GOING ANYWHERE
This was either the best or the worst decision he’d ever made. Stuffed Shirt lingered in the doorway of the train’s passenger car, looking out at the city of Canterlot. It had been his home for his entire life, but more and more it had started to seem like his prison.
He wondered how long his casual claim that he was ‘taking a walk to clear his head before the big event’ would buy him. Glancing down at the pocket watch in his hoof, the one that was nearly perfectly modelled to match the cutie mark on his flank, Stuffed Shirt checked the time. Guests were probably congregating at the cathedral right this moment, mostly friends and political allies of his parents. How long would they try to stall before they formally announced that there wasn’t going to be any wedding today? Good thing the reception was supposed to have an open bar; It was going to see a lot of use.
He almost felt a little twinge of sympathy for the mare who was about to be left at the altar, but it was hard to muster up too much concern for a pony he’d never even met before. He didn’t care how important the alliance between their two families was, or how many times his parents promised him that it was a ‘suitable arrangement.’ If they really meant that, they could at least have let the couple-to-be get to know one another first. But no, tradition dictated that he wasn’t allowed to lay eyes on... what was her name again? Oh, right, Emerald Dream. Of course it was tradition: some distant ancestor of his had probably decided it was better for everypony if the groom didn’t find out what he was in for until the lazy, inbred, entitled sow in question was waddling down the aisle towards him and it was too late.
The train shuddered beneath him and began to pull away from the station. With a final sigh, he turned to find a seat and figure out just what he was going to do now.
“Waaaaaaaaaait! Wait for me!”
At the sound of the voice, Stuffed Shirt poked his head back out of the train just in time to see a green earth pony mare round a corner and start galloping after the departing train. She was gaining, but with the train picking up speed her window of opportunity was closing fast. Without really thinking about it he leaned out and stretched a foreleg out to help her. Just a few steps before the end of the platform, a final desperate lunge let her hook her own foreleg around his. With a powerful yank and a little assist from his magic, he managed to pull her aboard as they both tumbled backwards.
Stuffed Shirt recovered before the panting mare did, giving him a quick chance to look her over. His eyes darted from her pickaxe cutie mark up to her light blue mane, which bore a few lingering signs that it had been ornately curled and done up until her sprint for the train had shaken it loose again. When he realized she was looking right at him and had in all likelihood noticed his cursory examination, he fumbled for his pocket watch again to check the time. A nervous tic he’d never quite managed to shake.
She let it pass without comment. “Nice watch.”
“Thanks,” he replied, a bit of lost confidence coming back, “I made it myself.”
"Whoa, that’s so cool!” Stuffed Shirt was taken aback by her apparently genuine enthusiasm. Usually when he showed somepony something he’d made... Usually...
“THIS is what you’ve been doing all afternoon? You have a test tomorrow! You should be studying, not tinkering alone up in your room.”
“You’ll never be a worthy successor to the family business if you waste all your time tinkering.”
“You’re going to come of age next month! Why are you still tinkering with what might as well be foal’s toys?”
“Uh, hello? You alright?” asked the mare, her voice shaking him out of the memories. “I didn’t think it was that hard of a question.”
“Sorry. Just thinking about something else. Say again?”
“I asked you what your name is.”
He hesitated, looking out past her at the city receding into the distance behind them. “Tinker. My name is Tinker. I didn’t catch yours.”
She grinned and shifted her saddlebags on her shoulders. “My friends just call me Emma. Come on, we better grab seats before the conductors come through.”
“Are these the only bags you brought?” asked ‘Tinker,’ as he decided he’d better start adjusting to calling himself. All in all, it wasn’t the worst alias he could have come up with.
Emma nodded. “I... left in kind of a hurry.”
Given she had only barely caught the train at all, Tinker had no problem believing that. Come to think of it, he hadn’t packed very much himself, certainly not enough to start a whole new life. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change his mind...
No. Not going to happen. He helped Emma lift her bags into the small compartment above before settling into a seat across the aisle from hers. Wanting nothing less than to be alone with his thoughts right now, he decided the best distraction he could muster would be rekindling the small talk with his new acquaintance. “So, what are you heading to Baltimare for?”
