And when the darkness comes around

by Cackling Moron

Chapters

One unit, whole blood
Blood on the world's hands
Blood to walk
All we need is blood
In blood we trust
Headwaters of the river of blood
3 Inches of Blood
World painted blood
All of the same blood
Blodtørst
Blood in heaven
I come alive 'cause for your sweet blood I am bound

One unit, whole blood

Author's Note

I finally got called out on my bullshit

Hope nobody looks further down the story page...eep

One unit, whole blood

What woke Eric up was more knocking at his door.

“Christ, everyone wants a piece of Eric,” he groaned, trying to sit up and failing because he had someone asleep on top of him.

That gave him pause.

Blinking and trying to focus he looked at the fluffy, snoozing lump curled on his chest and then remembered the series of decisions that had led to his present set of circumstances. He touched his neck again and winced, but only slightly. A tiny bit tender.

“Right, that,” he said, wincing again as the knocking at the door got more insistent.

“Bleeding Nora, keep your hair on. Come on, Lamia, let’s just - that’s it.”

With delicacy did Eric scoop the sleeping batpony up with both hands, shuffle out from underneath her and then replace her on the sofa. She slept through all of this, curling up perhaps a little tighter once her primary source of warmth had left.

It was an effort but Eric managed to tear himself away from just staring at this frankly unfair display of adorableness and instead lumbered groggily over to the door, which he opened. The pont on the other side had a hoof raised, poised for further knocking, and was obviously taken aback by Eric’s sudden appearance.

“I’m awake, I’m awake. How can I - oh, hello, you’re here earlier than I expected,” Eric said, squinting in the brightness at his visitor.

He recognised them, in a business capacity. A customer. They were here, he realised, to pick up a sign that he’d painted for them. They were ludicrously early, true, but still. That’d be Eric’s fault for not specifying a pickup time.

The pony lowered their hoof and looked up at Eric, whereupon they went a little pale.

“Uh, Eric, you’ve got, ah, blood just - just there,” they said, pointing to their own neck.

Eric blinked at them, then remembered.

“Oh right, that, uh…”

Still not having woken up anywhere near enough to properly lay out what had happened the previous night Eric, yawning, went with:

“Cut myself shaving. Yeah.”

The pony on the other side of the door looked up and took a moment to fully appreciate the abundance of evidence that Eric had not shaved anything in a fair while now. That, and another moment to try and imagine in what world two distinct puncture marks could in any way be mistaken for a shaving injury.

They then decided not to press the issue. Life was too short.

“I know I’m early but I was passing so just thought I’d check to see if the sign was ready…?”

Eric yawned again, hand to his face.

“Fair play, fair play, yep yep it’s all done just round back, come on,” he said, moving past the pony and beginning to head around the back of his house, beckoning to be followed.

Around the back of the house was the outbuilding in which Eric did whatever painting he did not do on-site. In this outbuilding was the sign that he’d been commissioned to paint. The pony had revamped their shop, apparently, and this was part of it.

Shop sold plates. Or general kitchen supplies, Eric wasn’t sure. He’d just done what the brief had told him to do.

“Ta-da,” he said, whipping the sheet off the sign.

“Ooh,” said the customer, stepping up for a better look. “Ah, wonderful! It’s come out even better than I’d hoped!”

“I aim to please.”

For the following minute or two the customer continued to admire the sign while Eric stood off to the side, rubbing his eyes. At length, the customer seemed satisfied and stepped back, turning around to the human again.

“Wonderful! It’s important to be eye-catching in the ceramics industry,” they said before beginning to rummage about their saddlebags.

“I’ll take your word for that one,” Eric said, extending a hand a moment later to receive a modestly jingling pouch, which he pocketed.

“Not going to count it?” The customer asked, eyebrow arched. Eric shrugged.

“You have an honest face. And if you short-changed me I’ll sneak around your shop at night and paint something obscene on your sign.”

Eric wasn’t wholly sure on what ponies might find obscene as his frames of reference were still a little off, but he felt sure he could rise to the occasion should the occasion call for it. The customer made to say something, stopped, thought better of it and instead went with:

“Ah. Lucky for me I counted that out twice to be sure.”

“Everyone wins,” Eric said.

He then pulled the sheet back over the sign before hefting it into a small wagon he had around for the specific purpose of letting customers haul back their bulkier purchases.

“There you go. You can bring the wagon back whenever, it’s all good,” he said.

“S’vhery khind,” the customer said around the handle of the wagon, which they’d already picked up.

And off they trotted, sign in tow.

“The most rewarding part was when they gave me my money,” Eric said, watching them turn a corner and disappear from view. He then cast his eye to the rear of his house.

Back to the task at hand.

Going back into his lounge he found his guest had not moved. Or rather, she had, but only to bury herself even deeper into his sofa, sticking her face halfway beneath one of the cushions, wings hanging limply down the floor.

Eric, who likely shouldn’t have expected much better, shook his head and took a knee beside her.

“Come on Lamia, rise and shine,” he said, poking her in the side. So fluffy.

She snuffled, grumbled and rolled over away from him, none of which got her any closer to waking up or going away. Eric had to resist the sudden urge to devour her, such was her overwhelming cuteness. Instead, he put a nearby blanket on her. It seemed a better option.

“Bat. Nocturnal. Daytime. Yeah, this is how it goes, alright.”

This altered his plans, though not a huge amount. He had no real reluctance about letting a strange pony hang around his house during the day because ponies were pushovers. Mostly he was concerned about poor Lamia just waking up alone somewhere unfamiliar.

His solution to this problem was to write her a note he could leave on the nearby table, for her to read on awakening.

“Dear Lahmia (hope I got your name right), as and when you wake up, if I’m not here, it’s because I’m at work. Make yourself at home. Your associate and dinner, Eric,” read the note in his mostly-legible scrawl.

How a man who painted for a living could such appalling handwriting was a mystery, but Eric had always insisted it was perfectly possible. He was living proof!

The note, he felt, should get the point across. The point being that he was going to be at work and she should make herself at home. Pretty direct stuff.

With that sorted Eric washed, changed into some clothes he hadn’t slept in, ate some toast, drank some tea and was then out the door to go do some stuff. Lamia slept through all of this, though she did - in her own sleepy way - very much appreciate Eric making sure the curtains were closed before he left.

Eric’s day of work was not packed, which suited him down to the ground.

Firstly and primarily he was continuing the painting of a mural in a nursery across town. The customers, expectant parents, had asked him to do a big wrap-around-the-room affair depicting a fairly standard lush, rolling countryside scene - farmland, fences, sunshine etcetera.

Their choice of a rural scene seemed a little redundant to Eric, given where they lived, but he wasn’t going to start questioning customer’s decisions. They wanted rural, he could do rural. Hell, he could do rustic, pastoral or even Arcadian if they’d asked him to - he was flexible.

Personally, had he been given free rein, he probably would have done something timeless. Like bronzed, muscled, oiled men and women in scanty rags firing bows and arrows at attacking dinosaurs. Something a child could be inspired by. Maybe a spaceship, if he was feeling spicy.

But Eric would be the first to admit his tastes were not everybody’s tastes.

Once he’d put sufficient time in on that - he informed them it’d likely be finished up by tomorrow - he had some lunch and wandered over to this engagement, which was painting a treehouse.

This was a much more straightforward affair, as he was not doing anything fancy with the paint, he was just being charged with putting it onto the outside of the treehouse. Three local lasses - kids, really - had approached him about it, apparently deciding that he’d be better doing it than they would be, given his apparent affinity for paint..

He was happy to help. They’d even provided the paint! Couldn’t be easier than that.

The three girls - there was a bow-one, a short-haired one and a unicorn one - made nuisances of themselves while he was getting on with it, which was fine. They assailed him with various questions about humans and where they came from, hassled him with drinks of water (which was welcomed) and remarked repeatedly on how boring painting was.

Eric, being a soft touch, find it out all very endearing. Very cute kids.

The treehouse was not especially large and so he managed to finish up while it was still light out, being ushered inside afterwards and being led to a seat at a table within. The table and chair were both ridiculously out of proportion for him and he ended up with his knees up below his chin, but it wasn’t so bad - he was glad of the sit down.

The three girls took position on the opposite side of the table and engaged in a hushed discussion and rummage. Eric, relaxing, let them at it.

A single bit was then pushed his way, accompanied by a quite-frankly alarming amount of fuzz and generalised lint. The sheer profusion of the stuff was enough to briefly distract Eric from noticing that they were trying to pay him. Only briefly, though.

“Nah nah nah, none of that, this is gratis,” he said, pushing the single bit and attendant debris back towards them. The kids were confused.

“Huh?”

“Free, it’s free. You can take this back,” he said, tapping the coin with a finger then flipping it the rest of the way across the table at them. The unicorn-one fumbled to catch it and toppled over, taking the short-haired one with her. Bow-one, the only one left standing, looked flummoxed.

“But-” She started, but Eric held his hands up.

“No no, no buts. You guys even provided paint. You can probably use that for something important, it’s fine, honest.”

By now the other two had managed to scramble back upright again so all three were able to chorus:

“But-!”

Eric remained unyielding in the face of this. He even folded his arms.

“You keep arguing about this and I’m going to start paying you,”

As far as threats went this one was kind of out of left field, and the kids were knocked for six.

This was not the way to run a successful business but then that wasn’t Eric’s intention. He wanted to have a fun, chilled time of things and enjoy his life. So far he was doing pretty well in this.

He took the girl’s baffled silence as a sign of victory.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. You three take that back and do something for yourselves with it. If you really want to compensate me, though, I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea.”

Painting - in the sense of applying paint over a wide area - was the sort of thing you needed a sit down and tea after, as it was a ballache. Since Eric was already sitting he was halfway there, the tea would simply complete it.

The three kids took this information on board silently and then, quite without warning, all dashed to exit the treehouse at speed, scrambling over one another in the process. Somehow, in their heads, they had all silently and mutually reached the conclusion that repaying Eric with tea was a matter of prestige and that being the one to do it was important.

How they’d reached this conclusion was unclear, but reach it they had, and off they raced.

“It’s not a contest!” Eric called out after to them, to no avail.

Some time later - more time than one might have expected a cup of tea to take, all things considered - they returned, only slightly scuffed. It seemed that in the interim they had settled the issue on who was to provide tea by handing the cup over as one. An awkward compromise, but such was life.

“Much obliged, girls,” Eric said, lifting the cup and saucer from their three supporting hooves and taking an experimental sip. First impressions were positive, and all was well.

And it was while Eric was quietly enjoying his tea that they finally noticed something on his person that they had up until this point failed to do so, mostly on account of his height.

“What’s that?” The bow-one asked, being the quickest off the draw, looking at him intently. Eric, midway through sipping, stopped sipping and looked behind him, assuming that was where she was looking, seeing nothing to warrant her asking anything at all. He then turned back to her.

“What’s what?” He asked.

“That!”

This did not narrow things down much.

Huffing in annoyance at Eric’s continued failure to get the message she moved around, clambered up onto the table, reared up on the table, wobbled, stuck one hoof out onto his knee for balance and then with the other pointed directly to his neck.

“That!” She declared again, louder this time.

Eric twigged it, hand coming up and clapping over the puncture marks he finally remembered were there.

“Oh yeah, that,” he said, sheepishly. “That was, ah, batpony. Showed up on my doorstep last night. Nice lass. But yeah, that’s what it is.”

To his surprise the girls reacted to this revelation with what appeared to be horror, the short-haired one and the unicorn one promptly hiding halfway beneath the table while the bow-one very nearly fell to the floor, Eric having to catch her one-handed.

“Hey whoa, steady on,” he said, delicately picking her up and putting her down whereupon she joined her friends in hiding. This seemed a bit much to Eric.

“You l-let a batpony suck your blood?” The bow-one asked.

This much should have been self-evident.

“Yes. She was hungry and she asked me nicely. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, actually. Weird, yeah, but not bad.”

Eric was rubbing his neck again idly and took a second to notice the three girls were still looking at him, horrified.

“You alright there?”

“Can’t believe you let a batpony feed on you…” came a murmur which could have come from any one of them, or all three, it was hard to tell. Eric had a feeling he was missing some sort of baggage here that would let him fully appreciate their opinions on the matter. To him, it did not seem a big deal. To them, it plainly was.

“She was perfectly pleasant to me,” he said, grumbling.

“But they drink blood!” The unicorn-one said, turning a rather sickly shade of green. The others stuck their tongues out in sympathetic disgust.

“We all have our vices,” Eric chuckled, but then saw that they clearly felt it was no laughing matter. Sniffing, he sat up straighter and got more serious: “Hey, kids, that’s not exactly their fault, you know? Just the way things are. Can’t really blame them for that, not like they chose it. And besides, look at me. I got my blood sucked and I’m fine, eh?”

“Except for the two holes in your neck…” The short-haired one muttered. Eric blew a raspberry of the most dismissive sort.

“Oh that’ll heal. I’ve had worse! And the worse I’ve had didn’t feed someone.”

Eric wasn’t entirely sure why he was so willing to go to the mat so vigorously to defend someone he’d met literally yesterday, but it had just boiled forth. He had not seen anything in Lamia for her to warrant such behind-the-back treatment.

Sure, maybe he was being taken for a ride, but if that turned out to be the case he could eat crow later! For now, defend fluffy girl! She did nothing wrong! Just had dinner!

He could also tell he wasn’t really winning the kids over. Time to change tack.

“How come I’d never heard about them before anyway? Think they’d be the sort of thing someone might mention to me. My welcome package didn’t say anything about them!”

This was true, it hadn’t.

“They’re rare,” said the bow-one. They were slowly beginning to emerge now from behind the table, which was something.

“And they drink blood!” The unicorn one squeaked. Even Eric’s nigh-limitless patience was being tried, now.

“Do they now? News to me. Sorry,” he said, feeling he’d perhaps been sharp. He had some tea to steady his nerves and collect his thoughts. This led to him confronting the fact that he wasn’t entirely clear on his thoughts. So he just made something up on the fly:

“Look kids, I don’t know what to tell you. She was the very model and picture of courtesy and I’m none the worse for wear. And imagine how it’d feel if everyone you bumped into thought you were a monster just because of the way your biology had shaken out. That’s not a matter of choice now, is it? Hardly seems fair to hold someone up for something entirely outside their control. Least not in my book. That’s no fun at all. Thanks for the tea, by the way.”

He’d finished the tea.

“It’s just...they’re creepy,” the short-haired one said to nods of agreement.

Tsch, kids. Eric frowned lightly.

“Ever met one?” He asked.

A simple question, but sufficient to catch them off-guard.

“...no.”

Eric had suspected as much.

“Well neither had I. Turns out this one at least is very nice indeed. I can see why the bloodsucking might freak some people out but that’s fine. Lucky she got me, bloodbag deluxe.”

Really, if you thought about it, Eric was probably one of the best things you could run into if you needed to suck blood. He was very relaxed and he was also bigger by far than most all ponies. Blood for days!

Eric rose to his feet, having to stoop to keep from hitting his head.

“Alright, well, I should probably be getting going. Uh, don’t touch the paint for a while if you can help it, it’ll need a few hours to dry.”

The girls acknowledged this and Eric climbed back down to ground level and went on his way.

By the time he arrived back home it was properly dark, and Lamia was gone.

Lamia did not reappear the next night, nor the night after that. Eric was waiting up just in case though, an eye on the window, an ear out for the door.

Why, though? He certainly wasn’t in a hurry to get his blood sucked again.

He put it down to concern, mixed with his enormous soft spot for ponies. Most of the ponies he knew were happy enough and settled, whereas poor Lamia had just looked so downtrodden. Never assured of a meal, ostracised through no fault of her own just because of what she was - it just seemed so unfair to him.

So he was concerned for her wellbeing, and hoped she was doing alright.

Not that she showed up.

After a week Eric stopped loitering around the lounge at late hours. After a fortnight he figured that it had just been a one-off, just one of those things.

Predictably, it was after this that there came a late-night knock at the door.

Eric, who had been about to turn in, did an abrupt-about face and very-nearly fell down the stairs, managing not to by inches and instead taking a bump against the wall at the bottom instead. Dazed, he opened the door and found Lamia, downcast, sat on her rump on his front step.

“Lamia!” He declared, delighted to see her in one piece, if as miserable as ever.

“H-hi,” she said, playing with her hair with both hooves and not meeting his eye. Eric put his hands on his hips.

“I was beginning to worry about you, you know! But I guess you can look after yourself.”

Her ears pricked at that and she looked up, one big ol’ eye fixed on his face, the other hidden behind her mane, with which she was still fiddling.

“You were?” She asked.

“Well yeah. You kind of just disappeared. I’m a worrier.”

Eric was not a worrier. His experience of worry that week had been an outlier. But Lamia didn’t really need to know that. She was, again, just trying to work out if he was joking, but again he seemed not to be.

“Can I come in?” She asked, with more surety this time. This Eric had sort of been waiting for, and he immediately stood to one side.

“By all means.”

There was less hesitation in her entering, though still some linger tentativeness, as though afraid this was perhaps some long-form prank that was due to payoff any moment. Purely because of its familiarity she made a beeline for the little seating area that Eric had. He went there, too, and sat in his spot.

This time Lamia hopped up on the sofa with him, though sat a respectable distance away, staring directly ahead.

“Sorry for falling asleep. You should have woken me up and told me to go,” she said after a quiet moment or three. Eric was appalled by the mere suggestion of such discourtesy.

“Ah, pffbt, s’fine. I imagine you’d had a rough night. Far too adorable to wake up as well.”

Lamia went a little pink and hid behind her mane even more, and said nothing.

Eric drummed briefly on his legs, looked around the room, waited a little longer for Lamia to reply, guessed she wasn’t going to and so instead carried on himself:

“Another lean night for you, then?”

She looked questioningly, not getting where he was coming from.

“Coming here I mean. Just assumed you hadn’t been able to find any other sources of, ah, sustenance tonight,” he said, waving his hands.

“I don’t need to feed every day,” she said.

“No?”

The way she’d outlined the process it kind of sounded like she did, but that was probably just Eric’s fault for making assumptions. No harm done. Learn something new with every breath.

“No. And after you - after y-you let me feed I wasn’t hungry for a long time.”

“Happy to be of service. It’s the high-quality you get from me, you see.”

This was a joke. Lamia did not get it. Eric cleared his throat.

“But, uh, you’re hungry now, I take it? Has been a couple weeks now, after all. Hence the visit?” He ventured. His neck had got better by now, mostly. Healed up right quick.

Batpony spit? Magic? His natural, manly resilience? All of the above?

Lamia was doing the nervous thing with her hooves again.

“Little bit. M-mostly I - mostly I...kind of m-missed you…” she said, starting out quiet and unsure and ending up barely audible. Eric clapped a hand to his ear and leant in towards her. Going deaf in his dotage, plainly.

“Sorry could you run that by me again?”

“I am - I was feeling lonely just being in my cave so I thought I’d...see you again…”

Took Eric a second to process that, though one detail did leap out above the others.

“You live in a cave?” He asked.

Lamia squirmed with every appearance of embarrassment.

“...yeah.”

This didn’t sound great to Eric, but maybe that was presumptuous. Maybe batponies were down for living in caves. Maybe they thought it was fucking great, he had no idea. So, tentatively, he asked:

“Do you like living in a cave?”

“...no.”

“Oh.”

Well that settled that, then.

Lamia, still keeping her head down and still alternating between nervously fiddling with her mane or nervously fiddling with her hooves, shuffled perhaps an inch along the sofa, closer to Eric.

“It’s cold. And lonely,” she said.

“You did mention that.”

Another shuffled inch.

“No-one here’s ever been nice to me like you were,” she said. “M-mostly when they say yes and let me feed it’s because they’re scared I’ll h-hurt them otherwise. I’d never hurt anypony.”

Eric scowled. Very poor form, such conduct.

“That’s damn rotten, that is. Hurt them indeed. Foul assumption to make about you! Not even knowing you. For shame,” he said.

And quite without thinking about it he brought his hand up and started to absent-mindedly scratch her behind the ears. This was a habit of Eric’s and was generally well-received, though he did try to make an effort to ask first. Sometimes he just forgot though, like just then.

Lamia went completely rigid and emitted a single sound that was rather like ‘meep’. Then, as the scratching continued, she began to relax, the look of shock on her face being replaced first with one of confusion, then with one of mounting bliss.

Eric then noticed what he was doing and pulled his hand back at once.

“Oh! Sorry about that Lamia, I really should have-”

“Don’t stop!” She whined, grabbing his wrist with both hooves and yanking his hand back onto her fluffy head.

“...rightyo then.”

The scratching resumed and a noticeable shiver ran down Lamia’s spine. The shuffling towards Eric was less restrained now. Indeed, it was blatant, Lamia schooching across the remaining distance so she would just put her weight against his side.

Eric looked around the room to see if someone had set this up. No-one had, and scratching continued, Lamia’s eyes now half-lidded.

This sort of thing happened with ponies sometimes, he just hadn’t expected it from Lamia. The one-eighty from how morose she’d seemed before was startling, though welcome. By degrees she kept on relaxing, veritably melting until she was sprawled across Eric, her head resting chin-down on his leg.

“Oh…” she sighed happily, one wing twitching while Eric disregarded the bizarre swiftness of the situation and just embrace it for what it was. Life was, as ever, too short.

“Your bad rap is thoroughly undeserved,” he said, graduating up to using two hands, much to Lamia’s immediate and vocal approval. She moved again, but then stopped, seemingly having found some spot on Eric’s leg that was of interest to her.

“You alright there?” He asked, watching her press her muzzle into his thigh, perhaps a little higher up than he felt comfortable with. Lamia was concentrating too much to respond though, really intent on whatever it was she’d found.

Wasn’t there some kind of important artery in the leg?

All at once Lamia scrambled up into his lap, balancing there, forehooves on his shoulders, muzzle inches from his nose.

“Can I - hnh - feed again? Please?”

There was a look in her eye that made Eric very impressed she still had the presence of mind to ask politely.

“Uh, sure,” he said, yelping a moment later as she leapt on him in a heartbeat, knocking him back against the arm of the sofa and clamping her mouth to his neck. There then came that weird, numb feeling again.

While she slurped away Eric stared at the ceiling, considering his life choices.

“Guess this is something that happens now,” he said, hands on his belly.

Lamia pulled back briefly, a single drop of blood just running down her chin. This was a little unsettling to see, but could have been worse.

“Did you say something?” She said, panting.

“Just an observation.”

She made to move in again but stopped herself at the last moment.

“Do you want me to stop?” She asked, obviously concerned. Eric gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and a pat on the back.

“You do you, Lamia. Maybe just don’t go overboard this time.”

She bit her lip, which was a very pronounced gesture for someone with fangs.

“O-okay, I’ll try.”

Then she got right back to it, slurping now with much more obvious restraint and control than she had been before. Eric brought his hands up to support her barrel as she crawled up a little for a better position. This continued until, some minutes later, she stopped again and properly this time, shuffling back and wiping her mouth on the back of a hoof.

“Done,” she said, licking her lips.

Eric touched his neck again, again feeling that numbness. She’d gone for the same side as last time. If this kept up he’d start looking pretty rough. Maybe next time - he had a feeling there would be a next time - he insist she start alternating sides.

“Feel better?” He asked, sitting up again as Lami hopped off his lap.

“Much. Thank you. Sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

She shrugged, sliding rapidly back into the doleful now that the heat of the moment had passed. Once more she was hiding behind her mane, on which she tugged.

“Just - with the scratching a-and I could feel the blood and - I got a bit carried away...sorry…”

“Hey,” Eric said, putting a hand lightly onto her neck, making her jump only to relax. “It’s alright. I said yes, remember? Kind of a weird arrangement but no-one’s getting hurt. Well, my neck looks kind of rough right now but, you know, worse things have happened. You’re alright.”

