A thousand times the worse to want thy light
“Two households both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hooves unclean.”
Stars, this was boring. Like, really boring. Like, so boring I was gonna fall asleep, and if I did that Scribe would send me to go talk to Counsellor Trixie, and I’d already been to see her three times this week, and it’d be a whole thing I’d rather not get into. That meant staying awake, though, and...
“Is it just me, or is this the worst?” Smolder grumbled, beside me.
I snorted. “Pretty much.”
Ocellus, just in front, shot us a scandalised look. “It’s one of the greatest plays ever written.”
Smolder and I exchanged glances.
“Uh-huh.”
“Sure.”
Ocellus, smiling, shook her head. “Just listen! The music of it, the flow...”
I yawned exaggeratedly. “It’s relaxing, I’ll give it that.”
“It’s romantic,” Ocellus corrected. Smolder mimed throwing up.
“It’s nonsense, is what it is. Can’t understand a word.”
“No, no!” Ocellus turned in her seat toward us, waving her hooves dramatically. “You just have to pay attention, it’s actually quite beautiful. It tells you right at the start how it’s going to end, and—”
“Ocellus.” Scribe – our teacher, the villain forcing this dreariness upon us – sounded quite unamused. Ocellus whimpered.
“S-sorry, sir.”
“If I may continue.”
Ocellus nodded, staring straight ahead and trying very hard to ignore us. Smolder winced. I bit back a snicker. The play droned on.
Claws clicked, hooves clopped, wings flapped as the lot of us ambled down the corridor.
“Aww, really?”
I chuckled. “Yup. Scribe’s forcing us to do some fossilised ’Pear romance for our report.
“Yeah,” Smolder said. “I mean, if we have to do one of these old plays, can’t we do that one with all the killing? You know, with the skull. Macbeth.”
“Hamlet,” said Ocellus.
“Yeah – that’d be much more interesting!”
“Totally,” I agreed.
Sandbar’s eyes were wide. “What? You guys get to do Romeo and Juliet?”
“Unfortunately,” said Smolder.
“Sucks, right?” I added.
“Dude, no! You’re so lucky!”
I stopped, turning to stare at him. “Huh?”
“Romeo’s great! I wish we got to do stuff like that.”
“Why?” I asked, honestly baffled. Something approaching suspicion crossed my mind. “What are you doing?”
Sandbar shrugged. Yona, beside him, announced, “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faust!”
I blinked. “The what?”
“It about pony who makes deal with draconequus and gets dragged into Tartarus!”
“It’s sooo dramatic!” Silverstream put in.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, come on,” Smolder huffed.
Sandbar made a face. “It’s really long.”
“Really cool, you mean!” I hopped into the air, swooping around him excitedly. “How come you get to read about ponies going to Tartarus while we’re stuck doing some sappy romance? That is so completely not fair.”
Sandbar shrugged, running a hoof through his mane. “I’d rather be doing ’Pear, if I’m honest.”
I flapped round to him, clasping my claws together. “Can we please switch places?” I begged.
His cheeks coloured. “I wish, dude.”
“New teacher really strict,” explained Yona.
“Aww...” I pouted. “Can’t you just make a deal with Discord or something?”
“And get carried off to Tartarus?” Silverstream gasped.
Smolder nodded solemnly. “A small price to pay for getting out of Romeo and Juliet.”
I landed back beside her with a sigh. “Yup. Romance? Lame.”
“You said it,” she agreed.
Sandbar nodded, but didn’t meet my eye.
Studying always sucked, but just then it sucked even more than usual. Somehow, reading Romeo and Juliet myself was even more boring than listening to Scribe waffle over it. I frankly hadn’t thought that was possible, but hey, the world was full of surprises. I stared at the words on the page, willing them to make sense.
“This,” Smolder said, raising her head from across the table, “is not nearly as bad I thought it would be.”
“No,” I agreed, “it’s worse.”
