Nopony Tell Him What Soil Is Made From
There were a lot of things which Zephyr didn't like about the working life, and he felt all of them were reasonable responses to having discovered it existed. Just for starters, a colt whose parents usually weren't even in the country had every right to feel a little resentment towards the Bureau. If a kid was lucky enough to have both a mom and a dad, then they were supposed to be home and taking care of you. That was the way the world was obviously meant to operate, and it didn't.
He wasn't exactly fond of the Bureau, and also felt that he happened to possess a perfectly comprehensible, utterly natural reason for that. And now he was stuck working for them. It wasn't going over all that well.
Fortunately, there were certain compensations. Like the salary. He could use that, at least for now. And then you had to think about the view --
-- when it came to the working life, he had multiple complaints. But when it came to employment, just about all of them had initially been formed via what he considered to be the best method available: outside observation. It had taken getting and keeping a job (if only for a few days -- so far) to gift him with some rather surprising discoveries regarding additional issues. Something which had taught him that nightmares could arise from unexpected places. And this was one of the weirdest.
If you were working, then you eventually reached the point where you got to stop.
And that was a horror.
It was part of what he was thinking about during that early afternoon as he flew towards the designated area, because it was the sort of realization which you really had to ruminate on for a while. To let it fully sink in. Especially if you were also trying to figure out why nopony else had spotted what was so very wrong about all of it, and totally didn't understand why none of them were spending every moment of their lives in screaming.
You got to stop. Right now, he was on his lunch break. Work was something which admitted that you needed to eat, probably because you needed calories to do some more work. And if you were working for the Bureau, you didn't have to stick around the little office while you ate. (Not that he would have minded. Not when it came to the view.) You could just head out for a while. Hit a restaurant, if you could find a nice mare who was willing to spend the bits --
-- technically, he'd found one. There were just a few hoofsteps to go before the actual 'lunch' part got reached --
-- or got stuck with nosing them over yourself. He also had the right to curl up in a comfortable spot for a while. Enjoy his meal while allowing the world to entertain him, which generally meant finding a decently-situated cloud. Zephyr liked to use places from which he could observe mares moving along, because the majority of mares could possess at least a few qualities which were inherently adorable. Anypony who yelled at him for staring just didn't understand that they were being appreciated.
Or... if he felt as if he needed to be cheered up, and Sun knew that working for the Bureau could bring him down -- then he could pick out some vapor overlooking a schoolhouse around recess. Or a playground. The smaller sporting facilities. Anywhere you could find kids, because just watching and listening while kids were being kids... what was better than that?
There was nothing better than being a kid. So you had to make sure that fillies and colts got to truly be kids. And that was what good parents did. They made sure foalhoods were safe and secure and perfect.
He could cheer himself up pretty easily, just from watching them play. That wasn't a bad way to spend a lunch break, because work gave you some time to not do any of it --
-- and then you had to go back.
That was the horror. That was what nopony else seemed to understand.
Lunch break? It's over: back to work.
Shift's over, and his time was now his own? No, it wasn't. Because the clock was going to keep moving and eventually, the tines were going to rotate into the configuration which says Next Shift Starts.
Two-day break? See you after it's over! For more work.
It was like having a life sentence in a prison which was sadistic enough to keep letting you out. Here's an open cell door, here's the world and all the things you could do in it, and here's an unbreakable elastic band attached to your dock. We'll decide when to yank on that last one. How will you know? Well, feeling your butt slam into the back of the cell should be a pretty good clue.
How were you supposed to enjoy life when there was a clock haunting it? A shadow over Sun itself, ruining every moment of joy because you might be have having fun now, but guess what? You have to go back to work.
If you somehow chose to survive through labor, then that's what you did: survived. You didn't live. And you had to keep working, just so survival would continue...
Kids didn't have to worry about that. Acting as a good parent meant making sure they never worried about that, and just got to keep being kids.
It was his lunch break, and one of the reasons he couldn't enjoy it was because any break meant you were taking a break from something. Nopony understood that, and he didn't know whether to pity them or wonder how smart you had to be (other than smarter than everypony else, anyway) before it became possible to figure it out.
