Your Family and You

“You’re a bucking idiot. You know that, right? A bucking idiot.” Using her magic, Ebony carefully maneuvered my hand around. Her green eyes studied the injuries closely. She applied some pressure against the tender flesh, checking to make sure no debris got into the cuts while they had been airing out.

“Yes, I know,” I told her. “You tell me every time you change the bandages. Yesterday, the day before that, and the day before that.” Trying to ignore the dull throbbing from her ministrations, I instead attempted to focus my attention on the book spread across my lap. Thankfully, I was just over halfway through it, so I could easily hold it open with my free hand.

As I turned a page, Twilight twitched beside me. Looking up from her own book, she craned her neck around and gave my choice of reading an incredulous look—the latest of several she’d given me in the past hour. “I can’t believe you’re actually reading that.”

“What? What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“Well, nothing. It’s just… I didn’t think it’d be your type of story, is all.” Her horn lit up and she lifted the book—taking care not to accidentally lose my place—and studied the cover for a moment. “You do know that’s the second book in the series, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said as she gave the book back. “I finished the first one already. Figured I might as well continue the series. You know, see what happens and all that.” It really was a gripping read, now that the plot was actually on the move. It had been a slow start, but it was starting to pay off. Plus, I really needed to learn if it was Iron Rod, Rocky Steady, or Buff Hardback that got Soft Petals’ sister pregnant. Either way, she was going to be so heartbroken.

Twilight watched me for a moment before returning to her own reading with a shake of her head. The book before her was a rather large tome, the pages tattered with age, and it smelled of dusty parchment and leather. She perused the cracked pages and faded writing with ease, as she had done so since she had borrowed it from the Castle of the Pony Sisters. I had inquired earlier about the contents, but the most I had gotten from her explanation was that it held old records of an ancient civilization of antiquity that had been located across the eastern sea. A place called “Dream Valley”.

It sounded like a Luna-type thing to me, but Twilight insisted that this was long before the Princesses.

I winced as Ebony’s magic brushed against a particularly raw gash. “Ouch! Hey, watch it!” My hand jerked back instinctively, but her magic held firm.

“Sorry,” Ebony said. “I need to make sure it’s healing properly though. Some of these cuts are still seeping.”

“What? Seeping?!” came a gasp. “Is he going to be okay? Can he still use that hand? Can he still move his fingers!?”

Sighing, I shook my head at the frantic barrage of questions. From the moment she had entered the library and saw my bandaged hand, she proceeded to fall into a panic attack and had been freaking out ever since. The concern had been humorous at first, but now it was just getting tiresome.

Apparently Ebony felt so too, given the exasperation in her answer. “Yes. His hand is fine, despite its appearance. The cuts are healing just fine. They aren’t serious enough to affect his fingers’ mobility once they close. He might have some scarring, but the hand will be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Ebony gave my hand one last look. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She picked up a tube of salve and a roll of bandages off the coffee table. Using her magic, she dabbed the sweet-smelling ointment on the cuts before wrapping the bandages snuggly into place. “There. That should do it for now. We’ll have to change them tomorrow after your shower. Again.”

I flexed my fingers. “Thanks, Ebony.” There was some discomfort, but thankfully my fingers weren’t as stiff as they had been. I could almost close my fist completely again.

“B-but… what if his hand doesn’t heal properly? What if he’s crippled?!”

“Okay. That’s enough of that.” Using a finger on my good hand to keep my place, I closed the book with a ‘snap’. I leaned forward on the couch and gave the fretting mare a pointed look. “You need to relax, okay? We’ve told you this for over an hour now. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Not that big a deal?” The gray mare looked horrified. Her usually prim and proper mane was tangled, and her bow tie was askew and unraveled. She looked normal when she arrived, but upon seeing my injuries, her appearance had changed almost in an instant—like a spring breaking. There was even an accompanying snapping noise.

Shit was weird, yo.

“Not that big a deal!?” Octavia looked like she was ready to explode. If her voice was even shriller, she could shatter glass. “Of course it’s a big bucking deal! That’s your fretting hand! If anything happens to it, you can’t play the cello! You’ll be ruined, destroyed, washed up, unable to perform the songs of another world in front of the eager masses!” Her face paled just at the thought, and she turned to Twilight. “How are you not more concerned about this?!”

