Starlight Learns About Pranks [Slice of Life, Light Comedy]
Part 1
Satisfied that she had already found all of the available books on the topic of practical jokes and other forms of pranks, Starlight returned to the stack of books that she had been gathering. A brightly-colored addition caught her notice; she didn’t remember pulling it off the shelves. Sometime in the last fifteen minutes, it had appeared on top of the books that she had been gathering from Twilight’s library.
Starlight raised an eyebrow at the crayon image on the cover, which consisted of the disembodied heads of Pinkie and Rainbow centered over a yellow background shape that resembled a many-pointed unsymmetrical star that had been stretched to fit both heads comfortably. She sighed, picked up all three books with her telekinesis, and made her way back to her room.
“Pranks for the Uninitiated by Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, illustrated by Pinkie Pie.”
Starlight chuckled at the book on the top of her stack. For all the progress in her friendship studies, she still had so much to learn. This time, it was pranks. A year ago, she’d have condemned playing practical jokes on one’s friends as cruel and demeaning, but ponies in Ponyville pulled them off regularly, hardly ever truly upsetting the recipient.
It doesn’t make any sense… But that’s what the books were for. Starlight took the moment to appreciate that Twilight meant it when she said that there was a book for everything. Rainbow and Pinkie had also just proven that if there wasn’t a book on something, there probably would be soon enough. So far as she knew, their maybe-one-dozen-page crayon-colored instruction manual hadn’t existed until about an hour ago – shortly before it had appeared on the other books that she had pulled from the library.
She stretched her legs out before settling down on her bed, and grasped the book with her magic for inspection. Made out of thick paper, the crayon wax stuck the book’s pages together slightly. Starlight rolled her eyes and thought, Equestria is probably lucky there’s only one copy of this book. Nonetheless, she opened it up. Surprisingly, the first page contained more than the expected one or two simple sentences:
Table of Contents:
Rules of Engagement . . . . 2
Common Types of Pranks . . . . 3
The Jokester’s Toolkit . . . . 4
Picking Your Target . . . . . 5
Step One: Planning . . . . . 6
Step Two: Execution . . . . 7
Step Three (Optional): Punchline . . . 8
Step Four: No Hard Feelings . . . 9
Example . . . . . . 11
The second page succinctly discussed the purpose of pranking (to have fun), encouraged taking a strong stance in a prank war, and warned her away from acting on sour feelings when planning a prank. ‘Step Four’ sounded the most like what Starlight was after, but clearly the rest of the book could provide potentially useful context. Flipping the page again, Starlight was met by a pamphlet from the local joke shop cut to fit and glued in, as well as remarks on each product from the authors in the margins. Honestly, she hadn’t thought either Pinkie or Rainbow had been proficient with pen or quill enough to write that small legibly.
She didn’t pay close attention to the next few pages; a breakdown of the pranking process didn’t mean nearly as much to her as a breakdown of its place in friendship would have, and the drawings, while amusing, didn’t help much. Before long, she found herself at the desired page. She briefly noted that the page on the right was blank, presumably because the ‘example’ made use of another drawing that spanned both pages.
Step Four: No Hard Feelings
Even with the perfect prank for the right target, you should always let them know after that it’s all in good fun, because nopony likes a meany-pants. If they aren’t happy, apologize to them, and keep their feelings in mind when choosing your target next time. Remember: pranks should leave you laughing with them, not at them. Never pull a prank that you wouldn’t go through yourself.
The highly-detailed example provided in this book draws from actual life experiences. The authors of this book hope it answers any questions still lingering about why ponies play pranks.
Starlight smiled. They struck the nail on the head with that last line. She flipped—
BANG
For a split second, Starlight saw things flying towards her. She screamed as she defensively attempted to obliterate the foreign objects with a blast from her horn until she found herself subconsciously trying to hide in the claustrophobic gap between the wall and the side of her bed. She finally settled on shrinking into the back corner of her bed and glaring at the space that the book used to occupy.
By then, the air had cleared, and Starlight could no longer see any of the scary objects, but that didn’t mean anything to her pounding heart. Still slightly panting, she inched forwards and peeked down from her bed.
