This Place

by re- Yamsmos

First published 21st of December, 2016

He loved her all through their childhood. Then she went off with another, and simply vanished. It's been a few days since she showed up at his front door, on the breeze of a cold fall night, after ten whole years. This time will be better.

He loved her all through their childhood. Then she went off with another, and simply vanished.

It's been a few days since she showed up at his front door, on the breeze of a cold fall night, after ten whole years. This time will be better.

Is Unfamiliar

What do you do about something like this?

What are you supposed to do?

He turns his head, just the slightest amount, so that he can pretend he's admiring his little sunflower sitting happily next to his laboring stove. He dares not look directly at his intended mark, but he stares straight ahead and forces a smile, minding his peripherals all the while for any signs of movement from them. He feels a frown on the verge of crossing his lips, but he chokes it down and lets a hum out instead to continue his feigned plant fascination. It seems they're doing the same as he, eyes glazed over in a silent study of the other pony currently idling in the same room.

A sharp intake of breath—and words on his tongue—but he closes his mouth and sets his jaw time and time again after small shakes of his head that he inwardly hopes she doesn't see.

What is there to say?

He flexes his chin.

There is nothing, or, at least none that he can think of, so he flicks his sights back to the sizzling pan in front of him, and the tried attempt of over easy eggs spilling their yolks inside its cast iron walls. There's a curse, an obscenity, down there somewhere, but he catches a glimpse of the still ticking clock hanging to his right and deduces that it's probably too early for little bouts of anger. He'd woken up earlier than was his usual today so he could do what he—well—what he was trying to do at the moment, but it seemed that she had somehow caught wind about his planned surprise before he'd even hatched it, and was already up and blinking around the living room as he trotted into the kitchen.

He doesn't mind, really. She can't really argue against his food when it's cooking right in front of her.

Well, she can, but he kind of hopes that she won't. Not because his feelings would be spoiled or anything, because he had to admit that he'd refused his own food plenty of times, but because she seriously needed something. She hadn't spoken a word since he'd opened up his front door on Wednesday, and if she wasn't going to talk, she might as well eat. That was okay with him. He could be honest about that. If she just wanted to crash on his couch and eat his crappy food, he was all for it.

His crappy food calls to him with a loud pop and a spot of scalding oil. He sucks on his teeth when it lands on his neck and burns away at his light amber fur, interrupting the otherwise peaceful quiet of his house's kitchen in his injured wake. The cuss pushes more forcefully than the last time, but he shakes his head and stares at his eggs to stop himself from letting it out. She might not like cuss words. He knows other ponies who are like that, and they give him a knowing glare and a soft frown whenever he lets another one loose in their presence. He wouldn't want that from her.

Even the assured safety of her silence is worrying him.

His eggs pop again.

He scrunches his nose and grabs at the spatula sitting next to the pan. His mind races again, and he can't help but point out he's just trying to distract himself from the pony softly breathing far behind him, but he has to say that this whole thing would be a lot easier if he had been born a Unicorn or something. Even a Pegasus could just use their wings, and he'd seen some around town use theirs like hands to close up their saddlebags or pick at fruit. Stirring breakfast probably wasn't too out of the question, and he'd be able to not screw these things up for once. He couldn't even flip the... darn things over. The backup plan, sitting in his fridge wrapped in plastic, always waited for him, but not a day went by when he considered it. Maybe today was its lucky day. It sure was his.

He turns his head again, craning his neck in the process, and looks at the mare before glancing back to his pan and smacking his lips.

"I, uh," he clears his throat with a foreleg pressed into his muzzle, "I kinda screwed up your breakfast." Cerulean eyes flicker to the egg murder scene crackling around his pan, and he debates making her another batch, but the fact remains: he's out of eggs. The carton lies in the open garbage can next to him, lined with overturned shells that didn't make the cut when put to the cooking test. Those same eyes dart to the floor and remain there, fixated on a little bit of dust he must've missed when he was cleaning just the other day. Everyone likes eggs, don't they? Eggs are good. They're fine.

He taps his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

His are fine, too. Kind of.

He takes one final look at them and half-heartedly agrees that they don't look as bad as they could, then twists around and grabs a plate from the pile next to his sink. Shoveling the egg onto it—and frowning at the pool of straight yellow already leaking out from underneath where it fell—he sucks in a large breath and bites down on the end of the plate. Turning about, he fixes his gaze on his immediate right and hums at the dark clouds plaguing the sky outside the safety of his house as he walks toward his wooden table sat up against the opposite wall of his appliances, minding his step all the way.

Stopping at the edge of the old oak, he lowers his head and releases his grasp on the plate, then nudges it forward with his nose.

He still isn't looking.

"I'm sorry. But you should eat." He realizes what he could be doing right now, and despite his head telling him off, he looks behind him and fishes, "There's some bread in the fridge if you want me to toast a piece for you. Yeah?"

With a smile on his lips, he slowly fans around, finally taking notice of the presence of another next to him.

Her mane is bedraggled.

She barely even seems like she's there in the first place.

She gives him a look with those eyes of hers, but remains quiet, and tugs needily on the heavy blanket wrapped like a cocoon around her body.

He makes a motion to help her, but she fumbles around in an instant and quickly does what she was prior finding difficulty in doing.

