Lily's conspiracy newspaper said that there was a monster near Ponyville, and while it was mostly wild speculation, town gossip said that Ginger Gold suddenly had somebody unexpected working in her woodlot.
Lily's conspiracy newspaper said that there was a monster near Ponyville, and while it was mostly wild speculation, town gossip said that Ginger Gold suddenly had somebody—something—unexpected working in her woodlot.
Lily had her thoughts about that, and so did I. Assuming it actually existed, would Ginger Gold hire it if it was really a monster? I didn’t think so, but the only way to find out was to see for myself.
Rose and Sam Chapter 1: The Creature Admiral Biscuit
The first I heard about the creature was in one of Lily’s conspiracy theory newspapers. I didn’t usually read those, since they just made me nervous, but she’d left it out and the headline caught my attention.
The creature had been spotted by passengers on a Ponyville-bound train, and the witnesses who had described it had been remarkably consistent about its appearance—bipedal, wearing tattered clothes, a brownish mane, and that it appeared to be heading in the direction of Ponyville.
Of course, it was all Lily could talk about, offering her own speculation on what it might be capable of and why it might have come to Ponyville and why it might have walked near the railroad tracks to begin with. Could it have been trying to wreck a train?
Over the next couple of weeks, a few more distant sightings were reported from overflying pegasi, vague enough they could have been that creature or they could have been anything else. A few ponies saw strange shadow-shapes in the Everfree, but that was little to go on. No trains were wrecked.
Roma claimed that it had sneaked into her garden and stolen some tomatoes, and after that there was a brief flurry of speculation around half-eaten food vanishing from compost piles near the edges of town. Nopony really thought that there was anything remarkable about that; plenty of animals would take food from a compost heap; likely as not, the actual culprit was a raccoon or an opossum or maybe even a skunk.
Even Lily stopped talking about it after a few weeks. It was probably a diamond dog or a juvenile minotaur who had been misidentified, coupled with some overly reactionary ponies jumping at literal shadows. Besides, there were other, more immediate threats to worry about.
Then once the whispers had nearly died down, somepony mentioned that Berry Black, a donkey who lived in the Everfree and made his living gathering firewood, had the creature as a helper. Nopony wanted to go into the forest and find out for sure, and the creature—if it existed at all—didn’t accompany him into town when he delivered logs.
I kept an eye out for him just the same, and spotted him a couple of days later, his wagon empty of firewood and loaded up with supplies instead. He was a familiar-enough sight in town, but nopony really trusted him all that much. If anypony would have a monster for a helper, it would have been him.
I didn’t see any mysterious creature with him, nor could I see one waiting on the edge of the woods for his return, so surely it was an unfounded rumor. If he really had the creature working with him, why wouldn’t he bring it into town to help him unload his wagon?
Then one day I was at the train station, waiting in line to send a telegram, and I happened to glance over at the platform and Berry Black was out there, waiting for a train. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him—or any donkey—riding a train before. I wasn’t sure that was allowed, although if they’d sold him a ticket it must be. Spike was the only non-pony I’d ever seen on a train.
By the time I’d finished sending my telegram, I’d almost forgotten about it. When I got home, though, Lily was practically dancing on her hooves with a combination of fright and eagerness.
“It’s real!” she told me.
“What’s real?”
“The creature in the Everfree! I went to Sugarcube Corner and got donuts for us—” she gestured vaguely towards the kitchen— “and I heard it from Red Gala who was telling Florina about how she’d overheard from Apple Cider that Berry Black was going on vacation and he’d loaned the creature to Ginger Gold to chop and stack firewood out at her woodlot.”
At first I thought that this was going to be another ‘sighting’ where somepony had overheard a conversation from somepony else who’d heard it from a third pony, but my ears perked when she mentioned Berry Black—I had seen him on the station platform, and why would he be waiting for a train if he wasn’t going somewhere?
If it really existed and if it really was working for Ginger Gold, it would be easy enough to find out. Her woodlot wasn’t that far from our house.
“I don’t like that look in your eyes,” Lily said. “You stay away from it, it might be dangerous.”
“Nopony would allow it in town if it was,” I countered. “Ginger wouldn’t have it in her lot, wouldn’t let it near her axes and mauls. Have you talked to anypony who’s actually seen it up close?”
Lily shook her head.
“It’s probably another rumor, then.”
“It isn’t, Red Gala wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true.”
Just then the front door opened, and both of us jumped. It was just Daisy, who looked between the two of us with confusion.
At that moment, my mind was made up. No more jumping at shadows. “Daisy, do you want to go with me to look for a monster?”
•••
“What’s gotten into you?” Daisy asked as the two of us made our way through town.
“I don’t think the creature’s real,” I said. “I think it’s just another thing that Lily’s obsessing over, or at least I thought that until I saw Berry Black at the train station. Maybe it is real, and maybe if I—if we see it with our own eyes and smell it with our own noses she’ll stop worrying about it.”
“I doubt that,” Daisy said. “But I’m curious, and it should be safe in town, there’ll be other ponies around.”
We were still a few blocks away when the distinctive sound of an axe splitting wood began cutting through the normal sounds of Ponyville. Both of us fell silent as we got closer. Finally, Daisy spoke. “That doesn’t sound like Ginger’s normal rhythm.”
“Maybe the creature is real.”
“She hires other ponies to help out all the time, it could be anypony.”
That was true—and she wasn’t alone in that. Lots of ponies had busy times and slack times, and sometimes hired extra help. We did. There was always a need for additional labor in a farming town during busy seasons, and while it was too early in the year for Ginger to be really busy, firewood didn’t go bad if it sat around for a while, and she was shrewd enough to get extra help and build up her stock for winter if it was offered.
Then as we rounded the corner and caught the first glimpse of her woodlot, there could be no doubt: the creature was real and it was there splitting wood.
Daisy and I weren’t the only two ponies who had decided to check the creature out for ourselves. Ginger Gold had set up her woodlot on the edge of town, which both put it nearer to the source of her firewood and also on a fairly untrafficed street, perfect for ponies who bought wood by the wagonload.
Now there were a couple of small groups of ponies walking by, ponies who rarely had any business on this side of town. There were also a few clusters of ponies just watching the creature work, with no attempt made to hide their interest in it.
And there were also a few ponies doing business as usual; looking through the split logs to find the ones they wanted, or simply purchasing one of the bundles Ginger had made up in advance. A lot of bakers and chefs were very specific about the kinds of wood they wanted so that their food would always cook the same, but most homeowners weren’t as concerned as long as the wood burned well and wasn’t too smoky or ashy.
Even though my attention was largely focused on the strange creature, I couldn’t help but notice that Ginger had a lot more split wood than she usually did this early in the year.
There wasn’t a lot to see right away—the creature had its back to us. It might not have liked the crowd of ponies gathered around watching its every move. Or that could have been the most convenient way to split the stack of logs it had.
From what I could see, it looked like a cross between a diamond dog and a minotaur, at least in general form. It was about as tall as a diamond dog but much skinnier, it didn’t have a tail, and its back was furless. It had a sort-of mane, which hung partway down its back—it was tied up with a ribbon, maybe so it wouldn’t get in the way of its forelimbs. When it brought its arms up to swing the maul, I could see that it had hair under them.
It wore dirty pants and tattered hoof-boots on its hind legs, and all its exposed skin was a pale bronze and covered in a light sheen of sweat. I could see a fading bruise on its shoulder and a few scrapes on its back, and I watched its muscles as it worked the axe.
The creature also had a shirt, as dirty and stained as the rest of its clothes. It wasn’t wearing it; the shirt was draped over the top rail of the fence, next to a wooden cup that had been balanced on the top of a fencepost.
Staring wasn’t polite, but I couldn’t help myself. There was something about the way it moved, something purposeful and fluid and deliberate in the way it worked, something almost pony. It was strange, but there was almost a harmony to its rhythm even if it looked awkward in the way it stood and the way it worked.
“It doesn't look dangerous,” Daisy observed.
“No . . . I wonder what it is?”
“Maybe if a diamond dog bitch and a minotaur decided to breed.”
A blush crept across my cheeks. “That’s rude. And the ears are wrong, too. I wonder what happened to all its fur? I hope it’s not sick.”
“You don’t think that it is, do you?” Daisy took a step back. “It looks really skinny.”
“Berry Black had all his fur, you’d think that if it was he’d be losing it, too. If it was a disease or fleas or something.” I looked back over at the creature. It had finished splitting the pile of wood it had and was picking the pieces up from around the chopping block. “Maybe it shaved it off so it doesn’t overheat when it works.”
“I dunno, I’ve seen lots of farmponies and working stallions with trimmed coats, but nopony I know would go furless. And Ginger would know, wouldn’t she? She’d make sure, she’d ask Berry.”
“He’s a donkey, he might not tell the truth.” I scraped my hoof against the ground as I thought about it. “But she’d know that, and if they really have been working together, and if she was sick, he’d have caught it by now and everypony would know. And she buys his wood from him anyway, he wouldn’t have anything to gain if there was a chance it might make her sick.”
Daisy nodded, and then the two of us watched it gather the logs. It could balance several against its chest with one forearm while picking up and stacking them with the other. I thought it was doing a faster job than Ginger Gold, but I wasn’t going to say it.
As it continued working, it turned towards us, and I got my first good look at the face of the creature. It had small eyes and no muzzle and yet it looked right for it. Stray bangs that had come out of its hair-ribbon covered part of its face, and once it had finished stacking as much wood as it could carry, it brushed it back over an ear. I could see a bit of bemusement in its eyes at the number of ponies gathered around watching, and it looked up as a pegasus took flight off a roof before focusing back on its task.
Waving felt like the right thing to do—it had seen us and it knew we were watching it—so I lifted my hoof and a moment later, Daisy did, too. It didn’t wave back.
“I think it’s female,” Daisy confided. “Did you see, on its chest? Those look like nipples.”
I hadn’t noticed, and it had turned its back again as it carried the wood over to the other side of her lot, but I got a chance to look as it walked back, and I thought she was right. The creature was female.
I shifted around on my hooves as it picked up the axe again and started working.
•••
“I want to get a closer look at it . . . at her.”
“You can’t just walk up to the fence and talk to it,” Daisy cautioned.
“Why not?”
“Ginger’s paying for it to do work, not to chat. And maybe it doesn’t talk, I haven’t heard it say anything, have you?”
Just then, Ginger called to her, and she set the wood down then walked over to the fence and the two of them spoke before it moved along the fence and crouched down in front of a new pony who I hadn’t seen arrive.
Daisy must not have, either; she tapped my shoulder to get my attention. “Is that the miller?”
I nodded.
“Why’s she want firewood? You can’t have a fire in a mill.”
“Never mind that, she can talk,” I said. Indeed, she and the miller were carrying on a conversation, although I couldn’t hear what it was about.
Finally, the two bumped hoof and paw and she went back to the chopping block while the miller turned and headed back into town.
“I don’t think she’s a monster,” I said. A monster wouldn’t be chopping wood for Ginger Gold, a monster wouldn't talk to the miller, the evidence was plain as day. The creature was real, the newspaper had actually gotten that right, but it wasn’t a monster at all, it wasn't a threat to anypony.
“Me, either. I think . . . I think she’s from somewhere far away and got lost and she’s trying to get by. She looks like a hard worker, she—”
She’d finished stacking the firewood and went up to the fence to take a break, leaning against the rail and watching us watching her as she drank her water. I started to feel almost guilty, like she was an unintentional creature in a zoo or a circus who didn’t belong, who didn’t deserve to be a spectacle. I’d seen Ginger split wood plenty of times; as often as not she was working when we came by to get some firewood, and sometimes if she was really busy she wouldn’t stop for any small talk as we checked out what she had to offer. That didn’t bother me, I was used to that. She’d mark down in her tally-book that we’d bought some wood and we’d settle up later. I was used to that, and sometimes she had other ponies working for her, especially as it got close to winter and she needed a bigger wood supply and nopony gathered to watch them work.
Ginger headed off to the outhouse, indicating to me at least that the creature didn’t require close supervision. It could be trusted not to go rogue with the axe.
I made my decision in an instant, and turned to face Daisy. “I’m going to buy some firewood from—from her. We’ll use it.”
Before Daisy could object and change my mind, I left her side and trotted across the road. The creature watched me as I entered the sales yard, walking between the neat-stacked piles of cordwood and the pre-made bundles.
She set down her mug and walked over in my direction, and I started to reconsider my boldness as she got closer: she was tall and her paws had claw-like fingers and the smell of her and her sweat was alien, dangerous.
I reminded myself that Ginger wouldn’t have let her in the woodlot if she was a threat, wouldn’t have given her an axe, wouldn’t have left her alone to use the outhouse. And Daisy had been close, practically on my heels, watching wide-eyed. The creature wasn’t a monster, she was a lost mare who didn’t fit in and was trying to get by. I could be a brave pony, and I did my best to study the wood to find the best bundles, I did my best to ignore her standing close enough to reach me if she wanted to.
“Can I have two bundles?” My voice faltered, and I gestured with a hoof at the stack of pair-bundles. Saddlebags didn’t fit cordwood properly, and a lot of ponies didn’t have proper panniers for carrying firewood so Ginger had figured out how to tie two bundles together with lengths of twine to cross the back for easier transport.
“That’s a bit and a half,” she said. Her voice was almost pony-like, but with a strange exotic accent I’d never heard before.
For a moment, I didn’t remember to respond; I was so focused on seeing her up close. She was taller than she’d looked from a distance, and up close I was certain she was female, certain that she had udders and teats and I hadn’t imagined the hair under her arms or the beads of sweat on her skin, and then my eyes were drawn to her tattered stained pants, which didn’t look like anything a pony would have made, and then she was speaking again and it took me a second to remember what I was doing and I shook my head and flattened my ears before looking her in the eyes.
“I have an account.” I pointed a hoof at the account book, in case she didn’t know what that was. “Roseluck.” I gestured back at my cutie mark, that was how Ginger kept track of who bought what. I’d seen the book before, she wasn’t the best at sketching cutie marks but it was at least recognizable and I thought that the creature would be able to figure it out.
She nodded and got the book, flipping through pages until she found it. She didn’t have to go far—I’d bought wood just a couple weeks ago, we really didn’t need it.
While I shopped, Daisy’s curiosity had finally gotten the better of her, and she’d crossed the road at least.
The creature put a couple tally marks alongside my last purchase, then closed up the book and put it away.
She picked up the bundle and carefully set it on my back, adjusting it until it was balanced. Ginger Gold always put smooth-barked logs on the inside to avoid scratching, and she did the same. The feeling of her paws on my back was weird but I kept myself mostly still as she got everything in place.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” As I moved out of the way, she looked over at Daisy. “Do you want some firewood?”
Daisy shook her head. “I’m with her,” she said, pointing a hoof in my direction. “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your name?”
I almost smacked myself in the face, I could have asked.
Neither of us talked until we were a couple blocks away—we were still thinking about her. I’d been scared of Spike when he’d first arrived, he was a dragon, after all. Then I’d gotten to know him and he wasn’t so scary after all.
Not knowing, hearing whispered rumors and seeing blurry pictures in the newspaper that Lily got, that was enough to make a mare worry. Seeing her, talking to her . . . she had an accent, but her scent wasn’t alarming and she looked like a hard worker. Ginger trusted her, Berry Black must have trusted her. It had been weird to have her looming over me as she loaded the firewood on my back, and the feel of her paws on my coat, but she’d done a good job loading the firewood. The two bundles were balanced and the twine across my back was comfortable enough. As comfortable as it ever was. We didn’t usually impulse-buy firewood but we didn’t always remember our wagon when we needed it, either.
I must have shifted unconsciously, because I felt a faint tug of magic on the firewood. “Is it okay?” Daisy asked. “Did she load it right? There isn’t bark rubbing against your coat, is there? You could lose hair that way.”
“It’s fine. She did a good job.”
“How would she know how to load it?”
“Berry must have taught her.”
“He’s got a wagon.”
“Surely he doesn’t take the wagon into the forest.” I could picture the close-packed trunks in my mind. “He’d get it stuck, he must go in the woods without it and pack it out, and when he’s got enough, then he loads his wagon and brings it into town.”
“That makes sense.” Daisy fell silent again, her ears roving around before they flicked back and then forward again. “Oh, or maybe they pull whole trees out, that’s how they did it in the foothills of Mount Fairweather.”
“Whole trees?”
“He’s just a single jack, and I don’t see how she’d wear a harness, unless she can go on all fours, so maybe not, but they’d chop one down and lop off all the branches and then cut it into house-sized lengths, and pull them like that.”
“Berry mostly does deadfall.”
Daisy nodded. “Might be easier, a lot of the branches would have already broken off, and the wood’s lighter after the water goes out of it. I suppose with those paws of hers it would be easier to hook up the chain, and maybe she carries some out, too. We saw her carrying it..”