The book stared back at her, half-burnt confetti surrounding it and clinging to the side of her covers. The right page of the book appeared to have either been singed by her magic blast or partially exploded by whatever Pinkie used to launch her confetti.
Leave it to Pinkie to use a paper party cannon, Starlight remarked to herself. The left page showed more writing:
Got you! We used this prank on Twilight when she was reading about flying right after she became a princess. You two kiiinda think the same a lot.
Now that you’ve been pranked, you’re all ready to start your own pranking career! Make us proud!
—Pinkie Pie & Rainbow Dash
After years of living in the sterilized village that she had made, obscenities had become almost completely alien to her. She was beginning to remember why ponies used them, though. They wrote this part knowing I’d fall for it, she remarked. But they were right.
They aren’t even here to see it happen!
Starlight groaned and flopped back onto her bed. As cheesy as the book first appeared, they had just proven their credibility.
Part 2
Starlight hadn’t been inside Rainbow’s house before, but it was way cleaner than she expected. The amount of clutter, awards, and posters crowding up the surfaces and walls of adjacent rooms came as no surprise, but every room that should could see into – especially the living room – maintained an open feel to it. She wondered if this was intentional and at all related to the fact that Rainbow was a pegasus.
I’ll have to conduct a study on pegasus living habits someday soon. My expectations clearly aren’t up to par. Starlight briefly recalled the uniform style of houses in her village. Gee, I wonder why that is.
She and Trixie had found Pinkie at Sugarcube Corner, and the three of them tracked down Rainbow, who had volunteered her living room when Starlight requested that they find somewhere more private than a random cloud bank floating just above Ponyville. Now Trixie and Rainbow seemed to be competing for who could appear more relaxed on a couch.
“So, who are we getting and what do you need?” Pinkie asked as she dumped out a large bag of what Starlight guessed were of props for her practical jokes
“Yeah, what do you need our help for?” Rainbow asked. “I’ve been kinda curious what pranks Twilight could think up, and your ideas are the next best thing.”
“Well— wait. ‘Next best thing’? I am not that much like Twilight.”
Rainbow sat up and rolled her eyes. “We heard you scream. Not only was that a prank we pulled on Twilight, that was the same scream we got from Twilight.”
Starlight would have been happy to move on, except Trixie took that moment to fall off her couch cushion from her poorly-concealed snickering. Starlight glared at her in an attempt to ignore the mild burning of her ears and cheeks.
When Trixie recovered enough to notice, she replied, “What? You only said it ‘startled’ you.”
“It startled me and I reacted defensively. Let’s move on, please.”
Trixie snorted, but otherwise let it go.
Starlight glanced towards Pinkie and Rainbow and said, “We’re here because, even though I still don’t understand it, you all think pranking your friends is totally normal even though pranks can be mean and embarrassing; I thought of an idea for one to use on Twilight but it also seems mean, especially because Trixie even likes it. and I just don’t think this is a good idea.”
She let out a nervous chuckle, traced a circle with her hoof, and gave them a hopeful look. “Isn’t there, I don’t know, a less mean-spirited way to learn about pranks?” Because I don’t want to provoke the inhabitants of another town.
“Sheesh” Rainbow said. “You know Twilight also freaks out like this, right?”
Starlight returned a glare until Pinkie placed a hoof on her shoulder.
“Awww, don’t worry,” she said. “Pranks are only truly mean when the ponies that play them don’t set up good boundaries or follow them. Sometimes we can lose our touch and go too far, like Dashie did—”
“Hey!”
“—and sometimes embarrassing pranks are useful for reminding your friends, like Dashie, to keep their ego, or entitlement, or massive superiority complex in check.”
“I’m right here.”
“Maybe even all three at once,” Pinkie continued. “So sometimes playing a prank is just like being honest, and that’s a good thing for friendship, right? And when it’s not that, you can think of it like playing a game where you can’t really lose and you show each other the best moves you’ve got, so even if somepony gets you really good, you can admire how they did it.
“I hope we didn’t go too far with our prank this morning.”
“I… well, I guess it was fine. I didn’t like it, but I definitely fell for it even though it was dumb and I should have seen it coming. Heh.”
“Twilight felt the same way but—”
Starlight stepped back. “Oh for—! Ugh. Fine. Twilight and I think a little alike, but we definitely aren’t the same.”
