they need help.”
“You like teaching, then?”
“It…”
Paul, holding a teapot, frowned and tried to think of how best to express his feelings on the matter.
He didn’t like the job he’d accepted. He didn’t like that he now spent a good chunk of the week trudging up to the palace (castle, whatever) to slowly and clearly explain to a room full of horses how to do what he’d done for years. He didn’t like that he had Twi- the small one there acting as his de-facto assistant and also as an equally eager pupil. He didn’t like that all of those who’d come to learn treated him with a level of quiet respect and listened to what it was he had to tell him.
But he didn’t dislike it either.
In a lot of ways it reminded him of how he’d spent a not-inconsiderable amount of his life: imparting his quote-unquote ‘knowledge and wisdom’ onto a newer, younger generation. A generation brought before him to learn because he was the only in easy reach left to teach them, usually, though this time for slightly different reasons than the ones Paul was used to.
And this time he wasn’t teaching them under duress, and wasn’t teaching them in the knowledge that what he was teaching was going to be put to use making the world a nastier place to be in. This was new, and strange, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet. Feeling good about it felt unseemly somehow, so he didn’t really feel anything about it yet.
Maybe once they’d finished and gone off to go do something with what they’d learnt he’d feel something. Until then he would feel nothing, as he had considerable practise of doing.
With all that being the case, Paul couldn’t really think of any good way of summing it up. So went with something that did the job as best as possible:
“...takes me back.”
“In a good way?”
Paul swallowed and resumed making tea, dropping in a teabag.
“In a way. Certainly it’s probably better than sitting around.”
“It’s almost like my idea was right all along…” Cozy said, tapping her chin as though proposing something mysterious and unlikely, looking up at Paul sideways. Paul closed his eyes.
“Eurgh…”
“Go on, you can say it. You can say ‘You had the right idea, Cozy.’ Maybe even add in an ‘I’m sorry Cozy I’ll listen to you more in future’ or something like that, if you feel like it.”
“You’re pushing it…”
“Yes but you loooovvvveeee me, dad,” she said, and while she drew the word out purposefully to get under his skin she couldn’t deny that the truth of it warmed her heart just that little bit.
And Paul couldn’t deny that part, either. Not now.
“...it was a good idea, and I should have just said yes in the first place. Happy?” He asked. Cozy beamed, leaning back in her seat and stretching, like a cat in the sun.
“Very happy.”
“Good. Tea?”
“I don’t-”
“-don’t drink tea, right, I remember.”
There followed the clinking of teaspoons and such, and while that was happening Cozy (still luxuriating in triumph) looked around and saw something out the window that made her double-take, hop down, and then move over for a proper look.
“Uh, dad, your walking machine is outside,” she said, nose to the glass.
“My what?” Paul asked.
“Your walking machine. That thing that pulled the wagon that one time? Lives in the shed?”
He blinked at her, brain chugging along.
“...oh balls, I’d forgotten about that.”
“Well it’s outside,” she said, pointing, tapping on the window.
“Really?”
He could not see it from his position and didn’t want to lumber over to check himself.
“I wouldn’t be saying it was if it wasn’t. That’d be kind of a weird thing to do. How’d it get out of the shed? Can it open doors now?” Cozy asked. She was of course unaware of the impromptu use Paul had put it to not that long ago, which did rather raise the question of how she thought he’d got up North in the first place, but still.
Twilight had known. Had she just not told her? Tsch.
“No, it’s - I’ll deal with it.”
Setting the steaming teacup aside, Paul headed out back through the kitchen door.
He really had entirely forgotten that he’d left the thing where it had collapsed. He would have gone and got it otherwise. Instead, the poor bloody machine had instead apparently walked all the way home again, despite being - very obviously - in no condition to walk anywhere.
Paul and the machine regarded one another across a patch of what might once have been grass (Paul’s horticultural ministrations once again proving to be anything but tender).
“You found your way back?” Paul asked, somewhat dumbly, unable to bear the silence.
The machine said nothing. It was built for several things, answering questions not being among them. It just continued to stand there, quivering slightly and rocking a little, quivering slightly more strongly when the rocking took its weight onto its left side, quivering slightly less again when it rocked back the other way.
Hell, that it was standing at all was a miracle.
Paul wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. Fix it, some part of his brain said, just take it aside and fix it. Turn it off and leave it for a project. Just fix it, like you’d fix anything else you’ve ever made. Simple. But for some reason he couldn’t move a muscle. He was rooted to the spot, staring at the machine.
“I didn’t mean to forget you, you know. I had a lot on. H-had a lot on.”
Again, the machine had no response to this. It could have no response to this. Paul knew that even if it could comprehend that it had been forgotten in a snowdrift (and, having built it, he knew that it couldn’t) it wouldn’t have cared either way, being what it was. Knowing this didn’t stop him from feeling an upsurge of guilt, a welling bubble that started low and small but quickly swelled upward and filled him out.
