“Alright, Sheila, here you are,” Lightning Dust muttered to herself, walking through the summer sun and the apple tree filtered light. She tried her best to keep her heart from beating out of her chest. It wasn’t everyday she made a cross country trip for somepony, and it was even more rare, as in never happened, when she came to deliver news like this.
She gave herself an amused and coy smile, remembering something she wasn’t particularly proud of, but that still brought some laughter to her whenever it came to mind.
“Well, it’s not the first time I’m delivering this news, but it is the first time I’m not lying about it.”
The embarrassing memory did little to quell her anxiety.
The increased heart rate and the cold sweat returned with a vengeance, which was not helped in the slightest by the scorching heat of the blistering summer day.
“Still,” the blue mare muttered to herself. “It’s cooler than Appleoosa was last week, at least,” Lightning admitted. “It also might not be that hot at all and it’s just my condition that’s making me feel this way…”
Her restlessness was killing her as Lightning Dust did her best to combat the flood of thoughts and implications that her current situation carried. There were always options, after all, and even if some of them weren’t particularly tasteful, they were still there.
But for all her apprehension, Lightning still did her best to try and keep her head on straight, knowing that she needed that much to do at the very least to accomplish what she went all the way from Appleoosa to Ponyville for.
In all honesty, it had felt like the single longest trip in one direction that she’d taken since she’d left the wonder bolts in disgrace.
Lightning let out an unhappy sigh concerning the current crisis in her life. She pressed her face squarely in the middle of her right hoof. It was the stupidest mistake that she’d ever made and now, being sober for the longest time since she’d up and left the academy of the best flight team in all of Equestria, she had to go and deliver perhaps the most jarringly awkward piece of news that she’d ever thought possible.
“Well, Lightning,” she took another deep breath, finding her body sweating in more places she’d been totally comfortable with. “You never were the type of girl to think ahead, were you? You just kind of always… shoved others out of the way and now that you’re here…”
As she paused to try and think of a way to end that sentence, the estate of one golden stallion’s extended family made itself known to her. Her golden eyes went wide as she took in everything, from the scarlet barn and all the pigs, fat and healthy and playing in the mud, to a fairly large house that looked like it could accommodate more than the few she knew lived there.
Finally stopped, she just let the whole situation and the setting sink into her and, finally placing one hoof in front of the other, she began moving through the apple scented farm and took the single, longest walk that she’d ever had down the shortest distance she’d ever taken the time to travel over.
“Alright,” Lightning gulped, moving slowly over a small stone path way. “This is it, Lightning,” the pegasus explained the situation to herself one last time before the final moments of her normal life came to an end.
The be all and the end all.
“The reaction of this pony is going to result in what happens with the rest of your life,” she struggled to slow her breathing, but to no avail, forcing her to simply give in and let her ungodly heart rate run its course. “That one, straight up guy that actually treated you with respect, and now?”
And there she stood, in front of the crimson door with white trimmings, staring straight at a doorbell that Lightning Dust was fairly certain about being an antique. “Now, you are so, totally, and unequivocally…” her blue hoof hit the bell and it sounded off, creating a cacophony of smaller bells that had been much more annoying that the athlete had thought possible.
“Screwed.”
“I got it!” A fairly high pitched southern drawl responded as his voice rung out from behind the country abode. “I got it!” He said one more time as the door opened, revealing a blond stallion with an off golden coat. “Well, hellooo, there! Welcome to Sweet Apple Acres! How can I-” He finally opened his green eyes to see who he was speaking to. “Lightnin’?” He took off his hat, showing his southern gentlecolt side. “What in tarnation… what are you doin’ all the way in Ponyville?”
“I, um…” Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be, Lightning Dust thought, rubbing the back of her mane and unable to look him directly in his big, green eyes. “Heya, Braeburn, I just wanted to tell you that-”
“Who is it, Braeburn?” A deep voice for another mare cut her off, eventually showing an earth pony that had the same color scheme as the stallion before her, only reversed. “Hey! Ain’t you the mare that almost got me and my friends killed?”
