Chapters Forgive me if this is bad
Among the rest of the townsfolk, Braeburn was something of an oddity. He didn’t have a proper job in the community, yet somehow still managed to not just earn his keep, but even manage to be one of the wealthier members of the humble settlement. The way things worked around this joint was, you either you worked in the vast apple orchard or doing municipality work, and got paid straight from the town council’s payroll, or you opened your own little business and provided your service or sold your goods to the other townsfolk.
When he would otherwise idle, Braeburn could be found in the orchard, picking apples or tending to the existing trees with a mixture of well-honed skills and instincts that ran in the family. When it was necessary, however, and that becoming more often as time progressed and the little watering hole grew in size and wealth, he was the town’s makeshift guide and one-stallion ‘tourism board’. His experience as one of the first members of the tightly knit settlement and his enthusiastic, contagiously friendly disposition and outgoing nature made him a valuable asset to the municipality management, who were trying to pull together as many bits as possible from as many places as possible. They were, after all, just as determined as anypony else to make their chosen home prosper. Braeburn, on the other hoof, was always eager to do his part and happily fell into their chosen role for him, accepting quite a generous payment from the town fund each month. Everypony else was contented with the arrangement, or else not daring to suggest that he was being paid too generously. Nopony could accuse Braeburn of being a slack-off, anyway. The poor fellow, in his zeal, often worked himself to the bone, and was loved and accepted by the rest of the townsfolk for that.
It was because of this that Braeburn found himself leading a group of tourists through the town on a regular day sometime in early July. He had almost finished giving the last trainload of visitors the tour and rather short history, noting with some satisfaction that the group had shrunk to less than half the size, with many of them heading to the orchards or to some of the various shops in the wide, empty streets. It seemed that inviting the bison tribal craftsmen to set up shop here was indeed a rather good idea. He would have to congratulate Sheriff Silverstar on the success of his plan. This batch had disembarked from the second last train of the day almost one and a half hours ago. The next train would arrive in about half an hour. Due to the awkward hours that one would have to catch a train in order to arrive on the next locomotive, he wasn’t expecting many visitors.
As he directed the last few stragglers to their various places of temporary residence or to some of the town’s attractions, he made the decision to call it a day. The tourists seemed to fade like locusts into the distance, silhouetted against the golden light of the setting sun, and he stood for a moment admiring his days’ work, before turning to the municipality’s newly set up common facilities, looking to take a shower. What could he say; there was a lot of tourism here, thanks in part to the locals and the natural locations. Even he had to admit, these facilities were a worthy investment, all but paying for themselves. He made sure to wipe himself dry with a towel from his saddlebag, not wanting the dust which carried on the arid desert air to stick to him like apples pelted on a cactus.
He was out just in time to see the last train of the day pull away from the station. True to his time-weathered prediction, there was almost nopony alighting here…save for a single mare. She was white-coated, and her mane was a mix of alternating locks of navy and electric blue. On her flank were two black tied quaver notes, a classic depiction of musician’s cutie mark. She wore a pair of rather flamboyant opaque, purple-tinted shades, encased in a thick black hard plastic frame. Though her chosen accessory effectively masked her facial expression, Braeburn could tell that she was worn out from the trip. It was written all over her in sagging shoulders, a drooping head and the rather numbed, clueless air she had about her. Braeburn decided that one last task wouldn’t take so long, and started to trot over. After all, she was just one more mare among the dozens of other visitors he was sure he had entertained just today.
He took his time, glancing at this week’s schedule on the station’s notice board and running through a list of routes, locations and timings. It was only when he was about two metres from her that he realized that the poor soul could only have gotten on a train sometime between eleven in the evening and three in the morning. He would have to make sure that she found somewhere to stay for the night, or he wouldn’t let himself off. "Good evening, miss. I’m the welcoming committee for Appleoosa. Can I help you?" She sighed almost inaudibly, looking somewhat listless even with her shades on, before offering a reply. When she did, though, Braeburn was somewhat surprised by how haggard she sounded. "Yes, please. Could you direct me to whoever’s in charge here? I don’t really know what I’m looking for right now, so I guess that’s a place to start." He silently agreed to the fact that she looked more than a little lost right then.
"Well…I think you want the town hall, I guess. They can give you a scope of what there is to do here, though I’d reckon you’d be looking for a place to stay at this time?" He followed up with a set of instructions, motioning with his right hoof all the while. "You’ll want to head down the road from here and take first left. It’ll be the second building on the right, the one with a little bell tower on it." All the while, the peculiar visitor looked like she was either nodding her head in acknowledgement or else nodding off. Whichever one it really was, he honestly couldn’t really tell.
"Ma’am, are you fine…?"
"Huh? Yeah, I’m alright. Thanks for all your help…" she nodded sleepily a few times, yawned, then set off towards the road, stumbling along and nearly tripping on the small flight of stairs that elevated the station from the rest of the town. Braeburn cringed as she nearly toppled over sideways upon a very shaky recovering. "Uhh… On second thought, ma’am, I’d better escort you there." And make sure you find somewhere to spend the night. What should have been a five- to ten-minute walk then dragged on, plowing through the minutes and seconds the same way the visitor’s hooves seemed to plow listlessly through the town’s dusty street. Braeburn would usually have tried to start a friendly conversation, but he just couldn't find it in himself to overcome the still, heavy atmosphere that seemed to swirl around them in uneven little eddies, knocking his new acquaintance off balance every now and then.
Come on, Braeburn, just break the ice. There’s nothing to it. You do this every day. "So…" Ask her who she is, you idiot. "… You have a name, stranger?" He immediately regretted it when he realized how clichéd that sounded. As the next metre or so passed in awkward silence, Braeburn was sure that he had scared her off for good, but in the end, she offered a weak, half-hearted nod, all but indiscernible from the up-and-down bobbing of her head, which hung low as she trotted along. "So… care to share it?"
"It’s… Vinyl. Vinyl Scratch." Her voice sounded almost trance-like, almost as if she was recalling a long-ago experience that was as faded and dusty as Appleoosa itself. He could also see that like the town, that memory had some kind of magic to it as well. She had seemed to perk up a little, grow a little less weary. Then she sighed, and the magic dissipated into the cool night air, carried away on a passing dry breeze. Braeburn found that he had been staring, and quickly averted his gaze.
"Wait…your name…did you say Scratch?"
"Mmhmm."
"Sounds familiar, but I can’t really put my hoof on it."
"I should think not. I came here for the peace and quiet, not for the fans. If I still had any, that is."
Fans? He was intrigued by the strange mention, but otherwise, he chose not to ask too much. It wasn't nice to pry into somepony else’s business, especially if they were looking for peace and quiet…and if one was hoping to make friends. Back off a little, maybe try to find out a little more about her?
"So where are you from, Miss Scratch?" Braeburn kept his eyes on the street, directing Vinyl to turn the corner when she failed to do so herself. The town office was less than twenty metres away from here. "Canterlot," she replied.
"I see." There was a moment of silence, punctuated by the bustling of a small group of holiday goers making their way through the town. To him, they looked like the very definition of warmth and happiness and self-enjoyment, whereas Vinyl and himself seemed to hang outside the range of their warming touch. He pondered upon this in silence as they crossed the last few metres to their destination. It was only when he noticed the weak sepia glow from the building’s porch light that he perked up again. "Okay, miss. You should find all the help you need in there, but just in case you need a little help afterwards, I’ll be waitin’ out here."
