Sweet Spinner Finds a Place to Crash
Sweet Spinner Finds a Place to Crash
by Present Perfect
Sweet Spinner was not homeless. She was just a pony who preferred not to be tied down to a given address for any length of time.
After all, would a homeless pony be trotting merrily down the streets of Ponyville? Would she have a song in her heart and a smile on her lips? Especially after getting into an argument with her previous roommate, during which she totally bit his head off?
No, they would not.
A real homeless pony would probably be sulking, hanging their head, letting their tail drag along the dirt road and getting Celestia-knew-what caught in the hairs. They would be counting up their last few bits and worrying how to make ends meet from here on out. They would maybe even skulk into an alleyway to find a comfortable cardboard box to spend the night.
But not Sweet Spinner. She had her saddlebags and the few personal possessions they held, and that was all she needed. The world could collapse around her, and she would have not a worry, if for no other reason than she knew the ponies in Ponyville were very kind and generous.
She trotted through the town square, receiving the occasional smile and wave from passersby. See? Kind to a fault. And as for the generous part...
It was a good ten minutes before she found what she was looking for. On the other side of town, a row of thatched-roof cottages stood snug and cozy down a lane dotted with flowers and low white picket fences. Just nice, comfortable houses for all the kind, generous, oh-so-trusting ponies of Ponyville.
Take, for instance, the second house on the left. Low-slung, just like the others, with a nicely manicured lawn and a few tasty-looking flower beds. And there, on the west-facing wall, like an invitation to any who might happen past, was an open window. It was high on the wall, sure, but there was a pile of wood positioned nearby, just so.
Exactly what Sweet Spinner liked to see. She chuckled to herself.
"Oh, kind, generous, trusting ponies." She entered the yard, hopped onto the wood pile, and tossed her saddlebags in the window before hauling herself up after them.
It didn't take long for her eyes to adjust to the relatively dark interior. What revealed itself to her in the dim light was a small if comfortable living room, the perfect size for a single pony. Large stacks of firewood bordered either side of a cramped hearth made of bulky, mortared stones, which took up most of the wall. The mantel was adorned with fading photographs of various ponies she had never seen before. Small cross-stitched wallhangings with pithy benedictions completed the facade of a perfectly normal, homely home.
The house stopped being interesting at that point, mostly because she'd spotted a lovely corner across the room, right next to a worn burlap sofa. It was relatively dark, out of the way, and the dust on the nearby shelves told her it generally went undisturbed. For a place to crash, it was just about perfect.
With a self-satisfied sigh, she flung her saddlebags into the corner and plopped herself down. From the bags, she pulled needles and a skein of lavender yarn.
She began to knit.
Burnt Oak had just had a Tartarus of a day.
It was one thing to run into the three children of his old friends the Apples. It was quite another to have to tell them the bittersweet story of how their own parents met. A whole host of feelings he hadn't realized he'd buried so deeply had been brought to the surface and, well, it wasn't just the Apple kids who ended up with moist eyes by the end of the tale.
Despite dredging up the old hurts, or perhaps even because of it, he felt good after that little chat.
Didn't mean he wasn't looking forward to a long night's rest at his little cottage on Ponyville's west side, however. It wasn't much, just a place large enough for himself that he'd been using as a summer home ever since his wife passed. The house had been much less cozy without her, but at the same time, he couldn't bring himself to part with it, despite the nomadic lifestyle his work made him lead.
He was in fact so completely consumed by thoughts of home and bed as he entered his domicile that he didn't notice the glaringly obvious Thing That Was Wrong. He moved to the fireplace, threw a few logs onto it, lit some tinder to start the fire, and was headed for the kitchen for a glass of water before he saw her.
Sitting on the floor next to his sofa, beneath the shelf of knickknacks that he hadn't touched in ages, was a mare.
Specifically, an earth pony mare. Light pink coat. Two-tone silver and lavender mane done up in waves of curls. Cutie mark a knitted sweater, purple, with a red hourglass on the chest.
All he could do was stare as she knitted another sweater that looked similar to said mark, only in a soft baby blue instead.
Eventually, she looked up and smiled at him. "Hiya!" Her voice was bright and chirpy, and she seemed not at all concerned about his presence. "Swell place you got here!"
Staggered, he took a step back. "Wh-who are you?" he asked, flabbergasted.
"Sweet Spinner." She turned back to her knitting, as though that was all that needed to be said.
He shook his head, regaining control of his faculties at long last. "Never mind that. What in Tartarus are you doing in my house?"
"Oh." She didn't look up from her task, nor did her expression change from anything but blissful contentment. "This is my new crash pad! I came in through the window."
A glance at the window told him that, yes, she had, and she'd knocked over his aloe plant on the way in, too. He'd have to sweep up the dirt and hope to Celestia he could even repot it.