You had to go back. Every time. Work had found a way to ruin every hour which wasn't work, and that meant he couldn't enjoy his lunch.
Also, he was flying towards what had been designated as today's meeting area, and that probably wasn't going to leave him with a lot of time to actually eat.
He was temporarily off shift and, thanks to his partnership with the griffon, he was still working.
Coming up with a word to describe how unfair that was -- it had to be somepony's job. But at least that one wasn't his.
He'd been given directions, and the bad part started when he reached the bit which said 'land and start trotting'. And then it got worse, because he didn't have an actual choice. Life was an infinity of choices and work was about taking all the ones which weren't work and stamping them with NO.
They weren't meeting in the wild zone, and the fringe was right out. (His sister lived on the fringe. If that didn't prove she wasn't up to taking care of herself...) But Ponyville had parks, and -- parks were kind of strange. Especially ground-based ones. Making a settled zone was about creating safety, and now you were going to invite a whole lot of the wild into the middle of it and pretend that was somehow okay?
Ground living was weird. The local ponies seemed to match it.
They were meeting in a park. Fine. She didn't want them to be spotted together any more than absolutely necessary, and hooking up among a bunch of trees -- well, if wood did anything right, it was in being hard to see through. And he had directions (which she'd repeated), there were trails and he could follow them --
-- but not being observed meant going off the trails. Moving through narrow spaces, trying to get past the thickest -- trunks? Yeah, that felt like the word -- without scraping his wings. Which meant folding them. All the way, because he was moving on hoof and any attempt to seek the safety of the air was going to wind up putting his mane into some oddly large branches.
...he had to be careful. Some of the green stuff was capable of staining his coat, and bark contact did bad things to the grain.
He kept hitting rocks, and he was only doing that because rocks had the discourtesy to exist. If you lived in the clouds, then you didn't need to lift your legs all that much. Unless somepony got really stubborn with their molding, you could just sort of skim the vapor as you trotted -- if you bothered to trot at all. But do the sensible limb pendulum on ground and not only did you keep running into the less fun form of elevation change, but minerals would wind up bouncing off keratin in all directions. It was a stupid sensation, and he couldn't seem to avoid any of it.
Clouds were just better.
It was also a lot easier to tell if somepony was following when you were moving over a cloud.
...not that following him was gonna be -- what was the name which had been newly and semi-legibly written on the assignment chart, right next to his? -- Thunderpain. That felt about right --
-- that wasn't going to be the older stallion's full-time job. Thunderpain was only going to be following him for pay while Bureau work was actually under way, and Zephyr totally got that. His parents had been working for the Bureau for his whole life. He'd learned a few things. Rookies could get partnered with veterans. Mostly for supervision: observation, a little extra instruction. He was sort of surprised it had taken that long. It was going to make a few things harder, but...
This isn't going to be forever.
It just felt like it. Any time in prison probably seemed like a life sentence to somepony unjustly jailed, especially when you didn't have a confirmed release date.
...anyway, having Thunderpain hanging around, watching him, working together... even without the difficulty spike for the problems involved in actually getting anything done --
-- he'd have to tell the griffon about the pairing. Zephyr wasn't sure she was gonna take that well --
-- it was going to make things kind of awkward. Zephyr had never been all that great with male companionship. Lack of experience. There hadn't been buddies on that level in school. You didn't make a lot of friends if you didn't have the time for it, and his first excuse for that had been sister.
(There were some other excuses.)
And as for the other hanging-around-stallions option -- well, to be honest about it, there were times when he'd actively wished to feel that way. He could sure tell when a stallion was attractive. Appreciating a good body was easy. Evaluating the grooming was automatic, and if he spotted a truly outstanding specimen, then he was probably going to go right up to them, in public, and tell them how great they looked. Followed by asking for tips, because that was a stallion who was doing a few things right and there was always something new to learn.
But when it came to feeling the sort of things which had been rising within from a mere glimpse of the resident office view... no. He'd tried. Turned out you couldn't force it. And that was just a pity, because Zephyr knew that feeling that way would have done a lot for his life. Just for starters, the 'ponies to buy me dinner' options would have doubled. Minimum.