“Do you think . . .” that she harnesses him, too?
“Hmm?”
“Nothing. I wonder how clever she is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she can help with gathering wood and splitting it, which she either knew before or else she learned how.”
Daisy nodded. “Maybe . . . we have no idea what she is, maybe she comes from a forest or something and is naturally good with wood. She didn’t have a tail, did you notice that?”
“Not a proper tail, it could have been tucked in her pants.”
“Don’t some monkeys not have tails? They climb in trees.”
“I thought they did, I thought they wrapped them around branches and hung from them, and used them for balance like squirrels and cats do.”
“I would think a tail would get in the way. Goats climb stuff and they’ve got really short tails.”
“Sheep don’t climb and they’ve got short tails, too. Even if she already knew how to split wood, she would have had to learn to read and write, so she must be clever enough to do that. And why do you think she was talking to the miller?”
“She wants to buy flour?”
I shook my head. “She’d go to the miller for that, we’ve got to. I bet she’s going to work in the mill.”
“Firewood’s one thing, but she could curse the flour or something, couldn’t she?”
“Couldn’t she curse firewood, too? Make it burn wrong?”
Daisy scrunched up her muzzle in thought and finally nodded.
“Do you think she could weed? Help out in the beds?”
Daisy considered it. “She’s at least smart enough to talk and chop wood. . . .”
“And find the tally book and write in it, too.”
“If somepony gave her directions, maybe. You’re not thinking of taking her on as an apprentice?”
“No, of course not.” We’d had our fair share, fillies and a few colts with flower cutie marks who were enthusiastic and wanted to learn. Mostly earth ponies; Lily wouldn’t dream of letting a unicorn touch our flowers, although she begrudgingly accepted a pegasus once. She’d never trust an unknown creature anywhere near our flowerbeds. I wouldn’t, either. Who knew what she might do to flowers? Firewood, at least, was hard to mess up. “Just thinking out loud.”
“You’re sure the firewood is on good? Because I can adjust it.”
“It’s fine. Why doesn’t she have a muzzle? And her ears weren’t at the top of her head where they should be.”
“I don’t know.” Daisy frowned. “Maybe it wasn’t a diamond dog and a minotaur, maybe a bird? They don’t have muzzles.”
“They’ve got beaks, and she didn’t have a beak.”
“We can go back and ask Sam what she is.”
“Isn’t that kind of rude? You get flustered when—”
“Okay, but she’s not a pony, it’s different. She’s gotta tell us. Why do you think she’s got ugly clothes?”
I’d been wondering the same thing, although I had other concerns than her complete lack of fashion. I’d thought they might be to protect her from wood chips, but then if they were, why wasn’t she wearing her shirt? Why didn’t they cover more of her? Then I’d thought they were to keep her warm, since she hardly had any fur, and maybe she’d taken her shirt off when she got hot. “To keep her warm, I bet. Since she’s only got a mane and a little fur under her arms.”
“And then she got too hot chopping wood?”
I nodded. “She’s working for Berry and either sleeping outside or sharing his house, so she can’t have very many bits.”
“I wouldn’t let her inside if I was him. It’s not safe. It’s one thing to have a tame creature helping you, but to invite it inside?”
“Fluttershy lets Harry into her house.”
“Fluttershy is weird.”
“She’s nice, I like her.”
“And she’s really pretty, and I like her too. She’s still weird. Do you think she’d know what the creature is?”
•••
I glanced over as we walked by the Hayburgers. Even if I wasn’t hungry, the smells always enticed me, even if I knew it’d go straight to my rump and crest. Their hay fries were so delicious.
Daisy saw where I was looking. “We could get some food. Or—”
I waited, and then prompted her. If she didn’t say it outright, it was a bad idea.
“Or we could get some catsup and I could splatter it all over my coat and claim that the creature had gobbled you up.”
“Lily’d smell that it was just catsup.”
“She’d faint or gallop to the basement before she had a chance to.”
“You’re probably right.” I snickered. “Maybe we should, it would serve her right for panicking over nothing.”
“She’s probably already got the door locked, just in case. And taken in all her flowers in pots.”
•••
She had the door locked, and from what I could see, she’d taken in all her flowers in pots. Daisy tapped on the door until she finally deigned to open the top half, apparently unaware that the creature could have easily stepped over it. Just as well that she hadn’t seen how tall and leggy it was. And maybe good at climbing things, like a monkey.
“I was so worried when you didn’t come back right away,” she started as we stepped into the house. “I thought that it might have gobbled you up or burned you with its fire breath or—”
“She’s not a monster,” Daisy said. “We watched her work and she’s a hard worker. She can speak, she can read the tally book, she’s not a monster.”
“She?” Lily narrowed her eyes. “Now the monster is a she? What’s next, you’re going to give it a name, too?”
“She has a name,” I said. “It’s Sam.”
“What does that even mean?”
Daisy and I exchanged a look, then shrugged. Maybe that was the kind of name those creatures gave each other.
“She’s got teats,” Daisy explained. “We both saw them, that’s how we know. And I asked her what her name was, and she told me.”
“And she’s not dangerous; Ginger wouldn’t have given Sam an axe if she was,” I added.
That was the wrong thing to say. “It had an axe?” Lily rushed past us and slammed the top door shut again, bolting it securely.
“Of course she had an axe, she’s splitting wood.” Daisy lifted the bundle off my back and set it on the floor, then started pulling the wood out piece-by-piece and stacking it in our already-full crib. “If she’d been tearing it apart with her bare paws or slashing it with claws, or if she’d been using horn magic, that might have been a reason to worry.” Her faint green aura lit around each piece as she put it in place. “But it was a normal axe, same one Ginger uses all the time.”
“When she loaded the wood on my back, if she’d wanted to hurt me, she was taller and had her paws on me. She could have done practically anything. I don’t know if I would have had time to turn and kick.” I hadn’t been thinking that clearly in the moment, but I could have kept my rump to her, just in case.
Lily shook her head. “She’s a monster, the newspaper says so and everypony does too and she lives in the Everfree and works for a donkey, what more proof do you need? Just because she hid her magic from you to lure you in doesn’t mean that she isn’t. She’s just pretending.”
Daisy twirled the twine around in her aura and finally slid it under the log bunk. “She’ll still be at Ginger’s woodlot.”
“So?”
“So?” Daisy’s voice got quiet. “So get your scaredy butt out of the house and come and see her for yourself.”
•••
“I could have handled that better,” Daisy admitted.
“Yeah.” I covered a yawn with a hoof. “We both could have. Hopefully in the morning she’ll realize she’s being silly and move the wardrobe off the upstairs landing.”
“She’s gonna regret it’s there if she’s gotta pee,” Daisy said. “Whatever, that’s her problem. You care enough to try and move it?”
I shook my head. “If anypony needs to learn a friendship lesson from this, it’s her. You wanna share the couch?”
“Might as well.”
The couch wasn’t really meant to have two ponies sleeping on it, but it was workable. One of us could have taken the floor, but I felt safer sleeping with Daisy anyway. Just in case Sam really was a monster.
Rose and Sam Chapter 4: A New Resident in Town Admiral Biscuit
Working for Ginger Gold brought about a change, although nopony realized it right away. Sam worked for the miller, and there were reports of a strange creature in town visiting the windmill and a blurry picture that didn’t really do her justice. Then she was spotted visiting the hospital but nopony got a picture of that, and there was more speculation especially since Nurse Tenderheart refused to comment.
And then she kind of became a fixture in town, just like Spike had. It wasn’t an all of a sudden thing, but there was a day where I was in line at Sugarcube Corner and she was in front of me. She got a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and she didn’t sit down but carried it away to wherever she was going. Ponies gossiped that they’d seen her going to Carousel Boutique, and the ‘why does she want clothes’ versus the ‘she has terrible taste in clothes’ ponies had plenty to say about the subject.
Aside from some of the more reactionary ponies, there wasn’t much gossip anymore. Ponies had gotten used to seeing her around, and even if she was still an unusual sight, nopony had enough energy to get worked up--it was the height of spring planting season, and aside from market days, nearly everypony who could work was out in the fields. Even Lily and I took our turns in the fields while Daisy minded the flowers. She was too small to be of much use in harness, and the bits we got helped carry us through the last of the winter flowers, hothouse flowers, and into the first spring flowers blooming.
Sometimes the roads were really bad in spring; the ground didn’t thaw all at once and the grass wasn’t always well-established yet, and there was a lot of traffic with wagons and farm implements being taken from field to field. Everypony was so busy that bad spots rarely got fixed quickly, and neither of us were paying attention as we stepped in the mud. In hindsight, we should have backed out when only our hooves and fetlocks were muddy, but we thought we could pull the wagon through.
Instead, it got stuck, and as the two of us were trying to pull it free, Sam came along. Lily shied back against the doubletree, but she couldn’t really go anywhere. Neither of us could.
“Do you need a push?”
I nodded, even though I didn’t think she was big enough to help much. It was either try that or unstrap and see what we could do to free it ourselves, maybe round up some other ponies to help get it unstuck. That wasn’t too embarrassing; everypony got their wagons stuck in the spring, but I was eager to get home.
I felt her shove against the back of the wagon and yelled at Lily to start pulling, and after a few hoof-slips we dug through the mud into the harder ground underneath where we could get more traction. The wagon finally jerked forward and came out of the mud with a wet squelching sound.
“Thank you, Sam,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
Lily was quiet for the next block, her ears and head down. Finally, she sighed, and said, “It smells weird.”
“She’s stronger than she looks.”
“Anypony who walked by and saw us stuck would have helped push.”
I nodded, because that was true. “So that means that Sam is somepony.” And not a monster.
“I . . . Maybe she is.”
•••
It didn’t seem long at all before she was a familiar sight, and there was another tizzy when she rented a house on the outskirts of town, and then that died down too, except for some complaints that the flowerbeds were growing nothing but weeds.
They weren’t all weeds; the previous tenant had planted some flowers. It wasn’t really my place to do so, but one day I picked a few of the worst weeds out of her beds, and as I was making my way through town afterwards I kind of wondered if she actually liked those plants. Some ponies liked feral hardiness, and plants that didn’t smell nice or couldn’t be eaten, and maybe she did, too.
I never heard a complaint.
One day when I was tacking a help wanted flier to the community board, she came along and I got nervous and left it at an angle. I didn’t think she'd do anything, but I was all alone in the square.
I glanced back as I was leaving and she was looking at it. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if she showed up and wanted to weed our beds. I know that Lily would panic and lock herself away. Maybe peer through a crack in the shutters and complain about how it had all been done wrong. Just because she’d gotten past calling Sam a monster didn’t make her any more accepting or willing to be close to her if it was avoidable.
Sam rejected my ad and picked another one instead and as I walked back to our house I couldn’t decide if I should be grateful or upset. We could have used the help.
Rumors swirled around. She bathed in the creek, she never went without her shorts. She was royalty, she didn’t have a cutie mark. A pony heard from another pony who’d seen firsthoof. I didn’t always know what was true and what was made-up, but I thought about her working in the woodlot or helping to push our wagon free, and I thought about how most ponies tended to shy away from her when she was in town.
I thought about a mare trying to fit in, I thought about Daisy using her TK or not depending on who she was around and how paranoid Lily was being. It didn’t come all at once but I heard other supportive voices about her, how clever she was with her paws and that she didn’t require much instruction at all when it came to new tasks. She got new clothes from Rarity and wore them proudly. That was weird, she was trying to cover something up, or maybe she was pretending to be something she wasn’t. Even when she was working at the mill, I heard she wore her clothes as she pushed around barrels and moved sacks of flour.
I’d never seen her without them, and that bothered me, even as she became a fixture in town.
There was no sense in being rude to her or shunning her, she was in town and she obviously intended to stay. I could see how some ponies tried to keep away from her, but I could also see how some ponies had gotten used to her, got along with her.
Some of them were certainly her co-workers or employers. The first time I’d seen her at the market, she was with Einkorn and Teff, a pair of stallions who also worked part-time for the miller. I didn’t know them all that well, they lived out on a farm and never bought flowers.
I resolved that if she came by our booth, I was going to be polite and learn more about her if I could. Lily decided that she was going to go back to the house until Sam was gone, leaving me alone at the booth. She said it was because we were slow and Daisy could use the help preparing the beds, but I knew why she was leaving: she didn’t want to see Sam.
I watched her as she walked around, flanked by the two stallions, and wondered if she’d come my way. I could tell her that I’d weeded some of her flowerbeds and maybe I could find out what flowers she liked and plant some for her.
I didn’t get my chance; they never came over to our corner of the market.
The next week, though, it was Daisy and I at the booth, and when I saw Sam with the stallions, I told Daisy I was going to wander and buy some food that we needed. Daisy wasn’t fooled, she knew I was curious.
“You and Lily are both obsessed in different ways,” Daisy said. “Don’t you trust what other ponies are saying about her?”
“Would you?”
“What if she wants to be left to herself, doesn’t want to be an object of curiosity?”
“If she really wanted to be by herself, she wouldn’t have come to market with Teff and Einkorn, and she should know that ponies can’t help but be curious about her.”
“I like Teff, he’s cute.” Daisy let out a happy sigh. “I wish—”
“Is that why you’re the one who always buys the flour?”
Daisy blushed. “He just loads the barrels and pulls the wagon, so it’s not like I’d get a chance to flirt with him unless he was outside and in harness already.” She turned her head and bumped me with her muzzle. “Go ahead, I’ll be fine by myself. There’s lots of ponies, it should be easy to get close.
It was easy to get close. Even though most ponies seemed to be tolerating her presence at market—especially in the company of Einkorn and Teff—nopony wanted to be all that close to her.
I lost sight of her as I got into the crowd of ponies nearer the food stalls but found her again without much trouble—Sam stood taller than practically everypony so she was easy to find.
She had little saddlebags on the sides of her pants, which was where she kept her bits, and a small canvas bag that she carried to put her purchases in. Mostly fruits and vegetables, although she did buy some chocolates as well.
She looked better than she had when I’d first seen her at Ginger Gold’s. Most of the scrapes on her skin were gone. I guess with no fur there was nothing to protect her from branches and bark, maybe that was why she’d had a shirt when she was chopping wood. Although I hadn’t seen her put it on.
I was still a little nervous around her, especially since I didn’t have Daisy to back me up, but since we were at the market and there were a lot of ponies around, I knew she wouldn’t try anything and got bolder.
I tried not to eavesdrop on her conversations with the stallions and the merchants because that’s rude, but I couldn’t help but overhear them talking. Mostly about food, what she was going to buy. She was also curious about visiting other towns but didn’t think it was a good idea; she said that even with all the work she’d done in town ponies were still really wary around her.
My ears fell when she said that.
Teff offered to take her on the train, that nopony would think it was odd that she wanted to see where the flour was going, and she said that she was worried that if she did, the baker who bought the flour might think she was going to spoil it somehow or might not want to buy it if they thought she’d helped to make it. She was right, Daisy and I had had that very same conversation.
Sam wasn’t as furless as I’d thought, I hadn’t really noticed when we were at the woodlot but now that I was close to her, I could see very fine pale hair, nearly invisible and certainly not a proper coat.
Since I’d accidentally overheard her talking about what kind of food she was going to buy, I’d guessed where she was going to go next, and was caught totally off-guard when she suddenly turned and nearly crashed into me.
“Oh, sorry.” Before I could even reply, she side-stepped and went over to the soapmaker’s booth. Einkorn grinned at me, and then followed behind her.
•••
“So?” Daisy didn’t even wait before I got around our booth to start asking questions. Not that it mattered, we didn’t have any customers lined up at the moment, and had our roles been reversed, I would have been just as curious. “What kind of food does a monster buy?”
“Apples, carrots, turnips, peppers, soap, cucumbers, and celery.”
“Is that what you got, too?”
“No soap, we’ve got plenty, and I didn’t get any apples.”
“What kind of soap?”
“I didn’t see for sure, and you know how Salsola likes mixing scents. It smelled like peppermint and lavender and something else.”
“Hmm.” Daisy scraped her hoof on the ground, then we both perked up as Jubileena arrived at our booth and began examining our flowers.
On the way home, once we’d packed up and loaded our cart, I told her about what I’d seen and what I’d overheard. Teff’s offer to take her on the train, and how she worried about ponies not accepting her, which we both thought was true and a very un-monstery thing to think. I also told her about the fine downy hair she had and the pockets she had on her pants to keep her bits in.
Daisy considered that. “You don’t suppose she’s being . . . show-offy? Wearing clothes all the time, and carrying around bits?”
”She certainly doesn’t act rich. Her house isn’t very nice, it needs to be painted. And why would she be working so many odd jobs if she was rich?”
“Some rich ponies are eccentric,” Daisy said. “I met a bunch in Manehattan.”
“I think she has to carry her bits around, maybe ponies don’t trust her enough to give her credit. You’re not going to tell Lily I followed her around at the market, are you?”