Wait, why was he worrying about plants at a time like this?
"I don't care who you are or why you're here," he barked, "you're gettin' outta this house before I call the guard!"
The mare sniffed, as though offended, her knitting needles clacking away unperturbed. "Nah, I don't think I will. After all, you wouldn't throw a mare out on the street with no home to call her own, would you?" She looked up at him and fluttered her eyelashes in a manner no doubt meant to be convincing.
Burnt Oak ground his teeth. "If you'd come to my front door and asked for a place to stay, I'd've likely gave you one. But just bargin' into a stranger's home and claimin' a corner of it for yourself? What kind of a pony does that?"
The mare shrugged. "Asking's not my style. And you Ponyville ponies have such nice, comfortable, cozy homes, well, I just can't help myself. No, don't argue, it'll be fine. I'll just sit in this corner and after a while, you won't even notice I'm here."
"It don't matter if I notice you, it's the principle of the thing!" Burnt shouted, doffing his hat and tossing it on the floor. He stood there and seethed for a minute before words found him again.
"Look, do you want money? I could give you some if you'll just leave."
"I'll take the bits," said the mare in a sing-song voice, "but you'd have to give me an awful lot to get me a house of my own. And judging by the state of the decor here, you don't have that much on hoof."
He grit his teeth. "Do you want some of my furniture? Maybe you could pawn it for a nice, sturdy cardboard box."
The mare snorted. "I don't know why you're getting so angry. I mean, it's not like I'm going to freeload. Did I forget to mention I'll take care of any bugs that show up?"
Burnt scratched his head and squinted at her like she'd grown another head. "Come again?"
At that moment, a fat, shiny bottlefly flew in between them and alighted on the arm of the sofa, where it began to fastidiously clean its legs while ignoring the two ponies.
Shellshocked, Burnt Oak stared at the fly, then at the mare. Then back at the fly. Then back at the mare.
"Oh," she said, putting her knitting down and frowning. "Well, it's over there, you see."
"What."
"Yeah," she continued, as though he hadn't said anything. "I suppose I should have said that I'd take care of any bugs that land here." She held up the sweater she'd been knitting and gave it a shake. "They get near me, and wham! They're toast. Otherwise, well, you're on your own. Not my corner, not my bugs."
Burnt Oak's eye twitched.
"Oh," the mare said, picking her needles back up and going back to work, "and I'll probably be laying my eggs here in a month or so."
Burnt Oak wondered if this was what it felt like to lose one's mind. "E-eggs?"
"At least a hundred. Maybe three hundred. Probably not more than five hundred. Could be a thousand. I might not be around to see them hatch, but you certainly will! Won't that be fun? And then your bug problems will be a thing of the past!"
"That's it!" shouted Burnt Oak. "I've heard enough out of you!"
He stomped out of the living room, still having elicited no reaction from the mare. He marched out the back door to one of his wood piles. He knew each pile of wood like the back of his hoof. Wood cutting was his cutie mark, after all.
It took him not long at all to pinpoint what he had sought. Taking it in his mouth, he stormed back inside his cottage. The mare was still sitting where he had left her, knitting away without a care in the world.
"Last chance," he said through clenched teeth.
She just regarded him as though she had no idea why he was even there, let alone cross with her.
He brought the sturdy oak branch down on her head.
The 'twhack!' reverberated through the house, overwhelming the soft clacking of the knitting needles hitting the ground. The mare fell to her side, eyes wide in disbelief. Burnt Oak's were just as wide.
But then his gaze hardened and he brought the branch down again. And again. And again. Strong neck muscles honed by decades of felling great oak trees battered the mare's head and body over and over. Her hooves scrabbled against the floor as she sought to right herself and escape, but his strength overwhelmed her.
With one final 'thwack!' the branch came down atop her head, and she was still.
She hadn't screamed or said anything the entire time. Now, she lay there, silent and unmoving, legs curled underneath herself.
A torrent of emotions flooded through Burnt Oak. Confusion. Sadness. A tinge of horror. But most of all, relief. He felt neither remorse nor doubt. He had been presented with a problem, and the problem was now solved.
He spat the bloodied tree branch on the floor and went to get a shovel.
Applejack's story came to an end as she put the final touches on the screen door patch. The Cutie Mark Crusaders stared at her, open-mouthed: shock and horror for Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, awe and excitement for Scootaloo. She never got to hear the cool stories like that one.
"And that," said Applejack with a prim sniff, "is why we Apples don't never abide spiders in the house. Lazy, no-good, freeloadin' ingrates. Rude as Tartarus, the lot of 'em. Good riddance."
Author's Note
The last few seasons of the show had far too much pro-spider propaganda for my liking. Gotta balance it out somehow. :V
Thanks to iisaw, Mike Cartoon Karma and Bluebook for feedback!