She laughed. “No, seriously. It’s really not as bad as I expected.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Honestly!” Smolder crossed her arms, puffing her chest out. “It’s kind of...sweet?”
“That’s the spirit!” cheered Ocellus.
I threw my claws up in despair. “I’m surrounded by eggheads.”
“Hey, what? No fair. I’m not an egghead, I only said it wasn’t bad enough to claw my eyes out over, s’all.”
I leaned over, tapping her head with a claw. “Yup,” I said, after a moment’s consideration. “Egghead.”
“Aww, Smolder!” Ocellus nuzzled up next to her. “It’s okay, we can be eggheads together.”
“I’m not an egghead!” Smolder protested, but she didn’t try to pull away.
I shook my head sadly. “It’s official, I’m afraid. Quite un-curable. Probably terminal.”
“Liking one old play makes me an egghead?”
I nodded. Smolder, scowling, turned to Ocellus for support. I winked, and she, too, nodded hesitantly.
“Well, whatever. Eggheads are cool, anyway.” Twin curls of smoke wisped from her nose as she very emphatically turned her back to me. “Say, Celly, how does this end? I hope they stay together.”
Ocellus, of course, had already read the thing cover to cover. She blinked. “Ah,” she managed, “the thing is, you see...”
Well, time to get back to reading. I frowned, rubbed my eyes, and set to work again on the page.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene...
“Oh, come on!”
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books
The amount I simply didn’t care about this play could not be overstated. It was maybe the single dullest thing I’d ever read – or, well, attempted to read – and every time I sat down to it I could feel myself drifting to sleep. Which was probably why I ended up where I was. Sitting, in the middle of the night, stretched upon the floor with the book clamped tight against my eyes. I’d tried, I really had. Nocreature could deny that. I’d tried, and failed, and now I was here, book glued to my feathers, as I waited for my roommate to return.
Tick-tock, went the clock in the back of my mind, the timer counting down the hours I had left to read it. Tick-tock.
I barely heard the door creak as Sandbar entered. He’d gotten pretty good at sneaking about, and usually I’d be with him, so I wasn’t used to being on the receiving end. All the same, I’d know his hoofsteps anywhere.
“Oh,” he said, as he spotted me laid out on the floor. “Hey.”
I let the book slide from my face and fixed him with one bloodshot eye. “Dude, you have to help me.”
He smiled, and dropped his bag carefully under his bed. “What is it this time?”
“I am so, so screwed.”
He turned back to me, and his gaze fell upon the rather battered book beside my head. “Seriously, dude?” he asked.
“Seriously.”
“Isn’t that due, like, tomorrow?”
“Twelve hours and forty-two minutes,” I said in a small, horrified voice.
He laughed, picking the book up and placing it delicately on his bed. “You really gotta get better at this.”
I watched him feebly from the floor. “Help?”
He looked over at me, and I could see on his lips the smile he was fighting to keep down. “’Course,” he said, after a moment, and patted the bed beside him. “Come over, then.”
When I was perched upon his bed, close enough to feel his warmth and his strength just beside me, he took up the book. “You’re holding this, by the way.”
“My...claws hurt?” I tried.
“Hooves,” he pointed out.
“Fair enough.”
He passed me the book, and I opened it with a sigh. “Kay,” he said, “so, where did you leave off?”
I blinked, and flipped it to the first page without a word.
“Dude,” he said, flatly.
I shrugged. “It really is super boring.”
“It’s not.” His voice was firm. “Listen, I’ll show you.”
And he began to read.
At some point, time had stopped. The room had melted away around us, and all that remained was Sandbar, and me, and maybe the bed, I wasn’t sure. We were floating along on something, at least. All around was velvet black, the very silence holding its breath between Sandbar’s every word. His voice was hoarse from talking, but I didn’t care.