“No.” Daisy shook her head. “If I do, she’ll probably insist you throw away all the food you just bought, just in case Sam touched it.”
Rose and Sam Chapter 5: Day Laborer Admiral Biscuit
In hindsight, I couldn’t have had a more perfect opportunity to learn more about Sam, although I wasn’t thinking of that as I tacked another flier to the board. We had a lot of work to do, and both Lily and Daisy were going to be out of town, which left all the work on my back if I couldn’t hire help. They were apologetic and I was annoyed, but we couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t the first time things had come up, and it wouldn’t be the last. We’d gotten through then and we would now. Our flowers weren’t too demanding; maybe after a couple of days unattended and unweeded they wouldn’t be as good as they could be, but most ponies wouldn’t know the difference.
When I heard the muffled knock at the door, my first hope was that a former apprentice had seen the post and wanted to help out, but it wasn’t. It was the creature, Sam, and once I’d opened the door I backpedaled as I tried to figure out what to do, what to say. All my thoughts about getting to know her better had been vague and hypothetical, and now here she was in front of me holding my torn-off advertisement in her hand and I didn’t know how to deal with it.
Both anger and fear flashed through me—she towered over me, she was close enough to grab me, and she’d taken my flier down. That wasn’t how it was done; if I didn’t hire her nopony else would know I was looking for help.
Was that how she’d gotten some of her jobs? Other ponies who had hired her had seen her carrying their flier and knew it was either hire her or nothing? But surely if that was so, none of them would have hired her again. Word would have gotten around if she was a poor worker; regarding her work ethic, at least, everypony was positive.
My mind flashed back to when she’d loaded the firewood on my back, the last time she was this close. She had some new scrapes and bruises, and she was still too skinny— her belly was flat and I could clearly see the outline of her ribs and the jut of her hip bones above her shorts. Didn’t she eat enough? Was she spending all her bits on clothes instead of food?
I must have stood there too long, mouth agape and eyes wide, because she finally spoke.
“You needed help with your gardens?” She hesitated, and then a spark of recognition. “Roseluck, right?”
I nodded. She’s not a monster. “Weeding, preparing the beds, and some spring-cleanup we didn’t get to. Lily and Daisy are out of town, and—” Too late, I realized I shouldn’t have said that; if she thought that they might be around any bad ideas she might have had could have been prevented. “The beds and greenhouse are around back.”
She turned her head to check for a path, and there was, but it was more convenient to come in the house. After a brief mental deliberation, I stepped away from the door and motioned for her to enter.
The moment her paws crossed the threshold, I imagined how Lily would react.
Poorly. Daisy, at least, would understand.
“The bathroom’s over there if you need it,” I told her. Was she housebroken? Surely she must be, everypony said she lived in Berry’s house, not outside. “And we’ve got pipe water in the house, too. Hot and cold.”
“I’ve got an outhouse,” she said. “You’re going to have to give me instructions for the flowers, I hope you don’t mind. I’m a quick learner.”
From the state of the garden around her rented house, it was obvious enough she didn’t know much about keeping a flower bed. “Follow me.” I kept one ear back, just in case she tried something, but she didn’t. It was easy to have confidence in her when I saw her in passing, but when she was so close, when she was in my house, that was a different matter.
•••
She did know the difference between a blooming flower and a weed, at least. That was a start, and once I was sure she wouldn’t hurt our plants, I tasked her with weeding the pots with flowers. I gave her a small bucket, one that Lily never used just in case she could smell Sam on the bail, and when it was full I showed her where the compost pile was.
I’d never been great at being social with other ponies. It took me time to warm up to somepony new, especially around town. At home, among our flowers, I was in my element, and it felt easier and more natural to give her instructions, to look beyond her strange appearance and to the pony I felt she was within.
I kept a wary eye on her at first just the same, to make sure that she wasn’t hurting the flowers, wasn’t picking the wrong things or eating leaves and blooms. It took longer to get used to her, how she’d crouch down on her haunches and use her paw to get into the pot and dig at the weeds, how she never even sniffed anything, as if she was nose-blind.
I had my own flowers and weeds in front of my muzzle, so once I was confident she knew what she was doing I became totally focused on them, only noticing Sam as I moved on from one bed to the next.
She was a diligent worker. I’d thought so when I first saw her chopping wood, and I’d heard a few ponies say so, as well. The miller was particularly pleased with her, and constantly hired her to move barrels and sacks. Teff and Einkorn must have liked her and trusted her if they were taking time out of their day to go to market with her.
Daisy, Lily and I usually chatted and gossiped while we worked, and Sam could talk, but I didn’t want to distract her too much. Although, it got lonely to work in silence, and she was only a row away from me.
I wasn’t sure what would be a good way to start a conversation with her, and as we worked that bothered me. Foremost on my mind was what was she, and why was her coat so sparse and why did she always wear shorts and sometimes a shirt no matter what she was doing? Did she really bathe in the river? Why had she worked with Berry Black when there were plenty of ponies in town who would hire her? Where had she come from, and why had nopony ever seen another one of her species? Did she have a cutie mark?
None of those felt like polite questions, especially to start a conversation.
Why did she want to work with me? I didn’t have the only job offer on the board—had she just picked the first one she saw? Or did she see it as an opportunity to learn more about flowers? Maybe she’d noticed that I’d cleaned up her flowerbeds some and wanted to finish the job first but didn’t know how.
I just assumed if she wasn’t a monster she was like a pony, and since she didn’t have wings or a horn, that meant she was most like an earth pony, which sort of biased me to think that she’d be naturally good with plants. And most of the jobs I’d seen her doing were physical jobs, the kinds unicorns and pegasi didn’t like to do. But there were earth ponies who were no good with plants at all, now that I thought about it.
She didn’t really socialize with other ponies, as far as I knew. After she got done working or shopping, she’d stay at her house. I hadn’t asked around, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing her out and about after dinnertime.
I couldn’t stand not knowing anything about her, and even if it was rude, the worst that could happen was she’d stop working and I’d pay her a half-day’s wages. “Sam?”
She turned her head.
“How do you like Ponyville?” That was a safe question.
She shrugged. “It’s a nice town, and most, uh, most ponies are friendly. Nurse Tenderheart said that since I’m different, they might be wary until they get to know me. So far, she hasn’t been wrong.”
As soon as she mentioned Tenderheart, my ears dropped; everypony knew that Nurse Tenderheart took charge of ponies who weren’t right in the head, who couldn’t live like a normal pony—and then I mentally kicked myself. It wasn’t polite to think like that. Daisy had issues, too, and Daisy talked to Tenderheart, and I’d seen with my own eyes how much it had helped her.
It would stand to reason that Sam would need help to fit in, and maybe there were things that everypony knew that she didn’t know. Like not to take advertisements off the work board, she might not have known that was rude. Maybe she couldn’t read and hadn’t thought to ask anypony in the square to help her, maybe she thought she had to go through town and show the advertisement to sompony who could give her directions. I’d heard that she wore her pants when she visited the spa and I hadn’t believed it, but maybe she didn’t know she was supposed to take them off to bathe, either.
Spike hadn’t really fit in well at first, although everypony thought that was because of Twilight’s influence. Nopony said that out loud, of course, but we all thought it. And in some ways, when they first came to town, he was the more social of the pair. Those were confusing times, and there had been a lot of scary changes all at once and I think if a few of the old farmers hadn’t sided with Twilight or if the Princess Herself hadn’t blessed her, we would have run her out of town.
I realized that it was my turn to talk again. I’d gotten distracted with my own thoughts. What had she just said? “Um, you’re a hard worker, lots of ponies like that. And you’re helpful, you helped push our wagon out of the mud. How do you like your house?”
“It’s a little more . . . rustic than I’d like, but nice enough. Nicer than Berry’s house.”
My ears perked at that. Nopony had ever seen where he lived, some ponies said it was just a tangle of deadwood and others said it was a proper cabin, and Daruma claimed that his father had sold Berry a proper wood stove some years back. I could get all the gossip about Berry’s cabin and how he lived.
“I heard he lived in a shack in the woods.”
“It’s more of a proper hunting cabin,” Sam said. “Two rooms with a lean-to and a workshop next to it, and an outhouse. Moss roof which I thought was strange, but Fluttershy’s got a grass roof. He built it himself out of wood he gathered, so it’s a little rough but plenty cozy. Sometimes I miss it, it’s lonely to be in an empty house.”
“Why’d you leave, then?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized how rude they were.
“It’s complicated.” Sam grabbed a weed and yanked it out of the soil, twisting it between her fingers. “Where are your friends? Lily and Daisy?”
“They’re in Canterlot.” I could tell when I’d touched a nerve, and while I was still curious, maybe that was ground to avoid. “You’ve met them before, Daisy was with me when I bought firewood, and Lily was also pulling the wagon.”
“Flower in her hair? Skittish?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be, she is.”
•••
Opinions were mixed on offering lunch. I knew some ponies who hired day-laborers who didn’t offer and either gave them a break to go get food, or expected them to bring their own. That didn’t feel right to me, though, and we’d always offered lunch. The fact I was even thinking about telling Sam to take an hour’s break to go find something to eat was a sign I was still nervous around her, and I didn’t know why. The day had gotten off to a rough start, but now we were getting along just fine. Was it the idea of spending time in the house with her that was worrying me, or how she might eat her food? Her paws were clever, just like Spike’s, and maybe she would want silverware to eat with. We didn’t have any.
Surely Berry didn’t have any, either.
I was still thinking about it as the town clock started chiming, and had to make a decision. She’s too skinny, I can’t not feed her. “Uh, Sam, would you like something for lunch?”
“You don’t have to bother, I can work through.”
I hadn’t expected that. Sometimes ponies fronted their workers bits for lunch and then deducted it out of the day’s pay. Maybe she didn’t have any money and was too embarrassed to say so. “I was going to make lunch for myself,“ I said. “Nothing fancy, just a salad or a plate of pasture grass, and it’s no harder to make food for two. What do you like to eat?”
She brushed her paws against each other to knock the loose dirt off before answering. “Do you have bread?”
I nodded.
“Jam? Preserves?”
“Is that what you’d like?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.” She glanced around the back yard. “Do you have a faucet where I can rinse off?”
I pointed a hoof in the right direction, and just watched as she put her paws under the water and washed them, almost like one of Fluttershy’s raccoons. It wasn’t until she turned that water off that I remembered I should be making lunch, not watching her clean up.
I scraped my hooves on the mat, making sure to work all the clods of dirt from around my hind shoes, and then glanced back as Sam took her turn. Her paw-boots were still dirty when she was done, but I didn’t see any clumps of dirt on them. It wasn’t that big a deal; if she tracked in the house I could just sweep it up.
For a moment, as I was opening the cupboards, I thought about what Lily would do if she saw one of Sam’s muddy pawprints in the house. She’d know right away it hadn’t come from a pony, her paws were long and bean-shaped and her boots had a weird zig-zaggy tread. I suppose it was for better traction, soft caulks for a flexible shoe.
“Can you read?” I asked. Rude, but it would save time if she could.
Sam replied by making a weird wave with her paw, then said, “Some. I’ve been learning.”
“All our preserves are over there,” I told her. “You can pick whichever you like, or if you’re not sure you can sniff it or ask me what it is.” Only after I’d spoken did I remember that I suspected she was nose-blind. “Most of them have pictures on the label anyway.”
We only had one loaf—half a loaf in the breadbox and I slid it out and then hesitated as I set it on the cutting board. I’d need a bread knife to slice it, and did I want her to know where the knives were?
But then if Ginger had trusted her with an axe . . . I was being too paranoid, maybe it was from reading too many of Lily’s newspapers or maybe it was just being alone with her. Sam hadn’t given me any reason to not trust her, but just the same, I’d have been less jumpy if Daisy had been home.
I’d also gotten too dependent on Daisy helping out in the kitchen; her magic wasn’t all that great but it was good enough, and I was so out of practice that holding the knife to cut the bread felt awkward.
“Let me,” Sam said and I set the knife down and took a step back and the moment she picked it up I could almost see myself dead on the kitchen floor, the hilt of the knife still jutting out between my ribs and I closed my eyes and wondered if it would hurt.
Of course she didn’t stab me, instead slicing off four pieces and then setting the knife next to the sink. “Butter?”
“It’s on the table.”
“I should have asked before I cut four slices, do you want some too?”
I’d been thinking of the fresh orchardgrass we had, maybe with a mouthful of oat hay mixed in, but nodded just the same. Bread and jam would be a good lunch.
She’d picked a raspberry jam which I never liked when working with the flowers, it was too sweet with the smell of flowers still in my nose.
Even though it was rude, I watched her as she ate. How she picked up the bread was almost artful. I’d started to get used to how clever her paws were as she weeded, but this was different. She’d concentrated on the weeds but was casual when it came to eating.
And her teeth—I hadn’t noticed before, but those were pony-like, too. Monsters had fangs, while she had normal-looking incisors and tusks and molars. And she didn’t complain about our lack of silverware, even though Daisy had told me that some unicorns would eat jam bread with a knife and fork. I didn’t know any unicorns that stuck-up; maybe she was trying to show off with her clothes but at least she wasn’t getting uptight about our lunch.
We had a jar of squash jam, and Sam decided to try a little on the corner of her second slice of bread. “Huh, I never would have thought of making squash into jam. Did you make this?”
I shook my head. “Kabocha did, she’s got a stall at the market every other market day.”
“Why not every market day?”
“Not all ponies like the taste of squash,” I said. “So it’s not worth it to set up all the time. We don’t always sell flowers at market; either. Sometimes you’ve got to keep your ears perked and see what’s selling, what ponies want to buy. There’s always an ebb and flow to the market, and if somepony really wants to get flowers they can just stop by the house. Don’t you know about markets?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“How do you get food then? Is it all what you can grow or make?”
“We have stores that always sell it--fresh food and canned foods and boxed foods--lots of stuff that can keep for a while.”
“So it’s like a market all the time?”
“Without the people, the farmers who grew the food or raised the animal. I—sometimes the market confuses me, and not everyone is polite.”
I frowned. I’d never noticed that. I suppose it could be intimidating to someone who didn’t know how markets worked, and since nopony had ever seen her in town when she was working for Berry Black, she must have let him get the food. Was she normally solitary? Maybe so many ponies around made her uncomfortable. But she had said that she was lonely in her house, so maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was looking for a friend.
We’d spent more than an hour at lunch but I wasn’t going to count that against her. It was my responsibility to tell her when to work, after all.
Against my protests she’d cleaned up the dishes and even wiped down the kitchen table, then gone off to the bathroom and given me a few moments alone to reflect. Sam was polite and helpful, as good as any day-laborer I’d hired before, and the more we talked the more curious I got about where she’d come from. I still wasn’t sure I should ask directly, although I didn’t know why. Sam seemed guarded, wary, not like how I imagined a pony on the run would be, but like there was something in her past she’d rather not remember. Was it some tragedy she’d escaped from?
Daisy got that way sometimes, she hadn’t had the best foalhood. I knew she’d been teased at school and she’d moved out to Ponyville to get away from her past. Maybe Sam had, too. Maybe that was why she talked to Nurse Tenderheart all the time, just like Daisy had.
I got the idea she didn’t have many friends in town and wondered if I could be her friend. Everypony needed friends; friends would help you and keep you safe. I didn’t know anypony who didn’t have friends, who stuck to themselves all the time. Well, Berry Black did but he was a donkey, and Zecora did but she was a zebra.
Neither of them had tried to live in town, though. Sam had rented a house.
When I thought about it, it troubled me that ponies hadn’t reached out to Zecora more, maybe invited her to live in town. I didn’t know much about zebras either, some ponies said they were solitary and other ponies said they lived in tribes. Next time I saw her at market, I’d give Zecora a flower.
•••
I wasn’t as conversational as I should have been at first. We had a lot of starter trays that needed to get filled with dirt and then the stratified seeds we’d been preparing. I was intending to do that on my own, although I thought she was smart enough and her paws were clever enough she might be able to do it herself.
And if she did, I could help out with Lily and Daisy’s flowers. I hadn’t wanted to let Sam touch Lily’s flowers especially, lest she have a complete meltdown and rip them all up. So once I set Sam to her task, I moved further across the yard and started weeding Lily’s flowers.
I was thinking of more than the flowers at the end of my muzzle, I was thinking about Sam and how my opinion of her had changed from when I’d first heard about her to when I’d first seen her chopping wood for Ginger Gold, to my hesitation when she’d appeared on my doorstep to help out, all the way to the present. There was something about her that just kept my attention and it could have been fear or curiosity or pity and I wasn’t sure which it was.
Daisy would understand, maybe more than most ponies. Lily would shriek and run off or tell me that I was being a foal and maybe I was.
I must have been completely lost in thought, weeding by instinct, because all of a sudden Sam spoke right behind me and of course I jumped, I hadn’t expected her to be that close. I even almost nipped off a bud by mistake when I clenched my jaw and tensed for a kick.
