Crumbs of Pie

The day after the so-called Long Night was strange and short. Strange as the town was veritably buzzing with outlandish rumours such as friendship beams of destruction, dead alicorns, living alicorns and there being a whole new princess being around. The last one was the most persistent one as there was a vocal minority claiming to have witnessed the new princess along with Celestia near townhall getting a flowery wreath lowered on her neck in a joyous fanfare. The apparent briefness of the event meant very few could claim of being there to see it so there were a lot of ponies thinking the tale was just a bunch of hooey.

There were even some who kept saying the whole Nightmare Moon thing was just a hoax and a cover story for Celestia sleeping late along with loud proclamations such as "Oh that poor mare" and "They should let her get a vacation, for once".

Whatever was the actual truth Celestia herself didn't seem to think the extended nighttime was an excuse to mess with the yearly calendar so the "longest day of the year" ended up being quite short as the night came again in its appointed time.

The next morning I woke up feeling strangely drained and detached. It didn't help that after unfurling the rolled up newspaper next to my steaming cup of tea I found myself face to face with a blue alicorn with a slightly confused expression printed right on the front page. After getting over my brain's sudden non sequitur of "Who's this douchebag?" I had to rub some sleep-crust off my eyes so I could focus on the text on the paper.

PRINCESS LUNA RETURNS FROM EXILE.

Huh.

I took an obnoxiously long slurp of tea before re-reading the sentence again.

Hmm, yes.

Quite.

[ADMONISHMENT]

I physically jerked up and almost spilled the tea on the newspaper as the sudden reprimand from my mental passenger interrupted me from reading the same thing for the upteenth time. I massaged my forehead with a grimace. This darn brain-fog made everything so difficult.

I need to get some fresh air.

Yes.

I jerked again from the brief stupor, folded the newspaper angrily and poured the rest of the tea down the drain. I took a glance over my smallish but well-loved three-room apartment and then stomped the stairs down to store proper.

The stairs led me behind the same counter I spent my night/morning/whatever -vigil a little over a day prior.

Lugnut was sitting on my throne as usual, leafing through a wholesale catalog. As I came he briefly raised his eyes to greet me.

"Good morning, boss."

Lugnut was an old, balding earth pony stallion whose appearance of a bony, angular face and slightly overweight body gave him a strangely contradictory appearance. The washed-out beige fur didn't help him looking any younger either. Overall, his constitution gave a mental image of a slightly sagging pile of cardboard.

Personality-wise I couldn't hope for a more dependable pony to help me with keeping the store running.

I answered his greeting with a vague grunt, felt a brief stab of guilt of making him deal with my various idiosyncrasies along the long years and snatched a clipboard from the counter containing the currently relevant orders placed by our customers.

The words were getting fuzzy before I even got to the end of the first line and I dropped the clipboard back to its place with a growl. A sudden noise interrupted my thoughts of unfocused anger.

"Hey, uh." My eyes zeroed on my usually nonchalant employee who was looking uncharacteristically contrite. "Sorry about the drool and ehh," he worked his jaw. "practically sleeping on top of you."

Aww, was he blushing? "Don't worry about it. No, really, I had already forgotten the whole thing."

Lugnut hummed as assent and ducked behind his rumpled catalog. I resumed my quest for fresh air and marched towards the exit. Lugnut could take care of the shop today on his own, it was his shift after all.

"Have a good day, boss."

I paused my stride at the doorway and turned my face back at Lugnut. "You too, Lugnut," I said with a smile and continued walking with a slightly better mood.

▪︎▪︎■■■▪︎▪︎

I walked north to a pier standing at a beach of the Sparkling Lake and bellyflopped unceremoniously into the water. I let the currents lead me where-ever they wanted as I floated with just an occasional thrust to keep me from beaching. The waves and the sun blazing above lulled me into a sort of serene meditation.

I lied earlier when I said that my body was not really good at anything. The water was a much better environment for my mobility than lugging myself along the roads could ever be. At the street I had to drag my fat behind along the coarse cobblestones or tense my muscles for a prolonged time to keep the tail in the air. Muscles that would protest at their abuse sooner than later.

Two of my limbs, the right front one and the left of the middle pair ended in lizard-like claws that were better at grasping things in a precise manner than using them for body-supporting legwork. All this resulted in painfully sprained wrists and stiff, clumsy claws if I ever decided a jog around the entire town was a good idea.

In the water it was a whole 'nother story. My tail was more flat than round and worked as an excellent paddle to propel me around. Add to it the six limbs for steering and a torso that was slightly more sinuous than for a normal pony I could say I was far faster in water than most of the population in town.

The pretty blood-red gills that looked sort of like two gigantic feathers? Yeah, I could breathe with them for a scant few minutes in one go and that was definitely snazzy. The downside was that they were practically sponges for any waterborne diseases and had left me crying in a fetal position at a hospital bed on two separate occasions. Better keep the gills tucked inside their pocket-aperture-thingy-whingy-

Oh forget it, you get the gist.

A hubbub of cheerful yelling carried over the water from a sandy beach. A slight raise of head gave a view of half-built sandcastles and a lone adult supervising a gaggle of foals. An adult I recognized and who was floating not too far away from me on an inflatable ring.

I smirked and changed my course for my unsuspecting prey.

Closer.

A little more.

"Hello Pinkie, long time no see."

Drat.

I let the drag bleed most of my momentum and I finally stopped as my muzzle gave a little sad boop against the yellow inflatable ring. Derpy, the grey-furred pegasus with a blonde mane, peered over at me. "A pink alligator-looking floating log isn't that hard to notice, you know?"

I looked upwards at her with puppy dog eyes.

Her placid expression didn't even tremble.