She nodded weakly again, then slowly turned and pushed the door open in front of her.
Braeburn took a seat on the slightly unstable wooden bench outside, crossing his hooves behind his head and pulling his hat over his eyes, resting. It had, after all, been a long day of hard work, and he still had to make sure that this Vinyl Scratch got a place to stay. Admittedly it was getting to be a bit of an obsessive concern, but she really did look in bad shape. Why would anypony be in such a bad state anyway? Out of curiosity, he tried to recall the schedule from the train station, and realized that she must have left Canterlot at about two in the morning yesterday. Wow. And why did her name sound so familiar? He could have sworn he’d heard it somewhere… but where?
The door beside him opened and an angular, trapeze-shaped spill of light was thrown out in front of him. Currently, it was obscured in the centre by two figures. He turned to face the figures, shoving his headwear up above his eye level by the brim. ‘Evenin’ sheriff. What brings you outdoors at this hour?’
"Same reason you haven’t gone off duty yet, I reckon." Silverstar indicated with a jerk of his head that he was referring to Vinyl, who was standing in the doorway behind him, head drooping. "I see…" Braeburn, against his own better judgement, risked a wild guess . "Is she in trouble of some sort, sir?"
"Nothing of that sort, Braeburn. I’ve got a little something to settle with the lady, if you don’t mind, so I’ll fill you in with the details later. If you’re up for a drink, that is."
"No thank you, sir. But I’m sure Paperweight can fill me in, right?"
"Yes, that would be preferable. Good night to you, boy."
"G’dnight, Sir."
Braeburn spared Vinyl a small, tight-lipped smile and an equally subtle nod of the head, both of which went unacknowledged. Whether that was just another coincidence, he didn’t know, but he couldn’t care much right now. Strange that the sheriff’s got to be involved in this. Well I know she’s not a criminal, but I can’t think of why else he would want to follow her. Well, to be honest, I do have a few, but those…not likely. He watched them fade into the distance of the white, smoky night, through the hustle and bustle that the early evening maintained among the town. Then he turned and entered the small office to converse with Paperweight.
Upon entry, he noticed that the small single-story building was dark except for a light illuminating the front desk and its single occupant, a middle-aged beige pony of about regular build. Paperweight. Braeburn knew him well because they made their journeys to Ponyville to see their relatives together. He was a helpful, hardworking fellow with a mild temperament and forgiving attitude, despite the fact that he was rather easily excited. Most importantly, he was a pony who showed that he could make an honest living when he came here with the first batch of Appleoosans. That was why he was now the town’s secretary.
‘Hi there, Paperweight. I was kinda wondering about what the sheriff was up to. He said you could fill me in?’
"Oh. Hi Brae. You won’t believe it what just happened." Paperweight dragged the last syllable of the word ‘believe’ in a somewhat over-emphasis. Braeburn just cocked an eyebrow in skepticism.
"No, really!" he continued. ‘That mare, you know, white with blue mane? Yeah? She just bought that ol’ house at the end of Cactus Drive."
Braeburn was stock still for awhile and simply eyed his friend in a sort of inert, shocked state. "No…you’re kidding, right?"
"No, really. Why do you think the sheriff went with her? Wanted to make sure all that ownership stuff was settled."
Braeburn's surprise changed to more curiosity and bewilderment. He scratched his head. "Who would want that old house there anyway? Sure it’s nice, but it’s right at the edge of town. Who would wanna live in a lost and lonely little establishment like that on her own? And I didn't see her carrying anything save for two saddle bags. And even then," he turned back to regard the carrier bags on his flank before continuing, "they weren't much larger than my own, that’s for sure."
Paperweight shrugged, then continued. "Beats me. But it’s not my place to ask, as long as she can cough up enough to buy it."
"Yeah. About that. Did she take a loan or something? There aren't exactly any banks setting up branches around here."
Paperweight’s eyes lit up. "That’s another thing. Look."
Braeburn watched as his friend reached under the counter-top and pulled open a drawer on his side, inviting Braeburn to look at it, which he did, sticking his head awkwardly over the counter. His eyes widened and his jaw went slack. It was full of hundred-bit coins, though also made up of slightly smaller denominations.
"She paid for it in full. Just emptied out this little sack in one of her bags."
"I see…" he replied, now more confused than ever. Whatever the deal with this Vinyl Scratch was, Braeburn had the feeling that things were about to get a little more interesting with a new neighbor in town.
Things are gonna get weirder, I guess. If you're not happy with this, there's nothing I can do.
The following day seemed to crawl at a snails' pace for Braeburn, not that there were actually any snails in Appleoosa. It was too hot and too dry, they would just shrivel up and die in the heat. Braeburn, on the other hand, was denied such a simple fate. Most of the day consisted of him standing in town square, awaiting the next batch of visitors. The problem was, there weren't much of them arriving today, only a few lone individuals and the occasional family of four or five, coming off the railway line in dribs and drabs. He had tried his best to put the spare time to use, adding detail and information to his tour that was often omitted due to time constraints, but eventually, even those few visitors tired of him. There weren't enough visitors to provide Braeburn with a satisfyingly hard day's work, and not few enough to allow him to return to the apple orchard.
Braeburn hated being idle. Maybe it was the Apple family blood that flowed through his veins, but he was possessed of the same preference for action as Applejack and Big Mac. It was the idle time that started to send his mind into action, though. Throughout the day, he stood baking in the sun, oblivious to the fact that he was probably going to be carcinogenic at the end of the day, instead choosing to think about all those things he usually didn't have time for.
Like the peculiar events of yesterday night. For starters, he still couldn't figure out why the name Vinyl Scratch sounded so awfully familiar. He tried to remember the last time he had heard it. Where had he heard it? And who had brought it up? A slightly high-pitched female voice and an undertone of excitement was what he could recall so far. What else? He had only heard it on the periphery of his auditory ability due to the background noise before it was repeated again and became a subject of conversation. Where was this?
The smell of savoury foods also came to mind. The smell of the apple pie was peculiarly unique. That was it. Apple pie. It was at the Apple family reunion in Ponyville. It had been Applebloom, in a slightly argumentative debate about the musicians of Equestria. Eventually, the conversation had spread throughout the whole group of Apple family members, and had mutated to take in the case of whether dubstep was actual music or just a pile of...organic fertilizer. He remembered laughing at how Granny Smith had been very...vocal, on the issue.
But she couldn't be, could she? It was a coincidence at best, perhaps a shameless lie at worst (Braeburn didn't like to assume the worst of ponies, unless presented with overwhelming evidence). What would a famous musician like her, a famous, MODERN musician like her be doing in a rustic, out-of-the-way town like Appleoosa? To take a break from the city? Then why did she buy a house? He knew modern celebrities liked to pull stunts ('like nudity'...Braeburn shuddered at the thought) but from what he could tell about her, she seemed rather somber, compared to the whole...current generation, too somber, in fact, to buy a whole property on impulse. It would certainly explain about how she was able to pay for it in cash, though.
For all the progress Braeburn had made on the matter, he still couldn't explain why Vinyl Scratch would want to take up residence, permanent or otherwise, in Appleoosa. Only towards the end of the day, as he leaned over a banister and watched the sun, a dying orange sphere sinking into the horizon, did he notice that he had failed to see Vinyl anywhere today. The town was small enough that he could greet at least two thirds of the residents, and spy the rest from a distance too far to facilitate speech. 'So maybe she really DID come here for a little peace and quiet,' he thought as he headed to the toilet for a shower.