I think if she’d touched my rump, I might have kicked her.
Sam must have realized, because she crouched down to be at eye-level, almost sitting on her hind paws, and her hand reached out and I moved back then let out a breath and leaned forward again, just as she was taking her hand away. “Sorry, I was lost in thought.” I wasn’t sure if her kind nuzzled, but it felt like the right thing to do, and I brushed against her cheek.
“I guess so, I . . . I shouldn’t have sneaked up on you like that.”
“Your paws are too quiet.”
“Feet.”
“That’s what you call them?”
“Feet and hands.” She pointed to each in turn. Her hands were streaked with dirt and compost, and some of it had stuck to her skin, too. And her pants as well. “What do you want me to do now? All the starters are full of dirt, should I help weed these plants?”
“No, that’s not a good idea. You—we could either go in the greenhouse and start moving flowers from starter trays to pots, or I can show you how to plant roses in the trays you just made. It’s probably best to start with the seeds, we can work together and it’ll go faster.”
Sam nodded. I didn’t have to show her where the greenhouse was, she knew it right away. The door was too low for her and she crouched down until she was past the frame, and I followed her in. I could clip my head on the doorframe if I didn’t duck, too. A lower door was cheaper and also helped keep more heat in, so it was worth the occasional bonk.
Our starter trays were next to a workbench we’d gotten cheap from Applejack when she reorganized her barn. “That’s where we’ll work,” I explained. “I have to get the seeds from our icebox, and you can carry in some of the starter trays you made, not too many or else it gets crowded. We don’t want to get confused about what’s got seeds in it and what doesn’t, I have a hard time sniffing out newly-sprouted seeds.” I’d spent a whole week watering and caring for a rack of trays I thought I’d planted, and didn’t want to make that mistake again. Daisy had jokingly called me the Princess of Barren Soil, which I didn’t mind since she’d done the same thing the year before and I’d twisted her tail for it a time or two.
•••
I hadn’t thought about how close we’d have to work. Both the corner that the workbench was tucked in and the need to show Sam exactly what to do necessitated it. The roses could take some variation in depth, but not a lot if I wanted them to be at their best.
And without thinking about it, instinct insisted that Sam was against the wall, in an awkward corner where she needed to reach over me or across me to get seeds or a new tray when the old one was filled and at first we did our best to keep our personal space but before too long we were like a pair of ponies in harness.
Some of it was my fault, but if Sam made a mistake I’d be the one watching a tray not sprout while she was on to her next job, my bits in her hand. That was always the risk with day-laborers, and I think she understood that I wanted to make sure she was doing what she was supposed to and didn’t complain about the tight working conditions.
By the time I was sure she didn’t need close supervision, that she’d learned what she was supposed to do, we were already practically harness-buddies and I’d stopped focusing on her hands or the occasional brush of fur against flesh. There’s always a point when two mares hitched in tandem get a rhythm, and we had. It wasn’t as speedy as it would have been with Lily or Daisy, but it was close, and by the time the racks were full I was starting to wonder if she might make a good apprentice.
•••
For all her artfulness at planting seeds, she wasn’t as good at transplanting. She was clumsy with roots and bruising on stems, and even if her ears weren’t drooping, I could tell she was upset that she couldn’t seem to get it quite right. I didn’t dare trust her with the sprouting starters, but those could wait if we split our tasks, that would put me ahead on my flowers and there’d be plenty of time tomorrow to get Lily and Daisy’s plants in their new pots.
She moved to carrying and fetching supplies and if she was disappointed by what some ponies would consider a demotion, she didn’t show it. Plenty of eager fillies had apprenticed for a short while, thinking they were ready, and they’d found out that there was more labor than glory, especially just starting out. Some of them understood and willingly did the boringest tasks, and others complained and muttered and I knew they’d grow up sooner or later but flowers didn’t transplant themselves.
I kind of lost track of time, and didn’t realize how late it was getting until I went into the house to use the bathroom. There were clouds building overhead, too; there was an evening rainshower scheduled.
I hated leaving things half-completed, and decided that we could finish the shelf that we were working on and then I’d pay her and send her on her way.
But that was kind of rude, by the time we were done it would nearly be dinnertime, and if I was going to keep her late I ought to provide dinner, too. There was plenty of food in the house and I knew some things she liked, I could easily make a salad. Or—”Sam, do you like cheese?”
“Cheese?”
“Do you know what cheese is?”
Sam set down the pot she was working on and nodded. “It’s just, sorry, that caught me by surprise. Yes, I do. Haven’t seen any at market, though.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know, Cascaval, she’s the cheesemaker, doesn’t sell at market. She’s got a store over on Terret Street.” I felt a blush creeping up my cheeks. DId she know what cheese was? She wasn’t that ignorant. “I was going to make dinner, do you like casseroles?”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.” She was too skinny, anypony could see that. If she was still working for Berry Black she couldn’t have been making all that many bits, and now that she was paying for a house, too. Daisy might have thought she was showing off her money by carrying it around and wearing clothes, but I didn’t think she had all that much. Maybe she had to skip meals sometimes, I could see that her pants didn’t fit her right, she kept tugging them up.
Was it vanity? Had she fallen on hard times but didn’t want to give up the last dregs of her former life? Was that what she was hiding?
Why had she come to Ponyville, and why hadn’t she moved into town right away but lurked in the woods through the winter?
I was sure there was a reason, but I didn’t know her well enough to ask. But I could be sure I was a good host, that I paid her what she’d earned, and that I made sure she had food in her.
And a bath, too. Besides the dirt on her, she had a thin sheen of sweat. I couldn’t help with the dirt-stains on her clothes, but I could send her away cleaner than the rain would make her.
•••
We finally finished the shelf and carried all the castoffs to the compost pile in the corner of the yard. I scrubbed my hooves on our mat, and she did the same, not digging in as much. The bottoms of her feet were smooth and looked soft, and her hoof boots were not in good shape, so she’d decided to leave them off while she worked. There wasn’t anything sharp in our garden, we made sure of that.
“You can take a bath if you want,” I said as we stepped into the house. “Wash off the sweat and soil while I get dinner ready.”
“I can wash off in the creek later.”
“You don’t have to, you got dirty in our flowerbeds so you can get clean in our bathtub.”
“I don’t have any soap.”
“There’s plenty in there, soap and shampoo and mane conditioner, it’s all good and it’s all from Salsoa, you can pick whatever scent you want. I’ve even got peppermint and lavender. The left faucet is hot water and the right faucet is cold, and there are plenty of towels, too. Just don’t use the raspberry-colored one, that one’s Lily’s and she won’t like it if your scent is on her towel.”
Sam hesitated, as if about to protest again, then turned and went into the bathroom while I started preparing dinner.
Sometimes I only focused on dinner, especially when I was alone in the kitchen. I’d keep my ear turned for conversation, of course, but we had a rotation with who cooked dinner most days, and so two of us would be working while the third prepared the meal.
I could hear water running and splashing as she bathed. Our shower was too low for her unless she crouched down and I felt bad about that; some days after hard work it was really relaxing to take a shower, it was like a rain shower but could be made any temperature. Did she know how a shower worked? I could go in and show her, but I was making dinner and she was pretty clever and could probably figure it out. I hadn’t had to explain how the valve on the spigot worked, just pointed her in the right direction.
Did Berry have a shower? Did Sam? She said she bathed in the creek, and if that was true hot water must have felt like a luxury.
I didn’t know how long it would take her in the bath. Her hands were clever and she hardly had any fur to wash, just the small patches under her arms. I suppose not having a coat would be an advantage when it came to bathing, and I did know some ponies who kept theirs trimmed really short if they were doing hot work like baking.
•••
I had the casserole in the oven by the time she came out of the bath, wearing her dirty pants. I didn’t like that, it didn’t seem right that she’d get dressed in sweaty clothes after a bath. Was she trying to impress me? There wasn’t any point.
I could have asked her about it, but instead decided I had time for a quick shower and I trusted her enough not to steal anything or break anything.
•••
Even though I’d told myself that, I hurried in the shower, barely getting clean or dry before coming back out. I thought I’d left the water on as I was drying off; the pegasi were really working hard on the storm—or else it was getting out of control. Sometimes that happened around season changes, and sometimes we’d have to rush out into the garden and protect our flowers from heavy rain and flooding.
Sam had picked up Lily’s conspiracy newspaper and was reading it. I couldn’t remember if that issue mentioned her. Hopefully not, that could really change the mood. Maybe she wouldn’t ask anything about it.
She got up as soon as I came out of the bathroom and folded the paper and put it back where she’d found it, then followed me into the kitchen. I was expecting her to ask questions about what she’d read, but instead she asked if I wanted any help, if there was anything she could do.
She admitted that she couldn’t make the casserole cook faster, then set the table, and after dinner she insisted on helping me clean and then did most of the work herself. She was a lot quicker than I was.
I hadn’t intended to offer any of our wine, but the day had gone really well and I was still a little tense from my morning hesitations about working with her. It would do us both some good, I thought, so I stuck my nose in my wine rack and considered what would be the right choice for today. “Would you like some wine?”
“What kind is it?”
“We’ve got a lot of options, but I was thinking of Red Clover”
Sam looked at the bottle. We’d gotten it in trade and it didn’t have a label; we didn’t bother with those since it was obvious by sight what it was. We occasionally sold some at market, and those bottles we did label. “I didn’t know you could make clover into wine.”
“Just the flowers—you can make all sorts of flowers into wine,” I said. “We make some of our own, but we bought this one.”
“Well . . . if you think it’s a good choice.”
I remembered that she was nose-blind, and might miss some of the nuance. And did she even know what wine was? “Is there something you like better?” A good hostess would have asked, yet I was just thinking of myself.
“You said you make some of your own, if it’s not too much bother I’d like to try that.”
Rose wine was too much, but we had some daisy wine we’d made, and I got out the bottle, then we sat on the couch to make a proper evening of it.
The wine loosened her tongue some, and mine as well; I admitted to following her around at market and buying the same kind of soap she had and she said that it was taking some of the ponies in town a lot of time to get used to her, but she understood. She said that she came from Vancouver, which was a place I’d never heard of, and then wouldn’t answer any other questions about where it was or what it was like. She said that nopony had believed her when she said and so it was better to not say, because maybe it wasn’t true after all, maybe it was something she’d imagined.
That was probably why she saw Nurse Tenderheart so often.
Some ponies would have been frightened by that, but I was sympathetic. Daisy used to sneak off to see her, worried about what we might think if we knew she was talking to a psychiatrist, but it seemed to be doing her good and after a while she became more friendly and outgoing.
Sam needed a friend.
•••
We talked well into the evening, and I’d almost forgotten that she was a hired worker and I ought to pay her. She hadn’t asked, she probably thought it was rude to ask.
Sitting on the couch and talking almost made me forget that she wasn’t a pony. At first it was disconcerting to see her sitting un-ponylike on the couch or grabbing the bottle with her hand, and I think I went through about every emotion a pony can have as we spent the evening and listened to the rain fall and chatted and every now and then I’d focus on her bare skin or fine hair or skinny belly and then she’d be telling me about working at the mill or in the woods with Berry and at some point it started to feel like we were old friends catching up. It was only as I got up to get the bottle of daisy wine again that I remembered that I’d hired her and she would want to be paid before we parted ways.
And a part of me thought that if I didn’t, we could keep the night going as it was, and I didn’t know if that was being hopeful or being selfish.
I was muzzy with drink and still not sure how the day had taken the turn it had, and it took me longer than it should have to calculate out how many bits she’d earned. I knew when I gave them to her she might see it as her cue to depart, and I hoped that she wouldn’t. I felt like if I said it just right as I gave them to her, she’d understand that I was paying her before I forgot, but I wasn’t trying to push her out the door.
And I must have said it right, because she put the bits in the pocket of her pants and then we had another glass of wine.
When I got out of the bathroom, Sam was looking through the front window, watching the rain fall. Sometimes in the spring the rains kept on, washing everything until it was clean and new and fresh. By the time we were yawning the rain was still falling, and I thought about how Sam would have to walk home in the dark and in the rain, which didn’t seem right to me.
Her feet-boots didn’t look waterproof at all, and of course her pants would soak through. Judging by the stains on them, she wasn’t worried about getting them dirty, but they still wouldn't be comfortable. And I decided that I was comfortable enough with her to invite her to stay over.
That would make the house less lonely, too. I never liked spending the night alone.
Did she? She hadn’t left the forest because she didn’t like Berry’s company, had she? That didn’t make any sense; if she wanted to be alone she would have built her own house in the forest like Zecora had, rather than live in town. Unless she was used to living in town by herself, maybe she wanted the company of ponies during the day but the aloneness of an empty house at night.
I shuddered at the thought, and hooked my forehooves on the windowsill and put my muzzle up against the glass, my barrel resting against her hip. Sam reached down and ran her hand through my mane which I wasn’t expecting at all, but it felt nice.
Her eyes were distant, looking beyond the rain-slicked street and houses outside.
“You, uh—” As soon as I started speaking I had second thoughts.
She jerked her hand back. “Sorry. I just—”
“No, it—”
“—forgot where I was.”
“—it’s okay.” I leaned back and bumped my head against her side. “Listen, I don’t like the idea of you walking home in the rain, getting all soaked and who knows what’s out there?”
“I don’t mind getting wet,” Sam said. “And I can handle myself.”
“I’m sure you can.” She’d lived in the Everfree and not gotten eaten by a monster, so she wasn’t bragging. “But I’d feel bad. Lots of ponies send their help home early if it’s going to rain, and I could have.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t mind working.”
“I know. You’re a good worker, and I wish I had more for you to do. Daisy and Lily will be back tomorrow, though. Maybe you would have wanted to stay, I don’t know.” Outside, a unicorn hurried through the rain, a faint light glistening over her head as she tried to keep the rain off. I wonder where she’s going? I didn’t recognize her in the dark. “You don’t have to, I’m not making you stay or trying to trick you into another day worth of work.”
“Berry didn’t ask for help.” Sam sighed. “He found me—we met in the woods and he offered me shelter and food and it didn’t look like he had a lot to give, so I started helping out where I could. Mostly chopping and sorting wood back at his house, loading wagons, cooking and cleaning, foraging . . . your couch is more inviting than a pallet on the floor.”
“You don’t have a bed?”
“I do now. He set aside money for me, what he figured I’d earned even though I didn’t ask him to. Enough to rent a house and get some new clothes and some furnishings and a proper bed.”
“We can sleep in my room,” I offered, “Like a proper sleep-over, and I’ll let you have the bed.”
“Where will you sleep?”
I shrugged. “I can get a couple extra blankets and make a pegasus-bed on the floor.”
Sam turned from the window and crossed her arms. “I am not going to take your bed just so you can sleep on the floor. You sleep in your bed, and I’ll make myself comfortable on the couch.”
“You’re too big to fit on the couch.”
“Of all the things you’re never supposed to say to a girl.”
My ears dropped, but then she laughed. “I suppose it is short. Well, I haven’t had a sleep-over in years, how about I get the blankets on the floor, the pegasus-bed.”
“You’re my guest.”
“It’s your house.”
•••
Sam even wore her shorts to bed, and I began to wonder if she was hiding something or if she carried something in them that was very important to her. I’d heard that she’d visited the spa a few times and taken them off; ponies had said that she didn’t have a cutie mark, so even if it felt like she was trying to hide her identity, she probably wasn’t.
She sat on the edge of the bed as if not sure if she really should take my offer, then turned to me. “Which side do you like?”
“I usually sleep towards the wall,” I said. “But if that’s what you prefer, you can have that side.”
“You should get in first, then,” she said.
I also hesitated, what if she really was some kind of a monster and would gobble me up while I was sleeping, or bite me and drain my magic or something? But if that were true, she would have already done that to Berry Black, wouldn’t she have? Although donkeys didn’t have magic, I didn’t think.
Maybe if I hadn’t drunk so much wine, I would have wimped out. I got into bed and started making myself comfortable as Sam stretched out, turning her back to me.
I was tired, but couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Sam had, I thought, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to wake her if she had. I listened to the rain pattering against the window instead, and her shallow breathing.
Did donkeys not have cutie marks because they didn’t have magic? Surely they must have some magic, but I honestly didn’t know that much about them. Maybe Sam didn’t have a cutie mark because she didn’t have magic yet, either. Or maybe she was still a juvenile and hadn’t gotten one yet.
It was too much to think about. It was easier to be in the moment, to relax and lean against her, to take comfort in companionship and friendship, to not think about her bare skin or how cool she felt. Maybe not the best bed companion for a rainy night, but I could imagine how sharing a bed with her would feel nice on a hot day.
The scent of shampoo was still strong in her mane. I hadn’t told her which shampoo to use, and she’d picked Daisy’s. I hadn’t noticed before, but then I hadn’t had my muzzle against it before either.
