Prompt-A-Day Collection III: Prompt Warriorsby Admiral BiscuitChapters21: Buttons23: Why Does it Have to be Snakes29: The Limp21: ButtonsPinkie Pie was dead. It was not a surprise to anypony. She was very old, and everypony agreed that it was nice that she’d first finished decorating what was later regarded to have been the best Nightmare Night celebration Equestria had seen in centuries, possibly ever. Three hours in, somepony had wondered why she was facedown in the punch. She’d been put to rest the next day, and her friends and descendants came to pay their last respects, along with the five Princesses of Equestria. It was a nice funeral, although the reception was . . . lacking. Fortunately, Cheesie Pie managed to accidentally activate a party cannon, and after that, things went fairly well. After the interment came the most difficult task of all: cleaning out Pinkie’s house. The living room was turned into the sorting room. There, all objects were placed, and distributed to family members. It was a very social affair, and before too long, it had turned into a party which attracted most of Ponyville. That was hardly surprising, and it was what Pinkie would have wanted. By mid-day, ponies were taking trinkets and tokens home with them, displaying them in their own houses, and sharing stories about that time Pinkie had jumped out of a cake with a rubber chicken in her mouth, or how she’d managed—on a dare—to complete every verse of “ten thousand bales of hay in the barn” over a memorable weekend. By the evening, things were in full swing. Pound and Pumpkin began carrying over cakes and treats which had been inspired by Pinkie’s cooking, and a rousing chorus of “Giggle at the Ghosties” was begun by a highly intoxicated Berry Pinch, who had followed exactly in her mother’s hoofsteps, complete with her own crop of illegitimate foals and grandfoals. Over the next week, as the house was slowly emptied, a dozen ponies found true love, three foals got their cutie marks, every lamppost in town had stopped by the cemetery to pay its respects—courtesy of Discord—and Lickety Split, in the throes of an ice-cream headache, discovered the meaning of life. He also discovered that Pinkie Pie hid things in bananas, but that’s a story for a different time. The town was partying as it never had before. But, all good things come to an end. On the ninth day, Cheesie Pie came down to report that the house was empty, all except for the dormer on the north side of the house. All the eyepatches had been discovered and distributed, and no foal was without a ball and a rubber chicken. Fake vomit was frequently appearing in the hospital and schoolhouse. The ponies of Ponyville took the news in stride. The funeral and wake had been a thing of legend, and it would be discussed through the cold winter months. As the wind blew and the snow flew, trinkets would be taken out of their storage places and chuckled over, and the families would share some memories of Pinkie Pie, and the winter would seem just a little bit warmer. “Well, that’s it,” Cheesie declared as he picked up the last box. “Everything distributed, and everypony’s happy.” He slid the box out of the dormer room with a quick flip of his hind leg. “Now there’s nothing but to . . . huh, I wonder what this is?” Below the box, slightly recessed into the shelf, was a simple button. It was large enough to easily be manipulated by hoof—a design sentiment which made sense, since Pinkie had always been an earth pony. It was bright red, and in neat white block letters it simple said “PUSH.” “Hey, Sammie. What do you think of this?” “I think it’s a button.” Although he knew his sister had been downstairs when he called for her, he was not surprised that she was right next to him in time to answer the question. Such were the ways of the Pies. “What do you think it does?” “I don’t know, push the button and find out.” Cheesie looked at it. Pinkie had been random and inscrutable, but she had not been mean. There wasn’t a mean bone in her body. Whatever the button did, it was likely to be something fun, or something that would turn out to be fun in the end, even if it didn’t seem like it at first. He slid a hoof forward, closed his eyes, and pushed. Author's Note Prompt:"I don't know, push the button and find out." The Blog Link 23: Why Does it Have to be SnakesWhy does it have to be snakes? Admiral Biscuit You awake, and you're surrounded by your deepest, most powerful phobia. Everypony has their own phobias. Some are illogical. Pegasi sometimes worry about losing their wings mid-flight. Unicorns fear the malfunction of their horns and resultant loss of magic. Earth ponies dread the thought of plants no longer bending to their will. Crystal Ponies fear the return of Sombra, even though they watched him die. Even Zebras are probably afraid of something. There are more logical fears, though. Granny Smith sometimes wakes up with a strange fluttering in her chest, and wonders if her poor old heart isn't about to give out. Sometimes it keeps her up all night. She's not afraid of death, but she doesn't want to leave her grandfoals behind. She