The best part about all this is that my talons are resting on her side. I don’t think she knows it, but it’s the only thing keeping me sane and composed and with all of my lunch safely inside my stomach. And the fact that I can see the glowing from her necklace of colored lights between the fabric doesn’t hurt either. Plus she smells amazing. She hasn’t been home in weeks but you can still smell a sea breeze in the trails of her hair. It’s almost like I’m on a beach with her, and not trapped inside a broken couch, counting all the different ways I’m about to die.
This all started innocently enough: I wanted Silverstream to kiss me.
Okay, so maybe that’s not so innocent, but I had heard privately from four of our five friends (Ocellus abstained) that she wanted to kiss me, and I was determined to find out if they were screwing with me. And what better way to say, “Yes, Silverstream, I want you to kiss me too,” than by a thoughtful gift for this year’s Hearth’s Warming, given at a private party for two?
And you might think picking out a gift for somegriff like Silverstream would be a cakewalk. She knows what she wants, and she’s not afraid to show it. For every store in Ponyville that she’s ever walked past, there’s at least three things displayed in the window that she’s told all of us she would love to have. Sometimes we have to peel her away from the glass. Knowing her, she probably keeps a list by her bed of all the things she wants. I hope I’m on there.
But the fact that she wants so many things makes it even harder. It’s like… choosing a book in a library with a bajillion shelves. Yeah, I’ll probably enjoy whatever book I pull out, but I want to find the perfect one. And what if I never do?
I asked Professor Rarity for help and she told me not to underestimate the power of a gift someone really needs. Socks may seem like a horrible gift idea, but if you get them for somepony whose hooves are always cold, then they’re the best gift in the world.
So I started watching—and listening to—Streams like a hawk, looking for any complaint, any suggestion to no-one in particular, of something she needs. It wasn’t easy. She doesn’t complain. Ever. I probably looked like I was about to explode for an entire month, staring at her from the sidelines. But then, the six of us were in the treehouse one day, leaning over various pieces of crystal furniture, when she said it:
“Sheesh. Would it kill the Tree of Friendship to conjure up some furniture with cushions or something?”
Streams didn’t say that. Smolder did. But Streams kinda hummed and nodded and flicked her eyebrows up in agreement, and I figured that was the best I was gonna get, so I winged it to a furniture store right away. I had a budget of exactly zero money. But I was pretty good at haggling, and sure enough I convinced the guy at Q&S to give me the used two-creature couch he had in the storage room for free.
I should have known better. There’s no such thing as a free couch…
I stashed it in one of the treehouse’s unused, empty rooms. With the couch inside, it looked less like the room to share a holiday kiss in and more like a room that you would only spend a holiday in if you were planning to kill yourself before the new year. So I stole some decorations from the castle of friendship on one of my weekly break-ins (What? Nopony lives there anymore. Don’t judge me.) and threw them in a big pile in the corner of the room. “Perfect,” I announced, except that the room looked even more suicidal. So I hauled in a crystal table, made a quick trip to the Everfree to hunt a wild turkey, and left its carcass on the table for us to eat if we were feeling peckish.
Then I searched out her voice in the treehouse and found her with the rest of our friends in the games room. Yona was braiding Sandbar’s mane, while Sandbar was braiding the hair on a little doll that looked like Yona. The other three were in a pile on the floor reading a textbook (Ocellus), a fashion magazine (Smolder), and a comic book (Streams). Streams was wearing a ring of colored lights around her neck that blinked on and off in a sequence. She was the only one dressed up in holiday gear. She never made anybody feel bad about not being dressed up. She wanted to wear lights around her neck, so she wore lights around her neck.
I flew into the room, and said, “Hey,” then cleared my throat and said, “Hey,” a little deeper this time. I probably sounded like I was about to vomit. And maybe I was.
Everyone but Streams looked at me like I was up to something. She just turned the page in her comic book. I said, “I set up a little private party in the other room for…”
And… look.
I know. I know I’m terrible at this. But it was only at that point I realized inviting Silverstream to a private party in front of all our friends is both a serious friendship faux-pas and also painfully transparent.
But then I remembered the dead turkey on the table. “Carnivores only,” I clarified, grimacing at Sandbar and Yona, who shrugged their shoulders and went back to braiding. Streams shut her book against her chest and gasped, and I was really proud of myself for coming up with the carnivores thing for all of two seconds before Smolder started to stand up.
“Except Smolder,” I snapped. “Because you smell.”
And I was getting ready to dodge a fireball when Smolder pointed a claw at Ocellus and shouted “I TOLD YOU” and Ocellus said “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY” and Smolder said “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO REMIND ME WHEN I SHOULD TAKE A SHOWER” and Ocellus said “IT’S EVERY DAY, SMOLDER, YOU DON’T NEED A REMINDER FOR THINGS YOU NEED TO DO EVERY DAY” and I grabbed Streams by the wrist and hauled her out of the chaos.
So far so bad, and it was about to get even worse. But, for a second, things were looking up, because, get this:
“Nice couch!”
