Chapter 4: A Leopard and Her Spots
Snow. How I dislike it. The way it makes it impossible to see as it falls. The way it makes it difficult to walk through when there’s a lot of it. The way it somehow always makes its way into whatever you’re wearing on your feet, leaving you with cold, wet socks. Pretty to look at, but an inconvenience (to me at least) all the same.
But if Tiara likes it…I guess I can put up with it. Couldn’t be as bad as her, right?
Just as I’d hoped, the snow had stopped falling earlier this morning, leaving everything in a thin layer of cold, white fluff. I’m dressed in my typical winter clothes, while Tiara wears her fuchsia snow boots and an old but in-good-condition scarf I had lying around. I didn’t have any filly-sized coats for her, but if she’s around long enough for me to buy her one…
‘If she’s around long enough’? You make it sound like she’s gonna be here forever. You know that’s not true.
Right. I did know. One of these days, she’ll go back to Equestria. She’ll have to. All I can do is look after her and keep her comfortable until then. But…if she did stay…that wouldn’t really be a bad thing, would it?
I’d taken her out to a park close by. (She was apprehensive about getting into my car at first, but once I assured her it was safe, she settled down.) It was still fairly early out, so only about two or three other people were there, and I doubt they even noticed us. Even if they did, the snow would’ve made it hard to recognize Tiara as a pony and not a dog of some kind.
Tiara smiles the entire time we’re outside. She breathes in the cool, fresh air like she’d breathed nothing but stale, musty air for years. The first thing she does when we get out to the center of the snow-covered field is fall back onto the ground and make snow angels, giggling happily all the while. I had with me my digital camera to take pictures of the cheerful little pony.
“Okay, Tiara! Big smile!”
This was the Diamond Tiara I would’ve loved to see more of in the show: happy, carefree, and acting more like the young pony she was.
While much of the morning is simply spent watching her as she enjoyed herself, I find myself joining in soon enough – against my better judgment. We make a snowman (Tiara commented on how it clearly looked nothing like an actual man), and I help her make a snowpony, with rocks for eyes and a warped tree branch for a tail.
As I step away from the two snow-made constructs to appraise our work, something cold hits the back of my head. I spin around to face my assailant, the icy water dripping down my back. There stands Tiara, holding a snowball in one of her hooves, a malicious grin stretched across her muzzle.
I give a grin of my own. So, it’s come to this, has it?
I leap behind the snowman for cover, shaping some snow in my hands into a sphere. I shoot out from behind the snowman, ready to open fire…but Tiara’s vanished. Suddenly, an attack from the east just barely misses my face. I turn to the pink-coated filly and hurl the snowball in my hand at her. She dodges it easily and flanks to my south side. I compensate for this and throw snowball after snowball at her. She gallops around my volley and dives behind a tree. I had her now! I take a large lump of snow into my hands and shape it into a ball while approaching the tree. My footsteps through the snow give me away, but should she have elected to run or jump out into the open, I’d be ready. Once I was close enough to the tree to rest my hand on its trunk, I jump around to its other side with snowball at the ready. What the?! Once again, Tiara’s disappeared. How did she keep doing that?
“Gotcha!” a voice above me cries out.
My head involuntarily shoots up, and I get a face full of white frost. The attack from above knocks me off balance, and I fall over face-up onto the ground. Tiara gloats from atop a tree branch. I clench a dramatic fist at the empty air. “I’M HIT! MAN DOWN, MAN DOWN! SEND BACKUP!”
Tiara laughs heartily and pokes fun at my theatrics. “You are such a goofball!”
I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I hadn’t played in the snow for almost a decade; it was like I was a little kid again. Almost every fiber of my being tells me to get up, bring Tiara home, and stop acting so immature. But seeing Tiara smiling and laughing like that… My inner child smiled and laughed along with her. She was having fun. I was having fun.
I didn’t want it to end.
I wait until it’s fairly late into the evening, after the sun’s gone down and I’ve given Tiara her dinner and bath. She sits with her back to me and stares into a mirror with a thin smile.
As I’m combing her lush lavender and white mane, I briefly eye the small bag situated by my feet. Seeing her reflection in the mirror, I see her eyeing the bag as well. I set the comb down to address her. “Hey. Can you close your eyes for a second?”
She turns her head slightly and looks up at me. “Why?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Reluctant but curious, she faces forward and closes her eyes. I reach into the bag, looking over every few seconds to make sure she isn’t— “Hey! No peeking!”