By the time he had fastened his boots and put on his faded brown leather jacket and ten-gallon, the automatic lights in the enclosed, tiled public bath area had already turned on with a flicker of warm yellow light. By the time he had stepped out, he could see that the brilliant orange and red tones of the sunset had already faded to a slightly brilliant purple lingering above the horizon, while the rest of the sky was in turn changing to midnight blue.
He made a split-second decision and veered off to the right, heading for Lonely Baron, the town's lone cantina. Tonight, it was half full of visitors from outside the town. The town's own resident population, mainly a few bison and laborers from the orchard, occupying a few half-vacant circular booths in the back. There was a peculiar buzz in air tonight, something that was exciting the bar's occupants, especially the visitors. Wading through a mixed bag of somber, quiet and somewhat awkward to thoroughly buzzed ponies and rowdy ponies to the counter of the bar, where there was a half-filled row of stools, arrranged, in a typical fashion, parallel to the elongated countertop. Braeburn headed for the far left stool, next to the bar's thin plywood walls. Calling the attention of the local bartender, a bespectacled, unassuming gentlecolt who was more tactful with the use of his tongue than it would seem otherwise.
Braeburn started off the conversation. ‘Hi, Jug.’
‘Evenin’ Braeburn,’ came a familiar reply. ‘Any special reason why you’re here today?’
‘Not really, but now that I am,’ Braeburn leaned himself further onto the counter in front of him, setting his right forehoof on the table and his left one at his side. ‘What’s all the fuss about here anyway?’
Jug raised an eyebrow, then shook his head rather unconvincingly. ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Are you sure you can take any more drink?’
‘Oh, come on, Jug,’ Braeburn rolled his eyes, relaxed his posture and asked again. ‘Speech might be one o’ your strong suits, but play-acting just don’t come so naturally for you. So tell me again what’s the buzz around here?’
Jug finally broke into a small grin, and offered Braeburn a glass of ale, which the latter accepted, leaving two bits in place of the brown wooden mug which he now held firmly between his two hooves, clasped close to his body. ‘Well,’ the bartender began, ‘the tourists have been going crazy all day, for starters, some o’ them just pop their heads in, do something like this,’ at this point, Jug imitated a slack-jawed stare of amazement, and the two of them chuckled before continuing. ‘Some o’ them, well they stop for drinks, but they’re not here for that, now, are they?’
‘No?’ Braeburn asked in skepticism. There wasn’t much else they could be here for. Tourists generally didn’t mix with the natives or the workers from the orchard, considering them to be too brutish and crude, and perhaps too prone to violence. And besides them, there wasn’t anyone else to talk to in the little cantina.
‘Not at all. All the tourist, even those that weren’t here for her—‘
‘Who?’
‘Just a moment, I’m getting to that. Anyway, what I was about to say was, they’re all here more or less just to get a look at her .’ Jug indicated with a discreet sideways motion of the head, a white-coated mare, whose tail was streaked with electric and cobalt blue, and whose eyes were covered by a set of unmistakable and somewhat garish opaque purple, thick-rimmed shades. She was currently resting her head on the table, swirling a glass of some miscellaneous dark-yellow alcohol in a sort of preoccupied, half-waking stupor. She was seated in the corner booth at the right of the bar, the opposite side from the orchard workers. Indeed, even as Braeburn observed the scene, everypony else in the bar seemed to be casting furtive, amused, even mesmerized glances at her.
‘Been tryin’ to get stoned since mornin’. If she asks me for another drink I got my mind set to get the sheriff, just in case her liver gives way.’ Jug turned to regard Braeburn with a sort of amused stare, as the latter simply eyed Vinyl with some measure of surprise. ‘You know her, sport?’
‘Yeah, I do. I’ll get back to you later, Jug.’ This somewhat preoccupied and uninformative answer was all that Braeburn offered as he vacated his seat, drink in hand, in favour of Vinyl’s booth, of which she was the lone occupant. Either nopony else dared or wanted to approach her, but why they wouldn’t want a chance to meet a star, he had no idea. He was thinking to find some answers through a chat with Miss Scratch.
Upon closer examination, it appeared that she was indeed heavily intoxicated, almost to the point of inebriation. She continued to swirl a bottle around in the air above her head, slowly gyrating the bottom of the transparent green container, which was probably beer, from the looks of it.
‘Miss Scratch?’ Braeburn asked somewhat furtively. She stopped swirling the bottle for a few seconds, and then continued without offering any further acknowledgement. Braeburn decided to take his chances and continued to approach the booth, though he was now a little more cautious. After all, he hardly knew her when she was sober, who knew how she would act when drunk. When he was about a metre away, he repeated his question, this time sounding even less sure than before. ‘Miss Scratch?’ He sat down on the opposite end of the row of seats, deciding to push his luck yet again.
Vinyl, her expression unreadable behind the opaque vermilion-tinted layer of glare protection, turned her head in a slow, lolling manner to regard him. She turned back to regard her bottle again after some time. ‘I don’t really know who you are, but I have a hunch about why you’re here. No autographs. I’m nopony special, so screw off and leave me alone.’
‘Miss Scratch, it’s me, Braeburn.’
She turned her head again, slowly, in a half-awake manner. ‘Oh. It’s you.’ She took another swig from the bottle, then added, ‘go away,’ thrusting forehoof pointedly and jabbing Braeburn in between the ribs. Then she turned away, letting her head fall back to the table with a thud and roll comically sideways.
Braeburn raised both eyebrows, but looked rather unsurprised. He sat down and leaned his weight on the table, cradling his drink and still eyeing Vinyl cautiously with a slight frown, though choosing to adopt a relaxed posture. He frowned and was about to make another attempt at finding out what was wrong, when Vinyl cut him off. Not bothering to face him this time, she simply said, her curt and would-be lethally sharp tone blunted by a slurred speech and heavy tongue. ‘Look, kid,’ she took another swig. Kid? Braeburn wondered. She really was inebriated, in that case. He really should have been listening to her instead, so he brought his attention back to her voice. ‘…don’t know if all of you country folk are this downright blunt, but haven’t I made it obvious enough that I’m just not in the mood tonight?’
Vinyl waved Jug over, and the barman approached the table in his usual business-like manner. At that moment, a very bombastic and slightly obnoxious-souding pony boomed to the barman from across the cantina, momentarily muting out the soft background music, which Braeburn recognized as a cover of ‘Piano Colt’ being played on the small upright grand sitting in the corner.
‘Waiter, her drinks are on me!’ Braeburn turned just around to see a rather large and well-toned stallion, a large, looking straight at them with a large, stupid grin on his face. His circle of friends were cheering and clapping him on the back, making quite a ruckus. Braeburn hurriedly turned back to face the alabaster mare, looking as if he had just discovered he was standing beside a few sticks of high explosives, set to blow at any moment. His panic was not wasted on an undeserving situation.
