Post of Honour

by Impossible Numbers

Rating: everyone
Tags: Derpy Hooves, Slice of Life, Parcel Post, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy
Length: 6416

How Parcel Post got his first job, the nature of which is a complete surprise to no one but himself.

Economic Fact of Life #1: A pony in Equestria should always check their own name before applying for a job.

Economic Fact of Life #2: You will successfully not die if you refrain from mentioning Ooh La La in Filthy Rich's face.

Economic Fact of Life #3: Movies are the opium of the working class.

Economic Fact of Life #4: You cannot solve all your financial problems with carrot cake.

Economic Fact of Life #5: Finding a good job is haaarrrd. But...

Economic Fact of Life #6: ...sometimes you get one by pure, blind luck.

Published 2020-08-28 21:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-08-28 21:00:01 UTC

Post of Danger

Parcel Post hadn’t meant to become a mail pony. It just sort of happened, like mumps, acne, his first – and sadly, last – kiss at elementary school, and getting kicked out of the house and refused his parents’ blessing until he got a proper job. Or at this stage, any job. Then they could check whether it was proper or not.

Trouble was that getting a job in Ponyville was harder than it had looked when he and his family had moved in.

Indeed, everywhere he looked, Parcel Post saw ponies lining up with their personal calling as if each had been built for the other. Carrot Cake went into baking, Mayor Mare was re-elected because no one else cared much about government so long as it promised them cake, and Filthy Rich remained the town’s wealthiest and most successful stallion through one honest supermarket chain and several means that never turned up in the paperwork.

So Parcel Post had started off wondering what in Equestria a pony like him should do.

He started off modestly enough: delivering newspapers to various houses. It was a local paper, the Ponyville Items – it was supposed to be “Times”, but the typos had taken over – and after each round of deliveries, he’d take a leftover copy for himself and read through the main articles.

The news was rarely all that interesting unless you got excited over happy agricultural things. Who’d won the Pony of Ponyville Award this year (Applejack), who was going to lead this year’s Summer Harvest Day Parade (Applejack), and who was going to deliver the rousing speech for the next Winter Wrap-Up (Mayor Mare, guest starring Applejack for the plant team). A few wonderful births, a few unfortunate deaths – part of Parcel Post wondered if there could be any other kind.

Yet, to his own surprise, he found it all rather pleasant, in a peaceful way. He quite liked that about Ponyville. The town was arguably the dullest place in Equestria, and for heart-pumping tedium, hoof-biting calm, and mind-blowing nothingness, it just couldn’t be beat.

He was happy to drop off newspapers in the rain, and took special care to take his rainproof overcoat and put it on the trolley so the ink wouldn’t run (he himself didn’t mind, and regarded it as a shower with no water bill attached).

He was happy running to beat the dogs that then tried to chase him up the road. Well, not at first, because it was unduly exciting, but over time, he learned the value of a specially tailored squeaky rubber bone, one for each dog that tried to maul him to death.

He was happy when his boss found no excuse whatsoever to bawl him out for shredding someone’s newspaper against the metallic letter flap. Not long into the job, he’d learned to prop the things open with a stick, or failing that a crowbar. He did have to go home to put iodine on his legs, but that was all right because it didn’t sting much.

He was even happy to get to know his – well, he thought of the homeowners as such – his clients. He’d been making great strides with his carefully delivered, “Morning, [Insert Name Here]!” and felt that, one of the days, he could work his way up to an actual conversation about… ooh, the weather. Or that local sports team. Or politics, if he was really daring.

He was only unhappy because the pay wasn’t very good.

Also, most of the other newspaper ponies were kids.

But mostly it was the pay.

It wasn’t, as far as his parents cared, a “proper job”. The way they’d talked about it, a proper job was one that involved sitting at a desk for tens of hours a day and writing on complicated paper. There was talk that Filthy Rich was hiring clerks. Hint, hint.

