Stubborn Old Bones
by WiseFireCracker
First published
Youth is wasted on the young. Wisdom is wasted on the old. Jonathan was the former, then the latter, and now the former again.
“Youth is wasted on the young.”
But only the oldest of people know that. Jonathan Taylor is one such man, in the twilight of his years, quietly lamenting the follies of the newer generations. He would show them, ah, he would show them all, if he could go back in time and live with what he now knows.
Then again, browbeating a voice that pretends to be able to grant wishes might not have been particularly smart of him either. She did hold a grudge. A little one. It probably explains the whole horse thing.
And, as the rest of the saying goes, wisdom is wasted on the old.
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The cover art has been drawn by the incredible mix-up. You can also see his gallery on deviant art.
Kind Soul
At the tender age of ninety-six, Jonathan Taylor had seen, heard, smelled and touched most of what humanity had to offer. And yet, nothing could induce the sheer disgust that ravaged his shriveled heart quite like the sight of the insipid green hospital gown he had been forced into.
No good could have ever come out of wearing it. Not only were they a color just flashy enough to irritate his old eyes, but they matched hideously with the baby blue walls of his prison cell. He certainly didn't need to look like a giant peppermint to agonize in peace.
But no, the nurses ignored his concern for that minor evil in favor of telling him off for getting out of bed. And that, Jonathan quietly admitted, made him laugh more than a little. Their fear of him hurting himself on the way were perfectly justified, given that his legs and knees burned something fierce from those few meters of walk alone. But leaving his room? With an IV dripping into his arm?
Well, he had done it before. But to be fair, Jonathan had only been eighty-two at the time. It didn't hurt his lungs so damn much to walk back then. Even now, sitting in his armchair a good ten minutes after the fact, he could hear the slight wheeze flying past his lips.
“You're getting close, you blasted harvester,” he mumbled to the hums of the machines hooked up to his body. “Damn close...”
His bushy eyebrows lowered, sobering his expression until Jonathan's face was naught but a grim mask of wrinkles and two sunken eyes. Slowly, his thin arm trembling ever so much, Jonathan coughed, hard, rasp. The whole of his lungs and throat flashed ablaze from the irritation, and the old man did not truly recover until long minutes had passed with only the thrums and beeps of the machines clustering his room.
Jonathan sank deeper into his seat, rubbing out the thin trail of saliva dripping on his chin. This might be it, thought a darker part of his mind. Ninety-six. Quite a run. Older than more or less everyone he had known. It figured that Jonathan would be the last one left.
They had all been called back when their time had been up. Some had left more graciously than others. As if Death had been but a vacation for them, something to do until they saw their loved ones again. Those, Jonathan felt a strange envy toward. Were he that he could be serene and gracious… maybe the poor nurses wouldn't be straddled with him.
If he had had the dignity and wisdom to accept it. Yet, the second the doctor had given his diagnostic – and assured him that there were no mistakes –, Jonathan's pride had clamped down on his temper and hadn't let go since.
The sniffles... Someone upstairs must have been having a good laugh at his expense. He could not fathom it any other way.
He would survive, Jonathan decided right there and then for the seventh time. Spite would carry him through this stupid cold. Only the best die young. The Grim Reaper had missed him once; well, that was just too bad. It hadn't gotten a second shot. It could come back the next century, see if Jonathan Taylor had finally been bested by something worthwhile.
Something other than the God forsaken sniffles.
In the meantime, he would chew on the acrid taste of a boring afternoon, sitting in a slightly crooked chair by his hospital bed, with the sound of wind brushing the leaves of the trees before his window as conversation material. He had survived on little less for more than his share of years already.
Jonathan Taylor let his gaze wander over the shape of the branches poking the glass window. They really were as twisted as his own fingers, though thinner. Like the hands of death, trying to reach him even inside the one place that could pretend to keep him alive.
Ah! The proud old man snorted. It wasn't in his young days that he would have had such thoughts. He would have laughed, loud and clear, confident in his own invincibility. He didn't know much in those days, but he had the time to make mistakes, and learn. Now, Jonathan looked at the ticking clock on the wall, and he could not help guess a number every time.
“We will, of course, do everything to help you heal, Mr. Taylor. However, you need bed rest. A man of your age needs more time to recover.”
Time that, honestly, Jonathan knew he didn't have. It wouldn't keep him from trying out of spite, but no, he doubted he would see that fabled complete recovery Doctor McKenzie promised him. With a sigh, Jonathan mumbled that his siblings really would have a field day with his stupid last battle against the Reaper.
“That remains to be seen,” said a woman's voice.
Jonathan blinked. He knew each of the nurses by voice, face and name. Yet this near crystalline chime had not rung any bell in his memory. And when he turned to greet and grumble in the general direction of that intruding woman, he came face to face with a silhouette bathed in light, any and all traits obscured by white sparkles.
Had it been a new treatment, something for which he knew not of side effects, Jonathan would have been tempted to call the nurses and ask that they stop giving him whatever crazy pills had caused this hallucination. But, again, the sniffles. And the beginning of a pneumonia, if he had to guess, but mostly the sniffles.
The silhouette in the light wavered, rippling like the surface of a lake in which one had thrown a pebble. “You have been a good if colorful man in your days, Mr. Taylor. I have chosen to grant you a wish, to reward your deeds and ease your pain.”
Jonathan resisted the urge to pinch himself, as he really did not need to add to the pain he was in. He would have known if this had been a dream.
Dreams of his that conjured ethereal entities generally had them berating his stubbornness. Or his arrogance. Yet, she had called him a good man. Not many that knew him would use the word “good” to describe Jonathan Taylor. Bullheaded. Grumpy. Crazy old kook. Something equally accurate and even less flattering.
Ah, nurses, they sometimes forgot that he hadn't need of a hearing aid.
This one missy though, she seemed to know him from an older, better time. When things weren't just a slow and painful trickle of time down a drying river. So, maybe, just maybe, there could be some merit in it. And he could always pretend daydreaming if it failed.
Thus, licking his cracked lips, Jonathan forced the words to come out with the wish bleeding through his heart. “I wish to be young and strong again.”
“Very we– wait, what?” The light flashed suddenly, and floated closer to him. She spoke faster, the aura of mystics growing thin around her. “No, you can't wish for that. Why would you wish for that?”
Jonathan felt his brow furrow together, his eyes squinting to look upon the radiant entity. Clearing his throat, he tried, but failed to keep a little derision from his raspy voice. “Well, honestly, Ma'am, what did you expect, asking an old man what he wishes?”
Awkward silence stretched between them as the light turned a faint shade of pink.
“I was hoping for something closer to inner peace or healing sickness. Tender care in your last days.”
He wanted to laugh as much as he wanted to scoff. “Why wish for good last days when I would rather wish for more days?”
At his words, something seemed to shift in the air surrounding his visitor. A shiver, particles of lit dust shaking. And somehow, the impression that lingered in Jonathan's mind was that of a bird's ruffled feathers. “Mr. Taylor, pushing back death is a futile endeavor. The only way to defeat the fear of death is to accept it as inevitable.”
Jonathan's eye twitched.
With great calm, he asked, “Can you die, Ma'am?”
What had been shimmering air stilled. For the first time, Mr. Taylor could see a clear outline of the character speaking to him. Her shape had no resemblance to the kind young lady he had imagined from the sound of her voice. What little he did see reminded him of a bride's veil, long strides of white draping a flickering light.
And she hadn't breathed a word to reply. He took it as the answer it was.