Even with her glasses on, it was now evident how very, very ticked off she was. She was facing directly at the stallion that had incurred her wrath. Currently, she had one clenched hoof supporting her on the table, and the other on the back of her seat doing the same. She was presenting her front to her target, an aggressive, challenging stance, gritted teeth and a low guttural growl. Then without warning, she swiped her now-nearly-empty bottle off the table top and smashed its round bottom against the top of the table, showering a startled Braeburn and herself in a spray of alcohol and dark green-tinted glass fragments that flew every which way through the air. He had barely raised a hoof in time to shield himself from the crystalline shower, while Vinyl didn’t even flinch, despite there now being several shallow cuts on certain areas of her face, arms and torso. Even Jug, who thought that he might have seen it all already with a job like that, took a back on reflex. ‘Oh dangit, not another one,’ he commented with a tired yet strangely expectant undertone.
Vinyl’s attack was surprisingly swift for somepony who was, by all standards, just about wasted. Braeburn wondered if he could have fed a particularly grouchy cat with tequila and got the same sort of response. He was off his seat split-seconds after she was, and grabbed her charging form from behind by the elbows, locking her arms and holding her back. She was surprisingly strong too, and he grunted with effort as she struggled, flaying her head around wildly. ‘Woah there, silly filly.’ Another grunt. ‘It ain’t worth it, trust me. I couldn’t even get through the skull of the last one I brained, and my bottle was full, too.’
She screamed and lashed her head backwards, hitting Braeburn hard in the forehead. ‘Ah!’ His grip slackened and she wriggled out of his grasp. She pivoted around and, somehow, even with her coordination shot, kicked him in the groin. Braeburn doubled over in pain, drawing a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth.
She kicked him once more, sharply in the abdomen, and Braeburn curled up defensively, more to ward off another blow than out of pain or fear. Seriously, he was just waiting for her to turn her back before trying to grab her again. Vinyl looked about ready to pounce upon the stallion, who was not trembling in fear and scared to the point of not knowing what to do other than stay on his feet and whimper. The rest of the bar’s patrons had either had the good sense to exit the premises or else retreat to a safer area to watch. Jug was nowhre in sight now.
Braeburn rolled his eyes, getting up and taking wide, unhurried strides after Vinyl. He had loosed a length of rope from his belt, one ordinary end of which he grasped with his mouth, the other end, which was tied in a lasso in his right hoof. He was starting to think that he might be too late, as Vinyl closed in on her target, a distance of half a room closing to a matter of five metres odd, with the distance decreasing with every drunken step she took. The stallion simply stood there dumbly like a foal awaiting a punishment, not daring to step out of line for fear of greater retribution. Come on, run you dumb arse, he thought silently.
Vinyl was about a metre off and made a last lunge, with the broken bottle held firmly behind her at an angle, ready to be brought into the offender’s upper torso and face. Oh Celestia no, please no, official statements are so boring to give… He threw the lasso, hoping to be able to slip it around Vinyl’s wrist and at least distract her, if not subdue her.
An explosive crack split the air, which was thick and with suspense and, to some extent fear. Vinyl stopped mid-stride, turning to face the source of the alarming noise. Even the fearful and honestly very stupid pony that had incurred her turned to face the entrance of the bar. Braeburn expertly recoiled the length of rope with a well-rehearsed tug, and the lasso knot changed direction abruptly in midair, into his open hoof, then turned a well. It was Sheriff Silverstar, silhouetted against the setting sun, one hoof holding open the swinging doors to the pub, and the other holding an old but well-maintained Colt six-shooter, pointed at the ceiling with its barrel still smoking. ‘Now if all four of you would come with me to the office. I need a statement. Yes, Jug, that includes you.’ They filed one by one out of the bar doors, which the sheriff, never short of professionalism, held open for them, the stallion still whimpering softly every now and then, while Vinyl did so huffily, having grudgingly dropped her weapon. Braeburn and Jug brought up the rear, whispering with hushed tones.
The former turned to Jug and asked accusingly, ‘where in the hoof were you when the action started?’
Jug shrugged. ‘Ringin’ up the sheriff. You can’t blame me for that, can you? She got you too, you know.’
Braeburn, taken aback but ever good-humoured, replied in amazement, ‘No she didn’t!’
‘No?’
‘Naw, I was just—‘
Sheriff Silverstar cut him off at this point, while keeping his eyes on Vinyl. ‘You have the right to remain silent, boy.’
Braeburn, spirits somewhat dampened, replied with a toned-down ‘Yes, sir.’
Statements, as Braeburn had expected, were a long and uninteresting, not to mention particularly stressful situation. They were requested to wait in a dull wood-walled room, devoid of all details or ornaments, save two benches placed along adjacent walls and a small square table in the corner. The sheriff had then called them one by one into a similarly fashioned room, which was smaller and only possessed a single desk and chair. The sheriff had installed a set of stronger, brighter lights, which, being well-maintained, were less of the flickering sepia that lit the rest of the town after daylight hours. It served to give the whole law enforcement office a strongly clinical feel despite its rustic build.
The first to be questioned was the visitor. It took about forty-five minutes in all for the sheriff to get all the information he needed out of the panicky, timid stallion, who kept jabbering and repeating details, and insisting repeatedly that he ‘did nothing wrong, officer’. Sheriff Silverstar, despite the full measure of his patient, quietly placative disposition, finally lost his patience and shouted the detainee into place, and into a greater degree of cooperation.
Vinyl’s statement took even longer, since there was a certain amount of background information that had to be uncovered in order to understand her given reaction. It didn’t help much that she was drunk, and, as a result, kept missing out on certain details. Even when she was able to provide them, they were still inconsistent and tended to change when revisited or being confirmed. The sheriff took nearly twice as long to get the information out of her, but when he reappeared to the detainees, Braeburn, who knew him well, could tell that his expression was just slightly softer and his eyes more forgiving.
Jug and Braeburn were questioned in the corresponding order, and were by far the most accurate and unbiased statements given that evening, much to the sheriff relief. It was about ten in the evening when the group was given the permission to return to their places of residence or lodging, being informed that they may be asked to return to the office if more information was needed. Braeburn, tired and restless from inactivity and from the tourist’s whining, happily obliged, and headed off towards the orchard. Jug had closed the bar when he had left with the rest of them, and had also decided to call it a night. The tourist simply bolted as quickly as his legs would carry him. Vinyl, now deprived of the bar in which to loiter around, simply walked along the street slowly, groggily, past the boundaries of the town and to the edge of the orchard, where she sat quietly in the cool evening breeze, looking over mile after mile of orchard, bordered with tall red rock outcroppings ending in dusty mesas, or shifting, inconstant sandy scrubland or desert, the sand now tinged blue in the evening light. It was a beautiful sight, but she didn’t really care. She just wanted to find somewhere where nopony would pay her any mind, somewhere where, if she couldn’t drown her sorrows with alcohol, she could do so with tears. It started with a sigh, a ravaged, frustrated noise that bordered on the edge of becoming a scream of rage. Then, after the sudden crescendo, it died off into a series of soft sobs and sniffs, punctuated by the keening wails of a weeping pony. Vinyl cried alone for a good part of the evening as the rest of the world moved on without her, then she went home, caught a few hours of sleep, probably less than five, but she didn’t care, and returned to the bar and asked for a bottle of gin.
Braeburn, tired and incoherent, stumbled out of the barn, squinting in the bright sunlight, which beat strongly down on him, assaulting his vision when it had yet to adjust. His body, still needing to warm up and quite unwilling to cooperate with him, felt as if it were scalded as he stepped out of the cool, familiar shade and into the full-on sunlight. He rubbed his head, causing his disheveled mane to be made even more unruly. Then he sat down on the sandy wooden floorboards, still in full view of the blindingly bright yellow-white ball of the sun, and tried to think.