She giggles softly and covers her eyes with her hooves. She twitches a little while I straighten her mane, and she feels something cool and metallic slide onto her head.
“…Okay. You can look now.”
Tiara slowly pulls her hooves away to look at her reflection, instantly spying a familiar trinket adorning her head. She gasps, and her face lights up in an ecstatic beam. “My tiara!” she cries. “You got it fixed!”
“Didn’t I tell you I would? After all, I did break it in the first place, so—” I’m cut off when a pair of tiny legs suddenly wraps around my neck. Tiara was holding me and nuzzling my cheek.
“Thank you, Richie! Thank you so much!”
I reach up and hug her right back. “…You’re welcome, Tiara.”
“…And then they got up on stage in these hilarious getups and did this even more hilarious song-and-dance routine! It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen in my life!”
Tiara and I were on the couch enjoying some hot cocoa when we’d stricken up a conversation about her growing up in Ponyville. (She seemed a lot surer of herself and more open since getting her cherished tiara back.) Almost every story she told was about other ponies she knew around town and the amusing antics they’d get into. In fact, almost all of them centered around a trio of fillies who called themselves the ‘Cutie Mark Crusaders’ – Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo. Naturally, as a die-hard fan of ‘Friendship is Magic’, I was familiar with the three and their various misadventures, but I nevertheless indulged Tiara, letting her tell the stories she wanted to tell.
Gradually, the conversation steers toward her friends and family in Ponyville. She had nothing but nice things to say about her family of course, the ‘daddy’s girl’ that she was, but she’d also mentioned how everypony in her class loved and worshipped her.
“Of course I’m the most popular pony at my school! Everypony adores me ‘cause I’m so nice, rich, and beautiful! Especially my best friend Silver Spoon! We do everything together!”
While I didn’t doubt that last part about Silver Spoon, I knew there wasn’t even a sliver of truth in the rest of what she’d just said. I don’t think there’s a brony alive who doesn’t know how much of a jerk Tiara is to her classmates. But could I call her out on it? Not without revealing the show’s existence to her. I didn’t want to think about how she’d take that kind of news.
I take a sip of hot cocoa and it warms me. “So,” I start again, “what about your cutie mark?”
“Huh?” She sounds surprised by my sudden inquiry.
“Your cutie mark. How’d you get it?”
She looks away. “It’s… It’s not important.”
“…Tiara?” She goes silent. “If…you don’t want to talk about it—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she answers, her tone a bit abrasive.
I reach my hand out to her and affectionately rub her ear. Her tail sways back and forth on the couch as I do so. I don’t press the issue any further. She’ll tell me if and when she’s ready.
December 31st. New Year’s Eve. Practically a week since Diamond Tiara came into my life. Probably one of the best weeks I’ve ever had in my life (if not the absolute best). She’d been tough to deal with at first, but once the ice broke, she warmed up to me. Even more so the other way around; she’d really grown on me over the course of the past few days.
Would I have preferred to end up looking after one of the ‘Mane Six’? Pinkie Pie? Rarity? Or even the lesser of the show’s two bratty evils, Silver Spoon? Maybe. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to know a filly that, it turns out, I knew so little about. A filly that, a week ago, I wouldn’t have given a second thought to if she were suddenly dropped from the show altogether. I wouldn’t change a second that we’ve shared.
Of course, there was still the matter of getting her home. A problem that not even the almighty Google could solve. But really, did I expect to find any results? Magic brought her to me, and only magic would bring her back to Equestria. And magic – real magic – was something that my world was in very short supply of. That is to say, zero supply.
It’s been a week now. Was anypony even still looking for her? If there were, shouldn’t they have appeared by now? Or were there dozens, possibly hundreds, of other worlds that they still had to check before moving on to mine?
How long would I have had to take care of Diamond Tiara? A few months? A few years? For the rest of my life (or hers)?
The more I thought about it…the more I was okay with it. Rather, the more I welcomed the idea.
It meant that I didn’t have to keep her presence such a well-kept secret. I could start small. Introduce her to my friends, my family. Paige would love her. I could give her that other bedroom I have, fix it up so she’d feel more at home. So she’d feel like…this was her home.
…Home.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I could fantasize about it as much as I want, but right now that’s all it is: a fantasy. Nothing’s for certain.