Parcel Post shuddered. He had no problem with office papers, but he felt it was a bit much actually stopping to read the stuff. Only a step away from being a lawyer.

His brother, Post Conviction, had grown up to become a lawyer. Being a lawyer in Equestria didn’t seem all that bad really, at least not at first, since they’d abolished the nasty adversarial system of law in favour of a nicer committee-based system of polite and mutually supportive discussion.

Unfortunately, that had only made the profession worse.

It meant there was not only no getting around the more unpleasant side of the job, but that there was an increase in the unpleasant side of the job. It meant lawyers ganging up. It meant lawyers cooperating.

The unpleasant side of lawyering was not the adversarial system. The unpleasant side of lawyering, in fact, was Laws.

And Laws have an effect on pony minds the same way bleach has an effect on rainbow-made muffins.

Lawyer ponies tended to be grey, no matter what actual colour they started out as (his brother had started out bright pink with a blue-and-yellow-streaked mane).

Lawyers checked and double-checked things. Lawyers rarely smiled, and even then only in small tasteful amounts, like cucumber sandwiches when you wanted a chili-and-jalapeño triple cheeseburger with salt-encrusted fries. Lawyers were too boring, even for him.

Lawyers were dead ponies walking.

That, and Parcel Post hadn’t been much good at the three R’s in school. He instinctively felt there was more to life than “Seeing Spot Run”, he preferred to pass around paper and pencils than to actually use them, and as for the third one… well, there was a reason he’d ruled out a career in accountancy, and it wasn’t just because accountants were nearly as bad as lawyers.

And he hadn’t been much for rules, anyway. Well, any besides ones immediately obvious and sensible to him. He had no trouble with little notices in bathrooms saying “Please wash your hooves”, but he broke out into a sweat whenever faced with the contents page of a book of regulations. He was the sort of pony who had to physically act out the steps of a fire drill before he understood it.

In short, he loved moving things. Posting them, for example.

And he loved talking to ponies. Delivering messages, in a sense.

He just could not for the life of him figure out how to put either to good use. Hence the newspapering.

But since it wasn’t a proper job and his income was lower than his rent, his savings began to trickle away at an alarming rate. Within ten years, his entire history of mindlessly saved allowances would be gone. And that was if he lived as cheaply and modestly as possible, otherwise it might be as low as five or even two years. He might panic and binge-spend at any moment. Anything could happen to his money. An asteroid might crash on it, for all he knew.

He didn’t want to spend ten years worrying about that. For one thing, it wouldn’t be attractive to any mare he wanted to date, once he eventually thought he could dare talk to one.

After a couple of months, he started getting desperate for a better job. Unfortunately, the Cakes already had an assistant baker from out of town, the Mayor’s Aid position was dismissed out of hoof because it involved heavy paperwork, and Filthy Rich would only let him work at the till, which drove him mad after the first week because the complicated offers and discounts (and outright mislabelled price tags) broke his brain.

Then, for another couple of months, he gave up and just sort of hoped that, if he kept himself hopeless, absolutely hopeless, he’d just flop down and sigh and catch a casual glance at something that would utterly change his life around. It had apparently worked in most of the movies he’d watched. It didn’t seem to work for him, even though he could sigh and flop down for a whole drama club.

Only then did he – sitting in his rented bedroom and trying not to squeak the floorboards in case the landlady Shoeshine bellowed up at him and asked about last Saturday’s rent – finally decide:

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He’d live… dangerously.

He started off small, by ordering his usual cinnamon bun… with extra cinnamon.

The Cakes were OK with this and chatted about the weather.

Afterwards, he thought they weren’t striking the right tone. He hadn’t enjoyed his bun much, either.

No, he needed something more exciting.

So next, he joined political rallies outside Town Hall… to have one extra hour for school every day.

It turned out later that all of the twelve foals campaigning were Cheerilee’s students. There was a counter-protest on the other side of the green, which was from the foals who had to go to other schoolhouses because Ponyville was a lot bigger than the frontier village it had started out as.