“But you’re too nice to be food…” she sniffled.

Eric had no real idea of how to handle this sort of problem. Lacking better ideas he just pulled an unresisting Lamia against his side once more, and put his arm around her.

“Oh I ain’t that nice. My advice to you, Lamia, is just to do whatever works for you. Keep up with what you’ve got going already, or just come see me when you get peckish - it’s all good. I’ll back you up, alright?”

“Why though?”

That question again. Eric just shrugged.

“It’s the nice thing to do. I can do it, I can help someone out, why not? No skin off my back. Just, heh, some holes in my neck. And that heals up pretty nicely. Though, uh, maybe switch sides in future? One then the other? Symmetry is important.”

He’d managed to get that in sooner than he’d expected.

And Lamia actually laughed! Kind of halfway point between a laugh and a strangulated sob, but still! A start! She cuddled into his side, wings tucked in, face pressed to him.

In all honesty this was still kind of an odd situation, at least by Eric’s standards. His neck was still bleeding and he was there vowing to step into the breach as someone’s dinner anytime they felt the need. Was that normal?

Was anything normal, here?

Ah, who cared.

“You know, if you’re ever sick of hanging around your cave I have a box room upstairs I could clear out - not really using it for much right now,” he said, after a little period of companionable silence. Lamia jolted, wriggling around to look up at him in amazement.

“You - you mean - I could - ?”

Eric shrugged some more.

“If you wanted. Don’t feel pressured. Just saying. No need to go back to a cold cave if you don’t have to, right? What are friends for?”

She blinked at him slowly, eyes so very huge, ears so very fluffy.

“We’re friends?” She asked.

“Let’s go with yes,” Eric said.

He thought most everyone he met was his friend, really, but then Eric had some odd opinions. Lamia, by contrast, hadn’t ever had a friend, not really. The mere thought that she might now have one - the mere possibility! - was enough to push her to the edge of tears.

“Thank you!” She wailed, latching onto him.

Eric, for want of anything better to do, started working the ears again.

The universal language, after all.

Blood on the world's hands

Author's Note

Whoops!

Blood on the world's hands

“And that, as they say, is that,” Eric said with satisfaction, sitting back on his haunches to check over what he’d done.

Painting furniture - specifically, painting the furniture put together by his semi-associate Mortis Gage and her various apprenti - was about as close to a regular gig as Eric got.

Ponies, it seemed preferred their household objects painted, in the main, and while Mortis could put them together she was not so great at the painting. Conversely, Eric’s efforts at woodwork were subpar at best, but his painting was exemplary.

It had not taken long for them to put two and two together on that one.

“Very nice. Very delicate. Very flowery,” Mortis said, moving on over to check over what he’d done as well. A lot of twisting patterns that made her eyes water if she looked at them too closely. She really didn’t have the stomach for this sort of frou-frou frippery, but the customers ate it up and her sainted mother - Mortis Joint - hadn’t raised no fool.

“I am inspired by nature,” Eric said, knowing that such artistic drivel always annoyed Mortis. He wasn’t wrong though - Spring had sprung and all about was bursting with life. Eric did so love this time of year.

“Yeah yeah, sure you are. I know you’re just trying to get a rise out of me,” Mortis growled and Eric gave her a wounded look.

“How little you think of me, Mortis. And after our successful partnership! I thought we had mutual respect!”

“Think you’re so funny…” She said, grumbling and mostly managing to keep the smirk off her face. Eric wiped his hands on his overall and then shifted around so that he was sitting cross-legged rather than kneeling, which had been doing a number on his knees.

“But yes, you got anything else ready for me today?” He asked, looking around just in case he’d missed something obvious. He had not. Mortis shook her head.

“Nah not today, boys been slacking,” she said shaking her head sadly, at which point something which had been bothering her caught her eye again.

“Your neck ain’t looking so hot there, Eric,” she said, looking at him sideways.

“Hmm? Oh, am I bleeding again?” He asked, raising a hand but finding nothing.

“No, you’re just starting to look a little chewed up. You alright?” She asked. He waved her off.

“Ah it’s fine, it’s not that bad.”

Last time he’d looked in a mirror it hadn’t looked that bad, at least. The marks of older feedings now just fading dots, the most recent still scabbed, but hardly anything to write home about, and that’d be gone in a few days anyway.

Turned out that, yes, batpony spit did happen to have all sorts of curious effects, one of the better ones being the speeding in recovery of puncture wounds. This Lamia had confirmed as a fact. She had been unable to confirm Eric’s followup question of whether it worked on other types of wounds, too, and she had refused to let him experiment.

This was fair enough, he supposed. Still! Convenience itself!

Seeing as how there wasn’t anything else needing painting today Eric started cleaning up his brushes. Mortis continued hanging around him, picking her next words.

“So…” she said, scratching her own neck now, still just starting at his. “I heard that she, uh, she was living with you now, huh?”

Previously the conversations between Mortis and Eric had not really ranged into the personal, because there hadn’t been a whole lot of personal Eric had to talk about. Now though, things were a touch different.

“On and off,” Eric said.

Mostly on, though. Almost entirely on. In Eric’s head it wasn’t that she’d moved in - he didn’t see it like that - it was just that he had left her with an open offer to use his spare room anytime she felt like it and she had then felt like doing it every day since, coming up on perhaps a little over a month now.

To Eric these distinctions were important.

To those around him, not so much.

“Uh, right, right. How’s that working out for you?”

Eric paused in his brush cleaning to consider the question. Honestly, it had been working out pretty great by his standards.

Owing to their different schedules the bulk of interaction between him and Lamia happened in the evenings, and mostly consisted of just lounging around on his sofa not doing much of anything at all. Sometimes he’d read, sometimes she’d ask him to read to her, sometimes she’d just flap around behind his shoulder as he made dinner - nothing too strenuous or exciting, but all consistently pleasant.

Nice just having someone around.

“S’pretty good,” he said, summing up his feelings and resuming the cleaning.

“And you don’t mind the, you know…?” She asked, pointing to her neck. Eric fought not to roll his eyes. People really did get hung on that, didn’t they?

He supposed he could see why. It wasn’t something most people had to deal with and, well, some people did get a bit squeamish about blood, which was fair. By this point he’d stopped thinking about it much, himself. It wasn’t doing him any harm and Lamia seemed to have finally settled into feeling less guilty for it. They were both happy, so there it was.

“Worse things have happened to me. I used to have to scoop vomit out of urinals, did I ever tell you that? And it’s not like it’s every day. It’s really not that big of a deal.”

Eric had mentioned the urinal thing before, but Mortis decided not to bring up that he was repeating himself. Again.

“I don’t think I could do it,” she said instead, quickly adding: “Not because of the blood. Blood’s fine. Cut myself to ribbons daily in this line of work. It’s just the whole...feeding...thing…”

She shivered.

“Skeeves me out. Sorry.”

Eric just shrugged, finished cleaning and then packed away, then standing up.

“Not sure what you’re sorry for, Mortis,” he said.

“Just don’t want you to think I’m knocking you. I wouldn’t do what you’re doing - most wouldn’t, I guess - but, uh, well…”

Mortis had not thought far enough ahead to actually have a point or conclusion to this sentence and was foundering. This Eric saw, and this Eric sympathised with.

“Ah, you worry too much,” he said, reaching down and giving her a scratch.

For maybe half a second she looked outraged at this but then his fingers found that spot on her head that he knew about from experience and outrage evaporated away, leaving only immediate and overwhelming contentment in its wake. Mortis smiled a dopey smile and pouted an annoyed pout once he stopped.

“One of these days I’m going to snap your hand off at the wrist when you do that,” she said, reasserting her previous level of gruffness.

“Is that day today?” Eric asked.

She glared at him.

“...no.”

Grinning, Eric gave her another scratch. Mortis growled, but her heart really wasn’t in it.

“Didn’t think so. Besides, this hand is too valuable to you!”

She tried to come up with a snappy response to this but his fingers found the spot for a second time and she lost her train of thought, nearly falling over forwards as he pulled his hand away, heading as he was towards the door and out of her workshop.

“Whenever you need me again come drop me a line! You know where I live!” He called out, waving as he walked off.

“You could learn to paint with your left hand! I wouldn’t let you off that easy!” Mortis shouted from the doorway. Eric just kept on waving.

There was about enough time for Eric to meet up with another pony across town who wanted to have a chat about some work they wanted done. This pony - Eric didn’t get their name, he rarely did, a failing on his part - wanted constellations across their bedroom ceiling.

Eric thought this was a marvellous idea, and both of them talked at length over the pony’s proposed design, luminescent paint and some of the finer details of what should be involved. Productive! Work would start once the paint arrived, Eric told the pony.

He then knocked off for the day.

All throughout the talk the pony had been very good at not staring too much at Eric’s neck. They’d noticed - most all of them did, now - but drew no attention to it, for which Eric was grateful.

It wasn’t a sore issue with him or anything like that, there were just only so many times he could say ‘It’s fine’ before the words started grating in his throat. Their concern for his welfare was nice and all but no, really, it was fine.

At the stall in the market with the nice lasses and the flowers - where he often liked to stop and just admire them and have a natter - they asked him about his neck. At that nice bakery with the energetic employee where he went for tea and sometimes cake, there they also asked him about his neck.

Even his laconic sometime drinking associate - the big red lad from the farm - had asked him about his neck, albeit not at great length and with the put-upon tone of someone asking for somebody else’s benefit.

Eric was actually meant to be drinking with him today, in fact, given that it was the normal day for the two of them to do it, but there was apparently apple-related farm business on the agenda today and so his buddy was busy. With that being the case, Eric just headed for home.

Home was quiet, as might be expected, and Eric kept it that way be by being delicate, Lamia being asleep and all that. With his painting apparatus put back into his outbuilding where it all lived he crept into the house proper and settled himself on the sofa with one of his books from home and a cold beverage.

In this way he spent a very pleasant three quarters of an hour or so, before the sound of hooves on the stairs caught his attention.

“Eric?” Came a quiet voice and he twisted about no the sofa, seeing just the barest hint of Lamia visible, halfway on the landing, one hoof on the first step down, uncertain.

“Yes?” He replied.

This was all Lamia needed to come down and down she came, a little unsteady from plainly having just woken up, but managing it all the same and coming to a sleepy halt in front of the sofa, mane a fuzzed mess, wings semi-limp.

She looked bedraggled, but Eric hardly looked better when he just woke up.

“Bit early for you, isn’t it? What you doing up?” He asked. Lamia swayed groggily and didn’t meet his eye.

“I had a nightmare…” she said. Eric frowned and put his bookmark in, popping the book down beside him.

“A nightmare? Tsch, that’s no good. Come on, come here, hop up,” he said, patting his lap.

Lamia needed very little prompting, shuffling over and obligingly hopping up and settling herself down as he put an arm around her, careful to tuck her wings in.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked. She shook her head. He pressed no further.

A few seconds following this she wriggled around enough for Eric to have bring in his second arm to better support her. For a little bit he thought that maybe she’d just gone back to sleep on top of him, which would have been fine, but instead she broke the silence:

“...could I sleep in your bed?” She asked, quietly, adding even more quietly: “It’ll smell like you…”

“Uh…”

Eric did a quick mental check. Friend in need? Yes. Friend asking politely to use bed? Yes. Would using bed help them feel better? According to them, yes, so assume yes. Am I using the bed? No. Conclusion: no reason not to let Lamia use bed.

“Sure,” he said, smiling down at her.

Lamia did not make any immediate moves to vacate his lap and take him up on this.

“Could - could you come up with me? Just until I go back to sleep?” She asked.

Not what Eric had expected. His brain fizzed.

“Uh…” he said again.

“I feel safer with you around…” She said, one hoof nervously rubbing the other. She had yet to break this habit, or even pick up on it. Eric had, though.

Another mental check. Friend in need? Yes, unchanged. Friend requesting presence on account of soothing effect of said presence? Yes, so it would seem. Am I doing anything important right now? No, not really. Is Lamia’s wellbeing important to me? Yes. Conclusion: no reason not to say yes.

“Alright, whatever works for you Lamia.”

Her head jerked up.

“Really?”

“Well I did say so, didn’t I?”

Lamia had clearly not expected success and was at a momentary loss for words.

“T-thank you,” she said, once words came back. Eric just gave her a squeeze.

“I know you’d help me out if I asked. Come on, let’s go.”

Rising from the sofa, Lamia still in his arms, Eric plodded up the stairs, using his foot to nudge open the door to his room.

Eric’s bed was actually two pony beds shoved together. It worked for him. He had been offered bigger - minotaur beds, for one - but had demurred. This worked for him.

Tucking Lamia in first he moved around the other side and climbed on in after her, not taking his clothes off. Even he had limits, and he had a fairly solid hunch that stripping off for something like this would cross a line from friendship into territory that he did not presently wish to approach. His poor friend was recovering from a nightmare and did not need that.

What she did need was cuddling, and this he provided.

“Thank you,” she said again, pressing back against him and curling up. Eric gave another squeeze.

“Think nothing of it. Now you go to sleep.”

“Okay…”

After that, quiet. At some point Lamia’s breathing slowed noticeably and Eric her fluffy little body relax. Not long after that, snoring. Adorable, adorable snoring.

It was a struggle for Eric not to fall asleep himself. As much as he might have liked a nap - and he really, really would have liked a nap - he did also want to make the most of his evening. That, and he was distantly worried about somehow maybe crushing poor Lamia in his sleep.

The idea hardly bore thinking about.

So, carefully, he disengaged himself from around her and slid back out of the bed. Lamia whined piteously in her sleep as he pulled away but did not wake up and moments later curled up tighter as he tucked the covers in around her a little better.

Even if the sun was on its way to setting Eric made sure the curtains of his bedroom were properly closed before he went downstairs, sparing one final look to the gently snoozing Lamia just to check she was alright.

From the looks of things she was, but it paid to be sure.

“Pleasant-er dreams, Lamia,” he said softly before creeping back down to the lounge.

Blood to walk

Author's Note

I can say with confidence that this is probably in no-way how art works at all.

But it is how fluff works.

Next, we have to share a sleeping bag. Oh noooo!

Blood to walk

The next day, bright and early-ish, Eric was at the post office. He had a catalogue.

Regular paint was easy to come by. Specialist paint - such as, say, extra-special glow-in-the-dark paint - was somewhat trickier, something he didn’t often keep to hand, and something which required sending out for. But that was fine, Eric knew guys who knew guys.

And he got trade prices, too.

So he was there, double-checking that he’d filled out the order form correctly, squinting at reference numbers and trying to read his handwriting. Then he tried to second-guess whether someone else would be able to read his handwriting.

“Sod it,” he said once he realised worrying about it would get him nowhere. Whacking it into an envelope he slapped on some stamps and sent it on its way. Cash on delivery, delivery in three to four working days following receipt of order - what a time to be alive!

Once the order had been placed he hung around the post office for a bit, because he was playing Uno with the pleasant, cock-eyed girl that worked there, who apparently didn’t have anything better to be doing? Slow day, she said. Lovely girl. No idea how to play Uno but kept beating Eric anyway, much to his continued amazement.

“Again? Blow me down. You know, it’d be polite to let me win at least one round,” he said, staring down at the pile of cards before him, his hand and her lack of a hand.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t know,” she said with sincerity, mortified at having not been polite.

Realising that perhaps she was coming at the conversation from a different angle than himself Eric quickly moved to reset the balance, giving her hair a quick ruffle before picking up and shuffling the cards.

“Just pulling your leg! Don’t worry about it. Let’s go again, eh? Pretty sure I’ve worked out your devious ways now, this round’s my round!”

She looked down at her leg for a second, confused, but then looked back up smiling, worries forgotten. She also reset the hat that had been upset into its proper position by his ruffle, managing to unstraighten it again.

“Okay!” She said.

Continued rounds showed no difference in outcome. It was uncanny.

“Statistically speaking this is, well, I’d say it was just unfair, really,” Eric said, once more looking out across another loss.

“Am I good?” She asked, one bright eye on him, the other somewhere else entirely, bobbing in midair behind the counter on which they were playing.

“Good? You’re outstanding! Some kind of prodigy. It’s like you’re channeling an outside force. I am impressed.”

Ecstatic at this assessment the blonde pony squealed with glee and dropped like a stone, her concentration taking a hit and her hovering suffering as a result. She landed out of sight with a thump, and several things fell over, at least one of them landing on top of her.

“Oh dear!” Eric said, leaning over the counter to check if she was alright. “Are you okay?”

Dazed but in one piece the girl rubbed her head, eyes very briefly operating in tandem, but this passed and normal service resumed. Peering up at Eric she smiled, happy as anything.

“Yay! I’m outstanding!” She said, hooves waving. Eric gave her another ruffle.

“That you are,” he said.

It was then that the bell above the door rung.

Eric, thinking quickly, hoisted the mailmare up and plopped her on the counter, figuring that if anyone was coming in they were coming in for post-related reasons and that she should therefore be present. He was merely a bystander.

Who was coming through the door turned out to be a purple pony. A unicorn, no less. With wings too! Wait, there was a special name for those ones. What was it again? An alicorn, Eric recalled after a moment’s thought. His welcome brochure had mentioned them.

The newcomer did not appear especially certain they were in the right place - despite their saddlebags, which may or may not have contained things they wanted to post - and looked about, eyes alighting on Eric, who she approached.

“I was looking for you,” said the purple alicorn brightly. Eric gave a small bow.

“You did well to find me, I don’t stick out,” he said. If alicorns tracking him down struck him as unusual he gave no outward sign. Just another thing to roll with. Batponies, bloodletting, losing at Uno - every day something new around here.

Eric had delivered this with such flatness and sincerity that the purple alicorn was wrong-footed, if only for a second. This was long enough for Eric to capitalise.

“You’re the princess, aren’t you? Local lass? Don’t tell me! Starlight or something?” He said, hazarding a guess. He was wrong.

“Twilight,” said Twilight.

Eric hissed, wounded by his failure.

“Right, knew there was a ‘light’ in there somewhere. Sorry, terrible with names.”

That sort of thing could probably have upset someone back home. Here, the locals were a little more relaxed. Or just more willing to give Eric leeway, one or the other. Twilight just smiled at him.

“That’s okay,” she said.

“Ooh! And you’re the one who wrote the welcome package, weren’t you? Good stuff, that, really set me up.”

She went just the tiniest bit pink around the ears at the mention of this. Twilight had indeed put together the welcome package, top to bottom and cover to cover. She’d been very pleased with the results, if she could say so herself. This was her first bit of recognition for it.

“Oh, it was pretty basic,” she said lightly, waving him off with a hoof. But Eric insisted.

“Basic is good! I needed basic. Solid foundations, Twilight! Really got me grounded. Very handy. And simple enough even I could grasp it! That’s tricky to pull off. Good on you.”

“Aw, well, I’m glad you think so.”

Always nice to be told of a job well done.

She then shook her head. They were getting off-topic. She had tracked him down for a reason.

“Eric,” she said. “Do you paint portraits?”

Ah, this sounded like business. Eric put on his business face.

“Do I paint portraits? Hmm,” he said, stroking his chin, casting his mind back.

He had in his time, once or twice, as one did. Not for a while though. Had he lost the knack, or would he just be rusty? Perhaps hedging his bets and giving a safe answer would be best.

“I could paint portraits,” he said. Technically speaking anyone could.

Twilight took his copping out for an emphatic yes, however, and beamed ear to ear.

“Great! Could you paint a portrait of Rarity? It’s for her birthday.”

The name rung a bell. Eric squinted, the better to sharpen his memory,

“Rarity? Rarity...ah yes, local lass, runs the dress shop? She’s lovely,” he said.

Not that ‘lovely’ narrowed it down much around here by Eric’s standards.

“Not just dresses but yes, Rarity,” Twilight said.

“Right, right. And a present you say? That’s pressure, that is. Right! I can live up to that, I’m sure. This isn’t something you need by the weekend, is it?”

“Oh no, her birthday isn’t for four months.”

This was an oddly specific length of time, but was still long enough for Eric to immediately relax.

“Wonderful, plenty of time - someone gets it,” he said.

There were other issues besides the time involved, of course, but the terrifying prospect of being expected to turn something out in a handful of days had been enough to freeze Eric’s blood. He did so hate to disappoint.

“So is she going to come to to arrange a time to sit down or - ?” He asked.

“Oh, ah, I should probably mention that this is meant to be a surprise for her,” Twilight said, sheepishly.

Eric digested this.

“A surprise portrait?”

“Yes.”

First time he’d heard of that, but there was always a first time for everything so what of it. Stranger things had happened, albeit not often.

He was vaguely aware of what this Rarity girl looked like having had a natter with her once or twice, but doing a picture of her from memory might have been just a tiny bit beyond his abilities. Or, at least, doing a good picture of her from memory.

“You know, commonly with these sorts of things you have your subject sat in front of you, at least for a little bit. With this being a surprise and all do you want me to just, you know, kind of shadow her and hope she doesn’t notice me?” Eric asked.

Possible, but difficult. Eric was rather easy to spot coming. Especially if he had an easel with him. Even a sketchpad might give him away,.

“I have pictures,” Twilight said, flipping open a saddlebag and floating over a folder which Eric took.

“Cunning.”

It was a hefty folder, not to mention meticulously organised. Twilight had collected and collated just about every useful or possibly useful picture of Rarity she had been able to lay her hooves on. At first it was impressive, but the further on Eric went through the folder it actually just started getting a little worrying.

“This is extensive,” he said, moving away from group shots and onto photos that just contained Rarity. That there even needed to be this stark a distinction struck him as perhaps unusual.

“She’s not averse to having her picture taken,” Twilight said.

“Obviously not…”

A good number of the individual pictures appeared to be professional glamour shots, presumably ones that Rarity had paid to have done herself. Some were even boudoir shots, which caught Eric off-guard.

“You do you, girl,” he said, nodding to himself and continuing to flick through. “How did you get these ones, just to ask?”

“She gave them to me. To all of us. As presents.”

It had been an odd year, that one.

“Memorable, at least. And nice to know she’s thinking of you. Though thinking what we can only guess,” Eric said, slipping the photos back and closing the folder. He’d seen quite enough. More than enough angles for him to hash it out. He could give it a damn good shot with the folder in hand. He could work with this.

“I can work with this,” he said.

“Great! Do I pay you now or half now and half later or - “

“Don’t worry about that right this second. I’ll go away and then come find you and we can work it out. You live in that, uh, the crystal palace, right?”

Twilight was about to tell him what it was actually called when she thought better of it and bit her tongue. He knew the important details about the place, why muddle things?

“Yes,” she said instead.

“Good stuff. I only hope I can live up to your expectations!”

“I’m sure you will, everypony says you’re good.”

Such unabashed flattery was uncalled for.

“Ah, they’re too kind. I’m adequate at best,” he said. THen on reflection felt the need to add: “The present will be above adequate though, of course. The portrait will be tops. Assuming I think I can manage it at all. I’ll get back to you on that sharpish.”

“Alright,” she said, smiling pleasantly.

Then, finally, her eyes just flicked down. The smile went away.

“Is your neck okay?” She asked and Eric fought the urge to groan.

“You know, I might start wearing a ruff if people don’t stop asking me about my neck. Honestly, it’s fine. Doesn’t hurt or anything. I think it gives me some character,” he said instead.

“Sorry. It’s just I heard you had a batpony living with you now and you were letting her feed on you daily,” Twilight said and Eric couldn’t help but scoff.

“Daily? Who told you that? Tsch, someone’s been telling porkies. Hardly daily. Couple times in a couple weeks, if that.”

To Eric this was not a lot. To Twilight, who had never had her blood sucked, it sounded like a lot.

“Having her feeding on you so much might be, ah, bad for you,” she said.

“I know I know, she told me just as much herself. She still goes out to find people to ask. I’m just there if things get tough. It’s fine.”

