The Whole Love Story
Fashionable spindly leaves a meter long in places. A silky wend oft turns heads, but the admirers are gone. The young plant waits.
Across the room, smooth on top but eroded and unexpectedly craggy underneath, the older stone shifts.
A friendship problem called the stone's mother, Maud. Her work takes her across Equestria's earth.
She travels without him, but she is not alone; she moves with an ally, the mother of the plant.
The older stone should have accompanied his mother. He always does. She takes him everywhere.
The younger plant never goes. Her mother doesn't take Phyllis anywhere.
The problem is among the dragons. Mother warned it will be deadly for stones like Boulder--a land of Lava.
Phyllis merely hopes she'll get her meals: sunlight and water.
Boulder yearns for his mother. She may live. She may die. Either way, he belongs by her side.
Phyllis longs to grow tall from watering and yearns to shade her mother when that pony returns. Until then, though, she will thrive on her own.
Maud didn't trust Starlight Glimmer's magic to protect.
Starlight should be able to protect a pony from lava, but Boulder wasn't a pony--the magic could fail.
The spells had not been tested on sentient stone.
The spell could not be proven without putting him under threat. A non-sentient stone could be tested but it wouldn't answer the question. The only one who could be risked was him alone.
Maud would not sanction that experiment.
So Starlight merely employed a plan that was tried-and-true.
Starlight thought about Maud, her traveling partner, but no other.
Maud didn't want to be a bother, she told herself.
Full of awareness, she knew her soul churned with disturbance. Her husband had died.
And so, even moreso than in normal circumstances, she knew she needed Boulder by her side, alive.
But, she cried--she couldn't risk him.
So his pleas failed to win an opportunity to be with her.
She, deep inside, must have wanted to die.
He feared this. But he couldn't chase after to help her. He couldn't fly.
He waited and glared across the room at his fellow inmate.
Phyllis waved a slender limb at her mate.
Boulder shifted uneasily.
Phyllis flirted easily.
The rock-and-plant sitter arrived.
Boulder and Phyllis were, of course, still there.
She fluttered in, wings flared out and knocked everything over on Headmare Starlight Glimmer's desk.
Ink from a well spilled into Phyllis' pot. Phyllis shrieked and bent to her left and struggled, reaching farther into the air.
The clumsy pegasus sucked a horrified breath in.
"I've done something terrible again!" She shouted out.
She twisted this way and that to glimpse something to absorb the ink. She found it.
Boulder joined Phyllis in her pot, being rubbed all over her soil, absorbing ink into him.
"I guess that's got it."
The pegasus picked Boulder up again, then noticed his inky discoloration and banged him against her blond mane and head-hit, hit, hit.
"Maud won't like you stained!"
Boulder sighed. His mother wouldn't be coming back, whether or not this derpy pegasus knocked herself out, brained.
The pegasus washed him off.
She rubbed a towel all over him, faster and faster with heated friction, off and on.
Craggy parts fell off his side.
He felt violated. Only his mother should buff his surface.
He had gotten craggier in the moons since his mother had been left alone.
She hadn't polished him as much as before--and he mourned too for her sadness, shedding fragments. They mostly sat, silent, bonding together.
Blushing now though, due to the inappropriate rubbing, he found himself returned to Phyllis' pot.
Phyllis leaned closer to him. "My hero," she beamed.... He had absorbed quite a lot of the otherwise toxic ink. "So strong, absorbent, and hot."
"It was just something I could do."
"How about I do something special for you?"
It took quite a while, but she shifted to wrap around and pull him up, on his side.
Boulder huffed, shocked and thrilled, handled with care: fully alert and alive.
They shared a time with bodies quite sober.
Another day, that derpy pegasus spilled some wine.
On that, they sipped. Tipsy, they tumbled closer together.
They couldn't imagine ever being apart.
Talked about their mothers. They could do that forever.
Time passed tick-tick-tick. It was the beginning.
They were sad a bit when they were parted and their meeting reached its ending.
But Maud was alive.
And Starlight Glimmer was not dead.
Mothers return to their lives.
Children refuse to live apart; their love should not die.
It is not enough to see each other but a wee bit.
Maud can sense Boulder's whispers, and he encourages her with a smile. They, accompanied, see each other much more.
They talk. Maud smiles more as the mothers chat.
Maud carries Boulder and Phyllis some liquor, pouring the jeroboam quite freely. They tangle.
Starlight watches with saucer-wide eyes.
Maud gently averts them and gingerly leads her away, guiding her thighs.
Years pass.
Time lives; ponies die.
And all these notable creatures rest in an old ponies' home now.
Boulder and Phyllis join together in the place that for their mothers portends the end.
They rest within a pot, angled on a pedestal where they can be seen.
Even though the ponies' eyes are often clouded or tired or shut.
Phyllis and Boulder still feel quite keen for each other as they hug.
In private (more or less due to their mothers' dulled senses), they love.
For their mothers... there are many good days.
But there are some very bad nights.
There are smiles.
And there are fights.
The inmates share memories.
But then one forgets.
Boulder whispers what memories he can.
Phyllis shrieks out as much oxygen as she is able.
It helps.
But their fate still hurts.
Ponies who control comfort at the end don't understand.
Even though there's things written down and intended and prepared and made ready and there should have been other ponies beside to guide, matters go awry and the ponies who slip away outlive many. The few who remain are entwined by bureaucracy. Princess Twilight and Chancellor Spike govern and they're present for brief moments but they're not fully there. The ponies who control comfort at the end don't follow every minuscule eccentric precept of the will.
The ponies must have been crazy.
Or the will drafter was lazy.
Phyllis, by act of luck or fate, finds herself situated atop the grave.
But she watches Boulder be buried beneath the earth.
It could have been worse.
There's yearning.
There's burning.
Water moves.
And earth shifts.
Closer ever to her beloved approaches Phyllis.
Roots dig deep, encircle Boulder.
Hugging now.
Hugging forever?