Chapter 1: Furniture Shopping
Friends are the hardest to deal with: we always know how to handle our enemies.
"I'm telling you, Bons, you've just got to see this," the aquamarine pony breathed to her marefriend in a low, conspiratorial tone as she pushed open Ponyville Furniture’s glass door with one sparsely furred hoof, tossing her two-tone white and aqua mane to the side eagerly.
"Yes, Lyra," her companion responded dryly as she followed, herself a cream-colored mare with pink and blue curls that bounced lightly atop her head with each step she took in her friend’s trail.
Stepping into the establishment, the pair nodded in acknowledgement to a roan stallion with a short, coffee-colored mane. "Good afternoon," Bon Bon greeted the attendant, flashing a polite smile.
The stallion's face lit up. "And good afternoon to you fine mares! Is there anything I may help you with?" he asked, his countenance suffused with cordiality.
Bon Bon chuckled politely. "Oh, no, you needn't trouble yourself; my friend was simply—"
"Nope!" Lyra cut in, placing her forehoof upon her friend's cream-colored back to prod her gently forward. "We know what we need. But," she added as she caught Bon Bon's disapproving eye, "thank you for asking."
"Very well, then," the attendant replied courteously. "Please do not hesitate to call out if you happen to require assistance."
"Will do," Bon Bon forced a smile, shooting a quick glare at her marefriend.
Lyra and Bon Bon made a strange couple, some might have asserted: although one was widely known throughout Ponyville for being a radical with a passion for ‘human’ conspiracy theories and the like, her partner was level-headed and urbane—usually possessing the social skills her friend lacked. Nopony quite knew why she fell for the eccentric mare. Her motherly toils were widely seen as wasted. In any case, here they were, and so the pair began to walk slowly through the aisles of the store, Lyra stopping occasionally to point out one piece or another, until they reached their destination: a small section devoted to office furniture.
"Alright. Just... wait, okay? I know what you'll think, but this one is different."
Bon Bon just brought her hoof up to her face as she usually handled her partner’s embarrassments. "Fine, Lyra. What is it?" she asked dryly. Not that she actually wanted to know, of course; she had simply realized that she would have to ask at one point or another.
"This... is called..." Lyra began to whisper breathily and with barely contained excitement, "the Aeron."
Bon Bon winced. Of course, she wasn’t exactly surprised at this development. It wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence, Lyra being able to babble for hours about some miniscule development regarding one of her many eccentricities. Neigh: at this point, Bon Bon was just resigned to the fact that she would be forced to stand there for a few hours, awkwardly avoiding the stares of other customers as her friend explained the intricacies of this particular piece of furniture.
It was only when Lyra took a seat on the chair—which, Bon Bon presumed, was only out for display in the first place—and started spinning rapidly, narrowly missing several light fixtures, that her marefriend was forced to interject.
"Lyra... are you sure we should be doing this? It's seven hundred bits; we wouldn't be able to afford it anyways." She paused, attempting to make herself look busy as another customer passed by and shot her marefriend a strange look, before continuing more quietly. "Our new apartment isn't big enough for an office, and neither of us even have office jobs. Come to think of it, why would they have office chairs in a furniture store for ponies, anyways?"
"Well..." Lyra slowed down her spinning, momentarily bemused by the question. "Come to think of it, it is a bit strange. But they must have a good reason. Come on, Bons. Pleeease?"
Rolling her eyes irritably, the mare shook her head; pink and blue curls flopped about erratically for a moment. "No. And stop that spinning. We're going to get kicked out if you keep this up."
As if on cue, the attendant stepped into the aisle, approaching the pair with a forced smile. "Do you two ladies... need any help?" he asked with all the politeness he could muster, glaring irritably at the still-spinning aquamarine mare.
"Oh, no, we're alright," Lyra replied happily, kicking her rear hoof against the floor to accelerate before a hoof shot out, quickly halting the spinning chair and sending her tumbling to the floor. "Hey!”
Bon Bon glared down at her partner. "Lyra, maybe we should just leave."
"What? No! There was—"
"I said..." Bon Bon cut her friend off short, hauling Lyra to her hooves with an exerted grunt. "Maybe... we should just... leave!"
The stallion flashed a false smile as the mare pushed her rebellious friend toward the exit with a guiding hoof. "Do come back sometime, ladies."
* * *
"You always get us kicked out of these places, Lyra," the cream-colored pony grumbled to her marefriend. "This has to be the eighth time this has happened."
"Ninth," Lyra retorted with a petulant snort. "It's the ninth time."
"It doesn't—You’re impossible, Lyra!" Bon Bon spat back. "You'll have us chased out of Ponyville just like you did in Manehattan!"
A gasp, hurt. "I thought we agreed not to bring that up."
"That doesn't mean we can just ignore it and... and not use it to make sure something like that doesn't happen again! Look, Lyra, I love you—"
"I love you too, Bons," her friend cut in happily, rubbing her cheek against her as they sat in their living room, in each their own posture.
"—but you have to stop this. You can't just go up to everypony we meet and start telling them all about how the 'humans' or whatever are going to... to invade and end the world and—"
"They're not going end of the world. I never said that. That's stupid."
"That doesn't change my point! When you act like this, people think you're crazy! Look, Lyra, I know you're not crazy, even if I don't quite get the stuff about humans, but you really have to stop this! I won't be able to get a job at all if everypony just sees me as 'that crazy filly's marefriend!'"
Lyra shrunk back. Her friend had struck a nerve, however gentle she’d tried to approach the subject. "So that's what this is about? I'm crazy?"
"No! I never said that, Lyra! I said you're not crazy, it's just that—"
“So I come home from all that bullshit and my marefriend gets on me, too, calling me crazy and—and—”
Bon Bon’s face intimated her own pain now. When her marefriend was upset, she couldn’t control herself. It hurt, but she loved her dearly and hated to see her in this pain. “Lyra, please—”
"Whatever, Bons,” her partner spat. “I'm gonna go for a walk."
"No! Wait, Lyra! It's not... It’s not that..." She trailed off weakly, suddenly tiring from her friend’s burden.
"Bons... I just need to be alone for a while." Lyra pushed herself off the ratty red couch, dragging her hooves across torn shag carpet.
Bon Bon sighed. Lyra... What am I supposed to do about this?
