Nonpareil

In the deep of the night, somewhere out on the roads, a campfire’s burning.

A loud, popping, crackly sort of campfire, but the two brothers know there’s not much to be done about that. It was a fire brought forth from a Flim-Flam-brand cider barrel, and it’s well understood that you don’t have much left if you’re down to burning your stock.

All the same, the warmth and the light were a welcome thing, and well worth all the extra noise in the camp. Tradeoffs, opportunity costs -- basic economics. Crackling didn’t mean so much when you were freezing to death.

“Do you think that we’ve got any food left?” asks Flam. “You know... In the trunk?”

He knows that there’s not any food left. Especially not in the trunk.

“I don’t think so,” says Flim. But he goes and checks the trunk anyway.  

Just right by the campfire is the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 -- a massive mechanical thing, and monstrously expensive to boot. The brothers had built it because, hey, why not? And they’d believed in it enough to back it with their small-time savings as pickers on an apple orchard.

Six months later, and zip-all return on investment, the brothers’ morale had been slightly diminished, but there was still hope. Cheap, plentiful, and freshly-squeezed cider was something a pony would want -- something a pony would pay for.

It just needed the right market, was all.

With a bit of applied magic, a compartment on the machine flies open -- the little storage trunk that contained all personal effects while out on the road. Flim can’t see inside it that well in the dark, but he feels around with a hoof and hopes for the best.

“Nope,” he declares. “No food. Not a singular sausage.”

“Ah,” says Flam.

They’d both seen that coming, but there’d still been some hope beyond hope. Hunger would make ponies do things like that. Foolish, crazy, irrational things. That Learn-via-Post course that Flam had once taken explained all about it. How an enterprising salespony could use such behavior to “multiply his money and find instant success.” Funny how they were now falling into that trap themselves. What was the word for that? Irony?

Irony.

Flim looks at Flam, and Flam looks at Flim, and the two of them stare out into the dark. They were still in Sweet Apple Acres country, and they could both see the outlines of apple trees against the night sky. Trees that were legally the property of other ponies, with potential reprisals for stealing.

Flim sighs. “Food, food, everywhere...”

“And not a bite to eat,” Flam finishes.

The brothers look at each other again. They're not quite thieves -- potentially cheats, but never quite thieves.

Not unless they can help it.

A few apples are picked. A promise is made to provide sufficient recompense to the Apple family for all damages done -- at such and such time as the Flim Flam Brothers are good for it, of course.

So that makes it a bit better than thievery.

The little life-saving harvest is hauled in front of the campfire, which still won’t stop popping -- only Celestia knows why. Something in the barrels, probably.

Flam takes a bite out of his apple and pauses to savor it. It’s food -- sustenance. Wonderful sort of thing. He barely even minds the juice getting into his well-groomed mustache.

Manners are things that you worry about when you're not at the brink of starvation.

“So, I was wondering,” he says, with his mouth full of apple. “What happened back there?”

“Ponyville?” says Flim.

“Ponyville.”

“Well, it wasn’t the performance. That was flawlessly done.”

“On both sides,” says Flam.

“Yes, yes. We played that part perfectly. ”

True enough. It had been the best acting the pair had ever done. Well-deserved praise was what it was. Hours on end had been spent practicing and rehearsing, because according to Learn-via-Post, “Presentation is paramount.”

Which was something that Flim could appreciate.

They stare into the fire, watching it flicker. Trying not to point out the most embarrassing part of their plan.

Flim smiles an uplifting smile. “The performance really was rock-solid.”

Flam stares harder into the flames.

“It was the contest,” he says at last.

“It was the contest.”

“Why did we panic back there?”

Flim blinks once, then twice. “Well, didn’t you hear that little purple one? They were making five barrels to our three. We were all set to lose if we didn’t do something.”

“Were we really?”

“I’m afraid that I don’t quite follow you there,” Flim responds. He’d never been one for the nitty-gritty of things. Numbers and pneumatics had always been Flam’s fascination. All Flim really provided was some magical muscle and a pretty young face that’d make the mares swoon. Raw charisma on demand, but not an awful lot else.

Flam sighs and kicks another piece of broken barrel into the fire. “I thought about it some...”

“And?”

“And I think we had a big enough lead to pull through.”

“Well, now that sounds preposterous. Are you really quite sure?”

“We were making three barrels to the Apples’ one, yes? Before we let their friends start helping?”

“Yes...”

“Past the thirty-minute mark?”

“I think so?”

“Then we had enough of a lead.”

Flim nods. He trusts Flam’s mathematical prowess that far, and further. He doesn’t really want to think it all out himself, but it sounds right to him. Right enough. “So then...”

“We didn’t need to send things into overdrive.”

“Didn’t need to make a slip-shod, stupid, slurry-like product that no pony’d buy?”

“Didn’t need to.”

“Doesn’t that just beat all,” Flim says. He bites through what remains of his apple and thinks on what he’s just been told. He doesn’t like the sound of it much.

“Ever think we got into the wrong sort of business, Flam?”

“What makes you say that?”

“We failed, didn’t we?”

Flam swallows his own apple core and pauses. He’s been thinking the same thing, deep down inside, but he doesn’t want to admit it. Not to himself, not to Flim, not to no pony.

Besides, what was that thing his pamphlet had said? Failure doesn’t mean... something or other?

“Failure doesn’t mean that we’re failures,” he says. That sounds about right. If it’s not what the pamphlet originally said, it should have been.

Flim looks a bit reassured. “The market can work in mysterious ways.” Something he’d read in one of Flam’s pamphlets. It sounds appropriate now to start spewing out quotes. There’s not much that Flim or Flam could say that would raise spirits more than Professional Wisdom.

“Ha! Now you’re getting it,” Flam laughs. “You’ll never achieve if you don’t believe.”

They smile and chew through another few apples. For a few minutes, life just feels good again. Losing the fight for Ponyville didn’t matter, all said -- there would be other towns, other ponies in need of good cider. The Flim Flam Brothers would roll right on up, sing their song and dance, and find an enterprising family of apple-growers who’d be willing to risk a contest with a couple of traveling ponies nonpareil.

Then they'd settle down, running an orchard of their own -- and a cider business to boot. Wives wouldn't be out of the question, once they were responsible. Families were the sort of things you got when you had enough to provide for them.

It’d all work out, eventually. The end of the rainbow would come someday, and there would be their pot of gold.

“We’re out of apples,” says Flim.

“Shame.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“Probably.”

It wasn’t enough -- they could feel in their stomachs that it wasn’t enough -- but neither of them were strangers to debt, and somehow it didn’t feel right to owe the Apple family more than they already did. There’d been another picker on the apple orchard, once. Never got out of owing the boss something. He's probably still there, for all Flim and Flam know, working off the borrowings he could never stop making...

So it would have to be enough.

“I think we should be off to bed about now,” says Flam.

“My thoughts exactly,”

The rest of the barrel is thrown into the fire and the fire pops more in response to its offering. The brothers don’t care all that much by this point. They're tired enough that they’ll let it all slide, and hopeful enough that tomorrow will be a better day anyway. They tuck themselves under their blankets of burlap and close both their eyes.

“‘Night, Flim.”

“‘Night, Flam.”

“Better luck next time?”

“Better luck next time.”