worries about how they’ll get along without her. Rainbow Dash is plagued by a recurring nightmare that she failed to make the second sonic rainboom in time. She wakes up in a cold sweat every time she sees Rarity crater into the ground. She will never admit this to Rarity. After she got her award and met the Wonderbolts, it hit her like a ton of bricks, and she had the shakes for an hour, then cried herself to sleep that night. She won't admit that to anypony. Fluttershy is afraid of being alone, but too timid to admit it. Rarity fears something happening to Sweetie Belle on one of her many crusades. Pinkie Pie worries that she'll forget somepony's birthday, anniversary, or any one of a vast number of celebratory events which she tracks obsessively on a large calendar in her room. Applejack wants foals, but claims she hasn’t met the ‘right’ stallion yet. She’s really afraid something will go wrong, somehow—either during the act, or afterwards. Twilight Sparkle fears snakes. There is no reason why she should. She's faced down some of the nastiest monsters that Equestria has to offer, and she's always triumphed. She completed a spell even the great Starswirl the Bearded could not, and ascended to princesshood. She's even learned to manage her obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and was once seen crumpling up a schedule and tossing it in the wastebasket. True, she pulled it out five minutes later and smoothed it back out, but progress is progress, no matter how small. But snakes. No snake has ever harmed her. She's been stung by bees more times than she can count—well, not really; if you asked her, she could give an exact tally. She's been stoned by a cockatrice. She's faced dragons thrice, once alone. She's dealt with Discord, Nightmare Moon, Sombra, and Changelings. Yet none of them hold the primal fear that a simple tubular reptile can inspire. She'd mostly avoided them in Canterlot. A busy city was hardly a snake paradise, and while there might have been some there, she never saw them. Even Ponyville was largely snake-free, and she did quite well until Winter Wrap-Up. If she hadn't managed to work up a schedule to get the chores done on time, ponies would probably still be laughing at her overreaction to waking up a den of hibernating snakes. The problem had gotten slightly out-of-hoof during their brief adventure with . . . well, she still thought of her as Daring Do. Naturally, wherever the archaeologist went, snakes were there, too. Twilight could chuckle at their mention in a book—although she still glanced around the room to make certain none were present—but she couldn't deal with them in the wild. That set her apart from Rarity. While the fashionista hated getting her hooves dirty, and complained any time she thought she might get a little sweaty or chip her hooficure, if it needed to be done, Rarity just did it. Twilight had humiliated herself by freezing up and had to be carried past the threat by Applejack. At least that's what they told her afterwards; she'd been screaming loudly enough to have not noticed. Fortunately, Rarity had been quick with a silencing spell—the net result was that Twilight could still hear herself screaming, but nopony else could. The girls finally calmed her down by repeatedly dunking her in a spring-fed pond that was the closest thing Twilight had ever felt to absolute zero. Rainbow seemed to take perverse pride in the act. They'd all soberly agreed that something needed to be done, and Fluttershy had proposed a simple solution—acclimatization. Once she learned that snakes were harmless, she would no longer fear them. While the plan had a nice academic feel to it, Twilight was dubious about the actual execution, but so far it had gone off without a hitch. They'd started with books about snakes. As creepy as they were, snakes were fascinating creatures. From a distance. Pictures came next, and once she'd gotten over the reflex of incinerating the photographs on sight, that went pretty well, too. Rarity made her a stuffed snake plushie. She pretended it was a rope, and that wasn't so bad. Before too long, there was a snake in a cage on Fluttershy's table. Twilight made sure to seal the door with magic, just in case it tried to get out. Other than that, she did all right. Her teacup hardly wavered as she drank, watching it out of the corner of her eye. Just in case. All that led up to the present. She'd felt pretty good about the whole snake thing, in fact. The word no longer gave her a slight thrill of fear. What an odd thing to be thinking about, she thought, stretching. Her body felt kind of . . . funny, like she'd slept wrong. The cold table had a familiar feel. It was the worktable in the library basement. I must have fallen asleep while doing an experiment. She lit her horn. The walls of the basement were shifting, moving . . . slithering, almost. What in Tartarus? Twilight brightened the glow, revealing dozens of dozens of snakes crawling all over her basement, her lab tables . . . and up the stairs. That day, Twilight made an interesting discovery and a resolution. First, she discovered