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Things Are Rarely as They Seem

by Orcus

Chapter 14: An Odd Awakening

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With only silence surrounding him, when Habeas woke up, the first discernible thing he noticed was that he was laying upon something soft, and draped in a set of blankets of a red-and-blue coloration. Lifting his chipped-horned head from the white pillow it was on, he slowly started to open his eyes. He didn't know where he was, but he did know it was a bed of some sort, situated in a medium-sized room with tan-tinted walls.

What happened last night - what happened yesterday for that matter - felt like a blur. He tried to recollect as much of it as he could, and when his memory started to return to him on how he had gotten to and fallen asleep on such a soft surface, he began to relive some of what had transpired in his mind.

Persica had drank most of the bottle of peach schnapps as the evening progressed. She had gone from grumpily surly, to happy, then back to surly, then back to happy again. She eventually stayed in a carefree and jolly mood, if not in a ditzy sort of way, and both she and Habeas had gotten into a conversation about one another's pasts. When Habeas had finished his part in saying how he was just a drone that found something more in life, Persica took her turn.

Mostly, she talked about how she and her husband traveled throughout Equestria in their ventures as monster hunters for-hire, and of the many beasts they had encountered, both fierce and strange. Currently, she was speaking to him of one time, as their adventures began to draw to their end.

"Anyway, what we got was a message that led us to the small town of Ponyville," she went on. "See, they were having a huge problem, I think. A very... hungry problem."

"So what was happening there?" asked Habeas, always intrigued by these tales.

"It was something along the lines of an unseen creature that was raiding the food storages of some ponies who lived on the edge of the place, neighboring the Everfree Forest. So we see one farmer, who tells us that the same creature recently ransacked the shed where he keeps most of his important foodstuffs, and it ended up devouring his prized wheel of cheese in the process. By the sound of his voice... I think he really wanted that thing caught."

Habeas tried to picture the image in his fuzzy-feeling head. "That poor cheese..."

"We looked over the damage, smelt a horrible, almost unbearable stench sitting about in the air, and came to the conclusion that it was a great swamp troll. So generally, we got ourselves ready and quickly tracked it down to its lair in the nearby woods. And as soon as we got there, whoo! It reeked."

"So it was smelly?" Habeas chuckled, wishing to know the ending to this tale. "Then what?"

"And," Persica sniggered again, "As it turns out, it wasn't a great swamp troll. It was an... an old, blind cockatrice, just sitting about in its lair, and the cheese it had eaten in the shed was giving it a bad case of gas!"

The two guffawed.

"Haha! Hehe! Oh, what a funny story..." Habeas mumbled once their laughter had died down, wiping a tear from his teal eye. "That sounds almost hard to believe! But yet, you say it's true?"

"It sure is," she replied, looking into her bottle and once more finding that there was no more schnapps to drink. Sighing, she clumsily placed the bottle on the table, taking a few seconds before she had put it there in a properly straight and stable fashion. "After a brief scuffle we ended up capturing the the thing and re... relocated it to a deeper part of the Everfree Forest. Considering it's a cockatrice and all, I'd... I'd, uh... bet it's still alive, and probably still trying to digest that cheese, heh. Celestia help whatever poor thing happens upon it during one of its gassy 'moments'..."

There was another, quieter round of giggling, then everything went silent for a short time before Persica broke it again. "That was one of Chantilly and I's last hunts. We loved doing it, and it was what got us both together to begin with, but we wanted to raise a family together more. And with Peach Blossom... I'd sooner die a thousand deaths than give her up for anything."

"And that's a noble promise more than worth keeping," Habeas nodded in agreement.

Persica looked up to the bright moon looming above them in the sky. Night had long since set over the countryside, and the with nightfall came drowsiness. Feeling tiredness she could no longer ignore creeping over her, Persica got up from her chair, still sensible enough to want to fall asleep indoors. She had wandered to the door with a yawn, when she stopped and turned back to the changeling as a thought came over her.

"Uh... Habeas. I'm gonna hit the hay. Wanna... come inside with me?" she asked him. "You look quite cold out here by your lone self."

"Oh, it isn't that cold..." he murmured back, looking to her from his chair.

"C'mon, I insist," she smiled in a warm way that made it far too hard for him to refuse. The changeling looked at her for a good few seconds before he gave into her words, and left his seat with a squeak of its legs over the porch floor.

"Are you... sure you're fine with this?" he questioned in a suspicious voice, walking up to her side in a tipsy way.

"I'm sure. With all you've done for me after what I did to you... I think you pretty much deserve it," she replied. With easy grins on their faces, the two dizzily ventured inside of the abode, sometimes humming or hiccuping the occasional chuckle to each other.