“Of course not, silly. Anyway, Twilight doesn’t usually like silly pranks, but she doesn’t mind the really clever ones. We save only our best ideas for her.”
“Well, in that case, I think I know exactly where to get her.”
Pinkie gasped. “You’re not going to tell her that cheesecake contains cheese, are you?”
“Cheese— What? How could— Why would Twilight care about that?”
Rainbow briefly glanced around. “You didn’t hear it from us, but Twilight is uncomfortable with the idea of cheese. Nopony knows why.
“So how do you want to prank Twilight?”
“I don’t have a plan, exactly, but seeing as we apparently think alike, I can say with confidence that Twilight absolutely abides by every grammar, spelling, and punctuation rule there is.”
“This sounds boring.”
Author's Note
Written around September, 2017. I produced a small pile of scrapped pieces while working on an idea that is about as grammatically torturous as Who's On First. Above is the farthest I had made it at the time, possibly because it completely avoided the main joke until the end. I've snipped off a couple hundred words to remove a hamfisted attempt to write in the main plot. As of the time I am writing this note, I am working on a rewrite of that idea from a completely different angle.
Batponies [Slice of Life, OCs]
Part 1
Once, many, many years ago, the chiroptera – or ‘batponies’, as they are more often informally called – were terribly misunderstood.
They soared the night skies with leathery wings, they had good hearing and excellent night-vision, and above all, they had sharp, pointy teeth. As all of the other races knew, these were the traits of vampire ponies. Thus, the two were conflated: Batponies were assumed to all be vampires, and to let one into your home would be your end. Similarly, vampire ponies were regularly depicted as batponies, with the few exceptions being other ponies who one day made the mistake of letting a batpony into their home. It was Princess Luna who finally managed, with great effort, to disprove these beliefs. When the rest of Equestria came to terms with the fact that batponies enjoyed a good piece of fruit even more than they had been assumed to enjoy a pony’s blood, nopony minded them, and life for them all became that much less exciting when it came to light that nopony had actually ever seen a vampire pony. Before long, Luna herself had replaced her beloved chiroptera as the ‘terrifying night creature’ when she assumed the form of Nightmare Moon.
Almost one thousand years later, one such harmless batpony was absorbed in her reading material, lying beneath a grand oak tree in one of Canterlot’s many parks. Moonflower often wandered the city after her university classes, and always found a park to spend the rest of her day reading. To her, a healthy tree surrounded by soft grass during the evening was nothing if not begging ponies to find a book and relax beneath it. Sometimes, she found herself reading late into the night. Sometimes, she regretted not getting enough sleep.
This particular day, Moonflower had set up under her arbitrary tree a little earlier. This time, the nearby stream and surrounding flowers, complete with little fishies and the occasional hummingbird, did not merely suggest itself as a good reading spot; it outright demanded to be enjoyed. The tree’s canopy extended just past the edge of the stream, and let through several small rays of the evening sun’s light. The space it formed almost felt separate from the rest of the outdoors, yet was still itself outside.
After she had settled in and read for a while, her attention shifted mostly of its own accord when she overheard somepony talking about her, presumably.
“… like somepony’s in your spot.”
Moonflower peeked up from her book when she caught those words from a couple of earth pony stallions walking down the nearest path, which was still some distance away. One of them was cerulean with what looked to be a darker, over-greased mane; the other was a light shade of tan with a modest green mane, and they were the only ponies nearby.
She returned her head’s position so that it would appear she was still reading, but angled it such that she could keep an eye on them as they passed – if they passed.
The tan one shook his head slightly. “The next reading assignment isn’t ‘til next week, and I have too much on my plate right now anyway—”
The blue one cut in. “I mean you should talk to her. She’s cute.”
“I really don’t…”
They kept to the path, and she couldn’t make out every word when they started walking away from her. It became apparent that the cerulean stallion’s voice carried farther.
“I’ve seen you talk to flowers more than you talk to mares. When are you going to get a life?”
After that, they had wandered too far away for even her to make out anything. Moonflower smirked to herself as she recalled countless hours that she had spent talking to plants or telling animals about her day throughout her childhood. She had since grown out of the habit... mostly.