It was silly but the familiar scent helped relax me, and the way that she was facing away did, too. If she was going to do anything scary or monstery she’d have to turn and face me.
I couldn’t help being alert, though. This was a new situation and what had seemed like a good idea downstairs wasn’t as certain now that we were so close together in bed; maybe it would have been safer to take the other side, just in case. Or maybe I was still more worked-up than I should have been; plenty of ponies trusted her and she hadn’t done anything wrong. So what if she wasn’t a pony, she worked like she was and behaved like she was. Maybe I’d spent too much time listening to Lily and not enough time trusting myself, so I nuzzled against her back, feeling her spine and the rise and fall of her breathing, and I could hear that her heart was beating fast so maybe she was scared, too. What if she was thinking that I might be a monster?
I put a hoof on her shoulder to reassure her, and nuzzled against her neck.
•••
I didn’t remember falling asleep but I must have, because the next thing I knew, I could feel Sam moving, and I pulled my head up, suddenly wary.
“I’ve just got to use the bathroom, sorry. Too much wine.”
“Okay.”
She pushed the covers off, and I was about to close my eyes again. “Uh, do humans have magic?”
She shook her head. “Not as far as I know, why?”
“I don’t know.” That was true, I’d asked the question and as soon as the words had crossed my lips, I wasn’t sure why it had felt important to know. She hadn’t shown any signs as she was working in the garden.
Sam slid out of bed, careful to keep the covers over me as well as she could.
Even with my ears cocked, I could barely hear her on the stairs; her soft feet hardly made any noise at all. I didn’t like that, but it wasn’t her fault. I could hear as she pushed the door shut, and of course now that I was awake I had to pee, too, although I could probably hold it until the morning.
Or else fall asleep for a while and then wake up and have to go.
I was still trying to decide as she came back up the stairs. We’d talked about getting an upstairs bathroom put in, lots of houses had them, but it was expensive and would make our bedrooms smaller and it wasn’t that inconvenient to have to go downstairs.
Since I was already up, and since Sam was gone and I could get out of bed without worrying about waking up again or getting out of bed without disturbing her sleep, I slid across and had my hooves on the floor as she was coming up the stairs, and we met in the doorway.
When Luna’s moon was bright in the sky, I could see everything in my bedroom clearly, but when Her moon was covered in rain clouds, I couldn’t. Sam looked different when she came up the stairs but I wasn’t really paying attention; I was still unsure on my hooves due to sleep and wine.
It wasn’t until I was almost to the bathroom that I realized she hadn’t been wearing her pants, and then I wondered if I’d just been imagining it, if it was some trick of the shadows and moonlight.
But when I was in the bathroom, I saw that her pants were crumpled up on the bathroom floor, and strangely there was another pair of smaller pants inside them. I’d heard rumors from ponies who had seen her at the spa that she had taken off her pants there and didn’t have a cutie mark, and other ponies had said that she wore another pair of pants underneath into the tub. That had sounded untrue, but I was seeing the evidence with my own eyes.
I didn’t like that her clothes were sitting on the floor and considered picking them up and folding them for her. Clothes were expensive and it didn’t make sense that she chose to wear them all the time but also treated them so badly, especially if she was really struggling for bits.
It wasn’t my place to touch her things, though, and when I was done I went back upstairs. Sam had gotten back under the covers but she was still awake and pulled her legs up so I could climb across the foot of the bed.
Normally I slept on my side, and while part of my mind suggested I should sleep on my stomach again in case I had to get up quick and run away, I ignored it.
I wasn’t the only one who had decided to change my sleeping position; Sam was on her back now and I nestled up against her.
The last dregs of rain were falling, a gentle white noise as I closed my eyes. This time I thought I would have no trouble falling asleep, and I didn’t.
Waking up was normal until it wasn’t. I stretched out, already getting an uneasy feeling that there was something pressing against my back that shouldn’t have been there, and something else wrapped around my barrel.
Did I fall asleep in the woods? That didn’t make sense, it smelled like my bedroom and my head was on a pillow, so I cracked open my eyes to see what was around me, expecting to see a twisted sheet but instead finding an arm and then the last vestiges of my dream were gone in an instant. I tensed, and then I remembered yesterday and last night.
“Good morning, Sam.”
I felt her move and I thought she was awake, but she didn’t say anything. “Sam?” I rolled on my belly and turned to face her. Maybe she wasn’t all the way awake yet, maybe she was just moving around in her sleep.
Her hair was mussed up just like mine, although she didn’t have fur or a tail to contend with. I could feel swirls of clumped hair on my side, while her skin was nearly fur-less.
As she stretched, I barely registered her good morning: my eyes were drawn down to her bare hip. I hadn’t expected to see a cutie mark there; she wasn’t a pony and everypony said she didn’t have one, but it was odd just the same. I’d imagined how it might look, but hadn’t actually seen it.
She seemed naked without a cutie mark. “So it is true.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of sad.” I’d never stopped to wonder before what other species thought about not having cutie marks. Were they jealous of ponies for having them? And how would they know what they were good at, what made them different from anypony else? How would they know that they had a special talent at all? Sam was good at weeding and preparing flower beds, but was gardening her talent? She was good at chopping wood, but was that her talent? It could be anything, and she’d never know.
That was too deep a subject to ponder in the morning. She’d rolled on her back, so I rested my head on her chest, on an udder, wondering too late if it was rude to rest my head there. Sam didn’t pull away; she reached up with her paw—her hand—and brushed my mane back behind my ear. “It’s a human thing.”
Most of her was bony and muscular, but her udder was soft. “No wonder you keep your flanks covered.” I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, in case it was insulting but I did. Then I noticed something else—she also had a patch of fur below her belly button that was almost the same as the hair under her arms. “How come your coat—”
She could see where I was looking. “Also a human thing.”
That wasn’t much of an answer, but it was probably the best I was going to get. She shifted around under me, moving her hips and rump, then relaxed again.
We’d pushed off the covers during the night. Sam’s lower legs were still covered, but I was completely exposed. Not that it mattered, I was still warm enough, although Sam felt cooler than a pony would have. “Are you cold?”
“A little, but you were keeping me warm,” she answered, and put her hand back in my mane. I tensed until she started scratching alongside my ear, then down my neck. It was really relaxing.
When she’d first loaded the firewood on my back, I’d been nervous about her talon-like fingers and what they might do; I hadn’t thought of how gentle they might be, how relaxing her touch could be. Ponies might pay her to groom them, and I told her so.
Although they might not be happy about her lack of coat.
I rested my hoof on her belly and started tracing it around, studying what she’d kept hidden from nearly everypony. Her stomach was too flat, and I could clearly see the outline of her hip bones, which I didn’t think was right. Daisy was about the skinniest pony I knew and she wasn’t that thin, although her ribs were more pronounced than mine. I thought back to the last time I’d helped her put on a harness—I couldn’t see any bones on her flank or rump.
Maybe Sam’s pants helped protect them, even if the fabric was thin. The triangular patch of fur concealing her marehood and under her arms, were they the last vestiges of a proper coat? Had some magical mishap caused her to lose everything else, or was it something more mundane? Could it be related to how she’d gotten to Ponyville? Nopony knew for sure, but everypony knew that powerful magical spells could singe your fur off.
I’d seen how her body was positioned when she sat down, and both her crotch coat and the hair under her arms might have been protected from whatever could have happened. Did she have a powerful mage as an enemy? Was she hiding from him?
Her skin was paler where her shorts had been, too, almost like she was wearing ghostly shorts. That didn’t seem like something I should ask about, especially since I was content for the moment to let Sam scritch my ear and run her fingers through my mane.
It was tempting to just stay in bed, to let her scritch behind my ears and relax, to just forget about everything else except the moment, and I might have been able to, but my bladder had other ideas.
Sam looked comfortable and I didn’t want to ask her to move just because I had to pee, so I carefully planted my hooves, accidentally pushing down on her belly as I caught my balance. She didn’t protest, though. Then it was an easy hop out of bed and onto the floor. She said she had to go, too, but could wait until I was done.
Was I going to go back to bed when I was finished in the bathroom? If she wanted to laze about, I might join her, even though I wasn’t tired at all. I’d slept really well, and that despite drinking too much wine and still being half-convinced Sam was a monster. Sometimes gut feelings were right; other times careful thought was.
As I made my way downstairs, I thought about yesterday and last night, and decided that the warnings my mind was still making were false alarms. Sam wasn’t a pony, Sam was different than a pony, but she was like a pony when it counted, and I was sure that I could trust her.
•••
I’d forgotten that Sam had left her clothes in the bathroom until I stepped inside. She’d wadded them up into a crumpled heap against the wall, and even though I had more pressing business, now that it was daylight I couldn’t help but give them a closer look. Not only the pants I’d seen her wearing, but the second set of pants that fit under them. They were left inside the pants, satin under-pants with Rarity’s monogrammed sigil. What they were for, I had no idea. I hadn’t known that she was wearing them; they were completely invisible under her shorts. What was the purpose?
Snooty unicorns in Canterlot wore clothes as often as they could to show off their wealth, but all of it was meant to be seen. What was the point of clothes that didn’t fill out a dress and which were hidden from everypony? I thought about it, but I couldn’t come up with an answer.
I didn’t know if Sam had fallen back asleep, so I was careful on my hooves as I went up the stairs. She said she had to use the bathroom, too, so I didn’t think she had dozed off again. Once I knew I had to pee, that always stayed on my mind until I had, but I couldn’t assume she was the same.
When I got to my bedroom she was down on all fours, her rump facing the door, looking under the bed for something. She must not have heard me, or else she was completely focused on her exploration. Her ears were fixed to the side of her head and as far as I could tell they couldn’t move at all, so maybe she wasn’t good at hearing things coming up behind her. Or else she knew it was me, and wasn’t worried that I was sneaking up on her, and I wondered if I should tell her I was behind her. Just in case she got alarmed and kicked.
WIthout a tail for cover, I could clearly see her vulva, not exactly like a mare’s but similar. More like an ewe’s than a mare’s.
An instant later I felt heat rising in my cheeks: was she presenting? I didn’t think she was, she wasn’t winking, just focusing her attention under the bed, so much that she hadn’t noticed me yet. I wondered how she’d react if I goosed her, and started snickering, which made her snap her head around.
“What’s so funny?”
I didn’t want to admit what I was thinking. Goosing a mare might earn a bloody nose or worse. “You look like a tail-less mare with no coat when you’re standing like that.”
“I can’t find my shorts,” she said. “I don’t know where they went.”
“They’re in the little filly’s room.” How had she forgotten? I couldn’t imagine having clothes and caring so little for them I wouldn’t know where they were. But then I remembered we’d had plenty to drink; maybe she’d taken them off and couldn’t recall when or where. And I thought about chiding her for not taking care of her clothes like she ought to, but that was her business. I wasn’t always as good as I should have been about cleaning my harness or hanging it back up neatly, that was something that Daisy always chided me for.
Still, for as paranoid as she’d been about wearing them, she had forgotten pretty quickly about where they were. Even if I didn’t care for it like I should, I knew where my harness was. “I—do you need me to get them?” Maybe she was comfortable in my room without wearing them, but not in the rest of the house.
She stood up and scratched herself before looking towards the door. “I’ll just go, and use the bathroom, and get my shorts.”
•••
She was still in the bathroom when I came back downstairs, so I knocked on the door and asked her if she wanted breakfast. Hopefully she wouldn’t want anything complicated, although it might be good bonding time to make breakfast together. I wasn’t sure if I would have been bold enough to have her spend the night if we hadn’t worked together making dinner.
Maybe I would have been; ever since I’d decided to go down to Ginger’s woodlot to see for myself if Sam was a monster or not, I’d felt bolder, more confident. It was almost a pegasus way of thinking, living in the moment and letting whatever happened happen. That was no way to run a garden; we’d hardly sell any flowers at all if we didn’t know what we were going to get until they bloomed. It could have been the spring in the air, everypony knew that made a mare giddy, made her willing to take a chance she might not have otherwise.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I’d been nervous around her at all, and then Sam came out of the bathroom which caught me by surprise—I hadn’t heard her move to the door. Her footbeats were very quiet.
As soon as she’d opened the door, I realized she wasn’t wearing her clothes. Instead, she was holding them loosely in front of her, partially covering herself, and I could tell she was nervous, so I folded my ears back and stepped away, wondering what she was scared of. She also stepped back and the hand gripping her clothes fell to her side and I realized I was being a silly pony again. “You’re just . . . I’m sorry, but you know that monsters come out of the Everfree sometimes.”
She rubbed her free hand in my mane. “I know.”
“How come you didn’t put on your clothes?”
“I didn’t feel like it.”
“Okay.” I took one more look at her bare hips, considering. I’d thought that Sam wore her clothes all the time because she was vain or she was hiding something, but since she was willing to not wear them in the house it must not have been to keep a secret from me. It must be vanity.
And she surely didn’t wear them at home. It felt like she was trying to be more approachable, less nervous around ponies, or at least around me.
It was too early in the morning to think too much about it. It would have been easy to get myself stuck in a loop trying to work out her motivations, or to try and figure out my own, from when I’d agreed to let her help with the flowers until now; it was better to just think of her as a funny-looking pony who sometimes behaved like my weird Aunt Moomin, and just have a normal morning.
As normal as I could.
With only a moment’s hesitation, I turned my back to her and walked into the kitchen with Sam following.
She set her clothes on the counter and then started getting out the bowls while I rummaged through the cupboards and icebox for breakfast. She didn’t need to do that, but I felt like she wanted to and would have been upset if I tried to stop her or discourage her.
We didn’t talk while we were eating. I had a lot of questions for her still, but answers would come in time.
Rose and Sam Chapter 9: Reflection Admiral Biscuit
I waved goodbye as we parted ways, hoping I hadn’t kept her too long and there were still jobs on the board. Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t justify keeping her another day. Not to mention what Lily would say when she found out, and I knew she would. Even if I didn’t tell her or she somehow didn’t smell Sam in the house, other ponies would gossip.
The breakfast dishes only needed to be put away, and I could do that after lunch. There was no hurry. Maybe Lily or Daisy would do it, to make up for going out of town and leaving me alone.
I could work hard, and then I could go over to Sam’s in the evening, find out what kind of flowers she wanted around her house. I’d already imagined what I’d put there if it was my flowerbeds, but of course different ponies had different tastes.
At least I wouldn’t have to work around her coat color, it was all pretty neutral shades of pink to tan and browner for her hair. Unless she wanted flowers that matched her complexion, in which case I’d have to do a lot of work. There weren’t any normal cultivars I knew of that grew in those colors.
Which reminded me that it would be a good idea to weed and trim the flower beds along the street. They’d gotten overlooked with all the other spring planting we had to do, and the weeds were taking advantage of our inattention.
I scuffed my hoof on the kitchen floor as I considered it. I should have thought of that yesterday, that would have been a good thing to start Sam out on, even if it wasn’t urgently necessary. If she hadn’t been any good with flowers, that would have been the place to start out.
But that was all water sunk into the soil; she’d done a good job.
I flicked my tail and blew out my nostrils: I felt on edge, unfocused, tense. It wasn’t helped that the kitchen still smelled like her, and that I had to keep reminding myself that there was nothing different from having her work yesterday than all those other days where we’d hired a pony to help out. She looked different and sometimes acted strange, but she was a pony where it counted.
•••
It was shaping up to be a beautiful day, and there was no reason to not enjoy some of it out in front of the house. The flowers didn’t need all that much attention, a few trips with a watering can and a few sprinkles of fertilizer here and there, and most of the weeds had barely gotten a root-hold.
I was fighting a burr plant—which was doing its best to put burrs in my muzzle—when Apple Cider greeted me.
“Hey, I heard that you had Sam helping you out at your house.”
I nodded, and dropped my trowel. She wasn’t wearing saddlebags or towing a cart, and it wasn’t a market day.
“And you didn’t get gobbled up.”
She must have seen me tense, because she held up a hoof. “I didn't think you would, but Florina and Apple Top were talking and you know how Apple Top gets worked up over nothing, so I said I’d check on you. Just in case I was wrong, too.”
“I’m a big pony, I can take care of myself.”
“Whoa, never said you couldn’t. Fact is, everypony who’s hired her has said she’s a good worker, and I’ve been thinking of giving her a chance, but the press is a one-mare job and Florie likes pouring in the apples and watching them get squished.” She moved in closer to me. “I’d give her a chance to run the mill, but she’s got more enthusiasm than weight, you know?”
I nodded. Plenty of fillies and colts were like that. She’d gotten her mark and asked a lot of questions and helped out for a while, and we were talking about taking her on as an apprentice—seriously enough that Daisy had broached the subject with Apple Cider—and then she had decided that feral flowers were more her calling.
“Sam did a good job,” I said.