It had been horrible last night. The strange, keening wails that had continued throughout the whole night had awakened some long-hidden fear within him, keeping him up all night until exhaustion finally took hold of him. What made him really afraid were two important details pertaining to the noise. First of all, he had never, in all his years living in this town, heard anything like it, not even when he had camped with the buffalo tribes of the land to try and learn about their culture. Second of all, the very nature of the noise had made it all the more terrifying. He remembered it in great detail, a high, keening wail in the night that spoke measures of loss, agony, rage that questioned the cruelty of fate. Or at least, that was what it had sounded like. The noise had cut right to his heart, and served to chill him deeply. Braeburn, who, as a rule of being the town’s friendly face to outsiders, didn’t carry a weapon to defend himself, had huddled in the barn behind a few large baskets of apples, arranged around a corner in a defensive quarter circle.
He shook his head and focused instead on the current surroundings. He didn’t want to think about it. Still squinting, he realized that the experience of being blinded by sunlight was almost alien to him. Come to think of it, he was usually up even before the sun was. Now that he thought about it, it was strange that the orchard workers had found him and woken him up. Most of the time, he would have headed into the town just as they headed in. How very strange…Wait…Oh darn. I’m late.
Braeburn couldn't believe it. He had never been late for work before, whether it was in the orchard or as the town's tour guide. It just wasn't responsible of him. There were other ponies whose valuable time depended on his puntuality, after all. He just couldn't believe himself. At that moment he nearly ran straight into somepony carrying a large open crate of metal blades, on the way to the new apple processing plant due to open in the next three months or so. He nearly tripped and sent his face straight into the assortment of cutters, differing in size, shape, length or otherwise in design, but all still equally sharp.Gosh, sleep deprivation's almost as bad as heavy drinking, only it's probably less harmful...heavy drinking... He slowed down to a brisk trot, and looked around the town. It came as a random observation that he couldn't find Ms Scratch anywhere in the thin crowd. Then he shook his head and wondered what had overtaken him. You barely know her. In fact, she probably hates you now.
Speaking of strange and disturbing... he thought about the strange noises last night, and shivered involuntarily in the broad, beaming afternoon sun. He had to find out about what that was, to satisfy his own horrifying curiosity, and, even though he wouldn't want to be caught dead over-worrying, he was honestly a little scared at the prospect of what could have made such a noise. And I have to find another place to spend the night. He sure as pony wasn't about to spend another night listening to creepy noises and putting himself at the mercy of whatever it was out there. Perhaps he could ask Jug to let him pull an all-nighter in the bar? He would see. Right now, all that mattered was getting to—he stopped his rushed pace abruptly as he approached what was an almost empty train station.
Work? Braeburn was a little stumped, to say the least. There was nopony, and absolutely nopony at the station, nor any tourists wondering around the vicinity draggin baggage of any kind. It was all a little strange, since they would more or less mill around waiting for someone to tell them what to do (they were always informed that there was a guide who would help them).
The rest of them responded the same way initially, with questioning stares and raised eyebrows, before shrugging their shoulders with equal non-chalance and proceeding to ask him for help. He was about done pointing the group in the right direction, when the sheriff approached him from the edge of his field of vision, standing to a corner until the last of the tourists were on their way. Braeburn directed his attention to Silverstar. “Mornin' sheriff. Sorry about the late start.”
“Never mind about that. I've got something to show you.”
“What's that, sir?”
The sheriff shook his head and beckoned with a hoof, heading to the station. Braeburn, though quite alienated and somewhat irked, nonetheless proceeded to trotted submissively behind the sheriff out of respect. They were heading towards the station, with Braeburn feeling ever more curious by the second. When they were both standing on the platform, the sheriff turned to face him, his eyes possessing a tint that Braeburn didn't see often. A slight glimmer of mischief and good humour. 'Now,' the sheriff started, 'I didn't want to point this out in front of the tourists, but if you would direct your attention to the notice board...' Braeburn did as he was told, and started to laugh. There, on the board, was a notice, printed in large font, which stated that the town guide would not be running his usual tour for today.
The sheriff smiled visibly and shared the brief moment of mirth with him. 'You', he placed a hoof on Braeburn's shoulder, 'are the first right-minded stallion I've met who comes to work on his day off.'
'Thank you for going out of your way to inform me sir.' He chuckled and paused, staring at the notice before adding, 'I had better finish with this batch first, though. Don't wanna leave’em hangin' now, do I?'
It was a short day of work, completed with the better part of an hour. It was barely late morning by the time the group was shooed off into the town to explore on their own. Braeburn sighed in relief as he watched the last tourist’s back-facing silhouette disappear into the distance. He stood in the uncomfortably warm sunlight for a moment, enjoying the moment of relief. As he wiped the sweat from his brow, he noticed abruptly that he didn’t know what to do now. He didn’t have anything to do now, come to think of it. He was genuinely surprised when he noticed that he had no other interest, no other hobbies or tasks to complete, goals to accomplish, other than his everyday work. It was a profoundly sobering realization, which he shoved into the corner of his mind for a moment, thinking to focus on what had to be done now. He would think about what he could do for leisure when he had time.
The heat of the sun was making him feel abnormally drowsy. He rubbed a hoof against his temple and looked around for some shade. Stifling a yawn, the events of yesterday night were brought to mind. He remembered the shrieks, frightening and heart-rending, echoing through the deserted orchard, and he shivered. First of all was to find out what that sound was, and, for now, to find somewhere else to sleep.
His first stop was the apple orchard, where he was greeted warmly by a number of the workers, friends and relatives whom he was familiar with. He had started inquiring about those who lived closest to the orchard first, asking if they had heard the noise. They were mostly laborers staying in the small hostile at the edge of town. Most said they hadn’t. Some said that they might have, barely, soft enough that a few thought it was just their imagination. Even fewer claimed that they had definitely heard it, and mostly in the dead of night, when it was quiet enough for sound to travel to their ears, then conditioned to the silence. Then he continued to ask if they had seen anything out of the ordinary. Not really, they had told him. Nothing…except, a few strands of something deep blue, barely visible against a patch of crushed grass at the edge of the orchard. Braeburn left afterwards, with nothing more than a frown and a growing sense of unease and puzzlement, and almost nothing to add to his dismal list of clues. He had no choice but to get going, having other errands to run.
It was about two hours’ walk to get to where the buffalo had set up their camp, based on the list of locations and timings that Little Strongheart had provided Braeburn with. And so he spent an hour plodding over dusty red mesas, through annoyingly inconstant sandy hills, around clusters of metre-and-a-half cacti. He would stop occasionally to take a swig of water from his canteen before adjusting his hat and continuing. By the time he had gotten there, the sun had just crossed the apex of its gentle arc across the arc. As soon as he was within sight of the camp, a few of the large, bulky buffalo, standing out from the pale yellow sands in their dark umber coats, plodded from the camp towards him. He stood perfectly still and stared straight at them, even making eye contact several times. But he didn’t approach. No, that would be taken as an indication of disrespect, or, in worse times, as hostility.
In the months that followed the small conflict between the natives and the settlers, he had been one of the first few ponies who took the first steps towards any kind of cultural exchange, learning first their traditions before teaching some of his own, always giving them the proper respect as equals. At the front of the group was an ochre buffalo, three times smaller than the others, lithe and almost skinny in build and with a spring it her step. There was no mistaking though, from the way Strongheart carried herself, that she was the leader.