Moonflower resumed her reading, but she only continued for half an hour more. Her mind kept exploring ideas tangential to the conversation she had heard a slice of, rather than making any of the words on the pages before her coherent. She indulged it more after she gave up and started for home.
Many of the bits of the brief conversation popped into mind, one after another. Talking to flowers, reading assignments, that one pony’s abhorrent and unnatural greased mane. ‘She’s cute.’ ‘Get a life.’ ‘Talk to her.’ She found ponies interesting in general, but most of them she’d rather observe than interact with. Other forms of life were… less judgmental, really. Her parents had always questioned that part of her, but then, they were city-folk. For whatever reason, she just happened to be more of an outdoors-y bat than both of them put together.
Still, there was something underlying that interaction that stuck with her, and she hadn’t been sure what until she had almost arrived home: she didn’t like Mr. Greasy-mane. He had put down – however subtly – everything that didn’t align with what he thought was part of having ‘a life’. Other ponies in Canterlot had done that in response to her own seemingly odd behaviors – especially the ones trying to emulate nobility – but none of them openly described her as ‘cute’. That made him just that much more annoying to think about.
So she stopped thinking about him. On the other hoof, the other pony… he seemed nice enough. Even if he did hang out with Mr. Greasy-mane, at least he had the sense not to ruin his own mane the same way. ‘Cute’ wasn’t the first word that came to mind, but she blushed faintly when she admitted to herself that she was curious to know a little more about him. Was he just a jerk like his friend? His friend was probably a jerk, she decided. Did he really talk to flowers? Other plants? Animals too? Where? What if he didn’t?
Moonflower blinked. She shouldn’t care if he didn’t. She hadn’t even met him, so why did she want him to? Brushing that thought aside, she cracked a slight grin when she realized her opportunity: if it was ‘his spot’, and he at least had a reading assignment for one of his classes sometime in the next week, she’d just have to show up that time of day until he came to read. If nothing else, it was a nice spot to read in.
By then, she had arrived at her home. More specifically, where she lived with her parents. They didn’t live very close to Canterlot Castle, but they did live a bottle’s throw away from a barracks and her father’s workshop. There were also a couple of bars. The local joke was that the Lunar Guard’s purpose was to keep its off-duty members under control.
She pushed open the door and walked inside. It used to be a nice house for its small size, but over the years, while the house itself was fine, her parents had found a point of contention: clutter. Her mother, Honeydew, liked things neat, even if not orderly. So far as she was concerned, things had to at least be visible without digging around. Her father, Midnight Oil, on the other hoof, was perfectly content with semi-sorted small mountains of whatever it was that happened to be out at the time. Moonflower had heard stories of the first few arguments, but they found a compromise not long after, at least: Nothing was to be on the floor if it didn’t belong there, and surfaces couldn’t be piled more than one object deep. As such, her father had taken to using more surfaces instead, seemingly content with building his mountains sideways instead of upwards. The result was a house that felt more like an extension of her father’s workshop, aside from cleaner floors, the existence of two bedrooms, and the infamous Honeydew-list on the inside of the front door.
Her mother had left to set up her fruit stand in the afternoon, and wouldn’t be back until very late. Her father, she noticed as she walked past the kitchen/dining room, was still eating breakfast. Most chiroptera lived during the dusk or night hours, though they were hardly strictly nocturnal. Moonflower didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted to attend the classes that she needed to get any sort of landscaping or botany certification.
Her father’s eyes locked onto her, and he raised an eyebrow from behind his bowl of cereal. “How was class?”
“Class was fine.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened in class.”
He shrugged and returned to his cereal. “Well I thought I’d ask since you’re home early.”
Moonflower refrained from rolling her eyes. “Have a nice day at work,” she said, and resumed the path to her room. Conversations with her father were nice sometimes, but more often than not he just pushed her to find and build her career. Her classes were enough to satisfy him for the time being, though at some point she knew he would push her towards actually working instead. While part of her resented that and wanted to have options to move out of the house before then, she mostly acknowledged that he was pushing her towards what he saw as the best way for her to actually have those options.