“As soon as I saw her chopping wood for Ginger Gold, I knew. You can always tell. No wonder the miller swept in so quick to hire her.” Apple Cider ducked her head down in the flowerbed and came back with a weed in her mouth, which she spit onto my pile.
“You coulda gone for the burr,” I said.
“What, and have to pick burrs out of my muzzle? That one’s all yours.” Apple Cider leaned in and gave me a nuzzle. “Sorry to trot off, but I got to report back before Apple Top decides Sam ate me, too, and needs to fortify the neighborhood.”
I suppressed a snicker as she left, then went back to work on the burr plant. It only stuck one burr on my cheek before it was vanquished.
•••
The first thing I noticed as I set hoof into the greenhouse was that we’d forgotten—I’d forgotten to put away our tools last night. They were still laid out where we’d stopped working. I guess I’d been more flustered than I thought.
The second thing that I noticed was that I could still smell her in the greenhouse. Doing the flowerboxes and border hedges had gotten her scent out of my nose, and now it was back.
There was no way that Lily or Daisy wouldn’t notice it in the house, and that was sure to be grounds for a fight. I could already hear Lily complaining that I’d let the monster into our house, I’d let it touch our flowerbeds and spoil the soil.
I could leave for Sam’s house before they got back, leave the two of them to figure it out on their own. And if Sam was serious about letting me stay the night, not have to worry about it until tomorrow morning. But that was the coward’s way of dealing with problems, and who knew how worked up Lily might get? Especially if they smelled her and I was gone. If Apple Cider’s surprise visit was any indication, Lily would assume the worst, and by the time I came back she’d think I was a zombie pony or something.
It was smarter to wait for them, let Lily have her freak-out, and then go and see Sam. She could see with her own eyes that I was fine, and that the two of us had gotten plenty of work done.
With that idea in mind, I started to work, already missing having Sam as company. It was always nice to have somepony else with you when you were working, it wasn’t the same working alone.
At least it was a familiar task, and I could let my mind wander as I kept trying to figure her out.
In so many ways she was like a pony. When we were just talking, I almost thought that she was, and then I’d turn and realize the truth.
Even after she’d become at least grudgingly accepted in town, some ponies still went out of their way to avoid her, although I’d never heard anypony who’d hired her for a day’s work complain. And when anymare hired a bad worker, the whole town knew about it in a few days, complaints would get passed on from pony to pony. Sometimes it wasn’t fair, especially if it was just fillies and colts trying their best. Whenever we got an apprentice I’d always go easy on her, explain things carefully, and not get mad if she didn’t know something I should have taught her but forgot to.
I thought I had been as fair with Sam, even though she wasn’t a pony. I hadn’t had to correct her after I taught her something, she picked it up right away, and that was more than I could say for some.
Plus, she wasn’t lazy. Admittedly, clearing the beds and filling starters wasn’t the most labor-intensive task, it just took a long time, but I hadn’t heard anypony complain about her slacking off. Even some of the Apple clan had started to warm to her, and they were really smart about things like that. If they hired her and she did a good job, everypony in town would know about it. It seemed unlikely they would, the family was big enough that kin could cover for each other if needed.
I dug my trowel into the dirt and tried to focus on that, and I did for a while, then returned to the quandary of Sam.
Ponyville was usually welcoming to newcomers unless they were weird. Sam was weird in many ways. Not much she could do about the fact that she wasn’t a pony, but I thought if she acted even more like a pony, her neigh-sayers would have no choice but to accept her.
I could tell just by the way she acted that she didn’t have any real friends. Maybe if I was being generous, she had Berry Black, but he was a donkey and didn’t really count.
Other than that, nopony.
Did she want to be my friend? I thought that she might, and I wasn’t opposed to it. Daisy would understand, and Lily would eventually come around.
•••
I must have lost track of time as I was working in the garden. My stomach was grumbling and I thought it odd that I was hungry and then I realized where the sun was in the sky. It was past lunchtime already.
Silly filly. Two days in a row I’d lost track of time, although at least yesterday I’d had an excuse. Breakfast felt like it had been only a moment ago, and also like it had been so long that I was in danger of collapsing from starvation.
I’d just made it into the house and started to rummage through the icebox—we hadn’t eaten all the casserole last night and that would be a perfect lunch—when I heard the front door open.
I didn’t remember hearing the train whistle at all, and for a moment I froze up, then relaxed as I heard Daisy’s voice.
“—out back in the flowerbeds.”
“What if—” Lily’s voice trailed off as Daisy poked her muzzle into the kitchen.
“Hey, Rose.” Daisy’s nostrils flared, and for an instant I saw a green flash just under her forelock. “You, uh, is that—what kind of casserole is that?”
Lily poked her head in the kitchen before I could answer, her eyes darting around the room and her lips pulled back as she took another deep breath. “What did you do?”
I’d known this was going to happen from the moment I’d realized that the greenhouse still smelled like Sam, and I’d spent part of the morning while I was doing familiar, repetitive tasks, considering how I might reply, or broach the subject if somehow neither of them noticed that the house smelled different than it had when they left. I’d thought that I was ready, but I wasn't; Daisy was more confused than anything, and Lily was already dancing on her hooves. She hadn’t placed the scent quite yet but it was only a matter of time.
“You were gone, we had a lot of work, and I needed help.” That was true, and it bought me a moment’s reprieve. “So I put a flier on the job board.”
Daisy nodded. We hadn’t discussed that before they left, but it wasn’t the first time we’d been shorthooved and needed some help.
Even Lily relaxed, briefly.
“And I hired Sam to help out.”
There was a moment as my words sunk in. Daisy’s eyes flicked between the two of us and her ears went back, while Lily’s eyes shrank to pinpricks.
I’d known that this was going to come, and I’d already decided that there were three outcomes. One, Lily would gallop up to her room and barricade herself in. Two, she’d run out into the garden to make sure all her flowers were okay. Three, she’d just started yelling at me.
I hadn’t thought of that when Sam was first at the doorstep; I’d only thought of how I would deal with her, and it wasn’t until I’d really noticed how Sam was leaving her scent everywhere that I started to consider how Lily would react to knowing Sam had been in our garden and house.
To her credit, her flowers actually came before personal safety; she took a deep breath and I thought she was about to tear a strip off my hide, then she shot into the backyard like her tail was on fire.
Both Daisy and I flinched as the back door slammed open hard enough to rattle the windows. Daisy’s ears perked right back up, no doubt expecting a scream of anguish. I had no doubt that once she saw that nothing obvious had been destroyed, Lily would examine every one of her flowers before coming back inside to yell at me, so I turned to Daisy instead. “Tea?”
It took her a moment, and then she nodded.
Once I got the kettle on, she suggested I make enough for Lily, too, who might need it to calm down.
“Maybe if I spike it with brandy,” I muttered. “A lot of brandy.”
“Just brandy with the tea infuser in it,” Daisy said. “That might help. Her flowers are okay, aren’t they?”
“I didn’t let Sam touch them, nor any weeds that were around them.”
“How about mine?”
“Sam handled some, but not until I could see she knew what she was doing.”
“It must have been scary.”
“At first.” I sat down across from Daisy and traced my hoof across the table. “When she was at the door . . . I knew she was seeking jobs on the board, but didn’t think when I put it up. And then I didn’t want to be rude and turn her away, plus I needed the help.” Daisy was pro-Sam generally, but that didn’t mean she really wanted her in the house or garden. “Everypony says she’s a good worker.”
“Is she?”
“We ran out of starter trays,” I said. “Once she was taught what to do, she was quick.”
“You don’t think Lily will smell her on the trays, do you? She might dump them out.”
“She’s not that paranoid.” If she did, I was going to make her replant every single seed, no matter how long it took.
“I hope not.”
•••
It was easier to gossip with mugs of tea in front of us. Lily was still out back inspecting her flowers; we’d taken turns looking through the window at her to make sure she was okay. It was hard to tell if she was frustrated or relieved that all of her flowers were unharmed. Sometimes a pony is upset and wants a reason to justify her anger, but Lily wasn’t going to find that out in the garden.
Maybe I should have let Sam use her towel, that would be something she could be angry about that didn’t matter at all.
Lily didn’t need to know that I’d made three meals for Sam and paid her extra for her work. Lily didn’t need to know that I’d let Sam spend the night, nor that I’d let her share my bed.
But I was still turning some of that over in my mind, and I could tell Daisy. That was what I told myself, but it was easier to think about it than to say it aloud.
“I kinda lost track of time,” I said. “We were in the greenhouse planting starters and had a rhythm going, and then it was late and raining, so I decided that I ought to offer dinner.”
Daisy nodded.
“And a bath, since she got dirty.”
“Did you treat her to the spa?”
I shook my head. “I could have, I suppose, but just offered our bath. Do you think she’d like the spa? I’ve heard from some ponies she’s visited before but only once or twice, and they said she didn’t seem to like it.”
“I heard that, too. And that she wore under-shorts into the soaking tub and in the shower so that nobody could see what her cutie mark was.”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“I heard that, too.” Daisy’s magic flashed, and she lifted her teacup and took a sip. “So it’s true?”
“Both things, she has under-pants that Rarity made and she doesn’t have a cutie mark. She does have a crotch coat, though, it’s just like the fur under her arms and it goes down to her vulva.”
“I wonder why?”
“She said that’s how humans were, which isn’t much of an explanation. Why only have a little fur, have you ever heard of anything like that? I thought maybe some mage cast a spell on her and burned most of it off, and she’s just embarrassed to say so.”
“That could happen,” Daisy said. “If a spell misfired or something. Mom says that I singed all the fur on my foreleg off when I was a little filly and cast a wild spell. Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t have a horn, I could have burned myself bald. If I did it to myself as an adult, I’d be embarrassed to admit how it happened.”
“I don’t think she can do casting magic, she used her paws—hands—for everything.”
“What about her back paws? I heard that under her boots those are paw-like, too.”
“Her talons were stumpy, so I don’t know how much she could do with them. She didn’t wear her boots while she was working, not until she left, so I don’t know if she could for sure.”
•••
Talking with Daisy helped get some things clear in my mind, but it was only an interlude before Lily finally came back in from the garden, now assured that her plants were all unharmed. Her mane was frazzled, the flower behind her ear was missing, and her coat was glistening with a faint sheen of sweat.
She did stop long enough to scrape her hooves clean on the mat and I thought about mentioning that Sam had used it, too, but it wasn’t smart to poke an angry bear.
“I can’t believe you,” she began, then turned to Daisy. “And you, encouraging her, drinking tea like it was normal to invite a monster over to touch our flowers and do who knows what to them? Put a curse on them, or something, just because everything looks okay doesn’t mean that it is, and you’re just pretending. Everypony is just pretending; the mayor never should have let her in town and any sensible pony should have run her back out.”
“She’s not a monster,” I said. I was suddenly feeling very tired. “If she was a monster, she would have done something monster-y by now.”
“Why doesn’t she have fur, then? Why does she have paws? Why does she live in the woods and stay away from other ponies?”
Daisy and I exchanged a look—we both knew why she stayed away from certain ponies, at least.
“She does live in town,” Daisy said. “She rented that house over on—”
“Now she does because nopony’s smart enough to stop her. She’s got everypony under an enchantment, but I can see through it, I read it in the newspaper and everypony says so and they can’t print it if it isn’t true.” Lily snorted. “And now the house smells like her and the flowers are all cursed and neither of you care, neither of you will do anything. I can’t trust you alone, next thing you’ll be inviting the manticore or a diamond dog into our house.”
I thought about telling Lily that she hadn’t said not to hire Sam, but that wasn’t going to be a winning argument.
“Maybe you’re the one who’s wrong,” I said. “If you’re not willing to get close to her, if you’re not willing to talk to her, how do you know? Has anypony in your newspaper ever talked to her?”
“They’ve seen her, and that’s enough.”
“You could ask Ginger,” Daisy said. “If you think that Rose is under a spell. Ginger wouldn’t let anypony put a spell on her, wouldn’t let anypony get close enough to try.”
“How about Teff and Einkorn?”
“Or the miller?”
Lily stomped on the floor. “How about how Twilight got caught by the cockatrice? She’s a smart pony, isn’t she?”
That was true, even if it hadn’t been in a newspaper. Little fillies made up stories all the time, but those three hadn’t been lying, even Fluttershy had been distant for a few weeks afterwards.
I didn’t have an answer and doubt crept in. Everypony knew that cocaktrices were sneaky and they’d hold your gaze even when you wanted to look away.
I had to trust what I knew to be true. If Sam had been trying to lure me in, she would have done something, she wouldn’t have behaved almost like a pony, and she wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to get me while I was sleeping.
“Everypony makes mistakes,” Daisy said. “Remember what happened when Big Mac got hurt, and Applejack was trying to run the farm herself because she was too proud to get any help. Even though anypony would have helped her if she’d asked.”
“What about Pinkie Pie?”
The two of them both turned to look at me.
“She hasn’t—” Daisy began, but I cut her off.
“If anypony’s a good judge of character in Ponyville, Pinkie Pie is. I know for a fact that Sam has gotten treats from Sugarcube Corner before. Ask her what she thinks.”
“She’s not always right.”
“No?”
Lily’s eyes darted back and forth and her ears flattened. “What about, she was wrong about—”
“Zecora?” Daisy finished. “Who isn’t a monster.”
“So she could be wrong about Sam, too.”
“She knew Zecora wasn’t a monster as soon as she actually talked to her,” I said. “Everypony did once they got over being scared.”
“You were scared, too.”
“And I shouldn’t have been, I was jumping at shadows and listening too much to what everypony said, and not seeing the evidence in front of my eyes. Monsters are always monsters, they don’t pretend not to be long enough to work chopping wood or moving flour or weeding flowers, and maybe if you stop worrying about her and just talk to her like she was any other pony, you’d see that, too.” I pushed my teacup away and stood up. “She got a lot of work done, she earned her bits, and I’m sorry you don’t want to see that. There’s more work to do. I’m going to go do it, and you should, too. Arguing gets us nowhere, and your flowers won’t weed themselves.”
•••
I knew that Lily wasn’t going to stay mad at me forever. None of her flowers had been harmed, after all, and I understood that it took time to get used to a new thing. Lily had had a thing or two to say about Sam getting a house in town, then she’d stopped talking about it. And when Sam had pushed our wagon out of the mud, she hadn’t been upset—she’d grown to accept Sam in town, at least, and she could get used to the idea of Sam working in the flowerbeds, too.
Eventually.
Until then, I had to put up with her sulking around the house and being snippy whenever she talked to me, but she’d get over it.
We were tending to Lily’s plants, they’d mostly gotten overlooked on purpose, and I knew she had mixed feelings about that. On the one hoof, the idea of Sam touching them offended her; on another, the fact that my plants and Daisy’s plants were almost all weeded and watered and hers weren’t felt like an insult, and I couldn’t blame her for thinking that. If I hadn’t had to teach Sam as much, I could have had Lily’s flowers all tended to. Next time, Sam would remember what she’d learned and be quicker, need less supervision, and I could make quick work of the other plants.
If there was a next time, if Lily ever trusted me to be left home alone.
What if I had to choose between them? What if Lily didn’t get over being mad, and gave an ultimatum? Who would I pick? The logical answer was the friend I’d known longer, the pony I lived with, but my heart had a different answer.
Rose and Sam Chapter 11: Ginger Gold Admiral Biscuit
When I heard the town clock chime, I went inside to make our lunch. It wasn’t my turn to cook, but I knew that if Daisy did it, Lily and I would get into an argument, and Lily would get mad if she was asked, since her flowers needed the most attention.
Despite all of the nice spring air and sunshine, it had been frosty in the garden. It was a pleasant change to be in the kitchen and reflect on the time I’d spent there with Sam instead.
Lily’s words were still echoing in my head. I knew she was wrong, but I didn’t know how to tell her. Didn’t know if I could tell her, or if she’d be stubborn and stay away from Sam and make signs to ward hexes any time she saw her. . . as if those worked. She used to try that around Daisy, too, every time Daisy used her magic for something. And then she just stopped and they mostly got along now. I think that Daisy wasn’t willing to be bullied, and didn’t care what Lily thought, that if she wasn’t going to deal with it she could move out. Or maybe Lily had just gotten used to it, and wasn’t going to lose a friend over something silly.
It wasn’t like we didn’t have unicorn friends. And Lily wasn’t rude to unicorns at market, she was even nice enough to Zecora on the few occasions she’d stopped by our booth.
I thought that once the town really started to come around on Sam’s side, Lily would too.
Where had Sam come from, and why? Why did she want to wear clothes even when she shouldn’t? I couldn’t figure it out, and ‘it was a human thing’ like she’d told me wasn’t much of an answer. I didn’t want to press her too hard, though, that wasn’t polite.
Maybe Berry knew—she might have told him. I turned the idea over in my head as I finished making our lunch. Maybe I could visit him. . . but going into the Everfree was too big a step, even though he must live someplace safe. Ginger would know where, wouldn’t she? Or I could wait until I saw him in town. If he wasn’t too busy I might have a chance to talk to him, to see if he would tell me anything about Sam.