Grunting, Mr. Taylor shifted in his seat and cursed his aching back. “Have you ever grown old, Ma'am? Because I have. All my life I've grown older. From the wee tender years to the best years, and then past that further and further without stopping. In my prime, I could carry three grown men on my back. Now, I feel the joints in my knees shift if I get up from my bed at a faster rate than a tortoise. I have been living with little hurts for thirty years, and bigger ones for seventeen. I used to have both hair and teeth. My sister and my brother have both died from the same illness, and it's only because I'm stubborn as a mule that I haven't croaked yet. Death has been taken a step closer to me everyday I lived, and that's a fearsome thing. Fearsome, I tell you. You? You don't feel that. You don't hear the clock ticking the same way I do. So, with all due respect, Ma'am, take your view on mortality and keep it in a quiet corner of your mind. I want to hear none of it.”
The spirit took him at his words and uttered none in return. Briefly, Jonathan wondered if she would leave, thoroughly embarrassed at being told off by an old man.
In slow tones, words trembling, she spoke up, “Is there nothing else you would wish for?”
“No. There is nothing an old man like me could wish other than that.” Then, without pity, because he was starting to feel like the entity might actually need it, “You asked. You granted it to me, assuming I would not go against your belief. I find, Ma'am, that it is far wiser to give restrictions before than after.”
Silence lingered longer than even before. Jonathan's eyes found it hard to focus on the lady, as her silhouette swayed as if balanced to the wind. The light flew from one corner of the room to another, each time with a greater flutter. And yet, throughout, Jonathan felt as if another pair of eyes watched his back.
Slowly, she lowered herself back to his level, floating by the curtains that hung from his bedside window. “...It will be a good lesson for the future, yes.”
“Yes, for the future.” He agreed on that much, but what she took of it, he didn't particularly care. “What about my wish now? Are you going to do it?”
“I… You do not understand, Mr. Taylor. There is not enough magic here to...”
The plea cut rather suddenly.
“Ma'am?” he asked when the words did not pick up again.
He might have asked more, had he not felt the sudden urge to cough both his lungs out. And then some. It left him shaking, fingers unsteady as they wiped the corners of his cracked lips. Mute pain radiated from his throat down to his navel. And she had expected some other wish from him?
Yet, she was still there, waiting. Politely. More so than he expected from the annoyance and irritation he had detected in her voice earlier. His ears caught the contrite tone she affected, and he narrowed his eyes in her direction. “I'm sorry, Mr. Taylor. My reluctance stemmed from my inexperience, but I believe I have found a way to grant your wish to your satisfaction.”
Jonathan would and still did say that he had experienced the full range of possible emotions, sensations and trials that any man or woman could. But this, he had to admit, in hushed tones and after copious amounts of alcohol, was new.
It was falling without gravity, unlike his three different parachute jumping experiences. It was the world spinning, without the dizzying pull of alcohol and fatigue after a good night of dancing. It was tingles in his limbs, over his skin and deeper beneath, and a swirl of colors that put even the hideous hospital gown to shame.
It was different, from even landing. It was suddenly standing, away from old creaking chairs, sterile scents and the incessant beeping of machines.
Jonathan picked up his jaw from the floor, slowly, as he gaze upon a sky bluer than it had a right to be, upon hills and hills of fresh long grass, shining under the midday sun. Upon a dirt road almost straight out of his childhood, leading to what seemed to be wooden houses and barns.
And he went to thank the Ma'am for her efforts, sincerely, when the idyllic painting first crashed.
Unless he misremembered the size of his nose in the good old days – and, from what everyone told him, most of those parts were supposed to have sagged with the later years –, the bump that filled the lower half of his sight couldn't be right. The overly respectful tone of the Ma'am made quite a good deal of sense now. A cold chill crept up on his spine, in a way that it hadn't since the encounter with the biker gang in 1964.
Jonathan stared at the stump that had replaced his hand. Then, up the curve of his arm covered in beige hair, to his shoulder and past it to his bare back and tail...What kind of ranch owner branded their animals with a bone-white cane on their flanks? And… now that he thought about it, how did one brand an animal in color? Then again, not important.
Some of the nurses and doctors in that place had thought he might have had some trouble remembering right, but Jonathan Taylor knew very well that his wish hadn't even included the word “horse”.
By the barely restrained snickers that rang light in the air, so did she. Why, the little...
“Ma'am,” he said slowly, a snarl on his face, “what is this?”
The ball of light flew off a few feet, to the top of the hill, and seemed to motion around him. “Welcome, Mr. Taylor, to the world of Equestria.”
Oh, now, what was this doohickey? Eques-what? A world?
“Beg your pardon?” he barked, glaring.
The veiled creature gave the impression of a shrug, and a mischievous one at that.
“You asked to be young and strong again,” she said, ripples of white light pulsing down to Jonathan's muzzle. Out of reflex, the young stallion snorted, a very unamused look on his face that reflected in her veil. “You should have added more restrictions if you wanted to be sure you stayed human. And on Earth.”
“And now she gets smart with me...” grumbled the teenager with a cracking voice.
A horse. On Pluto or some other planet-world-nonsense. Ridiculous! And, he thought ungraciously, it was the mark of a sore loser to be so vindictive and petty. For a wish-granting guardian angel, or whatever the missy was, she certainly did not act graciously. At all.
“I find it far easier to add restrictions before than after the fact, my dear Mr. Taylor,” she added, with an unmistakable mirth in her cheerful voice.
Oh yes, so much for the creatures of perfection he'd been told about for years. Petty and smug. Sure of her superiority after pulling a dirty trick.
…She would get along famously with his sister, that bitch.
“Have you ever been told you are insufferable?”
“Not in seven hundred years. It must be you. After all, you got what you wanted. Young and strong.”
Now the scowl on Jonathan's face faltered. Something ticked at the back of his mind. No wonder he hadn't noticed earlier. Absence was harder to notice than constant presence. Especially once someone got him worked up. But now that he thought back on the madam's words, he could feel it. The clock in his mind barely seemed to tick at all.
Jonathan scraped at the grass with the sole of his hoof, struggling not to marvel at the simple sensation. It had been so long…
Quite honestly? He could live with this. He had lived with arthritis, diabetes and increasingly severe farsightness for a few decades. Hard to really long for fingers when they had been as wooden and stiff as a hoof anyway. All the same for the rest. If his knees didn't hurt like tender little saplings in the storm anymore, he would not complain about them, even if they were backward and a bit twisted.
Jonathan Taylor lifted one of his front legs before him and flexed. A minute smile seemed to tug at the old soul's lips as he watched his muscles contract and relax, easily. Strong. He was strong again. How much could horses carry? Certainly more than three men.
“Well?” asked the spirit's chime-like voice.
“Well, what? I'm fine. This is fine.” Was it? His pride still prickled at the stunningly absurd idea. But he had far too much experience to let his doubt show on his face. “You said so, I got what I wanted, even if you are being childish about it.”
“You are coming to term with this faster than I expected,” she said, and Jonathan heard the frown she likely hid behind her veil of light. “Past experiences taught me that humans really don't take this kind of changes all this well.”
He snorted. “Disappointed?”
The blurred figure flinched, and seemed to take a lighter pink taint when she noticed Jonathan's grin. “Why would you think that?”
“Must be my imagination. You know how old people are. Always thinking that petty people are trying to one up them in some way or another, just to hide their wounded pride.”
He carefully forgot to mention that it took one to know one, but she would learn in time.
“… Worry not,” she said with a grand air that signaled an abrupt and panicked change of subject. “I have generously taken care of your papers. Since I am a professional at what I do, you will not have to answer embarrassing question on how you appeared out of thin air. Your new name is–”
“And what's wrong with my current name?” cut in Jonathan, one eyebrow noticeably higher than the other.
A loud 'pop' startled him, and he blinked as a pair of bags linked by a leather chord fell to the ground in front of his infuriatingly amused companion. Her light swung around the bags and a wind from nowhere made them tilt toward him.