A small smile broke through her otherwise morose visage. When they were close enough, her ruse finally broke, and she punched Braeburn in the arm. He rubbed his shoulder gingerly and returned the gesture, although more gently. Her smirk grew as she addressed their visitor. “How many times have I told you before, Mr. Braeburn, that you hardly need to stand on ceremony with us?” She turned and started trotting back to the camp, indicating with a jerk of her head that Braeburn should follow. “Last time anypony tried not standing at ceremony, they got the cold shoulder and dirty looks from the whole clan,” Braeburn reminded her. “Wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“Yes, but obviously whoever it was who last tried that, it wasn’t you.” Braeburn gave a snort of amusement. “So your father still thinks that we’ve got something going for us, doesn’t he?” he asked.
Strongheart’s cheeks reddened considerably. “Yeah, but I can’t bear to tell him otherwise. It’s quite cute though, ‘cause he asks all sorts of things after you visit.” Braeburn frowned in mock disdain, but didn’t face his friend. They maintained further silence until they were well into the small temporary camp. “So,” she started again, turning to face him. She ran a hoof to sweep a few of her messy locks above her bandanna. “What brings you to our camp this time?” He, in turn, reached into his saddle bag, poking around with his nose while he held it open with a hoof. He withdrew two weathered pieces of parchment a moment later, and dropped them from his mouth into Strongheart’s waiting hoof. “Two trade request, one for more sapphires and the other for cactus gum.” Strongheart accepted the documents and glanced over them with a small frown. Then she passed the forms to a clan member flanking her right, dismissing him with a curt nod. Braeburn had never gotten used to the sight of an eight-hundred kilogram bison scurrying off at her whims. “We should be ready to conduct an exchange in about two weeks from now,” she confirmed, turning back to Braeburn. “Now, is there anything else you might need?”
“Oh no,” Braeburn replied courteously, taking a few steps back. “I just—…“ Out of sheer coincidence, the strange noises in the night drifted into his mind, the same way he had heard it the night before. He shuddered and frowned. “Actually, there’s something I need to ask you about.” Strongheart nodded gravely, sensing the change in his mannerisms. “I have a feeling you’ll want to take a seat before doing this.” He shook his head and started to explain the occurrence from the previous evening. “Would you be able to identify this as anything? Maybe some sort of desert creature, or something from your folklore?” Strongheart’s brows rose slightly at the word ‘folklore’, but after several ponderous seconds, she shook her head. “Being the chief’s daughter, I’m required to know everything there is to know about our culture and our way of life, but I’ve never ever heard or even heard of anything by that description. Sorry Braeburn.” He nodded graciously, though rather grimly, in reply.
He set off back to town, arrived in the late afternoon, and finished his favours and chores by early evening. After a quick shower, he settled himself down in the cantina, intentionally plodding up to a bar stool directly in front of Jug and seating himself down heavily. The bartender took the hint. “What seems to be the problem? By the way, sorry you had to get involved in that little affair yesterday…” He waved it off with a hoof. “Listen, um, Jug, can I call a favour?” The reply came in the form of a shrug. Shoot. “I kinda need a place to stay tonight….Something really strange went on and there’s no way I’m gonna be spending one more night on that damn orchard. Not until this problem is resolved somehow.” A few extremely unlikely thoughts of townsfolk with pitchforks and torches filed in and out of his mind, largely ignored due to sheer unlikelihood. Bartender Jug peered at him over the tiny lenses of his glasses, as if searching for something in him that would decide his decision. The resolve to hold up such a keen and intense expression collapsed after a moment, and he sighed. “I don’t see why not, sport—“ he said resignedly, Braeburn punched the air and let out a silent cheer of elation. “—provided you do me one more favour.” It didn’t dampen his mood much, and he agreed almost instantly. Nothing could be worse than spending another night huddling behind bales of hay and barrels of apples, listening to eerie, heart-wrenching wailing and wondering whether he should go to sleep in case he was just hearing things. Jug watched the spectacle of triumph and, as expected, shrugged yet again. He pointed a hoof towards one of the shadowy corner booths, the seats, floor and table littered with glass bottles of a few different types…and a large lump of…something. Or somepony? He turned to Jug with a puzzled frown.
“She’s been here since yesterday, and I wouldn’t complain about the extra service, but I’m a decent stallion running a respectable business, and I’m worried about the poor lass. Just go check on her can you?” He slid off the stool and trotted over. “And try not to start a fight this time!” The last statement confirmed enough of his suspicions. When he reached the booths, Miss Scratch was draped over the table, a glass bottle in her hoof just like yesterday.
“Useless,” she muttered softly, and sniffed once, giving a slight shake of her head. “Useless, useless, useless…” the shaking got more violent, feverish, and she thumped a hoof on the table surface. “What’s useless?” he asked in as gentle-sounding a voice as he could muster. She drew back from the sound of his voice at first, and Braeburn froze halfway through taking a seat, unsure of what reaction she might offer. She set her head back down, and her glamorous thick-framed glasses bounced on her nose as her chin met the table with a thud.
For the fleeting moment the glasses slipped off her nose, and Braeburn caught a glimpse of startlingly bright scarlet irises. They would have shone like wine in a crystal glass, he could tell, but the dimly lit cantina muted them to a bloody vermillion. The streaks of bloodshot colouring her eyes made her irises look outsize for a moment before Braeburn noticed why. They hadn’t been used for much more than crying and tottering, fumbling trips to the restroom for quite a while, and now the tear glands were exhausted. Braeburn understood all of this in the few seconds it took before Vinyl dis-coordinately shoved the spectacles back up to cover her visage. And those glamorous ruby red irises, sad as they might be, were once again hidden behind an impersonal purple tint. Braeburn wordlessly put away the thoughts for later, the soft music came back to his notice, and time picked up its sluggish pace.
She just stared at him through the polarized eyewear, eyebrows outward-slanting and shoulders sagging. Then she to face the opposite side of the empty booth and set her head back down. “Never….never you mind, Mr. Braeburn.” She sniffed again. “I’ve caused you more than enough trouble already.” She took hold of one of the empty bottles by the neck, swirled it around, and found it was empty. Braeburn watched her as she deposited it dispassionately on the floor under the table and repeated the process several times as the green-tinted glass containers clacked against each other, sounding dangerously close to breaking point. He finally took hold of a half-full Heineighken and tried to make it as obvious as possible that he was intending to hand it to her. He didn’t trust her foggy perceptions enough to rule out being attacked again. Her impersonal and fearfully unreadable gaze returned to him for a while before she nodded jerkily and accepted the bottle. He handed it over a little too gratefully and she nearly lost her grip. A tension he didn’t know was there ebbed slowly away.
The silence continued as she took a long pull and wiped away the remainder on the back of her hoof. “Shoo. Don’t you have other things to do?” she slurred at him, the beginnings of a suspicious glare knotting her eyebrows. When he thought about it, Braeburn realized yet again that he was in fact unoccupied. Two things occurred to him immediately after. The first was that he always knew he was a busy pony, but he never suspected that the impression he gave off was that strong. The second was that he had no cause for elation regarding his newfound freedom, and it swiftly gave way yet again to a vague emptiness as he recalled that nothing would occupy his time.
