Barley Under A Cherry Tree
An underfilled mug joined mine on the sturdy wooden table.
I slowly looked up, gauging the idiot who’d disturbed me. The stallion waiting patiently looked pristine. Clean coat, well-groomed mane, some foreign cologne that probably cost twice as much as I made in a month. Even a two-breasted black suit and cuffs that shined with every flicker of the torches scattered around the wooden walls.
He looked like a beacon of cultured society, a Canterlot noble invading this flank-end gutter of a bar at the city’s limits. Definitely not a regular. I’d go so far as to say he wasn’t even native to Ponyville.
“Is this seat free?” he asked.
I shrugged, tipping my wooden mug over so the bartender would come refill it already. “Not anymore, I guess.”
He slid over to the bench on the other end of the table, bringing his own cup closer to his side.
“My name is Fate.” He offered a friendly hoof over the table. “Pleasure to meet you, mister...”
Oh my dear Dame, the stallion had his hooves shined. How did the grime from the door-handle not stick to that glossy thing he called a limb when he entered?
“Stumbles,” I answered without an ounce of the same enthusiasm, leaving the hoof drenched in polish to hang and dry. “Mind telling me why you’re sharing a table when there’s a perfectly empty one right over there?”
Fate pulled his limb back to rest over the other one, his polite smile replaced by a neutral look.
“That mare punched you,” he said, deadpan.
As if the little bastard was listening, my gut decided then was a good time to remind me it was displeased with being hit so hard. The punch had stung at first, then left my insides burning like a bad diarrhea was coming by to say hello.
Celestia be damned, Copper Rust had a good hoof on her. Not surprising: the Guard never skipped leg-day. I was just glad she hadn’t gone for my face, else I’d be out cold - and I wouldn’t be able to blame the cider this time.
“It would be wise to seek the hospital,” Fate continued, clearly noticing my pained wince. “It didn’t appear pretty from where I was standing.”
“Ever seen a pretty gut-punch before?” I scoffed, shaking my head and hunching over slightly. “No need to bother the nurses any more than I already do.”
“Oh? Familiar with the hospital?”
“Familiar enough that I know how many stains are in every room, but stranger enough to still fear death.”
Fate didn’t need to say anything; the tilted head and half-mast ears made his confusion clearer than the bottom of my current mug.
“I figure you see enough corpses being shoved off a gurney and into a bag, you eventually stop caring,” I explained, shrugging one shoulder. “Dunno myself. I'm not a worker there, just... an avid customer. Hasn’t happened to me yet.”
“A fair enough point.” Fate said, staring at the bartender as she arrived at my table for the fifth time tonight - an old griffon hen with a weird name, I just called her Sip.
Good ol’ Sip, dutiful as ever. Still owned a shitty bar and refused to invest in some decent cushioning for the seats, the bitch. Cider was damn good, though.
“Want to top off your own?” I motioned to Fate’s mug, still annoyingly half-empty. Stallion must’ve been nursing that for hours.
A shake of the head was his quiet answer. Sip didn’t even acknowledge him, as a good bartender ought to do.
Nah, old hen was too busy giving me a weird look. The kind you give a sad drunkard talking your ear off about things that bordered an insanity plea.
I knew it well.
“Think you’ve had enough, Stumbles,” she said in that horrible accent of hers. Something northern, I don’t know. “Let’s close your tab for today, eh?”
“Close it after this one, then,” I said, swiftly picking up the cider she was holding on her wing.
Sip left with a grumble, while Fate continued on his quest to prod me until my guts spilled on the floor, “Will you file a complaint on the mare, Mr. Stumbles? She stomped her way out a while ago, but I’m sure the Guard can find her.”
“Complaint against my own wife?” My chuckle came out muffled by the mug I brought to my lips. “No thank you.”
“Ah. Familial troubles, I’m guessing?”
“Idiot-husband troubles. Didn’t want me coming here again, said it’d kill me to keep this up”—I swished my mug to make my point, careful not to let any drop spill—“and she’s probably right, too.”
“Yet here you are.”
“Yet here I am. Cup well-filled and gut well-punched.” I shared an empty chuckle with the silence around us, Fate not joining me in my misery-born mirth. “Ah, crickets. I don’t blame her for stomping out.”
“Well, clearly something has kept her around this long.”
“Think it’s probably that worldview of hers.” I shrugged, looking out the window. “Made it easy to settle for a bum like me.”
“Well, now you have me curious.”
It had been ages since I fiddled with my drink. I was a pro now, signaling for the bartender and knocking the mug back before she even left my table, just so I could get another helping. Yet there I was, rolling the cider in my hooves like a little colt who just got dumped by his fillyfriend and was spilling his guts to a drinking buddy.
Appropriate, I guess.
“When she was promoted to sergeant,” I said, keeping my eyes on the little ripples in my cup. “I praised her. Said she was incredible, that I was lucky to… she asked me ‘not to define her by her best’—I figured, hey, being humble, right?