that she could teleport on the fly, from a sprawled position, while screaming at the top of her lungs. Secondly, she resolved that at the first opportunity, she was going to address Fluttershy's fear of flying in a very direct and personal manner. "Ah just don't see how this was supposed ta get us cutie-marks," Applebloom lamented. "Snakes need someplace warm and quiet to stay for the winter," Sweetie Belle said with some authority. "I read it in one of Twilight's books. And what's quieter and warmer than a library basement?" "Yeah," Scootaloo added, pouring another bucket of drowsy snakes through the basement window. "Besides, Twilight loves snakes; she's even got that snake stuffy your sister made for her." Author's Note As always, there's a LINK to a meaningful (ha!) blog post. 29: The LimpThe Limp Admiral Biscuit When she was younger, people noticed it. Sometimes they’d ask her what had happened—there was just something . . . well, un-American with a good-looking slender blond woman limping in the rain. She waved them off. If anyone pressed her, she’d mutter tersely, “car accident,” and leave it at that. It was believable; such things happened. Time flew on; once she was in college, the questions weren’t asked so much any more. One of her boyfriends was curious about the scar. No, not curious . . . more obsessed. He liked to run his finger across the puckered flesh that ran up the outside of her right leg, tracing it across the knee joint. She thought it felt weird. She broke up with him and never regretted it. By the time she got her diploma, it was just another part of her. it had been like that for so long she just didn’t think about it much. There was too much life to live. She started her career and started a family. She finished paying off her student loans and financed a new car. Two decades later, she finally convinced her husband to buy a large piece of property out in the country. Their young daughters would appreciate the space, she said, and exposing them to some of the responsibilities of a homestead would do them good. And on rainy days, she’d sit in the La-Z-Boy recliner and look out the window at nothing. As often as not, she would set a mug of tea on the end table, take a few sips, and then let it grow cold. Her husband was a good man, and one thing that a good man knows is to respect his wife. He asked about it once, and she replied that she did not want to discuss it. He let the matter slide . . . but he always got a little worried when she was one of her ‘brooding’ moods. He’d occasionally look in at her, and at the faraway look in her eyes, and he’d wonder what she was remembering. He knew about the scar, of course. He’d asked her about it, too. Not right away; not until years after they were married, in fact. It had just sort of come up in conversation. “I was kicked,” she’d said. “By a p—by a horse.” Even then, he knew her well enough to know that she was holding back. It was the way she moved her shoulders. “It was a long time ago.” She’d set a plate of pancakes in front of him. and the conversation was over. Every Christmas, four identical stockings would be hung from the mantlepiece. She’d brought them from her parent’s house and hung them up shortly after their second daughter was born. All four were identical; red woolen socks with a ruff of fur. He suggested writing their names on them with a Sharpie and she’d recoiled at the idea of defacing them. He was not a stupid man. As far as he was concerned, the socks were dumb, but they were her idea, and they held some special meaning to her, and that was that. One day she would explain it, or she wouldn’t. But after she’d gone to bed, he looked at them very closely. Besides being oddly shaped—more like closed tubes than actual stockings—all four had been worn. There was an almost U-shaped wear pattern on the bottom of each sock. And one of them—the one that was hers—had a brownish stain on the bottom. It could have been anything, but he knew that it was blood. And he knew that it was hers. That night, he did not sleep well. He tenderly pulled the covers off her leg and examined the scar in the moonlight. He did it carefully and cautiously, knowing that he would have a difficult time explaining should she wake. But she did not. He could almost see how it had happened . . . almost. There had been something sturdy inside that sock, and it had swung across her leg—probably by accident, probably when she was very young. Some game gone wrong, perhaps. But a game didn’t feel quite right . . . there was one piece of the puzzle missing. ~ ~ ~ Time goes by, as it always will. They’re older now; their daughters are married and live in cities on different sides of the country. They come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and occasionally other times of the year, too. He’s thought about selling the house and moving somewhere closer to town—any town, really. But he’s never broached the subject. He knows she loves it here. He’s never discovered what she sees when she stares out the window on rainy days. “Where’s Minty?” Star Catcher frowned. “I dunno, I thought she was with you. Silly filly’s gotten herself in trouble again.” Megan’s heart sank. That’s what she was afraid of. Minty had a heart of gold, but she was clumsy and impulsive. She probably shouldn’t be left alone ever. She jogged back down the path . . . maybe Minty had gotten distracted by something bright and shiny, or something that wasn’t quite level. