Snails slid his hooves forwards and let the cool air flow over his face. He shut his eyes and shifted his head into the side, letting his mind go totally blank. He paused for a wonderful moment before nudging his eyes open and gazing into his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Getting mocked, jeered at, talked down to, lectured to, and otherwise verbally abused through his foalhood may have brought Snails to tears countless times, but all that did give him a sort of twisted blessing. He brushed his right hoof through his mane, cut rather short recently, and he glanced down into the sink. The huge pool of water looked so calm, so peaceful— and so unlike the torrent of feelings flowing through him.
Snails thought back several years ago to when Sweetie Belle had walked besides his parents’ garden— his sanctuary where he had tended to snail after snail, grasshopper after grasshopper, and the rest of the fauna in way that kept them fed but also left enough of the flora intact— and listening to her talk to her herself about her latest fight with Rarity. Sweetie’s tears had pitter-pattered upon the tall tomato vines like rain. She had sworn to herself that she’d never manage to so much as make toast right.
Snails couldn’t take it. He had stood up, a warm expression going over his face, and he had walked over and leaned over the worn wooden fence. Sweetie had brought her huge, immensely pretty eyes over to him, and Snails had told her that she never should talk down about herself— acting as if she had nothing to give and could only get in other ponies way. Snails was never, ever able to see another pony burying himself or herself into depression.
The look going over Sweetie’s gorgeous face as she nodded, believing in herself once again after Snails had finished his mini-speech, had unlocked something inside Snails’ mind. He had felt this sixth sense of compassion that made him able to suck up their bad feelings like an emotional sponge. And then something had happened; something had clicked deep through his insides.
That something felt had almost exactly the same as when Snails had gotten his cutie mark, months and months before in that same garden. That sixth sense, caused by a lifetime of being treated like a prop in the stage of Ponyville life and casually bashed by pony after pony, became a blessing and then a calling. Snails never seriously thought about doing anything else.
Snapping out of his deep thoughts, Snails reached over for the bathroom towel and brushed himself off. He took in a deep breath, catching one last glimpse of himself in the mirror. His ears drooped over to the sides of his thick yet shortly cut mane. I guess it does make me look more adult, even more than being several inches taller and everything. I can’t imagine seeing anypony except Rarity cutting my hair. Still, he’d always feel like a foal at heart.
Making his way down the hallway to Twilight’s conference room, a nice large addition to her library that accommodated various human-related events, dozens of small thoughts bubbled up through Snails’ mind, slipping him back into his inner world. An ear. That’s essentially what I am. It’s a lot better, by far, then just being a punchline. I remember when Cheerilee froze with total shock when I first answered a question right.
He recalled jumping ahead in test rankings, having his parents pose with him so proudly when Cheerilee recommended moving onto something more challenging, and how that had all fallen apart. Sitting in an office somewhere outside of Ponyville sounded more like punishment to Snails than anything else, he wanted to help— he wanted to listen. He did just that, working with Twilight almost as an unofficial psychiatrist for ponies as well as those strange looking peach-colored bipedal creatures visiting from another planet.
I’ve been an ear…
Snails stopped walking, leaning up against the blank white walls. He brushed his cheeks with his hooves. He had tried time and time again to pinpoint when merely listening had started to feel hollow. Snoopy complained to him about dealing with Pinkie Pie, the human’s boss at Sugarcube Corner. Bruce spent a long time discussing his isolation and fear, having appeared in Equestria in the lair of the Diamond Dogs and suffered abuse upon abuse at their paws.
So many humans had sat upon Twilight’s couch in her fancy, smart-looking conference room and talked things over with Snails over the past several months. He had passed them cookie after cookie as they waved their hands and gritted their teeth, venting about everything. They had guzzled down Spike’s specially made iced teas. Merely listening seemed like all they had expected from him. It wasn’t that.