Thunderpain wasn't the most handsome stallion on record. But his designated future supervisor was doing a few things right with that mane. They could talk about that for a while.
But in the meantime, he had to look after his own mane, along with every other part. And he ducked under some -- mines? Green droops of hanging vegetation. 'Mines' was probably right -- got some distance between himself and what he'd learned early on were 'thorns', and he stepped over a tiny trickle of water, his sore hooves kicked away some rocks and then a few more rocks while he could feel the clock looming over him, the shadow of the wasted seconds and the elastic waiting to yank him back --
-- his right forehoof hit something softer. Yielding, but -- oddly solid at the core...
Zephyr looked down.
And it was wrong.
They weren't supposed to be like this.
They were meant to exist as mobile flashes of color and sound and life, moving just below your own path or somewhere in the rough vicinity because he was the larger and anything smaller had an obligation to get out of the way. Tiny intermittent bursts of presence and reminders that the sky was where life began and thrived and
ground was where it ended.
There was something hot rising in his throat. Hot and rancid and burning.
The little corpse still had all of its feathers. They were a blue so deep as to skirt the edges of black, and iridescence put tiny spots of extra colors all over the body. There were no fatal wounds visible. Perhaps, if his hoof hadn't come into contact with it --
my hoof
-- it might have been possible to believe that it was merely sleeping.
But the head was titled down. The beak touched soil, dirt and earth, the home of insects and creatures and so many buried corpses. Nothing about the body moved. The ribs didn't shift, the eyes wouldn't open, the dead bird hadn't flown away from the contact, couldn't, would never fly again and it was dead and it was going to be dead forever on the ground --
I shouldn't be here
I can't be here
it's the plan
it's the only way
-- his wings had flared, when there was no true room for them to do so. They were trying to flap, and all that did was scrape feathers and flesh against wood. It hurt --
He recoiled. It only brought his forehooves up as his body did its best to rear back, and then he had to crash down again while still being far too close to --
-- ultimately, he only managed to swallow back a portion of the internal tide. And then he stepped around the results as best he could (which might not have been good enough), fought forward until he found a clear space, room to move and summon magic and send a blast of what he felt was a perfectly reasonable reaction in the direction from which he'd come.
Zephyr presumed that a wind burst strong enough to break small branches and scatter soil was also more than enough to move a corpse. Get it out of the way, and deposit it where he'd never had to see the thing again. Maybe within the flow of water, especially since it was already dead and whatever lived in liquids could deal with that problem.
The wind had to have been strong enough. And anything else which resulted from the crashing sounds wasn't his fault.
Calm down...
Not that he really needed to. See a problem, get rid of the problem. Everything was already solved. His heartbeat was just a little behind the news.
He kept pushing forward. It was pretty much the same pace as before, but the focus had changed. He was looking down a lot more. Making sure each hoofstep ended in some degree of safety. And then he had to look up, because it turned out that moving with your head down risked running into a lot of mane-snagging branches.
It wasn't fair. The sky was where you had to keep track of every single dimension and direction, plus all the things which might be occupying that space. Ground should have been more basic.
Maybe he was going to be late to the meeting. But the griffon should have known that he'd have trouble reaching her quickly, especially since the directions had been hers --
-- maybe she killed the bird.
No. That was stupid. If she'd killed it, there would have been visible wounds, or blood soaked into the ground. Plus she probably would have eaten it. The death had likely been from disease.
...scrub his hooves. As soon as possible. And it was going to be all of them, because he didn't know how much ground the bird had touched before it died --
-- his nostrils flared.
Blood.
But that was more or less okay. Because the words arrived in his ears next, and she often smelled a little like blood. Especially if she'd just been eating.
"You're a little off-course," the griffon said, from somewhere within the green. (He wondered why he hadn't spotted her. The golden eyes had so much shine...) "Tilt left."
It had been an order.