Parcel Post considered a transfer to their rally instead, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Regardless, passersby just gave the foals snacks and chatted about the weather.

Still not the right enough tone. He needed something more exciting still!

Finally, he went up to Filthy Rich and mentioned not-so-subtly that during his time as a cash till pony, he’d learned all about the businesspony’s secret: Ooh La La.

An hour later, Parcel Post was tackled by a private security force of hired night watch lawyer ponies, and subsequently found himself up in court for transgressing business confidentiality and eavesdropping charges. Their grey, grey faces surrounded him. Drained him of hope. He was almost fined.

Ultimately, they slapped him with the Unofficial Official Secrets Act and let him off with a caution, though unofficially un-officially he was informed by the plaintiff – Filthy Rich – that he had made some very powerful enemies today.

Hmm… too exciting possibly. Organized crime was clearly too advanced for him.

By the end of the week, Parcel Post was back in his rented bedroom, wishing he could be free to do whatever he wanted without the landlady Shoeshine bellowing up at him and asking about last week’s rent.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Well, that was easy to figure out. Nothing – him – had ventured forth, and he’d gained nothing for it. Good to see that all sorted out.

The next week, he tried delivering newspapers in daring and exciting ways, but there were only so many angles from which to shove the headline “Filthy Rich Cleans Second Pauper’s Clock” through a letterbox.

It wasn’t fair. He genuinely liked this job. He knew all his clients – no, all his friends – by first name, had figured out how to talk to them without embarrassing anyone, least of all himself, and was getting a lot of healthy exercise and some occasionally interesting news about the green dales of Ponyville for free.

It had everything he wanted out of a job, except decent pay. And unfortunately, for some annoying reason, a few bits of gold were enough to overturn hours and hours and hours of humble little job satisfaction.

His parents still weren’t letting him into the old house. They believed in hard work and fair reward, a faith Parcel Post himself was struggling to uphold when he had vainly taken on more work hours than leisure hours and somehow earned less than Filthy Rich did in an hour, just going round and telling all his employees that he liked to consider them friends, even part of the family. What a complete jerk!

He was even learning how to deal with Winona now. Ah but Winona had been a challenge worthy of his skills!

Winona was the Apple family sheepdog, and so well-trained that thrown squeaky rubber bones merely bounced off her. Once she’d taken an interest in running off to town to hunt him down, no amount of petting or sweet-talking or bribing with tinned dog food would see her off. She had a mind of her own, and he was working on it like a safecracker with the dial of a particularly large and promising safe.

On his round, and while thus occupied with the complexities of his mind-numbingly interesting job, he happened to cross paths with a mail pegasus at one of the doors. She stuck her letters into the slot and then hurried on to the next house. One of the letters fell out and landed on the threshold.

Parcel Post stopped. He gaped down at it. He picked it up and turned it over curiously.

This letter.

It was like a newspaper… only…

He turned it over and over in his hooves.

No headlines. No tiny article that made him squint. No elaborate pictures: just a tiny stamp in the corner.

No news.

He turned it over and over in his head.

It was like a newspaper… but it was not a newspaper.

Something was gathering in his head. Something tumbled and turned and clicked neatly into place…

Then he shrugged and posted it. As an afterthought, he went back and posted his newspaper too.

A grunting sound made him look back. Further along, the mail pegasus struggled to shove a parcel through a letterbox one-twelfth its size.

Parcel Post watched for a bit, more out of mild amusement than horror, but eventually the horror took over.

“No, no, no!” he said.

The mail pegasus turned to look at him. At least, one of her eyes did. The other seemed fascinated by a random bit of gravel on the path. He flinched, but only until the old horror elbowed the new horror aside, got a grip on him, and pushed him forwards.

“First, you have to check if they’re in,” he said.

He knocked. After a minute, no one answered.