He gave a brief jig, finishing up with jazz hands for emphasis.

“See? Fit as anything.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Adamant.”

Twilight appreciated his choice of word.

“Okay, well. You know where I am so if you think you can do it come and find me. And, uh, if you think you can’t also come and find me.”

“Aye aye,” Eric said, giving her a nod.

And with that, business concluded. Twilight flipped her saddlebag closed and exited, bell jangling again.

“Can’t move in this town without someone throwing work at me,” Eric said, turning back to the mailmare who had - inexplicably - built a house of cards from the Uno deck on the countertop while he and Twilight had been talking.

Eric stood, agog.

“How?” He asked. “How?!”

Now that someone else could see it, the house immediately collapsed.

Later, back home, Eric was sat on his sofa sorting through the profusion of pictures Twilight had provided, picking out the ones most useful to him for the task ahead. He had been doing this for some time - long enough for Lamia to finally wake up and come downstairs with him still at it.

He was so involved he didn’t even hear her approach. HIs first indication she was there at all was when she leapt on him from behind, flapping up behind the sofa and wrapping her forelegs around his neck, snuggling in.

“Hello to you too,” he said, reaching up to give her a quick scratch behind the ears with the hand not holding a picture.

Lamia nuzzled and snuggled into him happily for a second or so before noticing what it was he was doing. Noticing and understanding were two different things.

“Who’s that?” She asked.

“Ah yes. My subject! Was asked to do a portrait of her but it’s a surprise, hence all these pictures. The idea being I won’t need her to sit in front of me if I have all these, see?”

“Oh, right,” Lamia said, sort of getting it.

Disengaging form around his neck she dropped behind the sofa and then trotted around, avoiding flying lest her flapping disturbed his obviously carefully arranged sorting system. Very considerate of her.

Picking a spot on the sofa unoccupied by pictures of Rarity, Lamia hopped up. Eric continued sorting, knowing that the sooner he finished the sooner he could do something else.

For this reason things got very quiet for a little while, Eric too absorbed to talk and Lamia too busy waiting for Eric to say something to talk.

Finally, Eric felt he’d done enough. Tossing the final picture into the final pile he sat back and stretched, reaching up above his head, various parts of him cracking. That had taken longer than he’d expected.

He’d also had an idea.

“Hey Lamia, I had a favour to ask. Would-” Eric said but he got no further as Lamia instantly replied with:

“Yes.”

She was absolutely one hundred percent deadly serious. So serious Eric couldn’t help but chuckle and give her a scratch, into which she melted, pouting when his hand moved away again.

“Heh, hold on there you don’t even know what I was going to ask!”

“Anything. Anything you want,” she said, again with deadly seriousness. This time Eric was a little perturbed with such a willingness to commit herself without full grasp of the facts.

“Steady on there, Lamia,” he said.

He then experienced a moment of hypocrisy-induced vertigo at the thought that while he was perfectly allowed to immediately and without hesitation agree to help out anybody in whatever capacity they might require he was opposed to anyone else doing the same for him.

This vertigo rolled over Eric, dissipated, and was gone. He could live with it.

“At least let me fill you in first, eh?”

“Okay,” Lamia conceded, though neither looked nor sounded happy about it.

“Alright. Now, I’ve been approached about doing a portrait of someone for their birthday. Rather nice, I thought, but then I would think that. First hitch: the portrait is a surprise so I can’t have them sit down. That’s fine though, I got enough reference material.”

He patted the folder.

“Second: it’s been a little while now since I’d done anything much like this and I feel I might be out of practise. So what I was going to ask you was, well, I kind of wanted to try and get back into the headspace and stretch my muscles - so to speak - so, yeah, was wondering if you wouldn’t me doing you once or twice.”

She blinked at him.

“...pardon?”

“Painting. Like, just smaller portraits of you. To get my eye in, yeah?”

“Oh,” she said, blushing at something that Eric had missed and then, once she grasped what it was he asking about anyway, blushing deeper still. “O-oh. Me? Really?”

“Well I haven’t got anyone else around I can just ask. And I think you’d a good subject. You’re photogenic! Portraitogenic? You got a good look, is what I’m saying.”

Somehow, Lamia turned an even more luminescent shade of bright red and thoroughly hid behind her mane.

“No I don’t…” She said before just parting the curtain of hair enough for the merest hint of one eye to peek out. “Do I?”

Shaking his head and smiling at her Eric reached out a hand and gently tucked her mane back behind her ears. Lamia did not resist this, though she still had trouble looking him in the face, and was still extremely red.

“I think so. And I got a yen for this sort of thing! Artistic sensibilities, eh?” He said, tapping his nose.

“S-so I just sit and you...paint me?” She asked. Eric nodded.

“Pretty much. Nothing major or fancy, just little ones like I say. And if they turn out horrendous then my chances of producing something birthday present-worthy using nothing but reference material seem kind of slim to me. That’s my logic and I’m sticking to it. Though, you seen some of these pictures? Look at this.”

He dug through for one of the boudoir pictures and brought it out for inspection. Impressively, Lamia’s eyes got even wider. Eric was just frowning at the picture though and so did not notice her expression of, well, something. Shock, maybe?

“I mean don’t get me wrong it’s a quality picture - the setup is great - I’m just kind of weirded out she gave these to her friends. Look! It’s even got a caption! ‘The Gift of Me’. That’s ballsy, actually. Eh, to each their own, I suppose. If we all liked the same thing and all that! Now, do you mind getting started now? Or later? Or tomorrow? Whatever works for you, Lamia.”

With effort she tore her eyes away, finally managing to look Eric in the face and even managing a smile as she did it.

“Let’s start now,” she said.

Eric smiled too.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

All we need is blood

Author's Note

Again, my sincerest apologies to anyone who can actually Do The Art - your craft shall be mercilessly sacrificed upon my altar of formulaic fluff.

If you do notice any inconsistencies with anything it is, as ever, magic.

MAGIC! WHOOOO!

All we need is blood

Lamia was not the best subject Eric had ever worked with. Not the worst though.

It was not that she wasn’t good at the sitting still. Normally she was very good at the sitting still. It was just that she found the sitting still while being looked at for extended periods of time by Eric to be an experience she was unprepared for.

That was the key point. It was having Eric’s attention focussed so intently on her that was the issue. Often, just having him smile in her direction was enough to make her flustered, depending on the context. But having to stay in position while he looked her over so intently? Top to bottom?

Agonising.

She managed it though, long enough for Eric to finally pull back from his pad with a flourish.

“Well that’s something,” he said, nodding to himself as he looked over what he’d done. Lamia relaxed, letting out a breath she hadn’t really been aware she’d been holding, wings falling limp by her sides, tension releasing.

“Is that it?” She asked.

“No no, that was just me sketching, trying to get you down. Did you know I’ve never drawn a pony? Not properly, at least. Done some kind of generic ones in the middle distance for some things once or twice, but nothing like this yet. Nothing in detail, trying to be really like someone. Weird. Anyway, what do you think?” He asked, turning the pad around.

Lamia hopped down from the chair she’d been perched on and clip-clopped over for a closer look though she was paying more attention to Eric than what he was holding, something he’d said having caught her brain.

“I’m not a pony though, I’m a batpony,” she said, coming to a halt in front of him and flopping onto her rump.

“Second part of that word’s the important part, Lamia. Think I captured you? Roughly?.”

He held the pad out further in her direction and now she had a look.

It was a picture of her. This should not have been a surprise, but actually seeing it still came as something of one to Lamia, who’d found the whole experience a little on the surreal side.

“Is that what I look like?” She asked. Eric turned the pad around again and looked it over.

“Like looking in a mirror, eh? I’m, uh, I think I did alright on this, given I pretty much just started. Think that bodes well.”

“It’s really good,” Lamia said. She had no real frame of reference but it had looked good to her. And she was heavily biased in Eric’s favour. He could have done just about anything and she probably would have said the same thing.

“You’re too kind. Though I did have good subject matter to work with,” Eric said, giving her a wink. Lamia didn’t get it.

“What?”

“You, silly!” Eric chuckled, giving her a poke in the belly. Lamia squeaked.

This was the first time this had happened. It was also possibly the single cutest sound that Eric had ever heard in his life to date, at least off the top of his head.

“Oh,” he said, face lighting up. “Oh I have to do that again.”

Again, Lamia didn’t really see where this was going. Blame her extended isolation.

“Huh?” She went, head cocked to the side, big eyes blinking. Eric just grinned wider, laid the pad to one side, and struck.

Her guard wide open, she was entirely unprepared. Both Eric’s hands found her belly and started tickling. There was a split second of absolute shock where her brain simply failed to acknowledge what was happening, but then that moment passed and it hit her. And the giggling started.

“Eric! W-what - ah!”

Far too late for that. Already she was on her back, belly even more exposed, the tickles coming thick and fast along with the squeaks.

“This is going better than I expected,” Eric said, perhaps not thinking through what he was doing as much as she should have done. To him it was harmless fun. To Lamia, something of a shock but not an altogether unpleasant one. To any number of unnamed, immaterial, hypothetical outside observers? Anyone’s guess.

Beneath his fingers, Lamia squirmed.

“Stop! S-stop!” She squealed between snorts and giggles, hooves flailing, the rest of her wriggling helplessly and none of her really getting anywhere. Not that she was putting much effort into it.

“You’re just so fluffy!”

“Erriiiiiic!” She wailed, now trying to buffet him with her wings, bouncing on the floor.

Concerned that she might hurt herself doing this Eric finally eased off, falling back onto his haunches - having lunged from his chair to start tickling in the first place.

It took Lamia a few seconds after he’d stopped to realise that he’d actually stopped, her squealing and flailing continuing even as she just knelt there watching her. Then she twigged it, stopped moving, and cracked one eye to see him there, grinning down.

“...oh,” she said, getting shakily back up into a seating position and dusting herself down.

Then:

“That wasn’t funny,” she huffed, glaring. This only served to make Eric really want to get right back to the tickling. Or the hugging. Or something, really. She just looked adorable when she glared. Probably not what she was going for.

“I got carried away. Sorry,” he said. “Can you forgive me?”

The glare persisted but could not hold, and quickly broke and she had to look away.

“...fine. But that was mean!” She said from behind her mane. Eric made a good show of appearing contrite.

“I know, I’m a terrible person. I don’t know what came over me!” He said.

Lamia, who’d managed to somehow get part of her mane stuck in her mouth, had to blow it out, which somewhat undercut anything she might have said next. Not that it mattered a whole lot, with what she said next being:

“Being a meanie came over you.”

This was a statement that would have been extremely difficult to deliver with gravitas, regardless of who you were. Fluffy, slightly breathless batponies couldn’t even have attempted to do it.

All Eric could do was smile in agreement. She wasn’t wrong.

With a grunt he pushed up from the floor and sat back in his chair.

“That’s enough for one night though, I think. For art at least,” he said, yawning, stretching. Lamia’s face fell.

“Oh...you’re going to go to bed?” She asked.

Eric had to finish up on the yawning and stretching before he could reply:

“Heh, you miss me when I’m asleep?”

“...yes…”

Eric had not caught that.

“Pardon?” He asked.

“It’s quiet when you’re asleep.” Lamia said.

Somehow, despite this being far, far longer than the single-syllable thing Eric had failed to hear initially, he didn’t notice any issues and just took what she’d said at face value.

“You need a hobby, Lamia. But it’s fine. Got nothing on tomorrow. Just waiting for paint to arrive and that ain’t for days. Can probably do some stuff for this portrait, maybe. Nothing urgent. Nothing I need to wake up for!” He said. This statement was unclear.

“So you can stay up with me?” Lamia asked, tiny bit of hope flickering.

“For a bit, ‘course,” he said.

Lamia hopped excitedly onto all fours and smiled without noticing herself doing it. A wide, pointy smile.

“Thank you!”

“No need to thank me! No chore spending time with you, Lamia. But what to do, what to do…”

Eric stroked his chin in thought. Lamia let him get on with it, not having really had any plan on what to do other than just hang around with him. That was about as far as her thought process had gone.

He might have had a point about her needing a hobby - it was just an issue that had never come up before.

“You go out at night, don’t you?” Eric asked, out of the blue.

This was true, she did. For feedings when she needed them, and also just for fresh air on occasions. She came and went via the window in her room upstairs, as Eric understood it.

“Yeah?” She asked, unsure where he might be going with this.

“Well why don’t we go out together? Tonight? Right now? Not if I’ll cramp your style if you’re out for blood.”

Mention of blood did not buoy Lamia’s enthusiasm. It was a complicated issue. Going out and feeding like she always did not was a problem, that was normal. Not a fun thing to do and often culminating in failure, yes, but she was used to that.

Feeding from Eric, though, was new. And reliable. And delicious. And made her feel bad because she didn’t want to think of Eric as delicious, she wanted to think of him as possibly the only pony - person, he said, but he also said he didn’t mind - she’d met in her life who had been nice to her from the very first moment.

And it would be so easy to just not even bother going out anymore, not when Eric seemed perfectly willing to indulge her anytime she asked. It would be so easy! But it would be so bad. She knew that. And even knowing that there was always that part that just wanted to do it anyway. Because it was easy, and he was delicious.

She preferred not to think about it too much if she could help it.

“I’m not hungry…”

“Alright then! Just a nice walk, eh? You and me! Nice to stretch my legs. And you your, er, wings I suppose.”

She had no idea why he was suggesting this but she couldn’t see much wrong with it.

“O-okay…”

And so off they went into the night, Eric pausing only to put a coat on first. It was a little nippy out after dark, or it could be - paid to be prepared for changeable weather, in his experience.

Eric’s house was fairly central as regards the layout of Ponyville but things were still quiet once outside, the night air brisk. He took in a lungful.

“I’m already enjoying this,” he said.

Lamia did fly around at first, but somewhere around the halfway point of the walk this transitioned into her riding around on Eric’s shoulders. How that had happened he hadn’t really noticed, but it had. He didn’t mind.

Lamia’s reasons for having done this were not complicated.

“Everything looks very different at night,” Eric said, hands on his hips, looking down one of Ponyville’s wider thoroughfares. Deserted now, of course, and so deliciously quiet.

“Does it?” Lamia asked, not removing her face from where it had ended up, buried in the crook of his neck. He gave her a quick scratch, reaching up idly, other hand staying on his hip.

“Heh, suppose you wouldn’t know, would you? Take my word for it, Lamia.”

She did, and so said nothing, and Eric kept on walking. He was heading around town in a rough circle, not straying too far, mostly just enjoying the difference between what it was like during the day and what it was like during the night. He’d done that sort of thing back home, too.

Some minutes later, at the very start of what might have been the home stretch, Lamia piped up:

“Eric?”

“Yes?”

“...where are you from?”

He was kind of impressed it had taken her so long to ask this question.

“Ah, not from round here. Another world, another time, in the age of wonder,” he proclaimed with booming seriousness - or as booming as he felt was polite given the hour. He couldn’t keep a straight face though. “Heh, not really. Just from somewhere else. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“How did you get here?”

“The usual way.”

There wasn’t a lot Lamia could say to that. So she went with something else:

“Do you like it here?”

“Love it here! Much more my speed.”

“So you’re not going to leave?”

Now that question Eric had not been expecting. So unexpected was it that he even stopped walking, doing his best to look down at Lamia to answer her. Given that she was practically wrapped around his neck he could not do this, however.

“Leave? No. Why’d you ask?”

“Just wondering…”

Eric considered this, then shrugged. He had to shrug extra hard with Lamia on his shoulders, and shrugging extra hard very nearly made her fall off. She went meep again, but clung on.

“What a strange thing to wonder…”

Not long after this Eric arrived back home, Lamia dismounting once he was through the door, slipping down him and landing by his feet to follow behind.

“Well that was bracing but now I really must be going to bed, I’m knackered,” he said, again yawning and stretching.

“Okay,” Lamia said, doing her best not to sound too doleful. Chuckling, Eric bent to give her another scratch. It was a very hard habit for him to break.

“Oh you, don’t sound so sad! I’ll be back up again in a few hours! I mean, you’ll probably be asleep by then...but hey! We got tomorrow night, eh? Or later tonight. Is this morning? I lose track. Point is, cheer up Lamia. I even saw you smile earlier! Made my night.”

“W-what?”

Eric, yawning again, missed her stuttering surprise at this, and also missed how she very nearly tripped over forward.

“Hmm?” He asked, once he’d finished and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Lamia said nothing, and Eric shrugged the moment off.

“Tell you what: tomorrow night you and I are going to sit down and see if we can figure out something for you to occupy your time with. Doesn’t sit right with me to think of you just waiting around twiddling your thumbs - er, hooves - all night if I’m not around and you’re not out there. Got to stay active, Lamia! Otherwise you lose your mind. Trust me! I’d know! Now, I’m heading up, you want a hug before-”

Hugs before bed were a thing in Eric’s house now, since Lamia started visiting and staying over every single day since he’d said she could visit. He was not sure why they had become a thing but she plainly appreciated them so they were a thing.

So much of a thing that he’d barely finished asking before she’d leapt up and wrapped herself around him.

“Steady on, there! Oh you,” he said, squeezing her before peeling her off himself and setting her back down on the floor and giving her a pat on her fluffy, fluffy head.

“I don’t know why you batpony types have this sinister reputation - you’re a bundle of wonderful you are. Don’t ever change. Now! Finally! Nighty night,” he said, determinedly, giving her a wave and then heading for the stairs.

“Goodnight, Eric,” Lamia said, watching him go.

She couldn’t be sure - because she didn’t really have the experience to be sure - but she was starting to get the creeping feeling that she and Eric were looking at something from two wildly different angles and seeing something completely different.

She just wasn’t sure what.

In blood we trust

Author's Note

The shindig here mentioned is an obvious contrivence put together for my own fluffy purposes. I think they have something similar in the show? Some family gathering? I forget.

As with the bar also here mentioned, these things exist purely for my benefit. I wouldn't think about it too much if I were you. All means to an end! That end? Snuggling, obviously.

Also: writing Applejack's speech phonetically. To go whole hog or not? Ah, the eternal struggle.

In blood we trust

From the moment that Eric and Mac had sat down in their usual spot right at the end of the bar, not a word had passed between them. Indeed, neither of them had said a word since entering - the drinks had been ordered with nothing but a nod. The place knew them well enough for that to happen.

All this was perfectly normal.

They sat, not making eye contact, occasionally sipping, soaking up silence.

Eventually though the silence had to break.

“You know Mac, I do love these chats of ours,” Eric said, nursing his glass. About half full, by his estimation.

A solid minute passed.

“E’yup,” said Mac, nodding.

SIlence resumed.

How this particular recurring event had started was not especially edifying, or even especially logical. At first it had simply been a coincidental twist of timing and bar occupancy that had seen both Eric and Big Mac sat beside one another and drinking - just an accident.

However, the accident later repeated, quite by accident, and this time the two of them acknowledged one another’s presence. This was the catalyst - the key! It had all clicked into place from there, and without a word being spoken that time, in that place, on that day of the week had been A Thing.

Sometimes life just worked out that way.

Since then, the two of them had maybe had a single conversation, and even then only if you were to scrape together all the words they’d exchanged during that time and combined them. And were you to have done that, you still wouldn’t have come up with anything you might find useful.

Everything Eric knew about Mac he’d learnt second-hand via outside sources, and not intentionally. Everything Mac knew about Eric was, well, he’d never mentioned knowing anything, but that was hardly conclusive. He might have just been keeping quiet about it.

They both found the whole arrangement utterly priceless, though were both equally aware that were they forced to explain why they would come up short. It was just one of those things. You either got it and didn’t need it explaining, or you didn’t and no amount of explaining would ever clear it up.
Neither of them paid much attention when the dim atmosphere of the was briefly interrupted by the door opening, allowing the tentative entry of some cautious sunlight and a single, hat-wearing pony, who approached.

Neither of them paid much more attention to this, either, assuming that whoever it was was here for someone else. Even when the sound of hooves stopped just behind them they kept up in assuming this, at least until a throat was cleared, at which point they reluctantly looked back to see who it was.

It was Applejack. Obviously.

“Howdy,” she said brightly, said brightness clashing horribly with the dimness, but this sort of place was not Applejack’s sort of place, and she did not get the etiquette.

Eric recognised Applejack from having done one or two things up at the farm in his time. Painting fences, mostly. Perhaps a waste of his more particular talents but an oddly meditative experience all the same.

Anything to do with paint, he was all over it. He wasn’t fussy. That was kind of his thing.

“Hello there,” he said, twisting about properly on his stool and giving a small wave. “Not keeping your brother from doing something important, am I? Tsch, skiving again?”

This last he directed to Mac, who affected a slightly annoyed look at the mere suggestion, making it all worthwhile for Eric.

“Naw, he’s alright - I just finished up early is all. Getting some things together,” she said, briefly lifting her hat up to show that she had stashed a shopping list under it. The list was all ticked off, Eric saw in what scant time he was able to see it before the hat went back down again.

“Farming both looks and sounds exhausting,” Eric said.

“Oh this ain’t for farming. Well, most of it ain’t…” she said, turning aside on realising that she couldn’t in all honesty say it wasn’t all not for farming.

“That so? Don’t keep me in suspense!”

“We’re having kinda a shindig!”

News to Eric, and delightful news at that.

“A shindig? Sounds very nice!” He said.

Applejack and co had always struck Eric as ‘work hard, play hard’ types.

“You’re invited! S’kind of a family affair but, well, friends are family too, I reckon, and Big Mac seems to like you. Won’t shut up about you half the time!”

Hyperbole, of course, for humorous effect.

Eric gave Big Mac a nudge.

“You salty rogue, knew you had a soft spot for me,” he said, then returning his attention to Applejack. “I’d be honoured! Very kind of you. I’ve been to parties, never been to a shindig! Do I have to wear anything special for it?”

“Whatever you like,” Applejack said.

“You may come to regret giving me such freedom. Uh, when? When’s a good time to show up?”

“You can show up anytime tomorrow - shindig runs all day and all night!”

It was kind of a big deal.

Eric accepted this news with a nod and a sip of his drink - happily planning already to roll up just whenever - but then one particular detail actually caught his awareness and he paused, gears clicking in his head. An idea!

“All night, you say? I couldn’t bring a plus one, could I?” He asked.

“Sure! You-” Applejack said, only then perhaps realising where it was that Eric was coming from. “Uh, you’re, ah, talkin’ ‘bout that new friend of yours, ain’t ya? That lives with ya?”

Eric had heard that line before. He gave Applejack some eyebrows, to highlight what he thought of this particular insinuation. When eyebrows failed to properly communicate his point of view he decided to try again, with words:

“She doesn’t live with me, why do people keep saying that? She’s just been staying with me for a couple of days,” he said, raising his glass for another drink.

Then on reflection he clarified:

“Okay, couple weeks maybe.”

Further reflection:

“Coming up on just under a month. Just over? Nearabouts. Still, she’s not living with me! That’s the main point here. I just said that if she wanted to stay over she could, and that’s what she’s been doing.”

“For a month?” Applejack asked, trying to work out if Eric was messing with her or not. He was not.

“Yeah,” he said.

“A whole month? Straight?”

Eric thought about that.

“Don’t think she’s been back to her cave yet, no. But so what? She’s just staying over, not living there. Important,” he said, holding a finger up to really underline how important this bit was.

Applejack shared a look with her brother. Neither of them needed to say anything, which suited Mac just fine.

“Right…uh, sure, don’t see why not,” she said, doing her best to smile reassuringly even if she had immediate misgivings. Eric finished off his drink and set the empty glass down on the bar, thoroughly satisfied.

“Cracking! Thanks for that. I think it’ll be good for her. Can make some other friends! Not really ideal her just having me, you know? That’s not sustainable or healthy. And she’s a lovely girl!” He said. Applejack’s forced smile remained, though now clearly straining.

