Hey, Sunshine. Help Me with This Crossword.
Another night, another shift.
Where most agents of the Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria, or S.M.I.L.E., would dread the repetitive schedule of work she faced, Sweetie Drops was actually grateful for this bit of normalcy in her life. While she certainly didn’t mind doing field work, like a proper special agent should, she felt she deserved a break from that fast-paced lifestyle, especially after the recent wave of attacks from Queen Chrysalis’ loyal followers along the Ponyville-Everfree Forest border.
Being assigned to the Ponyville Hospital didn’t bother Sweetie Drops in the least; in fact, things couldn’t have been more convenient for her. She was in the safety of her home town, which was always a plus. The hospital staff, although limited, were a pleasure to work with and since she mostly worked the graveyard shift, she had the entire day to catch up on errands and a somewhat bland social life if she wasn’t caught in between six certain ponies’ shenanigans. She really couldn’t complain.
Seated on a chair beside the bed of her sleeping patient – her ‘mission’ for the past month – Sweetie Drops chewed idly on the eraser head of her pencil, concentrating on the crossword puzzle before her. 11. Across. Synonym for red. That was it. It was seven characters in length and no other surrounding words were filled because Sweetie Drops was following her established tradition of filling in the longer words in first before moving onto the rest of the puzzle. Usually, the longer ones were the easier parts of the puzzle, but this was surprisingly different.
This was tricky.
She knew dozens of words that could also mean ‘red’, and she knew crossword puzzles liked to play around with your head, so this ‘red’ could have been the adjective or the noun form. Or something else.
Damn mind games within a word game, she thought. Now, she begin to realise why her marefriend, Lyra Heartstrings, became so frustrated by these things. Unlike Lyra, though, Sweetie Drops wasn’t going to rip the book in half. If she was going to finish this, and she was, her best bet was to write out every synonym she could think of along the side of the puzzle to return to number 11, later.
She didn’t want to consult a dictionary. That would be cheating. And even if she did, she wouldn’t find one in the Ponyville hospital anyway. It wasn’t stocked with decent food or toilet paper rolls; she highly doubted a book of synonyms and antonyms could be found anywhere within the building.
Her personal dictionary, Doctor Horse and Nurse Redheart, were nowhere in the vicinity. No surprise there, seeing as how it was a quarter after midnight. Just about everypony in town was asleep at this hour.
Sighing lowly to herself, Sweetie Drops steadied the pencil in her mouth and prepared to write, but a figure squirmed and groaned within the plain white bed sheets. That was her cue to put her puzzle down for now. Her patient was awake.
She grinned and helped him out of the entanglement of sheets. “Morning, sunshine!”
He let out a deep groan again in response to her sing-song voice.
She took that with a grain of salt and, as he sat up as best he could within the bed, poured him a tall glass of ice cold water from the pitcher atop the bedside table. “Here you go,” she placed the glass into his hoof to see if he was strong enough to hold it himself. He wasn’t so she held it for him.
When he was done with the glass, she asked him if he wanted another and he nodded so she obliged. “I got lucky at the market today and managed to get the last three Sweet Apple Acres’ apples of the day. Want to share a piece of the bounty or do you want me to heat up the dinner King Thorax left when he visited earlier?”
“Just give me the apples.” His voice was like thunder before a storm.
Sweetie Drops smirked and placed the plate of chopped apples near his muzzle. Even the changeling king’s own brother couldn’t deny that Thorax’s cooking absolutely sucked.
Pharynx ate the apples slowly, savoring every bite. Sweetie Drops waited patiently for his next course of action.
It was like this every night with him for the past month or so. He’d wake in the middle of the night, mouth like cotton, chitin glowing with a sheen of sweat, face flushed. She’d give him several glasses of water – she always had a cool pitcher ready – and he’d drink like a camel. He might get the urge to use the bathroom, and since he was too prideful to make use of a bed pan, she’d loop a hoof through his bandaged one and would help him to the adjoining bathroom. When he was done and comfortably settled into the bed again, she would offer him some sliced apples because her co-workers, both Ponyville branch of S.M.I.L.E. secret agents and employees of the Sweetie Drops Candies, never ate her store-bought apples, but this fellow did.