Lightning Dust smiled, trying her darndest not to say ‘see, now you’re assuming that’s the first time I’ve ever done that type of thing’, but she restrained herself, keeping her mind on her motive. “Sorry about that,” she lied. “But I have something I need to talk to Brae-Braeburn,” she corrected. “About right now… alone,” she added bluntly, hoping that the other mare would take a hint.
It didn’t work.
“Well, alright then, Lightnin’,” he shrugged, apparently not expected much. “Why’d ya travel all the way here for?”
“Well,” A final deep breath was taken and a speeding heart was ignored. “Braeburn,” Lightning forced eye contact, keeping her gold eyes on his green pupils until, finally, two simple words came out…
“I’m pregnant.”
His eyes went wide as he began to lose anything closely representing equilibrium in his body, from head to hoof. “Yer pregn…” and in an instant, his blonde mane and golden body made hard contact with the red painted wood of the home and abode of the Ponyville Apples.
After several seconds of simply staring, it was finally Lightning Dust that chose to spoke up first, somewhat surprised, but only just, remember the week they’d spent together in Appleoosa and recalling one of the most simple facts about the stallion, Braeburn.
“He fainted,“ she bluntly observed, feeling as though she’d earned the title of captain obvious.
“Braeburn’s-”
“Easily excited,” Lightning finished, cutting off the mare that she’d probably get to know very well in the coming months and years, still looking down at the enthused mustang that had seeded her with a foal. “Yeah, I get that.”
...One week earlier…
“Uugh…” Lightning groaned as the morning sun struck her square in her eyelids, earning it nothing but being ignored even further than before as the mare moved the covers over her golden eyes in the struggle against the great celestial body.
Her eyes still closed, and her senses still very much addled, the only sensation that could be felt in any capacity that could come close to being judged, save her hearing, was her ability to smell, which seemed to be a combination of dried apples and a sort of spicy barbeque sauce.
A floodgate of memories opened as she remembered how she'd gotten into that state, if only vaguely. Lightning recalled a lot of drinking, then heading from town to town, and then some more drinking and then a bar fight, all succeeding her botched attempt at joining the Wonderbolts and how, all because of her recklessness, she’d been demoted and, out of pure, genuine and stupid pride, left, all because she’d been busted down to the assignment of wingpony.
“Whatever,” she mumbled as she pulled her rough and somewhat dusty covers closer to her blue hair, feeling the cold, yet dry air of whatever Celestia forsaken town she’d ended up drunk in this time and hope that the hangover would pass over her like a bad… hangover.
Slowly, Lightning felt her body relax from the tense anxiety of remembering her failure and could sense her mind losing any sign of cohesive thought as they, in unison, began to drift off into the heavenly bliss in the back of her mind where she hadn’t failed her dreams due to her foolish arrogance and recklessness, and back to a place where she hadn’t been drinking away her problems in a single, steady stupor in the hopes that she could out run, and outfly, them.
“Mmm,” she hummed as, finally, Lightning’s lithe, athletic build began to slowly melt into the ether of nothingness, till only the faintest breath of the young mare revealed any clue that she’d still been alive at all.
“GOOD MORNING!!!” An overly enthused young stallion shouted with a loud whiny and consistent canter from the other side of the room. “And how, may I ask, is our guest today?”
A emphatic scream sounded off in the center of Lightning’s mind, followed by several hangover and lack of sleep induced ideas of how to commit murder, each one slightly more disturbing and exhaustion addled than the last. Instead, all she could manage was a simple whimper, hoping to feign death or something similar in the goal of making him leave her alone.
“Still sleepy, eh?” The country stallion asked, lowering his voice for her benefit and his smile painfully evident in the tone of his voice. “Well, I’m right sorry ‘bout that. You did have a real monster of an evenin’ last night, if’n you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Ma’am.”
“Mmm,” she moaned again, finally trying to form words, though still not sure how she got to be in that youthful mustangs… care. “Stop yelling at me.”