How many broken machines had he seen in his time? He’d long ago lost count. And what made this one any different? Nothing, really, except perhaps why it had ended up broken, but so what? What did that matter? It didn’t. And yet…
And quite without understanding why and with very little warning whatsoever he burst into tears. The machine had no response to this, either. It continued to have no response even when Paul lumbered over, collapsed to his knees, and embraced it, weeping the whole while.
“I’m sorry!” Paul wailed.
Cozy, who had been watching the proceedings through the window with a certain level of curiosity, was out the door the moment she saw him hit the ground.
“Dad! What happened?”
“Oh! Oh Cozy! Oh my girl! My girl!”
Feeling her bump into his side Paul lunged, wrapping his arms around her. Cozy was enveloped.
“Whoa!”
What Paul said next was impossible to make out, an incoherent mess buried in sobs and seemingly directed at her, the machine, and the world in general all at once. After failing to wriggle free or even wriggle into a slightly better position Cozy was helpless but to ride it out.
She looked to the walking machine but it was no help at all.
Fairly quickly Paul managed to pull himself together, his grip on his daughter loosening enough she could shift around and his babblings stopping in favour of loud sniffing, his breathing getting nicely back under control. Didn’t let go of her, though.
“What was that about? Are you okay now?” Cozy asked, slightly muffled.
Who was she even meant to call in a situation like this?
“I’m fine. Just - my life has gone in a very strange direction. Heh, life. I have a life!”
He might have been able to work out the reasons for this unexpected outburst if he sat and thought about it, but he had no desire or intention of doing that. The reasons were there, carved beneath the surface by a lifetime of things he’d often prefer not to remember - they weren’t even especially deep beneath the surface, not really. He could, so to speak, see their outline, and was entirely aware that they were there.
But he was going to leave them there. For now.
“You certainly do have a life. Now. Thanks to me,” Cozy said, mostly joking, mostly to hide a certain level of internal disquiet at her dad’s unusual behaviour. Paul gave her a final squeeze before releasing her.
“All thanks to you, Cozy, yes. Heh. Hah. Hahaha!”
Also mostly a joke. With some effort Paul stood up again.
“Doing my best. With my d-daughter. Yes, with my daughter. She’s a horse, but, you know, whatever.”
“What was that last part, dad?”
“Nothing, nothing…”
“I am not interrupting, am I?” Luna asked, suddenly there, having managed to approach entirely unnoticed. Paul very nearly fell over sideways and Cozy jumped a very neat and very exact foot in the air.
“Bloody hell! Oh, nearly gave me a fucking heart attack. She’s quiet, isn’t she? Blood and shit…” he took a few deep, steadying breaths, hand clutched to his chest. Then he straightened up. “Luna. Yes. Hello. Can I help you?”
Luna looked from him to Cozy and back again and then clearly chose her next words with some level of care:
“It was regarding that… item, we spoke about. The one which you said I would be able to use, if I so desired?” She asked, eyes again flicking to Cozy once or twice, not helping in making what she was saying sound any less suspicious.
“Hmm? Item?” Paul asked, bemused. “Ah, item. Yes. Go go, inside. Is, ah, is in workshop, on top of shelf. Easy to see, big. Go do,” he said, waving her in.
“Thank you, Paul,” she said, heading inside.
Cozy, also bemused, looked after her and then to Paul.
“Why is Princess Luna here? She in your class too and having problems? Today has been a day of odd arrivals…”
“Oh, she’s here to use the book. Didn’t think she’d take me up on that, least not so soon,” Paul said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and instantly regretting it and then patting himself down for a handy rag or similar.
“Book?” Cozy asked.
Paul realised, belatedly, that he’d let something slip that he’d have preferred not to have done. He froze.
“...uh…”
He was drawing a blank. He couldn’t deny it, could he? That he’d said it at all? No, that’d just make it worse. So what could he say instead? Play it off like a joke? Weird joke. No, that wouldn’t work. Shit, shit…
“What book?” Cozy asked.
“It’s…shit.”
Shit.
“How do you ‘use’ a book anyway?” Cozy asked, finding the choice of words here a little odd, on top of the whole thing being odd anyway. Paul squirmed a bit.
“Uh, look, Cozy, there’s - there’s something I should probably tell you,” he said.
“Oh? What?”
There wasn’t really any good way of putting this, Paul knew, so he just decided to try and sum it up as quickly and as totally as possible - get it over with:
“There was a thing a little while back where an, uh - where some other version of you from some other, ah, place, kind of swapped in somehow and…did some stuff…and, uh, well, she went back afterwards but she made this magic book or something so she and I could, you know, keep in touch and so that’s - that’s where the book came from. Yeah.”