Once in her room, she shut the door behind her and flopped onto her bed. Her own room didn’t have much, possibly because she needed it to balance out the organized chaos that had taken over the rest of the house. A desk sat against one wall, a few of her school supplies and books resting both on and beside it, and her bed took up a corner of the opposite wall, piled with a couple of fluffy blankets and more than a few plushies.
She pushed the lingering thoughts about her father’s imposed measurements of success out of her mind. She hugged her favorite snake plushie and took a look at the books on and near her desk. She figured that she shouldn’t read just anything when she took up ‘his spot’ again – it would be a wasted opportunity. What if he noticed her book? The straight-up textbooks were only good for announcing ‘I took this class’, and even then, to a pony in a different field, it would more generally say ‘I took a class on this’. She had a couple of fiction works, which were possibly more romance-themed than she really wanted to admit to even herself, so those wouldn’t do anything good for first impressions. Finally, she had some of her non-fiction, non-textbook books. In general, they did seem more likely to be worth having a conversation about. Of those, perhaps the most suited towards the topic she wanted to know more about his thoughts on was a narrative yet-still-thoroughly-informative published diary on the life cycles of various annuals, and possibly one of her favorites. If he didn’t notice that book, it certainly wouldn’t win him any points.
Moonflower rolled onto her back and smiled. Mostly because her plan was coming together, or at least, that’s what she told herself. She gave in to a yawn, and realized that she was rather tired for such an unproductive day. The recent week hadn’t been a great one for sleep, so even though the sun hadn’t yet set – which was when the day ponies usually went to bed, and she was still somewhat beholden to their schedule – she figured that the smartest thing to do was to make the day ‘productive’ by retiring early.
The next couple of days passed with less incident than Moonflower had hoped for. She hadn’t bothered going to her new reading spot the next day because, from what she had heard, the other pony might be busy for a little while. The day after that, she did head over to her spot after class, just in case. As much fun as it was to reread a book she liked, she still had textbooks that needed some of her attention. The benefit to this, though, was that at least she wouldn’t finish the other book too quickly.
Day three came along – a Friday. Moonflower wasn’t sure if coming out on the weekend would be worthwhile, at least not wholly on the basis of the other pony showing up. It was still easily one of the nicest outdoor spots to read in Canterlot. Really, the only thing she had known was that he said ‘next week’. She didn’t know what he’d do over the weekend or before. Not knowing much about him, though, was exactly what she was hoping to change, and it was the third day that she was in luck.
Soon after class, she had found herself quite immersed in her book, and near any of the school buildings in Canterlot, the ambient hoof traffic picked up a lot after classes on a Friday. As such, when she heard a pony’s hoofsteps merely a meter away – as planned as the encounter might have been – she jumped quite visibly, and turned towards the source.
It was the tan stallion that she had seen earlier – wearing a set of saddlebags this time – and the first thing he would see was her freaking out… and then blushing. Shoot! This was not going to plan.
“Oh—” He winced. “Uh… hi. Sorry. I didn’t see you on the other side of the tree.”
“No, um, that’s fine,” she said. Fighting back the urge to keep blushing with a few careful breaths, she figured the best way to proceed was with the truth, if not the rest of the plan. “I just… got a little carried away reading.” She took the opportunity to place her bookmark and flip the book so the cover was visible. Just in case.
He glanced at her textbook instead. “Well, I certainly don’t want to bother you if you have an assignm—”
She shrugged it off before he could turn away. “I’ve already finished that.” She poked the other book. “This one’s just for fun.”
He looked at her silently for just a moment. “So do you come here often, like at night?”
“No. Why would I?”
This time, it was his turn to blush. It still wasn’t going to plan, but Moonflower took comfort in the fact that they were at least on even ground at this point. “I guess I’m wrong at this point, but don’t, uh… uh...” – he scrunched up his face a bit as though he was trying to recall something – “well, I know there’s a more proper name for you guys, but for lack of it, aren’t batponies nocturnal?”
She blinked several times as she considered if he was implying anything. He did seem genuinely confused, so she decided to answer his question. “Most chiroptera are, but you can’t tell me you haven’t seen one out in daylight before.”
He shook his head.
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re serious?”
“I suppose I might have seen one or two, but I’m not big on crowds, so I don’t go downtown much.”
Moonflower let out a small chuckle. “You’d be right to think you’d find more of them downtown. A lot of day ponies don’t realize that chiroptera often like to enjoy themselves.”