He thought at first that she hadn’t heard him, or less charitably she didn’t particularly want to talk. But just as he was ready to consign himself to a long ride in silence, she spoke up. “They have gem mines there, don’t they?”
“I think so,” said Tinker.
Emma tapped a hoof in a quick staccato on the armrest of her seat. “Try to find work there, then.” A gradual smile seeped across her face. “Yeah, that’d be perfect.”
Tinker raised an eyebrow and gave her body another, less cursory once over. Her slim, distinguished figure didn’t exactly suggest a pony with a long history of physical labor. Then again, it was her cutie mark. “Sounds like a rough way to make a living.”
She scoffed. “You sound like my mother. She wished my special talent had been in sitting my plot down on a velvet cushion and being useless until I could pump out an heir too.”
“That’s not really what I’m trying to say. I just meant that for a mare with your build you might not—”
“Hey, Tinker?” she interrupted, “you seem mostly like a good guy, so it seems only fair to warn you that I’ve got the better part of a decade’s worth of frustration ready to unleash on the next pony who tells me what I can and can’t do. You might want to think carefully before you decide you want that stallion to be you.”
“...Mines are great. Nothing wrong with mining. Good ponies doing honest work. Sorry I bothered you.” With that, Tinker turned to stare out the window. The late afternoon sun was just on the verge of setting, the rippling waves from the day’s heat making Canterlot’s silhouette look like nothing more than a distant mirage. He sat there staring at it and trying to pointedly not think about the reaction of the ponies who had no doubt figured out what had happened by now. His parents would be disappointed, so business as usual on that front. Nearly an hour ticked by, the gnawing anxiety building in his mind until he felt nearly ready to burst out in tears. How much money had he even grabbed on his way out? How long would it last? He wasn’t ready for this, for the real world, but he’d leapt off the cliff anyway and now all he could do was gape at the ground rushing up towards him. He needed... he needed...
Then he registered Emma’s hoof resting on his foreleg. “Hey, sorry about snapping at you like that before. You asked why I was going to Baltimare? It’s because I needed a fresh start.”
He blinked a few times while that sank in. “A fresh start?” Because just repeating her words back to her didn’t make him seem like an idiot at all.
“Yeah. My family’s kind of overbearing. I could tell you stories, but you probably wouldn’t believe them.”
Tinker grinned. “Oh, you might be surprised. Let me guess: if you ever try to make decision for yourself you’re wrong and if you ever dare to diverge from the grand plan they’ve already mapped out for your life you don’t appreciate everything they’ve done for you?”
The open gape on her face was response enough, but it quickly enough turned into a knowing smile. “Okay, maybe you would believe me. I always felt like I was the only one.”
“You aren’t.” That smile was just so infectious. “Sorry, Dad, I don’t want to run a chain of garment factories for the next four decades. Yeah, I actually would rather die in a gutter, thanks for asking.”
Emma just grinned even wider. “Oh, that’s too good. My turn.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry, Mom, but I actually don’t want to hook up with Pompous Windbag or whatever his name is. Perfect for me? How would you know?” she laughed, but it was half-hearted and when it had faded she was left hanging her head.
“Emma? You alright?” asked Tinker, reaching across the aisle to rub a comforting hoof on the back of her neck. She leaned into it, but it was a long minute before she answered him.
“Am I being stupid?” she asked. “All this love and marriage stuff, it just gets overwhelming sometimes. Whenever I objected I just felt like I was this naive little filly. But I just can’t shake the idea that if I’m going to be with somepony for the rest of my life, I should love them. You can’t force that. The harder everypony tried the more I hardened my heart against the idea. I blame all those dumb old fairy tales, really. As if true love was some inexplicable thing that would only happen when I was ready. Like I said, stupid.”
“I don’t think that sounds stupid at all,” said Tinker. Distantly, a corner of his mind registered that he’d ended up resting his hoof on her shoulder instead of pulling it back. But she hadn’t protested against it.