Or I could ask Apple Cider what she knew. I didn’t think it would be much, though. She hadn’t worked with Sam, just seen her around working and heard some gossip, the same as everypony else.
Sam might open up to me in time. That wasn’t my motive in offering to go over and take care of her flowers . . . I hadn’t mentioned that to Lily, and she was going to be mad when she found out, even though it wasn’t any of her business what I did in my free time.
It wouldn’t be polite to change my mind and not go. I’d just have to think of an excuse to leave after dinner, maybe even before dinner. Or I could just tell her and deal with it before I went to Sam’s rather than after I’d come back.
Lily would think I was going off to my doom. I sighed. No matter what, it was going to be another unpleasant conversation and I wished I hadn’t thought of it before eating lunch.
•••
Lily was still frazzled when I called her in. None of us ever looked our best after working in the garden, but she was more unkempt than usual and still missing the flower over her ear.
Daisy looked annoyed as well; her ears were down until she smelled food, then they perked right back up. “Casserole?”
“And a salad. I had some leftovers from yesterday.” I wasn’t going to tell Lily that Sam had eaten some of this casserole, and I didn’t think she’d be able to smell Sam’s scent on it.
How would she react if I told her later?
I didn’t have to. She might have seen my expression or she might have guessed, but she narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m not having a casserole a monster made.”
“I made it.”
“For a monster.” Lily pushed her plate away. “I’d rather starve.”
“Fine, if you’re going to be that stubborn.” I leaned down and took a bite of mine. “She didn’t touch the salad, I made that fresh just now. She likes oats and milk, though, so if you’re not willing to touch anything she wanted to eat, you’d better leave those alone.”
“We talked about this,” Daisy said. “And I thought you’d come to an understanding.”
“It’s my house, too, and I deserve to say my piece. You can’t just go and invite anycreature you want into our flowerbeds, into the kitchen and living room and bathroom, not without us agreeing on it. You know how I feel.”
My voice was quiet. “I thought you’d had time to see that Sam wasn’t a monster, that she deserves the same respect as anypony else who lives in town, but instead you’re acting like . . .” Like a filly afraid of a raincloud, I almost said. “She doesn’t have everypony in town under her spell, and if you’d take the time to talk to a sensible pony or two instead of getting your tail in a knot gossiping with skittish ponies.”
“You weren’t so worked up about Spike,” Daisy pointed out.
“He’s small, I could kick him into next week.” Lily stamped her hoof on the ground to illustrate her point. “Sam’s big and fast and knows how to swing an axe and can carry bags of flour and wants to hide her cutie mark because it’s a bad mark--”
“She doesn’t have a cutie mark,” both Daisy and I said simultaneously.
“I’m sure your conspiracy newspaper gleefully reported on that,” Daisy added.
“They’re looking for weeds in an empty pot. Only equines can get cutie marks anyway.” But I’d thought she was pony-like enough to have one.
“I don’t care.” Lily looked at her salad bowl and pushed it away, too. “I’m going back outside to tend my flowers, at least they don’t invite monsters in when they’re left alone.”
“And I’m going to weed Sam’s garden, it needs some attention.”
“I hope she gobbles you up.” Lily turned tail and slammed the door behind her as she left.
Daisy watched, wide-eyed, then turned back to me. “You aren’t really--”
“I am. I said I was going to, and I’m a mare of my word. Her garden looks like shit, it needs all the help it can get.”
Daisy pinned her ears and snarled at me. “The two of you both need to calm down, and think before you say something. Nopony benefits when you’re biting at each other’s throats. Next time the two of you are at our market stand together you’re gonna wilt all the flowers if you don’t make up.”
“Sam’s not a monster.”
“I don’t think she is, but you need to consider her views on it.” Daisy took a deep breath. “She was right that you shouldn’t have had Sam into the flowerbeds, even if it meant turning away the only help you were going to get.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong. If you hadn’t just kept pushing her by using magic around her, she’d never have gotten used to you.” Daisy’s ears drooped, and I thought about my next words carefully. “It’s the same thing with Sam.”
“It is not. Lily always knew that I could do horn magic, I just tried not to do it around her until we were comfortable with each other, and in hindsight I think it was still too soon, but I was getting tired of having to do everything the . . . well, you know.”
I nodded. Sometimes I thought she was cheating by using magic, but on another hoof she didn’t have the endurance a proper earth pony did.
“Doesn’t matter, either way. We’d decided to live together, all three of us. But only you decided to invite Sam over, and you didn’t ask either of us how we felt about it.”
“How’s that different than the time that Strawberry Sunrise stopped by and Lily invited her in for tea?”
“We all know her and nopony’s afraid of her . . . you’re not afraid of her, are you?”
I shook my head. “She’s a little weird. Doesn’t like the taste of flowers.” I took another bite of my salad, and it tasted like dirt.
“I don’t think you should invite Sam over again until Lily’s ready,” Daisy advised. “Just to keep peace in the house.”
“Even though she’s quicker to learn than some apprentices we’ve had? Maybe if Lily watches Sam work, she’ll come around.”
“Or else you or Sam are going to have bruises on your barrels when she decides to fight. It’s easier to go at her pace rather than try and force her. She’s as stubborn as a mule when she gets an idea in her head . . . just like you.”
“So what do you suggest?”
Daisy shrugged. “Maybe the two of you should kick it out in the backyard.”
“Fighting doesn’t solve anything.”
“Doesn’t feel like that when somepony gets a good shot at your ribs. Are you really going to clean up Sam’s flowerbeds? You’re not just saying that?”
I nodded.
“And leave me trying to unwind Lily?”
“She might be happier if I’m not around tonight,” I said. “And she might be imagining how Sam’s eating me, that might make her happy.”
Daisy shook her head. “She’ll be worried, deep down. You know it. She only wants what she thinks is best.”
“Well, she’s not always right.”
“Of course not.” Daisy set down her mug and her magic faded. “Are you?”
•••
I hadn’t been kicked out, I’d left of my own accord, but it felt like I’d been kicked out as I walked through town. Sam wasn’t home--I hadn’t expected her to be--and I sniffed around her unhealthy, weed-choked flowerbeds before leaving.
My mind was half on Sam and half on what could be done with her flowers, if it was better to just tear everything up and start again, or try and nurse the ones that were left back into health? Or was I going to wind up wimping out and go back home with my tail between my legs? I didn’t really have a plan for where I was going, I was just wandering around town. It was easier to walk around than to think.
I didn’t think I was wrong, but Daisy wasn’t, either, and that hurt.
•••
I found myself by the Ginger’s woodlot. She was in the middle of the yard, splitting wood, and Berry Black was nowhere to be seen.
I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her, but she saw me and came over to the fence. “You need more cordwood already?”
“Just wandering,” I said. “We’ve got lots of wood.” Then, since I was there and she was at the fence already, “Were you worried about Sam helping you chop wood?”
Ginger shrugged. “Berry said she knew how, said she was a hard worker.”
“And you trusted him?”
“Yeah.”
“Even though he’s a donkey?”
I saw a frown cross her face, and she shifted her hind legs. “What business is it of yours, anyway?”
“I hired her to help in the garden yesterday.”
“And did she do what she said she was going to?”
I nodded.
“Were you worried about Sam helping you with your flowers?”
“I didn’t think she’d know how, but she’s a quick learner, and everypony says she’s a hard worker.”
Ginger relaxed and let out a snort, almost a laugh. “If Berry had come up to me one day and just said he’d found a creature in the woods and thought it could chop wood, I wouldn’t have given him the time of day. He was bringing in more wood, just when I needed it the most, too, so I knew he had somebody helping him. I thought maybe it was a cousin or something, lotta donkeys just wander around and take odd jobs, then I remembered hearing about the so-called monster in the Everfree and asked him if that was who was helping. He didn’t say, so I knew it was.
“It was a little scary to see her up close the first time, but I thought she deserved a chance. Maybe if more ponies saw her working, more ponies would want to hire her.” She sighed. “Even if it means I’m not going to get a surplus of wood next winter.”
“I think it’s going to take a while for her to fit in,” I said, “based on how some ponies are reacting.”
Rose and Sam Chapter 12: Sam’s House Admiral Biscuit
Sometimes it was the little things that made a pony feel welcome, like neatly-groomed flowerbeds filled with pretty flowers. I didn’t have any of my gardening tools, or any flowers. I hadn’t even asked Sam what kind of flowers she liked.
Would she have said something if she didn’t like roses? Or would she have been worried that I’d kick her out of our greenhouse if she admitted it?
I hoped she’d have the confidence to say what she didn’t like. What if I planted a new flower garden around her house and she hated it?
I was getting my tail in a knot. If she really didn’t like it, we could root it up later and plant something else. Sometimes it was the gesture that mattered the most. Her house should have a proper flower garden, and if Sam wasn’t going to do it, then I’d do it for her.
Without any of my gardening tools—I’d stormed off in too much of a hurry to grab them—I didn’t really want to completely strip everything out and start over. I didn’t have anything to start over with, anyway; I hadn’t brought anything with me but the fur on my back and the shoes on my hooves.
When I’d been a filly, I’d done plenty of gardening with nothing more. If anypony happened by, they might think I was being silly, or they might understand. I had good enough credit that I could go to the store and buy a new trowel and then when I was done digging, I could gift it to Sam as a belated housewarming gift.
That might not be what she’d want, or need. She might have a supply of them, maybe other ponies had seen the state of her garden and given her gardening tools so she could fix it, and maybe she just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
I wasn’t getting anywhere just thinking it over in my head.
•••
After learning that Sam wasn’t a monster, I hadn’t really paid all that much attention to her house. It wasn’t something to be stared at or avoided, it was just another house on the outskirts of town on a street I rarely visited. I might not have even remembered that her flowerbeds were overgrown if I hadn’t overheard other ponies gossiping about it.
They weren’t as bad as I’d expected. I thought she’d still like them to be more personal, instead of what the last tenant had left behind, but they’d be presentable after a good weeding. Most of the flowers hadn’t been completely choked out by weeds yet. One of the flowerboxes needed a new plank, as well—it was bulging out and dribbling soil onto the grass. That was an easy enough fix; there were plenty of carpenters who could have it done in less than an hour.
Since I was there already, I walked around to the back, stood up on my hind hooves, and stuck my head over her back fence. I didn’t know if there was a garden back there—a lot of ponies kept their own vegetable gardens. We would have if we’d had more room, but the flowers took it all.
Sam had an outhouse in the far corner, a clothesline stretched across part of her yard, and that was it. I was half-expecting the backyard to be overgrown, but it wasn’t; it was cropped short with a few dandelions sprinkled around. Was she saving those for something?
There had been some in her flowerboxes, and I decided I should leave them where they were and see how she felt about them. They were good raw or steeped into tea, or could be made into wine.
I didn’t see a compost pile. Sam might have had somepony who came by and picked up her compostables, or else she just threw them in her outhouse.
For now, I could just leave the uprooted weeds piled against the fence, and when Sam got home, ask her what to do with them.
•••
I’d gotten so used to using tools, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have my muzzle properly in the dirt, to dig around with my hooves and uproot the weeds one at a time. At first it was weird, and then it was like I’d suddenly remembered something that I’d been missing. Seeing her flowerboxes with all the weeds had felt almost daunting; I knew how long it would take to carefully root around with a trowel.
This took longer, but it didn’t feel like time was passing, and I must have gotten so focused on what I was doing that I didn’t hear or smell Sam as she approached.
“Rose?”
I jerked my head up and spit the weed out. “I was just neatening up your flowerbeds, I said I was going to.”
“I thought you were going to come over later.” She crouched down, resting her rump on her hind feet. I could smell the flour on her; she’d been working at the mill again. “After dinner.”
“That was the plan,” I admitted. “But I, uh, had some free time, and I thought I’d get started.”
Sam noticed my lack of tools and frowned. “Without a trowel or anything? You said that Lily would be understanding.”
“She will be, eventually.” I sighed and brushed some dirt off my muzzle, then shied back as Sam reached in with her paw.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I stepped closer and let her brush the rest of the dirt off. “You didn’t have other plans, did you? I can go away.”
“No, I didn’t have anything planned at all. I was going to change out of my work clothes and make dinner—have you eaten?”
“I ate lunch,” I said. “I don’t mean to be a bother, you weren’t expecting me until later, and I shouldn’t have started without you. Some ponies like weeds, I hope you don’t. I left the dandelions for you.”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t be doing it alone, though, that’s not fair.”
“I don’t mind.” I looked at her hopefully. “You don’t have a trowel, do you?”
“No, not yet. It’s on my list of things to get. Do you want a drink? How long have you been outside?”
“Couple hours, not that long.”
“Come inside, have a drink, relax on the couch while I change into shorts that aren’t sweaty and covered in flour dust.”
•••
I couldn’t help but look around at the inside of her house as soon as she opened the door. I hadn’t been curious enough—or rude enough—to stand on my hind hooves and peer through the windows. Some ponies probably had been; I’d heard some secondhoof gossip about what she had in her house and what she didn’t, and from what I could see, it was accurate gossip.
There wasn’t much, and the house hardly looked lived-in. She had a worn-out couch that was set on wooden blocks to make it taller, and a small table with some library books on it—Twilight must have trusted her enough to let her borrow them.
She had a new wicker basket with some clothes piled in it, and a few beat-up pots and pans in her kitchen. A towel was hung over the top of a door, and a robe hung over the banister.
“Sorry, it’s not all that neat. And I’ve only got one clean mug, you can use that if you want a drink.” Sam snickered. “I don’t get asked to host parties.”
I’d followed her into the kitchen; she had a stove and a sink but no ice chest.
She got the mug out of her cupboard—which was nearly empty—and filled it before holding it down for me. “How hungry are you?”
“Not very hungry.” That was a lie, but I could see with my own eyes that Sam didn’t have much, and she was too skinny. It would be rude to eat any of her food.
My stomach wasn’t that good at telling lies, and it picked that moment to grumble. “I don’t like weeding on a full stomach.” That was true. “Not when it’s all overgrown and some of the weeds are tough and bitter.”
“I’ve got some bread,” Sam said. “How about we have a snack, do some more weeding, and then we can have dinner after?”
•••
It was nice to have company outside. I’d been lost in my own thoughts most of the afternoon, but now Sam was crouched down next to me, or sitting with her hind legs folded under her rump. That looked really uncomfortable, but she didn’t seem to mind.
She was quick to learn what were weeds and what weren’t, and her fingers were good at getting into the soil and getting the roots out.
When she got to a dandelion, she started digging down around it. I didn’t notice until she started pulling it out. “You don’t like dandelions?”
“Aren’t they weeds?”
“Depends on who you ask. They taste good and the flowers are pretty and they make good tea. You can make wine out of the flower petals, too. I thought that since you had some in your backyard you wanted to keep them.”
Sam giggled. “I thought you’d just missed them and I was going to be polite and not say anything, I thought I could get them later, after everything else was neatened up. Do you want them?”
“It won’t do anypony any good becoming compost.” I hadn’t eaten a plant fresh from the ground since I was a filly, but with my nostrils filled with the scent of the earth, why not?
Sam found another dandelion and tore a leaf off it, studied it, then stuck it in her mouth. “Kinda bitter.” She chewed on it some before swallowing it, then turned back to me. “We learned some wild plants that we could eat when I was a Girl Scout, and I’d never thought it would be all that useful to me. And yet, here I am, wishing I’d paid more attention back then.”
“It’s never too late to learn,” I told her. “Not everypony’s good at wild foraging, but if you really want to know about edible plants, Fluttershy knows a lot.”
“So does Berry. I’d help him forage in the woods sometimes, it was a good way to stretch the food we had. There weren’t too many dandelions in the woods, though.”
Most ponies didn’t really go for foraging, except as a light snack when working, or pegasi if they saw something tasty, and it bothered me to think that she and Berry were doing that to stretch out their food. Maybe it was just a donkey thing—I hadn’t seen her scrounging for food in town, and for all the gossip about Sam, nopony said she was searching through the parks for food.
•••
I hadn’t expected for our weeding to attract the attention of ponies making their way home, but it did. I should have expected it from the crowd that Sam had drawn at Ginger Gold’s woodlot. This time they’d decided that Sam was more approachable—most just walked by with a greeting, or slowed and watched as they passed, but a few ponies actually stopped to chat. There were a couple complaints about us leaving weeds out on the ground, where they might shed seeds, but that couldn’t be helped. It was my fault for not bringing a proper basket for them, and Sam didn’t have one we could use unless she dumped out her laundry basket.
Sam did pick up all the uprooted weeds and carried them out back, and from then on we left them in the flowerboxes until we had enough of a pile to carry off.
•••
We were still working when the rain came. I’d forgotten that it was scheduled, and hadn’t paid attention to all the pegasi flying around putting clouds in place. We’d gotten distracted in the routine.