Twilight shrugged. “I’ve seen him in worse condition.” She returned to her book for a moment before pausing and looking back up. “I can’t believe I just said that.” Turning to me, she inquired. “How many times have I seen you hurt that I can say that with a straight face?”

“Uhhh…” I gave her a blank look.

“That’s what I thought,” Twilight said.

“It’s not my fault,” I defended. “This world just hates me.”

“You see?” Slumping across the now-cleared coffee table, Octavia threw a foreleg over her face. “This is it. Our duet is finished before it even had a chance to shine. The flame snuffed out before it could grow into a roaring inferno of splendor. Quenched before we had a chance to consume the world of theater in a blaze of glory.” Sighing, she rolled across the small table until her front half was dangling off the edge and she was staring at us upside down.

“Dismal,” she whispered. “Truly dismal.”

Rolling my eyes, I reached down and booped her with the corner of my book. “It’ll be fine,” I told her as I sat back. Crossing my legs, I placed my book across them. “It’s not the first time I’ve cut my hand, and it won’t be the last. I can still play the cello. It’ll just take a week or so to heal to the point I can play comfortably again.”

“That’s too long,” Octavia whined. “I was hoping we could practice today. That’s why I came over here. If you weren’t too rusty, I was going to book a possible gig for next week. Alas, my best-laid plans…”

“A week or so. Take it or leave it,” I said before flipping my book open again.

“Fine.” Standing back up, Octavia straightened out her bowtie, her hair suddenly brushed again. “I suppose that’s the best I’m going to get, all things considered. I should probably count myself lucky that you didn’t lose any fingers. However, you better be ready for a good long session when your hand is healed, because I will not be going easy on you.” She sighed before settling down onto a nearby armchair.

I nodded. “Fair enough.” I tried to return to my book, but a sudden clattering from within the kitchen drew my attention away yet again. “Oi! Will you stop raiding our pantry and get your fat ass out here?”

The noise stopped and a moment later Vinyl exited the kitchen. She had on her usual attire: her sunglasses over her horn, her black surgical mask around her neck, and a pair of headphones over her ears. Pyresteed sat upon her back, swaying gently from side to side as Vinyl walked. Both were chewing on something as they entered the room, and Vinyl had several items of food suspended in her magic

“Hey, I’ll have you know that a big flank is a sign of attractiveness in ponies,” Vinyl said from around her cheek-stuffing morsels. “Let’s the stallions know she eats well and has big hips for birthing. So, thanks for the compliment.”

“Whatever you say, short-horn,” I said.

All the unicorns in the room gasped in unison and stopped what they were doing. Pyresteed took advantage of Vinyl’s distracted state to steal several handfuls of crackers out of her magic, shoving them quickly with a gusto.

“Dude,” Vinyl said, her lower lip quivering, “I thought we were friends.”

“You’re stealing our food,” I shot back.

“You… you insulted her horn,” Twilight breathed.

“She’s stealing our food!”

“I’m not stealing it!”

“Well, you aren’t borrowing it, because I don’t want it back when you’re done with it! So yeah, you’re stealing it!”

“Only the expired stuff. You were going to throw it out anyway!”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh please. None of it was expired. In case you’ve forgotten, the queen of OCD lives here. Don’t deny it,” I said as Twilight opened her mouth. “You check the dates on everything almost weekly. Nothing gets close to expiring in this library.”

“Fine,” Vinyl grumbled. “I guess I’ll just starve. Reduced to nothing more than a skeletal corpse. Thousands of years I’ve survived, only to perish because somepony I thought was my friend refused to let me have some food.”

“Okay. No. None of that bullshit. You can’t come over anymore if both of you are going to be drama queens,” I said. “We’ve got enough drama around here without you two adding to it.”

Vinyl sighed. “No, no, that’s fine. I understand. I’ll just go and put everything back where I found it.” She glanced up at the cloud of magic above her head, only to blink in surprise upon finding it completely void of food. “What the…?”

From behind her, a low, drawn-out belch echoed around the room.

“Need to keep a closer eye on your food,” I chuckled. “Unless properly defended, your food will soon become Pyresteed’s food.” Smiling, I shook my head and opened my book again.

