“We’re all a little weird. And life is weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love…”

― Robert Fulghum

MUTUAL WEIRDNESS

By RadaVonVon

For Ozzeh

Image by Cap'n BluLead

Edited by Smayds

Warning: OC pony self inserts, with me as Twisty Twirl, and Ozzeh as Black Rain.

The warm glow of the orange candlelight lit up just enough of the room to illuminate the sheets of crinkled, yellow parchment that were splayed across the table. It was marked with years of water stains, the result of cold glasses being placed atop it and leaving dark rings of condensation behind, left unattended by the lazy pony who owned it.

Twisty Twirl hunched over the warped paper, making dark scratches of ink that formed into letters. She clenched a pen tightly in her mouth, her face screwed up with concentration as she placed her hooves on either side of the table and continued scrawling, crossing her eyes and focusing on the pen with a sense of quiet desperation.

Because she possessed wings and not a horn, Twisty Twirl lacked the ability to write as neatly or beautiful as the unicorns that so populated her home of Canterlot. She’d watch them scribble out gorgeous calligraphic works in seconds. She’d seen Unicorn painters recreate an imaginary dimension that suspended between reality and fallacy with visions of moons and planets and stars and cosmic matter, and she’d seen scenes of nature where the highlights and reflections of the droplet of water collected on a leaf had been so meticulously placed.

Twisty Twirl didn’t have this talent. The writing on the parchment in front of her was scratchy and messy, with stray lines worming their way between the unclear, lopsided letters. She pressed on anyway, wrinkling her nose in concentration as she continued to write with the pencil clenched between her front teeth.

She paused and finally reached over, pressing a green hoof firmly into a pad of ink and stamping it into the bottom of the page beside her signature. She shuffled, and the noise was impossibly loud in the otherwise near-silent room. The only other sound to be heard was the soft ticking of the clock on the wall.

Twisty Twirl glanced over the letter once again, her grey eyes scanning it in the flickering, inconsistent light. She paused for a moment, smirking in satisfaction. The characters were formed relatively nicely compared to her usual handiwork. They were haphazard and broken, but certainly llegible.

Silently, she hunched over the table again and folded the letter into thirds, slipping it into an envelope that was already addressed. She took a moment and licked the upper flap, glazed with a thin layer of dried adhesive, and sealed it shut.

Letter clutched in her mouth, the Pegasus turned to the hat rack that sat in the lonely corner of the room. The light from the candle stretched and distorted the shadows that clung to the dull white wall. She snatched a checkered scarf in her hooves and threw it around her neck while reaching for the yarn hat hanging off the edge of the rack. She pulled the thick, itchy fabric over her ears and turned, her hearing muffled by the hat.

Twisty trotted across the room and braced herself for the onslaught of glaciating air that was sure to roll in as soon as she opened the door. As she cracked it open, a swirl of white, icy flakes managed to permeate through the crack in the door and leak in. She darted out, squinting and slamming the door behind her.

Canterlot's winter had left a thin layer of slushy snow on the streets, giving Twisty's hooves something to crunch into as she traveled down the road, dipping her muzzle under the scarf and shivering as goosebumps rose up on her skin. Even squinting through the thick blizzard, she could see nopony else would bother to wander the streets in this kind of weather.

Twisty was always thought of as slightly different. She was friendly and openminded, saying hello to everypony on the street. She was cheery and bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, often skipping down the street, singing showtunes quietly to herself early in the morning. It was just another indication of her cutie mark: comedy and tragedy masks. Of course she was bound to be histrionic, she was an actress. It was expected, even anticipated.

Even now, fighting against the thick, icy winds, the mare was humming softly to herself and occasionally flitting into a whispered singing as she trotted happily through the powdery snow, her grey eyes scanning for the post office that she visited every three days, always at the same time, nearly to the second.

She was only able to find it because of the neon sign that announced in blaring blue and red that it was OPEN, shimmering like a beacon in the midst of the discordant weather. She nudged her way in fthrough the glass and metal door, embracing the forgiving arms of the post office's heater.

"Another letter, Twisty?" A cakefaced Unicorn glanced up from filing her hooves.

Twisty blushed, dropping it on the counter and smiling weakly. "Uh, yeah."

The Unicorn glanced up and batted her eyelashes, tarred with mascara. Her eyelids were coated with a thin layer of blue powder. "Not sure how well it'll fare in this weather... tsk, tsk."

Twisty had wandered over to the window, eyes gazing into the inky blackness of the night and watching powdery flakes of snow circle around outside the glass panes.

"Have you ever even met this stallion, Twisty?"

The grey pair of eyes on the pegasus wandered toward a snowflake that was whizzing across the dusted ground, peppered with its companions. "No, I can't say I have."

"How on earth do you intend to keep this up?" The Unicorn clicked her tongue several times disdainfully.

"Well," Twisty turned to the Unicorn. "It's not all that different from a normal relationship. I mean, he's so thoughtful and sweet and funny..." she trailed off, still gazing out the window after a momentary glance back at the Unicorn.

The Unicorn didn't reply, trotting behind the counter again, stamping the envelope with ink and dropping it into a slot in the mailbox. "Dearie, of course it is! There's physical attraction. I know you don't like that idea, but it's still there biologically."

"I know what he looks like."

"Has he sent you any pictures?"

"Of course he has," Twisty barked, and the Unicorn snapped her jaws shut, though it didn't last much longer before she said something else.