Snails slid his body down and sat flat in the middle of the hallway, looking up at the ever rotating ceiling fan. His tail slinked down in between his hind hooves. I have to admit it to myself. It’s those… those… the ‘special’ humans. The d-file. He bonked his head against the wall for a few seconds. Thoughts that merely being an ‘ear’ would stop being enough collected upon the back of his mind— feeling like tea leaves clogging a sink. Every last lost soul in that d-file… Jesse, especially…
A large clunking sound rippled through the hallway. Snails popped forwards, coughing loudly for a second. He made his way over to the left and opened up the big white door.
“Oh, sorry! Sorry!” Bruce called out, waving his right hand in the air. He blushed as Twilight stepped away from him, her eyes surveying all around the floor. Snails waited awkwardly in the doorway, saying nothing as he glanced up and down the tall, slender human’s body.
“It’s no problem,” Twilight replied. She walked away from the smatterings of glass and thick chunks of ceramic in front of Bruce and locked eyes with Snails, smiling. “I know just the spell to clean it up.”
“And you said that it was priceless and, ah,” Bruce muttered, not sure how to finish his sentence. He put a hand through his thick, dark brown hair and put his shoulders back, brushing his characteristic black jacket backwards on his frame.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Twilight remarked, twirling around and titling her head to the side. “The spell won’t merely clean up the floor— it’ll also reassemble the Kinderfeindlichkeit in no time.” She flashed her warm grin over to Bruce.
“Oh, sweet,” commented the nervous looking teenager, pushing back his small brown eyeglasses and sitting down at a table in the middle of the conference room. Snails still said nothing, locking eyes with Bruce for a moment. He always thought that the cheesy big frames made Bruce look like some kind of a rapist.
“So, ahhh,” Twilight said, walking over to the table besides Bruce. She tapped her hooves upon the tiles and took in a little breath. “Please?” Her eyes moved all around the whole conference room from the motivational posters on the walls to the sharp-looking dressers to the neat bookshelves to the empty stage area on one side of the room to the arrays of white tables with matching white chairs on the other side. “Yes?”
“Yes, what?” Bruce replied, scratching his chin. He blinked.
“Please step outside so that I can use my magic?” Twilight asked. She started to point over to the door, but she froze halfway, not wanting to look rude. She shifted her pretty mane across her shoulders and smiled once again just to be sure. “You’re a human, of course, so then… my… you know…”
“Right, right,” Bruce muttered, getting up and making his way through the room. “I’ll see… you… tomorrow, I guess?” He half-opened the door besides where Snails stood, his leg accidentally brushing up against the stallions’ back hooves.
Twilight nodded, and Bruce tapped a hand upon his temple in a semi-salute before heading out. Snails stepped over to the middle of the room, staring at the multicolored mess on the floor, and he took in a little breath. “Twilight,” Snails muttered, “what the hay is a ‘Kinderfeindlichkeit’?”
“It’s a large, rainbow-striped cube that apparently breaks really bucking easily,” Twilight muttered, sitting down. She let out a cough as she rubbed a hoof against her neck. “Wow…”
“Twilight,” Snails said, putting on a deeply serious tone as he stood up straight, “we need to talk.” He poised himself right besides
“Should I even repair this?” Twilight muttered to herself, leaning over towards a big, sharp-looking shard of glass. It appeared to glow with some kind of electricity, tiny yellow sparks dotting across its edges. “It’s not like I even know what it does. I can hardly even pronounce its name, for crying out loud.”
“Twilight,” Snails said, letting some conviction show in his voice. He held a hoof a few inches above Twilight’s mane.
“Maybe it’s supposed to break,” she whispered, her horn lighting up every so faintly as she tried to magically analyze the sparkling glass piece. “Could the Kinderfeindlichkeit be like a human Piñata?” A purple aura flowed all over her face.
“Twilight!” Snails yelled, shifting his mane from side to side.
She flipped around and stood up besides the stallion, blinking rapidly. “Oh, ah, yes. Indeed. What. Hello.” She pressed a hoof against her eyes for a second. “I’m sorry, Snails. I just got sucked into working on this thing.” She stepped a little bit away from Snails and leaned up against the white table. “What is it?” she asked, going back to her usual warm look.