It had started simply enough. In fair Verona, where the scene was laid. I’d read that line so many times I muttered it in my sleep, but somehow when Sandbar said it something had clicked, and it seemed to make so much more sense. Of course that was how it should start, it was only natural. And then he’d gone on, and I’d found myself nodding along as he read Benvolio, and Mercutio, and Paris, all these old pony names that had stopped me short flowed so easily from his tongue. He was a good reader – the voice he did for Tybalt was particularly great – and the story came alive as he spoke. The words themselves didn’t matter so much, it turned out – you got the idea of what they were saying pretty well by half-listening – but it was the emotion that came through. For some reason, he used his own voice for Romeo, and as dumb as it was, that seemed the most natural thing of all.
“That I were a glove upon that hoof,” he said, softly, “That I might touch that cheek!”
We had shifted, he and I, and somehow I’d ended up almost on his lap, against his chest, his head resting on mine as he spoke. I could feel the rumble of the words through his body, into mine, and for some reason I found that strangely comforting. If I noticed my heart beat a little faster every time he moved around me to turn a page, I don’t remember: I just knew his voice.
It should have been torture. Sandbar helping me out like this was nothing new – well, some of it was new – but even when it had been fun, or at least exhilarating, to sit up well into the night and race against the clock to finish some old book or other, it had never been...this. Whatever this was.
The story marched on, the lovers wept, and quarrelled, and held each other, and I found to my surprise that I was actually enjoying it, a tiny bit. I wasn’t transported, as Ocellus liked to say, it wasn’t that I was somewhere else, in the story itself – no, I was hotly aware of just where I was, and with who – but all the same it was different. I don’t really know how to describe it except that when the pair were married, my heart jumped, when Juliet danced around Paris’s questions, I laughed, and when Juliet approached the crypt to lay herself at rest, a terrible sense of dread sank its claws into my spine.
I knew how it ended, of course, but that wasn’t the point. As Ocellus had said, it told you that right at the beginning. What mattered was swell I felt within my breast as Sandbar hoofed through the final pages of the book; what mattered was the quiet murmur of his voice as the final tragedy took the stage; what mattered was the strength and ease of his hooves around me, holding me, as he said, at last, “For never was there a story of more woe, Than that of Juliet, and her Romeo,” closed the book, and whispered, “Exeunt.”
Silence fell, only it wasn’t silence, cause Sandbar was there too. I blinked, and blinked again, willing whatever it was rising in me to go back down where it belonged. It wasn’t sadness, exactly, or joy, or even relief, it was...well, I didn’t know what it was. A stirring, maybe.
“Huh,” I said at last, into the quiet. I realised with an effort it was dawn.
Sandbar chuckled, and my breath caught again as it rumbled through me. “There you go, then,” he said, “we’re done.”
Neither of us made any motion at moving.
“So,” he said, and I half-turned to face him, “what did you think? Still boring?”
I shook my head. “It was...” I wasn’t sure what it was. “...good.”
“Yeah.” I was painfully aware of every breath he took, every shift and bob of his throat. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I repeated. My body seemed to nestle into him all on its own. “Totally.”
He laughed, again, just slightly, and something inside me leapt. Not a normal kind of leap, because it didn’t fall down after it was done – it stayed there, warm and fuzzy and floating, and a desperate desire surged within me to lay my head against his chest and see if he felt the same. His breath was quiet, sweet, but filled the silence to bursting. He dipped his head to nuzzle against me, and I felt, to my shock, a purr rising in the back of my throat. I hadn’t purred since I was a hatchling – yet I felt no need to force it down. Suddenly, stupid as it was, I imagined I heard his voice again murmur against my ear the many declarations of love he’d made that night as Romeo. I shivered.
O speak again, bright angel, for thou art As glorious to this night, being o’er my head As a winged messenger of heaven.
So I guess that was how I realised that I’m maybe sorta kind of in love with Sandbar.
