The phone wasn’t supposed to ring.
Ditzy distinctly remembered the stallion saying so, back a few months ago when all the busy-looking ponies came in to install Ponyville’s own very first telephone switchboard here in the post office.
Yes, she was sure of it now. She remembered seeing the phone in question being wired into her desk and nervously telling the handypony that she wasn’t a switchboard operator. He had a big, puffy beard, and was really, really patient and nice—something that Ditzy would always appreciate a whole lot.
When she had asked, he tapped at his clipboard and told her that this phone (with its extra-long cable and its complicated-looking wiring) was something called an “auxiliary line” and that her desk in the middle of the room was the very best place for it. He explained how everypony could send calls from it if the main switchboards broke. Also, that it wouldn’t ring. In fact, it shouldn’t receive calls at all. She had made sure he was very clear about that—a girl had to have a healthy fear of unexpected responsibilities, after all, right?
And now, despite it all, the blasted thing had the audacity to ring, sitting muffled underneath three months’ worth of papery office litter. It had begun moments after Ditzy sat down at her desk for her early morning shift, as if the darned contraption had been waiting for her.
This was not the kind of start Ditzy would have chosen for her birthday. Everyone knows that from sunup to sundown, a pony’s birthday is a near-sacred thing. Old nags liked to say how any kind of misfortune during the day made for abysmal luck for the rest of the year. Ditzy wasn’t a very superstitious mare, but with just a few minutes before sunrise, things weren’t looking so great.
The only other pony clocked in this early was the office’s front desk secretary. It kind of made it all worse. There was just Ditzy and Miss Neatly sitting at their own desks in a big, empty room with an incessantly ringing phone in the middle of it. The pre-dawn light streaking in from a low angle through the windows actually made the bags under Miss Neatly’s eyes look deeper and darker. She looked terrifyingly cross.
After making a little show of pretending to notice the phone, pointing at it, and giving a few shrugs that said “Oh, this thing?”, Ditzy awkwardly picked up the receiver, all the while withering under her co-worker’s demonic pre-coffee glare.
“Hello, this is Ditzy Doo?” she said. “H-How can I help you this morning?” she quickly added, imitating the way she had seen switchboard mares answer calls.
“Ditzy, is th-that—? Oh, well it is, isn’t it?” came a stallion’s voice, rushed and bumbling. “Goodness, I’ve gone and messed it all up already… b-but that’s alright! I’m an admir—a secret admirer of yours and I… well I noticed it was your birthday today…”
Ditzy squinted and pressed the receiver up against her ear harder. That voice of his…
“Time Turner? Is that… is that you?”
“What what? Oh nonono, of course not. I’ve never heard of… I-I’m a secret admirer, the intention being that you definitely, for certain, have never, ever heard of me.”
Rolling her eyes, she replied, “We’ve been friends since forever; I think I can recognize your voice. Though… I didn’t know you, uhm, admired me.” A tinge of warmth spread across her cheeks at the thought.
“I—ah, ha—I guess I do. B-But I really, really don’t know who this Time Turner fellow is,” the stallion lied. “Definitely sounds like a nice sort of guy, if I should ever, errr, meet him.”
Ditzy glanced around the office; there was a strange sort of echo in the call. She didn’t know if this was normal or not on the phone. Straining, she could almost imagine it coming from that window next to Miss Neatly’s desk.
“Turner, I think it’s super sweet that you remembered today,” she said, picking up the phone and walking to the window. The extra-long cord trailed behind her. “But I really have to know—how in Equestria did you call this phone? It isn’t supposed to be hooked up to anything!”
“Erm, well, secret admirers have got secrets you know. Th-that’s the appeal of us, we’re all mysterious and, um, attractive that way, you know…” The blush in his cheeks was perfectly audible.
“Mhmmm…” she said. The ‘echo’ was definitely clearer here. Ditzy smiled.
Half-listening to Turner’s babbles, she trotted to the office’s entrance. The trailing wire from her phone swept around, knocking this and that off of Miss Neatly’s desk. Ditzy silently mouthed out desperate apologies; tomorrow she’d definitely need a double-batch of Miss Neatly’s favorite banana muffins to make up for this.
As Ditzy stepped out of the building and turned towards its outer east wall, her phone ran out of cord. She let it drop; it was easy to hear Turner from here anyway.
There he sat, next to the little blue box of a shed that held all of the circuits and wires for the building’s switchboards. A mess of knotted cords ran from the phone in his hoof into a tangled heap of wires that must have fallen from its rack in the shed. Turner’s free forehoof was circling through his mane like a runner doing laps at a track—a nervous tick that gave his hair its perpetually messy look.
He was still babbling on in that way of his, noticing neither Ditzy’s approach nor the increasingly alarming state of his short, ruffled mane. His hooves shook with an anxiousness that put bubbly giggles in Ditzy’s throat as he tried to salvage the conversation he thought he was still having.
It was at that moment that Celestia’s sun decided to finally peek out from between the faraway hills. Deep orange sunlight wove its way through the spring-green leaves on the trees in the yard and warmed Ditzy’s face.
Just on time, thought Ditzy Doo with a grin. Walking briskly forward with a confident sway of her hips, she decided that her first present today would be a kiss.