“Sure she is, sure she is…”

Technically not dishonesty, though skirting close enough for the strain to be obvious on her face. Eric narrowed his eyes.

“I’m sensing something here.”

“It’s nothing, nothing! But, uh, well, it’s, uh-”

Applejack tried to coax assistance out of her brother by use of hard stares, but he defended himself by looking in a different direction. In the event it hardly mattered anyway. Eric figured it out.

“It’s the blood thing again, isn’t it?” He asked.

“Maybe. Kind of. Just a little bit,” Applejack said sheepishly, holding up a hoof. Just something about it really got under her skin.

There were some other issues and hangups but the blood thing was the main issue. Not much use in denying that. Eric sighed.

“There’s some very odd ideas floating around about batponies, I’ve noticed. Yes, Lamia’s dietary requirements might be fairly unique around here but that hardly matters - she’s not just that. Normal people, when they get hungry, don’t just grab whatever’s nearest and tuck in, do they? No-one’s slapping biscuits out of orphan’s mouths when they’re feeling peckish. Yet everyone’s acting like poor Lamia’s a fistful of razorblades sitting on a mousetrap!”

This was such an unusual turn of phrase that Applejack wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it, and her already tenuous grip on what Eric’s point had been slipped, her understanding disappearing somewhere off over the horizon.

So to speak.

“...what?”

Eric realised that he’d rather lost the thread as well.

“Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Good image though, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Best to just roll with it, Applejack felt.

Eric continued:

“Sorry, again. Just seems like I’m the only one around here who even felt like giving Lamia a chance. Poor girl. She deserves better. If you’re not comfortable having her there that’s fine but-”

But what remained to be seen, as Applejack interrupted.

“Naw I’m sorry, she’s more than welcome. You both are. Lookin’ forward to have ya.”

“I’m sure a whale of a time shall be had by all. Does one have a whale of a time at a shindig? Suppose I’ll find out!”

Nods all round. Applejack then turned to Mac.

“I’m not sayin’ it’d be appreciated if you finished up and helped me haul this wagon back on account of you having pulled it down here in the first place and the collar bein’ too big for me to pull it back - though I could if I were forced to; I’m just heavily implyin’ it.”

Big Mac sighed and finished his drink without a word.

Later, Eric was folding his socks. It was the first time he’d ever done it.

“Really not sure what the point of this is, you know,” he said to himself, looking over his results so far. Then he shrugged and continued - started, so he’d finished.

The door to his bedroom creaked open by inches.

“Eric?” Came a quiet voice. Eric looked up.

“Evening Lamia! Still light out - to what do I owe this pleasure?” He asked, beaming. Lamia blushed furiously, unable to keep the smile off her face. Instead, she hid behind her hair again. It was a habit.

“Just woke up early,” she said, creeping in.

This was true, and it was true because she’d set an alarm to do it, borrowing one that Eric had had just lying around. He’d heard a ringing some minutes previously, but had thought nothing of it.

“Ah, one of those days, eh? Fair play, Lamia.”

Lamia circled around the room and hopped up onto the bed beside Eric. She’d already slept in it, so just coming on in and hopping up wasn’t that big of a deal, and it wasn’t the first time anyway.

“What are you doing?” She asked, tucking her hair back and peering over Eric’s arm as he continued folding socks.

“Folding my socks,” he said, folding socks.

“Why?”

“I really don’t know. Just killing time, I think. Turns out this isn’t my idea of a good time. And now I know! See? Valuable experience.”

He grabbed a loose one and proffered it to her.

“Want a sock?”

She took it, mostly because she was caught off guard, and held it between both hooves. There it dangled, and she stared at it with wide eyes, unsure of how delicately she should treat this gift, assuming it was a gift.

Eric, for his part, was watching her, thinking thoughts.

“You should put it on,” he said, this being the culmination of those thoughts.

“What?”

“Just try it, it’ll be a laugh.”

“Um...okay…”

Having lived with Eric for a little while now - or, rather, having been staying over consistently, to be more accurate - Lamia was aware of how socks worked. Not that they were that big of a mystery in the first place, it was just that this was her first time encountering them. Putting one one, though, was another matter entirely, and something she had immediate problems with.

Eric watched her struggle for a minute or so before pity forced him to help. With his help she succeeded, ending up with a sock up to knee on one leg, and also ending up a bit red in the face.

“That’s adorable,” Eric said.

“I feel silly…”

“Of course you feel silly, you’ve only got one sock on! Still, thanks for being a good sport, I can just - there you go,” he said, tugging it off while making a mental note to either purchase or knit socks just for Lamia at some point, him imaging that a full set would really suit her.

Just at an outside guess.

His sock was a write-off, of course, stretched to buggery. But it had been worth it.

Lamia then yawned.

“Aww! Big yawn for a little pony. You sure you don’t want to go back to bed?” He asked, giving her a scratch, her head pushing up into his head at once.

“I’m fine,” she said, her yawn still trailing off.

“If you say so, Lammy,” Eric said, not really noticing what it was he’d said. Then he remembered something. “Oh yes, before it slips my mind again: I’ve got something short-notice to tell you.”

He was still scratching while saying this, Lamia’s eyes happily closed as she settled further across his lap.

“Oh?”

“Yes! You and I have been invited to a party tomorrow. Big one, too. Runs all day and - this is the good bit - all night! We can both make it!”

Her eyes opened, and her sudden disquiet was sufficient enough to overcome the ecstasy of the scratching.

“...a party?” She asked. She’d heard of these.

“Yes! Eric said again, beaming. “Big one, like I say. Up at the Apple’s place. And, well, I say party but technically speaking it’s a shindig. How that’ll change things up I’m not sure, but I’m keen to find out!”

Lamia was not experiencing keeness.

“Will there...be many ponies there?” She asked.

“A few, I expect. Kind of the point. I think it’d be good for you to make friends who aren’t me. Can’t just have me!” He said.

Lamia nudged his hand away and crawled more fully onto his lap, sitting up and resting against him. Again, this was fairly normal behaviour for her by this point, and Eric didn’t think much of it.

“But I like you…” She said.

“I know you do, Lamia, and I like you too! But what if something happened to me, eh?”

The thought plainly upset her, so Eric quickly carried on:

“Uh, not that it will, obviously, I just think it’d be good if you had maybe some more friends. Even just one more! Friends are great, Lamia. We’re friends, right?” He asked.

“Yeah…”

“See! Exactly. So more can only be a good thing.”

She did not answer this and just stayed quiet, head resting against him, one ear flicking. She was not exhibiting the level of enthusiasm that Eric might have hoped she would. Indeed, she seemed to be exhibiting quite the opposite.

He put an arm around her, gave her a squeeze.

“Hey,” he said. “No pressure, honestly. If you don’t want to go then I can just mosey on up during the day and then be back here in the evening to hang out with you, no harm done. Okay?”

Again no response. Eric gave her another gentle squeeze and managed to coax her to look up at him.

“Do you - d-do you think they’ll like me?” She asked.

“Of course they will! They’re lovely, you’re lovely - how could it not work? I think they just have some weird ideas about you, that’s all. Once they meet you? All blown away. Much better!”

In Eric’s head this outcome seemed obvious and inevitable. In Lamia’s head not so much. In reality? Could go either way. Or any way, really. Reality was unpredictable and owed nothing to anybody.

Lamia was again quiet, thinking more, one hoof rubbing over the other.

“O-okay…” she said, eventually.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said, quickly adding: “You’ll stay with me? At the party?”

“Course! Not going to abandon you! You can even ride around on my shoulders again, if you want. Whatever works for you.”

He knew how much she liked doing that, even if he didn’t know why she liked doing that.

Lamia felt better about the prospect of going to the party. Not good - she was bricking it in her own quiet, subdued way at the very thought of being around so many ponies - but she felt better about it, which was something.

If Eric was with her she could do just about anything, she thought.

Headwaters of the river of blood

Author's Note

How long can a man live in the dark?

Headwaters of the river of blood

Turned out that Applejack’s family was considerably larger than Eric might have ever guessed. There were dozens of them! Scores, even! The shindig was a veritable profusion of Apples and extant relations.

Eric made a point to talk to a bunch of them and found them all delightful.

He’d planned on wandering on down - or moseying on down, if it was more appropriate - sometime near enough to night, but Lamia had continued her sudden and inexplicable habit or waking up comparatively early and so it had been late evening instead.

“Are you sure you’re okay with going? He’d asked her again, kneeling down the better to be on her level.

“I said it was okay…” Lamia had said, squirming a little under his scrutiny and then squeaking when he gave her a pat on the head.

“I know, you’re a trooper - was just checking you hadn’t changed your mind. Because you are allowed to, you know.”

“I know…”

And that had been that, off they’d gone. Lamia had flapped along beside him up until the point of the noise of the shindig became impossible to ignore, at which she had alighted on his shoulders and curled up there, head tucked in against his neck, tail hanging down his front.

Eric and his batpony scarf of sorts had attracted a few odd looks here and there, but no unkind comments. Those who were aware of Lamia felt it would have been rude to call attention to it, and those who were not also felt it would have been rude, but for different reasons.

None of which registered on Eric, of course, who was just happy to be meeting and mingling with new people, drinking free drinks, making the occasional horse pun, chatting idly about his craft with anyone who asked and generally having a good time of things.

He even managed to coax a word or two out of Lamia here or there, even if that word was usually just ‘hello’ delivered very quickly before she dug her face back into his neck and took no further part in the conversation. It was something, at least.

Not long after all this mingling had finally exhausted him, Eric was sat a comfortable enough distance away from the bulk of the shindig activity, balancing on his lap a plate on which was resting a slice of apple quiche.

“Who knew apples were so versatile?” He said, more to himself than to Lamia, before carving himself off a little with his fork and giving it a try.

He chewed.

“Well, I’m sure someone will like it,” he said, putting his fork down on his plate and the plate on the table nearby. Then, after some further consideration, he pushed the plate a little further away, in case anyone thought he might still want it.

“Hello Eric!” Someone said, pulling his attention away from curious culinary experimentation and towards the two ponies on approach. He saw them, and a few seconds after he saw them his brain ground into gear and rustled up their names - Pinkie and Twilight, yes, those two. He did know them both.

“Hello girls! Or should I say howdy? Important to stay on-theme.”

If he’d had a wide-brimmed hat he would have tugged it in greeting. But he did not. So he didn’t.

“Howdy,” Pinkie said with an unusual level of seriousness, pulling off a very impressive quick little two-step - or should that be four-step? - maneuver which obviously taxed her concentration if the tongue poking out the corner of her mouth was anything to go by.

“You don’t have to do that anytime somepony says howdy…” Twilight hissed at her but Pinkie continued regardless.

“It’s the way of their clan,” she said, which was maybe true, probably not. By the time she wrapped up the maneuver she was lightly out of breath and gave a small bow.

Eric had no idea what had just happened or why, but this was hardly unusual and no reason not to appreciate it.

“I’d clap but I’ve only got one hand free, so please accept this hearty thumbs-up for a job well done, Pinkie,” he said, giving a hearty thumbs up.

His other hand - and indeed, his whole other arm - was presently occupied in supporting the lump inside his jacket.

“Yes! It was hearty!” Pinkie said, pumping a hoof.

Twilight decided to just gloss over all of this.

“Enjoying the party?” She asked.

“It’s a shindig,” both Eric and Pinkie said in immediate, perfect unison. It was such an unexpected stereoscopic experience in instant correction that Twilight was momentarily completely unbalanced.

“Um, right,” Twilight said, rubbing an ear with her hoof.

“He just said it’s important to stay on-theme!” Pinkie said exasperatedly, gesturing to Eric, who nodded.

“I did! I did just say that!” He said. Twilight sighed.

“Alright! Enjoying the shingdig, then?”

“Yes, yes I am. Thank you for asking, Twilight,” Eric said, now all sweetness. Twilight accepted this answer, and then looked down to the lump in his jacket.

“And how is, uh-”

“Lamia.”

“How is Lamia enjoying it?”

“We can probably ask her,” Eric said, giving the lump a quick and gentle bounce. “How about you, Lamia? Enjoying the shindig?”

At some point after Eric had sat down Lamia had removed herself from across his shoulders and had instead taken up residence in the crook of his arm, balancing on his hip beneath his jacket. Hence the lump. At his sudden attention she stirred, peering out cautiously.

“Enjoying the shindig, Lamia?” He asked again, looking down at her.

She took a moment to look back up at him happily enough before regarding Pinkie and Twilight with more restraint and wariness. She did not know them.

“...yes,” she said, directing the answer up at Eric before retreating a little.

“Good. And are you sure you’re comfortable in there? You feel a little precarious.”

She really did. How she was staying where she was balanced was a mystery to Eric

“I’m fine,” she said.

“And, ah, Lamia, how are you finding living with Eric?” Twilight asked, hoping to keep the ball rolling. Lamia had not expected to be addressed directly.

“Um. It’s nice,” smiling a little at the thought of just how nice it actually was - a level of niceness she had difficulty properly summing up on the spot, but which she could feel in her bones.

Eric no need here to puncture the mood by pointing out she did not live with him, but was just staying with him.

“That’s good. You know Pinkie, I’m surprised you haven’t thrown her a party yet!” Twilight said, giving Pinkie a playful nudge - all in good fun!

Pinkie though was confused.

“Her cave is outside my partyorial jurisdiction,” she said.

“Patryorial?” Eric asked, having never heard this perfectly cromulent word before.

“Cave?” Twilight asked, unaware of where a cave was meant to fit into this at all.

“Yes,” Pinkie said, not see any reason to go further. She grasped the situation perfectly.

The three of them ground to a halt.

“...right, well, okay then. That clears that up,” Twilight said. “I’m - I’m going to go and get some cider. Would you like anything, Eric? Lamia?”

He held up his free hand.

“Very kind of you to offer but no, I’m quite alright,” he said.

“I - I’m fine. Thank you,” Lamia said. Much as she did not drink tea she also did not drink cider. Took Twilight a second to catch onto this.

“Oh, right. Uh, sorry. I’ll go. Have fun now!”

And so off Twilight went and, perhaps a second later, Pinkie gave out a quick ‘Bye!’ before hopping away as the winds of fate dictated she should, once again leaving Eric and Lamia on their own.

“Lovely girls,” he said.

“They seem nice,” Lamia said from beneath his jacket, slowly emerging out onto his lap and stretching out her wings briefly before settling down somewhat more comfortably, cooing as Eric idly started the ear scratching. He’d barely noticed his hand doing it.

“They are indeed very nice. There’s a lot of that going around.”

They stayed there sitting, soaking up the ambience at a distance.

Some time later though what had been a constant, churning background music provided by a band with a surprising number of jugs among their more orthodox instruments paused as the musicians rearranged. Once the music resumed it was louder, quicker, and ponies were now actively dancing to it.

A schedule part of the shindig, not that Eric was aware. He just started tapping his foot along to it.

It was only a whine from his lap that alerted him to the fact that Lamia was apparently now in some distress.

“Are you alright?” He asked, immediately concerned.

“It’s loud…”

Her ears were, he noticed belatedly, rather larger than most other pony’s...

“You want to go?” He asked.

“No. Yes. Not if you don’t,” she said, wincing.

Eric did not, at least not yet, so something else had to be done about it.

He looked around, but saw no immediate solutions to hand. Cotton candy here and there, brought along and provided by Pinkie or just having spontaneously generated in her presence - possible solution? No, no probably not. That would just cause more problems.

Then again, there was at least one option he had quite literally to hand - his hands.

He put them over Lamia’s ears. It seemed to work. She tensed, then relaxed, then relaxed further still, her look of discomfort disappearing. Thus protected, she was easily able to endure the loudness, even if she found the accompanying dancing baffling to watch. She’d never seen anything like it.

The rambunctious music lasted a little while, then moved onto something gentler and slower, allowing Eric to remove his hands, Lamia twisting around on his lap to look up at him again, smiling that toothy smile of hers. She did this a lot.

“Thank you,” she said. She did that quite a lot, too.

“Think nothing of it.”

“Um, Eric?” Asked an interloper in a soft, soft voice that came out of nowhere.

Lamia, taken by surprise, let out an ‘eep’ (distinct from a ‘meep’) and instantly zipped back inside Eric’s jacket again, forcing him to hurriedly put his arm back to keep her balanced again. Once that had been taken care of he was actually able to pay attention to who’d spoken to him. She was yellow.

“Ah! Hello Fluttershy! Didn’t hear you coming. Enjoying the shindig?”

Fluttershy was something of a repeat customer for Eric, and not in the sense of him and her having a specific deal set up, as with Mortis, but more in the sense that she just seemed to have an awful lot of things she wanted him to come over to her house and paint.

Birdhouses, furniture, rooms, that one time she’d just wanted him and her to paint eggs all day for some reason - the list was voluminous. He’d started giving her a discount after a while, feeling bad for taking her money when she was just such pleasant company and always insisted on hanging around and chatting with him while he worked.

Very nice girl, in his estimation.

“Yes, it’s fun. Um,” she said, eyeing the lump in his jacket doubtfully for a moment before standing up just a smidgen straighter for whatever reason. “W-would you like to dance? I-if you don’t mind, of course.”

She then hid behind her mane. Eric, who’d got used to Lamia doing this every few minutes, found it just as endearing as he always did. Ponies really were an adorable bunch.

“Dance?” he asked.

For a split-second the sheer wonderful absurdity of considering how on Earth someone of his size was supposed to dance with someone of her size made Eric forget that he still had Lamia huddled close to his side.

Then he remembered, and the point became moot - he could hardly abandon her just like that, and engaging in dancing while just holding her tucked under an arm or having her across his shoulders would be a little awkward for all concerned, and perhaps a little rude.

Frankly, more trouble than it was worth, sadly. He gave a rueful smile.

“Ah, perhaps another time?

Fluttershy was plainly crestfallen, but hid it well.

“Oh, o-okay. That’s okay! You - I - you have fun!”

She then beat a hasty retreat.

“You still want me to come over this weekend? Do that thing?” Eric called after her, but she was gone.

She had not specified what it was she’d wanted done, but that wasn’t unusual. Eric took most things as they came.

Perplexed by her sudden appearance and equally sudden exit Eric frown to himself on confusion. Had he missed something there? If so, what?

Ah, if it was important someone would tell him, he was sure.

Within his jacket Lamia stirred again, head poking out just enough for her to watch Fluttershy disappearing into the shindig crowds.

“Who was that?” She asked.

“Hmm? Oh yes. That was Fluttershy. Lovely girl.”

There were no such things as unlovely girls in Eric’s world. No unlovely people at all, in fact. It was an attitude that had seemed quite outlandish back home. Here though, not so much. One of the reasons why he liked it.

Once again Lamia wriggled back out onto Eric’s lap, this time sitting facing him.

“You didn’t have to stay with me,” she said, having heard what Fluttershy had proposed, having experienced a moment of dread on hearing it, too.

“Nonsense! I said I wasn’t going to leave you all on your own, and I’m not sure the dance would have worked with me carrying you about - think Fluttershy might have been quite confused about that, too!”

Confused here being used as a synonym for ‘put out’ or possibly even ‘upset’, were Eric in the mood use such strong language.

He thought about this.

“Unless she’d have been fine with it. Would she have been fine with it? Hmm, too late to know now, oh well. Let’s assume yes. That’s how dancing works, isn’t it? Typically? One-on-one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmm, neither do I…”

They went quiet, Eric idly watching those at the shindig who were actually dancing, Lamia watching Eric.

“Probably just as well,” Eric then said, apparently out of nowhere. Lamia cocked her head.

“Why?”

“I’d probably end up crushing the poor girl. There’s something of a size difference! And I wasn’t exactly a dancer to start with. I mean, sure, could have been fun, but I’d likely make a hash of it somehow. Two left feet and all that.”

Dancing was not Eric’s forte. He was down for it whenever, to be sure, but wasn’t so deluded as to think of what he did as anything close to good. Fun, mind.

Lamia thought about this.

“W-we could dance later? I-if you want. Back home, I mean. It’d be like practising.”

Lamia thought of Eric’s house as home. He did not notice this, mostly because it was too subtle and natural a conversational detail for him to have picked up on, partly because he was concentrating on what she’d said.

Not only a fun thing to do with a friend close to hand - Lamia - but also possibly useful in making it up to Fluttershy - another friend - later! It could only be good! No disadvantages here that he could see, and no issues whatsoever.

“Practise dancing, eh? Not a bad idea, Lamia, not a bad idea at all. Maybe tomorrow though, eh? After I’ve had a rest.”

“Okay,” she said. She could deal with that.

“Great! It’s a date, heh. You know how to dance?” He asked and Lamia shook her head.

“No.”

“Ah, good. Was afraid you might show me up! Two amateurs crashing about I can handle. I will push the furniture back, though. Just to be safe, eh?”

He grinned. Lamia grinned. She was better than grinning than Eric, something he’d be the first to admit, and he’d also admit that he really rather liked it when she did it.

Meant he had to be doing something right.

3 Inches of Blood

Author's Note

Of course, the balancing act is always a question of drawing out the cluelessness enough for sufficient, delicious tension to mount without overextending it into horrible, thumping agony.

A tough sell, made tougher still by the fact the game is rigged from the start being as how everyone reading has a different level of tolerance. But that's stories for you, isn't it?

Anyway, melancholic backstory incoming - hopefully it wasn't too hammy! Hah!

3 Inches of Blood

The ‘practise dancing’ went about as well as could be expected. Which is to say it was a clumsy mess, but it was a clumsy mess that they both thoroughly enjoyed.

Space was not an issue. With all the furniture pushed to the walls Eric’s lounge provided more than enough of that. The issue was twofold - first, relative size. Second, completely ignorance of anything to do with dancing. Combined, these were significant obstacles.

Fortunately, Eric was enthusiastic enough to overcome these obstacles, not to mention enthusiastic enough to carry Lamia with him, so to speak.

“Alright, so, footwork first I think, yes? Let’s just see how we go.”

“Um, okay,” said Lamia, who might have been starting to have second thoughts at the start, what with having Eric looming over her so.

Having him sitting down with her sat on his lap was one thing. HIm standing up? Quite another.

Little late to be backing out now though.

He’d been fiddling with a gramaphone, too. A very quaint device, and one he was very fond of. Especially as it gave all of his records from back home - well, technically records handed down, so his now - a new lease of life. This meant that practise would not be conducted in silence.

“Now I’m not saying we should move with the music,” he said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m just saying they it be kind of like guidelines. Now let’s see…”

What followed could not even charitably be called dancing, but on the plus side Eric did not step on Lamia, so there was that. And, more positively, Lamia very quickly realised that the main point of the thing was to have fun. Which she did.

That it was just the two of them in their home - or what she thought of as home now, at least, so basically the same thing - helped immensely. Difficult to worry when she thought about it like that.

“I think you’re picking this up faster than I am, you know,” Eric said once the first track had finished, signalling a good point to have a little break. Lamia giggled - actually giggled! It was a wonderful sound.

“You were good too!” She said, brightly.

“Ah, but not as good as you! Let’s keep going, eh? Next track, next track…”

He pawed through his singles and swapped them around. Lamia had never heard human music before, but then she hadn’t really ever heard any music before last night, or at least not clearly and not for a while, so she didn’t have much of a frame of reference.

Once Eric had got the next record spinning he moved back to her.

“Right! Again!”

Again, not dancing. Again, not really the point.

“Alright!” Eric said once the new track wound down, just the tiniest bit breathless now. “Think we had a little rhythm going there, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Lamia said, hopping in place, warmed up. She even bumped a hoof against Eric’s fist when he extended it out to her, it just came naturally.

“See! Improvement! Go us!” He said, pushing his hair back and blowing out a breath.