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks
I failed my report, but that was okay. Scribe had clucked disapprovingly when I’d presented him the empty parchment, and I was sure Grampa Gruff would get a strongly-worded letter about it at some point, unless I persuaded Gabby to lose it along the way, but I had more pressing things to worry about. Softer, warmer, kinder things. Things like how in stars I was gonna tell Sandbar. It wasn’t a question, really, that I would tell him – maybe some creatures could hold on to stuff like that, but I was pretty sure that if I tried, I’d fail harder than any test I’d ever flunked, and it would come bursting out at some point anyway, probably at the worst possible time. So I had to do it.
I was so distracted, in fact, that I didn’t even notice Smolder wasn’t there until I went to ask her for a quill.
“Hey,” I hissed, when Scribe’s back was turned, “where’s the dragon?”
Ocellus turned, shrugged. “Counsellor Trixie’s,” she said.
“What’d she do this time?”
The shadow of a smile played at the corner of her mouth. “Got caught fighting with Sandbar.”
“Got...what?” I stared. Ocellus giggled.
“It was just before class. Sandbar asked if he could switch places with Smoldy for Literature, and Smoldy said maaaybe, if he could beat her in an arm wrestle.”
My sleep-deprived brain struggled to wrap itself around the idea of Sandbar agreeing to this. “So what happened?”
Ocellus looked, for some reason, strangely proud. “They fought. Smoldy fell.”
“Smolder lost to Sandbar?”
“She was really mad about it.”
I picked my beak off the floor with some difficulty. “I’ll bet she was.” I knew, of course, that Sandbar had it in him to fight, but I couldn’t imagine him doing it so readily. Ponies didn’t usually fight unless they had to – unless something they really cared about was at stake. “Is he okay?” I asked.
“Oh yes, they’re both fine. Good, actually.”
“Huh.”
“Indeed.” Ocellus’s eyes twinkled as she leaned closer. “So, I don’t suppose you have any idea why he might have done it?”
“I...” The soft intensity of the night past flitted through my head. I saw Sandbar’s smile at my purr, and a flush spread across my cheeks. “Guess he’s just really into Romeo and Juliet.”
Ocellus shook her head knowingly. “You know I can taste emotions, don’t you?”
“Not fair.”
“I can’t exactly help it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Well, if anycreature had to know, at least Ocellus could keep a secret. A thought occurred. “Wait, so you can, like, totally tell, though, right?”
She frowned. “Tell what?”
“You know.” I lowered my voice. “If somecreature, well...likes you?”
“...Yes, pretty much.”
“Say,” I grinned, raising an eyebrow, “Smolder wasn’t exactly as keen on getting out this class as she said, was she?”
Ocellus blushed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.”
She cleared her throat. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be polite to say.”
“So you wouldn’t lend me a claw here, huh?”
“Absolutely not,” she said smugly. Well, that was that dashed.
We both jumped as Scribe’s hoof slammed down on Ocellus’s desk. “Working hard, are we?”
Ocellus looked guilty, I grumbled a vague apology, and when he left again, she turned to whisper one last thing. “It’s not just emotion for creatures I can feel, either.” She looked pointedly at the book upon my desk.
I took a deep breath. “I hate Romeo and Juliet,” I told her, meeting her gaze as levelly as I could.
“Egghead,” she pronounced.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone there willingly. Oh, sure, I’d been here enough that I probably knew as much about Trixie as she knew about me, but it wasn’t like I’d ever sought her out myself. Well, there was a first time for everything. Sandbar had clearly wanted this enough to wrestle Smolder for it, I reasoned, and even if the why of that desire might not be what I hoped, it was the least I could do to ask. I raised a claw to the door, but it swung open before I could knock.
“Sandbar!” exclaimed a ball of pink from three inches in front of my beak.
“Professor Pie?”
“Yup!” She beamed, and held the door open for me to enter.
“Is, uh, is Counsellor Trixie not in?” I asked, as she shut it cheerfully behind me.
“Nope! Her and Starlight are taking the day off to spend it together, or something. I’ve been called in to help out!” At my bemused expression, she added, “Headmare Starlight Glimmer, that is.”