“Then, two months later, I came home half-dead, drunk, crying like a colt on her lap. How could a successful, beautiful mare like her tolerate a bum like me? A sad little drunk with very little to his name, who was only good to get her teased by her fellow guards? She couldn’t even say my name without somepony scrunching their muzzles or snickering. ‘Oh, Stumbles? Had to escort him back from the bar last night. Keep a leash on that husband of yours, Copper.’”
With a deep breath, current company almost forgotten at this point, I opened the dam. The words flowed faster than Chug could fill her jugs with the alcoholic beverage.
“She comforted me… told me not to define somepony by their worst, either. That she loved me despite the shortcomings. Nineteen years ago, two little love-birds, just starting out their marriage… a very one-sided affair.” I frowned at the cider on my hoof, the previously perfect liquid now feeling a bit rancid. I tightened my hold on the cup. “Can’t define her by her best, can’t define me by my worst... feathers, only way to define ponies is if you squish all their character into the bland pavement. No highs, no lows, just a flat fucking line... Why can’t she just admit I’m a damned—”
I sat down. Apparently, I had gotten up from my seat during my little spiel. And the moment my flank felt the velvety touches of the pillow, it came. That feeling. That bastard of a feeling.
Just after you open up, the whole world feels just slightly more silent than before. Like everyone was an orchestra, and you were the clumsy maestro who forgot to conduct the last note. And now the spotlight turned on you, demanding to know why you interfered in a perfectly normal routine.
Fate, thankfully, saved me from that feeling...
Because he was looking right into my eyes as he said, “Maybe she meant we should be defined by the cherry tree, rather than a cherry-pick.”
“What are you on about?” I asked. The cider—coupled with the little monologue from before—slowing my mind down just enough to affect my reasoning.
“Maybe she meant highs and lows aren’t supposed to be your constraints, but parts of your whole being.” He waved one hoof around, encompassing an invisible picture. “The mountains and valleys all being part of the scenery. They don’t need to be one final sum, a line in a graph.”
I stared at him for some time. Longer than was polite, that was for sure. Or maybe the cider was already messing with my perception of time. I wasn’t sure. Lot of things I wasn’t sure about.
“… nah. Doesn’t matter much, anyway. Right now, I think carrying my ‘tree’ finally broke her back.” I stared down at my reflection in the clean cider. That ugly muzzle sure didn’t help my case, I’d bet. “She deserves better. Wish she could have somepony better.”
Fate looked at me intensely, then nodded, swishing his mug around just like I had before. “Harsh, but understandable. Not the worst I’ve seen wished.”
I stared at him, squinting my eyes somewhat. “Really, now? You in the habit of joining miserable ponies in shitty bars and hearing their wishes?”
“In a way, I guess so,” he said, finally knocking back that mug and taking a big gulp of cider.
“Well, lucky me. My own fairy godmother.” I joined him in emptying my own cup with just one swig.
Then my stomach decided that the quiet and calm just wasn’t going to cut it as tonight’s end.
It had been gradually getting worse. A heated iron pushing ever slightly further in, except something suddenly smashed it inside me. Hurting like hell, searing my insides and leaving singed husks, filling with a scorching liquid ready to melt my intestines and burst my barrel from the pressure.
“Agh, Celestia’s heavens,” I breathed out, caressing my stomach in the hopes that it’d alleviate the pain. “I think... I think I’ll take your advice about the hospital thing. Punch jostled my gut real bad. Damn.”
“Drinking right after couldn’t have helped your situation much,” Fate said, not moving a muscle. “Try not to honor your name on the way there.”
I struggled to get up, and locked my hooves straight so I wouldn’t fall back. “Been trying my whole life already.”
“Have a good rest, Hiccup,” he said, drawling my first name for a second more than necessary. Probably a Canterlot noble thing.
“Yeah, yeah. You as well.” I waved him goodbye, and stumbled my way to the wooden door. The hinges were well-oiled, at least, so it opened without much hassle.
The air outside was cold.
That’s what my mind latched onto, the moment I stepped outside the stuffy cabin that dared call itself a bar. The air was cold, and the winds were glacial. They cut my cheeks everytime they passed by, carrying with them the earthy smells of Ponyville.
There wasn’t anyone else outside that I could see. Given, my vision started blurring after a couple of hooves of distance, but there weren’t any blurry blobs of color either. Neither were there any sounds in front of me.
The only signs of life were the mumbled talks and the clinkings of glass from behind me, all hushed by the closed door.
A very calm night. It called to me, patting the corner of the bed in a sultry voice, with a prickly green blanket just waiting for my head to drop, and let me enjoy the warmth of the earth. How could I deny it?
The wind blew by my cheek, and my nose hit something hard.
Author's Note
As said in the description, this is a sort of side-story/'fanfic of a fanfic' from Short-tale's own story (that you can find right here).