Finally she sighed and I swore she rolled her eyes behind the big amber sunglasses she had perched on her schnozz. "You haven't come to visit in a month and half and now this is what I will get? I bet Dinky would have loved it if you came by more often to play and bake."

Oof. I rolled over to get my mouth above water.

" 'm sorry."

Derpy was silent.

"I am sorry! I kept staring at a mirror, wallowing in my dum-dum emotions and didn't visit my good, totes spectacular, all-around great friend and her adorable daughter and argHBLARGH-" Derpy interrupted my wail by stretching herself, grasping me with a wing and forcibly rolling me over again to face me eye to eye.

"Okay, how about you let me first rant about my woes at work while you listen and I do the same for you?"

I nodded and she slouched back to her ring, sparing a glance at the foals.

And so I listened as she told about all the dumb ponies who came to the post office with the weirdest of things, all unwrapped of course. About stupid new policies that trickled down from the main office to inconvenience them. About how she had managed to bring down a warehouse wall by shoulder-checking a door frame for the millionth time by accident. About how humiliating it was to sign a bundle of paperwork about an accident again, for who knows how many -eth of a time.

All the while I made my uh-huhs and clarifying questions at the appropriate times. It also gave me time to ponder about my own problems and suddenly I knew what I was going to say first at my turn.

"I think I need to go to a therapist."

Derpy raised her head from it's resting position to stare at me. "I agree, but please, do go on."

I sighed. "I think I am depressed. I may have fun at the start of an event or whatever but as time passes I start to wallow more and more on my own… stuff. It is dumb and exhausting. And… and.. "

I paused to get the words back to order.

"You were at the Strawberry's party. I noticed you at some point. What did you see me do there?" I asked Derpy.

Derpy scrunched her mouth and hummed. "Well, I didn't see you on the dance floor."

I nodded.

"And I didn't see you doing any of the party games either."

I nodded again.

"I did see you were playing a lot of card games with Davenport." Derpy said with a smirk.

I squeaked but nodded yet again.

"And at the end, you did the thing."

Yes, the thing.

Who really wants to listen to all about my gory history at a bloody party of all places? Nopony. Only reason it wasn't bigger of a farce is because Strawberry can't resist an opportunity to act like a loon.

I sighed. "You know I had a cutie mark about partying before I came here to this town. I remember on the day of the party I bragged to myself in my head on how much of a partymare I am and you saw how that went. I huddled at the most remote corner of the library, playing cards for money. Even Fluttershy, the eternal introvert, was there with me, gravitated as she was to the place of least bustle."

Derpy was leaning over her ring and petted my back. It was nice.

"Then there's friends. I have no friends."

Derpy squawked at that, flailing her hooves and stared at my eyes with angry intensity. "Hey! I am your friend!' I couldn't help but relax at that.

"Okay, i have one friend."

Derpy get staring at me. "How about Rainbow Dash?"

"Yeah, no. We are more like acquaintances. Meeting once a month or so by chance to laugh at some shallow crap."

Derpy muttered something that sounded like "semantics" and kept staring still. "Lugnut?"

"Pshaw, no. We are coworkers and he's a contrary old geezer. We may work well together, but Lugnut is still, uhh, Lugnut."

Derpy nodded slowly. "That he is." Suddenly a mischievous look started to creep on her face.

Oh Celestia no.

"Well~," she stretched the word like a master torturer. "How about Davenport?"

Why.

"There's no thing with Davenport. He is almost two times older than me for bucks sake!" Derpy frowned and quickly glanced at the foals.

Oh, right, swear words.

I briefly dipped my muzzle under the water and tried to grasp for anything else to say.

Right.

"Besides, what's the point anyway?"

Derpy looked visibly flummoxed at that. She blinked uncomprehendingly and made a noise of pure confusion. "Haa?"

I frowned. "I haven't told you?"

"No?"

Oof. I squirmed at my place, sending little waves across the surface of the lake.

"Okay, so, I don't have any of the equipment, for the stuff, you know. At the start I was such bloody mess. I had to prioritise things. The doctors had to prioritise things. Result is that I have one less orifice than most. No pokey-hokey going to holey-wokey." I grimaced. "Well, except if I want one in my bumhole, which, eww."

The whole speech I had done my best to not look at my friend's reaction, but as I finally raised my eyes I was treated with the most flabbergasted expression I have ever seen before. An expression which quickly changed into angry spluttering.

"You-, YOU DUMB ID-" Derpy paused to breathe in and out. "That's not how it-" She must have noticed my own expression as she paused again. "Okay, it works like that, but it's not the whole story!" She took her sunglasses off for a moment, stared at them as if they had offended everything she held dear and jammed them back on her face.

Wow, she is in a real tizzy.

Derpy leaned over the inflatable ring, almost tipping it over and placed her front hooves on both sides of my head. I saw well enough through the amber panels of her sunglasses to discern that her pupils were trying to bore into my skull.

"Have you ever heard of love and affection? You can love somepony with no hussle under the blankets needed. I bet my life savings on that there are ponies around Equestria with similar problems who are still happily married. Didn't the parents you had at that strange rock place teach you anything?"

My eyes shifted. Hers, squinted. "Or are you just being dumb?"

I tried to fidget some more but the grip of the grey hooves were like a steel clamp.

"Ah'm dumb," I muttered and stared down at the blue-green water.

The grip slackened and I heard a sigh. "Cmon, the twerps are staring at us. Let's get to the beach and take the whole herd for an ice cream. I'm paying."

The grey pegasus rose up in the air and started flapping towards the foals, the ring held between the hooves. I followed on the surface.

"And try to be less crass with your mouth. I swear you cuss more than my late grandpa."

Eaugh.