She gave a lot of orders, and even the words which weren't direct instructions tended to emerge with those tones. The griffon could probably say 'Good morning' in a way which told Sun that there would be consequences for getting it wrong. Not that Zephyr was completely sure there, because 'Good morning' absolutely wasn't the sort of thing she ever said.
It was supposed to be a partnership, and the griffon acted like she was in charge. She seemed to feel he was working directly for her. And that annoyed him, especially since there wasn't any direct pay. 'Annoyance' was also a reasonable reaction and as far as Zephyr was concerned, it was also the weakest such response possible.
But he was going along with it. Because they each had a plan. This presumably led to a pair of goals. And certain aspects overlapped.
Zephyr felt like she didn't really tell him much of anything. He got one set of orders at a time. It was sort of insulting. Implying that he wasn't capable of understanding more than that.
He worked his way past the last of the hanging mines. (The pegasus was almost sure that his mane was still clean. Explaining the stains would have been pretty awkward. Although it would have been nice if somepony had been paying enough attention to his appearance to ask.) And then he was in a tiny clearing with her, just about face-to-beak.
Zephyr didn't spend a lot of time looking at her beak. That was usually where the blood wound up. And...
...the beak opened. It closed. Words came out. But the edges didn't move. Tone could say a lot, but -- when it came to any attempt at figuring out how the griffon was feeling, he had to watch the eyes.
It was a learning process. Take away the flexibility of a pony mouth, and expressions turned weird. He couldn't read most of hers, and asking too many questions about them just made him sound stupid. Feel...
"Took you long enough," she said, watching as he came to a full stop. (He'd noticed that her eyes usually focused on movement. If he went completely still for a while, she would start to watch swaying leaves.) "I thought you had to do this on your lunch break. Should have saved some of it for the lunch." And made a point of looking around, openly dismissing all of the staining green. "But you can just grab something on the way back, right? Your whole world is lunch."
No, it wasn't.
Some ponies said ground had grass and the rest of the green going for it, because you couldn't eat a cloud. And maybe portions of the stuff around his hooves were suitable, but who knew if a bird had dropped dead on top of that? Other parts just tasted horrible. You could get sick if you ate the wrong things.
Ground didn't have much going for it. Not in the settled zones, and forget about the wild. In a perfect world, he would have stayed among billowing white for a lifetime.
But there was a plan.
He kept looking at her. She was sort of dirty around the eyes. The griffon really needed some better grooming. He'd been trying to come up with something she could use. It was all just fur and feathers, right? So anything which applied to a pegasus could apply to her. He just had to compensate for a few new locations on the feathers. Plus -- okay, talons and claws were still keratin, but she probably wasn't going to be interested in anything designed to smooth away edges.
"So anyway," Zephyr began, and completely missed seeing her clenching talons dig tiny trenches into the soil, "how long is this supposed to take? Because I've gotta get back to work." Watching her eyes, "The job you said I had to get."
"Because it puts you in the right position," she countered. (Her voice was almost calm. The eyes jerked a little to the right, and he wasn't sure what that meant.) "And it takes as long as it takes." The shoulders shrugged. "Just fly faster on the way back. Not my problem if you're late."
The right position for what?
But she was only telling him a little at a time.
"Nopony followed you?" she abruptly asked. Golden eyes checked the perimeter of the tiny clearing.
He almost wanted to laugh, barely suppressed the majority of the snort. "I wish."
And then she was glaring at him.
"Prey which wants to be hunted," the griffon snapped. "That's a new one --"
"-- there's this pony I saw," Zephyr cut in. "Major looker. If she's trailing me on purpose, then she's probably watching my butt." Which was more direct than he would have been in front of a mare, but -- griffon. "So I wish she was following me around. But it hasn't started just yet."
Her tail swayed a little. The tuft needed some tending.
"And there's this other mare," Zephyr added.
"The unicorn?" almost emerged in pieces. Each syllable had been virtually bitten through.
"Nah. Earth pony."
Because you had to get food somewhere, especially when you couldn't trust all of the greenery and didn't currently have somepony who would buy it for you. So he'd tried a bakery, and...