The feeling that she wanted to laugh only strengthened. “Equestrians have different naming conventions than humans. Jonathan Taylor is a name that would never fly in front of most ponies you'll meet.”
So, ponies had names, and apparently papers. Ah, bureaucracy, the ultimate evil that seemed to exist through all the dimensions and universes. Wasn't that a sobering thought for a sullen old man?
With a roll of his eyes and a deep scowl, Jonathan took the bag of scrolls for himself and rummaged through until he found a very official looking square of paper. At the top, he found the words 'birth certificate' and underneath...
He nearly kicked the whole thing away. “No. You're not calling me Old Bones. That is stupid, and hurtful.”
“Too late,” said the spirit's voice with great cheer. “Here's your birth certificate and your social numbers. You'll want both when you apply for your first job.”
As if pulling teeth, Jonathan growled, “And if I don't want to apply for a job here?”
“I did not bring you any currency, Mr. Taylor. Silly me forgot. And pony society does have one, they're called bits. You'll need them if you want to sleep under a roof and eat cakes. Though I suppose there's always grass to eat...”
There was a passing moment of silence during which Jonathan considered the idea. Had he been less focused, he might have noticed his companion's shimmering veil flinching, shocked.
In truth, his thoughts hadn't focused on the mechanics themselves, but on the dizzying realization of food being so abundant. One glance left revealed fields of green for miles, stretching and stretching farther until they met the blue of the horizon. A horse needed only to lower its head, then open its mouth…
But he only needed to picture the faces his siblings would make in the afterlife, knowing that proud old Jonathan had lowered himself to graze simply to be contrarian. A name. Such a silly thing to fight about. Names didn't change him. They just irked a bit. So the choice spilled out of his mouth like venom.
“Oh, alright,” he said with a roll of his chestnut eyes, “you win this one, Ma'am, but mark my words. You haven't made a friend today, and I certainly wasn't born yesterday.”
“Biologically speaking, you would have been born about sixteen years ago.”
Sixteen. Sixteen was being born yesterday, as far as Jonathan was concerned. That tender age of new feelings and new things to discover and new looks on the world around you, and new, and new and nothing feeling quite old yet. “Youth is wasted on the young,” he said to himself. He had wasted more than a little time on frivolous pursuits, not that he would ever admit it out loud.
“What does that mean?” Ma'am wondered out loud.
“Hmm?” Jonathan turned toward her, not quite willing to talk yet.
“Youth,” she clarified, her light lingering on her companion's wrinkleless muzzle, “how can it be wasted on the young? I don't understand what that means.”
“Only old people do.”
“I am far older than you, Old Bones,” she told him, her voice tight.
“No, you're not.” Jonathan pointed a hoof at the drapes of light. “Ma'am, you might have been born a longer time ago, but you're not older. I know the difference.”
Sixteen. How old did horses live again? Whatever the number, he doubted it was seventeen, what's with how much strength seemed to just wait in his limbs. He could run for miles now, he knew. He knew and that made him grin wider than anyone had seen Jonathan do in living memory. Oh, what did he care about horses and humans?
It was stupid, but he was not going to give up on it so easily.
Paper Crows
The air was stuffy, hot, dusty and Jonathan had never quite laughed so much simply for breathing without feeling his body burn on the inside. He could take the deepest, fullest inspirations he had done in years and still not be racked with coughs and pains. It made his insides light, his heart fluttering, and he was using all of his self-control not to frolic because Ma'am's light still shone barely a few steps ahead of him.
She had insisted – reasonably enough – that Jonathan headed to the town as soon as possible so he could get himself a roof to sleep under tonight. And for that...
“You should head to the mayor's office first,” she told him. “There, you will be able to register and probably ask around for work and lodging.”
“Not my first time getting a job, Ma'am,” he grumbled under his breath.
The veils of light paused. When her voice caught up with him, it sounded a mixture of irritation and mischief. “Well, listening to you talk, I admit to being surprised any employer could tolerate you long enough to hire you.”
Jonathan tried rather hard not to smirk. Oh, if only she knew...
“I can be a lot more charming than you think, Ma'am. Besides, what would you know about this? Have you ever had a job?”
“What do you think this is?”
Oddly enough, she had not sounded dismissive. Merely curious. What did he think that this whole wish-granting was? Jonathan had to admit, he did not know.
He could admit that to himself, in secret, while no one was looking at him. He still had a reputation to uphold, even if this was indeed a whole new world. But deep down, really, he hadn't cared all that much what it was to the creature of light as long as it was real.
“You being bored,” he settled on.
Ma'am fluttered ahead. “I do not know boredom. I have seen towns being built and destroyed and in that same span, never once experienced boredom, Old Bones. Now, come. The mayor's house is the one at the end of the road, over there. With the red roof.”
A scowl on his face, Jonathan reluctantly looked in the direction she floated. He took little notice of the tall wooden farmhouses on each side of the road, despite their impressive shadows in the early daylight. A few signs depicting chickens, pigs or horses caught his attention, but even those were only filled to the back of his head. His eyes only settled when they found a bright, vibrant tomato red roof, perched atop of a stout wooden and stone house.
It made for a very interesting sight amidst the much older looking farms, he decided.
Then, he heard an angry yell, and saw a looming figure in a cloud of dust headed his way.
With a skip, he jumped away from a coming carriage pulled by a much bulkier brown stallion. Dazed, Jonathan did not even let loose the string of insults that he felt take place at the tip of his tongue. Further proof that he was completely out of it.
No matter, he figured while he readjusted his saddlebags on his flanks. He would have plenty of time to insult and yell at whomever he wished later. Years even. For now, settling down for the near future was more important.
Jonathan took a few steps to the side back in patches of grass as opposed to the hardened dirt road in the middle of town. This way, no pony would run into him unless they were drunk. And this way, he could run his gaze over the rows of farmhouses and barns that seem to be the backbone of this little town. These tall, wooden buildings brought back memories of his childhood in the countryside, moving to the rhythm of a busy life with plenty of little horses running around to their hearts' content.
He eyed a group of three children laughing and playing a game of tag through the street, darting and jumping around the empty porches bordering the road.
“Must be a weekday,” he said out loud, a bit too casually for anyone with a trained ear.
The Ma'am took the bait, hook and sinker. “How… how did you know that, Old Bones?”
“There's no stall set up anywhere in the main street. It's the same in every little town I saw. Producers like selling their produces. A shocking truth. But they have a lot of fields to tend to, so they set-up a day for all of them to sell and buy and gossip all over the market place. There's practically no one today, so I'm guessing it's one of the busy days.”
“Well, I guess you can't be only grumpiness and sourness incarnated...” Ma'am snidely commented under her breath.
“A real shame too.” The old man ran his tongue over his lips. “It's been years since I was allowed a good slab of beef. Even more so one that was fresh from the farmers.”
Too tough for his teeth. For his stomach. For his delicate pancreas or intestine or everything. At some point, it had really just sounded the nurses taking revenge for the sponge baths. An eye for an eye, degradation for degradation. But now, now that he was young, and healthy and free from his damn chair…
He noticed, with no small amount of distress, that Ma'am hovered silently at his side. He could not feel her gaze on his skin, not even a little.
“Yes, about you eating meat,” she began with a strange offset white color to her light. “You can't.”
His brows shot up right into his hairline. “Pardon?!”
A few blades of grass lifted in the air, as if cut one by one by a person needing something to occupy their hands. A person, or a child. “Ponies can't eat meat. It's just how it is.”
His lips curled into a snarl before he even processed the words. “That's a load of lies! I've seen horses eat little critters that got in their ways all the time when I was working on the railroad!”
“You're not an actual Earth horse, Old Bones.” The spirit's voice held a note of urgency and none of the previous teasing. It was enough to give her companion pause. “You're an earth pony.”
Jonathan's brows furrowed. “That's basically the same thing.”
