The life and times of Lafayette Ryder

The sun is down and my belly is full when we get up to leave. Being the troll I am I leave a couple ones as my tip and swipe a bottle of beer from the bar before we go. Maybe troll isn’t the only word to describe me but it’s one of them. A cool breeze greets us as I exit the building in front of the others; I hang back near the doors for a smoke break. I pull out a small case that I always carry around with me, inside are five Cuban cigars my brother had bought for me a year ago. Part of me wants to save all five for a special occasion but another part of me says that tonight is good enough. Why the hell not? I flick my Zippo open and light the cigar, damn this is good, maybe I won’t save the others. I enjoy my smoke for a minute until my friends walk out (They’ve been treating me better than half the ‘friends’ I had back home so why not call ’em that?) and say their goodbyes to each other before they leave. I carefully put the cigar out and place it back into its case, no reason to waste such a fine thing, and walk over to the group.

Twilight and Applejack are discussing the logistics of an upcoming harvest, Dash and Fluttershy wave and fly off together (I notice how close the stay to each other as they fly, eh what the hell, if I had a pretty girl at my side I’d want to stay close to her as well.), Pinkie rushes up to me and starts to ask me what I want at my party (she’s drunk as me on fourth of July…wait that’s a terrible analogy, you have no clue how drunk I got this independence day. Abso-fucking-lutly wasted, that’s how drunk I got. There now it all makes sense.), she giggles when I tell her I want a cakes with a shit ton of chocolate in it. She waves to the others and tells me that she needs to get her rest before the party tomorrow. She turns to leave but stops, before I know it Pinkie hops up and kisses me straight on the lips. The sheer amount of ‘What the fuck’ in my system nearly makes me keel over. Pinkie smiles seductively and turns to leave once again, not without brushing her tail across my waist first, and skips off to Sugercube Corner.

My cheeks turn as red as Big Mac’s ass and one thought shouts over all others.

‘STOP IT BONER!’ The unfortunate response from that particular part of my body is a firm ‘No.’ I shift my body for a moment to hide the unwanted appearance of an appendage and turn to the three left talking. Thank God none of them paid attention to what just happened.

Twilight and Applejack are still talking and Rarity is sitting on a bench and looking quite upset. My body now back under control, I decide to go see what the matter is. I already have an inkling of what it’s about but I want to know for sure.

“Hey Rarity, why the long face?” Who the hell uses puns to start a conversation? Apparently I do.

“Oh, it’s nothing really darling. I just had my hopes set on meeting Chef Tobias; the bouncer wouldn’t let me in when I asked.” Damn, she’s this upset over not meeting some ass? Eh what the hell, I could score some major brownie points here and I do owe her for these new threads.

“Hey don’t be sad, you know what I think I’ll have a word with the bouncer.” I walk over to the kitchen doors and slip the bouncer a few gold bits, don’t ask where I got them, and ask where they’ll get me. To my surprise the bouncer is also a pimp and just a few bits can get some kinky shit in this town. I tell him that I only want to take a friend to meet the head chef and he apologizes and tells me that’s fine. At least the pimps here have good manners.

I fetch Rarity and tell her to follow me; together we head back to the kitchen doors, past the bouncer/pimp, and into the workplace of one Tobias Hayseed.

Rarity gasps at the scene before her eyes, even though dining hours are over stallions and mare race back and forth to finish up their work, bus boys carry stacks of dish and waiters bring complements to the chef. Speaking of the chef, the ass stood just a few feet in front of us, cleaning his workstation and preparing to go home.

I nudge Rarity along as I walk up to Chef Tobias.

“Sup Toby?” I greet him as I greet all my friends (All my bro’s anyway) and he turns to me. What had been a grimace on his face turns to a smile when he sees me.

“Lafe, how ya doing. Did you enjoy your steak?”

“I most certainly did, by the way thanks for the help with the reveal, it wouldn’t have been the same if they had seen the steak before I even got it.”

“No prob, no prob. So is this the filly that you said wanted to meet me?”

“Yep, Rarity this is my new friend Tobias Hayseed the ass.”

“Hey, just cause I’m a mule doesn’t mean that you get to call me that!”

“But Toby, you are an ass!”

“True, true. Anyway it’s very nice to meet you miss Rarity.” Tobias wipes his hoof on a rag and reaches out to shake Rarity’s. Rarity begrudgingly reciprocates the shake and makes a half assed excuse of why she really must be going. I slap Toby on the back and say goodbye and then walk out of the kitchen with Rarity. Once we are well out of range from the kitchen I turn on her and glare at her.

“Just what the hell was that?”

“What was what?” Fake innocence and puppy dog eyes, oh how I hate thy.

“You know damn well what, you wanted to meet Toby so bad and then when you saw that he was a mule you ditched him. I went to all the trouble of arranging for you to see him and you turn out to be a petty racist.”

“I’m not racist, it’s just that he’s… well he’s an ass to be frank, you even called him that several times.”

“Yeah, I called him an ass, he called me an ogre. But you know what we did after that?” She shakes her head. “We slapped each other on the back and laughed. You know the sad thing?” Again she shakes her head. “Although Toby is an ass, you’re the one who acted like an ass. I’m going now and I don’t really care what you do but I think it would be kind of you to go and apologize for your prejudiced behavior. See ya, I’m out.”

I leave Rarity there and walk over to Twilight. Applejack had already gone home and she was ready to as well. She offers that I can stay at the library again and I accept.

Twilight waves to Rarity as we leave, I don’t look back but I do hear the kitchen door opening and somepony walking inside. Maybe, just maybe Rarity can make it up to Toby for being such an ass and learn not to judge other people on petty shit like race.

Twilight and I walk home, yeah I know its weird but this place is really starting to feel like home, and I collapse into my sleeping bag once we get there. I don’t even change out of my new clothes, I just sleep.

For the first time in a long time I have a good dream, a dream about friends and parties, about love and tolerance, about love and an angel who I’ve seen a few times since I got here.

An angel who just so happens to be sleeping in the bed five feet away from me.

I smile, a true and genuine smile. I haven’t been this happy in a while.