I looked over at Sam—she didn’t look like the rain bothered her, and I didn’t mind it all that much either. It was a gentle rain, and for now the coolness was refreshing. She might have felt the same.
Before too long, it was going to be unpleasant to work in the flowerboxes any more. When the soil got muddy it wasn’t good to garden; the dirt really got down in the fur on my muzzle and legs and was hard to get out again. Until then—we had enough time to finish this box, and that only left one small one for later.
Was it strange that I was disappointed? Our conversation had tapered off as we both focused on our work, and it was just as peaceful as working in the hothouse or out in our flowerbeds.
The small cluster of ponies from before had all vanished, safe at home and out of the rain. A pair of fillies galloped by, and then the street was silent again.
“We can go in,” I said. “We don’t have to weed in the rain.”
“I don’t mind,” Sam said. “It feels nice. And we’re almost done with this flowerbox—is it going to get heavier than this?”
“A little, but not a downpour.”
“Then let’s keep going, and then we can rinse all the mud off in the rain.”
•••
The rain had picked up by the time we finished the flowerbed, changing from a drizzle to a good soaking rain. We should have called it quits sooner, but both of us were stubborn and meant to finish what we’d started.
Sam tossed the last batch of weeds over the fence into her backyard, and I wondered how many seeds had gotten on the ground and would sprout. It was too late to worry about that now.
I knocked off my hooves on the door sill as best as I could. Sam didn’t have a hoof-brush by her door like most ponies did, and there wasn’t much point in asking if she had a hoof pick.
“I’ve got a clean towel upstairs, hold on.” Sam trotted up the stairs and left me alone, my belly grumbling. The dandelions I’d snacked on had worn off, and now that I wasn’t moving around and focusing on weeds, I was starting to feel the chill.
I still didn’t want to share her food, but it would be rude to refuse. We could go to a restaurant—we’d have to brave the rain for it, and she might not want to get her normal clothes wet for that. I hadn’t seen her wearing anything around town other than her work clothes, but I usually didn’t go around town in the evening, so I didn’t know what else she liked to wear.
Did she mean for me to come upstairs to get the towel? I put my hoof on the step and was about to start walking up when she appeared at the top of the stairs again, a towel in her hand. “Do you need me to dry you off?”
“I can do it myself.” That sounded more harsh than I’d meant it to.
“Sorry.”
I could trust Sam. “But it’s easier if you help. If you don’t mind.”
“Here, give me a moment, my—” She paused and tossed the towel down to me, then vanished upstairs again. Had I offended her?
I could hear her muttering and opening and closing bureau drawers, then the creak of bedsprings, and then she was back on the landing with only her under-pants on. “Sorry, I forgot my robe was downstairs.”
•••
I was glad I’d had a snack—Sam didn’t keep her stove hot, so it took a while to get a fire going in it.
Some ponies didn’t in the summertime. The stove would make the kitchen too hot, and you were burning a bunch of wood for nothing. It would have been nice on a rainy day, though. Maybe if I hadn’t been weeding her flowerboxes when she came home, she would have remembered to start her stove.
She made pan-bread and sautéed vegetables, slicing them up very thin. I couldn’t help but stare—her paws were so dexterous. I’d thought her trouble with weeding was because her paws were clumsy, but it was obvious that they weren’t, that it was just a new thing that she didn’t know.
Probably Berry had thought she was clumsy at first, too, and then as she got used to chopping wood he’d realized just how graceful she could be. Maybe not enough ponies had seen that side of her, maybe a lot of them had gotten over their nervousness and hired her once and decided that a pony could do it better. “Do you have trouble finding work?”
Sam shrugged. “Nobody in town really knows me, so it’s understandable. The miller hires me a lot, and Ginger likes me working in her woodlot.”
“If—” We didn’t have enough flowers to justify a fourth, even if Lily would learn to be nice to her. Sometimes when it was busy, we could use an extra hoof or two, though.
“It’s okay.” Sam stirred the vegetables around. “I’m doing all right, and if things don’t work out, I can always go back to live with Berry.”
When Sam was done cooking, she put the food on plates, and then I think it occured to both of us at the same time that she didn’t have a dining table.
“I usually just eat at the counter,” Sam admitted. “That wouldn’t be comfortable for you, would it?”
I shook my head. I could eat standing up on my hind hooves if I had to, but I wouldn’t really enjoy the food—which would have been a shame; it looked and smelled delicious, and the thinly-sliced vegetables were something I’d only ever seen at a really fancy restaurant. Maybe Sam could get a job as a vegetable-chopper; some ponies would pay for that, especially in Manehattan or Canterlot.
“I’ve been meaning to get a table, but I haven’t found anybody selling one.”
I could understand her plight. When I’d first moved in with Daisy and Lily, we’d outfitted the house with pass-me-down furniture from our houses, slowly replacing some of the more worn-out items over the course of years. To have to buy it all at once was a big investment, and Sam couldn’t have very many bits, not working odd jobs like she was.
“It just hasn’t been a priority.”
Complaining that she didn’t have a place for me to sit would have been really churlish. We could have had dinner at a restaurant instead of her house, after all. “What about a picnic?”
“Has it stopped raining?”
“Inside.” Her living room was mostly empty, and it wasn’t as weird to eat on the floor if it was a picnic. “We could have the door open if we want a breeze or want to listen to the rain falling.”
Sam nodded. “We can use my bedspread as a cloth, let me go get that.”
She turned and went up the stairs and I resisted the urge to nose around in her cupboards to see what she had and what she didn’t. I could lie to myself and say that I was doing it to see if Sam needed anything that I could offer her, even though I’d still know in my heart I’d been motivated by curiosity and not charity.
I should have come over after dinner, like she’d been expecting. Of course she’d felt she should offer dinner, since I had cooked meals for her yesterday.
•••
It was a little awkward at first to sit on her comforter and eat dinner, but it wasn’t long before I got distracted by the food. Besides the thin-sliced vegetables, the meal tasted different than anything I’d ever eaten before. I knew what all the ingredients were and how she’d cooked them—I’d been watching the whole process—but the combination of flavors she used wasn’t something anypony in town would have thought of.
Had she been a cook before she came to Ponyville? It felt rude to ask. Whatever her past was, she’d tell me in time, and I didn’t think I should press the issue just as we were getting to know each other, not unless she brought it up first.
•••
When we’d finished eating, we washed the dishes together, even though Sam insisted that she should do it, since she was the hostess, and then after that the two of us went back to the living room and sat on the couch.
I could tell by the way Sam sat on it that she’d made her couch comfortable for her, but it was too high for me to get up on easily. It would have felt weird and stand-offish to stay on the floor, though, so I hopped up and settled in next to her.
Daisy, Lily, and I usually stuck together after work. It was always strange when I was home alone, but this was stranger. Even if we’d argued—which we would have, I would be fooling myself to think otherwise. Especially with Sam’s scent still on me. Lily needed time to calm down; maybe she’d feel better in the morning. Maybe she’d miss me around the house. Or . . .
Sam had enough room in her backyard for my flowers and it was cheaper for two ponies to live together . . . I tried to put a stop to that line of thinking. If it happened, it happened. Worrying gave small things big shadows.
“I haven’t really had any guests over,” Sam said. “I—if I was hanging out with a friend back on Earth, we’d watch TV or something. When I was with Berry he liked to have his coat curried at the end of the day.”
I nodded—there was nothing like the feeling of a good currying after being in harness. Or visiting the spa and soaking in the tub, but nopony would want him there. Maybe Aloe and Lotus would let him use the showers, but I thought a lot of ponies wouldn’t like that, either.
“And check over his harness, just to make sure everything’s in good order. Of all the things I never thought I’d learn. . . .”
Her eyes were distant.
“For someone who didn’t spend my life in stables, I was pretty good at saddling—” Sam took a deep breath. “Okay, this is going to sound really, really weird to you, and it’s not the kind of thing I’d go around telling just anybody, but where I come from there are horses which are a lot like you but way taller and you can ride them.”
“Ride them? You can—” I could feel a blush forming on my cheeks.
“On their backs.”
“Oh, like foals sometimes ride on their mothers’ back.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam sighed. “There were camps for girls that didn’t have a horse of their own, summer camps where you could learn the right way to do it, or go trail riding, or do jumps and stuff. I never liked doing jumps, it felt like I might fall off.”
She was skinny and couldn’t have weighed that much. It didn’t sound that weird. “What is a horse, anyway? I’ve heard of them in songs and stories but never seen one.”
“They’re . . . wait, what? You’ve heard of them?”
I nodded. “They live in Saddle Arabia and wear gauzy veils and blankets and lots of jewelry. They’re as tall as Princess Celestia. Some ponies say they’re even taller.”
“Huh.” Sam seemed completely confused by the idea, I wasn’t sure why. “So, uh, maybe it's rude to ask, but you can put a harness on yourself, right?”
I nodded. “It depends on the style, some are easier to put on and some are harder.” I thought back to what Berry had. I’d only ever seen him with his wagon harness, but he might not wear that in the woods. “How many harnesses does Berry have?”
“Just one. When we were out skidding, he didn’t wear the back part.” She motioned her hand over my rump. “The breeching and its straps, but he needed that put on for the wagon. It was a lot easier for me to do it, once he showed me how.”
“We’ve got a couple,” I said. “Me and Lily share the cart harness, and Daisy’s got a real light sidebacker. Used to have a third, but we traded it in—even when we do Winter Wrap-Up, there’s no need to have all three of us in harness.”
“That makes sense.” Sam shifted around on the couch. “Sorry, I’m not exactly an entertaining host. I’d offer to curry your coat but I don’t even have a curry comb. All I’ve got is my hairbrush, and I don’t know how well that would work.”
“It’s alright,” I said. “I think the rain rinsed off most of the mud, anyway. You—” We weren’t really close enough for mutual grooming, not yet. Although I trusted her. Berry might not have taught her how to do it right, he was a jack and they didn’t care all that much about their coats anyway. What about her species? Was that something they cared about? Who had suggested it, anyway, Sam or Berry? I thought it would be Sam, I thought that she might have seen him brushing himself and then offered to help.
“I’ll get one, before next time,” she said.
“I’ve got an extra, I could just bring it over,” I said. “So, uh, how do you like Ponyville?”
She shrugged. “It’s an interesting little town, and it’s more . . . busy than the woods. I’ve done some exploring on days I don’t have work, just to get an idea where things are.”
•••
The two of us stayed up later than we should have, talking and getting to know each other better. It wasn’t like yesterday where we were complete strangers trying to get a job done. It felt like Sam was more relaxed, maybe just because I was in her house and sitting on her couch.
Or maybe yesterday she’d been worried that I might not pay her. I didn’t like that thought, because it made me wonder if there were some ponies who had hired her and then not paid her. I didn’t know anypony who would take advantage of a helper like that, but maybe she’d met some ponies on her journey who did.
What if that was why she hadn’t come to town right away? What if that was why she’d stayed in the woods with Berry?
Sam had read Lily’s conspiracy newspaper, and she probably thought that a lot of ponies behaved like Lily did.
As the night drew on, Sam told me about some things she’d had and done back at her home, things I couldn’t believe were true. “Being here reminds me of Fort Langley,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a living history museum; they have buildings and showcase what it was like in the Gold Rush days. There are demonstrations about making maple sugar and making barrels and blacksmithing and farming.”
“You’ll have to wait until spring before you can see anypony making maple syrup,” I told her, then covered a yawn.
“I’m sorry, it’s probably past your bedtime. I’ve been keeping you up with chatting . . . and—are you planning to spend the night?”
“You said—”
“I did, and Lily kicked you out.”
It was true but it hurt to have somepony else say it.
“This was easier last night, when I was full of Dutch courage.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s . . . sometimes it’s easier to do things when you’ve had some wine to drink. Or something stronger. Kind of loosens you up.”
“Don’t you want—were you, I thought, were you just inviting me to stay to be polite, to return the favor?”
“I kind of thought you wouldn’t actually come over if I’m being honest.”
“I said I was going to.”
Sam nodded. “Sometimes I forget that ponies seem to be better than humans at keeping their word.”
“Are we going to argue over who gets to sleep in the bed now?” Some ponies had guest beds, but I was sure Sam didn’t. “How am I different from Berry Black?”
“I never shared a bed with him.” Sam sighed. “It felt wrong, since he was a boy . . . a stallion—”
“A jack. Male donkeys are jacks and female donkeys are jennies.”
“Either way, it didn’t seem right.” She rubbed her hand through her hair. “I don’t want to suggest that he did anything bad, Ginger told me a lot of ponies in town don’t trust him because he’s a donkey.”
My ears drooped. I still couldn’t help but think he wasn’t trustworthy, even though that was wrong. He was in no different a position than Sam—and he should have been more familiar, since he was more of a pony than she was.
“Some cold nights it was tempting, though. Maybe if I had pajama pants. It’s just. . . .” She tapped her fingers on the couch.
I could go back home, Lily probably hadn’t barred the door. If she had, I could sleep in the greenhouse, it wouldn’t be the first time.
In my heart, I knew what the right answer was. A lot of ponies who knew Sam liked her and trusted her, but they were nervous because she didn’t look like a pony and didn’t always act like a pony either. And I thought that if somepony didn’t reach out to her, maybe she’d decide to move back in the woods with Berry Black, maybe she’d decide to stay away from ponies like Zecora had for so long, like Berry still did.
I could invite him to dinner sometime. Oh, that would make Lily’s head explode if I invited both Sam and Berry to dinner.
Maybe after we’d hashed out whether Sam was allowed in our house or not.
Foal steps. “I’d, we can share your bed if you want, or if it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
•••
I had expected her bedroom to be about as empty as the rest of her house, and it was. There was the bed, a bureau, and a battered nightstand, along with another new wicker basket full of clothes. She might not have had much in the way of furnishings, but she had more clothes than I did. I would have spent my bits on an icebox instead.
Her bedroom had windows on two walls, which was nice. Both of them were cracked open to let a breeze through.
“You can take whatever side you want,” she said. “I don’t have a preference. That’s the only pillow I have, but I’ve got another blanket if it’s too cold. I don’t think it will be.”
“It’s fine.” Her bed was still pony-height, although it lacked a proper headboard and tailboard.
She was still hesitating when I hopped in the bed and nestled down into the covers. Somehow, her scent was comforting and reassuring, almost as familiar as our furniture at home. I think it was a combination of sitting on her comforter in the living room and having a couple of days to be close enough to her to get used to her.
When she sat down on top of the covers, I thought about saying something, but even if she wasn’t a pony I could tell she was uncomfortable. Maybe it was because she was still wearing her shorts.
It must be hard for her to try and fit in. I’d been thinking of things I could tell her, but it might be better to let her move at her own pace. After all, I had been wrong to push Lily so hard. I was going to have to apologize to her tomorrow. Flowers grew at their own pace, and so did ponies.
She finally slid off her shorts and got up so she could fold them over the edge of the basket. I thought she was going to take off her under-pants next, but she didn’t; she laid down on the bed with them still on and pulled the covers over herself.
It had been easier after we’d been drinking; the two of us both tossed around until we’d found positions that were comfortable for both of us—I wound up resting my cheek against Sam’s shoulder and closed my eyes, and I listened to the sound of her breathing and the gentle rain that was still falling. She rolled in my direction and touched a hand to my mane.
That was nice, that was something to concentrate on, instead of my worries about what tomorrow might bring.
•••
I’d mostly drifted off when I felt her shifting around in the bed, and I perked my ears instinctively. “Rose?”
Her voice was a soft whisper. I didn’t realize that I’d fallen asleep, but the rain had stopped and moonlight was coming through the window.
I was about to answer when Sam got off the bed and went over to the window. She pushed it open to let some more rain-fresh air in, then turned and stopped when she saw that I was looking at her.
“Oh. You’re awake. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
I shook my head. She had, but sometimes it was okay to lie. “That breeze feels nice.”
“It does.” She shifted her legs, and looked up. “Your sky is really pretty, I hope you know that. Back home it’s always washed out with streetlights, and you can’t see all that many stars. And the moon—it’s just peeking around the edge of a cloud.”
I was still tired but I got out of bed just the same, joining her at the window. The sky was beautiful; the moon was highlighting the tops of the dispersing clouds, and I saw a pegasus-shadow cross close to town, maybe the last of the storm patrol ponies still on duty. It was a view I rarely paid attention to, and that was my loss. Twilight sometimes talked about things in the night sky and I rarely paid attention to them; it was funny how Sam was making me really notice it.
•••
I don’t know how long the two of us stood at the window together, watching the moon peek around the ever-shifting clouds, watching the lone pegasus on patrol swooping around, watching the twinkling stars spread across the sky, but we finally both decided to return to bed. Sam took a detour—she crossed the room and stepped out of her under-pants, set them across her wicker basket, and then got back in bed, snuggling up against me.