In spite of the circumstances, she felt casual in his presence; if she were younger, she’d feel a little uncomfortable if not embarrassed because word had it that it wasn’t every day that you got to swab a soapy sponge over the Head of Changeling Kingdom without his protest. After several nights of the same cycle, Sweetie Drops had gotten used to the patient-nurse relationship and considered it just as much of a part of her routine as brushing her teeth. She liked to think of herself as a professional nurse now. She no longer giggled when she had to wipe drops of sweat off his forehead; she no longer blushed when she brushed a hoof over the beautiful cyan exoskeleton he had.
Most believed that Pharynx had brought himself and his platoon over to Ponyville to protect the ponies as they were allies, but she was briefed in HQ that the changeling king’s brother’s real motive was actually to protect a certain young changeling who became a student at the School of Friendship. Ain't that cute? Who knew the one and only Pharynx was a softy? With this hidden motive unveiled, the higher ups have assigned a special agent to monitor Pharynx, which in Ponyville, always meant Sweetie Drops.
The ambush on the squad Pharynx was in charge of left him with several poison-tipped darts lodged in the side of his neck which in turn left him in a complete and utter mess. Exhaustion, dehydration, fever, nausea... the works. Sweetie Drops reckoned the symptoms he had were similar to the ones she suffered when the changelings replaced almost every Ponyville resident before they were saved by Starlight Glimmer and her band of secondary characters. Although, he seems to be experiencing it on a much higher dosage, weakening his muscles. They really did a number on him, she couldn’t help but repeat each time she saw him struggle to sit up. Even Mage Meadowbrook, the legendary healer and one of the six "Pillars of Old Equestria", had been amazed at what the poison had done to the renowned fighter.
After a brief coma and treatment, he was put on bed-rest with the occasional therapy conducted by Mage Meadowbrook herself or Ponyville Hospital’s Doctor Horse. As the agent appointed to keep a vigil on him mostly during the nights, Sweetie Drops was in charge of everything from feeding him if his strength left him to cleaning him. She surmised that the ambush also left his pride severely bruised. His silent and often curt attitude led her to believe that, anyway. Who knew what went on in his mind. She certainly didn’t.
Pharynx finished the apples and damn near dropped the plate when he handed it back to her. “Do you need something?” she asked, putting the plate aside.
“No.”
Snippy to the end, aren’t you? Sweetie Drops thought with a grin. “Well, you know the drill…”
“…hum if you need anything,” they said in unison, Pharynx more or less droned his part. After years of meeting ponies of many different eccentric personalities in Ponyville, Sweetie Drops was not bowled over by such behavior.
“Good. I don’t have to say that part anymore.” Sweetie Drops balanced her opened puzzle book on her hooves and armed her mouth with her pencil. She was going to finish this crossword.
“I don’t belong here,” Pharynx said suddenly.
The pink and blue maned pony didn’t bother looking up from her book. Patients wanting to leave were common within the hospital. “Of course you don’t, Sunshine. I don’t belong here either, but here we are so we might as well make the most of it.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I wasn’t mocking you, Sunshine.” Sweetie Drops looked up from her puzzle and was met with a pair of violet eyes glaring daggers right through her. “I was being serious.”
“Stop calling me that,” Pharynx snapped.
“What? Sunshine?”
“Yes.”
“But I give all my patients a nickname – I even gave one to Filthy Rich when I had to save his butt from timberwolves a few months back. It helped them feel less patronized, I think.”
“I don’t care. I’m not Filthy Rich. Stop calling me that,” Pharynx said, tersely. “Pretend I’m not your patient.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
Sweetie Drops mused. “Because you’re in a hospital and it’s my mission to look after you like this until you’re released.”
Wow… Hanging around with Maud Pie and her poorly timed bluntness paid off. Helpless anger seemed to wash over the changeling as he scowled and fixated his glare to the window beside his bed. He must have been really frustrated because his sparks of transformation magic gave her quick glimpses of a maulwurf; a half-bear, half-mole, half-raging-pile-of-claws monster native to the Badlands.