“I… wasn’t…” he answered back with a small tinge of confusion briefly halting his near absurd enthusiasm. He then shrugged. “At any rate, Darlin’, I’m so happy that you’re awake! After what happened last night, I can’t wait to tell all my friends and kin ‘bout my new wife from out’a town!”
If Lightning hadn’t known any better, she would have sworn the sound of shattering glass in the very back of her mind, sending echoes throughout her psyche in ways that would have broken even a princess.
In an instant, Lightning’s eyes burst open, her mind and body instantly alerted to the situation now.
“Not again!” Her mind now possessing crystal clarity, she came out of her daze like an adrenaline infused wrecking ball.
In a sudden salvo of rapid movement befitting an athlete of her caliber, the green blankets were thrown clear across to the other side of the room. Her eyes, now narrowed, had darted across what she’d now noticed the spartan and utilitarian chambers.
But the cowboy’s choice of interior design wasn’t what was important right then: figuring out what happened last night, on the other hoof, was.
Though Lightning’s body had difficulty catching up with the speed her mind traveled, her greatly honed reflexes still suffised and, within no time, she’d slammed into the mysterious stranger of stallion hooves first and tackled him to the ground.
“What?!” Lighting asked, ignoring the newly stirred up dust and her body perfectly parallel to the stallion’s golden-rod figure. Her body panted heavily from the sudden change of pace. Her face met his, with hardly inches separating the two ponies of different tribes. “What the heck happened last night? How did we get-” she began to glare at him as he began to do something rather uncalled for, considering the situation.
“Why are you laughing!?!?!” She demanded to know, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him vehemently.
As if something hysterical had happened, the young mustang had nearly begun to burst into tears of jubilation, from the looks of it, and could barely keep his green eyes open. “I’m sorry! The look on your face!” He then looked her back, dead in the eye. “I’m kidding!”
His body stopped the shaking with a jolt, quickly followed by being dropped down on the hardwood floor. “Ow!” the off yellow stallion sounded off in near perfect harmony with the accompanying thud. “Heh.”
Lightning briefly looked around, seeing almost nothing that really caught her interest aside from the sparse desert like climate that reminded her of home.
Well, she thought to herself, her mind growing to be at ease upon swishing her tongue throughout her mouth. My mouth doesn’t taste like bad decisions, so I guess that’s something.
Indignantly, the mare moved her face to her hoof and shook off the returning headache. Her aching mind struggled to make sense of the situation, but to no avail.
Screw it, she surrendered to herself. I’ll ask.
“So what happened last night?” Lightning asked, turning around to face the green eyed stallion. “And how the heck did I end up at your place?”
He arched his eyebrow at her. “You don’t remember what happened last night? At all?”
“Well…” Lightning took a deep breath, forcing herself to remember exactly what went on the last night and why, pray tell, she was stuck in a two story house out of an overly enthused frontier mustang with a high pitched voice.
“Honestly?” She arched her eyebrow. “All I remember from last night was a mop, cheap whiskey, a shovel and a dozen bowling pins in a burlap sack,” Lightning shrugged, looking back at her host for the time being.
“Huh…” he scratched the back of his mane. “Sounds like you had a time last night, eh?” He let out an awkward chuckle before switching to a face of embarrassment. “Whoops! Looks like I plum forgot my manners,” the cowboy placed his brown, widebrimmed hat over his heart. “Name’s Braeburn, Ma’am,” Braeburn did a slight bow towards his guest, followed by him extending his right hoof to meet hers. “Pleased to meet you!”
She kept moving down the stairs without taking a first look at the dusty hoof, instead opting to to just keep on her way down the flight of downward steps.
“So, Ma’am,” the young stallion moved down faster, keeping a steady pace just behind her; close enough to not lose her and have a clear conversation, but far enough away to not throw off her sense of personal space. “What was that about last night, anyway?”