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Minty was stuck rump-first in a hole by the path, futilely pawing at the dirt with her forelegs. Megan ran up to her. “Are you okay?” “I got stuck,” she explained simply. “Can you help me?” Megan looked at her dubiously. The ponies were heavier than she was. “Can you move your hind legs?” “I think so?” Minty struggled for a moment. “Kind of. I can sort of push off the wall, but then I slip and get stuck again.” “Let me help.” Megan walked around and wrapped her arms around the pony’s barrel. With a grunt of effort, she pulled as hard as she could. Even at her age, she knew this probably wasn’t good for her back. She could feel Minty’s powerful muscles shifting under her hands, and with an almost audible pop the pony was loose, and then she was scrabbling up and out and one of her hind legs slipped again and kicked back against Megan, sending the girl sprawling. She didn’t have to even look to know it was going to be bad. The side of her jeans was torn open, and she could already see blood seeping out onto the ground. There was no sense in looking at it before they got back to Ponyville, though. She struggled back to her feet and put an arm over Minty’s withers for support. “Thanks for helping me out of the hole. You’re such a good friend.” She looked at Megan admiringly, but her expression quickly turned to concern. “Hey, what happened to your leg?” “I . . . hit a rock.” “Ooh.” Minty led her along in silence for a while, then stopped just before town. “I bet socks would make you feel better. Everyone loves socks.” She pulled off her socks and gently tucked them down Megan’s shirt. “There, isn’t that better?” Megan looked into Minty’s hopeful lavender eyes. Of course the socks didn’t make it better—they didn’t stop the bleeding and they didn’t stop the pain. They wouldn’t mend her torn jeans. She stroked Minty’s mane reassuringly. “Thank you. I’ll treasure them forever.” Author's Note Prompt: “...And that’s why I walk with a limp when it’s raining sometime.” I can't remember if I had the idea for this story before I watched A Very Minty Christmas or if I watched the movie for research for the story. I think it was the former. Whichever it was, I had the idea to use Megan as soon as I read the prompt.
21: ButtonsPinkie Pie was dead. It was not a surprise to anypony. She was very old, and everypony agreed that it was nice that she’d first finished decorating what was later regarded to have been the best Nightmare Night celebration Equestria had seen in centuries, possibly ever. Three hours in, somepony had wondered why she was facedown in the punch. She’d been put to rest the next day, and her friends and descendants came to pay their last respects, along with the five Princesses of Equestria. It was a nice funeral, although the reception was . . . lacking. Fortunately, Cheesie Pie managed to accidentally activate a party cannon, and after that, things went fairly well. After the interment came the most difficult task of all: cleaning out Pinkie’s house. The living room was turned into the sorting room. There, all objects were placed, and distributed to family members. It was a very social affair, and before too long, it had turned into a party which attracted most of Ponyville. That was hardly surprising, and it was what Pinkie would have wanted. By mid-day, ponies were taking trinkets and tokens home with them, displaying them in their own houses, and sharing stories about that time Pinkie had jumped out of a cake with a rubber chicken in her mouth, or how she’d managed—on a dare—to complete every verse of “ten thousand bales of hay in the barn” over a memorable weekend. By the evening, things were in full swing. Pound and Pumpkin began carrying over cakes and treats which had been inspired by Pinkie’s cooking, and a rousing chorus of “Giggle at the Ghosties” was begun by a highly intoxicated Berry Pinch, who had followed exactly in her mother’s hoofsteps, complete with her own crop of illegitimate foals and grandfoals. Over the next week, as the house was slowly emptied, a dozen ponies found true love, three foals got their cutie marks, every lamppost in town had stopped by the cemetery to pay its respects—courtesy of Discord—and Lickety Split, in the throes of an ice-cream headache, discovered the meaning of life. He also discovered that Pinkie Pie hid things in bananas, but that’s a story for a different time. The town was partying as it never had before. But, all good things come to an end. On the ninth day, Cheesie Pie came down to report that the house was empty, all except for the dormer on the north side of the house. All the eyepatches had been discovered and distributed, and no foal was without a ball and a rubber chicken. Fake vomit was frequently