A Sibling's Friend in Need
This day was supposed to be Maud’s easy day.
Not merely an easy day, that is, but the ultimate easy day. As simple as a day working at the Canterlot City Museum of Science and Natural History could get. The kind of day that made most staff wonder what was the point of coming in at all. (It paid, though, so everyone did anyway.)
Maud Pie probably would have shown up even if the money wasn’t a factor. It wasn’t exactly an exciting day on the job – little activity meant little excuse to wander around the geological samples that had attracted her to the tour guide position in the first place, with her instead needing to helm the front reception area – but still, routine was a comfort, and she didn’t have an especially compelling reason to break it.
It was Thursday, which tended to be the slow day for museum traffic. Not that it was bustling on other days, especially weekdays, but Thursdays, for whatever reason, seemed especially quiet, with sometimes hours between visitors. This had made Thursday ideal for school tour groups, with classes from Everfree Elementary and Canterlot High often booking Thursdays for visits. (Much rarer seen was Crystal Prep, which had its own respectable private collection.) On days like this one, though, with the school year drawing to a close and no tours booked, it was silent.
But what made this even more the ultimate easy day was the fact that the curator, Bygone Times, was out with a heavy cold. Not that Maud felt any need to wish him ill, but there was a certain relief in not having an overseer on a low-effort day. She could still be presentable at a moment’s notice should someone walk in the door, and she wasn’t about to drown out the world with headphones like Vinyl might, but there was a certain relief in being able to dawdle, to lean back in her seat at the reception table and play an insipid game that poorly approximated the experience of gem mining, without fear of it affecting a performance review.
And so it had been the ultimate easy day.
For about two hours.
People had a tendency – to put it mildly – to tell Maud she was underexpressive.
It was a phrase she’d gotten in the habit of tuning out. The most important people in her life, after all, could read her perfectly fine, so there seemed little reason to adjust for others. It seemed more like an issue for them.
And looking at the desperate, already-pleading face of her schoolmate, one of Pinkie’s close friends who usually smelled faintly of animal dander, as she burst through the doors of the museum, Maud briefly wondered exactly why such overwhelmingly visible emotions were considered such a good thing. It seemed a terrible burden, in all honesty.
“Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh!” Fluttershy didn’t so much run up to the desk as stagger, nearly collapsing onto it. “Oh no no no I’m so sorry! Really, Maud, I wouldn’t be asking this if it wasn’t really important!”
Maud stared. “Asking me what?”
“Goodness, I know this’ll be really hard for you while you’re working and it’s so… embarrassing to have to ask! My shouting must be really disturbing everyone…”
Fluttershy had only barely notched above the threshold of what generally constituted “regular volume” for speech, though her voice had taken on a somewhat raspy, whisper-shout quality.
“But I, well, I have some, um… there was an accident today, at the animal shelter. Everyone’s okay, but there was a gas leak and we had to evacuate all the poor animals! We’re still waiting to make sure the building is safe for our little creatures. Believe me, I’d be watching all of them myself, but…”
Maud glanced down at the notes on the desk. “You’re here for the interview.”
“Yes! It’s in less than ten minutes, and it’s my only chance! I’ve been wanting to work with the museum’s butterfly garden for years, and I know I’m lucky I’ve even made it this far, it must be such a competitive position!”
Maud happened to know Fluttershy was the only applicant. The likelihood of Sooty Wing remembering she had to hold an interview today was minimal.
“So I couldn’t risk blowing it off, but I had to find care for all the displaced creatures! Applejack agreed to watch most of the dogs, and Pinkie has most of the little mammals, but I couldn’t find anyone else on short notice! So I… I…”
Without budging, Maud replied. “Do you need me to help watch some of your animals?”
Two weak nods. “Can you? I know today’s not normally very busy, and, well–”
“It shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a staff room that isn’t used very often.”
Fluttershy leapt forward and threw her arms around Maud, hugging tightly. “Thank you thank you thank you! I owe you big, Maud! Now, let me just go get them…”
This day was supposed to be Maud’s easy day.
As she looked over the small zoo’s worth of animals before her in the staff room, she did a quick runthrough. There was a large clowder of cats forming a singular mass on the floor, a few ferrets scampering about on the table, a large container containing a multitude of lizards sitting on the counter, and, most surprisingly, a fawn.
Fluttershy had had them well-controlled, the animals orderly filing into the room while she set down the terrarium. But now she was gone, and discontent was starting to spread, sounds of hissing increasing in frequency and intensity.
Maud stood staring in the doorway. The fawn trotted up to her and gave her a warm nuzzle. She responded with a firm pat on its head.
From outside, she heard the sound of a door swing open – a guest. And then she got a loud reminder there was also a parrot squawking on her shoulder.
At least this might be good for her standup routine.