For a split second, she almost skipped a beat in her step, but only just a split second. Lightning knew that she couldn’t have done anything to horrendous the previous night in this town. She’d been on a steady buzz for nearly a week, not accounting for sleeping, so she knew for a fact that she was an excellent drunk. If she wasn’t, then she could hardly call herself a Sydneighan.
The perky mustang let out a laugh at her expense. “I still can’t believe you fought through five guys by yourself and drunk off your flank!”
Lightning began to slow down after that and her mind slowly began to gain new memories from the last night. Though it wasn’t a flood as opposed to a steady trickle like you’d see in a kitchen sink someone forgot to turn off all the way, the images of a rather large and involved bar fight began seem more and more familiar.
“And don’t even get me started on that there tab you got started!” His laughter became more and more pronounced. “I mean, I reckon you gotta be eight kinds’a healthy to drink that much without droppin’ dead like a-”
“Okay,” she turned around, now finding the both of them not only at the bottom of the stairs, but just in front of his relatively robust home. “What, in high holy hell, happened last night?” she jabbed her hoof into his bark leather vest. “Because you have been chitchatting non stop since I woke up with a hangover that would make Celestia change her plans and I still have no idea what in tarnation,” she added a mockery of a twang for emphasis. “You’re talking about. Now, you are going to tell me exactly what happened and what I did in this podunk little town of yours, and then I am going to leave. Do you understand me partner?”
“Heheheheh,” he chuckled as he put his wide brimmed hat back on. “Darlin’? He tilted his face upward, letting her see just how wide his grin was. “You may wanna cover your eyes for a sec. It’s fixin’ to get bright up in here.”
She squinted her eyes at him as he reached for the door handle to the outside. “What are you, GAH!” The light began to flood in with all the dusty heat that seemed so familiar to her yet seemed like it hadn’t been in contact with her for nearly a lifetime. “Holy dooley that’s bright!”
“I warned ya,” he snidely replied. “Ladies first?”
If she had her eyes in working order, she would have glared at the young stallion, but the situation was what it was and all she could do was offer yet another snide remark. “Go right ahead, Pretty Colt.”
Braeburn just shrugged as he took the lead.
“This here is the town’a Appleousa!” He whinnied with much enthusiasm. “By the way, here,” he took off his hat once more and Lightning felt a soft nudge to her chest. “Your eyes may take some issue with adjusting’ to the bright sun here. Happens a lot with greenhorns.”
Greenhorns? Lightning Dust thought, feeling insulted but wearing the hat none the less.
“Also might be a good idea considerin’ your, ah…” he tapped his chin as they kept walking through the small colonial frontier town. “Less than ladylike behavior last night?” He shrugged. “At any rate. This here little town is a tiny oasis among the desert and the waste lands of the mild west!”
“Eh heh…” Lightning added as she struggled to care and her eyes finally started to adjust to the sunlight properly.
“Ya see, Ma’am,” his voice and his chest began to sound and puff out more pronounced. “We’re among the first ponies to ever settle this far down south and this far away from the capitol’a Canterlot!”
He stopped, and by extension, so did Lightning to look at a group of small foals and a buffalo play with a small rubber ball that had definitely seen some use.
“I thought the ponies here were having land disputes with the bison,” Lightning asked, evidently forgetting to not care. “What happened?”
She turned to find her host smiling warmly at the children at play and taking a deep breath. “My family came down from up north for a visit. From the town of Ponyville?”
The name rang a bell to Lightning, though it was only slightly louder and more resounding than her late night escapades in the bar. She didn’t keep up much with current events, but she knew that there was some big shot in Canterlot that lived up in that town. Maybe a few of them.
“Anyway, things weren’t goin’ so great between us and the buffalo tribe nearby,” his eyes began to get milky as they turned to the horizon, where the aforementioned tribe no doubt lived. “Almost got into a bit of a mess, if’n you’ll allow the understatement. But then they showed up, fixed things with a bit’a negotiation and one very bad show tune,” he let out a nervous chuckle as his warm smile returned.