“OK…” That was as far as his training had got him. He looked up. No clouds today. He’d have to improvise something, wouldn’t he?

Think, think… Package. Can’t carry it everywhere. Has to be delivered. So…

“Then, you leave it on the doorstep,” he said.

He did it for her and stood back, admiring his hoofiwork. Still not right.

“And you… and you…” He cast about for inspiration. “And you…” He held up one of his newspapers, then beamed and tore a corner off. “And you write an explanatory note.”

The pen in his pocket still wrote, but he noticed the ink was thin. He’d have to save up to buy a replacement soon.

“And voila!”

She peered at him, puzzled.

“That’s French for ‘A small string instrument which means the job is done!’” he said.

And her reply, once her mind had caught up with his helpful smile, was: “Oh, thank you! I never knew that, Mister… uh… ?”

Parcel Post nodded the satisfied nod of a job well done. “Parcel Post, ma’am. Any time, ma’am. Have a nice day, ma’am.”

Then he went back to delivering newspapers.

For the rest of the day, his brain screamed at him like crazy, but for the life of him he had no idea why. Also, he got a complaint later for delivering a torn newspaper to Number 7.

When he wasn’t working for a job that simultaneously brought cheer and bowel-knotting anticipatory terror into his life, Parcel Post went out, mostly to get away from the landlady Shoeshine.

Ponyville was the town equivalent of that sleepy old farmer who’d just woken up and realized there were all these exciting young mares and stallions all over the place, and who therefore was hastily trying to catch up. The basic unit of the town was thatched-roof cottage plus green grass, but it had borrowed over time the idea of a library from Canterlot – which, due to some confusion over where books came from, was literally made out of a whole tree – the idea of a hydro-magical dam from Manehattan – which turned out to be useless, as there was no grid to connect it to – and the idea of a local movie theatre from Las Pegasus – which had introduced to Ponyville the marvels of black-and-white silent movies until someone finally fixed the colour projector and speaker system.

Yes, there was magic in Ponyville wherever you looked. Most of it cost money, but Parcel Post found it easier to go without food for a couple of days than to go without entertainment for a couple of hours.

He liked the library. For a start, it was free.

The Golden Oak Library was run by Cheerilee, who was always a pleasure to talk to. Today, he learned she’d been thinking of moving out in the not-too-distant future because her teacher’s salary meant she’d finally saved up for a proper house, and she just needed to find a buyer who wanted a home partially open to the public and with a librarianship as a guaranteed job.

Interesting. He asked how much it was going for. She told him.

He didn’t like the library as much after that.

He liked the hydro-magical dam. Hoofer Dam had been converted by a quick-thinking Mayor Mare into a tourist trap as a cunning way of turning a blunder into a business boom. There were tour guides overlooking the dam and explaining in exquisite detail the engineering work involved, whilst carefully ignoring any questions about why none of the so-called brilliant engineers had spotted the obvious problem.

He didn’t like the long walk to and from the dam. It was a fair way out of town. Too much time to think.

He liked the movie theatre. The Running Equine Plex had lots of movies about pirates and luna-nauts and sky-faring post-apocalyptic societies that sounded so romantically stupid that he could forget about reality for an hour and a half. The popcorn wasn’t half-bad, either. It was 100% dreck. But that was part of the escapist charm, as in his taste buds soon wanted to escape his mouth and eventually went numb in self-defence.

He didn’t like leaving. Staff insisted, however, and he couldn’t pay for another movie showing.

He went home – well, to his rented bedroom, which try as he might he just could not honestly call “home” – and suddenly, it didn’t matter that he’d enjoyed himself today. The cheer gave way, once more, to bowel-knotting anticipatory terror. In fact, he was so quiet and curled-up that night that the landlady Shoeshine didn’t even remember to pester him about last month’s rent.