appearing in the hospital and schoolhouse. The ponies of Ponyville took the news in stride. The funeral and wake had been a thing of legend, and it would be discussed through the cold winter months. As the wind blew and the snow flew, trinkets would be taken out of their storage places and chuckled over, and the families would share some memories of Pinkie Pie, and the winter would seem just a little bit warmer. “Well, that’s it,” Cheesie declared as he picked up the last box. “Everything distributed, and everypony’s happy.” He slid the box out of the dormer room with a quick flip of his hind leg. “Now there’s nothing but to . . . huh, I wonder what this is?” Below the box, slightly recessed into the shelf, was a simple button. It was large enough to easily be manipulated by hoof—a design sentiment which made sense, since Pinkie had always been an earth pony. It was bright red, and in neat white block letters it simple said “PUSH.” “Hey, Sammie. What do you think of this?” “I think it’s a button.” Although he knew his sister had been downstairs when he called for her, he was not surprised that she was right next to him in time to answer the question. Such were the ways of the Pies. “What do you think it does?” “I don’t know, push the button and find out.” Cheesie looked at it. Pinkie had been random and inscrutable, but she had not been mean. There wasn’t a mean bone in her body. Whatever the button did, it was likely to be something fun, or something that would turn out to be fun in the end, even if it didn’t seem like it at first. He slid a hoof forward, closed his eyes, and pushed. Author's Note Prompt:"I don't know, push the button and find out." The Blog Link
23: Why Does it Have to be SnakesWhy does it have to be snakes? Admiral Biscuit You awake, and you're surrounded by your deepest, most powerful phobia. Everypony has their own phobias. Some are illogical. Pegasi sometimes worry about losing their wings mid-flight. Unicorns fear the malfunction of their horns and resultant loss of magic. Earth ponies dread the thought of plants no longer bending to their will. Crystal Ponies fear the return of Sombra, even though they watched him die. Even Zebras are probably afraid of something. There are more logical fears, though. Granny Smith sometimes wakes up with a strange fluttering in her chest, and wonders if her poor old heart isn't about to give out. Sometimes it keeps her up all night. She's not afraid of death, but she doesn't want to leave her grandfoals behind. She worries about how they’ll get along without her. Rainbow Dash is plagued by a recurring nightmare that she failed to make the second sonic rainboom in time. She wakes up in a cold sweat every time she sees Rarity crater into the ground. She will never admit this to Rarity. After she got her award and met the Wonderbolts, it hit her like a ton of bricks, and she had the shakes for an hour, then cried herself to sleep that night. She won't admit that to anypony. Fluttershy is afraid of being alone, but too timid to admit it. Rarity fears something happening to Sweetie Belle on one of her many crusades. Pinkie Pie worries that she'll forget somepony's birthday, anniversary, or any one of a vast number of celebratory events which she tracks obsessively on a large calendar in her room. Applejack wants foals, but claims she hasn’t met the ‘right’ stallion yet. She’s really afraid something will go wrong, somehow—either during the act, or afterwards. Twilight Sparkle fears snakes. There is no reason why she should. She's faced down some of the nastiest monsters that Equestria has to offer, and she's always triumphed. She completed a spell even the great Starswirl the Bearded could not, and ascended to princesshood. She's even learned to manage her obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and was once seen crumpling up a schedule and tossing it in the wastebasket. True, she pulled it out five minutes later and smoothed it back out, but progress is progress, no matter how small. But snakes. No snake has ever harmed her. She's been stung by bees more times than she can count—well, not really; if you asked her, she could give an exact tally. She's been stoned by a cockatrice. She's faced dragons thrice, once alone. She's dealt with Discord, Nightmare Moon, Sombra, and Changelings. Yet none of them hold the primal fear that a simple tubular reptile can inspire. She'd mostly avoided them in Canterlot. A busy city was hardly a snake paradise, and while there might have been some there, she never saw them. Even Ponyville was largely snake-free, and she did quite well until Winter Wrap-Up. If she hadn't managed to work up a schedule to get the chores done on time, ponies would probably still be laughing at her overreaction to waking up a den of hibernating snakes. The problem had gotten slightly out-of-hoof during their brief adventure with . . . well, she still thought of her as Daring Do. Naturally, wherever the archaeologist went, snakes were there, too. Twilight could chuckle at their mention in a book—although she still glanced around the room to make certain none were present—but she