“I’ve heard of her,” I said, sitting down on the couch, in vague hopes she’d take her seat across from me.
“So!” She hopped up upon the couch beside me. “What’s the issue? As long as it’s not wing moult, I’ve got you covered. Unless it’s beak maintenance. Or horns, I guess. Or maths! Anything friendship-related, though, I’m great at.” She blinked. “I’m on the Council of Friendship, you know.”
“Professor, you taught me for years,” I reminded her.
“Aww, you remember!”
“I...” I pressed one claw very gently against my forehead. “Sure. It’s more of an administration issue, anyway.”
“Oh, I’m good at those!”
I eyed the large stack of papers which had been neatly swept into the bin. “Glad I came to the right creature.”
She nodded wisely. “What can I do for you?”
“Well,” I started, and paused. I want Sandbar to move class so we can read together and cuddle and maybe make out a little too didn’t seem like quite the right way to put it. “My friend,” I said, carefully, “wants to move into my class so we can study together.” Yeah, that sounded better.
“Ohh.” She gave me a huge wink. “It’s that kind of problem. You just need to tell him how you feel!”
“...Huh?”
“This ain’t my first rodeo,” she assured me. “I can read between the lines.”
I stared. “What...what lines? How could you possibly...?”
She shrugged. “I was just talking to Sandbar, you know.”
I suddenly, desperately wished I’d caught that conversation. “Isn’t student information confidential?”
“Sure!” She gave me a huge wink. It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
“So what was he saying, then?” I asked, casually.
“Ah.” She folded her hooves together and looked at me very seriously. “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
“Of course.”
“But I think I can still help you.” She leapt from the couch, and began rummaging around in her mane.
I tried to keep my alarm out of my voice. “Oh, good.”
“I present you...tada!” With a flourish, she pulled from her mane a small glass vial.
“What is it?”
“A potion,” she said, placing it in my claws.
“...What does it do?”
Proffessor Pie gave me a mysterious smile. “That’s the question, really, isn’t it.”
“You mean,” I said, absolutely failing to keep my dread hidden, “you don’t even know?”
“Afraid not!” She flopped down on the couch again with a sigh. “Got it from some reindeers way up in the mountains.”
“So why are you giving it to me?”
“They said to give it to somepony in need!”
I tucked the bottle very gingerly inside my bag. “Look, can’t you just let us change classes?”
“Welllllll...”
“Please?” I offered.
“Aww, I can’t say no to that. So I totally would! If I knew how.”
I buried my face in my claws. “Thanks anyway.”
She beamed. “Oh, it was nothing.”
I couldn’t help but agree.
Purple, misty, bright, the stuff seemed to almost sparkle as the sun shone through it. The juice swirled as I shook it, shimmering for a moment before settling again. It was completely unmarked, which didn’t help matters, and I wasn’t really sure whether it was a good sign or bad that there was nothing I could see that was magical about it. I uncorked it, sniffed, and plugged it up again. I held it up to one eye, and my room warped and pulled as I peered through it.
I’d pretty much decided I was going to drink it.
This was, all things considered, a terrible idea, but stars, I was in the mood for terrible ideas, and, well, a trip to the Ponyville Hospital would be an excuse not to see Sandbar tonight. Not that I didn’t want to see him – I kinda wanted nothing more – but seeing him would mean talking, and even though I’d thought about it and everything, imagining it still made me want to throw up. For better or worse, Sandbar would look at me different come morning, and as long as I could put off that change, I would. Cause if things went wrong, I didn’t want to think about what that would mean. Being roommates would become pretty awkward, for one.
I thought I remembered a story about those reindeer, though, from Hearthswarming time, sitting round the fire. Silverstream had said something about them, maybe, and though perhaps Silversteam was not the most reliable source of information in Equestria, it did add up with what the Professor had said. Something about them getting just the right things to just the right creatures. So hey, maybe this potion would make things turn out all right. Maybe it was a love potion, and it’d end with Sandbar and me, happy together, no conversation needed. Maybe it’d put me into a deathlike sleep for two days. Maybe it’d make him kiss me. Maybe it’d do nothing at all.
