Derpy Hooves and Secrets of Life

The sun shone brightly over Ponyville that on that summer's day, the birds sang brightly in their trees while bees hummed as they worked on collecting nectar for their hives. All about the small town ponies could be seen trotting down the streets and in the park. It was a perfect day, and non of them wanted to waste it, including Derpy Hooves.

She was a plain pegasus mare, not a real beauty by any standards. With a dull gray coat and a pale blonde mane. The only thing to set her apart from others of her kind was her lazy eye, that never seemed to want to point in the same direction as her good one. She sat on a picnic blanket watching the clouds roll slowly by, beside her was her best friend- well, one of them anyway- Clockwork, a chestnut brown stallion with a messy darker brown mane and tail. They had just finished their picnic lunch and were watching clouds, trying to find shapes in the clouds.

"There," Clockwork spoke up, pointing with a hoof. "I see a bunny."

Derpy looked to where her friend was pointing. She giggled, "That's not a rabbit, that clearly is a dolphin."

"How in the name of Celestia is that a dolphin? Can't you see the ears?" Clockwork argued, looking at her with a grin, his blue eyes sparkling in a good-natured way.

"Those are the flippers!" She told him, giggling again, gazing into his eyes. She liked spending time like this with him. Maybe more than she should, but at that moment she didn't care, she was with the stallion she liked and they were having a good time. That's all that mattered.

"No! They're ears." He insisted.

"You need your eyes checked." She told him with a wink.

Clockwork bit back a response, just shaking his head with a sigh, then laughed. Derpy knew she'd won that argument. Clockwork was much too nice to tell her that it was Derpy herself that had the eye problem, meaning that Derpy would win every time. The pair went back to cloud-gazing for a short time before Clockwork got to his hooves.

"We'd better get going." He said, helping her up. She blushed slightly when their hooves touched, looking away. Clockwork didn't seem to noticed and began putting the plates away in the basket, while Derpy folded the picnic blanket.

"I uh, I had a lot of fun today." Derpy told him as they worked.

Clockwork smiled brightly. "Yeah, me too. We should do this again sometime, when you're not busy that is."

"Well, my new job doesn't seem so bad." She shrugged, her heart fluttering. He wants to do this again sometime! she thought happily.

"Aren't you working for a delivery company or something?" He asked

"Well, it's still part of the mail service, just a different faction. " She explained, handing the folded blanket to him. He put it on top of the basket.

"Ah, okay." He nodded. "Would you mind if I walked you home?"

Derpy did her best to play it cool. "Yeah, I'd be okay with that."

Clockwork smiled and headed towards Derpy's home. Derpy trotted to catch up with him, wanting to walk side by side. On the way they engaged in small talk, commenting on the weather, how their week was, where Clockwork was traveling to next. It didn't take long for them to get from the park to the modest little duplex that Derpy rented with her roommate, Golden Harvest. Derpy opened the door, laughing at something Clockwork had said as they both entered the front room. What was waiting for her there was the last thing she had expected on this summer day. Her brother.