“No, I meant, you're an earth pony, not an Earth horse. A… not the planet, but a tribe of ponies with a link to the earth, soil, dirt.” For a brief moment, the light dimmed and floated down, as if exhaling a long sigh. “Curse mortals and their confusing languages. You just can't eat meat. Even if the horses back in your old home could, the ones here can't. You can't.”
He had half a mind to find a steak and gobble it down just to prove that he could, but he wasn't quite that prideful. Oh, he had plenty of it, more than enough to make people pull their hair and scream, but his own health wasn't a thing he was willing to risk.
It would be so easy to think that he was back there, sitting, waiting with the drip in his arm and the pain in his legs. For the shortest instant, Jonathan's nostrils tickled with the sterile, dead smell of a hospital chamber.
Jonathan hurried his steps toward the red-roofed home, and muttered sullenly, “What can I eat?”
“Oh, vegetables, grains, most forms of sugar and pastries. Eggs are okay if cooked or in recipes. Some ponies can eat fish, but it's more of an acquired taste.”
A pair of ponies ahead of him wisely trotted out of his way.
Fish! Of course, he could eat fish, but not meat. The Ma'am truly felt a staggering hatred for him.
“So, horses, ponies… they can eat fish?” But no steak – was the very clipped undertone to his question.
“Pegasi do,” she replied with an invisible shrug. It took three full seconds for the spirit of light to stop, hovering in midair as if struck by a thought. “Well, that's probably something you should know as well. There are three sub-species of ponies in Equestria. Earth ponies like you, winged ponies called pegasi and horned ones called unicorns. They're the ones using magic. See those objects floating in the air? That's the unicorns using levitation spells.”
“Spells?” He knew he shouldn't be skeptical, he really knew that deep down, but the idea that people casually did what the Ma'am did… Oh, that didn't sit too well with his old bones. His tail, blasted thing, flicked to the side nervously, and Jonathan put on a neutral sour face. “Let me guess: the ones with wings can fly.”
Ma'am sighed. “You're a grump, Old Bones.”
Jonathan forged straight on ahead, and kept an eye out for the red roof. “I have been, and I quote, a good if colorful man in my days.”
She had nothing to say to that, and he considered it a point for himself.
Silence should have followed that. His hearing had been one of the few senses that had never deteriorated in Jonathan, but it seemed, as his ears twisted on top of his head, that even that meant little in comparison to that of a horse. So many little noises echoed around him, louder when his ears turned in the right – or wrong – direction. In the back of his mind, he could somehow think on their location in comparison to him. That was how he could hone in the two prim voices that suddenly caught his attention before he ever saw them at a house's window.
Two mares, mothers and good-thinking madams of this little village he would wager, exchanged worried looks while trying very hard not to glance in his general direction.
With a frown, he nodded toward the gossiping mares, “Why are they looking at me like that?”
“Nopony else can see me, Old Bones.”
“That explains that,” he grumbled low. “And stop calling me Old Bones, Ma'am. You know that's not my name.”
The light fluttered closer to his face, and he was certain she was impish behind those blasted veils of hers. “Well, you have to get used to it, don't you? It defines who you are and it's what other ponies will call you for the rest of your life.”
“Watch me.”
Jonathan stomped his way up the small stairs and through the half-opened doors of the mayor's house. And nearly stumbled to a grounding halt. A wave of dusty, inky old smell hit his nostrils with a strength that was quite unlike the crisp air outside. While the streets carried on the same hints of earth and wheat and horse, the hall he found himself in was all muted colors, pale beige paint that peeled off the walls in scales, monotone clicks of hooves over a typewriter and but the vaguest hint of mud on the floor.
It breathed and smelled and probably ate bureaucracy.
“That's some face you're making,” Ma'am said, a strange note of worry held within. “Jonathan?”
The old young stallion grunted. His brown eyes flicked to the hovering light for the span of a heartbeat, and in that time, they showed a deep annoyance. If he was the only one that could hear her, then he wouldn't reply and make a fool of himself.
At the desk, the only piece of furniture on the ground floor apart from a billboard sadly void of any offer, a petite mare with an outrageous cherry red coat looked up just long enough to see who had entered the mayor's house. Then went back to her typing.
Jonathan's ears and eyes twitched. The mare could have been a nurse, for sure. “I'm here to find some work,” he called, loudly clearing his throat. “Heard this was the place.”
The clicks of the typewriter continued.
“Anything in particular?” she asked with a dull, even voice. “We are first and foremost a farming community.”
With a wide confident grin, Jonathan puffed out his chest and gestured to the air. “Puh-lease, madam, I can do anything. I've been all over the world. There's no job that would be too hard, no task to scare me. Show me a field and it'll be blooming with whatever plants you want in three days.”
Her green, half-lidded eyes darted from left to right on her paper. “Mhmm.”
Now, Jonathan had new teeth. And he did not want to file them down too quickly. But he needed serious effort not to grind them together in the face of this soulless creature. Maybe if he spoke her strange language… “I brought my papers.”
Of course, that got the mare to look up, and hold out a hoof expectantly.
Oh, sometimes, he just wanted the world to prove him wrong. But alas, that never happened. With a long-suffering sigh, the old soul foraged through his saddlebags to pull out what Ma'am had told him were proper papers.
“Ah, I see, young stallion on the road, looking to make his fortune at the sweat of his hooves. Name is… Old Bones, correct?” the bureaucrat asked, one eyebrow slightly raised.
He kept on his proud confident smile, barely. “Call me Taylor.”
In the corner of his eye, he distinctively caught sight of Ma'am, huffing in indignation. The words 'no respect' and 'all that effort' were uttered, but clearly could not be more than mad ramblings.
“I'm afraid I cannot address ponies as anything but their proper, documented names.”
Jonathan wondered. Surely, there was a way to get the Ma'am to stop laughing. Surely.
But he doubted it would be discreet enough not to be noticed by the mindless servant of bureaucracy in front of him. So he endured. “Damned whippersnappers…” he muttered through his teeth.
“I see you left your special talent checkbox blank. So, what is it? Your cutie mark,” the clerk repeated, pointing a hoof toward Jonathan's flanks. “What does it represent? What's your special talent? Most employers will ask before considering your candidature.”
Clearly, the mare behind the desk had long since mastered the art of sounding bored out of her mind. Otherwise, the simple act of asking those questions should have at least changed the inflection of her voice. Perhaps then, it would have lost some of its hypnotic power.
Luckily for him, Jonathan had mastered the art of bullheading his way through problems. His chronic insomnia in his later years might have helped keep a clear head as well.
“My special talent is not asking so many questions.”
From Jonathan's left rose a deep, breathless chuckle. “Really? Sounds like an interesting talent.”
For the first time since coming into town, Jonathan truly startled. That stranger somehow entered through the same entry as him, without making a sound. And that, as Jonathan looked up, he could not quite understand. The stranger, a black stallion with a shining coat, looked down to Jonathan with amused marine eyes.
His head still full of that nonsense on special talents, Jonathan could not help himself and gazed as discreetly as possible at the taller stallion's flanks. At first, he believed there was nothing, for his croup seemed a full, unbroken black, but he then caught the way the light reflected differently on that spot. Vaguely, his eyes squinting, Jonathan made out the faint shape of a pair of crossed blueish feathers.
“Name's Scare Crows,” – Jonathan schooled his expression. Even if that name was properly ridiculous – “and my special talent is actually accounting, administration and booking, in case you were oh so subtly wondering.”
Pride won over decency, and Jonathan remained stoic. Though, now he searched that abyssal-black face for a hint of his age. He hadn't sounded too different from some of the younglings Jonathan knew... “So, why are you here now? Are you hiring?”