I took the vial, popped it open, and raised it in toast to the stars. Really, what was the worst that could happen?
I woke up two days later.
“Hey,” Sandbar said, and I knew it was him before I knew who I was.
“Hey,” I managed, sitting up slowly, carefully, as reality assembled itself around me. Like Yakyakistani flat-pack furniture, or something.
“How you feeling?”
I frowned, leaning back against the headboard. “Uh...fine? I think?” I wasn’t quite sure why he was there, watching me wake up, but I couldn’t say I minded awfully much.
“Hey, easy, dude,” he said, as I went to get up. I watched bemusedly as he fussed about me, setting a glass of water gently down beside my bed.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You’ve been out for a while. Asleep, that is.”
Huh. “And...?”
“No, dude, I mean a while. Like, days.” That woke me up, alright.
“Seriously?” Sandbar wasn’t normally the one to start such elaborate pranks, but that didn’t mean this wasn’t some other creature’s work. I certainly wouldn’t put it past Yona. Or Ocellus – she had a devious mind, when it could be persuaded away from a book.
“Seriously,” he said. I studied him a moment, then lay back. Either he’d gotten worryingly good at lying in the space of as many hours, or he was telling the truth.
“Dang.”
“Yup.” He sat down on the bed next to me, his tail just inches from my nearest claw. I had the sudden, bizarre urge to play with it.
“I guess...” My eyes widened. “The potion! Professor Pie gave me a potion, and I drank it before I went to sleep!”
Sandbar seemed to be shaking. I reached out to touch him, and realised he was grinning. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He waved a hoof reassuringly. “It’s, it’s just, well, when you didn’t wake up yesterday I went straight to her, and after hours of ponies standing about and shaking their heads – they were even about to send a message to Griffonstone – we realised, uh...” He placed next to the water another vial, this one still full of a rich, liquid green.
“What?” I pressed him.
“It actually got really serious. They sent ponies down from the hospital to check on you and everything. We were all super worried – Silverstream said that maybe since Professor Pie was kind of a draconequus herself, your soul might have been dragged off to Tartarus.” He was laughing again. “And then Professor Pie went to scratch her head and found out she’d given you the wrong bottle.”
I stared.
“It was blackcurrent juice you drank.”
“I...”
He nodded.
I couldn’t help it, I started to chuckle. The idea of everycreature fussing over me like that was...well, oddly comforting, really, but also downright incredible. I laughed, and so did Sandbar, and the more I thought about it, the funnier it became, until we were both sitting there wheezing, clutching each other, and I hadn’t even noticed we were that warm.
“So, so,” I snickered, wiping a tear away with one claw, “so what you’re saying is I was just really tired.”
“That’s right.”
“And, so, everycreature was standing around all serious, and Silverstream thought my soul was trapped in Tartarus, and the whole time I was just sleeping?”
“You missed two days of class,” he told me. “Scribe was all ready to just give you a pass, if you ever awoke from your enchanted slumber, and he was so mad when it turned out to be regular sleep.”
That set me off again, imagining the pony’s thunderous scowl, and Sandbar seemed just as delighted as I was. “The best part,” he added, through gasping breaths, “was when Smolder tried to play it off like he’d overworked you. He threw up his hooves in the air and shouted – actually shouted – ‘Work? Work? That griffon’s never worked a day in his life!’ Ocellus swears she could see a blood vessel threatening to burst in his forehead.”
It was, frankly, too much. My sides hurt, and my beak was sore from too much smiling, which was a shame, cause I’d have a lot of that to do the rest of the day.
“Long story short,” Sandbar finished, running a hoof through his mane, “you’re in my class, now.”
I swallowed, letting the laughter subside. “Oh, oh stars. That literally could not have gone any better.”
“Heh, yeah.”