I push thoughts of living with Tiara out of my mind. I have far more important things to think about. Like tonight, for instance. It was, after all, New Year’s Eve.
“…Where are we going?”
Tiara asks me this as we get into my car at around quarter to midnight. I turn the key in the ignition and tell her with cryptically and with a smile, “You’ll see.”
For a little over ten minutes, we drive down the road before we reach our destination: a sprawling field of grass with a rolling hillside, where a large number of people had already gathered and were conversing among themselves, creating a lively blanket of sound. Rather than have Tiara walk alongside me, I carry her close, her head poking out of my zipped-up jacket. Once again, I rely on the assumption that those who notice her mistake her for a dog, or even a doll.
I find a spot for us to sit near the top of the large hill, a good ten yards from the nearest person. I unzip my jacket so Tiara can stretch her legs, but she doesn’t leave the comfort of my lap. I check the time. Eleven fifty-nine and forty-two seconds.
Tiara glances up at me. “What’s about to happen?”
“Every year when I was little, my parents took Paige and me out to this field to watch.”
“Watch what?”
“Just wait, it’s almost time.” I keep my eyes on the time. “Okay, you ready? TEN!”
The crowd joins in on cue. “NINE! EIGHT! SEVEN!”
Tiara’s eyes dart about aimlessly. “SIX! FIVE! FOUR!”
I project my voice to her over the crowd. “Keep watching the sky!”
“THREE! TWO!! ONE!!!”
At that moment, the crowd of people assembled on the field erupts in a unified shout of,
“HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!”
Noisemakers clamor, corks pop off of champagne bottles, and fireworks set the sky ablaze in a burst of sound and color. Tiara’s eyes are larger than I’ve ever seen them. They were one of my favorite features about her. Such a vibrant shade of blue.
Summer had those same eyes.
I lean down to kiss her gently on the forehead. “Happy New Year, Diamond Tiara.”
She meets my gaze with a faint blush. “…Happy New Year, goofball.”
We sit there silently, Tiara leaning back against me, as we watch the fireworks dance across the midnight sky and paint it all the colors of the rainbow.
I awaken to the sound of knocking at my door.
Tiara and I had fallen asleep on the couch, having stayed up all night watching cartoons and following a couple of televised year-end parties. We’d celebrated with some Earth-style apple cider.
“Sweet Apple Acres’ cider is better.”
I don’t doubt that.
As the knocking at the door gets progressively louder, I quickly but carefully move Tiara to the bed in my room and close the door behind me. I rub the crud from my eyes before the door; whoever was on the other side might as well have been pounding at this point. Note to self: install peephole. I unlock and open the door to see…
“Dude! There you are!”
…Jesse. My eyes shoot fully open, and my fatigue vanishes in an instant. “J-Jesse,” I stutter as I greet him. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?! It’s been days, dude! I’ve tried calling you, like, a hundred times! Where’ve you been?!”
I nervously rub the back of my neck. How would Jesse react, I wonder, to the thought of me caring for a filly from an animated television show? “I’ve been…around,” I finally tell him.
“‘Around’, huh?” he retorts, clearly not satisfied by my answer. “Doing what?”
“It’s…complicated.”
“Well, ‘un-complicate’ it for me.” He brushes past me and lets himself inside. I’d have said something, but decided against it so as not to arouse suspicion. “…Smells weird in here.”
“You smell weird.”
“Says the brony whose breath reeks of apple cider. …Seriously, man, you fall off the face of the earth for a week, then I stop by and – boom! – here you are. Have you been here the whole time? ‘Cause Summer said she stopped by and you weren’t here, but she thought someone else was.”
My chest locks up briefly. Was Diamond Tiara not as careful as she or I thought? My mind races to come up with an alibi. “…S-Someone was here.”
“Who?”
“My sister Paige. She got into a thing with my folks and ran away from home. Came up to stay with me for a few days ‘til things blew over.”
“Aw, man. Hate to hear that.” Wow. He actually bought that? “Is she still here?”
“Nah, my mom picked her up last night and they patched things up.”
“Okay, good to hear. So now that that’s over, you’ll be coming back to work? Summer’s been asking about you nonstop, and I can’t cover for you forever.”
As much as I didn’t want to leave Tiara at home by herself, I did have to return to work eventually. I needed to earn some more money now that I blew through most of my bonus. “Yeah. I just need another day or so to, you know, make sure everything’s fine at home.”