“Whew. Back in a sec, Lamia,” he said, heading for the kitchen. In his absence Lamia went through a few of the quote-unquote ‘steps’ they done, prancing in place and smiling happily to herself.

Eric returned shortly with a glass of water, which he draine

“You need anything? Need a drink?” He asked, holding the empty glass to his forehead, for the cools.

Mention of this did put a little bit of a dent in Lamia’s exceptionally good mood, especially as she actually did, it having been a good few days now since her last meal. She chewed briefly on her lip before making a decision, then nodding.

“Hop up,” Eric said, taking a knee and sticking out his neck.

Reasoning that doing it quickly would give her less time to think about it - and thus feel bad about it, for reasons she had difficulty fully defining - Lamia scrambled and flapped her way up his body and clamped onto his neck.

“Ah, almost forgot how that felt…” Eric said, moving an arm around to help support her, and on this arm she settled.

A quiet minute or so two of slurping followed before Lamia detached herself, though it was an effort of will to do so. He really did taste quite uniquely delicious. Though that might have been bias on her part. Not that she cared.

“Phew, need a little sit down now,” Eric said, pushing back onto his feet and moving over to where he’d pushed his sofa, flopping onto it. Lamia followed closely, jumping up beside him.

“Are you okay?” She asked, instantly concerned. He waved her off.

“Yes, plenty fine. Just tired anyway, then that. It’s been a while now, hasn’t it?”

It had been, for Eric at least. His neck had looked practically spotless!

He yawned and when he finished yawning he found Lamia still sitting beside him, looking worried. Chuckling, he gave her mane a ruffle and she tried ineffectually to fend him off.

“You’re a worrier, you. I ever told you that?” He asked.

“Only about you.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

“...if you say so. Anyway! Dance practise! Capital idea that was, Lamia, well done you. I think we really tore the place up. And on our first go, no less.”

“I had fun,” Lamia said, smiling now, less worried.

“As did I! Definitely knackered now though, definitely bedtime - you tuckered me out, Lamia!”

“Bedtime?” She asked, less sadly, more resigned. Eric nodded.

“Bedtime,” he said.

Lamia promptly leapt on him to get one last cuddle in, something at which he could only laugh.

“I’m only going upstairs,” he said once it came time to pry her off. She whined a little, but couldn’t really argue with that. He rose, popped her down on the sofa - which he figured he could move back tomorrow, if he cared enough to do so - waved goodnight, and plodded upstairs to quickly shower and then fall into bed.

And in the darkness of his bedroom, in the comfiness of his sheets, thoughts that had been burbling away harmless at the borders of his brain came creeping in towards the central portions, causing trouble as they went. Things that he’d been able to ignore in the sunshine, when ‘dancing’, when having a laugh.

They stayed vague and shapeless because he deliberately avoided paying too much attention to them, but the effort he needed to ignore them was enough for him to be aware that they were there at all.

Like being aware of something because you can notice its absence, as it were.

Eric’s optimism was the natural outgrowth of an inherently sunny disposition, but its careful maintenance the result of years of careful practise, and these sorts of mental gymnastics were one of the results. An unavoidable byproduct. Normally, nowhere near an issue. Now? Suddenly? Out of nowhere? Now they seemed to want to be an issue.

And the issue was something like this:

Lamia was a lovely girl, wasn’t she?

Everyone in Ponyville was nice, obviously - nice and lovely. To a fault! This Eric knew. But Lamia especially, yes? Fast friends, him and her, and under what were quite unusual circumstances by anyone’s standards.

But that in itself wasn’t unusual, was it? He had lots of friends! Lots of lovely friends. Most of which he’d made fairly quickly in his own inimitable way.

But none quite so inseparable, and none who looked quite so excited to see him and so sad to see him go, day after day.

He’d put it down to having helped her out, at first, having provided a meal. But he didn’t do that as much now, and she still lit up whenever he was around. So then what?

It meant something, it was pointing to something! And he knew what it was! He also just knew it couldn’t be that, so it clearly had to be something else. Just his brain false-firing and going in the wrong directions. It did that sometimes. Didn’t everyone’s?

“My imagination must be getting the better of me,” he said to himself, shaking his head, grinning at the flat-out absurdity of what sort of thoughts were suggesting themselves, all of which he dismissed out of hand. Absurd!

Then he paused, thought a little more, frowned. Maybe not that absurd?

Then it passed, and the grin came back. Or most of it, at least.

“No, no, definitely my imagination. Ah, these late-night thoughts. We’re all good friends, yes. That’s it. Yes.”

Didn’t sound quite as sure the second time, though.

Took him a while to get to sleep, too.

The next day, on his way home from finishing up the ceiling of the chap who’d wanted stars - that job had turned out very well indeed, by Eric’s estimation - he picked up some stuff with which to knit, having it in his head that socks surely couldn’t be that hard to make.

And why would he be wanting to make socks? Why, as a present for Lamia, of course.

This seemed obvious to him. That singular sock of his she’d put on had certainly suited her, in his opinion, so a full set made to actually fit her could only be a massive improvement. And what better way of expressing one-hundred percent uncomplicated Platonic friendship than by giving a surprise gift of socks?

Eric could think of no better way.

Eric also wondered why he’d had to be so exact about the nature of their relationship.

Tsch, his imaginating again. Honestly.

Additionally, of course, the slightly selfish desire to see how she looked in all socks, as Eric assumed - with what he thought was fairly good reason - that it would be the most adorable thing he would have seen in his life up to that point. But that was a secret reason and no-one would ever know it.

The decision to make them himself had been an idle one. How hard could it be, really, he’d thought to himself. Answer? Harder than he’d expected.

Knitting was not something he was at all familiar with, a fact which made itself abundantly clear the more he read his beginners guide to knitting.

“Probably should have done the reading before buying all the gear,” he said to himself, turning a page and seeing that things did not get any less complicated for him. “Mother always made this look so easy…”

So engrossed was he in his reading that he failed to hear Lamia coming down the stairs, only noticing when she came padding softly into view, blanket still halfway wrapped around her and trailing behind. Not until she touched him on the knee did he snap back to the moment.

“Hmm? Oh! Oh, Lamia, another nightmare?”

He could tell just by looking, the look on her face. Lamia nodded, wordlessly climbing into his lap, Eric bundling her up in the blanket.

Not a duvet. His spare duvet had proved excessive, given her fluff, and so had been swapped out for something lighter. This had worked much better.

This would be the third or fourth time this had happened, by Eric’s less-than-reliable count, and what happened each time was basically the same: cuddles and moral support. Eric felt he was capable of providing these.

“There there, it’s alright, I’ve got you,” he said, giving her just a little bit of a rock, making sure the blanket-bundle was done up right.

He still had no idea what it was she had nightmares about, but that wasn’t really important. That she had them all was what was important. Details were for her, he was just there to make her feel better again afterwards.

That was his opinion at least. Lamia was coming from another direction.

She gave a sniff. She’d thought about the next bit.

“E-Eric?” She said.

“Hmm?”

“Can I tell you what my nightmare was about?”

“Of course you can, but don’t feel you have to,” he said.

“I w-want to tell you.”

“Okay then,” he said, smiling and propping her up a smidgen better on his lap in her little bundle. She wiggled around to free her forelegs from the blanket and took a moment to order her thoughts and compose herself.

Briefly, Eric wondered whether Luna had stepped into the breach on Lamia’s nightmares at any point. He’d heard that it was something she did, though he had no experience of it himself. Then again, he reasoned, she couldn’t be everywhere with everyone every night. Or maybe she could?

He didn’t know, and he was okay with that. So he just kept his mouth shut and listened to Lamia.

“It was the same. Usually they’re the same. They’re about - about where I lived before I came here.”

Not strictly true. The nightmares themselves were, in the way of nightmares, jumbling collections of imagery that made sense only while asleep combined with a blanketing feeling that got its message across directly. But she knew what it related to, and that was what she was talking about.

“Oh, okay,” Eric said, not having expected that. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he had expected anyway. Falling? Wouldn’t make much sense.

“I never learned what it was called,” Lamia sniffled. “But it was far from here. Quiet.”

Sounded alright to Eric. So far.

“Everything was fine, everything was normal. I’d go out and I’d try and sometimes ponies would say yes and it would be fine. There was a foal, too.”

Unusual detail.

“Oh?”

Lamia nodded.

“Sometimes they’d stay up late, even though they shouldn’t. Reading books. I saw them through their window sometimes. They waved at me. They were nice.”

Eric had the impression that this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. He didn’t like stories without happy endings, though he grudgingly admitted that they did exist. Even here, apparently.

“But then one day everypony just stopped saying yes. I don’t know why. First it was a week, then two. No-one came out at night anymore. I was so hungry.”

Eric wondered - briefly, idly, as was his custom - whether Lamia was capable of taking blood from anything other than ponies and humans, but felt it might be insensitive to ask. If she could, she would have, surely? She was the expert, after all.

Besides, he was mostly too busy feeling bad for her to ask, and so just held her more tightly.

“Then one night I was out a-and I saw the foal. Outside. They’d come out because they’d seen me and could tell I was hungry. S-said they wanted to help.”

Eric could kind of see where this was going.

“And they said t-they’d read about b-batponies and that it was fine and that I c-could have a little bit. I tried to tell them no! But they said t-they didn’t think it was fair I was hungry…”

Sounded like a good kid in Eric’s books. Good head on their shoulders.

“A-and I didn’t want to b-but I was so hungry! And - and…”

Plainly this was not a memory Lamia enjoyed revisiting.

“I didn’t hurt them,” she said, emphatically, in case Eric had been concerned about it. He hadn’t, the thought not even having crossed his mind. But still. Lamia continued: “I only had a little, a tiny bit. I was thankful. But it was afterwards…”

Eric had the impression that there were layers of context here that he, as someone who did not suck the blood directly out of people's’ necks, was missing. He could imagine that doing so from a child would leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth - to speak - but maybe he was wrong? Or maybe it was just Lamia? Poor, unfairly guilt-ridden Lamia.

“Afterwards their parents and some others came to where I was living...” Lamia said, rubbing a foreleg nervously at the mere memory.

“Oh,” Eric said, really not liking where this was going now.

“They thought I’d t-trick the foal, or forced them...they were angry at me…wanted me to leave...”

Eric did not like where this had gone.

“I tried to tell them I didn’t hurt them but they didn’t listen. They just kept shouting...”

Eric frowned. What a shameful breakdown in communication.

“Didn’t they ask the kid?” He asked.

“They did, but they didn’t listen…”

Unhelpful.

There was no bathos in this story at all. Eric was at a loss. Normally he’d expect at least something to take the edge off. Someone farting, maybe? If one of the ponies involved had been wearing trousers having them suddenly fall down?

But no, nothing. Nothing for him to work with. The story was just a stupid mess. Not in that it in itself was stupid - it was plainly something that had cut Lamia deep - more than the events in it were boneheaded and easily avoidable, but had happened anyway. Such was life.

“So you left?”

“I had to. Nopony ever said yes after that. Sometimes they threw things…”

Eric did not like this story. He had trouble believing it could even have happened here! What rank foolishness had gripped these ponies? How had they so utterly failed to see Lamia meant no harm at all? Why had their singularly failed to actually listen to what answers this lovely child had provided?

Tsch. Lots of tsch. Eric was not a happy boy.

“You poor girl. No-one deserves that,” he said, cuddling Lamia even more tightly than before.
Unable to really think of anything else he could say right then to express his support Eric instead bent down a little and planted what he thought of as a nice, friendly, chaste and thoroughly innocent peck just on Lamia’s head.

Lamia did not receive it as nice, friendly, chaste or thoroughly innocent, and at once had almost entirely forgotten about the nightmare and, indeed, the whole sordid anecdote behind it.

It was only after he’d done it that Eric had second thoughts, and by then it was too late. He just hoped that Lamia didn’t read too much into what he’d done, or that he himself read too much into what he’d done. Too late, again, and too late on both counts.

Neither of them said anything about it though, of course, and both just outwardly pretended nothing had happened. Eventually, enough time had passed to allow them to pretend this enough to someway believe it. This meant they could talk again.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Eric said. He hadn’t heard her, he just gave what he hoped was a reply that would fit. It did, and Lamia nuzzled into him for a moment before trying - and failing - to disentangle herself from the blanket wrapped around her.

“Want to go back to bed?” Eric asked. She nodded.

“Want, uh, want to sleep in mine again?” He offered, remembering how that had apparently helped. Hadn’t seemed as inexplicably odd to him the first time. Foreign thoughts were intruding, nibbling. It was confusing.

Lamia thought about his offer, but shook her head.

“Alright. Okay. I’ll carry you up.”

“You don’t-”

“I know, I know, but you’re already all wrapped up. It’s fine. Come on.”

And so Eric carried her upstairs into his box room - now far more of a fully-finished spare bedroom than it had been not even two months ago - and put her back into bed, unrolling the blanket and tucking her in.

Once that was done he wasn’t sure how best to conclude things and just sort of loomed awkwardly over her.

“Um,” he said. “Sweeter dreams, Lamia?”

He was not sure why he’d phrased this as a question.

Lamia just smiled, nodded, closed her eyes and Eric took this as his cue to leave. He was stopped by the door though, on hearing:

“Eric?”

“Hmm?”

A pause, Lamia choosing her words.

“...thank you,” she said, at length. Not what she’d been wanting to say, but she hadn’t know what she’d been wanting to say so it was really her only option.

“Could have sworn you already said that,” Eric said, resting on the doorframe with one arm.

“Thank you again, then,” she, sticking out her tongue at him. First time she’d done that. Worked, too, in helping Eric not think too much about excessive thanks.

“Heh, it’s alright. You’re alright. Anything you need, I’ll be around, okay?”

“Okay,” Lamia said, rolling over and pulling the blanket up around her.

After that Eric went back downstairs and made himself a particularly strong cup of tea for himself before resuming reading his book about knitting. Aggressively.

Lamia did not go back to sleep. Partly this was nerves, partly this was plan she was rapidly hatching. If she stayed awake now she would be tired enough to sleep through the night, which would mean she could wake up with at least some energy for the day.

Daytime was a time when she could do something. Because she had to do something.

This was unsustainable, what was happening. It was making parts of her ache in ways she could not adequately explain, ways she had no experience of. And it was only getting worse.

She had to do something about it.

World painted blood

Author's Note

I wouldn't think too deeply on the socks thing, if I were you.

It's just a means to an end.

World painted blood

Perhaps a week prior, Lamia had found one of Eric’s hoodies just lying around.

These were old items of his, his tastes having moved more now onto jackets, and they mainly hung around for him to wear when he was feeling lazy or had an inkling he was going to get messy. This one he’d left around because he’d still been feeling lazy once he’d taken it off.

Without thinking much about it Lamia had picked it up and wriggled it on over her head. It fitted pretty well, being as how it had been made for someone bigger, and she found it warm and comfortable. And it also smelt of Eric - a definite plus for her.

It was only after Eric had found her wearing it that she remembered that she probably should have asked his permission first so, sheepishly, she’d asked for it after the fact.

Eric had obviously said yes, entirely comfortable with this fait accompli, and indeed he did her one better - carefully cutting out some slits in the back of the thing so that her wings could more comfortably fit through and out.

She was horrified that he’d done this, but he shrugged her horror off.

“Looks good on you,” he’d said with a wink, and she had been too busy blushing to press her argument that he hadn’t needed to, and that had been that.

Now, it came in handy, because now Lamia was planning on sneaking out during the daytime, and the hoody would be excellent to hide in while she did it.

Daylight was not harmful to batponies. They just disliked brightness, and it tended to give them a headache. Lamia knew this from experience.

Unusually, it was a somewhat cloudy day - set to rain later - which meant it wasn’t as bright as it typically was, but still far brighter than Lamia was used to or comfortable with. She ended up also borrowing a pair of Eric’s sunglasses, which inexplicably fitted her, much to her surprise.

These, combined with having the hood pulled up, proved adequate.

Waiting until she heard Eric leave to go and do whatever it was he was doing on that particular day Lamia hung around until she felt sure he was properly gone then exited via the window, as she usually did.

Her plan was a fairly simple one, but then she didn’t really know what other options she had available. She was going to go to the big crystal castle thing and ask Princess Twilight for advice.

The reasons for this were, well, fairly simple.

For one, Lamia had learnt that Twilight was a Princess and the Princess of Friendship at that, so it stood to reason that Twilight would be a good person to ask about this particular issue, being as how Eric and her were friends and all that. That much was obvious.

For another, Lamia had at least met Twilight once. Mostly. Kind of. And she’d seemed nice enough and not especially threatening or likely to yell at her. Definite positives.

For a third, the big crystal place was big and easy to find. So the plan should be easy. Look for big crystal place. Go to big crystal place. Knock on door. Go inside. Ask questions. Find solutions. Missing step. Success.

Or something like that.

It was the best she had been able to come up with in the time available.

Keeping her head down barring - the times she had to look up to find out where she was - Lamia went straight there, trying to ignore anyone who might have been looking her way, which wasn’t a whole lot of ponies.

On arrival she knocked at the doors, waited, knocked again, waited some more, cautiously opened one door and then crept inside as quietly as she could, timorously calling out:

“Hello?” To no response.

Spike, incidentally, was out that day.

Not really sure that she was meant to be inside, Lamia wandered around constantly expecting to be caught and thrown out. This did not happen. Instead what happened was that, before too long, she heard the distant sound of humming and started homing in on that. In this way, she found Twilight, who was bollock-deep in books.

“Um...hello?”

Twilight’s ears pricked and swivelled, the rest of her turning as well a second later. She saw Lamia, hoody and all. This she had not expected. This, she wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with.

Her best bet? Friendlyly.

“Oh, hello Lamia, this is, ah, a surprise! I didn’t think you’d be around during the day,” she said with a smile. Lamia was rubbing a leg, as was custom.

“I stayed up. Wanted to talk to you. Most ponies are asleep at night,” she said, unable to really look Twilight direct in the face. She had not taken the sunglasses off yet, either.

That most ponies were asleep at night was generally a safe assumption.

“Talk to me? Come in!”

Meanwhile, out in town, Eric also had a plan. His was a little different though.

Very quickly - very, very quickly - he had worked out that knitting simply was not for him. He’d started, but that was about it. The dream of socks as presents was still alive though. It was merely how they were going to happen that had changed.

So, he was heading towards that yonder roundabout shop to ask a horse about some socks. And also to spy, cunningly.

For, here and there, Eric had also been working on Rarity’s secret birthday present portrait. His practise with Lamia had really helped him out and he’d banged out a couple of preliminary bits and pieces using all the material Twilight had lent him, and he’d even tentatively started.

So he figured that only could be obtain socks he could also - surreptitiously - have a gander at his unwitting, oblivious subject! See perhaps how things were matching up, catch some details that pictures simply couldn’t convey. It’d be like spying, only with shopping mixed in.

Mostly for socks though.

Pushing open the door announcing his entrance with a bell, and got Rarity to look up from whatever it was she’d been doing. Eric was easy to spot.

“Eric! What a pleasant surprise!” She said, trotting over happy as anything. He gave a small bow.

“Hello beautiful, doing well?”

That got a giggle. It always did.

“Oh you! Flatterer. I’m doing wonderfully. And to what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?”

“Shopping, darling!” Eric said, getting a little carried away. “Ahem, shopping, yes. I’m in the market for something.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes indeed. Was rather hoping you might have some socks available. Pony ones, I should say. This isn’t for me.”

“Ooh, socks? Who-” She then went rigid, eyes wide. “Uh, aha, heh - um, w-who might these socks be for, dear?”

Her immediate excitement had blinded her to the implications. Meanwhile, Eric was entirely unaware that there even were implications he could be blind to, and cheerfully carried on:

“My friend Lamia. She tried one of mine on the other day and I think it was a good look, so I reckon this would be a good present. But shh! It’s a surprise,” he said, tapping his nose.

Rarity just blinked at him.

“You’re getting her socks?”

“Yes! Not the most amazing present I know but, well, small things.”

Again, Rarity blinked at him, trying to work out if he was pulling her leg. Did he know? Did he not? Should she tell him? Would it be rude to tell him? Presumptuous? She simply had no idea.

For his part Eric was feeling pretty smug being right there, getting a proper idea of some of the subtler things he might not yet have been able to properly capture about Rarity, with her being none the wiser! So very cunning, he thought, though the way she was staring silently was starting to get a bit unnerving.

“Rarity? You doing okay there?” He asked, snapping his fingers. Rarity shook it off and put a smile back on,

“Aha, ahaha yes, yes I’m fine dear it’s just - ah - Lamia would be the batpony who is living with you presently, yes?”

Eric’s continued hale and hearty health while in the lengthy presence of Lamia had done much around town to dispel some of the unease that had come from imagining a batpony in their midst, though here and there some doubts lingered. Such was life.

This wasn’t really what Rarity was nervous about here, though. In fact, she wasn’t nervous at all, she was just approaching the situation with the delicacy she felt it warranted.

“Wonderful girl, yes. Not living with me though, just staying with me.”

“Of course, of course. And you are planning on giving her socks as a present?”

Rarity rather hoped that with the proper emphasis she might be able to wheedle out of Eric what his intentions were with this, or at least gain some hint. But nothing, sandbagged. Being as how they were coming at the issue from two wildly different sides, the possibility of crossover simply was not there. Eric noticed the emphasis she’d put in, thought it a little odd, but gave no thought as to why it might be there.

After all, what could the problem be? It was just socks. What was wrong with socks?

“Yes. No reason, just thought it’d be a nice thing to do,” Eric said, gaily ramming his hands into his pockets and rocking on his heels, at which point Rarity finally realised that he honestly had absolutely no idea what such a gift could be perceived as.

She hardly had the heart to tell him, either.

“Right, well, follow me if you please, I’m sure I have something…” she said, turning away to lead him off, wondering if she was being party to a great misunderstanding.

Back in the castle, Lamia was sitting just a tiny bit awkwardly in a chair in the room in which she’d found Twilight. Twilight was also sitting. Sitting was conducive to informal conversations. Apparently.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Twilight asked, brightly.

Lamia continued to keep her head down, now mainly fiddling with the drawstrings of the hoody, shifting in her seat and feeling very put on the spot. But the plan had to go ahead.

“Are you...friends with Eric?” She asked, eyes on her hooves as they fiddled.

“Eric is friends with everypony,” Twilight said. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. It would be more accurate to say that he was friends with everyone he’d ever met, or at least considered himself to be.

These distinctions are important.

Lamia chewed on her lip and glanced up at Twilight.

“I mean, do you know him? How to talk to him?” She asked.

Twilight furrowed her brow.

“He’s very easy to talk to.”

“I-I know. I talk to him a lot. More than anyone. I just - there’s something - something I want to tell him. I don’t know what. It’s difficult. He - he’s the first - he’s just nice to me and I…”

Words were failing Lamia at this point, which was kind of the issue she’d had to start with. There was something inside her. She could feel it. It sat like a weight whenever she was away from Eric and when she was with her it seemed to swell and fill her. She did not know what any of that meant, and did not know how to explain it.

Fortunately for Lamia, Twilight got where she was going with all that.

“Ah, uh, this isn’t really my area. Cadence would be a lot of help right now,” Twilight said, more to herself than to Lamia. “Um, you like Eric a lot, then?”

Lamia nodded, again chewing her lip and rubbing her hoof, nervousness building to severe levels given the sensitive nature of the topic under discussion.

“He’s - I really like him,” she said, again not really having the words available to properly get across what it was she was actually feeling inside, which was tumultuous.

“So what do you want to happen?” Twilight asked, feeling her way forward, trying to think what the right thing to ask might be. Lamia just shrugged. She hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“He’s nice to me, but I think he thinks we’re friends. And we are friends. But I…”

She trailed off, shifted more on her chair, looked Twilight in the eye over the rims of Eric’s sunglasses.