Craning her head backward, Vinyl glared upside down at Pyresteed. “You were supposed to be my accomplice. Instead, you make me your scapegoat. I’m still hungry.”

Pyresteed chirped softly, her head tilting to the side. “Hungry? Alpha hungry?” Reaching into the neck of her shirt, she pulled out an apple that had been hidden between her breasts. “Pyresteed find food. Alpha hungry?”

“Sure!” Holding out my hand, I caught the apple she tossed to me. It was a little slick and sweaty, but a quick wipe from my shirt took care of that.

As I bit into the crisp fruit, Vinyl tsked. “So unfair. I sense some favoritism going on here. I steal food, I get yelled out. She steals food, you turn a blind eye.”

“Yeah, well… she’ll eat anything, so…” I took another bite before passing the fruit to Twilight, who accepted it with thanks. She nibbled around the edge of my bite mark, sucking up the leaking juices as she continued reading.

“Got any more?” I asked Pyresteed. She blinked before rummaging around inside her shirt again. A moment later, a pear was tossed my way, followed swiftly by a packet of nuts.

“That’s rotten,” Vinyl huffed as I dug into the food. She was silent for a moment before perking up. “Oh, speaking of rotten, I just remembered. I was going to ask you. What’s wrong with your tomatoes?”

Sucking on a large nut, I gave her a confused look. “What tomatoes?”

“You know…” Vinyl waved a hoof about. “Your tomatoes.”

“We… don’t have tomatoes.”

“Uh, yeah, you do? They’re growing in the window sill.”

It took me a moment to process what she said, but when it registered, my head shot up. “Say what now?!”

~ ~ ~ ~ > > < < ~ ~ ~ ~

Gathered in the kitchen, we all gaped at the plant that was growing—quite successfully, I might add—in the planter box located in the kitchen window. Long cyan vines crept up the wire trellises that had been provided for them, and the stems hung heavy with dozens of large fruit. The tomatoes were plump and fat, their dark crimson skin spiderwebbed with lighter-colored lines that looked almost like veins.

“It actually worked?” I blinked, expecting the sight before me to change. When it did not, I glanced down at Ebony. “It actually worked?”

“I don’t believe it,” breathed Twilight. “They… grew?”

“Isn’t that what plants do?” Vinyl asked. Scratching at her ear, she tilted her head as she eyed the fruit. “Granted, they look completely different from any type of tomatoes I’ve seen before. They almost look poisonous. What species are they?”

“They were just… normal tomatoes,” I answered, still staring at the impossible fruit. “Like, standard tomato seeds you could get at the store.”

“They weren’t supposed to grow!” Strands of Twilight’s mane stuck out at odd angles. “This doesn’t make sense! I was just humoring you by leaving it up. Nothing was supposed to come from this!”

Octavia gave us a confused look. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. If you expected them not to grow, why did you plant them?”

“And what did you do to them?” Vinyl asked.

“I don’t… what…” Turning, I looked to Ebony. “What did you do?”

“What? Me?” She looked affronted. “You said to keep them watered! That’s what I did!”

“You’ve been using my blood bags?!”

“You said!”

“When I was high!” Covering my face with my hands, I let out a long sigh. “H’oh my god. This… this doesn’t… ugh… Why didn’t you tell us something was growing?”

“I got tired of manually changing the bags,” Ebony said with a shrug, “so I designed an enchantment that would do it for me. All I had to do was keep an eye on the supplies, which, I might add, is getting rather low. How did you not notice?”

“I… have had other things on my mind?” I offered.

“Um, excuse me, but can we get some clarification here, please?” Octavia asked, Vinyl nodding along beside her.

Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I turned back to the plant. “Long story short? Due to an idea that came to us when we were high on painkillers, we decided to try and grow tomatoes using blood instead of water.”

“What in the world would make you think of that?!” After explaining to her our reasoning behind the grotesque experiment, her muzzle scrunched up. “Not only is that… disgusting, it’s also impossible.”

Saying nothing, I gestured towards the plants with both arms.

Silence fell over the kitchen again as everyone’s attention returned to the tomatoes. The shadows of the leaves danced across the fruit, giving them the illusion that they were almost pulsing like a heart. Glancing down, I brushed a finger up my arm, following the visible vein until it disappeared beneath my sleeve.

Vinyl cleared her throat. “So, um… what do you think they taste like?”