A crushing, all-annihilating silence greeted this garbled revelation.
“Dad! What the fuck!” Cozy blurted.
“Language!” Paul said, sternly, only to have his sternness wafted aside by Cozy’s hoof.
“Oh no, you don’t get to make this me being in trouble! Something like that happened and you didn’t tell me?!”
She seemed pretty willing to believe that such a thing could happen but then again things like that and stranger things besides happened all the time around Equestria, her dad wouldn’t make something like it up (he didn’t have the imagination needed to do so) and, importantly, he himself was from ‘some other place’ so there was precedence.
Which meant that on the balance of things whether it had happened wasn’t the issue - that she was only finding out about it now rather was.
“I was waiting for the right moment!” Paul protested, using force to cover up how feeble it was. Cozy was not fooled for a moment. She could recognise someone cornered.
“The right moment?! When did this happen?” She asked.
“...um…”
“When?”
“...couple years ago…”
“A couple of years?!”
Cozy legitimately got him to take a step backwards as she advanced on him.
“I - I just thought you had enough to worry about, that’s all. Without having to wonder how, you know, other versions of you might be getting on. Other versions who might have…not been so…lucky at times…”
The memory of that fucking hole under the mountain where they’d wanted to stick his little girl loomed and he found he couldn’t really bring himself to finish the sentence. He didn’t want to think about Cozy getting thrown in there, his or any other ones. Didn’t want to think about her being left in there for however long it had been or might have been.
He really was getting soft in his old age. Or at least around certain someones.
“What do you mean ‘swapped out’ anyway? How long did this last for?” Cozy asked. She had a lot of questions about this, and was stumbling over which ones to roll out first. Paul rubbed his face. Despite having had time to prepare answers to this he hadn’t, and didn’t have the energy to do it on the spot.
“Honestly the details kind of confused me but she was here for a few days while you were, I don’t know, in limbo or something. You came back, didn’t remember any of it,” he said.
“Did anyone else know?”
Paul paused, hands still on his face.
“Um, yeah. Maybe one or two people…”
“Like…?”
His hands dropped.
“You know, just the princesses, maybe, and maybe someone else, I don’t know who noticed. But mainly the princesses. Turns out the, ah, the other-you got adopted by Luna. S’why she wants to use the book, I guess? So, uh, yeah.”
“...wow.”
This was a lot to take in and not at all what Cozy had expected on coming back home for lunch. She’d expected a sandwich, instead, this. What would the proper response be? Was there one? She was unsure.
“Can I use the book?” She asked, after a few moments digesting it all. Paul hadn’t seen that one coming. In hindsight he probably should have.
“Uh…I guess?”
He couldn’t imagine this ending well, but at this point couldn’t imagine saying no ending well either, or even working for a moment.
“Cool. Maybe I’ll do that later. Maybe I’ll do it and not tell you about it. Maybe I’ll do all sorts of cool, weird stuff and not tell you until years later. Can’t believe you didn’t tell me this happened.”
Paul was actually too cowed by his daughter’s disapproval to have any comeback to this and could only stand sheepishly while she went back inside to make some lunch. That left him and the walking machine, the machine having waited obligingly while all of that had happened.
“Well, let’s get you seen to then, eh?” Paul said, leading the walking machine back to the shed where it lived where he (delicately) deactivated it and partially disassembled it with what tools he had to hand (Paul always had tools to hand). This showed a bevy of issues both mundanely mechanical and esoterically otherwise and made it very clear to him that, yes, this was going to be a project, something that he’d be coming back to for a little while.
But more pressingly he had a plate to redo and a daughter to placate - and still toys to make as well, couldn’t forget those. And more lessons to plan as well, for when his pupils had finished what he’d set out so far. And another agonising meeting with Celestia to discuss how it was progressing (though honestly he wasn’t hating the thought of having to spend time with her as much as he used to - he was comfortable in knowing that he could tolerate it and there would be good tea).
Barely any time left for staring into space and waiting for the next day to happen until the next days stopped happening. How unexpected. He really did have a life. Fancy that. That had snuck up on him.
This thought buoyed him and carried him all the way to the kitchen, where he found Cozy sat at the table eating a sandwich and pointedly ignoring him, and also found that his tea was now cold.
He drank it anyway and ruffled Cozy’s hair, to her writhing annoyance.
A life! Him! Of all people. Must have done something right somewhere to deserve that. Somehow still alive after all this time and finally actually living. Who’d have thought it?
“So what you working on, anyway? Up in town, I mean,” He asked, sitting opposite her.
He had a vague awareness that she had somehow managed to wrangle her way onto some sort of project or scheme or something, possibly by loudly correcting someone else involved and demonstrating her aptitude, possibly by some other means - he wasn’t entirely sure, he hadn’t been able to follow it when she’d laid it out for him the first time.