...good stuff. Baked goods didn't seem to suffer from being made at a lower altitude. But there was this pink, slightly chubby mare behind the counter, and...
...not his type. Nowhere close. But it had felt as if she'd been watching him. Hadn't spoken to him at all: the older (and chubbier) mare had been the one to take his bits. She'd just had him under some scrutiny. And then she'd looked away.
Absolutely wasn't going to go for her. But maybe flirting wasn't a bad idea, because free food. And there might be extra chances. He'd spotted her briefly near one of the town's fountains, right around the time he'd been thinking about how having a Bureau job meant he was practically living here.
"Whatever," the griffon decided. "As long as she doesn't know we're working together." The talons clenched again. "Because that's going to really hurt your end of this, isn't it? If she finds out, then she might do something stupid. We're trying to get her out of the way. And the stupid ones, when they learn you want them to move -- they dig in. So we're gonna avoid that."
He looked at the intensity which had been compacted into tiny pupils and, after a moment, decided to nod.
"We get Fleur Dis Lee out of the way," she continued. "Just make her -- step aside. Or step anywhere that she won't be blocking, right? Doesn't that just sound easy? And once she's moved over... then you've got a clear path. Straight to your sister."
They'd each talked about their goals -- or rather, they'd both discussed his. Zephyr wasn't sure he'd heard the whole of hers. But getting Fleur out of the way was definitely part of it.
Admittedly, it wasn't an absolute requirement on his end. Having the unicorn gone did give him a clear path. Figuring out some way where she hung around and stepped aside would potentially accomplish the same goal. All she had to do was accept his presence. It might even make things that much better.
He could think of things like that. Because he wasn't stupid. It was part of why he hated being laughed at so much. Laughter made him feel stupid, even when he so clearly wasn't. A stupid pony wouldn't have a plan.
"And having you on the weather team gives you mobility," she added. "And access. That could be important later."
As not-mistakes went, "How?" was just about instinctive.
The golden eyes glinted.
"Not quite there yet," the half-parted beak technically smiled. "So how's work?"
He told her about Thunderpain. She listened.
"Should have figured that was coming," the griffon decided. "But it won't last long if you can just wow them enough. All you've really got to do is get your assignments early. At least the night before. And if we have to, we'll fix things from there."
The pegasus exhaled. 'Thanks' nearly reached the back of his throat, and then became stuck on residual bile.
"Anything else happening at work?" she asked. The tone was almost curious -- no, it was stronger than that. More intense. "Tell me what your boss is doing."
Zephyr grinned.
She moves.
Whenever she can.
And the view...
...possibly not a good opener. It was easier to talk about mares in front of a griffon, but describing just how much he wanted the prismatic to be following him wasn't going to do anything but burn off the rest of his break time. Besides, there was no way she was actually going to care.
Still -- it would have been nice to tell somepony (someone?) about how utterly gorgeous Rainbow was. A sleek, compact bundle of overwound mainspring energy. He could just see all of those tightened kinetics looking for a place to go off, and they also happened to come with the kind of equally-tightened little ass which a stallion of taste could just...
...yeah, the griffon wasn't gonna want to hear about any of that either.
He'd made it clear to Rainbow that he was interested: using every possible opportunity to let his eyes visibly drink her in was good for that. But she just wasn't looking back yet. Something which was just going to take a little more time. Plus maybe an adjustment or two on the plan, because a smart stallion had to make room for new stuff and if you were going to be stuck on or near ground, it helped to be stuck with a mare who had a body like that.
Zephyr had been dreaming about what Rainbow could do for him. Or to him, which was a lot more fun.
He kicked out a few sentences about how she distributed assignments, because that was just about all the direct interaction he'd had. The griffon listened, and the tail gradually stilled.
"Good," she finally said. "And the little giant? Have you seen her?"
"Yesterday. On an air carriage coming back into town." Which had been at a distance, from behind -- but he'd been able to identify her: the flow of the two-tone mane was distinctive.
Portions of her fur seemed to ruffle. Feathers shifted. Her neck seemed to expand, and then the ruff settled back down.