Yeah. That’s what Silverstream said when she saw my present. I had to stand behind her so she couldn’t see all my feathers stand up with glee.
“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t wrap it for you.”
She swerved away from the couch and grabbed my talons and said, “You mean it’s for me?”
“No.” I gulped. “Well, maybe a little.”
And she let go and flew to the couch and it made such a horrible noise when she sat on it. I should have felt, seen, sensed the bad vibes that were coming off that thing. But I’ve always been terrible at vibe checks, and instead of thinking, I went to sit beside her.
As she tested out the springs, I started to yawn and stretch, slowly lowering an arm around her shoulders just like Spike taught me (I said don’t judge me), but then Streams gasped and stood up.
“Oh, oh, oh! I read about these! Gallus, check it out!” And Silverstream did what she did with most inanimate objects: She grabbed some loose piece and yanked on it with everything she had.
Turns out there was a bed inside the couch. Who knew?
The bed flew out from under me, bucked the cushions in the air, and tossed Silverstream over my head. “Wow!” she said happily, and then a sound of metal snapping shook my hollow little bones and I made this horrible little yelp and everything went dark and… Well, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.
So now here I am, stuck with the girl who may or may not want to kiss me between two halves of a broken pull-out couch. My talons are on her side, and we’re squeezed between enough springs and metal cables that you could get away with calling this thing a torture chamber instead of a couch. My legs are bent and my wings and other arm are splayed behind me outside the cushions like I’m going for some sweet dunk in a Buckball game (an illegal move, by the way). We’ll probably need to call for help at some point. But out of all our friends, Smolder has the best hearing (other than me and Streams), and if she found us in here she would probably just sit on top of us and paint her claws. And besides, Streams isn’t worried. She sounds like she’s having a great time, but then she always sounds like that.
“Hey,” she says after a minute or so.
“Thank Celestia you’re alive,” I say.
I’m only half-joking, but she laughs a full-joke’s worth. “Yeah, so far. You okay?”
“Sure,” I say sarcastically. “I’m just great. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“The tight space.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Gallus.”
“Fuck me.”
“You’re okay.”
I’m not okay, and I’m getting less okay by the second. Because I feel cold air and bits of snow waft through my wings outside the couch and I remember that I opened the window like two minutes before this whole debacle and now I’m picturing the snow slowly piling over us until we drown inside this couch. Can you drown in snow? I bet you can. I bet we’re about to.
Silverstream’s talons appear from between the cushions. They paw at my chest and arm, searching for me, and then they rest on my shoulder. Oh, wow, I think. Oh, wow. I’m touching her and she’s touching me. I’m not sure if that’s making me panic less or more, but Yona once told me that every creature creates their own reality, so I try to convince myself that being trapped in this couch is the best reality I could possibly find myself in because I’m touching her side and she’s touching my shoulder. I don’t take much convincing.
She squeezes my shoulder, says, “Remember when Smolder accidentally burned the tree down in Ponyville Square, and Ocellus transformed into a replica tree for an entire week while they found a replacement?”
“Yeah,” I say. It was a week ago. “She said the decorations tickled, but I thought the decorations were part of her too.”
“This is a lot like that,” she says.
I wait for her to explain. She does not. And I realize she’s probably trying to distract me. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me when I’m panicking. That part helps more than the distraction.
“Hold on,” she says. “I have an idea.”
The couch begins to shift, and I know it’s her trying to squeeze her way out of the cushions, but I can’t believe it because I know she’ll have to climb over me to do it and there’s just no room, so I can’t shake the feeling that the couch is tightening in on me and soon I won’t be able to breathe. I shut my eyes and pray that she appears behind me.
But when I open my eyes, she appears in front of me instead. She’s close. She looks calm, caring, and downright mischievous. I love a good mischievous Silverstream.
Don’t stammer, I think. Whatever you do, don’t stammer.
“W-what are you d-d-doing?” I ask.
“I’m going to touch your beak,” she says.
“W-with what?”
With hers.
It’s more like a bite at first, a peck at the edge of my beak, like she’s trying to open a walnut, but it goes soft when she finds her way inside. Her breath is warm. She’s been drinking hot cocoa. She's been waiting to do this a long time. Her talons move up my shoulder to my neck, and it feels so amazing that I try doing the same thing: I move my talons up her side to cup her shoulder and pull her closer. She giggles and tightens her grip on my neck.
She breaks free, and when I open my eyes she’s scanning my face to see how stupid she’s left me. She’s loving this.
“I thought you were trying to get us out of here,” I say.
“Why would I want to get us out of here?”
She kisses me again, and it starts to feel like there’s more room, like we’re not even trapped at all. I think maybe one of our friends is opening the gap to pull us out, but all that’s happening is I’m relaxing. I’ve managed to throw the most depressing Hearth’s Warming party ever, and give the most unsafe gift in Hearth’s Warming history, but Silverstream wants to kiss me anyways.
Unless she’s into being shown a horrible time or something. I have to remember to screw it up all over again next year.