“D-do you know how I could...talk to him...about this…?” She asked, pleadingly, sounding lost. Twilight rubbed her neck.

“Ah, no. I wouldn’t know how to talk to, heh, anypony about this, really. And Eric’s different. And also human,” she said.

“Does human matter?”

“It might. I’ve tried talking to him to get some useful research material on humans and human customs but he is, ah, easily distracted.”

“Oh…”

Lamia’s plan wasn’t going to plan at all. Twilight, seeing the batpony look so suddenly, intensely downcast, sighed.

“Lamia, you should just talk to him. You don’t have to talk to him in any special way or anything like that, you just have to talk,” she said.

“But what if-” Lamia started out with an objection, only to pause, something catching her attention.

She sniffed, head raised in the air. She then went ramrod stiff, tail stood on end.

“Eric!” She squeaked before zipping straight up to the ceiling and sticking there, all so quickly Twilight barely had any time to react. She was just left there, looking at the spot where lamia had been moments previously, feeling a little confused.

“What?” Twilight asked, then hearing the unmistakable two-feet sound of approaching human. Then she got it.

“Door was open. Spike out for the day? Nice. Hey Twilight, I had something I wanted to ask you,” Eric said, sauntering into the room like he owned the place.

Today was clearly a day for asking Twilight things. Not that she minded. She did so enjoying helping ponies - and people, or person singular - out. Kind of her thing.

“Of course Eric! What is it?” She asked, just trying to ignore the fact that the last conversational partner she had had zipped vertical with no warning.

“I know you’re a girl who likes a book or two - was just wondering if you had one on batponies kicking around somewhere?”

“Batponies?” Twilight asked, ear flicking, fighting the urge to look up at Lamia who was still clinging onto the ceiling, eyes wide. Quite why she’d felt the need to hide was unclear to Twilight, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

Eric, oblivious - quite unlike him - just nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, just curious, you know? What with Lamia liv- staying with me and all. Just some things I was wondering,” he said.

“You could always just ask her?”

“I could, I could but, uh, I don’t know. I don’t want to look like I’m prying.”

“I don’t think she’d mind.”

“Well, heh, no. I’m sure she wouldn’t. Lovely girl, Lamia, really very lovely,” he said, losing the thread for a moment. “But I’d prefer not to interrogate her, you know? Barrage her with questions! That’s no fun for anyone.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Definitely. Needed something new to read anyway.”

Twilight nodded, already running through in her head what books might fit the bill and where they might be. Books that delved into useful detail on batponies were actually quite thin on the ground. Being as how they were fairly rare to start with they constituted a fairly obscure area of interest, and one in which there had not been many developments for some considerable time. That narrowed down Twilight’s choices a fair amount.

Which was handy.

“Be right back,” she said, trotting off. Eric took a seat and waited, whistling to himself and occasionally segueing into singing to himself as the mood took him.

Lamia, breathing as quietly as possible, stayed in position, willing Eric not to look up.

There were a couple reasons why she didn’t want him knowing she was there. First, she had good reason to believe that he would be overly concerned for her welfare on seeing she was up and about when he thought she was sleeping.

Second, on asking her why she was up and about - and hiding on the ceiling - she was fairly certain that she would be utterly incapable of lying to him about why. What followed from that hardly bore thinking about. So awful! Everything would fall apart!

Thus, hiding and keeping quiet.

Luckily for her Eric seemed to have very little interesting in looking up and she remained undetected. Some minutes later Twilight returned, levitating a dauntingly hefty book with her. The thing was significant - all thick binding and multiple, frayed-ribbon bookmarks. Looked like someone had tried to stop a sword with it at one point, too. As you did.

“Here you go. There’s others, but this is sort of the authority, really. It’s old, but every book that came after draws on this one,” she said. Eric took the whacking great book and tucked it under his arm.

“Much appreciated, Twilight. Do love a little light reading, me,” he said, smiling. Twilight smiled back. Then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she pointed a hoof at the bag he was carrying.

“What’s in the bag?” She asked.

“Oh, this? Socks!” He said, hefting it up proudly.

“Socks?”

“Yes! Present for Lamia, shh,” he said, smiling, tapping his nose again.

Twilight’s turn to go a bit rigid.

The issue here was one of culture. Socks were not in themselves a lewd item. Well, they could be, it was just that the lewdness was not inherent. It was complicated. There were layers of insinuation and compacted meaning. The sort of thing that had just built up over time, like plaque, or sedimentary layers. Or something.

The implications were immediately, glaringly obvious to Twilight, much as they had been to Rarity, too. Eric, not so much.

“You look like you’ve gone a bit rigid there Twilight, you alright?” He asked, experiencing mild concern.

“Um, no. I mean yes, it’s fine, I just - why socks, Eric?”

Putting the massive book down beside him and resting the bag on his lap, Eric lifted the socks out the bag to admire them. Fine things, they were.

“Well, she tried on one of mine the other day, you see, and I felt it rather suited her, so a pair of her own seemed a good idea. Is it a pair if there’s four? Double pair? Nevermind. That and, well, just thought it’d be nice to give her a present. Friends and all that.”

Personally speaking Eric really thought he was ahead of the game here, as far as being a nice chap was concerned. Socks were a classic. It was only Twilight’s continued silence that broke the mood, and when he finally looked from the socks to her he found her still rigid.

“You know, that’s the second time today I’ve got funny looks after mentioning socks. I feel like I’m missing something here,” Eric said. He often felt this way, but usually he didn’t mind.

Twilight swallowed.

“Socks are, ah, kind of a...special present. You get them for somepony special,” she said, putting all the right stress in all the right places. Even Eric caught on, raising an eyebrow.

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the socks again, now regarding them a little differently.

“So not just a friendly gift, then?” He asked.

“No.”

This development was considered, then the socks put back into the bag.

“Hmm, fancy that. How unexpected. The welcome guide didn’t say anything about that,” Eric said.

“I didn’t think it would come up!” Twilight protested, but Eric was now looking off into space, tapping a finger against his chin.

“And Rarity just let me waltz on in and buy them without a word of warning! Crafty minx. Hmm. So...would it be a bad idea to give Lamia these?” He asked, tentatively.

“That would depend,” Twilight said.

“On what?”

“On how special she is you to.”

Dead silence.

“Ah. I see. Um. Okay. Lots to think about then. Okay. Right. I - I am going to go home now, yes. Book to read. Thank you for your input, Twilight, really helped me out,” Eric said, bending to retrieve the book before leaping to his feet. “I’ll - uh - see you later. At some point. Yes.”

And with that he left, stopping just outside the room to quickly nip back in and add:

“Sorry: goodbye.”

Then he left properly, at speed.

Twilight watched him go, hearing his step recede. In her opinion that could have gone worse. Then she jolted, remembering the batpony still hiding, wide-eyed, on the ceiling.

“It’s okay Lamia, he’s gone now. You can come back down,” she said.

In the even, it took rather more coaxing than that.

Outside, power-walking home as though the Devil himself was on his heels, Eric muttered to himself:

“Socks of all things…this place is a marvel...”

All of the same blood

Author's Note

Feel like this is building to something.

All of the same blood

Back home, Eric decided to put off the unexpectedly thorny issue of socks by drinking tea and reading the book instead. It wasn’t going that well. Or at least the reading part wasn’t. The drinking tea was going fine.

Eric didn’t want to think disparagingly of someone else’s hard work but he couldn’t brush away the impression that the authors of this particular work might have spun more than few of their assertions out of whole cloth.

For example, the stated fact - fact! - that all batponies regardless of age had exactly six hundred and eighty four teeth. Exactly.

Now, Eric had never taken the time to actually count Lamia’s teeth but he did find this number to be a little bit on the generous side, and it irreversibly damaged his faith in anything else the book might have had to tell him.

Like the batpony habit of turning invisible when under moonlight.

He’d seen Lamia under moonlight, which kind of undercut the invisibility angle. Maybe she’d just chosen not to go invisible? It seemed unlikely.

“I’m not going to have to write my own book, am I?” He sighed.

Flicking through to a couple of random points he also learnt that batponies fed on blood not for sustenance but rather because their own blood ran as sand in their veins, courtship involved a brutal form of trial by combat, mating resulted in one (or both, somehow?) parties being devoured and often a thousand or more eggs could be laid in a single clutch.

After this Eric put the book down.

“Can rather see why there was concern over Lamia now, if this was what they were working off - phwoorf. Questionable. Perhaps needs an update.”

A project for someone of sharper intellect and greater academic rigour than Eric, he imagined. Perhaps he’d tell Twilight that her book wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, let her off the chain. It’d keep her out of trouble, at least…

Then, from upstairs, a bang, and a loud one at that. Eric looked up.

“What on earth…”

It had sounded like someone had fallen over, but the only person in the house other than him was Lamia - who had not snuck out or anything, clearly, because she was asleep and so couldn’t be sneaking anywhere, don’t be silly - and she was in bed.

Ergo, therefore, she must have fallen out of bed. Eric dashed upstairs at full speed, vaulting up tiny pony steps before skidding to a halt outside the door to her room - his box room, rather - and knocking gently on it.

“Lamia? Are you alright?” He asked through the door, ear pressed against it. Inside he heard what might have been a woozy groan. Concern blossoming, he inched the door open.

He saw the bed, which was messy, but no sign of Lamia in it. Opening the door wider he then spotted her about halfway between the window and the bed, on the floor, apparently having got caught up and tangled in his hoody.

For whatever reason the thought that Lamia might have been sleeping while wearing that old hoody of his gave him a warm jolt and brought a smile to his face, at least until he remembered that she’d fallen out of bed.

Some fall at that, too, to have landed so far from the bed. But stranger things had happened.

“Eric! I-” she started, trying desperately to free her hooves from the hoody and only succeeding in somehow making her situation worse, rolling around on the floor. Eric was on her before she could free herself, sweeping her up in his arms.

“Did you fall out of bed?” He asked.

Lamia had been halfway through cooking up something she’d hoped would be a plausible excuse for her being on the floor but found that this one delivered right into her lap was much better, so took it.

“...yes,” she said.

“Are you alright?”

“...I think I hit my head,” she said, pointing to her head, dumbly, feeling heat rising in her cheeks from the look of absolute concern coming at her from Eric. Eric, on hearing this, very gently pulled back the hood to have a better look, causing Lamia’s ever-messy mane - which had taken some tucking away - to floomph out all at once.

Had it ever been tidy? Could it ever be tidy? Who knew? Eric rather liked it the way it was, were anyone in the mood to ask him.

Lamia, her hooves held in front of her, could do little else but stay still and try not to squeak as Eric carefully gave her the once over, feeling about her head with his fingers.

“Hmm, think you’ve got a little bump here, yes. Oh, poor girl! Let’s get you some ice, eh?”

And before Lamia could protest this Eric was heading out of the room, pausing only when he stepped on his sunglasses and crushed them. He looked down and raised his foot.

“Huh, don’t remember leaving those in here. Oh well, serves me right for not looking where I was walking!”

He then resumed carrying her downstairs, moving swiftly to the kitchen.

“I-I’m okay Eric, really,” she mumbled as he kept her cradled in one arm, squatting down by his magical fridge-freezer to ferret out some ice, which he then put in a tea towel.

“Nonsense,” he said, standing again and now heading to the lounge, ice in hand, Lamia in arm. “I heard that fall. Come on, it won’t be for long then you can get back to bed.”

Lamia yawned, so couldn’t argue, and Eric sat down on the sofa. Shifting her around so she was resting in the crook of his arm, resting against his body, he put the ice onto what was now a semi-visible bump and held it there. Lamia just took it, being too tired and too flustered to do anything else.

“There you go,” Eric said, quietly, smiling down at her.

Lamia yawned again. She really was bushed. Even with the ice pressed to her head it would have been very easy to just fall asleep on top of Eric. He was warm, after all, and soft. And safe. She really did want to.

But she forced herself to stay awake. Twilight had said to just talk, to talk normally. So while she still had even the tiniest scrap of the nerve to do so, why not try it now?

“Why are you so nice to me?” She asked.

“I’m not doing anything anyone else wouldn’t,” he said. Lamia had seen that sort of answer coming, but even so actually hearing it still annoyed her.

Wriggling in his grip she reached up to take hold of his wrist, pulling his hand down to her chest and holding it there. Doing this made the ice slip out of his hand, but he was too taken aback by the gesture to really notice.

“You are. You’re - you’re amazing and you’re just so nice to me and…” Lamia felt her courage to keep talking ebb away under Eric’s eyes and she had to look away, reduced to absent-mindedly running a hoof over his hand until she noticed she was doing it, at which point she stopped.

Eric swallowed.

“Amazing might be overselling it a bit…” He said.

“No, you are. I think so. You’re amazing to me. We - you - you’re-”

Lamia’s nerve was not holding. She was sure a normal pony in her position wouldn’t be having these problems. They’d know exactly what to say. Hell, they’d know exactly what it was they wanted, for a start. She didn’t. She just knew that she was a writhing bundle of things she didn’t know, and being in Eric’s arms was making it even harder to pin down.

So she copped out.

“You’re my friend. My best friend. Y-you’re my amazing. O-okay?” She asked, trying to sound sure but coming off as anything but, not helped by having gone very red indeed. Eric thought about taking his hand back, but decided against it.

“Friends, always. I’m very fond of you, you know.”

“Fond?”

Eric wondered why he’d had to pick that word. Then realised the word was fine and innocuous and he would have used it for anyone, so why did it matter that he’d used it here? Again he felt the unusual pressure of something trying to get his attention but he pushed it down - now wasn’t the time.

“I am glad that you showed up on my doorstep,” he said.

And then they both went quiet without really thinking about it, also not really thinking about the fact that this time both of them were holding eye contact.

Eric had been aware before that Lamia had had nice eyes - most ponies did, in his experience, kind of a feature - but never had he actually seen how pretty they were. Really quite striking. One of her best features. Out of many good features. Lots of very good features.

Then he caught on to where it was his mind was wandering, and he managed to tear his attention away. Think friendly thoughts! She said he was her best friend! Think friendly thoughts!

“I dropped the ice,” he said.

“You did.”

This didn’t seem to go anywhere. Eric glanced down at Lamia again, briefly, asking:

“How’s your head?”

“Better.”

“Good, good…”

Lamia tried to keep this next yawn in, but failed. She was starting to crash now. Knowing she was inches from just nodding off on top of Eric she stirred, forcing herself upright, wiggling out of his grip and standing up in his lap before silently hugging him.

She got in close, tucking her head in under his chin, right against his neck, even putting her wings around him, or at least as much as she could. Eric didn’t even think before hugging back. It just happened.

Being so close to his neck always made her a little agitated, for want of a better word. Flustered. Over-excited. Hot under the collar.

Being wrapped around his neck when she was on his shoulders was one thing, that was just sort of comforting. This close? This position? Fangs so near to that pulse? Kind of difficult to concentrate.

Especially with the smell - his scent! It was unavoidable, everywhere!

But she liked being close. She liked having him close. Even if it made her feel confusing feelings. She nuzzled against him and felt his heart rate pick up. She was good at noticing that sort of thing.

“I just…”

“Hmm?”

“Didn’t say anything.”

The hug lasted until Lamia yawned, again, which was apparently the final straw.

“I think someone needs to go back to bed, hmm?” Eric asked, peeling her off. Lamia couldn’t argue. She was finding it difficult keeping her eyes open by then, her head bobbing as she fought to stay awake.

Keeping her held against him Eric rose and carried her up to her room - definitely her room - and put her back to bed. By the time he pulled the blanket around her she was already sound asleep.

As softly as he could he left the room, shut the door, and then took a moment. Standing on the landing he held perfectly still and attempted to organise his thoughts. He didn’t even know where to start.

So instead - or because, he wasn’t sure - he went to his room and opened the door enough to see the bag from Rarity’s, sat on his bed where he’d left it.

“‘How special she is to you’...what does that even mean…just some socks...when did this get so complicated...” he grumbled.

His tea was probably cold by now, too.

And speaking of socks, when Eric had abandoned his efforts at knitting them himself, he had also abandoned the not-even-close-to-half-finished articles on his coffee table along with all the supplies, equipment (such as it was) and literature he had acquired on the subject. Eric could often be untidy.

So there the socks sat, needles and wool present also, book open on the page telling him what he should have done. They sat there all through the day and into the night, forgotten. All of this caught Lamia’s eye.

A special gift…

The planned rain had arrived by the time Lamia eventually woke up again, and the prospect of going out did not appeal. Besides, she’d already gone out once anyway. Stuck inside and with Eric asleep she hadn’t had a whole lot else to do.

And so, on the spur of the moment, she had whisked all of the stuff up to her room, there to try and carry on and complete them with an eye to giving the completed articles to Eric as her own gift. It seemed a good idea at the time.

Sitting on her bed, legs splayed, she found that knitting wasn’t actually all that difficult, once you got into it. She made some mistakes, sure, she was beginner, but she learned from them and progress remained steady. Lamia was amazed!

She’d never thought she could have been good at anything, really.

It was actually pretty fun, knitting. In a meditative sort of a way. That, and thinking ahead to what she could do once she’d finished. She kept on knitting so long she failed to notice it starting to get light out, and it wasn’t until she heard Eric moving around and waking up that she figured it might be time to turn in.

Eric, for his part, entirely failed to notice the disappearance of his knitting stuff. He had other things to pay attention to.

After this things more-or-less resumed the sort of rhythm that had already existed. Which is to say, they went back to what had become normal for them.

During the day Eric went out to do this or that, sometimes painting stuff, sometimes not. Lamia woke up in the evening - earlier now, just because that’s what the pattern had become - and they hung out. There were a few more practise dance sessions, at least one very informal board game interlude and lots of unspecified lounging about.

So far, so normal.

Little things had changed though, without either of them noticing when. One such difference was that sometimes one or the other of them would catch themselves staring or be caught staring and very quickly look away, usually while going just the tiniest bit pink. For just one example.

For another there were also now those times that, when they were engaged in the unspecified lounging or even just generalised hugging or friendly, entirely platonic cuddling, they would suddenly be very aware of just how they were to one another, particularly if their faces were close.

More pinkness usually followed this awareness.

It went without saying that everyone - everyone - in town noticed this. Even if they weren’t around to see the particulars, they saw enough and they saw enough of it in Eric for it to be blindingly, glaringly obvious that something was going on, even if no-one could confirm what.

That, and Rarity had of course mentioned Eric’s purchase of socks just in the course of perfectly innocent nattering, and this mention had been passed along and overheard and repeated and in the process lost some of the important contextual details, such as the rather vital point that Eric had absolutely no idea what the purchase of socks for another implied. Or at least, hadn’t when he’d bought them.

He’d since learnt, of course, and the knowledge had been stewing him alive for days. Did Lamia know what they meant? Did it matter if she knew? Did it matter if he knew? What was he even worrying about? How special was she to him again, exactly? And what did that even mean anyway?

Eric did what he usually did confronted by intractable, complex emotional problems and just tried to think happier thoughts and focus on other things. This worked fairly well, but the worry kept coming back, and the socks just kept on sitting in their bag, waiting.

On the weekend he went up to Fluttershy’s as arranged, expecting a nice, leisurely, friendly time as he might have come to expect from her company only instead to find the atmosphere curiously subdued. Like something bad had happened.

Fluttershy had been even more quiet and withdrawn than usual, which was saying something, and the quality and timbre of her quiet had changed, too. Something a little different to it, Eric noticed, though he couldn’t say what, and she’d insisted up and down that she was totally fine.

Eric had done what she told him needed donig and had then left, a tiny bit dazed by the experience.

He was reduced to wondering why everyone was acting so oddly. What had been up with Fluttershy? Why was everyone smiling at him now as though they knew something he didn’t? Why were the various ponies he was painting for all now suddenly interested in Lamia, how she was and how they were getting on together?

And why did people keep saying they lived together?!

“Did I miss something?” He asked himself more than once.

Not long after that, Lamia finished making the socks. She was actually pretty proud of what she’d achieved, and rightly so. Knitting them had been the easy part though, comparatively. Actually giving them? That made her gut twist in knots.

What if he didn’t like them? What if he said they weren’t good? What if he laughed at them?

That didn’t last long. This was Eric, after all. He wouldn’t do that.

So, buoyed by this thought, one evening she girded her loins, took the socks, went downstairs and dropped them into Eric’s lap. This caught him off-guard.

“Thank you, Lamia?” He asked, picking them up. They didn’t look like any pair he was aware of owning. Not that he kept particularly accurate track of these things.

“They’re a present,” she said. “I made them for you.”

“How sweet! Definitely thank you, then. I - made?”

Eric had been so taken with what a lovely thing this was for her to have done that he initially glossed over that particular detail. But then it slithered through to his brain and gave him pause.

He looked at her then, standing just in front of him, wearing that old hoody again, shuffling about nervously, watching his reaction.

“You made these, Lamia?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

Eric admired them a moment, then thought about it a bit more.

“Wait. Aren’t these the ones I was trying to make?”

“Y-yeah…”

He blinked, looked to the coffee table, saw that all the stuff he’d left there was missing.

“Huh. Well you did a far better job than I could have. Go Lamia, snaps for you.,” he said, returning his admiration to the socks. They really were very well done.

This was one hell of a coincidence. And surely it meant that Lamia was - just as he’d been - unaware of the significance here. She had to be, didn’t she? Otherwise why would she have done this? It would not make sense.

So there would be no harm in him giving her her gift now.

“Heh, funny you should give me these, actually,” he said, holding the socks up. Lamia cocked her head.

“Why?”

“Because, uh, well, I may have got some for you, too.”

She knew this, obviously, but had to pretend she didn’t.

“O-oh?”

“Yeah, got them the other day. Just been sort of, you know, waiting for the right moment. Now seems good, eh? Uh…wait right there. In fact, wait right here,” Eric said, reaching down and picking Lamia up and popping her down on the sofa where he’d been sitting, swapping her around. She squeaked, but that was about it, and stayed where he put her.

“Right here, okay?” He said, holding up a finger. She nodded, dumbly, and Eric dashed upstairs. He returned some moments later with the bag, and - sitting down beside Lamia - took out the socks.

“I couldn’t really make them myself - heh, as you noticed - so I just cheated and bought them. But still. Hope you like them,” he said, handing them over.

“I really like them,” she said, looking at them in her hooves as thought they were something quite precious. Which to her they were.

Both of them knew what socks given as a gift represented. Eric did not know that Lamia knew. Lamia, conversely, knew Eric knew. The practical upshot of this was a befuddling lack of clarity. Did he mean anything by it? Did he, thinking she didn’t know, not mean anything by it? Had this only made things even worse?

Was this, at any point, going to get any easier?

‘Not yet’, was the answer to that question. Indeed, in the short term, things might look to get even less easy, if the twisting branches of narrative reality and imposing conflict had anything to say about it. They often did in Ponyville, mysteriously.

For at that very moment, on the other side of Ponyville, off towards the forest, right at the very edge in a lovely, quaint cottage, one pegasus was giving advice to another pegasus...

“I don’t know…” Fluttershy said, nervously tapping her hooves together. Rainbow Dash groaned, throwing her forelegs up in exasperation.

“Come on!” She cried, frustration finally starting to wear away on her patience. They’d been at this for minutes now - minutes!

That Fluttershy had something of a modest crush on Eric was not widely known, mostly because how would anyone have found out? She hardly made a big deal out of it. This was part of the reason for it had never got anywhere either - Eric had had about as much of a clue about it as anyone else, which was to say none at all.

Barring Rainbow Dash, of course, who had worked out after covertly observing one of Eric’s visits to Fluttershy’s cottage. This had started out as perfectly innocent spying - to gather material with which to crack jokes later - but had quickly turned into thoroughly involved snooping when it became obvious that anytime Eric turned his back to get on with what he was doing Fluttershy was there right behind him, pining hard, failing to say anything she clearly wanted to.