He just knew that she had something going on and that she was, by all accounts, actually quite involved and excited. He also knew that he enjoyed the energised expression she got on her face when she talked about it.
Cozy cocked an eyebrow. It wasn’t as if she was going to just forget that he’d forgotten to mention that whole thing with the dimensions and whatever, but the opportunity to maybe talk about what it was she’d got into was a tempting one. She really had latched onto an opportunity to set her brain onto something non-megalomaniacal, and dad was, if nothing else, a pretty good sounding board.
“Do you care?” She asked.
Paul was genuinely affronted!
“I care a lot! Explain, daughter! Don’t miss out anything! I can take it!” He said, pulling his chair in closer to the table and lacing his fingers together to rest his chin on - a proper listening pose, he felt, and one that properly demonstrated his intention for listening.
Slowly, Cozy grinned.
“Well…”
Paul understood very little of what followed, but he couldn’t fail to understand the relish with which Cozy held forth, or the energy which filled her as she spoke. It was delightful.
Incomprehensible, but delightful.
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Aw.
Cozy’s love magic, I guess ?
Another lovely story, I'm glad to see Cozy find a happy family.
I wanna say that it was a fun way to end things, but I'm scared that that author's not is just a ruse and you're gonna pop up and shout "AND ONE MORE THING!"
11156867
And then it ended SADLY SOMEHOW!
Dawww...................Well this as mentioned is also a solid 9/10 excellent story featuring a grumpy Slavic man and his involuntarily adopted angry sociopathic and one-time megalomaniacal pony daughter.
Honestly, besides the stuff that was confusing if you didn't know the other Story (which you did warn about so I glossed it at points) this was a fantastic story.
Could easily see this story picking back up with one years later, Cozy grown up, in a relationship, showing the poor soul to Paul.
She's a awfully cute horse though.
I would love to have seen that conversation.
Get used to it Fluffy. It's the curse of being cute.
Somehow, I feel like I know where this is going.
"And that's how we will create a state monopoly within the next year!" "That's nice honey."
Five years latter- "We should not have moved to Canterlot."
11156867
11156810
My feelings exactly.
What a breath of fresh air this story was. The very definition of a sequel you never asked for, but always needed. And I'm making note of your outright refusal in the A/N to say the journey's done.
On an unrelated note, did the CMC get in trouble for Cozy running off?
11157127
She's absolutely old enough, curious enough, and petty enough to have learned enough of an alien language through osmosis just to catch someone out.
11157196
You know, I don't think they did. After all it wasn't really their fault. And, crucially, it all worked out somehow.
As always, I greatly admire your ability to create such dynamic, life-like characters. Excellent work!
I love this universe and I love this story! I hope there will be more parts to it, Paul and Cozy relationship is simply awesome.
I consider your leaving that crossover unmentioned until way after the fact an insufficient sin to get me to not like this story.
You've done it again you madman, I really enjoyed this! Now to find out what all that crossover stuff was about.
I must admit, this is probably my favourite Cozy Glow story and one of my favourite pony stories in general. It also makes me want to write something of my own.
Hi, I’m kinda new to reading your stories. I uh found yours while I was browsing the web. I wanted to say your story was very good! Beautifully written in fact!
But, um I want to say that the first stories I’ve ever read that you made was the one about Jack the human. (I really did think he was going to actually have a fulfilling life with his new friends…)
Ever since then I have been paranoid about all your other stories having such similar bittersweet endings. (I felt like I got punched in the gut when he had to watch everyone he knew die of old age and never even got to say goodbye. That was an unwelcome twist/existential crisis that I was not prepared for… For crying out loud I thought I was just going to read some silly feel good fluffy story about a human trying to find his place in the world! Not something so tragic!)
I’m worried about what you have planned for Paul (and Cosy) if this story happens to develop to be even remotely similar to Jack’s. Don’t get me wrong you are an extremely good storyteller and this was a very good read.
(So good in fact it’s one of the few stories that made it to my favorites folder.)
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I’m cautiously optimistic that if you do continue Paul’s (and Cosy’s) story, you won’t take away Paul’s (and Cosy’s) chance at finally having a life worthy of living. Even if you don’t I would probably read it anyways. (Damn you curiosity!)
But, if you decide you don’t want to continue after this then it was good while it lasted.
Ok, rant over. I’ll lurk some more later. Right now it’s time for me to go back to bed. It’s too late for this…😩
P.S. Having an existential crisis after reading a surprisingly depressing story before bed is probably not the best idea for my sanity.
Man, I just finished this, and it was quite a trip, A really beautiful story about the relationship between a budding father and daughter.
Esperaba que Paul estirara la pata.