Lunch
The Final Game of the Season
Admiral Biscuit
It was impossible to not notice as High Winds led Kerfuffle to her seat, as she steadied Kerfuffle and leaned her crutches up, as she set her lunch on the table and opened the bag—as if she needed help with that; her hands were fine. It was just her leg that was gone.
Well, not entirely gone; it was currently tucked into her locker. Kerfuffle was still healing and apparently couldn’t wear her prosthetic all day long.
Just a play for sympathy. Even if she couldn’t use her leg all day, why not wait until after lunch to take it off? Or why not keep it strapped on and just use her crutches all the time? Or whenever she needed to take some weight off it? A leg filling out her jeans was less conspicuous than no leg.
Or should have been: Kerfuffle was a burgeoning fashionista, or at least a skilled seamstress. Sunset had noticed conversations between her and Rarity, and now she had a whole collection of pants with a zipper up the inseam of one leg and around the knee—
She doesn’t have to make it so obvious all the time. Like a damsel in distress, one of the worst tropes in fiction. Ever since she’d come back, she’d been one of the most popular girls in school; everybody was constantly doing things for her, and she had a ready-made excuse for being late, for needing to leave class early–Sunset couldn’t help but feel jealous, and she hated herself for it.
Sunset turned her attention back to her lunch, or lack thereof. There was still time to get in the hot food line; she could buy a piece of pizza that would require two or three napkins to blot the grease off of. Or if that wasn’t worth the try, mac and cheese that had been the subject of several culinary crimes, or even take her chances at a carton of malk which may or may not have expired in the current semester.
“Hey, mind if I sit here?”
Sunset jerked her head up, gave him a non-committal reply—really, more of a grunt—and then returned to her attempt to tune out the cafeteria, the casual conversation, the noisy normal that was anything but. It could never be normal again; it had all gone wrong one night on the way home from a volleyball game and wouldn’t it be better if Kerfuffle had never come back, if she’d—
No.
Sunset couldn’t think that. Even if the weight of her guilt was nearly too heavy to bear, she could carry it. She would carry it, she had no choice. What else was there to do?
“You know,” her tablemate offered, entirely unprompted. “You’d be a lot cuter if you smiled more.”
“And you’d look a lot better with a fork stuck in your eye,” Sunset muttered in reply. “And yet here we are.”
To her complete lack of surprise, her former tablemate muttered something unprintable under his breath, and then gathered up his lunch tray and departed for greener pastures.
Stats
Page generated in 0.017 seconds
Total duration
1,002 users online
2,117,303 hits today, 2,073,628 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
He was asking for that response, yeah.
I have to assume that was deliberate. I hope she got the one with vitamin R.
11785831
Yup, exactly.
11786163
It totally was. Wasn't in the original draft (it was just milk back then), but AlwaysDressesInStyle mentioned malk and I kinda had to roll with it.
11785831
yeah...I might be relatively clueless at times, but if I saw her in a CLEARLY crummy mood, I would leave her alone or at most ask what was wrong, if there was anything I could do to help, but not a smarmy pick up line.
11786820
This is high school, you know someone's going to do the smarmy pickup line.
Well, that's not just limited to high school if I'm being honest.
The fact is that you wouldn't and I wouldn't and neither of us have a fork stuck in our eye.
I must say, the non-linear narrative is a genuinely brilliant way to explore the story. Juggling between past and presents adds to how her she tears self. Her being even briefly jealous is shows a narrative reflection on her past self. The introspection to reject that Kerfuffle being dead would be better shows her tough, unending journey for redemption abd self-worth. She's barely holding it together, and must recognize it's okay to talk to others. The postige potryal of Kerfuffle's adjustment is very in character for her, as well as her innumerable ideas for little things to make her life better.
11789197
Using flashbacks is tricky, but the story really demanded it. While it's not how we like reading stories, it's how our brains work (or at least how mine does), especially when there's trauma involved. Heck, sometimes I suddenly remember stuff from twenty or thirty years ago, and I don't know that those things will ever go away. Not so much of an issue when you're in Target and see the latest Lego sets on offer and have a flashback to playing with Legos as a kid; potentially more of an issue when it's something traumatic and you're doing your best to deal with it but keep getting reminders of what happened and how you felt and how you're currently feeling.