“Yeah,” the stallion replied, still breathless, looking around the near empty town hall, “at this point, I'll take pretty much any earth pony that wants the job.”
Jonathan's ears perked up, which he himself had no idea on how or why. He put it back to a little corner of his mind, stepping forth to better look at his prospective. Desperate employer offered good conditions, generally. However, there usually was a reason they were short-handed. He had learned that once. Once.
“You said your name was Scare Crows, right?” Ma'am had told him pony names were great indicator of who they were as a person. What was it suppose to tell him about a black stallion like that? That he stood in fields all day and shouted at birds?
“Why, yes. I'm the owner of the wheat and oat farm at the end of the road.”
“Inherited?”
The question obviously startled him. It was after all intrusive, with a very impolite undertone. Perhaps Jonathan should not have asked, considering how sour the meeting might turn if his question was ill-interpreted. Scare Crows had yet to speak up.
But the question registered, truly, and something changed in the way he held himself. A spark lit up in the stallion's dark blue gaze. His polite smile widened into a full-blown grin. “Nope. Started my own. And I'll be expending again next year.”
Pride. He recognized its shade in the youth's bearing. Hard-earned, fought for, pride. The best kind, in his humble opinion.
Jonathan whistled low. “Damn, Son, that's mighty impressive. Not many your age I saw with that kind of enterprising streak. Doing something with your life. Good. Keep it up.”
Scare Crows blinked, then shook his head and rubbed the back of his head. “Right, so I would need a farmhoof to help with the crops. It's bigger than expected, and my workers aren't quite keeping up. Shouldn't waste an opportunity is what I think.”
Jonathan could not help nodding along. “You're right. Seize the moment, Son. Every occasion is like an old friend wanting to reunite after long years apart. If you keep waiting till next time, eventually they'll stop knocking at your door. So, what is your crop like?”
“You know,” Scare Crows started with a chuckle, “you said you were good at not asking questions, but you've been quizzing me more than the opposite.”
Jonathan did not, even in the slightest, blush a nice tomato red. However, he might have heard Ma'am shocked gasp, and that wasn't any better.
It got worse when the black stallion's rich laugh rose in concert. “Ah, sorry, sorry, I wasn't serious or anything. I just thought that was funny,” he said, his pearly white teeth contrasting vividly with the rest of his appearance. “So, Old Bones, huh?”
“Taylor is fine,” Jonathan tried. He had to. Someone would pick him up on that offer eventually. Then Ma'am would see who was laughing snidely behind who's back.
“Ah, afraid I can't just go calling my employees by their nickname. It's not very professional.” To be fair, Scare Crows did look sheepish, one hoof rubbing at the back of his head, his grin turning into a smaller smile. “Anyway, I really need the extra help in the fields as soon as possible, so are you good to start today?”
Jonathan's every effort could not reign in a deadpan, “Son, I did this long before you were born. I can start anytime, anywhere.”
A firm black hoof snaked itself around Jonathan's neck and pulled him closer. Jonathan's brief bout of stuttering was muffled into the equally dark coat his mouth was pushed against, but he heard his new employer's grin. “Now, that's stallionly talk. Kind of old timey, and weird in your mouth. But still, stallionly. I love it, Old Bones. Come, I'll show you the fields and the work I want from you.”
Author's Notes:
Phew, finally got settled in the UK for a year-long job. THings got a bit hectic, and I suffered from a lack of wifi in ways I had not imagined I would.
But that's done. Hopefully, I'll be a bit more productive nowadays.
In the meantime, enjoy Mix-up's newest coverart. Praise be given. Here on fimfiction, or on dA for those of you that prefer that website.
Tried and True
Another man or woman might have thought with some sentimentality of the dead ringer of their childhood home. They might have shed a tear over the beige facade of the house that reflected light just enough to appear shining, or over the dirt path pooling at the feet of the house, where one had played ball games with their friends, or even over the way the stems of wheat and oat seemed to wave like water at sea under the wind.
Jonathan, for his part, eyed the scarecrows in the fields and the plow resting against the side of the shelf, and his first thought was that his childhood home had not been so olden. And yet, the fields looked brimming with plant-like gold. Scare Crows nudged him, gesturing at the farm he had slavishly built with his own hands, and Jonathan was forced to tear his gaze away from the fields down the small hill they stood on top of.
“S'good work down there, son. Any hidden vice I should know of?”
The taller stallion laughed, his black hoof snaking around Jonathan's neck to bring him against his shoulder. “That? There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's perfect.”
Quietly, Jonathan admitted he didn't actually disagree.
The only shadow over the picturesque image of the farm was ironically a bright, thoughtless fairy-spirit-thing who had not stopped speaking since they had left the town hall.
“I am so proud.” Ma'am crooned in his ears, voice rich in mirth. “I did not think you could actually get hired with your attitude, Jonathan.”
She was definitely baiting him. Taunting him to get him to talk to empty air just so he would look crazy and change Scare Crows' mind. Not that it wasn't working and getting his old heart pumping, but at least he knew her game. He had invented the game!
Scare Crows led him down the path, with no resistance from Jonathan whatsoever. The two stallions trotted at a brisk pace, Scare Crows losing himself in explanations about the fields and the work that needed to be done. Something about the secondary crop needing harvesting quickly, before it grew past the best windows for sales and stockage.
Shame Jonathan only got one word out of two, what's with Ma'am's incessant buzzing in his ears. It figured that it was only once he had become young and frisky and hale again that he developed a hearing problem.
He waited until his employer had waved toward the farthest fields, all his attention on the crops on the hills. At that moment, he hissed, “Oh, good man, what is your wish?”
Ma'am froze still.
Jonathan kept on walking, and because he was just an innocent horse that did not know how to control an unfamiliar body he had just acquired through mysterious circumstances, he just so happened to slap the orb of light with his tail.
At least, that was what he told her later. All the while smirking.
Jonathan Taylor had also invented the poker face.
“Yeah, sorry about the flies,” Scare Crows said, his own tail flicking to slap away a large insect. “There's the Duck's Lake at the end of my fields, and there's some really fat bugs around. Just gonna have to bear with it.”
Ma'am turned a vivid shade of green, the drapes of light on her form sizzling. Oh, Christmas, you are here early this year, Jonathan thought.
“I am used to it,” he said, making every effort not to laugh. “That one's been following me all morning. A real pest.”
“Shame,” Scare Crows said with a shrug. “Usually, they aren't that obnoxious. Seems like they figured the rats and the pigs are easier targets.”
“A lot more fresh too,” grumbled Ma'am.
Jonathan paid her no mind, though his smile faded around the edges.
Fortunately, his new boss didn't seem to put stock in this, as he led them through a wooden arch at the bottom of the hills and past a large fence. “Alright, so, officially this time.” The stallion grinned proudly. “Welcome, Old Bones, to Crow's Wheat and Oat Farm.”
Jonathan had to love that boy's confidence. “Pleasure to be here, Son.”
“Good. So, we've got the sugar sweet oat in the Western fields over there,” – he pointed to a patch of solid golden fields near the hills – “while the acres near the farm itself are used for the three varieties of wheat. The oat is a newer addition, so it's not as diverse, but we'll be getting there eventually.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” Jonathan said, nodding along.
Scare Crows turned a curious eye to his new employee. “What was that?”
“The saying. The tortoise and the hare?” At his boss' blank look, Jonathan felt old. “Youngsters these days… No appreciation for the good old classics.”
Scare Crows frowned, nonplussed. “Never heard of anything like it,” he muttered, rubbing his chin. “Could be a foreigner's thing.”
A fair point, though Jonathan kept his tongue in his mouth. It had been years since he had done this, indeed! Usually, he managed to be insufferable only after he had showed he was an irreplaceable worker. “Mhmm.”