couldn't deal with them in the wild. That set her apart from Rarity. While the fashionista hated getting her hooves dirty, and complained any time she thought she might get a little sweaty or chip her hooficure, if it needed to be done, Rarity just did it. Twilight had humiliated herself by freezing up and had to be carried past the threat by Applejack. At least that's what they told her afterwards; she'd been screaming loudly enough to have not noticed. Fortunately, Rarity had been quick with a silencing spell—the net result was that Twilight could still hear herself screaming, but nopony else could. The girls finally calmed her down by repeatedly dunking her in a spring-fed pond that was the closest thing Twilight had ever felt to absolute zero. Rainbow seemed to take perverse pride in the act. They'd all soberly agreed that something needed to be done, and Fluttershy had proposed a simple solution—acclimatization. Once she learned that snakes were harmless, she would no longer fear them. While the plan had a nice academic feel to it, Twilight was dubious about the actual execution, but so far it had gone off without a hitch. They'd started with books about snakes. As creepy as they were, snakes were fascinating creatures. From a distance. Pictures came next, and once she'd gotten over the reflex of incinerating the photographs on sight, that went pretty well, too. Rarity made her a stuffed snake plushie. She pretended it was a rope, and that wasn't so bad. Before too long, there was a snake in a cage on Fluttershy's table. Twilight made sure to seal the door with magic, just in case it tried to get out. Other than that, she did all right. Her teacup hardly wavered as she drank, watching it out of the corner of her eye. Just in case. All that led up to the present. She'd felt pretty good about the whole snake thing, in fact. The word no longer gave her a slight thrill of fear. What an odd thing to be thinking about, she thought, stretching. Her body felt kind of . . . funny, like she'd slept wrong. The cold table had a familiar feel. It was the worktable in the library basement. I must have fallen asleep while doing an experiment. She lit her horn. The walls of the basement were shifting, moving . . . slithering, almost. What in Tartarus? Twilight brightened the glow, revealing dozens of dozens of snakes crawling all over her basement, her lab tables . . . and up the stairs. That day, Twilight made an interesting discovery and a resolution. First, she discovered that she could teleport on the fly, from a sprawled position, while screaming at the top of her lungs. Secondly, she resolved that at the first opportunity, she was going to address Fluttershy's fear of flying in a very direct and personal manner. "Ah just don't see how this was supposed ta get us cutie-marks," Applebloom lamented. "Snakes need someplace warm and quiet to stay for the winter," Sweetie Belle said with some authority. "I read it in one of Twilight's books. And what's quieter and warmer than a library basement?" "Yeah," Scootaloo added, pouring another bucket of drowsy snakes through the basement window. "Besides, Twilight loves snakes; she's even got that snake stuffy your sister made for her." Author's Note As always, there's a LINK to a meaningful (ha!) blog post.
29: The LimpThe Limp Admiral Biscuit When she was younger, people noticed it. Sometimes they’d ask her what had happened—there was just something . . . well, un-American with a good-looking slender blond woman limping in the rain. She waved them off. If anyone pressed her, she’d mutter tersely, “car accident,” and leave it at that. It was believable; such things happened. Time flew on; once she was in college, the questions weren’t asked so much any more. One of her boyfriends was curious about the scar. No, not curious . . . more obsessed. He liked to run his finger across the puckered flesh that ran up the outside of her right leg, tracing it across the knee joint. She thought it felt weird. She broke up with him and never regretted it. By the time she got her diploma, it was just another part of her. it had been like that for so long she just didn’t think about it much. There was too much life to live. She started her career and started a family. She finished paying off her student loans and financed a new car. Two decades later, she finally convinced her husband to buy a large piece of property out in the country. Their young daughters would appreciate the space, she said, and exposing them to some of the responsibilities of a homestead would do them good. And on rainy days, she’d sit in the La-Z-Boy recliner and look out the window at nothing. As often as not, she would set a mug of tea on the end table, take a few sips, and then let it grow cold. Her husband was a good man, and one thing that a good man knows is to respect his wife. He asked about it once, and she replied that she did not want to discuss it. He let the matter slide . . . but he always got a little worried when she was one of her ‘brooding’ moods. He’d occasionally look in at her, and at the faraway look in her eyes, and he’d wonder what she was