He raised an eyebrow. “‘Day ponies’?”
Moonflower gave him a look. “Just like ‘batponies’, it’s descriptive, so we’re sticking with it.”
“That’s fair,” he said. He slid off his saddlebag. “I don’t suppose you mind if I join you properly?”
“No, I don’t mind.” As much as she hated it, her blush returned. All she could do was hope that he hadn’t noticed while he found a nice patch of grass to call his own.
“My name’s Hardy Vine, by the way.”
“Moonflower,” she replied.
“That’s pretty.”
Moonflower didn’t want to even think about how red her cheeks had to be at that point. She thought about his name instead. ‘Hardy Vine’ seemed more agrarian than the usual city-pony was. That plus his cutie mark – which appeared to be a bit of vine with a bunch of grapes – made her a little more curious about where he was from. She realized that she might have started staring at him when he addressed that exact thought.
“My parents own a large farm near Baltimare,” he said. “They wanted me to get an education in business, and Canterlot was the most respectable option that wouldn’t leave me surrounded by hundreds of ponies and vast expanses of pavement.” He look around briefly. “At least, not all the time. It’s pretty nice here, and especially right here, specifically.”
“I noticed,” Moonflower said. “I think I’ll do most of my reading here now.” With that, she stuck her tongue out at him briefly.
Hardy replied flatly, “Oh, how I’ll suffer.”
She raised an eyebrow at that, and he hid behind one of his books, blushing furiously, in response. It took all of her effort not to break out into a fit of giggling. She picked up her own book, but mostly to give herself a moment to think.
She didn’t know too much about him yet, but he was nice, and didn’t seem like a city-pony… although ‘business’, in her experience, seemed to be a quintessentially city-pony thing. That made her, again, somewhat curious. The ponies she knew that went into business were still largely normal. The ponies she knew of that claimed to be ‘businessponies’ tended to appreciate the strict order that came with the indoors. From what she gathered, there tended to be more of those ponies as one got closer to Canterlot Castle, which was one reason she was happy not to live near it.
Yet Hardy seemed perfectly content to spend his time outdoors.
If his parents pushed him towards business, maybe he liked it, maybe he didn’t. Either way, he probably had other interests, and her bet was that they involved being outdoors. She would probably have to actually ask him if she wanted details, and she didn’t think they were that far yet… though some hopeful part of her mind suggested that she ask him out to lunch. The rest of her mind responded by asking herself why this had to be so embarrassing. After that, it didn’t seem like a bad idea, but it did feel like a leap, given how recently she’d met him. On the other hoof, getting to know him better was exactly the point of asking him out to lunch. As a compromise, she decided to hold off at least a little bit and, if he hadn’t given her any reason not to, ask him before either of them left.
Hardy, a moment later, inadvertently removed her doubt. It relieved her that at least one part of her original plan had worked.
“In all my reading – and I’ve read a few botany books – I haven’t seen a published diary on plants,” he said. “Is it any good?”
Part 2 – Several Years Later
A classroom full of ponies was a special thing. Nowhere else could Harvest Moon find so many ponies gathered together, and none of them wanted to be there. Her over-dressed teacher didn’t show it, but Harvest wasn’t so easily fooled. She wasted no time leaving at the end of the day, presumably to spend the rest of the day having a ‘proper’ life with other ‘proper’ ponies, shopping and flaunting and other ‘proper’ things. Harvest had a higher tolerance for school than most of her classmates, but today even she didn’t want to be there.
History was a good subject, language was alright, math was fine – she liked any of the sciences, really – but social studies was not. Harvest didn’t inherit the curiosity that her mother had when it came to other ponies. Worse, often when her teacher used words like ‘should’, ‘most’, ‘many’, or ‘majority’ during these lectures, she and half the class would uncomfortably glance at Harvest. As if the subject itself weren’t enough reminder that she didn’t seem to fit in. The bell tolled for lunch and recess after what must have been a couple of hours.