In the end, Scare Crows shrugged it all off with a very unconcerned look. His hoof grabbed Jonathan's shoulder and pulled him around the front of the farmhouse. “Alright, so the red one over there in the fields is Pepper Seed. He's new, just a few months back, but he's good work. Then, the orange mare with the baskets is Harvest Season, my best worker. Been there since the beginning, or almost. Plow and Pull, good ponies, thick as thieves, a bit chatty though. Last but not least is Matron Apron inside the house. My only advice? Listen to her.”
Jonathan chuckled. Those were the words of a young man that had been beaten down by the right woman.
“You laugh now, but wait until you spend a few mornings in that house,” Scare Crows warned good-naturedly, misunderstanding Jonathan's mirth.
Far from him the idea of contradicting a venerable lady in her domain. That did not mean he could not imagine his boss getting pulled by the ear by a wrinkled old mare.
“I'm certain she is delightful,” he said, his tone light.
For a second, Scare Crows stared, suspicion in his eyes. He seemed to want to insist, to call out the lightly mocking tones piercing through Jonathan's voice. But he only shrugged, apparently thinking better of it. When one was being stupid, better to watch than get caught up in it. Words to live by.
Instead, Scare Crows pointed to a farm visible in the distance, past the hills of golden oat.
“There's also Flower Blossom, the neighbor. She comes to help once in a while when she's done with work on her parents' fields. Dunno if you'll see her today. S'been a busy season so far, and it's not like I pay her or anything.”
“But she comes anyway?” The tips of Jonathan's ears pricked. “No charge? No nuthing?”
Scare Crows did not appear overly concerned. “Said she likes the company of ponies not working for her parents. I've had no complaints about her so far.”
In his old experience, people didn't do such things for as simple a reason. Other horsies, he had seen in town. And none would require that she pull her weight to hang around. Jonathan filed that detail in a little corner of his mind. It would be a mystery for later.
“I see.”
“Alright!” Scare Crows clapped his hooves together. “You said you were ready to start at anytime. So I'm taking you at your words here.”
Walking with intent, Scare Crows made his way to a large bell hanging from the edges of the farm's front porch, and vigorously pulled the rope next to it. Its chime, low and loud, echoed well into the fields, where the working ponies paused, raising their heads from their works. Within a minute, they had arrived, carrying various tools.
The one called Harvest Season stopped right next to Jonathan, her impressive build towering over even Scare Crows himself. Within her clear blue eyes shone a quiet question for the smaller stallion.
Jonathan would rather focus on their boss. Whiffs of sweat and dirt had been added to the ambient farm smell, and the ponies that had brought most of it panted slightly, one leaning on the other's shoulder.
Two near identical faces, their smiles wide and showing slightly yellowing teeth to contrast their dirt brown fur. Two near identical hooves, pointed at Jonathan in comical synchronicity.
“So, who's the new kid, boss?” they said at the exact same time.
Jonathan's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. If that hadn't been practiced, he'd eat his socks. The next time he bought socks. Not that he needed socks now, it seemed. Regardless, he eyed the two stallions – twins, obviously – warily. He'd dealt with their kind before.
With a friendly grin, Scare Crows saved him the trouble. He stepped in the circle of ponies and designated Jonathan with a nod. “Everypony, this is Old Bones, your new colleague. He'll be helping out for the rest of the harvest season. And we'll see how things go from there.”
“Pleased to meet y'all,” he said courteously… then less courteously, “And for the record, I am not one of those bumbling and sniveling brat you think about, boys.”
“Might as well be,” grumbled Ma'am under her breath.
“Touchy much?” asked one of them. “Plow, I think this one is sensitive.”
The second twin tilted his head left, a light scar visible just under his chin. It was almost like a trick of the light, and the line near disappeared under the sly smirk on the colt's face. “Really, Pull?”
In the air behind them, Ma'am pulsing light turned a peaceful shade of cyan. “You know, Jonathan, I like those two.”
“Ah, ignore them, Old Bones,” Scare Crows dismissed with a wave of his hoof. “They like to hear themselves speak.”
The twins squawked in unison, in outrage much too intense for such a simple rebuke. The lack of comeback and their lazy grins indicated how 'badly' they had been wounded by their boss' oh so heartless words.
Scare Crows rolled his eyes. “Oh, dry your cragadile tears, you two. You're half the reason I can't find new employees.” Then, with a shrug, turned to the stallion on Jonathan's other side. “Anyway, I just wanted to make a quick introduction. Pepper Seed, how's the harvesting going in the west fields?”
The red stallion who had been till now perfectly silent perked up at his employer's question. “Great, boss. We'll be able to sell extras to Canterlot at this rhythm.”
“Perfect. I'll come with you and start the packaging, whilst the rest of you finish up on your tasks.”
The large mare lifted a hoof as thick as a trunk, like a schoolgirl before a teacher. “Crows...” Her gaze had not left Jonathan yet.
“Harvest, you're in charge. Just give him the… ” He put a hoof to his chin, then eyed Jonathan with a sideways glance, grinning. “Think you can take care of the applesian oats today? It's just a sniping job, the fourth section in the East to ease yourself into it today. Should be enough for your big stallion talk, right?”
Starting easy? No way he could do that. He had to establish dominance quickly amongst the rabble. “Please,” Jonathan drawled, “I'll have the whole field done by tomorrow.”
Scare Crows barked a laugh, dragging Pepper Seed along the way. The black stallion raised a hoof in the air, in what Jonathan confusedly thought might be a bizarre equine version of a thumbs up.
A fresh wave of heat hit Jonathan straight in the face, which he would deny having anything to do with this 'blushing' thing he had heard about. That was a boogeyman created by youngsters with too much time in biology lessons. Some things you didn't learn about in books. Or TVs. Or Internet.
Lips pinched, he turned to the towering mare and met her gaze head on.
She was not impressed. “Do you even know how to work on a farm?”
It was enough to set Jonathan off. He had said he could do it. Just in front of her, less than a minute ago. Yes, yes he could. Better than they had ever seen. And ah, hadn't he ever told them the story of the time he had saved his great-uncle's harvest from a swarm of rats and foxes? They sold three times as much as any other year they could recall in living memory after he had taken charge.
“We've met less than five minutes ago,” the bulky mare deadpanned. “And we're not interested in chatting. No time for that here.”
“Speak for yourself!” shouted Plow. “This colt's fun!”
Jonathan's lips pinched at the mention of 'colt'. He wasn't that much of a snot-nosed brat now. Still, he let it slide. Those youngsters did not know any better. But they would learn in time. And then they would rue the day they made this mistake.
“Well, I was hired to work, so that's what I'm gonna do.” He trotted past the twins, after Harvest Season. He tried very hard not to smirk at their simultaneous looks of indignation and bafflement. “Lead the way, Miss.”
Harvest's next grunt sounded vaguely approving. Vaguely. Now Jonathan was getting flashbacks of his sister. Surely, her ghost wouldn't haunt him even in this land of magical horsies? Right? Oh, what was he saying? She'd go through hell to torment him.
...He kinda missed her.
Luckily, Harvest was not a mare to tolerate much in the way of daydreaming and lost thoughts. After leading him through a dirt path in-between rows of orange-tinted wheat, she pointed straight at a much more barren part of the fields, on whose ends a large plow laid abandoned.
“That's the reaper,” said Harvest with an even voice. “It ain't too hard to use. Just pull it in between the rows, not too fast so the wheat falls in the baskets. Only problem is it's a tad heavy. Just strap it right and it'll be fine. Shouldn't be trouble for you though, right?”
“Right,” Jonathan agreed reflexively. He felt a tad feeble for a horse, too thin around the barrel and the knickers, maybe. Still a bit coltish around the corners. On the other hand, weak for a horse was pretty freaking strong for a man. “Walk down the rows, pulling that thing. Seems simple enough.”