It really paid off. Sweetie Drops had never seen a changeling that frustrated. “By the way,” she added, “King Thorax knew you’d be like this so he drained your magic daily when you’re asleep, just in case the idea of escaping crosses your mind.”
Pharynx grunted and continued staring out of the window.
“Princess Twilight Sparkle casted some sort of reinforcement spell on the door… She did one on the windows too.”
Pharynx sighed, defeated. Satisfied with her Maud-esque effort, Sweetie Drops started filling in the answers for the other parts of the puzzle.
Silence lingered in the air for the next twenty minutes or so before the changeling shattered it again, turning from the window to his ‘nurse’. “Of all the nicknames, why Sunshine?” he asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
For the first time that evening, Sweetie Drops was taken aback. She half-expected Pharynx to go off on a tirade about why he didn’t deserve to be in here or something to that effect. At least, that’s what she once did when she ended up in the hospital after she singlehandedly captured the Bugbear, and what she would have done if she ended up in the hospital again. Maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought. Maybe he had just grown past that. Or maybe he was just too tired to continue arguing with her.
Sweetie Drops balanced her pencil on the tip of her muzzle, a minor testament to her… muzzle-eye coordination. “Well, think about it: during your time here, we’ve only interacted during the night hours, so the contradictory factors work there. And your gemstones…”
“My gemstones...” He grew too curious to wait for her to finish thinking of an ending to that sentence. He gazed down at the three gemstone-like objects on his chest as he asked, “What about them?”
“They’re the brightest thing in this room at nighttime.” She paused and laughed a little, tucking a strand of her blue mane behind her ear. “They remind me of the sunshine that comes after every storm.”
Although he didn’t look the part, Pharynx damn near radiated surprise. Sweetie Drops saw it in the way he tensed beneath the bed sheets. He closed his eyes and allowed the corner of his lips to quirk some as he shook his head. “You’re strange.”
Sweetie Drops took that as an off-beat compliment. Her being strange meant she was unique, something she sought to be when her retirement approaches, she wouldn’t need to blend in with the crowd to lessen her suspicion as a S.M.I.L.E. agent and actually be somepony.
That isn’t all though. She also knew that the analogy is widely known amongst those who lived a dangerous life. She knew that with what she said, he finally understood what she meant by ‘mission’ and ‘saving Filthy Rich’s butt from timberwolves’. She knew that with his almost nonexistent smirk, she gained some sort of respect from the changeling in front of her. She smiled at him, arctic blue eyes twinkling behind her shades. “Thanks.”
A throaty chuckle escaped Pharynx and for a moment there, Sweetie Drops could have sworn he looked like he didn’t intend for it to do so. Pharynx attempted to avoid her scrutiny, however, as he buried himself beneath the covers and feigned wanting to sleep. But she wouldn’t let him get off the hook so easily. They were actually making progress in the conversation department. “Hey, Sunshine, you’re a genius, aren’t you? Leading an army and all that. Help me with this crossword.”
“It’s Pharynx. Pha-rynx.” His gruff voice rolled out from under the sheets.
“Please?”
“I want to sleep, pony.”
“A yes or no was enough.”
“Fine. I’ll help, only if you swear to stop calling me Sunshine.”
Sweetie Drops snorted. “Fat chance.”
There went that throaty chuckle again. “Then I’m not gonna help.”
Sweetie Drops couldn’t believe she was conversing with a changeling who was wrapped in blanket, looking like a cocoon. She huffed. “Fine. PHARYNX, can you please help me figure out this one word? Once you do, I promise to not only let you sleep, but I’ll never call you Sunshine again.”
That obviously super-sweet plea seemed to be the ticket. “Since you need my help that badly…”
When Pharynx peaked his head from under the blanket, the ghost of a smile was evident on his face. The special agent made a face at him and rotated the puzzle book so that he could see what she needed help on. He more or less took nothing but a quick glance at it before yawning: “Crimson.”
Flabbergasted, Sweetie Drops scribbled in the word and saw that it was indeed the correct one. Ugh! Show off!
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Pharynx said, “I’d like to sleep. In peace.”
“Sure thing,” she sneered. “Grumpy.”
Pharynx groaned.
END