He then looked at Lightning. “This town can mean somethin’ new for both ponies and buffalo. Like… this could be the birth of a whole new civilization! You heard’a how the three tribes got started together, right? With that whole windigo debacle?” Lightning forced a nod, not really having it in her to rain on this particular parade. “Well, this could be our version’a that, I reckon.”
“We have it right here to create a whole new world, and I think it’s amazin’.”
She looked him over, her eyes squinting in equal parts examination and suspicion and still taking issue with how bright the sun was and how alert she was forced into being while suffering from a hangover.
“Now,” he looked back to her. “You said you needed to get out’a town, right?” She nodded back to him. “Well, I’ll try and see if I can help ya, but truth be told, you ain’t really the most popular girl in town right now.”
Lightning raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I get that, thanks. But that’s just another reason for me to get out of here like a bat out of hell, right?”
“Nah, Ma’am,” he laughed nervously again. “I mean, ponies are gonna wanna piece out’a you, and as it turns out-”
“Hey! You!” a much more gruff and brazen voice sounded off from behind the blinding light. “We got a bone to pick with you, lil’ lady!”
The next thing Lightning heard was an exasperated sigh and the sound of a hoof rubbing against a golden colored face.
“Ah, hell…” Braeburn muttered under his breath. He turned to Lightning. “Listen, I’mma need you to go ahead and hide for a spell, kay?”
She responded with an entertained smirk. “Why? You got a girlfriend in town you don’t want me seeing?”
“No,” he answered back with all joy drained from his face for the first time she’d met him approximately fifteen minutes earlier. “Just keep out’a sight for the next lil’ while, keep the hat on, and just…” he trailed off as he began to meet the larger earth pony stallion confronting him.
“Stay out of trouble,” he muttered to himself.
…
Tarnation, Braeburn thought to himself as every last bit of his happy left him and was immediately drained by anxiety. I did not need this right now.
“Howdy Braeburn,” a larger, dark brown earth pony in a brown hat confronted the younger, almost golden stallion. “Who’re you talkin’ to just now?”
He took a deep breath. “One’a my daddy’s patients,” he lied. “She wasn’t doin’ so kean after that bar fight last night. I was makin’ sure she was takin’ her pain killers.”
“S’at right?” he nodded and smiled. He turned to his fellows, one being a brick red earth pony, the other being an almost bronze one. “He says that she was just a patient, boys,” they chuckled. The confrontational stallion turned back to Braeburn. “So then, tell me, Braeburn,” he reached over to ruffle his younger counterpart’s mane. “What happened to yer lucky hat?”
Braeburn gulped down his spit and his fear. “It’s bein’ washed.”
“Your lucky hat, the one you got when you were knee high and is made from 100% genuine Dodge Town red wood bark leather…” he paused to let the absurdity of Braeburn’s claim sink in. “Is bein’ washed?
“Yes,” Braeburn nodded.
“Look, Mr. Manchineel,” he began to walk around him and his cohorts. “We both know that I’m not the one you really want, right? It’s that one drunk off her plot, rampagin’ pegasus from last night, but, and I am bein’ totally honest with you right here, she left last night. So there’s no reason for you to-”
“Alright, cut the act, pretty colt,” Mr. Manchineel cut him off, moving closer to him and forcing Braeburn to back up slowly. “Now, we know that she was sent you and your doctor daddy’s, house last night to recover from the fight last night. And we both know that she was in no condition to go anywhere, so you wanna know what I think?”
Braeburn stood his ground, refusing to move another inch. “You’re gonna to let it go because my dad’s the only doc in this town and you keep hackin’ off the buffalo tribe?”
Manchineel gave him a bitter smile. “Funny. Y’know, yer the only one here that actually gives a rat’s hind end about those fur horns?” He didn’t get an answer back. “But no. I think, and here’s the kicker, that you’re just hidin’ her to spite me.”
