The morning sun... It's beautiful, right? The sun is how the days start, and the moon is how the day ends. With that being said, among ponies stretching, cracking their joints, and yawning as they are awoken by a bright yellow light, there is a specific pony who has a little trouble getting out of bed.
This pony isn’t a troublemaker by any definition of the word! He’s a special kind of pony, but not in a derogatory sense. He’s lovely, he’s adorable… and he’s cute... At least, that’s what his mom and dad tell him.
“Xavierrrrr…” A nice little voice, one that could be used to sing lullabies, is heard. The pony twitches, his ears flicker and twitch with his body as he lays in the comfort of his blanket.
“Xavier…” A repeated call. This voice wants him, this voice needs him for something. But we’re not quite sure what it is. The pony once again twitches, but it’s a lot more noticeable, a lot more jittery.
“Xavier!...” It makes a quiet yell. The pony cutely grumbles before flipping to his left.
“Mhhh… mommy?” The pony calls out with his eyes still closed. His voice is that of a classical nerd—nasally, high-pitched, with very little masculinity, but it’s not a bad thing! His parents love that part about him and never made him feel insecure about it.
“Yes, dear, it’s time to wake up! I made your favorite: Blueberry waffles with bacon and milk!” His mother quietly exclaims with graceful love. If some other pony heard her voice, they would immediately fall victim to the entity of sleep. Not because of a negative opinion, but because the maternal figure has a very beautiful voice—very motherly and very gentle.
“O-Okay…” Xavier rolls out of his blanket and collapses onto the floor.
“Xavier!” His mother gasps with worry.
“I-I’m okay!” Xavier slowly stands on his hooves with sleepy happiness. The blinds made the room a little too dark, and he gets blinded by the sun as they open, though.
“Alright then, come on, Xavier. We don’t want your food getting cold, do we?” Before he knew it, he felt a muzzle that nuzzled against his left cheek, and based on how it felt both physically and emotionally, he knew it was his mom. Even though his mom was always in the room.
“No, mommy…” Xavier nodded before trotting with her downstairs to the kitchen, where he could smell exactly what he wanted: Blueberry waffles with bacon and milk. With his sleepy little head, he accidentally bumps into the railings and walls of his home, which promptly gets his mother to guide him down.
“Have a seat, Xavier. I’ll eat with you shortly! Momma just has to get her own plate.” Xavier sat down with his breakfast obediently, starting to eat with weak strength, though it was enough to chow down on his food. Before he knew it, a couple of minutes had passed, and his mom was sitting across from him with her own plate.
“So Xavier, did you have any dreams from last night, my dear?” Xavier looked up and saw her motherly curiosity.
“Uhm… I had a dream about being on the moon!” Xavier slowly roused from his sleepy state into his usual happy-go-lucky self. Xavier remembered his dreams well; they usually sparked ideas on how to play and what to play with to act them out.
“Really? What were you doing on the moon, Xavier?” His mother asked politely. She remembered her days when she was a child and always asked her mom and dad to go to the moon. She couldn’t believe she thought the moon was made of cheese until age 10. Having Xavier recount his dreams and being so excited about them really brought nostalgia to her heart.
“Uhm… I think I was playing with my toys before Princess Luna appeared! I think she wanted to play with me?” Xavier used his hoof gestures to emphasize his story. He loved playing. It was one of the few things he had to do during the day; otherwise, he’d die of boredom… literally!
“I’m sure with how Luna travels across those dreams…” A sigh came about. “She should at least have some free time to herself with a cute, adorable stallion like you, Xavier!” She couldn’t resist the urge to just hold on to Xavier, ruffle his mane, and kiss him on his cute forehead with pure motherly love.
“It looks like you’re done with your food, Xavier. What do you want to do now, Xavier?” She looked at a poster on the wall showing the various family photos of Xavier, her, and his dad.
“Where’s daddy? I thought daddy was supposed to be down here by morning time!” Xavier stood on his hooves while he looked at the same image as her.
“Don’t worry, love, Daddy’s upstairs still sleeping! He’s very hard to wake during morning time, Xavier.” She giggled teasingly before she trotted off to the backyard.
“Then I’ll go wake daddy!” Xavier shouted.
“You can try, Xavier!” She was already outside in the backyard, where a beautiful garden lay awake. Butterflies, honeybees, and a variety of bugs were around. It was something that Fluttershy would’ve had.
Xavier trotted towards the stairs, then slowly trotted towards the upstairs bedroom where Dad laid asleep.
