Lucky Me

Hello. My name is Caramel.

Okay, so I’m a bit forgetful. And I’m not exactly the most popular of ponies. And I’m kind of quiet. But, you know, that’s okay. I know ponies that are forgetful and a teensy bit ignored and kind of quiet. Just... not as much as me.

Fluttershy, though, she’s a quiet girl. In fact, she was one of the first ponies I met when I moved to Ponyville.

So let me slow down. I was born in Hoofington, which is a primarily earth pony place, like Ponyville. There, I lived with my parents, until I decided to move out of Hoofington entirely.

Don’t get me wrong, Hoofington is a wonderful place. It’s just... well, I felt kind of out of place there, as I wasn’t as strong or as enduring as the other earth ponies, and I had a bit of a sweet tooth, and I didn’t seem to be able to hold down a job, and...

Anyway. My parents were really supportive throughout the whole thing, and I owe a lot to them. But I guess that I’ve got to start at the beginning, otherwise this isn’t going to make sense at all.

So...

I guess it all started when I was born. I’m a spring foal, so I’m not that good at winter wrap-ups. I was first assigned to the ploughs, but I was too weak, so I was assigned to planting, but I was too forgetful, so they handed me over to the skaters, but I was too clumsy, so... yeah.

It was the same at school. I was the colt in class that never seemed to get it. Numbers seemed to twist on themselves, words always stumbled over each other, and science... well, don’t even get me started on science.

But I was good at art. Clay-making, sketching, ceramics and everything in between. I was so good at it, it was my art grade alone that got me into secondary school.

Another bad thing about me - as if there weren’t enough things already - was that I didn’t get my cutie mark at the normal age. It wasn’t that much of a bad thing at primary; I guess that my classmates expected me to get it over the holidays.

It wasn’t like they’d know, or care. I never had friends over.

I don’t think I ever actually had friends.

That aside, it got really bad for me at secondary. There I was, in front of my class, talking about who I was and what I liked and so on, and then I turned and walked back to my desk and suddenly everyone was laughing... at my flanks.

My blank flanks.

It only took a week for the teasing to start. They’d yell out “blank flank!” in the hallways as I went to lessons, put flank-sized stickers in my locker, and generally acted like jerks. They even started calling me “mule”, because only ponies get cutie marks, and refrained from using terms like “everypony” when I was around.

It got worse in the classroom. I was as bad at work as ever, and I couldn’t even keep up in art anymore. I failed every exam, got every extra tutor, and yet just couldn’t be... good.

I was completely unlike my twin brother, Monny Tore, who had been born two minutes before me. He wore glasses, but was really smart and popular and likeable and funny and organised and the complete opposite of me. He tried to make me feel better by hanging out with me in the cafeteria, but... it was staged.

We both knew it.

Another thing was that he already had his cutie mark: a heart monitor. He was a doctor, and somepony destined to be a great doctor, by all accounts. By year eight he was going to medical school, and sometimes he even helped out with the school nurse.

And I still didn’t have my cutie mark.

Eventually, my parents came down hard, and they sent me to a cutie mark specialist. She said that there was nothing wrong, and I... what did I do again? Oh yes. I went back to school, and the teasing continued.

It was around year nine that things finally started looking up for me. Ponies can drop out of school at year ten, and so there were tons of special-talent clubs starting up. There were some athletes, some mathematicians, some writers, and... some artists. Of course, I joined up.

And I got kicked out.

Well, it’s lucky that I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have ever discovered the metalworking class. It was something that was going to be ditched by the end of the month, as nopony was joining.

So I did, and it was amazing.

I made things; amazing, beautiful, wondrous things. Horseshoes that actually worked, tiny delicate and accurate butterflies of metal, wind chimes and whistles and any other kind of thing that could possibly be metal.

The teachers were intrigued, and I was signed up for an apprenticeship with the local blacksmith.

I came to his house on a Sunday, and pretty soon I had gotten a firm hold on the theory for the first time in my life, and I was actually doing it right. That day, I made horseshoes that were almost as good as my master’s, and my technique improved as I went to the smith for lessons each Sunday afternoon.

It was the first time that my master was away that I actually took the forge for myself. I managed to hold my own through the entire day, and the next week my master was greeted to the sight of me with my cutie mark of three horseshoes.

After that, things looked up considerably. Monny threw me a surprise cute-celebration, and the teasing stopped almost immediately. Some of my main agonisers tried to pick on how generic my cutie mark was, but they quit it after a week. Too trivial, I guessed.

Anyway, I just barely finished school, but I was much better and more confident - not by much, but every little bit counted - in my schoolwork. In the end, I got a job at the blacksmith when my master - not my master anymore, actually - badly broke his back and was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

I know that I should have felt bad for leaving him, but I was just so glad when I finally got enough money to move. I had made up my mind ages ago to move out of Hoofington, quaint little town it was. I just hated it when ponies pretended to be nice to me, and I was determined to start clean, cutie mark, diploma and all.

So I moved. My parents got the moving carriage up, and there were many tears shed. I promised that I would write, they said that they’d love that, and they waved me off.

I don’t know exactly why moving was my number one priority once I had finished school. It might have been because of my brother, who had moved almost immediately after finishing school so that he would be able to get a better pay for his doctor services.

Anyway, it turned out that Monny was going to become a travelling doctor, which I found slightly odd because he was a unicorn. Oh, yes, another thing to add to the list of things that he was better at than me. Magic.

I know, us earth ponies have a kind of innate magic of our own, but it’s not as impressive as saying that you can carry heavy things and don’t get as out of breath than lighting up your horn and moving something without touching it. Besides, I really was weak for an earth pony, and Monny beat me in hoof-wrestles most of the time.

That aside, I figured that I would have preferred a tiny, earth-pony town, something out of the way and all that. So I settled, after an age of indecision, on Ponyville, when I heard that Monny was currently at Canterlot and I learned that Ponyville was near to Canterlot anyway.

I knew that Monny would most likely have moved on to Appleloosa or something once I had gotten there, but the lure of knowing somepony was so strong, so...

Yeah. I moved.

And I guess that’s when everything went pear-shaped.