Jesse lets out a long sigh; he looked like he’d been holding that one in forever. He must’ve been relieved to not have to cover any more of my shifts. “Oh, thank God. …Alright, we’ll talk later, okay? Take it easy.”
“You too, bro.” He steps out to leave and I lock the door behind him. I heave a sigh of my own and thank the Princesses it was a short visit.
But now I’m presented with yet another problem: the holidays and New Year’s were over. I had to go back to work or else risk losing my job. That meant leaving Tiara at home alone for a few hours each day, even accounting for flex hours.
How do the fanfics make this look so easy?!
…Tiara was antsy. How could she not be?
I’d met with my manager and asked him if my work hours could be spread more evenly across the week so that I could spend less time at work and more time at home, using the old ‘trouble at home’ excuse. I assured him it would only be temporary. He was hesitant, but soon relented, off-handedly mentioning I was one of his best employees. Great. Now I’ve lied not only to my best friend, but also to my boss.
What’s more, I had to explain to Tiara that I had to return to work and couldn’t spend as much time with her as I have over the past week. She understood, of course, realizing the importance of having a paying job. But over the past two days, I’ve started noticing changes in her behavior. She’d become less conversational, talking less and less about Ponyville and the cartoons she’d come to like, and asking me more frequently about my attempts to get her home. Each time I could only give her a bare bones answer, and each time she’d walk off in a huff. I could tell. As she’d spent increasingly more time indoors by herself, she missed home that much more. Her patience was wearing thin.
It finally comes to a head when she confronts me while I’m surfing the internet for answers I knew I’d never find. “I’ve been here for over a week now!” she yells at me, as if I didn’t already know that. “You said you’d figure out how to get me home, but you haven’t done anything!”
Once again, I find myself backed into a corner. “Hey, cut me some slack. I don’t have much to go on here; I have no idea how magic even works. I’m doing the best with what I’ve got.”
That wasn’t the answer she was seeking. She shakes an accusing hoof at me. “Well, your ‘best’ isn’t good enough! I bet I’d have been home by now if I didn’t have to rely on you!”
“Hey, come on.” I wasn’t sure what was causing it, but she seemed to be regressing to her old self. The ‘Diamond Tiara’ I’d met a week back. The ‘Diamond Tiara’ I hated. “What’s wrong, Tiara? Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”
“What do you mean, ‘all of a sudden’? This is how I always act!”
“No, it’s not,” I assert. “You’ve changed since I found you. You became kind and friendly. You were happy, weren’t you? The park, the snowball fight, the fireworks – wasn’t all that fun?”
“Oh, please! Like you’d know what fun is! That was all baby stuff! I guess that makes you a baby then, doesn’t it? Hah!”
“Hey!” I push my swivel chair away as I stand. “Seriously, what is your problem?! A few days of acting nice, and now you’re back to being a stuck-up jerk?! Is that all it was – an act?! Was none of it real?! Or were you just getting on my good side so I’d get you home that much faster?! I thought we were friends!”
“Hmph!” She flicks her mane to the side and snobbishly points her muzzle skyward. “Like I’d actually be friends with a stupid…”
Don’t.
“…Useless…”
Don’t do it.
“…BLANK FLANK like you!”
Her words bite into me with each stressed syllable. All I’d done in the hopes of bringing us closer, undone by a few choice insults. My stomach lurches. Did the past week truly mean nothing to her at all? Did I mean nothing to her at all? Or did I just fool myself into thinking she’d change? That in some minuscule way I’d affect her? If so, then why? Why pretend?
Because she’s an evil little filly who’s fundamentally incapable of change.
Her smiles were genuine. Her laughs were genuine. Her thank-you’s were genuine.
Fake. It was all fake.
What about her tears? Did she lie about wanting her parents? About wanting to go back home?
Probably so she didn’t have to look at your ugly, gullible face.
She’s my friend.
You hate her. You’ve always hated her.
I close myself off from the world around me and growl through gritted teeth. “…Get out.”
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Chapter 4 never disappoints. You've set up the pins and shot them down with a cannon. What more could the reader ask for? We have visible character flaws on both sides of the argument, so the conflict is made twice as compelling. I suppose this chapter was a bit lacking in the humor department, but I see no reason to say every chapter has to be just as funny as the next. Besides, this chapter had some great lines.