"It sounded like she was out of town for a while," the disgruntled griffon said. "Too bad it wasn't forever. But she's definitely back." The golden eyes narrowed. "For now. Just give her some distance, unless she comes straight up to you. It's not time to drive that wedge in yet."
"And when does that happen?" was, from Zephyr's work-shadowed perspective, also not a mistake.
The beak snapped shut. Clacked twice. And when it opened again, the griffon's words were pushed out on the edge of a roar.
"When we're ready," erupted through the green. "And that's not now."
"But I've been working for the Bureau for --"
Every visible muscle on her body went tight.
"I'm learning about her," the griffon half-snarled: a designation which took some serious round down. "You have to study your prey. Especially when you're hunting another predator. You need to figure out its territory." The tail was beginning to lash. "What it stalks, where and when. The tactics it uses. If it's picked up a partner species, or just has a scavenger trailing in its wide. Maybe it needs one of those. Or both. And maybe they're weak points. You stalk, you study, and then you strike. Knowledge lets you figure out how to strike once. Knowledge is using weight over edge --"
Asking questions would have made him feel stupid. Correcting the griffon showed that he was smart.
"Ponies aren't predators."
She stopped. A muted chuckle echoed at the back of the beak.
"You'd think that," she said, and no part of the golden gaze was focused on him. "You'd really like to think that. But if they have the right heart... then some of them start pretending towards everything else..."
"Huh," if said with the right tone, wasn't a question.
Her eyes seemed to locate him again.
"Don't worry about it," the griffon said. "Don't give it a single second of concern in that little pony head. Just tell me anything you hear about her. Anything. Truths, rumors, and lies. Especially the lies. Because a good lie wipes out its own trail, but a bad one can be tracked across a planet." She paused. "Solomon Short said that. So of course it's right."
He decided that pretending to know who that was required saying nothing at all.
"Get back to work," she abruptly ordered him. "I'll get word to you on the next meeting. But if you find out that Rainbow is going to be meeting with her, then you contact me. You know how." Her head tilted back, and gold tracked the glow of Sun against the leafy canopy. "I've got to go."
She began to turn. Zephyr took a very small hoofstep forward.
"Do you need any lunch?" He sort of knew where she could find something to eat. If it wasn't too stale, or too waterlogged.
"No," without eyes to read, came across as something entirely dismissive. "I've got to go --"
"-- where?" Because she always just left.
With more than a hint of both snarl and hiss, "Work."
The pegasus blinked.
"You've got a job --"
"I work in Canterlot," the griffon declared. "It's not exactly the shortest flight. We'll talk again when I'm ready. I'm going."
The more powerful form finished its turn. Pushed through the green, and did so with what felt like an odd lack of sound. Vanished.
Zephyr waited for a few seconds, just in case she'd forgotten something.
He had a plan. So did she, and part of the goals potentially overlapped. But the griffon seemed to feel that she was the one in charge. And a boss -- well, if you were working for someone, then they should really be a little like a parent, right? There should be an obligation to look after you. And with her...
She had a plan: something she wouldn't reveal all at once. But the way she'd put it during their first meeting... was that if she got what she wanted, then so did he.
She had a plan.
(She had to have a plan.)
Zephyr didn't feel like its first priority was him. But the goals might truly overlap. And if they did... then the best way to work was clearly to have someone else do most of it.
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If he thinks he gonna beat fleur-de-lis he is nuts. She is a lot smarter and tougher than she seems and her talent gives her insights into people's lives and who they are.
Oh Zephyr, you poor deluded fool...
11568502
He's counting on Gilda to beat Fleur for him. There's a chance she can. Fleur is holding back right now because she's trying to save Gilda and not destroy her. The reason both of them are doomed is because Fluttershy is the far, far more dangerous of the pair and both are oblivous to that.
11568534
And fleur was raised by griffins so it not exactly going to be easy to beat her. She takes on life burdens especially for fluttershy because she makes the stress and pain from them go away.
I'm becoming increasingly sure that Zephyr is Up To No Good.