Vinyl lurched over the table and lost her grip on the bottle, which tipped over and spilled its remaining last few milliliters over the table. She sighed and put her head in her hooves as the bottle tumbled over the edge, bounced once on the padded booth seat and clinked onto the floor. Vinyl seemed to twitch forward once, then again, and again…. At first Braeburn thought that she would throw up and got ready to haul her to a nearby sink before he heard an almost inaudible sob issue from the mare. She wasn’t retching, she was crying. And it left Braeburn at a loss for what to do. He had never needed to go any further than professional courtesy or even casual friendship ever since he came to Appleoosa with the rest of the settlers….
Her crying grew in pitch and volume, becoming intense enough that it drove other thoughts into hidden recesses of his mind. There was something eerie about the very manner in which she began to wail which made him feel increasingly uneasy and panicked. Barely half a minute was all the indecision and apathy that he could manifest, and, trapped between guilt and pity, inexplicable fear and the general frustration that today’s turn of events had inspired, he impulsively draped a furtive hoof around Vinyl’s shoulders. She started to sob even harder, and he felt his cheeks redden as he turned to scan the rest of the cantina. It was mercifully empty. “There, there….just let it all out…”he breathed placatively. ‘Not that she needs any prompting….’ He realized. She shivered once and he realized dully that he had subconsciously pulled her closer to himself. ‘I wonder what happened to her.’
Looking over his shoulder, he caught Jug’s eyes and tried to put the same mixture of heartache and bewilderment into that quick stare. Apparently only the latter got through, because the bartender picked up a phone receiver and indicated a faded old sepia picture of Sheriff Silverstar, which in front of a barrel from Sweet Apple Acres. Braeburn cringed and shook his head. Definitely not. Jug shrugged and acted as if to shoo him away. It’s your call.
She calmed down after a few minutes’ worth of eternity, where Braeburn tried his best to moderate between patronizing her and easing out all the tears that she had been bottling up. “Hey, you feeling better?” he asked when her breathing calmed down from moaning exhalations and shuddering gasps. She nodded sleepily and sniffed. “Thanks.” Braeburn afforded a grimace of a smile that she couldn’t see. “Nopony deserves to cry alone.” He told her, meaning every word. Still, it troubled him as to what had brought a successful, famous pony like herself down to her current pitiful state. How hard would it be for someone in her position to be happy anyway? Her life was one that many a pony, fans or otherwise, would no doubt covet. What did it take to be happy. ‘Like me?’ his mind replied sardonically. He was on the verge of agreeing and justifying the statement until he truly considered the statement. Was he really happy, or was he more similar to Vinyl Scratch than he had granted himself a right to notice? His closest kin was a few days’ railroad journey away, and while he was friends with basically everypony, that also meant that there was nopony he was especially close to. With the exception of Strongheart, but he had the feeling that things weren’t going as smoothly as they could be either. It was in that moment of disillusionment that he realized how alone he really was, how he had hidden behind the façade of work and simple fulfillment.
Something in his voice changed abruptly. “Vinyl,” he rasped, the collection of thoughts having robbed him of speech momentarily, “Can you tell me what’s been bothering you so much? I’d like to know.” The simple request spoke measures, even to Vinyl in her current state, and her head shot up as best it could while still swaying around under the effects of an afternoon’s worth of alcohol. Her glasses were half-flung off her eyes and into the centre of the table in the process, and she scrabbled for it with a hoof. Braeburn was quicker, and clamped his own limb around hers before she could retrieve her eyewear. He felt her tense up and wondered for a moment whether he was going to get it in the forehead this time round, but he tried to catch her gaze anyway. “Leave those off,” not knowing what was really going on at this point anymore. “Please…” It was apparent that some embers of a fire still blazed in her eyes in the moments that followed, but they quickly faded with some instant recollection that could only lead to the defeat in her heart and the weariness in her eyes.
Author's Note
Okay, I acknowledge all that this chapter is; disjointed, mood-killing and poorly mended over the course of several months. But before the critics have a field day, let me just say that I'm not at my best, not in the least. I've had to return to brass tracks lately, and this is likely to be one of the worst chapters in the entire fic, so don't judge me based on this. I have to ask for your patience on this one, with the hope that things will get a better.
<insert appropriate title>
I'm having a hard time getting back into this, as the chapter title so subtly suggests. This is a filler chapter. There is a certain amount of character development here but meh. But hey, I'll probably get another one up soon.
She’d managed to lose a little of the melancholy that had plagued her in the next few minutes, and now acted more akin to recalling a very vague, very sad dream. “It was…I can’t remember when it started, really….” she finally admitted, voice rasping gently over her constricted larynx. She was now hunched over the table, her shades clutched in both hooves under her chin, eyes succumbing to a gentle defocus through a combination of fatigue and recollection. “It all seems so long ago.”
Braeburn, similarly, was looking in her general direction, but not looking specifically at her. He would give an occasional nod to indicate that he was still listening intently. He did so now, and she misread the gesture as a prompting, shrugging in reply. “Take your time,” he murmured. And so she did. Time stretched from a minute to five, then ten, and then thirty. The silence, saturated with the white noise of soft cantina music, finally broke when Vinyl sighed. “As much as I’d love to tell you all about myself, Mr Braeburn, this just isn’t working. Aaaaa—AAAH!”
She aimed a frustrated kick at the round table’s metal support strut, inadvertently sending half a dozen beer bottles skittering about the immediate vicinity. Several patrons who had filed in a while ago turned at the clinks and clanks. Jug raised an eyebrow at Braeburn. For his part, the stallion shot upright and laid a hoof on her wrists. “Hey, take it easy,” he chided.
His touch seemed to leach all the anger from her, and she instantly reverted back to her sullen—though decidedly more docile—mood from before. She nodded drearily, sighed again and dropped her head into her hooves, rubbing her eyes. “You know what, maybe we should call it a night for now,” Braeburn concluded, hopping off his seat and offering her a helping hoof. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.” Vinyl was halfway through getting up when she paused and blushed profusely. “I….uh…forgot where I’m staying.” Despite himself, despite the evening thus far and the pony in front of him, he afforded himself the slightest of chuckles. Vinyl blushed even harder, pursed her lips, and directed her eyes towards the ground. “It’s alright,” he corrected quickly, upon noticing her reaction. “I have a pretty good idea of where to go.” She cocked a suspicious eyebrow at him but couldn’t be bothered to say anything. “Alright. Let’s go.” She shoved her glasses back on her face, tottered off her seat, barreling sideways back against the padded seats, before needing to sit down again. Braeburn trotted to her side, but refrained from reaching out to assist her. “I’m not even going to ask,” he stated blandly. Vinyl didn’t get it, but she tried to stand again, this time sending herself sprawling towards Braeburn, who caught her deftly and righted her, holding her steady until she got her footing. “Are you sure you can walk?” he asked skeptically. She grunted angrily at being questioned and shoved him aside, then stumbled and swayed in the general direction of the swinging bar doors. Then she stumbled into the wall next to the doors, cursed through gritted teeth, and went careening out after correcting her course. Braeburn recovered from Vinyl’s ‘assertive reassurance’ and trotted briskly after her, exiting through the still-swinging doors.