That 'thing' was only the strangest contraption. Sure, it had the usual parts of a plow. A good, traditional, well-made plow. The thing of his childhoods. Except for the scythes on each sides. Rotating scythes, he would wager, not unlike the more modern trucks he had seen in the fields a few years back. And a box for a cargo behind. What Devil's machine was that?
For a very short moment, he was tempted to ask the Ma'am if she had had anything to do with it. But his coworkers would think him crazy instead of annoying. That was a fine line that he was not going to cross. Yet.
“Ain't it a bit late in the season for a whole new crop though?” he asked as he trotted toward the reaper.
“Nah,” answered a twin – Pull – in passing, “with an extra earth pony, I bet we can make it all bloom before any of the scheduled frost.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. Kids. Always thinking of the best case scenarios. Probably never had to deal with an early frost in their life. An extra person on the job wasn't gonna make the plants grow faster. But well, he had been hired to do it, so he was gonna. They'd learn eventually.
“Pull, just finish up the fifth and sixth rows,” Harvest ordered. “Plow, you're with me. We got to finish up the rolls before dusk. Bones, just get going with the reaper. No time for dillydallying.”
He had no plans to. Just got to put on that harness first. Which, now that he was left alone with, he could admit to being a bit nonplussed. Not that he had never used one of these! But, and that thought he kept quiet lest his guardian angel divine it, it had always been on the other side of that harness. The beginning of a shiver tickled the base of his spine.
“Harvest Season is watching you from the corner of her eyes, you know?”
Jonathan clamped down on his shocked reaction so hard that he went perfectly still. So perfectly still, so abruptly, that a nerve in his left shoulder pinched and he bit down on a curse.
“I knew that,” he boldly lied.
Pure white dust drifted from her illuminated form, a handful of which landed on Jonathan's muzzle. “Oh,” she said, chipper, “I thought you didn't. Because you're supposed to be working right now and you said you knew all about this kind of work.”
Jonathan scoffed. With uneasy bow, he lowered his head to the loose straps of… leather? Nay, didn't look right, but the material seemed mightily similar. Maybe one of those chemical artificial thingy those peoples made in labs. Whatever it was, it didn't itch as bad as he thought it would. Might be the fur. With a snort, he pushed his head, then his front legs through the loop and grabbed the straps on each side of him.
Had to tie it around his midsection somehow though. At least he could grab things with those weird stumps of flesh they called hooves, so he would not question it. Dexterity was another problem entirely however.
After a few moments of useless flailing, Jonathan bit down into the straps and pulled until it near drove the breath out of his lungs. Should be enough, he thought with a wince. Right, back in the days, how did they fixed the belts around the horses again? Shoulders too. Right. Right.
Jonathan sent a quick prayer in sympathy to the horses he had worked with for years. This was really a mess, cumbersome as hell. Oh well. Time to work.
The tense straps attached to the plow got in the way. More precisely, of his left hind leg. Jonathan's reflexes, a lifetime of honed reactions failed him on account of being useful for bipedal beings. With a complete lack of grace, he landed face first in freshly turned soil.
“I see your years of experience have served you well,” commented Ma'am. “I'm impressed.”
Judging by the snickering coming from the next field over, so was Pull -- or Plow. Muffled growls rose from beneath the ground, and with a jerk, Jonathan extirpated his head from the Mother Earth.
“What was that?” Ma’am asked.
Spitting out a glob of mud, the dirtied stallion shot an equally dirty look to his immaculate companion. “I said 'Bite me, you insufferable firefly.'”
“I'm incorporeal.”
“Just shut up and let me work.” He warily pushed forward, feeling the plow behind him bite into the soil. A familiar noise of ripping ground followed for the first few steps. “Okay, that should be good. Now, the rows…”
They waited patiently for the reaper’s coming. A path of dirt separated the stems of wheat at just the right length to allow a pony pulling a plow to pass. When rows of wheat shadowed him on both sides, Jonathan smirked and rolled his shoulders. Time to work!
For a blessed hour, Ma’am did leave him to his own device. Perhaps she sensed that he would ignore her. Perhaps, even, she had a smidgen of decency left in her after all and didn't want to distract him while he struggled with pulling that darn plow through the hard soil. It was good work. Good, honest work, and he had to fight a grin whilst sweating like a pig under the sun.
Every little snip of the scythes sounded like music to his ears. Every stem of wheat that fell in his baskets, like a year shaved off his birthday count. If not for his current status as a farm animal, he might have imagined hearing his cousin's voice as they worked the tobacco fields.
His coworkers called after him every so often, with things like “You okay there, old timer?”, for which he had elegant and thoughtful insults readily prepared. So what if they asked when he seemed to be panting hard, struggling against a particularly stubborn block of earth or bundles of wheat? He'd had worse.
Those little hurts? Nothing. They were nothing. His sides had friction burns. His legs felt a little numb. S'all. Not painful. He could go on for hours still.
Right as he turned though, his hoof hit something solid, and he was sent sprawling on the ground, again. This time, however, he found it hard to lift legs that weight five times what they used to. It was as if every second of the last hour had returned flooding to him, with every hint of hurt flaring up until he bit back a low growl of agony. Each breath made him wince, the straps digging too deep into his sides. Should have loosened the damned thing an hour ago.
As he pawed at the straps, another pair of hooves suddenly slid under his neck.
Black fur and dark blue eyes moved in his sight. “Wow, you alright there, Old Bones?”
Scare Crows? When had he arrived here? Damn it, now his boss would think he was just a greenhorn, or some other idiot full of hot air. And deep inside, a part of him flinched, bruised at the thought of such an idea.
Weakly, panting, he smiled. “A bit… tired… s'all…”
“Colts,” scoffed Harvest Season, and Jonathan blinked, rolling his head back to catch but a hint of her mane at the very edges of his sight. “Can't pace themselves for the life of them.”
“More like the harness was improperly tightened.” Scare Crows glared at the loose strap, and Harvest Season had the good grace to look away. “You could have checked.”
“He said he knew it all,” the mare protested. “If it was so bad, he could have just said so.”
A fair point in Jonathan's book. His idiocy, his consequences to deal with. Though, judging by the frown on Scare Crows' face, that excuse wouldn't fly. Not very far, at least.
“Give me…” He panted, his lungs refusing to waste air on words.
“Yeah, just take a minute there, Old Bones.” Scare Crows pulled him up in a near sitting position. Pepper Seed placed something black in his employer's outstretched hoof. With a twist of his teeth, Scare Crows uncorked it and tipped it to Old Bone's lips.
Water splashed down his throat, cool and smooth against his dry mouth. For a precious few seconds, Jonathan forgot all about his protests and let the liquid sooth the inside of his mouth and throat.
“Better?”
Jonathan burst out laughing. Better? He could see past the tip of his nose! Of course he felt great! “Son, I haven't felt this well in decades!”
He could work again. He could push through the pain without tubes in his veins and pills in his mouth. He could carry the world on his shoulders like he had, back in the days. Though maybe this time he would let someone else carry the world once in a while, let the youngsters pull their weight and all.
The last time he had had a good sweat like this, he had been climbing up the stairs of a retirement home. For once, he would not have begrudged an elevator, but no. Darn machine fell into ruins every other week.
“Maybe you ought to start with something a little less demanding,” Scare Crows said.
The skin under his fur prickled. “No, son.” He frowned and pushed himself back on his hooves, ignoring the trembling of his legs. “I'm going to do this. I said I could, and I will.”
A surprisingly strong black hoof kept him firmly in place.
“Look, Old Bones, it's fine if you need a bit of time to learn the ropes. Nopony's good on their first try. Hay, I'll just call Plow over and get him to help you.”