He gently opened the door before seeing his father soundly asleep. Trotting over, he looked at him before his brain started the rusty gears of thinking, trying to come up with various ways of waking a heavy sleeper.
“Daddy?” He tried simply calling to him. Didn’t work.
“Daddy!” Louder, still didn’t work.
“Oh! I have an idea!” He went to his bedroom. The clattering and dropping of toys could be heard before he came back to the room with a toy trumpet, though it wasn’t a real one. It was more of a practice trumpet.
He started blowing into the trumpet, horribly butchering years of musical development. You couldn’t blame Xavier, though—he’s just a teenager doing his best.
THAT seemed to work.
“AHHHHH!!!!” His father flailed wildly, before entangling himself in his own blanket. A couple of seconds of untangling ensue before he sees the sound source… his own son.
“Hehe! Good morning, Daddy!” Xavier teasingly but innocently says with a trumpet in his mouth.
“Xavier… I was sleeping!” His father faux pouts before stepping out of bed, cracking a few joints here and there. He tried to arch his back, which sounded like faint firecrackers before struggling to pop the last one.
POP!!!
“Aaaaahhh~...” The sound of relief had its own voice, surprisingly. He turned to Xavier, who still has a trumpet in his mouth.
“You can’t be asleep during morning time, Daddy!” He giggles lightly before spitting the trumpet out on the floor with a childish smile. Seeing his dad brought him comfort. He knew other ponies and could interact with them well, but he had no other family members to turn to but his mom and dad. But it wasn’t sad for him—there could’ve been other members of his family that he just didn’t know about.
“Heh, sorry, Xavier.” He scratches his mane before trotting over to him and kissing his forehead—the exact place his mother took pleasure in kissing.
“Did you already eat breakfast then?” He looked out the window and saw his wife already gardening the flowers and planting seeds, though it seemed a lot gentler than last time.
“Yup! My tummy is all full! Can I go outside now, Daddy?” He pleaded as he thought he was being a good boy. He got up in the morning, he ate his breakfast, and he got a forehead kiss from Mommy.
“Of course, you can, dear boy. Do you remember the route home by heart?” His father holds him close to him as he leans down with serious but caring concern.
“Yup!” He gets ready to sing along as he inhales all the air in the room along with his father. Then, as if on cue, at the exact same time, they say:
“Go to the left, go to the right, don’t get frightened if you do get stressed!”
“Go to the left, go to the right, don’t get frightened if you do get stressed!”
After their little rhyme comes to a short close, they giggle with each other like schoolgirls learning about the birds and the bees, but Xavier excitedly trotted out the front door as his father watched with content.
After Xavier goes outside to Ponyville, his father trots down to the backyard, where he finds his wife.
“Meryl?” He calls out her name.
“Yes, Daryl?”
“Can we talk about him?” His father has a smile, but it is tainted with worry on his face; it’s not like he could hide the subject of the topic. Both knew who it was.
“Is it about his life?”
He scrunches his lips before giving a subtle but noticeable nod. She stops watering the plants and planting the seeds before turning to him with a very depressed sigh.
“We’re trying, Daryl. The doctor already said his autism is permanent, and there’s no treatment except for ‘accommodations.’” She sighs and sits down against the fence with her husband before using all her power to hold back a single teardrop.
“I know, Meryl.” He holds on to her with a comforting hug of love.
“I thought that maybe if we tried to explain it to him at an early age, maybe we could’ve helped him? But… Daryl…” Her defense of love before starts to crumble under the global power of dread and depression.
“H-He doesn’t even know how to subtract anything bigger than 10!” He starts to nuzzle into her mane, where it comforts him the most. This conversation was more of a symposium to find solutions to secure his independence later in life.
“I know, sweetie… I know.”
“Remember when we tried to explain multiplication to him? He couldn’t even get the basic concept of repeated addition!” She started to cry, but not fully sob just yet.
“I mean… I can’t hold it against him, Daryl. He can’t control it. I love him so much. He’s our only child, and we tried so… SO long for a child.”
“Meryl, I love him too. But if we’re gone, what’s he gonna do? If he can’t even get the basics of arithmetic, how is he going to live? If he can’t cook, if he can’t read, if he can’t even speak properly, if he can’t even use his critical thinking—I mean, the list goes on and on, Meryl.”
“Listen, I think we should just stop worrying about this. Plus, I may have a solution in the works!” Meryl, with tear-ridden eyes, looks up with confusion. After the talk of having no solution, there’s suddenly a solution?