“I need to talk about the humans,” he remarked, sitting down. She said nothing back, merely watching him as he rubbed his side with his bottom hoof and let his mane curl over his eyes. “I need to… talk about the… the…”
“Yes, Snails,” Twilight said, focusing on his slightly pained expression. “Whatever it is, we can talk about it.” She hoped that she had the same motherly softness in her voice that she had always had with Spike.
“I’m getting too,” Snails said, closing his eyes. He flashed back to his last session with Jesse, sitting down on about the same spot where Twilight stood just two days ago. His mind’s eye replayed the look of horror across Jesse’s face as she had screamed at him, tears welling up under her eyes, and held her deeply pale hands above her head. “Too close.” Snails spat those words out, feeling his lips quiver.
“Snails…” Twilight began.
“I can’t really— just— all of them, the d-file patients,” Snails murmured, half-collapsing backwards onto the cold floor. “I listen to them. I talk with them. I hold the humans’ hands… in my hooves.” He shut his eyes tightly and relived the moment that Jesse had grabbed him, shoving him into a full hug. The woman’s freezing cold, almost white fingers had locked against his fur; her tears had dotted all along his chest. “I’m so close.”
“That’s what,” Twilight said, stopping to search for words. She brushed her own hooves against the floor and took in a little breath. “That’s what you’re here for. What’s why everyone is so happy for you to be here. For you to listen to the humans’ problems, acting as sort of the ‘heart of Ponyville’ for all those boys and girls…”
“It’s…” Snails tried to keep himself breathing normally. Jesse’s words, carved into his soul like a knife mark into a stump, just would not let him go— he felt her every last pant and her every last groan so vividly. “It’s not that it’s too intense. I can handle that.” He felt a strong, boiling hot feeling building up inside of him. “It’s something else. It’s that…”
“Snails, there’s nothing to get worried about,” Twilight said as she stepped around the stallion and brushed his mane with a gentle touch. “You’re overworked. It’s not fair, after all, since I’ve sort of fallen into the position of making you… well, let’s be honest, you’ve got the implicit job to ‘love all the humans’. Listen to their problems. Give them advice. That’s too much.”
“No,” Snails whispered. I’m not getting it across to her. She has to understand. She has to get it. “With all the d-file humans, I’ve gotten to this point— it’s gone so far. And I’m past the line.” He felt himself crumpling into the floor even farther, and he wished that he could just hide underneath in the middle of the soil and the mud. “Just listening isn’t enough. It’s not nearly enough.”
Twilight at least partly understood. Snails could tell from her deep, low sigh. She’s spent hours looking over scientific reports on the subject, consulting the best experts that Princess Celestia could find. She’s watched expensive test after expensive test with human materials in complex laboratories. She’s been at it for weeks upon weeks. All in all, she’s never solved the mystery of what made those certain humans— those poor souls in the euphemistic “d-file”— so special. Intellectually, one could have pondered it for centuries.
“Yes,” she finally said back, an airy, weak tone flowing over her voice. “Yes, I know.”
“Yes,” Snails softly repeated. Dozens of men and women with brutally horrible memories of their death back on their home planet before they ended up here are walking around Ponyville right now. Some of them saw their own mutilated corpses before they saw the white light. A lot of them had no light at all. And a few, like Jesse, saw their own friends dying before their eyes before fate came for them next. He melted even farther onto the floor, his ears drooping down onto his front hooves on his bunched up body. And she hasn’t been able to sleep one single night in Equestria without waking up screaming.
“And it seems like we can’t do that much— they just don’t fit it, they can’t relate to ponies, they can’t really live so well in our city— for those in the d-file.”
“The death file,” Snails flatly commented.
“The death file.”
“Yes.” Snails sniffed, rubbing his face with both front hooves. He felt something like a thousand itchy, scratchy sensations bursting off above his mind. Yet, at the same time, he seemed to have that inner warmth burning even brighter. He gritted his teeth. I have to make Twilight understand.