Just take it easy, Mr. Taylor. Always taking it easy. Always… always so patient, so understanding! As if they weren’t slowly pushing him into his grave! Jonathan's word came fervently, harsh, so solid as to be made of stone. “When you make a promise, you keep it. It doesn't matter at all if there are easier things to do.”
The hoof was brushed aside as if it had never been there. A few staggering steps led him to the harness, to the straps.
“You said you needed this done for tomorrow. Well, give me until tomorrow. I already promised you, it'll be done.”
There was a snort from Harvest Season, grumbled words, but none that Jonathan could catch. Besides, in that moment, she could have started dancing the salsa with a thirty mariachi band for all he cared. His gaze had been fixed on his boss, and nothing else could have distracted from him.
From the doubt that shone in the stallion's eyes, from the twitches of doubts that flickered on his face, from the nervous flick of his pitch black tail.
“… Alright, Old Bones,” Scare Crows said, halfway between a sigh and a chuckle. With a shake of his head, he sent a strand of his fringe aside, and gave Jonathan a long hard look. “I believe you. You've got until tomorrow to finish the fourth section. Inside the red flags. That's all I'm asking.”
And Jonathan was left alone. Farmwork generally did not allow for idle moments, and today was not disappointing.
None of them noticed the smirk beginning to pull at their new coworker’s lips.
“Jonathan, this is not a good idea.”
She had almost sounded concerned. That alone should have given him all the indicators that the games were over.
His eyes stayed transfixed by the loose harness straps lying on the ground. “Ma'am, you said I had been a good man, back before old age got to me, didn't you? How did you know?”
The spirit's light wavered akin to a shiver, but her chime-like voice didn't ring to his ears again. How, indeed, could she have known, without seeing it for herself?
“You were watching, weren't you?” Silence answered him. “Then stay there, and watch me.”
“This is stupid. You're being stupid.”
“Gave my word,” he huffed.
Light near blinded him as it came to him in a flash of frazzled veils. “Why, Jonathan?” Her voice hitched up, and a wave of cold washed over Jonathan's fur. “Why would you do it so stubbornly? Why does it matter if you can't do it all on your first day?”
“Because when you have nothing more to your name than your words, you better make sure they're damn good words, Ma'am! I said I could do it in one day and that’s what’s going to happen.” He really was a youngster now, wasn't he? Back home, he wouldn't have wasted his breath on this. But he did, and his words jolted with every bump in the soil, every pull back from the harness. “When you realized you'd misjudged me and my wish was different, did you just leave without fulfilling your promise?”
The sphere of light floated aside, as if letting him pass. She wanted to speak. But she had enough integrity not to.
“No. 'Course not. It's the same thing. When you make a promise, you keep it.” He huffed, grunted as he pushed past another bump. “S'why I can respect you.”
“You are not acting respectful toward me.”
“You first,” he deadpanned.
Ma'am made a sputtering sound, then a hiss of frustration. Those precious few moments, he used to breath a bit deeper. He really ought to stop talking, but now that he had started, he found it hard not to keep going. When was the last time someone actually listened to him and his crazy ramblings?
“My point, Ma'am, is I'm not stupid. But I'm not that kind of bright either. The youngsters that have that spark, that little plus in your head that makes you damn creative? I'm not that. Never have been. But that didn't stop me from doing something with myself. And it started with me being stubborn as a thousand mules.”
“That's actually considered very offensive here, Jonathan.” At the stallion's raised eyebrow, Ma'am added, “the part with the mules. They do not appreciate that stereotype.”
“Well, I'll apologize when I meet a thousand mules then.”
Ma'am scoffed, but to Jonathan, it had sounded as if she had been holding back a laugh.
“Point is…” Jonathan grunted as his harness tonked against a bump in the field. “Darn machines! Can't even do their jobs properly! Ah, what was I even saying? Oh, yes, the point… the point is that you only have one chance to start from the ground up.”
“This is your first day on the job, Jonathan. Ponies are not an unforgiving sort.”
“But I am,” he said with a frown. “I look myself in the mirror every morning, Ma'am. Never had trouble with it, even when I was starting to go blind at the end. I'd like to keep doing that, especially when I have eyes this big.”
Thoughtful silence followed. A breeze from nowhere shook the edges of the scythes. “Your first day, Jonathan…”
“If you allow yourself one step, what's the reason for refusing yourself a second? One step is one step. And you can go very far, one step at a time. Trust me, I know.”
Jonathan paused but for a second, massaging his aching neck before shaking his head and going back to pulling the reaper.
***
Scare Crows had come blathering around dinner time. Something about Matron Apron, a hot meal, and some other nonsense about taking a break. He'd done enough. It would count as a good first day in Scare Crows' book.
Jonathan had looked at the wheat still standing within the red flags' territory. “Nah. I'm almost there. I've got some more to do. Just send someone to bring me some water if you're that worried.”
Pepper Seed had come ten minutes later carrying a bowl of porridge and a flask of water.
“Thanks, son,” he had said tersely. “Soon as I'm done…”
The red stallion had merely stared, as if Jonathan had been a strange enigma wrapped in a particularly puzzling mystery. “The boss says you have to stop working when you can't see in front of your hooves. Doesn’t matter how far along you are then.”
And the rest… the rest he barely remembered. Just the same pull, the ache in his legs, all four of them. Filtering out Ma'am's comments throughout his time working. The dull curtain of his memories, failing. His cousin's words, most of them lost to time.
So on, so on, until…
“Old Bones!” rang a familiar, manly voice. “How long have you been out there?”
In the early morning light, a black stallion's fur glinted with an almost blue tint. And in a field of gold and pale orange, one could see him coming from afar. Enough time to at least straighten up a bit, and it was good that he had bothered with it. Scare Crows arrived galloping, eyes wide, slightly panicked and worried.
“Hmm, you're up early,” Jonathan grumbled. “Good. Early bird gets the worm. Lazy rabbits get eaten. Something like that.”
His legendary wit failed him. Thoughts floated in shambles inside his head, blurred by the fog of his fatigue. He attempted to massage his forehead, blink away some of the sleep, but he only manage to smack himself in the face with his damnable hooves. At least he was a bit more awake now.
“I thought Pepper Seed told you…” His jaw dropped as he realized his mistake. “You… It was pitch black all night!”
“I have my ways,” said the young old stallion, a lopsided grin on his face
“You…” And words failed him as he glanced around them both. “You did the rest of the western field too.”
“Did I?” The grin grew. “Well, my old eyes aren't what they used to be. Hard to tell the difference in the dark.”
“How…? You couldn't even adjust the tools yesterday. And it's all packed correctly too!”
In other circumstances – merely him being able to think and breath –, Jonathan would have launched into a long tirade about the virtues of bullheadedness. As it was, he settled for a much easier, “I said I would do it.”
Scare Crows flinched. For a split second, his eyes darted to the ground, to his hooves nervously pawing at the dirt road. Warring ideas raged beneath his impassive mask. “Yeah. You did. It's just…” He gestured helplessly to the piles of sorted wheat.
Jonathan would analyze that reaction later. Perhaps sometime when his legs weren't on the verge of giving out. “I'm a man of my word.”
Scare Crows' face blurred. Tilted. Then clear again, and beige fur rubbed at the young old stallion's eyes. His eyelids stuck together, heavy, stubborn, before he outstubborned them and gave a long hard look to his boss.
“You need sleep,” said Scare Crows, and it was a tone that brokered little arguments. The same kind that pissed off employers used toward employees on the verge of getting fired. Out of a canon. Into the sun.
“S'not sunrise yet.” Jonathan vaguely pointed toward the horizon, smiling. “I've got time for a nap. Then I'll be right as new for another day of hard work, boss.”
Without another word or thought, he trotted up to the broad side of the barn, found a patch of grass and dropped down. He was snoring before he had closed his eyes.