His eyes glaze over, and hers do too.

He's still standing in front of her on the opposite side of the table, so he realizes his own presence and turns to leave the kitchen.

There's a hope that he hears a fork scraping as he goes away, that she's taking care of herself this morning.

A hope.

The house remains still, but she's still here.

Is Unexpected

He isn't sure what there is to say.

He isn't really sure what there is he can do, either, but he's got a seven-hour shift tomorrow, so there's some amount of other doings that need to be done. He'll need to go through his closet and find his clothes iron so he can flatten out his blue tie, and then he'll need to rifle around his fridge for awhile to decide what he'll be needing during his short lunch break. A sandwich, an apple or two, some leftovers he'd much rather just toss in the trash. It wasn't—and didn't—make too much of a difference to him. Just nice things to put in his saddlebags to forget and suffer for neglecting hours afterward, when his head would throb with heavy beats and his hooves would create twin trails in the dirt behind him.

It almost comes to him like a normal day, in fact. Just another day of blinking away the crust in his eyes, starting in his thousand-degree bed with a stunning jolt and an almost disheartened gasp, and staring at, first, the ceiling above him, then the fan trying its hardest just like he to get its expected work done with practically laughable results. He pulls off his sheets and sits up, an awkward position for a pony that goes uncared for as he brings up his shaking hooves, groans, and reaches for his dreary eyes to all but stuff them back into his scalding skull. His chest feels empty even though he knows he's bearing a heart, and lungs, and intestines and stomach, and he practically sprains his neck as he takes his bare attention elsewhere to his left.

It's only when his ears flicker and slap against his moist head that he realizes his alarm is still wailing at him with the volume of a winter night inside.

He reaches a leg out and swipes at his clock, which turns out to be much further from his bedside than he was usually accustomed to. He bears his teeth, furrows his brow, and pushes away the realization that he actually has to get up to turn it off as he rises out of his bed and does it. He stands there, his task now begrudgingly complete, and shivers at this newfound coldness. It courses through his entire chest—up and then down and then up again—when he sighs and tries to shake the feeling away.

It comes back to him again when he reaches his bedroom door, lightly pushes—no, walks—into it, and heads toward his kitchen. He needs to brush his teeth; he's not an animal, as far as the term goes, but ponies were animals, and animals needed to eat. The pit in his gut seems to agree with him, gurgling and pelting him with a familiar twinge. It wasn't that he wasn't taking care of himself; time was better spent in the mornings combing his hair and packing lunch and forgetting about the rest of the day ahead of his baggy blue gaze.

It almost comes to him like a normal day, in fact. So in fact that he almost jumps at the figure getting up on the couch, her—his—fuzzy gray blanket clinging to her with an energetic love for her unkempt fur. It seems that she very simply skips most of his daily routine; she only looks around for a perpetual second, then shifts her glance a bare centimeter and locks eyes with him without speaking a single word nor an audible sound.

And that's okay. He smiles, because it's five or so in the morning and he can make her something to eat.

He makes her breakfast for her, but he also makes the mistake of assuming she'd eat it, and so he spends an entire hour just staring at the patterned tiles of his kitchen floor waiting for a fork scrape or a resounding crunch. Even if she's a quiet eater, a gulp would work more than enough magic to get him moving again. She's looking at him; her food; her plate; whatever he seemed to be so interested about on the ground in front of him. If she was glancing about the dining room with an anxious panic, he wouldn't be able to tell. Her head is locked into place, hooves and body too. It seems only her eyes are capable of moving; she's paralyzed, just as he, but only she can have some sort of effect by fidgeting.

She's still here.

She hasn't left yet, but she hasn't shown any aching signs of wanting to stay, but she's still sitting at his dining table with a fork and a spoon and she's still just watching him out of the corner of his eyes and in the center of hers and she's still here.

There's no better option. Not for her. It's that easy. There's no reason on the entire planet that his company would be one so definingly sought after. There are other ponies in town. Countless for him, but none more for her, and so she prods at the toast in front of her with a silent judgment. There's nothing else to do. He's tried again to get her to eat, but tried is a tried word.

He steadies his breathing and tries to smush it back down like some kind of bellows when he realizes it's gotten too heavy. She notices, and looks away from her cold food and straight at him for an unspoken answer to her like question. She blinks in his peripherals but stays her studies. She isn't eating, so she's doing something else with her time to pass it.

There's a lack of energy in both of them, and he's already downed three shots of blistering coffee since trudging into his kitchen.

There are words on his tongue, beckoning ones that could start up something soft and new with someone he knew needed it, but they slide back his mouth and bury themselves in his gut. Counts of three and worthless self-promises come to him just like a conversation, disappearing and fading away without a trace as he stupidly sucks in air, lets it go, and works his trembling jaw around. There are words that can be said, but they're distant; hundreds, thousands, millions of miles away in much better hooves and much better company than he is. He'd love nothing more than to say them. Any of them. He'd pluck them off a tree and simply let it spill out and piddle like oil in a lake, but the neverending bark of rain beats against his front lawn, and he's hopelessly out of fresh eggs.

His tongue is caught, and hers just as well, and the only thing either had to change the situation now lies dormant amidst a sea of crappy jam and butter on a circlet of recently washed porcelain.

It's a quiet morning, but at least it's not lonely.