Harvest slid out of her seat and waited for the room to clear before making her own way out. As sour as her mood might get, at least she always had her sandwich to look forwards to. A peanut-butter and jelly sandwich with lots and lots of grape, cherry, and strawberry jelly. It took a lot of practice for her to figure out how to eat it without making a mess, and she still didn’t know how her mother managed to successfully seal the jelly in with the peanut butter. The last time she had tried to make her own sandwich, the only thing she had successfully done with peanut butter was glue her plate to the table.
She walked down the hallway towards the room her book bag and lunchbox were stored in. On cue, when she passed by Fast Track, he whispered, “Blank flank.”
Pocket Watch stood in front of his stretch of wall, as per his schedule. He’d be there until exactly noon, and then he’d go and have lunch. No matter how early a class let out, he did the same. Somehow, he still had the audacity to roll his eyes at her every day.
Gilded Lily and Class Act just giggled at her when she entered the cubby room. They had singled her out pretty quickly for not keeping up with all the trends – or rather, any of them. Harvest didn’t understand why this had been so important, but to them, it was everything. When she first met them, her Nightmare Moon-print bookbag had offended them, apparently, just by being “so last year”. She figured the fact that Nightmare Moon was a significant figure in chiropteran culture and that the legend was actually a thousand years old wouldn’t win her any points with them, and held her tongue.
They had been responsible for several widespread rumors centered around her, but they had a hard time making things any worse. Their most recent fabrication circulated when she had missed almost a week of school when she came down with a nasty stomach bug. She came back to find her classmates afraid of her more than death itself, possibly because they seemed convinced that she was death. As it happened, Lily and Classy had managed to convince a number of them that she had come down with some sort of magical, contagious ‘nightmare plague’. She didn’t care to play into it, but it did come with benefits Lily and Classy likely hadn’t foreseen. Silver Tongue had kept his distance, and Fast Track had been so terrified of her that the first time she bumped into him – almost literally – only a day later, he had clearly contemplated flying through the nearest window, and settled for screaming and backpedaling into a bookshelf.
Even now, it brought an amused smirk to her face.
She pulled her lunchbox out of her cubby and made for the lunchroom. Usually she didn’t have any trouble finding a corner to call her own, but in the event that she couldn’t, there were a few reasonable places to eat just outside. Two of the corner tables were free this time, and she settled down at the one farthest from any of the doors.
Her mother worried about her lack of friends, but she would have been perfectly content if ponies would just leave her alone. Back when she was just old enough to start attending school, she had been enrolled into a chiroptera community school. She hadn’t really cared to make any friends there, especially since it took away from her reading time. When the other foals had noticed that her books didn’t have pictures in them, she really stopped fitting in. A new school had seemed like the answer, and while the ponies in this one had been more hostile, at least she didn’t feel like she was supposed to fit in, and that was an improvement so far as she was concerned.
Then she opened her lunchbox. Instead of her peanut butter and triple-jelly sandwich and the accompanying bunch of grapes, a single raisin-imbued bagel stared back at her.
Raisins were not grapes.
She had seen her mother make and pack the sandwich. Harvest tried not to let her eye twitch freely as she realized that somepony at school had to have swapped it out. Maybe that was what Lilly and Classy had been giggling about. Even so, they weren’t this overt. Silver Tongue, on the other hoof, was. He was exactly the pony who would leave her with a stupid bagel full of raisins.
Early in her first month at school, she had told him off for picking on a couple of other batponies, endearing herself in the eyes of effectively nopony, apparently – day ponies were weird sometimes. That was the day most of her problems started. In the time since, he had been mean and said nasty things about her and batponies in general, but he hadn’t crossed this line.
Harvest fumed in front of her lunchbox for a moment longer. The hole in her happiness wasn’t one that the bagel could fill. Now he had crossed that line, and the only things that her mind offered were brief fantasies of making him hurt. She glanced around.
Across the room, at the other previously free corner table, sat Silver Tongue, with a suspiciously familiar-looking sandwich. Catching her eye, he smiled, lifted the sandwich, and took a large bite.
A second later, her lunchbox flew across the room.
Moonflower sighed as she picked a bottle out of a bed of marigolds and straightened out the bent flower stalks. Taking care of the square in front of her father’s workshop was Moonflower’s least favorite part of her occupation, not specifically because the late-night parties that so often spilled out into it meant more litter the next day, but because of what those parties were: the lifestyle of chiroptera in Canterlot.