I took a long drink from the water he’d brought me, and sat next to him on my bed as I let it run down me. Clean and fresh and new. It was a minute before I realised just how close we’d been, and a minute longer before I could feel any awkwardness about it. Inches from me, just to my right, he seemed at once horribly far and unbearably near.
“So,” I said, when I had quite recovered.
“So,” he agreed.
I had to say something. We were alone, we were together, and it was as good a time as any. I looked down into my glass as if it might offer some advice. I didn’t mind if he didn’t love me back, I told myself, that I could bear – it was the look he would give me, and the way the space between us would change as he shifted away, just a little.
“Hey,” I began, “I got something I need to—”
“Uh,” he said, at just the same time, “there might have been one other thing I—”
We exchanged glances. Snorted.
“You go first,” I said. He looked like he’d much rather not, but nodded.
“Cool.” Sandbar leaned back, putting his hooves behind him to support it. My right claw was a hair, a feather away from his leg. “Right. So.” He seemed to be gathering himself, gathering courage, and I wanted desperately to cover his hoof with my claw, only I wasn’t sure that would reassure him. “Okay.” He bit his lip, and said in a rush, “I kinda sorta kissed you when you were asleep.”
Taking a deep breath, not daring to look at me, he explained, “Professor Pie thought it might be one of those spells, like in old stories, where true love’s kiss would wake you, and, uh, for whatever reason she told me to give it a go. And we were all really worried and didn’t know if you were going to wake up and Silverstream was crying and Yona was just staring, staring like she’d smash the school itself to wake you up, and...” He came up for air. “I was scared, too, you know, and hey, like, it might’ve worked, and...yeah, sorry.”
“Huh,” I said, after a moment.
Sandbar opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Huh?” he repeated. “Dude, that is not a reaction you’re allowed so have.”
“Huh?”
“No!” He pushed against me theatrically. “I’ve been thinking about that for days! You don’t get to just say huh.”
“Okay,” I said, quite reasonably. “I...don’t mind?”
“Huh,” he said, after a moment. I grinned, waiting for him to continue. He didn’t.
“You wanna hear what I was going to say?” I asked, eventually.
“Tell me.”
I swallowed. My stomach lurched, and the moment felt right, and I had to get it out, but still I struggled to form the words. Even now, it was difficult. “I drank that potion...well, blackcurrent juice...because I knew I had to talk to you, and I knew I wanted to put it off.” And I sat, and I told him about just what I’d felt when he’d held me against him, reading softly, in the quiet of the night, where he and I were the only two creatures in the world, his voice humming through me like the strings on an instrument as he breathed words written four hundred years ago as passion itself. I don’t know what I said, exactly, but then it wasn’t the words that mattered. I started off looking him in the eye, but by the time I whispered that what I meant to say was I wouldn’t mind, in the end, if he kissed me again, my gaze was firmly on the floor.
Silence hung between us, and my cheeks burned, and I traced patterns in the wood that were dull as I’d thought the play to be, but it was better than looking up to see him staring, to see him moving away.
Something brushed against my claw, and I recoiled, but a moment later it was there again, stronger, more insistent. I blinked, and followed the tingling with my gaze. Sandbar’s hoof, of course, and Sandbar’s shoulder, and Sandbar’s chest and Sandbar’s nose and Sandbar’s eyes and Sandbar’s smile.
“Hey,” he said, very gently, squeezing my claw, “it’s okay. I like you, too.”
It wasn’t musical, it wasn’t poetry, but it was beautiful all the same, and truer besides. His fur reddened as I stared into his eyes, and met his smile with my own.
I went to say “Really?” or “Thank the stars”, or even just his name, just “Sandbar,” but along the way it got caught and all I let out was a squeak. His eyes sparkled, and I felt myself blushing.
“Gallus,” he said, looking at me quite seriously, “that was unbearably cute.”
“Shut up,” I told him. He leaned forward, went to add something, but I never found out what it was, because I cut him off right there. I kissed him.
Thus with a kiss, I die.