So, later, Rainbow Dash had cracked jokes about that, and Fluttershy had surprised her by immediately begging for help. Fluttershy’s logic had been that as Rainbow was the very picture and model of assertiveness and confidence she might have a clue what to do.

A reasonable assumption, unfortunately falling short owing to the fact that, while she was more than capable of kicking seven shades out of a monster should the situation call for it, Rainbow was less capable of handling ‘soppy stuff’, as she so called it.

Still, wasn’t like she was going to back out of a challenge.

“Felt like I was making good progress,” Fluttershy said, lamely, shoulders slumping.

Rainbow glared at her, unable to really fight off the suspicion that her friend was actively working against her in something she herself had asked help with.

“You were not making good progress. I saw you! You were giving him the eyes but only when he turned around! Why would you do that?” Rainbow asked, or more accurately accused. Fluttershy shrivelled up further.

“I didn’t want to come on too strong…”

“Well you didn’t come on anything. And now time’s running out! Windows closing!”

Here referring, of course, to Eric and Lamia, who were something of a local talking point of late. Not much else was happening.

“He seems happy. He bought her socks. What if they’re, you know, a...thing?”

Despite being a local talking point there was very little concrete actually known. No-one felt like asking Eric to his face, feeling it too blunt, and those that Lamia appeared to in the night usually forgot about asking her. This put the actual nature of their relationship entirely in the dark and open to rampant speculation. Something was going on, but what?

Rainbow rolled her eyes.

“If they were a thing everyone would know! It’d be obvious! The only thing that’s obvious now is that neither of them know! Eric at least, don’t know about the batpony, I haven’t even seen her. Twilight has and Twilight’s said nothing, even after I leaned on her a bit,” she said.

This was an exaggeration. She’d just asked the usual way, and Twilight had given a non-committal answer. Rainbow had felt uncomfortable being so upfront about something so potentially soppy and so had been satisfied with this, deciding to play it up for Fluttershy’s benefit later. Thus.

“Point is!” Rainbow said firmly, keeping control of the initiative. “They’re not a thing yet! At least not that anyone knows. And they don’t have to be! You were here first, Fluttershy. Now it was kind of lame that you just sort of quieted it out for so long sort of just hoping he’d get the hint - Eric doesn’t get hints, right? - but that doesn’t matter! Now you’ve got to get it done! You got to be direct!”

She punctuated this by pounding one hoof into the other. Fluttershy felt it sounded very intimidating, which was why she was hugging a cushion.

“Direct?” She asked.

“Yeah! He’s coming over this weekend, right?”

What he’d been over to do the previous weekend he was coming around to make good on, or at least see how it had settled. That, and he secretly wanted to see if Fluttershy was feeling any better compared to how she’d been the last time. But neither of the ponies knew this, obviously.

“Y-yeah?” Fluttershy said, nodding, unsure. There was the gleam of action in Rainbow’s eye.

“You should totally kiss him. That’ll work,” she said, grinning. In her head this perfect. It was decisive! Direct! Unequivocal! Even Eric wouldn’t be able to ignore that.

Fluttershy, fairly naturally, was horrified, and now hid behind the cushion as well as hugging it.

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”

Again Rainbow groaned, collapsing into a chair in despair.

“Well do something! Unless you want to just give up.”

An effective ultimatum. It cut to the core of the matter for Fluttershy, and laid it out. Waiting and hoping had clearly not worked, and now the time for waiting and hoping was very obviously at an end. The time for doing and hoping was now, or else the time for just, as Rainbow said, giving up.

And Fluttershy did not feel like giving up. In her own reserved way she did not want to.

So why not take a punt?

“Okay,” she said, quietly but sure, nodding to herself as she lowered the cushion. Rainbow looked up, surprised, and find Fluttershy smiling over at her. The smile of someone decided. “Okay I’ll do something.”

Blodtørst

In the event, what Fluttershy did was get food. What better way to soften someone up than to ply them with food?

Specifically a cheeseboard, in this instance, seeing that Fluttershy was aware it would be well-received. She knew that Eric was a cunt for a cheeseboard, though she wouldn’t have used that word.

She’d thought a lot about what it was she wanted to say, and in so doing had also come to some final conclusive decisions about what it was she actually wanted.

This was not something she had not done before. Her feelings for Eric were vague and fuzzy and poorly defined, based mostly on his consistently positive attitude, unrelenting optimism, intriguing exotic-ness and general niceness. These were, as said, vague, and once you got down to it not something you could base much serious on. So she’d thought about it a little more.

And her conclusive decisions were that she would not mind getting to know Eric better and more properly. In fact, she conclusively decided she would enjoy that. In addition, though, she had also decided that if it turned out he and his batpony houseguest were more serious than was assumed - or as serious as some assumed, depending on who you asked - then that would be fine. She could live with that. Eric would be happy, after all, so where would the harm be?

Rainbow was probably looking at the whole thing as some sort of competition where somepony had to come out on top. Fluttershy didn’t think it was like that, though. But that was her.

Then came a knock at the door and she jumped. He was early!

“J-just a second!” She squeaked, leaping off into the air and zipping around for a final check. Everything appeared to be in order, everything looked to be in place. Now or never. Taking just long to first untuck her hair from behind her ear before deciding against it and re-tucking it back again she flapped over to the door and landed, opening it wide.

And there was Eric, bending a little so as to be able to look through her front door. He was also smiling.

“Hello! Know I’m a little early but no harm done, eh? Can I come in?” He asked.

“O-of course!” Fluttershy stammered, hustling aside to let him through.

Unlike Eric’s place - which had been built specifically to be a bit bigger than most - and Twilight’s place - which was a fuck-off castle - Fluttershy’s cottage was actually pony-sized. Eric therefore filled the space inside it quite severely, and had to stoop constantly. Not that he minded.

“Alright, so we’re just going to look over what I - ooh, hang on, what’s all that?” Eric asked, immediately distracted, pointing over to where Fluttershy had set everything out. It was hard to miss. Eric shuffled on over and let out a whistle.

“This is some spread, Fluttershy. You having a party?” He asked, taking a knee by the table just for the sake of comfort. Fluttershy wandered over to stand beside him.

“No, I just knew you were coming over.”

Eric’s eyes widened, impressed.

“This is on my account? Wow! You didn’t need to do that. Ooh, beer.”

Beer was not notable for being popular with ponies, and so was thin on the ground. Eric immediately homed in on it and scooped up a bottle, turning it over for a good examine. A local brewery, perhaps? He could go for a visit sometime. Who knew Fluttershy was a fan?

“I know you like it,” she said .

“This is for me, too? You really went out of your way. You didn’t need to do that.”

“Thought it would be nice. I wanted to.”

This wasn’t what Eric had expected at all. Sure, she’d made him a cup of the tea those other times he’d come over and that had been nice, but this was something else! Above and beyond!

He moved to knock the bottlecap off on the edge of the table only to realise this was a pretty rude thing to do someone else’s table without asking. Then he spotted that the top just twisted off - how novel! Didn’t get that that often back home. He twisted and was delighted.

“Far too nice to me,” he said, taking a sip, then: “Are you feeling better?” He asked and Fluttershy blinked, tiniest bit confused.

“Feeling better?”

“Than last week. You seemed a little off, if you don’t mind me saying. You were quiet. Heh, quieter, I mean. Was a bit worried about you if I’m being honest.”

Realising now what he meant she relaxed a little bit.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be quiet.”

Eric took another sip. It was interesting stuff. Distinctive.

“I think you just are quiet, Fluttershy, and that’s okay. ‘Remember what peace there may be in silence’ and all that. It was just a slightly different brand of your usual quiet, so I was concerned. Thought something was getting you down.”

Him drifting so close to the truth there kind of reminded Fluttershy that this whole thing had an agenda behind it, which put the wind up her just a little. She knew it was the point, but that didn’t make her any less nervous about having to see it through.

“Me? N-no, nothing. I was just, um, distracted. Had things on my mind.”

“That’s something that can get you down, Flutters! That’s the sort of thing I can be concerned about! Come on, you can tell me if you want. It’s good to vent, you know.”

The actual reason Eric had had to come over - quote-unquote ‘actual reason’ - was being put on hold until after he had properly confirmed that Fluttershy was feeling better about whatever it was she had not been feeling good about the last time he’d seen her. Making good could wait as far as he was concerned.

Fluttershy squirmed.

“Nothing, really. Nothing important, anyway. Um, h-how is your batpony friend? The one that lives with you?” She asked. This was a prelude to her getting on with it and getting it all sorted, she told herself. All part of her plan, part of the order of things.

Eric had started making use of the cheese and crackers, seeing as how they were just there and apparently there for him, too. Would have been a waste otherwise.

“She doesn’t live with me, she’s just staying with me,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

He waved Fluttershy’s apologies aside - nothing to apologise for!

“No it’s okay, everyone keeps making that mistake. Lamia is great. She’s good, really good. Seems happier these days, which is nice. Uh, why do you ask?”

“Just curious. Batponies are very rare, it’s unusual having one around, especially like this.”

“Huh, fancy that,” Eric said, eating a cracker.

“And you two seem to be getting on,” Fluttershy said, proddingly, hoping to try and wheedle out of Eric even the merest hint of what his feelings about Lamia might actually be, if any.

Eric, meanwhile, had spent another semi-sleepless night worrying about much the same thing, desperately thinking himself in ever-decreasing exhausted circles before finally crashing out without having come to anything useful. A lot of the muddle from this was still floating about his brain and the prodding from Fluttershy was apparently all it took to unleashed a minor flood:

“She knitted me socks! Can you believe that? Girl just picked it up! Just like that. Literally too. I left my failed attempt lying around, she picked it up, did it. Pow. Think it was the first time she’d ever done it, too, at least the way she told it to me. I was very impressed. She’s pretty great, I think. Not just because she can make socks, obviously, just generally. Though making the socks herself was very impressive, as I say. The ones I got her I just bought! Oh, that reminds me - did you know that socks here have way more meaning than they do back home? Heh, what am I saying, of course you do, you live here! Weird, I thought, but then I’m the alien. Don’t think me and her had any meaning to it though. Right? I wouldn’t want her to get any wrong ideas. Whatever those might be. But then she did give me some too. But she’s been out in the wilds, has Lamia. Maybe she doesn’t know? Ah, now I’m just speculating. And babbling - hah! Ahaha! Sorry. I should, ah, let you get a word in edgewise.”

Fluttershy lost the thread in this daunting wall of talk fairly early on, but the thrust of it seemed pretty clear to her.

“You really like her, don’t you?”

“Who? Lamia? Um, yes I suppose I do. She’s - we’re friends. I’m everyone’s friend, me,” he said. Fluttershy had been expecting this answer, and had seen it coming.

She could see it now, plain as anything. He really had no idea. And unless she was direct - as Rainbow had said she should be - he would never have any idea. That decided it.

Despite having spent so long playing it safe, keeping it subtle, Fluttershy felt oddly at ease with the plunge she was about to take. A calm had descended. It was just what had to happen, she saw.

“Can I tell you something?” She asked.

“Anything,” Eric said, maneuvering dairy onto savoury.

She took a breath - the final bit:

“I had - have, I suppose - kind of a crush on you.”

Couldn’t get much more direct than that, short of shouting it.

Eric froze, a cheese-laden cracker halfway to his face, face like a smacked arse. He stared at her, waiting for the punchline to happen or for her to say something like ‘The look on your face!’ or anything like that. But she wasn’t doing anything like that. She was just staring at him much as he was staring at her, waiting to see how he’d react.

Slowly, he put the cracker down.

“I’m sorry? Did you just say…?”

He didn’t really need - or want - to specify what it was she might have just said. Fluttershy nodded, which was all she had to do. Eric swallowed.

“I don’t - I can’t say I’ve ever...thought about...you...like that…” He said, every word a painful effort.

Eric had only ever thought of Fluttershy the way he thought of everyone else he knew around Ponyville: they were all fantastic friends, up for a laugh, always ready to help one another out. That was the extent of it. That was just how it worked. What else could there be? They were all friends!

Indeed, the only person around he’d only ever felt even the merest flicker of anything different - more, perhaps - was Lamia. He’d brushed it aside, sure, but only because he was aware of it in some dim and distant way. Had he not been he wouldn’t have been trying to avoid it. And he had been trying to avoid it. And it just kept on coming back. Hence semi-sleepless night fretting about it. Which actually had to mean something, now he came to think of it.

And he’d only just properly confronted this. Just then. Just at that moment. Entirely because of what Fluttershy had said.

What a way and what a time to catch onto that!

“Oh…” Fluttershy said, downcast a moment before - with obvious effort - brightening again. “That’s okay.”

Not what he’d expected to hear.

“It is?”

She nodded, strained but holding, still managing to smile.

As much as it wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear, hearing it came as something of a relief. She hadn’t really understood just how much the doubt had been pressing down on her. Suddenly, knowing something - even if it wasn’t ideal - felt as though a weight had been lifted.

At least she knew now, right? No more living in a state of taut expectation. That had been a fairly unambiguous answer he’d given, though not without some wiggle room to work with, were she of a mind to do so at some point in the future.

Maybe.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that, right now, at this moment, she knew that it just wasn’t her time. And that was fine. She could live with that.

Besides, she could always be patient...

“As long as you’re happy,” she said, smiling more widely and easily now, totally sincere.

“I’m always happy, me.”

“You are.”

Here the conversation petered out.

“I feel bad now. You did all this,” Eric said glumly, sweeping a hand across all the effort that Fluttershy had gone to on his behalf, only to have it all come to naught. That’s how he saw it, at least. Fluttershy saw it more softly than that.

“Oh that’s okay. We’re still friends, aren’t we?” She asked.

“I’d hope so!”

And they hugged, friendly-like, Fluttershy hopping up onto her hindlegs and Eric bending a little to sweep her in against himself. A big friendly hug, it was, and much needed by both of them.

At length, Eric let her back down again.

“Uh, sorry about...not returning your feelings and all that…” He said, entirely unsure how you were meant to word an apology like that. Fluttershy took his fumbling with good grace.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. It’s okay,” she said.

“Gosh you’re nice, Fluttershy.”

He then looked over again at the cheeseboard, which remained expansive.

“That is a lot of cheese for a little pony,” he said. It was, too - she’d put it together with Eric in mind and so had portioned accordingly. He was a big boy, at least by pony standards.

“Take some with you,” she said.

“Really? I wasn’t angling for that, you know.”

Partly true. It hadn’t been his intention, but it had been his quiet hope. Fluttershy, again, nodded, smiling.

“It’s not really my sort of thing.”

Not even her sort of thing and yet she’d got it all anyway! Eric felt even guilter than he had been before!

“Aww, you really went out of your way! Oh you, Fluttershy. You’re just so nice.”

She got another hug for that, which caught her by surprise.

Eric ended up leaving her cottage carrying a full-on picnic basket loaded with cheese and crackers, not to mention a few bottles of the beer. He was swigging from one of them as he left, unable to believe his luck.

“That could have gone worse,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Although, really, as well as it had gone - extremely well, all things considered - that whole thing just raised more questions. Or at least it did for Eric.

He was concerned. Everyone was his friend, that had been the way things were. Now it turned out that Fluttershy had been secretly nursing more-than-friendly feelings for him? He’d had no idea! He hadn’t even considered the possibility! This changed everything!

And kind of threw his own more-than-friendly feelings for Lamia - which he reluctantly had to admit existed and did not appear to want to go away - into somewhat stark relief. What was he meant to do about those? He’d just shot poor Fluttershy down! What if he tried the same with Lamia and got the same result only with himself on the receiving end? Would be take it as well as Fluttershy had?

Or should he just keep quiet about it forever, hope it died down and then pretend it never happened? Did that sound like fun?

Eric had no idea.

So he decided to go and bend someone’s ear about it.

Twilight was, again, reading. She did this a lot whenever she wasn’t having to do anything else. It was kind of a reflex action.

There came a light tapping on the open door to the room in which she was reading. Her ear flicked.

“Yes?” She asked, not looking up.

“Knock knock, Twilight,” said Eric, whose voice she could tell a mile off. Little disconcerting she hadn’t heard him coming. She put it down to being too deep in the words.

Reaching the end of the line she was on Twilight hopped down from her seat and trotted over, beaming. Always nice to see Eric, if occasionally aggravating, depending on the topic of discussion.

“Hello Eric how are - is that a picnic basket?” She asked, eyes snapping down. Eric nodded and put a hand into the basket.

“Would you like a cracker?” He asked, holding out a cracker to her. Twilight went briefly cross-eyed given how close he was holding it to her face, then snapped out of it.

“I’m okay, thanks.” She said.

Eric ate the cracker. He’d already plied Spike with them on his way in. He hadn’t needed to, he just had so many of the damn things he felt he couldn’t get through them all on his own. Had Fluttershy got a bulk discount or something?

“Fair play. I had an ulterior motive in coming to see you, if you can believe that. Not just here to offer crackers,” he said, tapping a finger conspiratorially to his temple.

“Oh?”

“Yes. I rather wanted to ask you something in your capacity as Princess. Friendship and all that, eh?”

Twilight could see where this was going.

“This is about Lamia, isn’t it?”

Eric gasped, wounded.

“I - there are other people in my life, Twilight. I was at Fluttershy’s earlier, for instance. And you, for another instance. I’m talking to you right now,” Eric said, waving his finger about at Twilight. Twilight was not phased.

“About Lamia,” she pointed out.

Eric paused, finger still raised. Slowly, he lowered it.

“...fine. It’s just been a complicated time. Can I talk to you or not?” He asked.

Smiling, Twilight stepped aside.

“By all means.”

They went inside, Eric sitting in the very same chair he’d sat in the last time he’d come to see Twilight. Full circle? Well, a very small full circle, he supposed.

“Okay, before we start I have to ask: where did you get the basket from?” Twilight asked. Eric hefted it a moment and then set it down beside him.

“I was just over at Fluttershy’s. Hence the basket,” he said.

“She gave you food?”

“In a roundabout sort of a way. She, ah, hmm. I was there to check on some stuff I’d done there before but it instead turned into a rather brief conversation where Fluttershy asked about me and Lamia before, well, telling me that she herself has apparently been carrying something of a torch for me for a bit. Who knew, right?”

“Huh,” Twilight said, eyebrows raised. “You know, I never would have called that.”

“She was rather subtle about it.”

Given who was speaking Twilight would normally have doubted this, but given that apparently nopony else had picked up on it in this instance Eric might have been right.

“So what did you say?” She asked.

“I told her that I had never thought about her that way, which is true. She took it very well all things considered. Almost serene. But, uh, it was her asking me about Lamia that kind of...got to me...see, I’ve, well - this is why I’ve come to talk to you.”

“About Lamia,” Twilight said again, flatly.

“Yes yes alright, you can see me a mile off. You’re aware that Lamia and me are friends, yes?”

“Really. Hadn’t noticed that.”

He wagged a finger at her.

“Hah. Sarcasm, I like it. But yes, she and I are friends, no disputing that. It’s just, uh, well, lately I’ve feeling perhaps stronger, ah, feelings towards Lamia than just that. I think.”

“You think?”

“Well I’m not sure. It’s not the sort of thing dwell on usually, honestly. But she and I spend so much time together, you see - every day, actually - that it’s getting rather difficult to ignore. And I don’t really know what to make of it.”

“Maybe you like her more than just a friend,” Twilight said and Eric winced.

“Ah, heh, I suppose that’s a possibility but I’d prefer that not to be the case, all things considered,” he said, smiling weakly. A little weird, Twilight thought, cocking her head.

“Why?” She asked. Eric looked at her as though the answer should have been obvious. It certainly was to him.

“Well, that might sour our friendship, don’t you think?”

“You don’t think she likes you too?”

“Well as a friend, obviously yes, but as more than that I wouldn’t think so. I mean, why would she?”

Given that Fluttershy had not one hour before revealed that she might have entertained feelings greater than baseline friendship Eric’s boneheaded insistence on plodding straightforward in defiance of all evidence he shouldn’t was a little bit grating to Twilight. Not a surprise, but still grating.

“Didn’t you just say that you spend every day with her?” She pointed out.

“Yes. Just in the evenings and nights, obviously.”

“Obviously, right. And in all those evenings and nights she’s never mentioned...anything?”

“Anything about what?”

By this point in the conversation Twilight was rubbing her temples. If she didn’t know Eric better she’d think he was deliberating trying to annoy her. Since she did know him well enough to know he wasn’t, she was instead feeling annoyance build up at how anyone could be so resolutely cheerful and dim in the face of the blindingly obvious.

“Sun’s searing radiance, don’t you two talk to each other? How can both of you be missing this? You live together!”

“She doesn’t liv-”

Twilight snapped.

”YES SHE DOES, ERIC.”

Neither of them had expected that. Eric was gawking at her for having been so loud so suddenly and Twilight was sat looking amazed that that had slipped out. Eric was the first to recover:

“Okay, I’ll admit that maybe at this point it might be said to have gone a little bit beyond just staying over.”

“She was there when I asked you to make that painting for Rarity! That was three months ago! At least!”

He thought about this and jolted when it clicked that she was absolutely right. Even by his standards that was a little lengthy. Had it really been so long? The time had flown by...

“...okay...maybe she...might be...living with me…”

Eric went quiet after that, seeming to shrink in on himself.

“Not meaning to derail the conversation but how is that painting going, by the way?” Twilight asked. That birthday was coming up, after all. Eric sat upright at once at the mention of work.

“Oh, pretty good I’d say. Want to come around and have a look sometime?”

“Tomorrow?” Twilight offered. Eric nodded, counter-offering:

“Or later today, whenever works for you.”

That did actually work for her.

“Cool, alright. Where was I? Oh yeah, that was it: for the love of all that is pure and good in this world Eric please just talk to her. She really, really likes you. A lot.”

Another jolt, not to mention a sudden and entirely unforseen flutter of butterflies right in the gut. They dissipated quickly, sure, but they’re been there.

“She does?” He asked. Twilight ground her teeth.

“Yes! How can you not see that?”

“She said I was her best friend, I just thought...”

“Didn’t feel a need to read any more into that, huh? And Lamia didn’t think that would be unclear to you. Ugh. She can’t spit it out and you wouldn’t notice it if she did. You two are…”

“Quite the pair?” Eric offered. Twilight sandbagged his cheeky grin.

“Frustrating, is the word I would use.”

Fair play, thought Eric.

“That would also work.”

Seriously, why was Cadence never around when things like this happened? Did she have any books on the subject? Ooh, now there was an idea. Maybe she had some spare copies of dedicated works? Some she could send down if Twilight asked? There were still unused shelves somewhere around here Twilight was sure of it. She-

No! Not the time!

“Eric, this really isn’t my jurisdiction or anything I know a lot about. Even with that, though, I can see that you’re messing this up. Just go! Talk to her!”

“About what?”

Twilight actually growled.

“This! You! Her! She likes you! You like her! Just...figure it out! With her! Go talk! Go, go! Shoo!”

Eric found himself being forcefully ushered out of the castle by Twilight, who flapped along and shoved him. Given the significant difference in size and mass he had to help her in this by selling being shoved, which he did. It was polite.

On the threshold he turned around to say:

“Good talk, Twilight!”

“Shoo!”

A final heave-to by her got him out the door and she closed it behind him.

Author's Note

And you might say "Hey, wait a minute! Why'd you bother setting up any fracas when it all just got talked out, easy as that!" and, you know, fair enough, but this is my house! If I want things resolved happily with conciliation and compromise and just a nice chat I will!

Besides, if anyone was going to happily step aside to let someone else have a shot at a good time it'd be Fluttershy, surely.

Blood in heaven

Author's Note

Let's wrap this up.

Don't think I missed anything.