Uhm...IMO that's apparently legal here. However, "legal" =/= "socially approved". IMO, given the seeming gender imbalance (about 3/1 or more?) there are probably a LOT of mares who regard that sort of thing as Unfair Competition
11568534
Now I want to see what happens when a griffon gets Stared. How would Gilda react to a stronger will than hers?
That was a good chapter.
Oh man. Zephyr coming in again with the painfully relatable takes on work, lol. I can actually relate to him, or at least understand and remember feeling this way myself. Nasty! đ Stop making me understand and appreciate his perspective Estee! I only want the hottest Fleur takes that boil him down to a caricature I can laugh at, thanks.
Man. He nearly told all that raunchy stuff to Gilda (betcha he doesn't even have her name, either one) and her reaction would have been LEGENDARY. But now it'll just be even more exciting to see what happens when it pays off later. đ Thank you for the update Estee! Zephyr was an entertaining and surprisingly kind of considerate perspective to follow, despite his blatant narcissism. He seems to relate everything in terms of parents and children. Freud (who was PROBABLY a griffon if he existed in this universe, letsbereal) would have had a field day with him.
Thank you for this update Estee! I hope we get back to Bringing Sexy Back next
weekupdate, aka the little giant. Absolutely hilarious condescending nickname that Gilda would come up with for Fleur, of course. Reminds me of the joke from Veep about Jonah, who was very tall and everyone on the show gave him shit for it (also b/c he was an ass), one of the nicknames they came up with for him was "Cloud-botherer" and it fits perfectly into MLP vernacular imo.Fluttershy "should"(don't know if she ever will) get really angry at her parents for not doing their job.
Zephyr seems to be thinking it's her job to do everything for him because it was.......
Just side-stepped a major issue by pure luck there, Zephyr.
11568656 Considering how she reacted to Fleur out-dominating her? I'd say poorly.
Oh boy. I donât think either of them have any clue what they are getting into, and if Flure is driven off, Fluttershy and Rainbow will not be happy at all. Canât wait for more.
really want to know about his childhood, theses glimpse we get are really painting a picture of a life that really show how he ended up as the annoying empty life zephyr
boy does zephyr have issue's he really need a therapist, unfortunate the closest thing for that in ponyville is Fleur, so he screwed
Gilda is proberly the closest thing to a friend zephyr ever had and that sad
i have a feeling the end goals will be mutually exclusive and it end with zephyr having to try fight Gilda to stop her hurting fluttershy
Getting this look inside Zephyrâs head is fascinating in all the worst ways. His perspective on work is understandable, even if the conclusion is wrong - pretty sure everyone can sympathise with the Sunday-night feeling that you canât enjoy yourself because soon youâll need to sleep and right after that work starts again. The ideal solution is to try and get some kind of Universal Basic Income going in a way that the country can support so that people donât need to do work just to survive, but while the politics of Equestria might be friendlier to that than ours, I feel like their economic situation isnât.
Not that Zephyr would go for that anyway, unless it was someone else doing all the work to get it. The term âmanchildâ seems almost painfully appropriate here; he seems to have never actually matured into an adult mentally because he was never given any indication that he should, or that he should have to do so rather than expecting the world to conform to his wishes, at least that he picked up on. Heâs a very good demonstration of the dark side of a usually-optimistic phrase, too: âGrowing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.â
Also demonstrated with the sheer and utter contrast between on one hoof, Zephyrâs reaction to the ground and the things there not being how he wants them, especially the bird, and on the other hoof, Fluttershyâs mark, job, lifestyle, and the entire â500 little murdersâ story.
Gilda, meanwhile... we see just enough of her to see that sheâs trying to hold onto some kind of stability for herself, and possibly forming a chain of herself and Zephyr... except her âstabilityâ sheâs trying to get to is just the removal of the only person whoâs challenged her âavoid thinking about the problem as a problemâ mentality, rather than actually confronting how messed up she is and trying to fix it properly. Understandable, but sheâs going to break down eventually and I can only hope it doesnât hurt anyone else when she does.
Little giant? I donât know who that could be. I guess Iâll have to go back a few chapters to look for whoever that is.