“Please,” Braeburn rolled his eyes. “When have I ever done anythin’ to spite you, Mr. Manchineel? I mean, what could I possibly do to-”
Braeburn felt a hard shove against a pillar and found himself drawing all kinds of attention. “Listen to me, you upstart lil’ greenhorn! I know you know where she is! So, you tell me now and I won’t repay the new scar she gave me to you with interest?” Braeburn’s eyes squinted with defiance and Manchineel began to ask him a question he already knew the answer to. “Now, are you going to tell me where to find that blue bit-”
“Aye!” an arrogant voice rang out from the middle of the dusty street. “Put down the pretty colt!”
Why does everypony keep callin’ me that? Braeburn thought before he recognized who it was that was yelling.
“Well,” he dropped Braeburn, creating a small dust cloud. “Looky loo who it is!” the four ponies met in the middle of the street. “I remember you, yes I do! You cut me last night,” he showed her the laceration she’d made on him the bar fight on his right arm. “You made me need to go get stitches, ya bi-”
“Try and call me that again,” she cut him off, meeting her golden eyes to his brown. “See what happens.”
“Well, at least we can’t call you coward now, eh?”
“Guess not,” she caught a glimpse of Braeburn trying to dust himself off, then went back to staring down the large and ugly gentlecolt in front of her. “But that colt right there? The one that looks like he’s tryin’ to hard to be a male model?”
“Hey!” Braeburn shouted indignantly.
“Quiet!” she shouted back. “I’m speaking for you,” she turned back to the stallion. “He’s just trying to hide the fact that he hired me to be his bodyguard. He’s sensitive like that.”
“Is that right?” the dark brown stallion nodded with an entertained smile. “And what if I don’t believe you? What if I think you’re fibbin’ at me?”
“That’s cute,” she replied back in a very condescending tone. “You assume that I care what you think. He paid my bale, so I’m paying him back, that’s it.”
He raised his eyebrow. “And if I still deign to have fun with ‘im?”
Lightning moved closer him until their sides were touching and reached underneath Manchineel’s body and between his legs. “Then I deign,” she added extra venom for the repeated word. “To have fun with this. You like this, yeah?”
His voice moved up another octave. “I… wouldn’t be adverse to keepin’ it…”
“Then you might wanna keep your hooves off him so that I’ll,” she released him. “Keep my hooves off of that. We have an agreement there, Mate?”
He nodded.
“Then we’ll be square,” she smiled wryly as she moved back. “Now get going. The lot a’ya. I’d hate to send you all back to the doctor’s office!”
She watched them leave, all of them, out into the sun and into another building of maybe two stories.
“I didn’t need you to do that,” a familiar southern drawl rang out from behind her. “I mean, I’ve dealt with them before. I didn’t need any-”
“Shattup,” she interrupted, taking off his hat and placing it on his head with only half a care. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s an easily bruised ego,” she informed as she began walking with her client, such as he was, behind her. “And, by the way?” she tilted her head back. “I wasn’t kidding?”
“What?” Braeburn asked, adjusting his had.
“Look, I’m a lot of things,” she began to list them off. “A liar is one of them. Conniving, cynical and sarcastic are a few more, but I don’t like owing others anything.”
“Huh…” he let that sink in for a moment. “So I have a bodyguard, eh? Can I at least find out her name?”
She sighed and extended her right hoof to him. “My name is Lightning Dust.”
“Lightning Dust,” he tipped his hat to her and accepted her hoof. “Pleasure to meet you. They call me Braeburn,” she then found him wearing that same incredulous smile he’d worn when she first saw him earlier that morning. “Welcome to Appaloosa.”
“So…” he paused for a moment as they walked back to his home, hoping she was still listening. “You, ah…” Braeburn stammered, not quite sure how to ask. “You weren’t really going to tear off his-”
“I said I was a liar, Braeburn,” she answered before he could finish. “Take that however you like.”
Author's Note
Alright, so I finally got this first chapter out after pretending to right it for freaking EVER!!!
So yeah, we established the relationship between Braeburn and Lightning Dust: one being a hopeless idealist and the other being the exact opposite.
Let's see where it goes!