The next day, Parcel Post figured what he really needed was another movie. Failing that, somewhere comfortable to obsess over the ones he’d already seen. It’d be slightly cheaper, even the food, and at least that would definitely be higher quality than the stuff you bought at the Running Equine Plex.

So, to Sugar Cube Corner he went.

This time of day, the queue was quite long. He ended up behind Cheerilee, who was OK to talk to because no one could say anything she wouldn’t immediately spin into a positive. Still, he kept his woes to himself and stuck to the weather, and a couple of the more tasteful movies he’d seen recently. Somehow, watching her spin anything else into a positive would make him feel even worse.

Besides, Winona would be set free from her routine at any minute, and he wanted the bakery smells to give her a hard time first before she tracked him down.

Cheerilee didn’t take long at the counter, despite her happy chatter. She just ordered her usual Smiling Doughnuts with flower-like flour around the edges, resembling daisy petals. Parcel Post vaguely heard her talk about the protests outside Town Hall for reducing the amount of school time by one hour a day. Poor mare sounded quite jumpy and quavery at this point.

Parcel Post tuned it out and thought to himself.

He thought about the movie a couple of weeks ago. A good one. Except for the tickets.

All he could think of was money trickling away.

Thinking of a vast desert.

A vast desert he had a lot of time to cross accompanied by his loyal camel. Only it was a lot of desert. The sun did not scorch yet, but it didn’t need to; it just made him uncomfortable, in that clingy, sweaty way of a relentless sizzle. The camel barely noticed him, and he it, until he was sure it was no longer there and started believing it never really had been and he had trekked on his own the whole time.

And his satchel of money, trickling away all the time. No more money raining down. His ear cocked, constantly waiting for the trickle to suddenly stop…

Or worse, for a group of lawyers to parachute in with their papers and take his satchel away.

He wiped his brow and returned to the real world.

Wherein Cheerilee had blushed red because she’d dropped a receipt for Ooh La La on the counter by accident.

A hasty sweep, a tinkle of coins, a hurried walk out, a few interested stallion heads turning –

Parcel Post’s turn!

By rote, he went through his order, his mind still floating somewhere deserty. He got a cinnamon bun from the Cakes. They asked if he wanted extra cinnamon. He had no idea where they’d got that idea from and shuffled off.

Then, whilst the other ponies queued up for a slice of the Cakes’ baked goods, he just stood in the corner of Sugar Cube Corner and moped over his bun. Occasionally, he’d take a mechanical bite and reports came in from his tongue confirming that nothing of much interest was happening there.

What had that movie been now? Lawmaker of Saddle Arabia. There’d be an uprising or something. Something had risen up anyway.

He thought of something else. The movie he’d watched last week, maybe?

Oh, he hadn’t liked that one. It had been about a postal pony going mad over days and weeks of stress and then finally erupting and – to the gasping horror of the audience – sitting down and writing lots upon lots of angry, complaining letters to all the newspaper offices he could think of. What was it called now? Mail Aggression, or something.

He had hated that one. It felt, for some strange reason, like he’d been personally insulted. Yet he had no idea why. Yet his brain screamed at him about it. Anyway, anyway, anyway…

…the acting had been lousy. And the script bland. That was what was wrong with it. Yes!

Briefly, he noted some familiar pegasus mare at the counter now, looking worried in one working eye. He ignored the counter and peeked out of the window. No Winona. So far, so good. He had the magic laser pointer in his pocket, just in case. True, that was said to work on cats, not dogs, but you never knew your luck.

Carrot Cake’s voice from the counter drifted through his thoughts about rampaging sheepdogs. Poor stallion sounded worried. “Sister” floated through the air and passed in and out of Parcel Post’s ear. But he had enough problems of his own to worry much about others…

Or maybe not?

The familiar pegasus mare’s voice talked on with Carrot Cake’s own. Both of them sounded nervous. “Carrot farm” passed his mind. Huh. Someone considering opening a farm? Looking to work at the Apple farm? Wait, hadn’t he seen a movie about a farmer who turned out to be a long-lost princess?

