This Is Your Wake-Up Call
It was thicker than cloud and colder than fog, and it lay over Ponyville and the surrounding area like a blanket.
Naturally Twilight Sparkle and her fellow Elements of Harmony had to go find out what was causing it and put a stop to it, but only after they'd made sure all the ponies of the town were safe. The town ponies were just about able to get from building to building in the gloom, but the farms surrounding town all had to be evacuated to keep them out of the chilling fog and away from any unseen predators that might be lurking in it. Many of the farmers had family in town, but not all, and their livestock also had to be housed somewhere safe, because in the magical land of Equestria "animals are people too" is no mere slogan.
And, because it was the largest and most underused structure in town, Twilight Sparkle's crystalline castle was the obvious first place to put those who couldn't go anyplace else.
Starlight Glimmer had taken charge of organizing this, and by the time Twilight led her friends off to face whatever it ended up being, she had got forty-three ponies, eighteen cows, eleven pigs and three goats into various little-used spaces in the castle. (She put more in the School of Friendship, but they don't come into what follows.)
She also, for whatever reason, ended up with a single, solitary rooster. And, because she had been raised a town unicorn and had almost zero experience with farm animals, she decided the bird could roost in her own room.
She took up the carpets first, and she patted herself on the back and congratulated herself for her foresight.
Before long she learned what any farmer could have told her: roosters start crowing a long, long time before the sun actually comes up.
And she kept re-learning that lesson, as one excruciatingly early morning followed another and the cloud blanket failed to go away, until...
"Get up, you."
The rooster woke up. It didn't move, since it had been perched on the foot of Starlight's bed when it went to sleep, but its eyes opened. The glow of Starlight Glimmer's magic just barely revealed the look of perpetual insanity it, like most birds, gave to the world in general.
"You probably can't read a clock, but the time is currently 4:28 AM."
Most animals in Equestria understand Ponish just fine, even though most ponies couldn't understand them. Chickens don't, partly because some inner part of them still thinks of ponies as prey and not as owners. Thus, the random misfirings of neurons which could charitably be called chicken thoughts merely registered: Pony is gabbling. Must be quiet. Must not stab. If I am good I will get treats. If I am bad I will be held immobile until I stop resisting. I like treats and hate being held. So, must not peck.
"I point this out to you," Starlight continued, "because for the past four nights without fail, you have begun crowing at 4:37 AM, and you continue crowing off and on until half-past ten, with isolated scattered crows through the afternoon giving way to dull sullen exhaustion by nightfall."
Gabby pony is in my space. Want to peck. But stabbing ponies gets hugs. Hate hugs.
"As a result, due to all the work I'm doing keeping you and your owners safe and fed, I have had an average of three hours twenty-two minutes of sleep per night." Starlight Glimmer's eyes had a slight resemblance to chicken eyes at this moment. "And if this trend persists, bird, I cannot be answerable for the consequences."
Gabby, gabby. Where are my treats, gabby?
"I have tried begging. I have tried bribery. I have tried magic." Starlight's horn grew a little brighter. "And every time I stop, you go back to crowing as if nothing happened! So I'm down to threats: shut up or else. You got that?"
The rooster waited a moment, decided the gabbling had ceased, and jumped over Starlight's bed to perch on the headboard. This done, he turned to face the shuttered window and crowed his loudest crow.
"No! NO!!" Starlight beat her head with her forehooves. "It's only 4:32! It's five minutes early! This isn't supposed to happen!"
The rooster crowed again.
"STOP!!"
The rooster crowed again.
"PUHLEEEZ STAAAAAAHP!!"
The rooster crowed and crowed and kept crowing, well past dawn.
Twenty-three hours passed, during which the farm ponies, upon seeing Starlight Glimmer's manic expressions, decided not to explain facts of poultry life to her.
Midnight became one, then two, then three, then four, as it does.
And then, at precisely 4:27 AM:
"COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOO!"
The rooster, startled, fell off its perch.
"COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOO!!" Starlight Glimmer shouted again, leaning her muzzle down to within an inch of the rooster's face. "How do you like it when it happens to YOU, huh? How about THOSE apples? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOO!!!"
In the tiny, tiny knot of insanity which is a rooster brain, one clear thought arose: Challenge accepted!
If Twilight and her friends had defeated the Meatier Ologist one day sooner, they wouldn't have returned to Ponyville to find Starlight Glimmer in a hospital bed.
"Haven't had a rooster attack victim in a year and a half," Nurse Redheart told them. "Most Ponyville folks know what to do and not do around a rooster. And they know they have three-inch-long spurs on their legs. She'll need another couple days of rest and healing potions before we can release her."
Twilight leaned over the bed and looked at the gauze mummy lying under the covers. One blue eye, slightly bloodshot, stared back through the wrappings. "Starlight? How are you feeling?"
"I've been better," Starlight admitted.
"Everyone told me what a good job you did taking care of everypony," Twilight said.
"It was nothing."
"Well," Twilight said, "if there's anything we can get for you that would help you get better-"
"Yes." Starlight sat up painfully and snarled: "Chicken. Soup."
Author's Note
This was inspired by a post Estee made about someone becoming homeless, and in particular saddling a brony's family with a rooster as an unwelcome houseguest in the interim. (Incidentally, plug for that family's GoFundMe.)
And by the way, Flash Fog is and remains an excellent story, but this has nothing to do with that.