On top of that, with how poor her relationship with her father was anymore, the workshop itself seemed to loom over her, as though it were watching her to tell her father every move she made. As if he even cared anymore.
As soon as her duties in the square were completed, Moonflower moved on promptly. In her childhood, she had already realized that her father wanted her to follow in his footsteps, and later it became clear that it would be a source of tension between them. She did not expect him to make her feel guilty about getting pregnant with Harvest.
Instead of what? Building up her perfect career? To say that she was upset that he couldn’t see over his pride and be happy that she was happily married and starting a family would be understating it, and she was reminded of that every time she worked near his workshop.
After she left, and had a chance to clear her mind, the rest of the day was largely unexciting, which she deemed one of its perks. Unsurprisingly, being a batpony herself, she had been assigned to maintain chiroptera communities. As such, her areas were generally unpopulated during the day, when she worked. She finished her rounds in the late afternoon, dropped off her waste bag and toolbelt, and made her way home.
As she neared their house, she considered her options for making dinner. Harvest would be home before long, as would Hardy, and they would both be hungry. As part of his ongoing mission to convince them of the wonders of the brown lumps of root that he called ‘potatoes’, Hardy had obtained dozens of them from somewhere – she had never seen them for sale in Canterlot – and piled them in their pantry. It was just her luck that he was assigned to a large project the next day, and had to start working longer days. She had no idea how to cook them up, and they didn’t taste particularly good raw. In that light, maybe she’d just stick with the tried and true: fried apples.
When she opened the door the their house, a lump of multicolored objects greeted her from the floor. A blink later, she recognized them to be Harvest’s school bag and its contents.
She’s home early? Moonflower thought. School isn’t supposed to end until almost an hour from now. There hadn’t been any announcement that it would let out early that day – at least, not to her knowledge.
“Harvest?” sche called. There was no response. Puzzled, she wandered down the short hallway to Harvest’s room, and pushed the door open.
There was a lump of covers on the bed, with a telltale gold-colored tail hanging off its side.
Moonflower frowned. Something had not gone well for her. “Is everything okay?”
“No.”
She jumped onto the bed herself and pulled the covers back just enough to expose Harvest’s head, and gave her forehead a kiss.
“More teasing?”
Harvest wiped her eyes and snuggled up before responding. “Worse. Silver took my sandwich and ate it in front of me.”
What?! Moonflower blinked. She could feel Harvest shaking. “Did nopony try to stop him?”
“No,” she said. “He swapped it out with a stupid raisin bagel before lunch.”
That aside, Moonflower was still curious to know why Harvest was already home. She was a little worried about the possible answers, too. “And what did you do after that?”
“I… threw my lunchbox at him.”
We’ll certainly talk about that later, Moonflower noted.
“Then the teachers got upset with me,” she continued, tearing up again. “He told them the sandwich was his and I was just jealous. Nothing I say matters anymore, because he makes them think I start all the fights.
“There’s a note in my bag for you.”
Moonflower sighed. A jumbled pile of thoughts concerning just what she thought of the teachers in that school were competing for attention, but first, she had to cheer Harvest up at least a bit. Some part of her mind also told her that a good parent probably wouldn’t give their child the impression that throwing metal boxes at other kids was in any way acceptable, but Moonflower couldn’t help but feel at least a little amused and proud of what Harvest had done, if only because she had plenty of experience with such jerks herself.
If her brief meeting with Duchess Argentum at the start-of-the-year parent-teacher meet-and-greet was any indication, his parents were jerks too.
“We are going to talk about what you did,” she said, “but that can wait. How about you go clean up and I’ll make some dinner.”
“Okay…” Harvest slid off the bed and took a few sullen steps towards the door.
“You can snack on some grapes while I cook.”
“Oooh!” That perked her up. A blink later, she was gone.
Author's Note
Written in 2017. I honestly don't fully remember what stopped my progress on this, because this read well when I went to clean it up. I did later plan on merging the characters here into a story with Trinket Toss from Horrible Mechanical in Unhinged, but that also hit a bump and I've set it in my writing queue behind two other stories. It would probably be my most Biscuit-like (the Admiral one) story yet.
If anyone wants to suggest a title for this, feel free to drop it in a comment.