Now Carrot Cake and the pegasus mare sounded very worried. Parcel Post began to feel worried too. Then he heard the word “legal” and immediately felt out of his depth and suddenly immensely determined to ignore it. He couldn’t help when it came to lawyers. He had enough problems of his own without his life turning grey, like he’d been bitten by a lawyer. In fact, hadn’t he seen a movie once about zombie lawyers…?

Anyway, what he really should be doing was looking out for Winona. That was important.

And figuring out how to get more money.

Most of the methods involved losing his current job. His friends. His otherwise flawless happiness. He might as well post a letter to the bank telling them to…

Hey. Wait a minute!

That was it!

He hurried over to the counter. The pegasus mare with the familiar voice must have gone, because the Cakes were now serving a burly stallion who made his order via Twenty Questions: he gave a series of “Eeyups” and “Eenopes” until their questions zeroed in on what he wanted.

Parcel Post took Carrot Cake aside and decided to go out on a limb. After all, the stallion was a successful business pony.

He asked if he had a post open.

Not since Pinkie Pie arrived from out of town.

Anyway, Parcel Post had already asked about a position at the bakery. Didn’t he remember that?

Red-faced, Parcel Post waited for his cue to be updated. Realized it wasn’t happening. Then said never mind and slunk out with his cinnamon bun.

Rats! He almost had it then! He could feel it!

Part of him wasn’t sure why Carrot Cake had looked so worried. His own business boomed beautifully. Maybe it was some other carrot they’d been talking about? Rang a bell…

Old worries about his own job ambushed him. He didn’t have time for this! He had a carefully boring future to manage. Jobs didn’t just fall out of the sky, after all, not for ponies who hadn’t scraped good grades back at elementary school before their parents decided to move to a quieter town where, more to the point, their neighbours didn’t give them smug little meaningful looks and mutter about what their son was going to do at wizard college, or something.

He’d hoped it wouldn’t matter so much in a modest, friendly town like Ponyville. But his parents had made it clear what happened to bad sons who didn’t get proper jobs here –

Then his worries came to an abrupt halt, for Winona then shot out of nowhere, tackled him, and ate his cinnamon bun.

The next day, he did his rounds again. He still smiled and chatted with his friends along the route, but only out of mass-produced rote, like a lawyer’s document copied out in duplicate. And triplicate, and quadruplicate, and however many -uplicates he had left until his thirsty money dried up and took his lovely, precious, precious life with it. How grey was he turning now!? Even the fun parts of his life were losing their colour.

Once more, he took a newspaper with him after his shift and pored over the job adverts. Not with much hope. It was hopeless. Absolutely and genuinely hopeless.

Construction workers wanted for Mayor Mare’s town expansion project… trainee nurses being recruited at the Ponyville General Hospital… Cloudsdale weather factory clerks for the Ponyville branch… gosh, even the weather had clerks now…

He gave up and shuffled off to take today’s edition back to his room. Maybe if he saved up enough newspapers, they’d become antiques and he could sell them for a fortune.

Then he bumped into a familiar face. Literally, because it had flown into him.

Once he’d stopped seeing birds fly around his face, he found himself eye-to-eye-to-eye with the mail pegasus mare he’d met some days before. There were some faces a pony couldn’t forget in a hurry.

Hastily, he apologized and helped her get back up off the grass. A bit of outrage jostled forwards in his head and made him ask her what she’d been rushing around for. A poor and seriously desperate part of his mind wondered if he could sue her for some quick cash. Or for some eventual cash once the lawyers had helped themselves to the case.

The mail pegasus hovered over him, flapping agitatedly, said sorry over and over, and gestured to the crate on the cart she’d been tethered to. By a strange quirk of sympathetic pegasus physics, the cart was floating as if on an invisible road in mid-air.

Her voice! Her voice was the familiar voice from yesterday!