“What are you even talking about, Daryl? We can’t do anything more than just accommodate him!”
“I managed to get some connections with royalty, and I managed to score Twilight Sparkle—”
“You’re joking. There is no way Twilight Sparkle would want ANYTHING to do with us citizens! Isn’t a princess supposed to interact with other royalty?”
“Well, it doesn’t seem that way through my talks with her. I’m not even sure if we’ll set up a meeting, but I think we can. Give it some time, okay Meryl?”
“...” Some silence followed as she stared at him, her brain—which was sort of working on overdrive because of the emotions—geared into action. After considering it for some long moments...
“Okay, Daryl.” Without warning, Daryl gets wrapped into a hug as he hugs back. No complaints, though. Daryl loves those hugs from his lovely wife; they remind him of his first anniversary with her.
“Now, Meryl? Go back to finishing your gardening, okay? I’ll be out working.”
“Okay, sweetheart.” Meryl, with her romance, gave a quick peck on his lips before both parted ways. She went back to gardening, Daryl got ready for work, and Xavier was out in town—usually at his picnic table.
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's Note
This is my first story!! Criticize it as much as you want but please make it constructive! I am a beginner writer after all-
Author's Note
I am SUPERRRR sorry for the long delay! School, boxing classes and procrastination got the better of me!!
I also wrote this in a haste so I apologize if it's shorter than the one before!! I promise to make longer chapters if you guys want that-
Please feel free for feedback with this information in mind!!
I'm curious...
Xavier McMuffins sat on the bench of his picnic table. There was a plate of milk and a sandwich on top of the table before him. It was his favorite every time. It was like a revelation each time he found it, though; it was his favorite part about the journey near Ponyville.
Because it was a long walk to the table, and a simple reward was food. That was enough for him. So when he took his first bite, it tasted equally as tantalizing as the other dozen times he had taken a bite, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about things.
Thinking wasn’t unusual for him, but it wasn’t something he took his time to really focus on. He just did what he did and didn’t bat an eye. This time, however, was rare, for he took the opportune moment to focus on what he thought about.
“I wonder what Ponyville is up to today!...”
“Maybe Sugarcube Corner has good muffins…”
“Oh! What if Rainbow Dash comes here and gives me a muffin!”
The usual thoughts he conjured up. Nothing too interesting about it, at least from his perspective. Today was a strange one, though. He always had the goal of going to Ponyville one day, but he never went, even though it was so close to him.
“Hmm…” He stared into the distance where Ponyville was; it seemed small compared to him. He could smush Ponyville with his hoof at this distance.
“But mommy and daddy say not to go…” He slurred out with a rising pitch.
Xavier had an interesting thought. It might get him in trouble! But curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat. Xavier had never seen anything beyond the picnic table and his home. Ponyville was a mythological city full of wonders and utopia from all the stories he read before bed.
Xavier was taught to never leave messes, though! Therefore, he cleaned up after himself and ate his food fully before hopping off the bench and landing on his hooves. Xavier stepped closer to Ponyville, but it didn’t move any closer.
“But mommy says to always follow the rules! No being a bad boy!” He repeated to himself with a raspy pout.
“But I wanna go to Ponyville!” He craned his head to the sight of the buildings.
The path caught his eye, the one that went all the way back to his house, a place he was very familiar with. He had never broken the rules before, had he? For what it’s worth, Ponyville did contain the Mane 6.
A group of ponies that he idolized because they were so awesome. He would’ve asked mom and dad if he could go to Ponyville, but they probably would’ve said no again. They are also way too far to simply walk. Xavier had to make a decision himself.
“Umm…” His head kept pulling left and right between two places. His thoughts started to get jumbled and jangled.
“What do I do?!?...”
“If I go by myself, mommy and daddy will be mad at me…”
“Will mommy and daddy be mad at me?..”
“I really want to go!”
“But I gotta follow the rules…”
And so on. Xavier couldn’t grasp a single thought because they went too fast for him to process.
“Ohh…” He whimpered under the pressure. One way or another, he had to make a choice.
He would’ve gone back to eating his sandwich had he not eaten the whole thing. He took step after step, after step, and so on.
Though it was slow at first, it sped up as he realized that there was no going back after “breaking the rules.” It took a while, but Ponyville seemed to come closer into view! It was starting to get a lot bigger than what he thought it was, which amazed him.
It was until he looked back at the distance that his table seemed small in comparison to his hoof. He continued and eventually made his way into Ponyville.
