How embarrassing, to wake up in the morning with your muzzle on your desk. My head is killing me, there’s drool on my most recent sheet, and my skin feels hotter than sunbathing in a wool sweater. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea to go so far for my first night of drinking.

I don’t really know what I have to say about the picnic…

Well, first off I guess I went to the wrong rendezvous. I had shown up to our group’s grotto as I had expected our gather to take place there. As it happened, however, we were meeting at the mid-summer Theater Revival. It’s not mid-summer anymore; we barely got to visit the last performance of the season.

Anyhow, I wound up waiting for a while at the grotto, ponies came and went like the scent of flowers on the breeze. I had worn my favorite hat and taken very little along with me besides some money, some tissues, a novel (just in case), and my ID (for the bar). I hadn’t known I would need ID when I left my apartment, but I like to keep it with me.

As for the park: Being left to myself always led to some kind of mental altercation. I wondered where my friends were, among the fact of my predicament between stallions. I wondered if I should have dressed up more, or left my hat behind. I thought about how well I would sing, what I would sing, how ponies would react… And eventually remembered the wager between Pearl, Noguki, and myself. I smiled to myself, though at the time I pretended it was Aura. It didn’t feel like Aura, but I was having so much trouble hearing him and remembering what he actually sounded like.

I waited nearly half an hour I suppose before I got too frustrated with my friends. I obviously thought I had messed something up, but partly blamed them for leaving me out of important information when the event they were hosting was clearly for my benefit—

And when that thought crossed me was when I felt the anvil land on my shoulders.

“Amazing to see you here,” I heard the some-familiar voice from far away. I turned to look at the source, to be disarmed by a sandy pegasus with a cloud-white mane. “After what I did…”

“I could say the same,” I proclaimed to the sexual predator, whose name had escaped me. I briefly considered mentioning that I had been here frequently with friends; it was a good mid-way between our apartments. I thought better of revealing it, though, in case he thought to use the information against me somehow.

“I have no choice, actually,” he admitted. “After being released from custody, I was fired from my job and then evicted. I’ve been living here.” I watched cautiously from the corner of my eye, he gestured to a spit of shrubbery arranged to brace a tarp over a moderately-sized wool blanket, and various boxes. I had to look away… How long had he lived here? Did he already know I visited friends here? “I’m not going to try anything…”

When he said that I realized I was incredibly tense. I didn’t relax though. I continued to watch him from the corner of my eye. I didn’t want to be able to read his expressions.

I wanted to say something. I had to. Wasn’t it my fault his life was like this? That can’t be possible, even remotely. Why did I feel like it was? No! He attacked me! He has to face the consequences. Even though he softened himself amidst the assault, and turned himself in to the authorities… Was this Aura talking? Justifying?

“I don’t want to tell you to relax,” the pegasus said, “but I don’t want you to mourn for me, or anything. I got myself into this mess.”

“No, you didn’t…” I said without really thinking, which is rare! It took a second for the rationale to catch up, and it might have been Aura. “It wasn’t you, it wasn’t me. It was your father.” I turned my body toward him some more, not entirely though. “I don’t want you to get angry at me for shit-talking your dad again though. I just have to say it, and I won’t be afraid to either. You were raised in a torturous setting, under… harmful jurisdiction. I can’t begin to guess what kind of things you were taught. All I can say for sure is that a lot of it was bad. But you still have the common sense to know what’s really bad.”

My body is at a profile from his perspective, he’s sitting facing me directly. As I speak freely his emotions change rapidly between hurt, defensive, and terrified. I expect him to react, in some way. In any way at all. He doesn’t though. “You’re right.”

“So tell me,” I command. “What’s right?” I pause, thinking of leaving it rhetorical. Then, “Rape, and punishment? Justice served scripturally, and mindful innocents left to weep? Or… Something else?” I swear I had something meaningful coming from this. “Something more, simply because it’s what you feel is right, and not what some… some monster destructively embedded into your subconscious?”

“Please stop…” he pleads. “He was my father…” He chokes, forcing himself to believe that his obedience is all that matters.

“He was your sire…” I trail off, starting to choke up with empathy.

The wind separates our silence, counting the number of breaths the world takes as we ponder our next words. “In what ways can I change? Change, what he’s made me into?”

I watch a tear streak through the dirt on his cheek. “I don’t know. I believe you already know right and wrong, as much as anypony can. Use that, somehow. I don’t know.” I laugh at myself.

From the void comes the reminder of the Theater Revival, and I scold myself for losing the information so easily. I don’t want to leave Lavan behind like this though. His name had finally returned to me, and I wanted to use that to start to make up for… for what happened to him.

“Will I find you here?” I ask.

He grins painfully. “I’ll be tending the flowers.” I remember his name – Lavandula – which briefly sounds familiar to something from some time ago. How long ago?

With that, I leave him. The wish remains open for now, to be fulfilled once I clean up my own fucked-up life. However different our problems may be, I’ve come too far to start ignoring myself now. At least, that’s what Pearl would have me believe.