Blood in heaven

Eric spent the rest of what daylight remained sitting around at home thinking to himself. Eric was not very good at thinking to himself, as he was very out of practise with it. Eric, therefore, did not really get anywhere near as far with this as anyone else might have done.

Not that it mattered, really. He felt, more than thought, what he had to do. It sat in his gut as something he couldn’t put into words but which he knew would seize and move him when the moment came. Or so he hoped. He was fairly certain that was what was going to happen.

Fingers crossed.

Lamia’s sleeping patterns had shifted somewhat over her time in Eric’s house, with her now waking up far earlier than she had before. Worse things had happened, and the upshot here being that she came down the stairs much sooner than Eric had been expecting - indeed, he’d started napping on the sofa, awaking to Lamia’s face basically in his, her grinning at him.

“Ah! Lamia!” He yelped, falling off the sofa in surprise.

“Are you alright?” Lamia asked, worried, peering down at Eric as he lay face-first on the floor. He rose, groaning.

“I’m fine, you just rather caught me off-guard. Heh, quite a nice way to wake up, actually. To your face, I mean. The falling down was less nice. Ah, hmm.”

Odd thing to say, in retrospect, but in Eric’s defence he had literally just woken up. Grunting, he heaved up and got back onto the sofa again, sitting down. He patted the spot next to him. Now he had his wits about him again - such as they were, him being Eric - he figured that now was as good a time as any to get the ball rolling. No time like the present and all that.

“A word in your shell-like, Lamia,” he said. She was puzzled.

“What?”

Looking at them, he supposed that pony ears - batpony ears especially - did not look like shells. He could see why that line might not travel well. Clearing his throat he patted the sofa again and tried:

“Uh, can we talk?”

This worked, and Lamia hopped up, though she looked the tiniest bit worried.

“What are we talking about?” She asked. She’d initially settled on the spot where Eric had patted but had then moved closer to him just on general principle, and was now basically touching him.

Eric wondered how best to kick things off. This was not his area of expertise.

“You and I have known each other a little while now, yeah?” He tried.

“Um, little while,” she said with a small smile.

“And we’re friends, aren’t we? Best friends, right?”

The smile went away.

“Yeah…” Lamia said, not sounding as happy about it as one might have hoped. Expected, at this point. Eric had kind of seen it coming. Which said a lot, given this was Eric.

“Do you - do you think we…” He wasn’t sure how to finish that. He made some hand gestures but still the words did not come. Sighing, he decided to start over.

“I’m very fond of you, you know,” he said. Lamia nodded dolefully, having a feeling that this was not going to go the way she might have hoped it would.

“You said.”

“Yes, I did. I don’t think I really explained how fond, though.”

And Eric then decided to make some sort of bold, crossing-the-Rubicon-esque move and so reached out and took hold of one of her hooves. That got her attention. He took it in both hands and, since Lamia had been so close, held it then in his lap. Lamia immediately went very pink.

“I’m not very good at this, heh,” Eric said, quietly, before attempting to look as though he was taking things more seriously. “Ahem. Lamia. You and me, we’re friends. I’m friends with everyone, really. But you, uh, you…”

He really, really wasn’t very good at this.

But he was trying, and Lamia could see this. And what’s more he was trying - or was pretty obviously - trying to get to where Lamia rather wanted to go as well. She found her heart beating rather more forcefully than it had done at the start of the conversation, and it also now seemed to be in her throat.

“You are, uh, special. You’re very special to me, Lamia. I - I think about you rather a lot. And it’s - it’s not like it is usually. I - oh dear, I’m making a hash of this, aren’t I?”

“It’s okay,” she croaked, hardly believing what she was hearing anyway.

“Suppose I was - heh, still am, really - worried about...souring our friendship. I didn’t want that. Once I started thinking that maybe I...had...other feelings...I worried. You know? Then I spoke to Twilight and said that you, well, you know...shared the...feeling…”

Eric coughed, also now blushing, mostly through the sheer burning force of his embarrassment. He couldn’t help but feel he was digging himself into a hole.

“This isn’t really my strong point. And now I’m babbling. I just worried. I may not look it but I’m a worrier!”

Not true, he wasn’t. Or at least he wasn’t usually.

“You don’t have to worry about this,” Lamia said.

“Ah, but I’m also rather worried that this is sort of, well, unfair, you know? What with me looking after you. An uneven state of affairs? Felt like it might be...taking advantage...you know?”

This as an issue had popped up in his head only recently, and had been a source of fairly significant anguish for Eric. At least as far as Eric experienced anguish. He would have been mortified to be seen as someone taking advantage.

Lamia gave him a lopsided look, which did become something approaching a smile.

“I got by before I met you, you know…” She said.

Despite how obvious this was it hadn’t actually occurred to Eric, who blinked.

“True, true. Can’t really deny that,” he said, scratching his chin.

“So don’t worry. It’s not that. I mean, I like you looking after me…” She really did. “But you don’t have to. It’s enough you care. And that you’re there.”

“Well, I’m still going to look after you anyway…” Eric mumbled. He liked doing it almost as much as she liked receiving it. Lucky, really.

On another spur-of-the-moment decision Eric removed his hands from her hoof and picked Lamia up, plopping her onto his lap. This was unexpected, so she squeaked. This was adorable. Once she was in place he moved his hands down and let them come to rest just on her sides. Having them there did nothing to help Lamia’s shade of pink.

“Hey,” he said, quietly. “Look at me a second.”

She did so, although with difficulty. Eric raised one hand to brush her mane out the way. It was often in the way, he found, though often in a way he found rather fetching. Not that he’d ever thought about it that was before. Now though...

“You have very lovely eyes. Have I told you that?” He asked.

Lamia shook her head, unable to actually say anything in response to this. She had to look away as well. Eric did as well.

“...probably kind of a weird thing to say, sorry. Just something I noticed before…kind of thought about again...”

“Thank you…”

Awkwardness climbed rapidly, Eric feeling that he’d royally put his foot in it while Lamia squirmed inwardly, inches away from just melting into a puddle of butterflies - so to speak.

This time it was Lamia who seized the initiative, wriggling off of Eric’s lap and back onto the sofa. Before he could pipe up to ask why she’d done this - and what he’d done to make her do this - she cut across him:

“Wait. Wait here. I’ll be back,” she said, giddy, pressing down on his leg with both hooves to emphasise where it was she wanted him to wait before jumping off the sofa and half-dashing half-flapping upstairs to her room.

Eric, at a loss, did as he’d been told.

He sat on the sofa and waited. First he waited in stunned silence, not moving a muscle. Then, as time passed, he relaxed a little and let out a breath, unable to really believe what was happening. More time passed and he started to get a little curious about what Lamia might actually be doing. He drummed on his legs and looked at the ceiling.

“Should I go check?” He wondered aloud, only to shake his head. “No, no. She said to wait, I’ll wait.”

More waiting followed.

Some minutes later, the slightly muffled sound of hooves on the stairs, and then she was back in the room.

And there was Lamia in her socks.

“Oh, oh my,” Eric said. Words failed him then.

It truly was the single cutest thing he had ever seen in his life, bar none.

And perhaps a little more than that. Maybe. Possibly. He couldn’t say yet.

He swallowed and with effort said:

“Those, ah, those really suit you.”

Lamia smiled. It wasn’t just that he’d said it, though it was nice to hear, it was the way he’d said it.

“Thank you.”

She gave a turn on the spot. Overkill at this point.

There was definitely something beyond cuteness that Eric was experience, though he was having difficulty putting his finger on it. That might have had something to do with him having difficulty ordering his thoughts in a more general sense.

Trotting over Lamia jumped back onto his lap, standing up and resting her hooves on his shoulders. This put their face very close together, as they had been more than a few times recently. Little different this time though, somehow. And now neither of them had any desire to look away.

“You took a while,” Eric said.

“Socks are really hard to put on,” Lamia said with the merest hint of a pout.

To be fair, she didn’t have fingers. Eric had no idea how ponies managed most of the time.

Their faces really were very, very close together.

“Are we supposed to kiss now?” Lamia asked.

She’d read about it, briefly, during her idle hours around Eric’s house. There had been magazines lying around. Eric honestly had no idea how he’d even acquired those magazines.

Having read about it - and also having just been caught up in the moment and find herself quite, ah, heated, perhaps - she found the idea very appealing.

Eric, for his part, had no idea if they were supposed to or not. Certainly it sounded like the sort of thing they were supposed to do. Probably without the asking first, but nobody’s perfect. And besides, no-one was watching.

He also found the idea rather appealing. He licked his lips and said in as steady a voice as he could muster:

“If you want to?”

They stared at one another.

“...might be fun to try,” Lamia said.

And try they did, at some length.

Fumbling and inelegant at first, quickly breaking down into giggles, they tried it out. Once some of the early issues - teething problems, a wag might call them - were overcome the enthusiasm mounted. They quickly forgot that this just meant to be about trying.

It seemed that a barrier of sorts had been breached on Eric seeing her in those socks, and now a lot of what both of them had been suppressing without fully realising now just came pouring on out, uncontrollably.

Also sloppily and noisily. Things were very involved.

In fact, so involved were they that neither of them noticed the knocking at Eric’s door.

Eric’s perpetually-unlocked door.

“Hello?” Asked Twilight, nudging it open and popping in her head, figuring it would be fine - why wouldn’t it be? “Eric? I’m here to see that portrait, like we said? Is now a good time? Eric? Hel-”

In defiance of reason it took Twilight this long to see why no-one was answering.

“Oh! Oh Celestia I’m sorry! Sun, stars and - just - just forget I was here! I’ll come back tomorrow!”

END

I come alive 'cause for your sweet blood I am bound

Author's Note

I have no idea if batponies are a real thing or not? I have limited access to the show and am, like, twenty years behind you lot anyway, probably. No-one can stop the smooze, am I right?

Seen them pop up once or twice though, and fluffy is fun. So I guess they exist in this story, at least?

Mostly just an outgrowth of something Solobrony mentioned to me. And which I then stole and did a thing with. Hah!

I come alive 'cause for your sweet blood I am bound

Eric, local human, was sitting around in his little house on the outskirts of Ponyville one evening, feeling pretty good about things. It had been alright day, and looked to be a quiet night. All was well in the world.

Then out of nowhere came a knock at the door. Eric frowned.

“Who on earth could that be,” he said to himself, glancing over. He quickly ran through a list of possible candidates in his mind but none of them jumped out. Certainly, he didn’t know anyone who’d just pop by unannounced.

What a mystery.

Rising from his sofa with a grunt he sauntered on over and the cautiously opened the door. Or as cautiously as he felt was necessary in Ponyville. The door hadn’t even been locked.

And there, standing just outside, was a pony he did not recognise, eyes down, one hoof rubbing the other leg, mane a curtain with which to hide.

At first he took her for a pegasus, but only for a split-second or so. Then the immediate differences leapt out at him. Ears? Longer and pointier. Teeth? Also longer and pointier, at least the two he could see. Wings? Not feathered, but leathery. Coat? Fluffier.

She looked unlike any pony he had thus far encountered. He was getting strong overtones of bat. But this wasn’t that big of a deal. Equestria was a weird place. It’d take more than this to ruffle him. There’d probably be scorpion-ponies somewhere, knowing his luck. He bet they’d respond to ear scratches, too.

The universal language!

Besides, this stranger looked adorable. Kind of downcast - which was sad - but adorable all the same. But then Eric would think that.

“Evening,” Eric said, leaning on the doorframe.

The visitor said nothing, or at least nothing he could hear, and continued to just rub her hoof against her leg in what was obviously a nervous tick. Maybe she was shy?

“Nice night for a walk, eh? Or a flap, for you I suppose,” he ventured, even trying a light chuckle.

Nothing, no response.

Was he missing something here? Some pony nuance he was unfamiliar with? Some etiquette not covered in that acclimatization leaflet he’d been given? He was drawing a blank.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

At long last she looked up. Aside from what difference Eric had already noticed - fluffiness and pointiness - she looked about as he might expect a pony to look, which is to say cute. Though sad, as he’d also noticed. He started to feel the gnawings of concern.

“C-can I come in?” She asked, voice small.

Bit late in the day for that sort of thing and kind of out of the blue but Eric couldn’t really see any reason why not. She was out in the cold on her own, after all - what sort of cad would he be to refuse her? She already looked so sad!

“Sure, why not,” he said, stepping aside and sweeping an arm to indicate she could neter.

Instead she stood rooted to the spot.

“Really?” She asked.

“Sure, why not,” he repeated. “Wasn’t expecting company so the place is probably a bit of a mess but you’re more than welcome. Come on in.”

She gave him the look of someone expecting there to be a punchline and that punchline to be her having the door slammed in her face the instant she tried to enter.

“Really?” She asked again, gingerly inching closer, eyeing the threshold.

“Would you prefer I say no?”

“No!”

“Well alright then, in you come, come on.”

Eric took proactive action at this point, sliding past her and actively ushering her in. She had not expected this and squeaked in alarm, fololloping forward as Eric brought up the rear and shut the door behind him.

Once in and upright and stable she stood in Eric’s living room - into which the front door opened - as still as a statue. Clearly if she’d had a plan she had thought it through no further than the asking-to-be-let-in part.

Eric had never seen a pony act like this before, but everyone was different and who was he to judge? Whistling to himself he sauntered on past, heading for the kitchen, stooping to avoid cracking his head on the doorframe.

“So there any reason you’re out this late? Not that I’m judging, course, just curious. Most ponies would be in bed by now,” he called from the kitchen as he sorted through mugs.

“I - I’m a batpony,” the visitor said, by way of explanation.

Eric paused midway through mug sorting to raise his eyebrows. Really were such things as batponies. Scorpion ponies still a possibility? Only time would tell. Still, learnt something new every day. What a world!

“Ah, so nocturnal and stuff, right?” He asked, resuming activity.

By now she’d found the wherewithal to move and was now loitering around the kitchen doorway, watching him nervously.

“Right,” she said.

“Cunning, I get ya. Now here’s an important question: would you like a cup of tea?” Eric asked, turning around and holding two of his cleanest mugs. She looked shocked, eyes dropping to the mugs, going back to his face, dropping again then again rising.

“I do not drink...tea,” she said.

A pause.

“Okay. No tea then.”

He put her mug back and flicked the magical kettle on. Just because she wasn’t having tea didn’t mean he couldn’t.

“What would you prefer, uh, sorry I don’t think I caught your name?” He asked.

“Lamia.” Lamia said.

“Lamia? Huh, s’different. I’m Eric. Not from round here, yada yada. Not sure what else I got for you, really. Think there’s some juice, still. Is there beer? No, no, drank that…”

“I don’t - I - do you know anything about batponies?”

“Until I met you, Lamia, I did not even know they existed. So no.”

Lamia was doing the nervous rubbing-her-leg-with-a-hoof thing again and failing to meet his eye.
“Batponies don’t eat the same food normal ponies do.”

“Right,” said Eric, fishing around for a teabag in the bottom of a mostly-empty box.

“Batponies...drink blood…”

Eric, who’d had the teabag on the ropes, accidentally let it slip through his fingers.

He then turned around and looked back down at her.

“Blood?” He asked, to confirm. Lamia just nodded, face still hidden by her unruly mane.

“Yes, blood,” she said, to confirm.

Eric made an impressed expression before returning to trying to nab his teabag.

“That’s surprisingly hardcore for this place. Surprised I hadn’t heard that before. Equestria has vampires! Who knew,” he said.

“We’re not vampires, we’re batponies,” Lamia grumbled, pouting at him adorably, fangs protruding. Eric wasn’t clear on the distinction but it seemed important to Lamia so he made a mental note.

“Right, right, sorry. Never heard you mentioned, though.”

“Most ponies don’t really like to talk about us,” she said, shrugging.

“Because of the blood thing?”

“Because of the blood thing…”

Eric tossed the teabag into his mug of choice and then poured the kettle - which had boiled - into it. Stirring it briefly he then gestured that Lamia should head towards the seat area of the lounge.

“Just going to let that sit a few minutes, let’s chat over here,” he said, leading the way. He returned to his sofa, Lamia settled herself right on the very edge of the overstuffed armchair.

Conversation did not resume flow. Eric, clearing his throat, decided to get things going again:

“So how does it work, usually? Like, normal day - well, night - for you, you’re hungry, what do you do?” He asked.

Lamia could now properly rub her two hooves together nervously since she was sitting down but paused long enough in doing this to tuck at least some of her mane back behind one of her ears, exposing enough face to make continued chatting at least a little less awkward.

“Uh, when I wake up it’s usually turning dark and I go out and I look to see if anypony is still out on the streets,” she said.

“And you swoop in and suck their blood?” Eric asked, filling in what seemed like a natural blank.

Lamia looked horrified.

“No! I approach them directly and politely and ask them if they wouldn’t mind me sucking some of their blood.”

Eric was genuinely amazed. He couldn’t tell if she was joking at first, but then it became abundantly clear to him that she was deadly serious.

What a place! Even the bloodsuckers were nice!

“And they say yes?” He asked, surprised. Lamia, who had been busy looking offended by his previous suggestion, now looked downcast again, shoulders slumping.

“Not usually, no…so I keep trying…”

“That doesn’t sound very efficient.”

“It’s not, not really.”

As to highlight this Lamia’s stomach chose that moment to rumble and she blushed with embarrassment.

“Sorry…” she said, but Eric waved her off.

“Don’t apologise for being hungry, that’s not your fault. So what’s with the door-to-door routine?”

“I overslept so when I went to look today there wasn’t anypony around. So I just started going house to house but no-one would let me in until, well…”

She trailed off there, but then again she didn’t really need to say anything else.

“Ah, muggins here, I get ya. Gimme a second, I’ll be right back.”

He then hopped up to deal with his tea, returning mug in hand a moment or two later.

“So I guess the idea was to find someone who’d say yes to your, ah, blood-drinking proposition, eh? You’re not going to ask me, are you?” He asked, jovially enough.

Lamia looked incredibly crestfallen by this.

“O-oh. Are you - do you want me to go?” She asked, already starting to slide off the chair. Eric, steaming mug poised before him where he was blowing on it, did a double-take.

“Wait, what. You were?”

She went quiet and looked down but nodded all the same, inches away now from just sliding off onto the floor.

“It was kind of the idea,” she said, voice now tiny instead of just small.

“Oh. Huh.”

Well this wasn’t how he’d seen his night going.

On the one hand was his innate, burning desire to be a good host, crossed with what he’d quickly learnt on arriving in Equestria was a soft spot a mile wide for ponies, on account of their enormous cuteness and general pleasantness.

On the other, being a good host in this instance involved him letting someone he’d just met suck his blood. With their fangs. Directly from his person.

This was an unusual set of circumstances.. He had no precedence for this.

The deciding factor in all this was just how bloody sad Lamia looked. Eric couldn’t help himself.

Swallowing, he shifted on the sofa and asked:

“If I, uh, did agree - hypothetically - it’s not going to leave me an emaciated husk or anything, is it?”

Being an emaciated husk was never fun.

Lamia gave him a look that was somewhere between pity and exasperation.

“No. Most ponies don’t even notice afterwards, and you’re twice the size.”

“I’m at least three times the size, thank you.”

“It’s okay, I can go,” she said, finally landing on the floor and moving sadly, slowly towards the door. Eric stuck a hand out to bar her path.

“Hey hey ho, hold on a minute. I can’t in good conscience let you go back out there hungry. Especially now I know it’s likely that you’ll be staying hungry! That doesn’t sit right with me.”

It really didn’t. Even if the alternative was, well…

“Does that mean - do you - ?” She asked, ears now pricking up hopefully. Eric swallowed and set his mug down. As relaxed as he was - and he was very, very relaxed - even he had to admit to some trepidation. Were it not for his enormous, aforementioned soft spot for ponies he likely wouldn’t even be entertaining the idea.

“Consider it a tentative and polite yes,” he said.

Lamia literally jumped for joy, flapping at the apex and then gliding the minimal intervening distance between herself and Eric. Unnecessary, but she’d rather given up hope of eating that night and her excitement was difficult to contain.

She landed on the unoccupied end of the sofa, beside Eric, who shifted up a little unconsciously. She made up the distance, looking up at him with huge eyes, though it was the fangs that Eric was concentrating on mostly.

Unbidden, thoughts of vampires returned, and Eric felt a little flutter of skittishness.

“This isn’t going to do anything weird to me, is it?” He asked.

“It shouldn’t,” Lamia said, practically on top of him now.

“That’s reassuring. Not going to do anything weird to you, either? Bizzaro-alien blood from another dimension?”

That gave her pause.

“Um...I don’t think so?”

Neither one of them really knew what to do after that. Eric coughed again.

“Guess we’ll find out. You want a wrist or - ?” He asked.

“Neck works best,” Lamia said, clambering up onto his lap and rearing up unsteadily onto her hind legs, bringing her face level with his. Or, rather, bringing her mouth level with his neck.

“...right.”

Eric could see how from the outside this might seem like a terrible idea. He could hear the arguments now. But it was far too late to back out, and how rude would he be? And besides, the way he ickle face had lit up on learning she’d have a meal!

If the worst came to the worst he could always just throw her across the room, right? She was only little.

Kind of a dick move if it came to it, yeah, but he could probably be excused. Probably.

“And oh yeah, this isn’t going to hurt, is it?” He asked while Lamia licked her lips.

“You won’t feel a thing,” she said, and then she struck.

Eric did indeed not feel a thing. Or at least he felt no pain, just a distant numbness. He felt a kind of warm, sucking feeling both on his neck and a little deeper, but it was a feeling without much distinction. Just a vague awareness.

It felt really weird. Not unpleasant, just weird.

Lamia got on with it. Eric just sat there and let her.

It went on for some minutes with no apparent sign of stopping. If Eric had had a watch he would have checked it, but he didn’t, and his clock was in the kitchen.

“Uh, out of curiosity why do batponies have this kind of bad rap given the whole feeding process is so harmless and painless?” He asked, at some point.

Lamia pulled back, gasping, long enough to reply:

“Sometimes - ah, mmm - sometimes we get greedy.”

This was not what you wanted to hear someone with fangs say to you.

“Define greedy,” Eric said but Lamia was already back to it.

As it went on, the more Lamia started sagging and resting on Eric, who ended up having to use his arms to support her. Turned out, what with it having been something of a lean and hungry week for her, greedy was what she was, though with Eric being at least three times the size (if not more) of what she was used to this was nowhere near a problem.

He was also very different tasting. Hard to put a hoof on it at first, and the more she drank the more she needed just to be sure what exactly it was about his blood that seemed so different.

And in that way she gorged herself stupid, and fell asleep. It was only when Eric heard her snoring that he realised the numb sucking feeling had stopped, and she’d nodded off in his arms.

“Hey. Hey Lamia,” he said, giving her a little bounce but to no avail - she was out of it.

Shifting her weight about and sighing Eric raised a hand to his neck and pulled it away. Not a whole lot of blood, but still blood. He looked at his fingers and frowned.

“Well at least I got an anecdote out of tonight, I guess,” he said.

Then he yawned. Big lad though he was, getting your blood sucked was still getting your blood sucked.

Issues like waking Lamia up and turfing her out seemed like issues that could wait to be dealt with by future Eric, now. Present Eric kind of thought a nap seemed like a good idea, and a priority.

Twisting on the sofa and slinging his legs over one end Eric snuggled down, the deeply, deeply asleep curled-up lump that was Lamia now resting comfortably and happily on top of him, dead to the world.

Instinctively he gave her mane a ruffle and then let that transmute to a scratch behind the ears, a sense of delight building in his gut at the sleepy smile that spread across her face. Cute. Always so fucking cute.

“Just going to have a little snooze, I think,” he said, yawning again and closing his eyes. “I feel quite drained.”

A few seconds passed, then he twigged what he’d said.

“Heh, eheheh…heh...”

A few more seconds after that, he was snoring, too.