It was difficult, painful even, to think. Any sort of cogitation made Sumac’s head ache and feel swimmy. His horn hurt something fierce, like the time when he had unicorn flu and couldn’t stop discharging everywhere. He rubbed his temple with his hoof and watched as Vinyl Scratch teetered around the kitchen. Vinyl, who was getting better after having a high rise dropped on her, was smiling and had something that was almost a spring in her step.

“Vinyl, really, I’m not sure one of your hangover cures will help…” Tarnish, sitting on a short wooden stool, shook his head and watched as Vinyl moved from cupboard to cupboard, fetching various objects. Sighing, Tarnish looked over at Twinkleshine, who was drinking a soothing cup of Celestial Glory tea while trying to pull herself together.

Passed out in the fruitbowl, sound asleep, was Boomer.

“It’s weird having the house to ourselves, with Octavia and Maud working. You’d think that they would have learned not to leave the two of us alone together by now.” With something that was almost a smile, Tarnish continued his work, mixing various ingredients together in a bowl so that he could make a gourmet saltlick.

Having gathered everything, Vinyl went to work, dumping everything into the Stealth-Mixer model 7880, which was, perhaps the single greatest invention ever made by ponies. It was a blender fused with arcanotech that made it completely and utterly silent, for those mornings when the screeching whine of a blender might drive one to suicide. The blender was so successful that it was being cited as the reason in the recent population uptick that was noticed by the census board.

“Pebble tells me that she had a wonderful time and really enjoyed her date with you,” Tarnish said to Sumac in a low whisper, unable to resist teasing the colt. “She really enjoyed the train ride of death.”

Sumac groaned and rubbed his head.

“Pebble has something in common with her mother,” Tarnish mused, “you’d never know it, but Maud is a thrillseeker through and through. She tends to do her best when things get exciting and I guess I do too. Might explain why we work so well together. Now, Pebble, she’s not so different, she complains when things start to get exciting, just like her mother does, but when things are actually exciting, both of them really start to enjoy themselves.”

The sight of Vinyl Scratch dropping in a small, shriveled, dried out serrano pepper into the blender put Sumac’s teeth on edge. Whatever sort of strange alchemy was about to take place made him worry just a little bit. He looked over at Twinkleshine, and noticed that her mood had improved a good bit, she was smiling now, and looked a bit happier.

“No remember,” Sumac said, struggling to get the words out. There was some kind of weird disconnection between his mind and his mouth, and had he been more intelligent, he might have realised that his specialised magic, which affected his speech, was still scrambled. “No remember what went in head.”

“Vinyl, Daring Do, and I once had to battle a centaur crystal pylon,” Tarnish remarked as he stirred the contents of his bowl with a soft edged spatula. “It had gone mad, as centaur technology tends to do, and it wanted our brains. Was convinced that we were experiments run amok and that we needed to be processed so it could discover what had gone wrong with us.”

It was at this point that Vinyl made a very visible shudder.

“Ran into a new type of automaton, the vivisector model. Lots of arms. Many buzzsaws. Tools for scooping bits out. Probes of all kinds.” Tarnish let out a bored sounding sigh. “The pylon was responsible for the storage of information. I can’t help but wonder what sort of knowledge was lost when we junked it.” As Tarnish spoke, the Stealth-Mixer model 7880 turned its contents into a fine puree.

Vinyl lifted up the blender, pulled off the top, fetched a glass with her magic, poured in the red, frothy mixture, and slipped a celery stalk into the glass as a garnish. With a pleasant, but somewhat worried smile, she set the glass down in front of Sumac, who was more than just a little bit wary as he eyed it.

Curiousity got the better of Sumac, who began to wonder, what could it hurt? With his foreleg, he pulled the glass closer, grabbed it in his fetlock, and then guzzled down the contents of the glass, not smart enough to think of things like self preservation or the harm this might bring to his sanity.

The first gulp made his throat clench, as if his very tonsils had all formed a union, voted, and decided, “NOPE!” His spine made every attempt it could to disconnect his brain stem from his brain to cut off the signal, to end the comprehension of what was going on, and there was a embittered war for consciousness. His stomach, before the drink even reached it, it had just heard about current goings on from the neighborhood gossip, and it tried to flee out of his backside even as the terrible invader oozed down his throat. Sumac experienced the perplexing sensation of his liver trying to swim away from the general area of his stomach, trying to shove his intestines aside as it made its way south.

“Any second now, the dragon bulbroot is going to take effect,” Tarnish said, almost sighing out the words as he watched with a look of casual amusement on his face.

The overpowering taste of Worcestershire sauce, yeast extract, and what Sumac was certain was rotten-hoofed frog-cheese filled his mouth, along with a dreadful burning sensation. The colt belched and sent out a six foot long cone of blue-green flame, which brought with it the stench of rotten eggs and fishy cat food.

Twinkleshine, sipping her tea, raised an eyebrow in concern.

Sumac belched again, sending out more flames, grimaced, and shuddered from the awful, indescribable taste. Snot dribbled from his nose in long, runny, yellow-greenish ribbons, and fishy smelling tears trickled from his eyes. He sat there, looking very much like he was caught in a sneeze; his mouth open, his eyes wide, all of his features twitching, and the stench of burning hair rose up from him even though he wasn’t on fire or singed in the slightest.

“Oh YUCK!”

“Feel better?” Twinkleshine asked as her teacup hovered near her lips.

“I wanna die,” Sumac replied as his skull threatened to implode.

“Well dang,” Tarnish said as he turned to look at Vinyl. “It worked. How did you do that?”