"Well, if I were you, I'd be careful of this 'Black Rain' fellow. He sounds suspicious. Do you ever even plan on meeting him?"

Twisty nodded slowly. "Cloudsdale will be rolling around soon. We'll meet then. We'd do it sooner, but it's ordinarily so far off..."

"Well what do you plan to do?"

Twisty Twirl narrowed her eyes, the Unicorn just couldn't stop flapping her jaws. She leaned forward, brushing a lock of her mane, coloured an artificial version of the auburn she'd had in her youth, from her dull brown irses. "I don't know," Twisty began narrowly. "we'll find something. It's not about what we do, you know. It's about spending time together."

"Oh, but, he will pay for everything?"

With that, Twisty turned and sighed. "I'll see you when the next letter comes, Joyful Noise."

Joyful Noise furrowed her brow and pouted her lip, as a child being punished. Twisty flicked her tail dismissively and wrapped her scarf around her neck again, lowering her hat and nudging her way out the door. The snowstorm had only grown more vicious, thrusting savage arms of ice in her direction and buffering her from all directions. She shivered, trotting to her home once again in hopes that she wouldn't slip and fall in the icy street.

"Anything today?"

"Sorry kid, 'fraid not."

Black Rain sighed, tilting his head to the side as he watched the bulky brown mailpony fly away to deliver the rest of the contents of his bag to the next house. The cyan pegasus stallion turned, trudging through the dark coloured cloud beneath his hooves and ducking back into his home.

It would rain soon. The smell was thick in the air, and humidity hung over like a blanket. Even in spite of this, the air was cold.

They'd be approaching Canterlot soon enough.

Every three months, Cloudsdale would follow the patterns of the winds and storms and circle around Canterlot until it ended up in the same place. For the past couple of months, he'd been writing another pegasus in Canterlot, a mare. He couldn't really think of a way to explain their relationship, the only thing he could come up with was that he got along better with her than many other mares he'd met. She was different.

He shook thoughts of Twisty Twirl from his head. He wouldn't think about her now. He had to try to keep from focusing too much on it, the wait would just seem longer and longer the more excited about it he got.

The tension grew in the pit of his stomach, seeming to gnaw anxiously at the rest of his body until he felt like he would wear away. Two days. It would be two more days before he would see her. He shook his head of the idea and sighed, slipping into his home and taking a seat. His eyes scanned the bookshelf hugging the corner of the room. What hadn't he read?

He walked over to the rows of books, scanning his brown eyes along the spines of various tomes and novellas, doing his best to pick out something. He wasn't an obsessive reader, but at least it'd be something to pass the time and keep his mind off of the cruel reality of his situation.

He finally settled on some generic Daring Do novel, nothing particularly spectacular. Buck, he'd even read it a couple times before. The details, however, were lost to him. He remembered something about a statue.

Black Rain pushed the thoughts of Canterlot and the one Pegasus he longed to see from his mind and lounged back on his bed, burying his nose in the novel's crinkled, yellowing pages that smelled so heavily of must.

"Daring Do ducked in the undergrowth, forcing her way through vines that crinkled and snapped beneath her hooves. She could almost already smell the air of danger and foreboding that lay ahead..."

Twisty Twirl paused, taking just one more second to look herself over in the mirror. Her eyes scanned over her green body and cutie mark. She hadn't bothered to lose weight? Why hadn't she bothered to lose weight? She leaned forward frenetically and checked her eye makeup one last time and inhaled shakily.

Why hadn't she prepared more? She looked up one last time, scrutinising her blonde mane and stomped a hoof in aggravation. How careless. Why did she have to be so lazy? She smiled anxiously in an attempt to at least rehearse her first greetings, but failed spectacularly.

Her eyes looked terrified, as though she was in some kind of horrible pain. She allowed the smile to deflate and her face hit the counter with a groan. She was going to ruin everything by looking like a complete idiot!

Finally, after the briefest second of gathering herself, she stopped to look up at the mirror again. "Okay, Twisty. You can do this! Come on, he doesn't like you for how you look. He likes you for your personality..."

She gulped loudly after a long second of eye contact with herself. "At least... I hope he does," she added softly.

She stopped only for a short moment after before taking another deep breath and inhaling. She grabbed a bottle of perfume and sprayed it briefly, adjusting the bracelets on her hoof. There was nothing she could do at this point. She would be late.

Without a second thought, Twisty Twirl turned and headed for the door.

Rain tapped his hoof anxiously in the dust, glancing from side to side and looking at the ground. He hoped she hadn't ditched him here.

Then he saw her. The first thing that tipped him off was the lack of a horn. But as she made her way through the crowd of unicorns that occupied Canterlot, Black Rain could see her.

The wings. Bright green wings folded in sheepishly at her sides as she dodged around the other pastel-coloured ponies. She looked up and stared at him. Their eye contact didn't break.

He started to move toward her, and they began to drift together, ever-so-slowly, until they were only several hooves apart.

"M-my name's..." His throat had closed up.

"Yeah... I know. It's nice to finally meet... I mean, actually meet you."

"Yeah. I-it is. What do you say we, uh... get lunch?"

"That sounds nice. I'd... I'd like that."

The smallest of grins formed on Twisty's lips, and they began to walk together, talking in hushed voices that would eventually rise to cackles of laughter and casual, affectionate conversations the afternoon drew on.

Happy birthday, Carter. I love you with all my heart.

-- Vonnie