Uncharted Books

by DawnBreeze

Uncharted Books bookstore

“Water, Water everywhere… nor any drop to drink” –Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Inside the small bookstore on the corner across from Sugar Cube Corner, behind the counter sits a young Pegasus with square frame glasses. That pony is me. My name is Cheerwine, and I’m the proud cashier of Uncharted Books. I’ve sat behind this counter for nearly two months now, with only a handful of customers coming in and the boss coming out of the backroom to check on me.

I work at Uncharted Books every day, with the exception of D&D night and during Magic tournaments. I’ve always loved books so it just made sense to send in an application when I saw the ‘help wanted’ sign in the store’s front window.

Looking around the now well stocked store, I remember when I first came to the store. It had been a poorly stocked and disorganized hole in the wall in danger of being closed down, but now it is a successful bookstore visited almost as much as the library in the center of town.

Most Pegasi are expected to get a job at a more athletic or Pegasus centered business, but I’m too much of a nerd to work at one of those places. Even my cutie mark is a quill and ink well. I’m also too clumsy and impatient to learn how to play team sports, except for hacky sack.

I was laying my head on the counter about to fall asleep when I heard the bell above the door jingle. In walked our number one customer, Twilight Sparkle, a purple unicorn who’d probably want nothing to do with a Pegasus with an ugly light brown coat other than to buy the newest and rarest books.

“Hey Twilight!” I said excitedly, lifting my head up to a familiar gaze. “Hey Cheerwine!” She said, putting a rolled up list on the counter and unrolling it with her magic. It rolled onto my side of the counter, and I lifted up my hoof to let it keep rolling until it went through the door into the backroom. Obviously my boss saw it because he yelled in his masculine low voice “Good morning Twilight Sparkle! I assume you’re here to buy up all of my books again?” I sighed, thinking of how much work I was going to have to do - order the books, get the possibly hundreds of books from the train station to the library. How was I going to do that since the wagon has a broken wheel?

“Good morning Book Shelf!” She yelled back to my boss, who let out a loud crack probably from craning his neck to get the kinks out from the night before, which he had spent accounting for the shop. I ran my hoof through my greasy and long, yellowish orange mane.

If it had been anyone else I’d have told them to get the buck out of the store, but Celestia have mercy if I wasn’t a sucker for the mare who stood before me. I finally snapped out of my half-conscious reading and focused on the list, I started reading down it. “Daring Do and the last Holy Pony War is in aisle three, just got it in.” I said, when I instantly recognized it towards the bottom of the list. “I’ll have to special order the rest again.” I said, with my sleepy voice that I casually sported like a trademark.

I absolutely hated the days when Twilight came around; it almost always meant I’d have to work my flank off the next day. “This’ll probably end up being around three hundred bits for all these books.” I said, mentally adding up the prices of the ones I knew from the catalog. Not all that much considering that since Celestia supplied bits through Twilight’s student account. I’ve always been afraid she’d cause inflation every time she puts a bag on the counter with a few hundred bits in it.
She did exactly that. dropping the bag and releasing it from her purple magic aura, she turned and opened the door. “Keep the change, have a good day you two!” she said, before promptly exiting the store. I picked up the velvet sack with my wing and took it to the backroom and set it on the table in front of my boss, who noticeably sighed, knowing he’d have to count it all.

I turned back around and went to the catalog, realizing I had forgotten the list. I turned and it was floating in air; I’d almost forgot my boss was a unicorn. I grabbed it with my hoof and set it next to the catalog, going down the list and checking them on the catalog until I eventually passed out. I awoke to the ringing of the service bell. I walked into the small space between the wall and the counter.

I was tired and ready to go home at this point, so I didn’t even notice the steam powered contraption strapped to my friend Loyal Blade’s back until I had already asked what I could do for him today. “You can wake up, clock out, and come with me to meet Cloud Feather at The Mushroom Café.” He said almost monotonously with just a hint of amusement in his voice. I instantly noticed the voice and lifted my hoof over the counter and he returned the gesture, smacking our hooves together making a ‘clop’ sound.

“What’s up, Blade?” I asked with a tiny bit of energy to show I was still conscious. “Not much brother, just haven’t talked to anyone lately.” He said, while I yawned slowly. I finally noticed his mane was now burgundy instead of the usual dark purple that his coat was. Brown eyes, purple coat and a propeller for a cutie mark.

“So you scheduled a dinner with Cloud Feather and said to yourself ‘let me go get Cheerwine to clock out early?” I asked him quizzically. He pointed his mechanical wing out the window and then I realized it was dark, at least nine in the evening. “Oh, it’s past closing time anyway.” I said apologetically to my unicorn engineer thing friend who refused to show any emotion, despite several years of therapy from Twilight.

He sat silently in front of the counter as I flew about the shop putting up scrolls and books into their appropriate place on the shelves of the store. I hated to fly inside the shop because of my tendency to be a little clumsy and knock over three or seven shelves like dominos. I’ve always wondered about my silent friend, if he simply refused he wasn’t meant to be Earth bound and designed the wings on his back, which I learned connected to intricate valves which let him control them through his spine and nervous system as though he’d always had them on his back, to let him escape from his home on the ground to where his parents dare not go.

I finished cleaning up in record time because I wanted to get to the mushroom café and get some tea with Cloud Feather. I flipped the sign in the door so that it displayed ‘closed’ to the street outside and trotted up beside my long time best friend, ever since he simply refused to let me drift my nap cloud over his tree house because he wouldn’t be able to stay in it if his parents thought it was going to storm.