Vinyl shrugged and gave Tarnish a blank stare as she began wiping Sumac’s muzzle.

“I have to go to a funeral in a bit. Want to come with me?”

Still looking at Tarnish, Vinyl shrugged again.

“I promised Fluttershy I would go and that I would bring guests.” Tarnish slipped some cling wrap over his bowl of salt lick fixings and then left it be so it could cure for a while. “Angel Bunny died again and poor Flutters is in need of comfort.”

“Again?” Twinkleshine put down her teacup. “What are you saying?”

Tarnish nodded. “You know, rabbits don’t live forever.”

“My mouth tastes bad and I wanna spit my tongue out.” Sumac shuddered, felt as though he might burp for a moment, and he thought better of it, fearing more flames. Still shuddering, Sumac was caught by surprise when Vinyl kissed him on the cheek. He glanced at her, feeling grateful for what she had done, and he decided not to make a big deal about it. It was time to act a little more grown up with his reactions to being touched by mares… or fillies, in the case of Pebble.

His mind still felt slow and kludgy, the colt licked his lips and decided that he was thirsty. Before he even had a chance to say anything, a small waxed cardboard carton of apple and white grape juice was set down in front of him, and the little plastic straw was stabbed into the tiny foil covered hole. Unable to make his magic work, he had to pick it up in his fetlock and hold it the hard way, which was embarassing. No unicorn wanted to be without magic. As he sat there, drinking, he likened the sensation to somepony watching while he was trying to use the bathroom—it was just plain uncomfortable.

Sipping his juice, Sumac wondered what a rabbit’s funeral might be like.

Winter’s chill hung heavy in the autumn air as Sumac looked around Fluttershy’s yard. Rowanne and Garnet stood like some sort of honour guard near a tiny casket. Fluttershy was sniffling and looked distraught as she clung to a tiny little yearling named Knick-Knack, whom she was foalsitting. As it turned out, Fluttershy did a lot of foalsitting, and Sumac wondered if perhaps she wanted some of her own.

Not far away, Tarnish dug a small, narrow, but also deep grave with a spade, scooping out black dirt and placing it into a pile beside the hole. Vinyl sat on a blanket spread over the grass, holding a parasol over head to keep sheltered from the sun. Twinkleshine sat beside her and Boomer was curled around her horn. Between the two mares there was a basket filled with a blanket.

“Knacky, letting go is hard,” Fluttershy murmured to the foal in her care. “It is so very hard to let go, but that is the natural order of things.”

Reflecting upon these words, Sumac thought about how they applied to him, but his mind was still having some trouble thinking. He thought about Caper’s funeral, he thought of Dandelia, and then much to his own surprise, he found himself hoping that she was feeling better. Troubled as she might be, as difficult as it might be to do, Sumac found himself wanting to get to know his adoptive grandmother. With a solemn glance, he watched as Fluttershy wept, mourning the loss of her companion and friend, a rabbit.

The world felt as though it was a somewhat better place because of ponies like Fluttershy. The yellow pony and her kindness had a profound affect upon all those she came into contact with, and Sumac was feeling it now. With as troubled as the world was, with everything going wrong, with Grogar lurking in the shadows and Catrina wanting to kill him, it was reassuring to know that somepony still believed that all life was precious. Kindness still meant something and the life of even one little rabbit had value.

For Sumac, it restored his spirit, and he felt better.

Such was the effect that the Elements of Harmony had upon those around them.

“It’s a lovely coffin, Fluttershy,” Tarnish said as he speared the spade into the dirt pile.

“Thank you,” she squeaked as she began to sniffle. Fluttershy managed to smile somehow, her lips quivering, and her ears fell down upon the sides of her face. “Big McIntosh made it for me. He’s made several now. He made the first one when he was still a colt. He’s getting older.” As tears began to trickle down, Fluttershy’s breathing became raspy as her throat filled with phlegm.

With a nod to Garnet and Rowanne, Tarnish lifted up the tiny coffin, holding it level, so as to not disturb the precious contents inside. Moving with slow caution, he levitated it over to where he stood, and after getting a nod from Fluttershy to continue, he placed it down into the grave he had just dug.

“Letting go is hard,” Fluttershy said again as she gave the tiny yearling she was holding a squeeze. “Keeping him would have been harder. He was tired, and cranky, and his joints hurt him all the time, and with winter coming, he just wasn’t happy. Letting go was hard, and putting him down was even harder.”

Sumac felt a bad case of the sniffles coming on, and there was a dreadful pressure behind his eyes as Tarnish put the first scoop of black dirt back into the grave. There was a row of graves here, all in a row, and each them had a tiny little headstone. The newest one was untouched by weather or age, and somepony had leaned a wreath of flowers against it.

More black dirt was put back into the grave, and Tarnish’s jaw was set into a grim expression. It didn’t take him long to fill the grave, and then he began to pack the dirt down. As he tended to the grave, Fluttershy went over to the basket between the two mares, Vinyl and Twinkleshine, and little Knick-Knack followed along behind her.

The yellow mare sat down, lifted up the somewhat wadded blanket, reached inside the basket, and pulled out a little fuzzy baby bunny, which she held to her barrel and cradled in a warm, maternal embrace. Knick-Knack sat down beside her and looked at the little bundle of fuzz that Fluttershy held, and the little yearling filly smiled though her own tears.

“Hello Angel Bunny,” Fluttershy said to the tiny rabbit that she held, “I think that you and I are going to be friends…”

Author's Notes:

Knick-Knack.