Parcel Post noticed the cart had the insignia of Barnyard Bargains on it. The supermarket chain owned by his recently made powerful enemy, Filthy Rich.

Mildly curious, he asked what it was. Although in fact, he could smell the carrots from here. The flying mare… he forgot her name, if ever she’d mentioned it… was, as far as he could tell from her worried spluttering, making a delivery for a friend so she could maybe get her carrot farm up and running. So far, Barnyard Bargains had been crowding out a lot of competitors in the old Ponyville Marketplace, so maybe if a carrot farmer couldn’t beat them, she could maybe join them.

Yeah… now Parcel Post remembered. The carrot farm. He delivered a newspaper there every Friday. A pretty small place, he’d remembered, barely a scrape of carrot fields on the vast, vast hills either side of it, with the orchards of the Apple farm filling the horizon on one side. A little guy in a big pony’s world.

He suddenly wanted very much to follow… what’s her name, the pegasus pony, face like it wants to go two different directions at once… and see this Filthy Rich pony again.

The two of them ventured forth.

The haggling at Barnyard Bargains’ back door was unsuccessful. There was “no market” for carrots as anything other than rabbit food, apparently. Besides, the pegasus mare stuttered and struggled to remember her points and clearly shuffled uncomfortably in the presence of suits. Filthy Rich said sorry, but that was how it was.

The two of them gained nothing.

Parcel Post wondered if he should go back and mention Ooh La La again, but rare survival instinct told him the caution next time would probably involve a lot of paperwork and a serious goodbye to what was left of his money reserves.

He and the pegasus mare… seriously, what was her name now? – Anyway, the two of them left quietly, still with the carrots in tow.

Her dejected slump was more than he could bear.

“That was a nice thing you just tried to do, ma’am,” he said, to cheer her up.

Her dejected slump looked no less dejected or slumpy.

“You know, I’ve always thought the world was very badly organized,” he continued, with feeling. “Things aren’t where they’re supposed to be. You’ve got a lot of jobs and a lot of ponies wanting jobs, and somehow they never go together like a… like a… like hayburgers and fries, or like rent and nice landladies who don’t give you nasty looks when you just want to use the communal outhouse.”

Her slump was not de-slumped. It remained, if anything, more un-de-slumped than ever.

“What this town needs,” he continued, not put off by a lack of success so far, “is somepony who can take things where they are and move them to where they’re supposed to be. Like you do. Somepony who makes the world better and keeps everyone properly connected. You know? Like a big family.”

Suddenly, it was very important to Parcel Post that he cheer up this pegasus. Having a bad life was one thing, but at least he’d sort of gotten used to being on his way out. It was like falling down a long slide: after a while, you just sort of shrugged and tried to enjoy it on the way down.

What he really didn’t like was seeing a bad life in others. He preferred to think life on the other side of the fence was greener than his, because then he had something nice to admire. He always made sure on his rounds to deliver cheer to his friends just as much as he delivered news about local election scandals and missing cats who wouldn’t have to wear the darling little sweater if only Mummy could have her safely at home again.

Then he delivered his coup-de-grace: nothing ventured, after all, was nothing gained.

He confessed for the first time in his life: “Take me, for example. I love my job, but I can’t live on my pay.” He glossed over his savings as not helping and continued, “If the world was better organized, I could go the rest of my life happily doing that.”

Then she replied, “Delivering newsy papers?”

“Well, anything really.”

“What about being a mail pony? That’s kinda like delivering newsy papers.”

Parcel Post realized, in one amazing, brilliant, embarrassing, confusing moment, that in all the time he’d spent killing himself with worry, he’d never thought of anything of the sort.

How…?

“They hiring?” said his mouth quickly.

“Yeah. And it’s a government job, so you get all kinds of nice things like yoo-nyuns and security and special hiring practices.” She beamed at him. “That was how I got hired!”

He stared at her revived smile as if he’d never seen it before. Or smiles in general.