“Doesn’t it?” asked Emma, “I just can’t shake this feeling that, and I can’t even believe I’m going to say this, that if it’s love then in some weird way it’s meant to be. And if it’s meant to be, wouldn’t it happen on its own? Without everypony in my life forcing it to?” She sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m kinda nuts.”
Tinker smiled. “Well, if you’re nuts for believing in that I hope you’ll save me the cell next to yours in the insane asylum. Because apparently I’m crazy too.” When she didn’t respond, he took a moment to consider his options. Would she even believe the full truth? One way to find out. “Hey, Emma? The truth is that the only reason I even got onto this train in the first place was—”
“I said move your hoof, sir.” Tinker shocked himself out of the tunnel vision that had been fixated on Emma and registered the train’s stewardess looming over him. The cart she was pushing through the aisle had stopped right before it had collided with the foreleg obstructing it. Which he just happened to be rather attached to.
He yanked his hoof away from Emma, and wondered if he was completely misinterpreting her expression as he did so. Was that regret or relief at the departure of his touch? Not that it especially mattered given that she was a random stranger he’d only just met, what, an hour ago? Of course he was hoping that his touch had been welcome; what gentlecolt wouldn’t? That was probably the main reason.
“What would you like for dinner?”
Oh dear, the stewardess was talking to him. “Salad?”
She gave him a world-weary sigh that, if he didn’t know any better, Tinker would have sworn had been practiced extensively in the mirror to let passengers know that they were supposed to hate themselves without explicitly saying so. “Waldorf okay?”
“Um, sure,” he said and the pegasus slid a plate of wilted greens and browning fruit in front of him instead of replying.
Instead she’d already turned her attention to the next passenger, who just happened to be Emma. “And you, miss?”
“I’ll have the barbecued eggplant sandwich, please. And could I get an extra side of coleslaw with that?”
Tinker looked down at the flimsy pile of food doing a barely passable imitation of a proper meal on his plate. Meanwhile, steam erupted from the freshly unwrapped foil as the stewardess dropped an extra scoop of coleslaw from a concealed bowl onto the plate and slid it before Emma. As she pushed her cart past them and towards the next car, Tinker got his first good look at her dinner.
He had chosen poorly.
Before he had a chance to come up with some clever comment about the relative qualities of their respective meals, Emma leaned in and attacked her plate like a starving animal. Tinker could only watch in horror as she downed a sizable portion of her entree and nearly all of her side dish before she happened to glance up and notice him staring. “Oh, please excuse my—” the rest was cut off by a loud belch before Emma manage to slap her hooves over her mouth.
By the time she managed to recover from her embarrassment enough to glance over at him, she found him smiling at her. “I guess you were hungry.”
Emma cleared her throat and meticulously lifted her napkin to dab at the corners of her mouth, completely missing the chunks of mayonnaise and cabbage clinging to her cheeks. “I’m sorry, that was quite rude of me.” Tinker’s ears perked up. Just for a second, he thought he’d caught the hints of a far more refined accent in her voice than he’d come to associate with her. It was gone as quickly as it came. “In my defense, I’ve been on something of a crash diet these last six weeks. All to fit into a dress that I’ll never...” her voice faded away and her eyes locked onto Tinker’s meal. “Is that your dinner?”
Tinker looked down at the rather pitiful offering in front of him. He poked a fork at something that might, just might, have been spinach in a former life. “Could be worse.”
“Really? How?” Tinker chose to ignore the comment and tried to muster up the strength to force a forkful of the stuff into his mouth. The slimy texture of the greens left the inside of his mouth coated in film, and he fought down the urge to gag at the trickle of ‘dressing’ that ran down the back of his throat. It was only on the fourth try that he managed to swallow the over chewed mouthful, only to look down and find that he’d barely even made a dent. He squeezed his eyes shut, preparing himself for the worst.
Before he could take a second mouthful, the scrape of ceramic on plastic derailed his train of thought. By the time he’d opened his eyes again, half a sandwich and a small mountain of coleslaw sat on the plate that he was quite sure wasn’t really his.
Looking across the aisle, he saw that Emma’s tray was bare and she was whistling in a suspiciously innocent fashion. “I thought you were hungry.”