“You’re, ah,” Twilight began, stepping about in place for a moment. Snails remained locked in place with his eyes closed, breathing clamly. “You look pale and really thirsty. Let me get you a hot tea ASAP. Then, we’ll talk about it in depth. Don’t worry. I’ll get you a bunch of Spike’s nice hot teas with the lemon and the raspberries— just relax.”
Twilight stepped over to the door. Snails slowly stood himself back up. He flashed back to session upon session over the past several days, events that made him feel more alive than he ever had. He opened his eyes once again, slowly and dramatically, and he shifted his head back, his tail jutting out in the air.
Twilight looked backwards, starting to say something. “Let’s ta—”
“I’m in love with Jesse.”
The ponies froze in place for a deeply emotional twenty seconds. It felt like several centuries. Twilight finally leaned up against the conference room doorway, and she nodded. Snails brushed his face, overcome. He had said those words with more conviction than anything else in his entire life. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from crying, his hooves pressing against his cheeks. He sucked in a gigantic breath.
“Snails,” Twilight muttered. “I… I know.” She looked out awkwardly at the motivational posters on the walls around her. The images of a tall pegasus zigzagging through treetops and a short, stubby earth pony lifting up an enormous wooden books with the captions ‘determination’ and ‘strength’ both seemed to mock her.
“It doesn’t— it shouldn’t matter that she’s human. That’s she’s so much older than I am. That’s she’s a patient, or client, or whatever the hay your office has her listed of mine. I don’t care.”
Twilight gave Snails a blank glance.
“I don’t,” Snails began, shivering. He still dropped down the occasional tear, but he still stood up proudly and almost smashed his hooves into the floor as he declared himself. “I don’t care. What anyone would say. Or whatever problems she has. It’s not.” He wagged his head from side to side, sucking in air. He heard Twilight start to say something, and he immediately cut her off. “I don’t care what you think. It’s not a ‘doctor effect’ or whatever. It’s not that I pity her or anything like that.” He locked his teeth together, prepared for all of the objections or insults that Twilight could have said back to him. He had rehearsed her every possible bad word deep in his mind already. Nothing would stop him.
“Snails, I—”
“I love her like Shining Armor loves Cadence.” Snails poised himself as tall as her could, holding his head and shoulders back. He felt the last of his tears sliding down his cheeks, and he felt nothing but sheer warmth and steely determination all through his sides. “The moment I saw her to this moment right now, there’s no difference. And that’s— that’s the end of that.”
Flashes of Jesse’s smooth skin going over his body with her adorable facial features and her piercing dark brown eyes went across Snails’ subconscious. He replayed that wonderful moment when she had hugged him for support, her whispy, gentle voice thanking him for listening to every word and going through her through every last worry. No mare had a voice that tender and venerable yet so beautiful— not Rarity, not Fluttershy, not Applejack, not anypony.
“Snails,” Twilight began. She saw Snails ready to cut her off yet again, and she leaned over at him, eyes glaring. “Listen.” Snails remained still, lips pursed. He watched as Twilight made a long sigh. “I know that you know about all that what that would entail. That humans always leave, and whatever deep connection you make won’t last more than a matter of months except for fleeting visits to her planet later on. That ponies might not like your choice, losing friends for getting a girlfriend outside of your own species. I know that you know all about that and you don’t care.”
Snails nodded. He tried his best not to cry again. Twilight, for her part, walked over to Snails spot, stopping until their faces were mere inches from each other.
“All that I’m going to say is that, honestly,” Twilight remarked, “I don’t know if she’ll love you back.”
“I’ll see,” Snails finally muttered.
“You’ll see,” Twilight said. Snails let out an ‘eep’ as Twilight did something he didn’t expect at all, grabbing his shoulders and giving him a passionate hug. He reflexively shivered for a moment, which only caused her to hug him even more tightly. “And I hope she will.”
To Be Continued…