Then he found a smile in turn. “Oh, boy! Pinch me, I must be dreaming!”

She obliged. He spent a while explaining the difference between a saying and what he really meant to say, and then gave up and asked the way to the post office.

Ha ha! This was it! This was more like it!

The morning load with its satisfying piles of letters, piles of ways of wiling away the next few hours! The feeling that he was doing something important for the Ponyville ponies, the friends he could still meet and chat with, the letters with their easily readable addresses and humble little stamps, the snappy uniform that had felt like putting on the perfect saddle all over his body, the slightly but significantly increased pay!

There was something ineffably satisfying about going up to a door, checking very briefly you had the right name and address, and then popping it into the flap.

It turned out to be a lot more satisfying than newspapers, because there was a lot less writing to look at, and it was usually the right size. If it was misspelled much more often too, then that was a small price to pay because it meant he was allowed to find someone and talk to them about it – and about anything else they fancied talking about.

He was even considering getting a black-and-white cat. He had to be stopped by his boss when he asked for a big red cart.

He even came up with a song: “Parcel Post, Parcel Post, Parcel Post and the job he loves most! Early in the morning, just as day is dawning, he picks up all the mailbags from his boss –”

After the first few days, he was threatened with legal action from a post pony one town over, but he simply changed to humming the tune quietly. He’d struggled to come up with more lyrics, anyway.

The only thing that didn’t improve was his parents, who still insisted “mail pony” wasn’t a proper job. Fortunately, he couldn’t hear them over the tons of friends who cheered him whenever they met.

And he finally moved out of Shoeshine’s cottage, though he didn’t get the Golden Oak Library place because he still couldn’t afford it, and anyway he was talked out of trying for two jobs at once. By Cheerilee herself, who needed a lot of cheering up these days outside of her many, many, many, many work hours by any friend who could be spared.

Eventually, the campaigns to extend school hours were rescinded. If only the campaign to reduce school hours had not been rescinded as well…

One week later, it was somehow leaked to the Ponyville Items what Filthy Rich’s Ooh La La thing even was. No one managed to pin anything on Parcel Post, despite Filthy Rich’s initial crusade.

Then the whole thing died down. Disappointingly so, for it turned out a stallion being involved in a bespoke lingerie business was nothing to be ashamed of in Equestria, and if anything Filthy now had a bit of cachet around town for boldly coming out and feeling he could say it. At least, that was how most ponies remembered the story thereafter.

There was also a book of regulations, complete with the dreaded contents page. Fortunately, Parcel Post had been assured the government under Mayor Mare was meant to inspect his progress, which meant no one would actually notice if he didn’t read it.

If he really had to read anything, like fire codes, then it was to be read at his own comfortable pace, and no one cared if he had to act out bits of it once a week.

So many wonderful days passed. Parcel Post was on top of the world. Or on top of the mounds of mail bags, which was almost as good because the view looked much the same.

He even considered inviting his new mail pegasus friend – Derpy, her name turned out to be – to the movies, or at least to a guided tour of Hoofer Dam. But then not.

Ultimately, he decided he had enough luck on his side already, and didn’t fancy pushing it. Besides, the two of them were clearly way better as friends. His first kiss way back at elementary school would, for now, have to remain his last.

Although he did have high hopes for the other pegasus mare in the department, who was significantly smarter than Derpy and sometimes winked at him when she handed over the mailbags…

Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Then again, nothing ventured, nothing lost, either.

Nah.

For the time being, he had a happy time with his humble lot in life. And he made a point, as he did so, of buying a crate of carrots once a week, then once a month when he realized how expensive they were, even though all he did with them was make a lot of carrot cakes and hand them round at work.

After a mere few weeks on the job, Parcel Post was named Employee of the Month. It was the happiest day of his life, and it only got better from there. For who in Equestria could’ve guessed a pony like Parcel Post would have found his true calling in the postal service?