The expression on Emma’s face oozed insincere surprise. “Gosh Tinker, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. And like I said, I’ve gotten used to being hungry when I need to be.”
Tinker let it pass. After all, who could say when the next time he’d have the chance to eat his fill would be? It was slowly sinking in that once he got to Baltimare, he didn’t have much in the way of a plan. Maybe find a watch shop that was hiring an apprentice. Would that be enough to support himself, though? It didn’t sound like the sort of position that paid enough to support a place of his own. But maybe...
“Hey, Emma, I—”
“Listen, Tinker, do—”
They both went silent at the same time. It was Tinker who recovered the courage to speak up first. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to talk over you. Go ahead.”
Emma blushed. “I couldn’t. I’m sure whatever you were going to say was more important.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t. Go ahead,” said Tinker
“Don’t sell yourself short. You should say what you wanted to say.”
“You should say yours first.”
“No, you should say yours. I insist.”
“Really, I have to—”
“Would one of you just get on with it already?” asked the one other pony in the passenger cabin who nopony had paid any attention to until now.
Tinker looked back to Emma and found her blushing hard, eyes averted from his. He let himself indulge in the view for a few more seconds than was entirely proper before he cleared his throat. “I just had this thought that maybe we could, I don’t know, combine forces? We’re both new to the city, we’re both looking for a place, and I don’t really know much of anything about Baltimare’s real estate but I know I’ll probably need to share a place to afford it. I just... by the Princesses, I feel like a creep even asking you this.”
Emma let out a snort. “Are you asking if I want to move in with you?”
“No!” shouted Tinker. “Well, not like that. I was just thinking that maybe if we combined our bits we’d have a better chance at stretching them far enough to make ends meet. I know we just met, but I... I don’t know. I think I could do a lot worse. If you’re interested.” Emma spent far more time thinking the proposition over than Tinker would have liked. “Just for a month or so. Transitional. I need a couple weeks to try things out and figure out what I want out of life, and I promise if I drop the ball on that I won’t stick around where I’m not welcome. I’m... um...” he trailed off.
“What’s the catch?”
“Huh?”
Emma rolled her eyes. “What’s the catch? What you’re saying sounds good, but my dad told me never to accept something that sounds too good to be true at face value. So what’s the catch?”
“The catch?” Tinker shifted from side to side in his seat, finding nothing he could describe as comfortable under Emma’s gaze. “I’ve been told I snore sometimes.”
Emma’s icy glare stayed fixed on his for a few more seconds. Then there was a little twitch at the corner of her eye, and everything started to crack. First it was just a barely audible chuckle, but then it degraded into a full-fledged laugh.
At last it settled. “Fair enough. Promise me you’ll put up with the occasional sinkful of dirty dishes, and I think we’ll be just fine.”
“I think I can promise that.” How badly would it compromise his negotiating position if he admitted just how much hearing her laugh had cheered him up?
“Good,” said Emma, “and don’t think that just because we’re going to be roommates you can try any funny stuff. I’m not the sort of mare who would spread my legs just because some cute stallion was doing me a favor.”
Cute? The word resonated in Tinker’s mind for just a second before he shook it off. This mare was not a romantic prospect, just a friend and roommate. Just as he was about to lose the initial struggle not to think of her that way, the stewardess came back through the cabin. She collected the remains of their meals and left them with rather underwhelming cups of water to sip before the cabin lights went out, signifying that it was just about time for sleep. Tinker glanced over to Emma in the low light, only to catch her glancing back.
“A toast!” she shouted just a hair too loud as she raised her cup in her hoof.
Tinker gave an internal shrug. Why not? “What to?”
The gentle smile she gave him in reply very nearly caused him to spill a few drops of water onto his lap. “How about ‘to new beginnings and new friends?’”
“I’ll drink to that.” The gentle impact of the two plastic cups striking each other was lost against the background noise of the train they were on, ever-charging into the night. If all went well, it would stay on schedule all night and reach its final destination in Baltimare just in time to welcome a brand new dawn.