Habeas Brittle was suddenly snapped out of his memory as he perceived the feeling of a hoof tightening around his waist and realized a sensation of warm of breath had graced over his webbed ears from somewhere right behind where he lay. In that one moment of surprise and terror that followed he stopped breathing, and swore his heart failed to beat for a quick moment.

Oh no. Oh, no. Sweet Chrysalis, please no. No, no, no, nonononononononononononono... The thoughts spinning in Habeas's head were of a chaotic mix that left him feeling sick and faint, but all showed the same feelings with the burning clarity of a bee's sting. Panic, fright, and dread most intense filled all of his senses like the choking smoke from a blaze.

He was laying in the same bed as Persica.

How he had gotten into this situation was like a nightmare made manifest, and it left him almost completely paralyzed. It was roughly five minutes later that he dared to turn his head to look at the pony he feared most, and found his eyes spying her sleeping face less than a few inches away from his own.

She was just snoozing there right next to him, quite peacefully by the way her mouth hung slightly ajar where her head lay against the pillow and eyelids easily shut. The only movement she seemed to make was the deep breaths that caused her chest to slowly expand and deflate. She had him in a small, but firm embrace with her left hoof, and didn't appear to be willing to let go of him anytime soon.

If she were to wake up now... oh, the consequences he would face would surely make a lifetime of imprisonment in the fiery depths of Tartarus look paltry in comparison. Silently shivering at the horrid thought, Habeas got his mind straight and started to concoct a plan to avoid falling to such an awful fate.

Without a word to utter, Habeas began his escape, starting with getting out from underneath Persica's hoof. As he was just completing moving barely an inch after what felt like an hour, Persica unconsciously mumbled some nonsense from behind her idle lips, her grip around Habeas's waist constricting further and forcing him to freeze in his attempt.

"Mmm... no, Chantilly," she whispered groggily and tenderly, rubbing her furry snout over the back of his neck with a smile curling over her lips, yet still dead asleep in spite of all of it. "Another... minute..."

Habeas gulped a stale river of saliva down his throat. When he reclaimed his courage, he put his good, but shaking hoof on her own, and with enough care to not irk a fly, he slowly, slowly began to slide it off of himself. He continued performing this one action until he succeeded in taking it off of his body, and lowered it by Persica's own side without her knowing.

After seeing his sling was all set around his lame leg, Habeas started to slither off of the bed, through the sheets until he had touched down on the floor. Lifting himself up, he looked around the room and saw, like a wonderful miracle, the door out of here was directly ahead of him.

Habeas crawled to it, treading over the floor with long and heavily cautious steps, and was seconds from leaving the room when he realized something unmistakable was amiss. Putting his hoof to his bare, chitinous neck, he failed to feel the old piece of green, patchwork cloth he always had wrapped around it.

Where's my bandanna? he thought. Snapping his head back to the bed, he looked for but a moment before seeing it. It hung over one of the bed's front posts, on the side where he previously laid. Holding his breath with the knowledge of what could happen if he just left this incriminating piece of evidence here, he snuck back over to the bed with as much care in his steps as when he was leaving it, and used his magic to quickly levitate it toward himself when he was close enough.

Wrapping his bandanna around his neck where it belonged, Habeas turned to depart, when he heard a faint commotion of moving bedsheets, indicating that Persica had stirred. With blood freezing in his veins, he slowly turned his head back around and looked at the earth pony once again, just in time to catch a small bout of movement on the bed.

Persica was rolling over with a small grunt, continuing in this sluggish motion until she pointed her still-sleeping face toward the other side of the room, and went still. Habeas exhaled the deepest breath of his life when he noticed she was still absorbed in dreamland and, without further delay, tiptoed to the door and finally left the room as quiet as a mouse.

It was some time that passed by before Persica herself awoke. She yawned and raised her head from the pillow, sitting up as well as she could manage and rubbing her sore face with her hooves. With a groan, she pushed back her untidy and disheveled mane from her face and opened her eyes. Taking a deep breath of the stagnant air into her lungs, her wits slowly came about her.

Nearly everything from yesterday was a blur, including how she had gotten into the bed in the first place. Her head ached terribly; an effect of the hangover she had given herself from the night before. Cursing herself for her ineptitude in controlling her impulses from whatever it was that got her to drink so much in the first place, she stretched her aching limbs out and sat up on the bed.

She sat there like that for a few minutes, recuperating from the stiffness of her limbs, and only then did she come to the realization that her sleep in the night was utterly unfitful, nor did she suffer through any of those accursed nightmares. It was a curious thought, as this was the first time she could properly recollect where this had happened.