remembering. He knew about the scar, of course. He’d asked her about it, too. Not right away; not until years after they were married, in fact. It had just sort of come up in conversation. “I was kicked,” she’d said. “By a p—by a horse.” Even then, he knew her well enough to know that she was holding back. It was the way she moved her shoulders. “It was a long time ago.” She’d set a plate of pancakes in front of him. and the conversation was over. Every Christmas, four identical stockings would be hung from the mantlepiece. She’d brought them from her parent’s house and hung them up shortly after their second daughter was born. All four were identical; red woolen socks with a ruff of fur. He suggested writing their names on them with a Sharpie and she’d recoiled at the idea of defacing them. He was not a stupid man. As far as he was concerned, the socks were dumb, but they were her idea, and they held some special meaning to her, and that was that. One day she would explain it, or she wouldn’t. But after she’d gone to bed, he looked at them very closely. Besides being oddly shaped—more like closed tubes than actual stockings—all four had been worn. There was an almost U-shaped wear pattern on the bottom of each sock. And one of them—the one that was hers—had a brownish stain on the bottom. It could have been anything, but he knew that it was blood. And he knew that it was hers. That night, he did not sleep well. He tenderly pulled the covers off her leg and examined the scar in the moonlight. He did it carefully and cautiously, knowing that he would have a difficult time explaining should she wake. But she did not. He could almost see how it had happened . . . almost. There had been something sturdy inside that sock, and it had swung across her leg—probably by accident, probably when she was very young. Some game gone wrong, perhaps. But a game didn’t feel quite right . . . there was one piece of the puzzle missing. ~ ~ ~ Time goes by, as it always will. They’re older now; their daughters are married and live in cities on different sides of the country. They come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and occasionally other times of the year, too. He’s thought about selling the house and moving somewhere closer to town—any town, really. But he’s never broached the subject. He knows she loves it here. He’s never discovered what she sees when she stares out the window on rainy days. “Where’s Minty?” Star Catcher frowned. “I dunno, I thought she was with you. Silly filly’s gotten herself in trouble again.” Megan’s heart sank. That’s what she was afraid of. Minty had a heart of gold, but she was clumsy and impulsive. She probably shouldn’t be left alone ever. She jogged back down the path . . . maybe Minty had gotten distracted by something bright and shiny, or something that wasn’t quite level. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Minty was stuck rump-first in a hole by the path, futilely pawing at the dirt with her forelegs. Megan ran up to her. “Are you okay?” “I got stuck,” she explained simply. “Can you help me?” Megan looked at her dubiously. The ponies were heavier than she was. “Can you move your hind legs?” “I think so?” Minty struggled for a moment. “Kind of. I can sort of push off the wall, but then I slip and get stuck again.” “Let me help.” Megan walked around and wrapped her arms around the pony’s barrel. With a grunt of effort, she pulled as hard as she could. Even at her age, she knew this probably wasn’t good for her back. She could feel Minty’s powerful muscles shifting under her hands, and with an almost audible pop the pony was loose, and then she was scrabbling up and out and one of her hind legs slipped again and kicked back against Megan, sending the girl sprawling. She didn’t have to even look to know it was going to be bad. The side of her jeans was torn open, and she could already see blood seeping out onto the ground. There was no sense in looking at it before they got back to Ponyville, though. She struggled back to her feet and put an arm over Minty’s withers for support. “Thanks for helping me out of the hole. You’re such a good friend.” She looked at Megan admiringly, but her expression quickly turned to concern. “Hey, what happened to your leg?” “I . . . hit a rock.” “Ooh.” Minty led her along in silence for a while, then stopped just before town. “I bet socks would make you feel better. Everyone loves socks.” She pulled off her socks and gently tucked them down Megan’s shirt. “There, isn’t that better?” Megan looked into Minty’s hopeful lavender eyes. Of course the socks didn’t make it better—they didn’t stop the bleeding and they didn’t stop the pain. They wouldn’t mend her torn jeans. She stroked Minty’s mane reassuringly. “Thank you. I’ll treasure them forever.” Author's Note Prompt: “...And that’s why I walk with a limp when it’s raining sometime.” I can't remember if I had the idea for this story before I watched A Very Minty Christmas or if I watched the movie for research for the story. I think it was the former. Whichever it was, I had the idea to use Megan as soon as I read the prompt.