“You see Tea Leaf around lately Cheerwine?” Loyal casually asked, as we passed the library on the way to the café. “No, he came in to get a book on pH levels and the effect on the growth and distortion of chemicals in plants a few days ago and then dropped off the scene completely.” I asked with concern, I thought Tea Leaf had been with Loyal and Cloud since he lived directly under them and used to steal the morning paper from their doorstep.
Tea Leaf has always been a loner since I met him in flight school. He always preferred his plants, which don’t talk back to him. I thought he was insane when I walked by his apartment one time and heard him singing the lyrics to ‘My Garden’ by the KottonMouth Kings. It turned out he had bought a book from Uncharted Books on my first day that said singing to plants can encourage long plant life and growth.

By the time we arrived at the café, it was dark outside and the street lamps were being lit by a blue pony with a long stick that had a small flame at the end of it. I liked it when the night is almost pitch black. We finally got to the café, and sitting at one of the mushroom tables that gave The Mushroom Café it’s famous oddity factor was my friend and Loyal’s marefriend Cloud Feather. We both trotted slowly up to the table and sat down. Loyal used his magic to lift up the menu but I knew what I was going to get: hard cider and a grass and tomato sandwich.

By the time we left the café, the streets were well lit with candlelight from the lamps on either sides of the street. I had ended up having about four or five glasses of hard cider and was flapping my wings drunkenly just to keep myself from falling over and being picked up for public intoxication.
We walked past Loyal Blade and Cloud Feather’s apartment building and they stopped. I turned and said goodbye to both of them. Hoof shaking commenced and ceased, and I continued my drunken stumble down the street until I arrived at my apartment building two doors down from Uncharted Books.

I walked in and walked up the two flights of familiar stairs without incident. 2A had an earth pony colt banging on the door, I tried to slip past him but he stopped banging and stormed off towards me nearly running me over. I continued my swagger through beer goggles past the latest doorway cut off by yellow tape which read ‘Police line – do not cross’, as I would find out the next morning. Making my way up the third and final flight of stairs a zebra came crashing down in a beaten and bruised lump just as I hugged the wall to support myself. I looked up and saw that another pegasus with gold horseshoes and necklaces had apparently thrown the zebra down the stairs, but who was I to disturb someone trying to make a living? I continued to walk up the stairs, and the pegasus flew after the limping zebra.

I finally reached my apartment, number 3B, otherwise known as the apartment with the ineligible graffiti sprayed next to it with blood splattered across the wall. I pulled the key to the door from my jacket pocket and unlocked the door leaning heavily into the door I flung it open with me following suit falling to the floor with a dull thud and pained groan, “I need to get out of this god damned building.” I muttered into the floor. I pulled my face off of the ground and surveyed the seemingly brand new space. I don’t live in the nicest of neighborhoods, but you have to give me credit, I had erected several bookshelves which were all filled with books. The smell of strawberries and clover hit me like a buck to the face. I reveled in the usual smell of my apartment. I walked through the foyer past the broken hinges on the bathroom door and through the bedroom door. I stopped for a second and looked over the mattress, which was spread out in the corner of the room without any sheets, a blanket, and a PlayColt magazine next to my custom clover pipe.

I lifted the pipe with my wing and proceeded to dig under the mattress to retrieve the small bag of clover which I kept in case of emergencies. I walked to the window which led to the fire escape. Opening it, I stepped onto the top level of the fire escape. I only came onto the fire escape when I needed a smoke and to think. I stuffed the bowl of the pipe, only to realize I had forgotten my lighter, when all of a sudden the clover lit with a spark. I looked around confused. What in celestia's name? I thought to myself. I couldn’t find a reason for the sudden flame until I peered towards the roof and my green-maned unicorn friend Tea Leaf was sitting on the edge snickering like a school filly.

I took a toke from my pipe as my mentally unstable friend erupted into laughter. “I should have known.” I whispered to myself, as he recovered from his laughing fit. He stood up and hopped down onto the rusting platform of the fire escape. “Good day Cheerwine. I see you enjoy my crop, as many a pony does in Ponyville.” He stood quite awkwardly for a unicorn, almost as tall as the top of my wings when they’re fully spread. Sometimes I hated this fact because I was always the tallest one until Tea Leaf became our friend. “I enjoy my clover; I could care less if it’s from you or an earth pony’s crop.” I said, before taking an extra-long toke from my pipe and offering it to my magical friend, who graciously took it in his magic aura and held it up to his lips, taking a small puff, for he is a dignified gentlecolt, who only takes small puffs from his less civilized counterparts’ stash.

After about ten minutes of the puff and pass, the clover was burned out and we said our goodbyes as I climbed into my bedroom window, closing the glass pane and blinds behind me. I climbed under the blanket on my bed and poked my head out the top of the cloth. I began thinking about how long it’s been since I shared a bed with a special somepony. I ended up passing out around thirty minutes after I climbed onto the dirty mattress.

Author's Note:

Meh it's gonna be a weird story, it's my first fanfic but not my first story. I hate to put that here, treat the story as if it had been written by someone more experienced though instead of as a newcomer's one shot.

Comments

[Da_Spy]

I have absolutely no idea where this story is going to go.

Neither do I lol

[DawnBreeze]

1776414
I'll figure it out eventually, but for now, no clue.