The scary thing? He is absolutely certain everyone owes him. A place to live, food, comfort. All things that he is just a single step from demanding from others. Note when he thinks about Fluttershy and where she lives. It's not concern she lives in the fringe and might be in danger but that she will be safe if he moves in and she takes care of him.
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And if they manage to hurt her well a lot of folks are going to be mad. Rarity trust fleur because she saved her sister from a predator who would have destroyed her innocent little sister and left broken child in her place. Applejack probably feels the same way knowing that her sister could have been easily the target instead sweetie. They all want the cmcs to grow up safely without their innocent destroyed and it almost was so they won't be happy if something bad happened to her while not on the job.
Um...
Okay. This might actually be some common ground between Zephyr and Fleur, assuming she can stomach his presence for long enough to find it.
Huh. Likewise the merciless march of time and resentment towards it. Though Zephyr's ideal age is earlier than Fleur's. In both cases, it's a matter of losing what they need to live comfortably. For her, it's her looks. For him, it's the excuse to let other ponies do all the work for him.
And there's a sentiment Discord could understand. Really, if Zephyr were less... Zephyr, he could settle in quite comfortably in Ponyville.
Legitimate concern... made less so by never bothering to question his assumptions. Does he even know about the whole "frequent savior of the world" thing?
That raises a number of questions. Among them what Zephyr had been doing instead.
On that note, to truly compare the mental and emotional strength of the two siblings, contrast how they deal with death.
Out of sight, out of mind. And in Zeph's case, that includes getting out of sight of anypony who might disagree and expect him to clean up.
As the recurring concern over his mane indicates, Zeph greatly values his self-image. As long as he sees himself as a hoopy frood, he is. If reality starts to present evidence to the contrary, he leaves. But now he's anchored to this one location, and the counterarguments may start piling up...
I wonders what Pinkie sees in him, to say nothing of other senses. I don't expect any romantic inclinations, but it would be very interesting indeed to see through her eyes while she was considering him.
Generally speaking, the two of them can agree on that last statement. It's the specifics where they differ.
Also, imagine if Zeph had shared his thoughts on Dash with Gilda. There might not have been enough of him left to identify.
Yeah, Gilda's hanging on by a thread. Not sure what she's doing in Canterlot, but it could well be a cover for her actual situation. And this look through Zephyr's eyes has been most enlightening. Both of them need to have their respective noses rubbed in just how messed up they are. The trick is getting either of them into a frame of mind that can acknowledge their own failings. And that'll probably be far easier with Gilda...
This study of Zephyr leads into a lot of thoughts contrasting and comparing him with other ponies...
Glimmer's chapters: Rainbow thinks that Given enough time, the Rainboom will be duplicated... We dunno what Zephyr's max speed is... He's obviously pretty strong.
if it's him that does it, in a moment of pressure, needing to run away...
"hanging mines" Oh, thank goodness. I read that as hanging mimes and thought "Gee, Celestia's really getting into her Patrician role...
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Twilight, perhaps? It was always said that Alicorns were the largest of ponies, and Twilight is the smallest Alicorn
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Oh boy, Zephyr really is nothing but a child.
Hmm, I wonder. The underlying resentment for his parents, there is some contrast between this and how Fluttershy described him as the beloved Miracle Child. Sure there might be some legitimate grievances with the work, but I think the core of this resentment is much more recent.
I had my suspicions, but this chapter makes me more certain that Zephyr has been cut off from his parents.
My best guess is that his "plan" is either use Fluttershy as his new primary caretaker, of course he could have a more complicated plan that involves convincing his parents that they need to go back to the old system.
Hmm, perhaps their argument was that is Fluttershy can care for herself, he could too? And if he can "prove" that she really isn't, it will magically make the parents go back on their decision?
Also, Zephyr clearly has a talent for grooming and could likely be an amazing stylist, so just why haven't he gotten down that route?
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I'm pretty sure she meant Fluer, who has been described as unusually tall for a non-alicorn pony, but ponies are usually smaller than most other species. Plus they talk about her coming in an air carriage and having been out of town, which both apply to Fluer.