The sun had set, long ago enough that the sky was a glistering cobalt blue, recently enough that heat radiated off the unprotected desert terrain. The breeze couldn’t make up its mind whether to be cool or warm, and it blew gently and indiscriminate of direction in its indecision. Vinyl was having similar issues of her own. On one hoof, she wanted desperately to pull herself together and get back home, and maybe think hard and long after the effects of the alcohol wore off. On the other, she couldn’t stand another moment of lurching along while the world spun nauseatingly on its lateral axis. She couldn’t get up now, having fallen flat on her back when she tripped over the two wooden steps preceding the entrance, an unseen adversary which had unfairly ambushed her. On top of that, her head still hurt, her stomach churned, and she didn’t want to do anything more than lie where she was, where the breeze which could have been real or could have been her imagination blew apathetically over her failure, where the warm sands eased the dull throb and lulled her tired mind….
Braeburn chose that single contemplative, ethereal moment in time to flip her over so that she no longer faced up towards the sky. Perfect timing if he was thinking of shattering the surrealistic moment into more disjointed frames of intoxicant-induced mono-colour swirls. On any other day it would have been comically pitiful, funny enough even for Vinyl to spare herself a laugh, but tonight, it just made her want to cry. All the trying had got her no closer to home, and to her addled mind it seemed a fitting omen that no matter how she tried she would never get back on her feet.
And then Braeburn shoved his head under her abdomen. “What…what are you doing?” she snapped angrily amid a bout of sniffle. Braeburn dutifully ignored her. “I—urgh—trusted you, jackass!” Slowly, she felt her body tilt to the left, then experience the most peculiar sensation of seeming weightlessness. “I demand that you put me down this instant!” she slurred. Braeburn snorted in grim amusement. “Believe me, I feel like doing this even less than you do,” he told her quietly but firmly, “but we both know that if I let you down here and now, there’s no way you’re getting back up.” The harsh change of tone registered even to Vinyl. “In fact,” he continued, “I’d half expect to come back the next day and find you choked on a scorpion.” She felt her heart sink for some reason that she couldn’t recognize. All she knew was that suddenly, what this stranger said had mattered to her. Despite herself, she produced the tiniest whimper somewhere in the back of her throat.
The odd noise created a very tense, unexpected silence for the next few seconds. Then Braeburn sighed. “Look, I have a feeling I shouldn’t have said that,” he admitted in tacit apology, “but sometimes, it’s just not enough for one pony to try on her own strength. Right now, this is one of those times, but somepony as strong-willed as you are ain’t come to terms with that without a good, hard kick in the flank,” he explained with additional emphasis on the last syllable. In the time it had taken Braeburn to say all this, Vinyl had repositioned herself so that she wasn’t in a firemans’ carry anymore, but lying along Braeburn’s back. “Mhm. Do go on.” She was dozing off and didn’t really know how else to keep herself awake. “I’m going to ask you to give up for now and let me help you, alright?” Braeburn offered. A mumbled agreement and a yawn were offered in reply. He could feel her cheek rubbing against the base of his neck as she nodded. Half a minute later, it was replaced by a gentle snoring, and this time, Braeburn chuckled openly to himself.
It would take him another fifteen minutes or so of trudging through the now-empty town before he finally found his way to Vinyl’s property. In the silence of the night, he could hear Vinyl’s gentle breathing, punctuated ever-so-often with an unceremonious snore. Like the night breeze, it came in subtle waves with the movement of her chest as she inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled…
He was there before he knew it. It was a little awkward trying to position the pony on his back so that he could reach the saddle bag hanging over her sides, but he did it eventually, somehow ending up with Vinyl leaning her back against his neck while he unlocked the door. A flight of stairs later and he sidled up to a skeletal wooden cot in one of the four rooms in the home. He shouldered her off as gently as he could. Vinyl mumbled incoherently. He watched in silence for awhile. Then he pulled a threadbare single layer sheet of nylon quilt up over her shoulders. Leaving the way he came, he had the sensibility to lock the door and toss the key in through a window, naturally missing his mark when it slid off the table. Oops.
The following morning—as with most mornings following a night (or maybe several nights) of heavy drinking—was not easy for Vinyl. Especially with the sun beaming in seemingly mocking radiance from the closed windows, while the hot, stuffy air in the room seeming to gradually press in around her as the temperature rose. Finally, she opened her eyes slowly and carefully against the oversaturated morning glow and got her bearings, then counted down from ten. At the count of one, she rolled out of bed, intending to come out of the well-rehearsed maneuver standing upright. This time though, she lost her balance and stumbled diagonally, head bowed towards the floor; right into a waiting doorframe. The collision, though brief, was sufficient enough to disorient her. Something clipped her shoulder as she clumsily tried to side-stepped the obstacle, flipping her around so that she landed hard on her back. ‘Maybe I should have stayed in bed,’ she thought with a faint groan. ‘A full half-metre of clearance and I cleanly miss it, then I go off in the wrong direction. Stellar.’
While waiting for her stomach to settle, she looked around at what was supposed to be her property. It was a dusty, faded, sun-bleached piece of work that fitted right into the dusty, faded, sun-bleached western backdrop. There were several structures that were left over from the previous occupant, mostly threadbare compressed plywood furnishing. But like the house, it looked sturdy enough, if not a little old. Despite being larger, it just didn’t really feel like an improvement to her apartment in the big city. Everything seemed to be the same shade of light brown, and the familiar clutter—navigable only to her—was missing entirely. She’d need to spruce it up a little…
Something caught her eye, and as her eyes focused, the identity of her object bewildered her. ”What?” At that point, she wasn’t about to question her good fortune on finding it, but she still wondered how her keys had ended up under the couch. Their scratched and oxidized steel surface glinted dully. She reached over, and the tip of her hoof brushed over the top and managed to catch the key ring. She dragged it over to herself and tossed it towards the table that she had bumped into earlier. It landed on her nose and deposited some of its dusty exterior. For some inexplicable reason, the resultant sneezing fit nearly caused her to throw up and she decided not to move. Naturally, a doorbell that she hadn’t known existed rang mere moments later.
Swearing emphatically, she screwed her eyes shut and heaved herself up and in the general direction of the main door. “Whoever it is,” she muttered, “I am going to wring your neck until—“ she threw the door open and found Braeburn backing away slowly in panic, then felt her cheeks burn. “Is this a bad time?” he asked, voice more than a little strained. “Oh no, sorry.” She put a hoof to her spinning head and sighed. Not the best way to make a first proper impression, but then again it hardly mattered at this point. “Would you, uh, like to come in?”
Braeburn, apparently more at ease now, shook his head, but added “it’s alright” after he noticed that her eyes were shut tight. “I have to get to work, but I thought I’d check up on you first,” he explained wryly. “Nice to see you can stand again.”
Vinyl tried to put on her best lopsided grin, but she had a suspicion it looked more like a pained grimace. “No worries. I’m holding up just *urp* fine.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “And thanks. For last night and/ for today morning.” Braeburn grinned back and asked how she had found her keys. The pair laughed and settled into an awkward but comfortable silence. “So…see you later I guess?” she offered. “You bet. There’s a conversation we need to finish.”
He felt the somewhat light-hearted mood die as the look on her face changed abruptly. Vinyl, for her part, felt the pit of her stomach fall even deeper out from under her, and believed for a moment that she might even throw up. The hopelessness returned to her eyes. “I guess we do,” she conceded with a sigh. Then turned and shut the door behind her before he Braeburn could apologize. He was left wondering what he had to be sorry for. In the end, he got back to work but could never fully shrug it off.
Author's Note
Yet again, any criticism? I'd like to understand why, if anyone downvotes this.