She eventually felt well enough to leave the room, but as soon as she had done so at her leisure, a strange, but delectable odor caught her nose. It was a warm, crisp aroma, not unlike that of a certain morning meal she was used to preparing for her daughter some days, and had the tang of something that left her empty and hungry stomach rumbling.

What is that wonderful smell? she thought to herself, taking in another, longer whiff of the scent that seemed so heavenly at the moment. She wandered down the stairs in search of the origin of the smell, which she had realized was coming from the kitchen, and swiftly entered it, only to come upon a sight that left her quite surprised.

The first thing she saw, illuminated fully by the late morning sunlight shining through the windows, was Habeas. He was standing over the heater of the stove with a frying pan, and something of a golden yellow coloration sizzling upon it. She could see that it was scrambled eggs that the changeling was cooking with that trademark grin of his on his fanged mouth, and on the counter beside him was a plate that bore a trio of pancakes.

Habeas eventually noticed the mare's shape standing in the kitchen entrance out of the corner of his compound eye, and turned to her instantly. "Morning!" he cheerfully greeted to the awestruck mare.

"You can cook?" she inquired, disbelief coated in her tone.

"You do remember me saying I repeatedly and obsessively read from a single cookbook for the last two years of my life, right?" he chuckled. "I was bound to learn a thing or two on how to make food properly."

Finishing with the food, he lifted the scrambled eggs from the pan with the spatula and put them on the plate, next to the pancakes. Getting the bottle of whipped cream he had out and ready, he sprayed a depiction of two eyes and smile onto the pancakes themselves, and then placed a single strawberry in the center to replicate the nose. When that was done, he brought the plate to the table and presented it in front of Persica.

"For you, m'lady," he said, bowing in a courteous fashion. Eyeing him oddly, then doing the same to the plate, Persica took a seat at the table and lifted the fork laying on the nearby napkin. At first testing it with a few pokes from the fork, she soon carved into the pancakes with it and took her first bite, closing her eyes as she savored the sweet taste that rolled over her tongue.

Habeas watched her eat for a few minutes before going to wash the dishes and deciding it was appropriate to speak again. "Persica, about last night..." he started, unease evident in his voice.

"It's okay, Habeas. Last night was... mostly my fault, I guess," Persica stated, setting the fork down for a moment as she looked to him. "But there is one thing that's gotten my mind twisted in a worse knot than it's already in. If I remember correctly - and that may not be the case, given what happened between the two of us - you said you... 'liked me'."

"I... I did?" he stuttered, caught a little off guard by the comment. "I... I... don't think I..."

Persica halted him before he could properly explain. "Stupid question. Forget I asked. It's just that... we both drank more than we should have, and you said a few things that you didn't mean to say. I probably did too. Agh, my head hurts like all hell..." She rubbed a weary hoof over her temple.

"How did you, uh... sleep?" he asked her, hoping that she didn't notice or remember him being with her. Before replying, she lifted her glass of orange juice and took a long sip from it.

"Dreamless. Peaceful," were the two words that came back when she was done, causing him to sigh in relief. "It was good. Best I've slept in years, possibly."

"That's... good to hear," Habeas spoke, clearing his throat as he finished up washing the pan and spatula. Persica stroked her chin with a hoof for a second as she thought of something rather strange.

"Why'd you... decide to come in here and make me breakfast?"

Leaving the kitchen counter and approaching the table, he took a seat and looked at the mare with a kindly expression painted over his face. "I just like being nice from time to time."

"Sure you do." Persica took another sip from her orange juice as another thought came to mind. "Before I forget, do you know what time it is at the moment?"

"Last I checked... it was five minutes to ten," he replied, his torn-up wings flittering briefly.

"Five minutes to ten? Oh wow... I've got to go pick Peach Blossom up!" the mare then said in a hurried voice. "I told Blossom to inform his friend that I would be at their house to get her by ten-thirty."

"If you're leaving right now, while you're gone I'll... start on the morning chores then," Habeas said to her in a much calmer tone by comparison. He was unsure if his words were heeded though, as Persica was busy downing the last of the food on her plate, after which she ran from the kitchen, collected her wide-brimmed hat, and sped toward the door.

"I'll be back soon, Habeas!" she shouted to him.

"Alright then! I'll be here!" he shouted back, trotting up to the left-open doorframe and watching as she split from the house and soon out of view. Sighing once more in relief on the news that she hadn't remembered snoozing with him in her room, Habeas returned inside to wash the plate she had left behind.

Next Chapter: Eyes of Red Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 24 Minutes
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