It was a long hike from Canterlot. About two hours by train, I said, but there was no way they’d train around the countryside. That’s the whole reason they walked, anyway. They wanted to be free, out in the open air, drifting without a care in the world, working and resting where they pleased. “Life roaming,” they called it.

What the hell does that mean anyway? Why didn’t they just call it ‘backpacking around Equestria’ or something far less goofy?

I think Caramel had intended it to really mean something. But then again, so had Pilsner, and that explains why they stopped at so many inns and taverns along the way. You know, to 'enhance the experience of travel'.

That was just Pilser code for lot of fillies and cheap booze. Pretty standard guy stuff.

I should warn you first about Pilsner. You know the kind of stallion that says dumb shit, but never backs it up? Well, that was Pilsner. The big, tall, jockish draft stallion. Hoofball player, blah blah blah, drove the ladies crazy. Or so he said. He was a brewer’s son, if the name didn’t tip you off already, and usually I wouldn’t have anything to do with guys like him...They all tend to be the same, if you know what I mean.

But Pilsner was the exception to the rule (aren't the most conspicuous ones always?). He might look like a jerk, and he might act like a jerk, but at his heart, he's actually quite a nice guy. Pretty honest assessment. And despite what I just said about him being a big mouthed idiot, he never really means what he says, he just doesn't think. I recall being chased out of a couple of bars because he 'accidently' offended someone as big as he was. Usually such catastrophes would involve a repair bill, and they started with what we called, ‘I oncses’.

That was our name for them. All four of us would be there, plus myself on the odd occasion to make five. Pilsner would be sitting at the counter, taking a sip of beer, and he’d turn to us and start a story by saying ‘I once’.

He loved a good story as much as the next pony, and his heart was in the right place. He loved the laughs they got, so I guess he was just an entertaining kind of stallion. Except sometimes, somepony listening would call him out on it. Maybe the story had something to do with drinking, or mares (Those were Pilsner’s usual topics of conversation), and that was usually when the trouble started. Not that he wasn't telling the truth, of course! Pilsner would never lie. He'd just get hammered, and somepony would get a little upset at one of his offensive jokes, or they'd tell him to shut up.

And then he'd respond in classical Pilsner fashion... By telling them to buck off. And THEN we’d all have to drag him and the stranger apart while Freddy tried to smooth things over. So you get the picture. A nice stallion who liked a good story, but he had a big mouth. And he was pretty stupid sometimes.

Alright, most of the time.

...

Alright, all the time. And he was an an absolute horror for women. Oh, and he even worse when he was drunk.

But really, at his heart, he's a nice stallion.

Nice-ish.

All that said, I wish you'd been here to listen what he told me the other day. He and I shared a house in Canterlot at that stage, and the day I heard it was the day he was due to return home after about four or five months abroad. I'd received a string of intermittent letters from Freddie, so I was able to keep track of their whereabouts.

The story starts when I was out on the veranda one day watering the pot plants. It'd been a crushingly hot summer, and they needed the drink. I was just about to go back inside when Pilsner himself strolls through the garden gate, brown saddlebags slung around his back, beaming at me.

“Well, if it isn’t the love of my life!” He said to nopony in particular. I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t start with the sweet talk,” I said. We hugged hello instead, and I couldn’t help but take a deep whiff of his mane.

Now, if you've ever been crushed by a big brother hug, then you know how close I got to him. And he reeked. He probably hadn't showered in a day or two. Combined with the usual Pilsner mix of cologne, sweaty and musk... It smells like, like...

Oh goddesses. I need to go and vomit now.

“Ew! Get off me, you’re revolting,” I gagged, wriggling away. He released me, and waggled his eyebrows.  

“All manliness, angel.”

“Don’t,” I growled warningly. His ears drooped a little. I guess he could see I wasn’t really in the mood for playing around. Luckily for me, he wasn’t that predacious. Not as much as you'd expect a guy like him to be, anyway.

“Oh, alright,” he said, shaking some dust out of his amber brown mane. “But you are never gonna believe me when I tell you what we got up to.”

“Uh huh,” I said, rolling my eyes. "Tell me after a shower." Pilsner, Clover, Caramel and Freddy. Honestly, between those four, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of stuff they’d been up to, or what they’d done. Or, I thought with a shudder, who they’d done.

He gave me a look of mock hurt at my indifference, and began to try and push by me.

“All right,” he said with a shrug. “Well, I guess if that’s your attitude, I guess I can’t tell you about it then.”

“Tell me what?” I said, leaning a little in front of him to cut him off.

“The news.”

“News?”

“Oh yeah.” At this, he paused, sitting back onto his flank and drawing his forehooves in a large, imaginary arc above his head. “The big... news.”

He leaned forward again, and tried to walk past me once more. I had to fight to not to let the smell of goddess knows

what bother me as his tail whipped me in the nose, but I bit onto it, yanking him back.

“News? What news?”

“Sorry,” Pilsner replied, waving a forehoof back at me as I tugged gamely on his tail. “Can’t tell you. Gotta shower.”

“What?” I insisted. “Come on, tell me!”

I hate having secrets kept from me. He knew it, of course, and looked back at me with a sly grin. I should have known better. I spat out his tail and surveyed him with disgust.

“Ugh, some filly?”

“No, no, no,” he said with an eager shake of his brown head, reading my features. “It’s about Caramel…” He glanced around the garden and veranda furtively, as though he thought someone might hear him.

Hmm, I remember thinking at the time. That was quite odd. Usually, Pilsner’s stories began with himself, or on the odd occasion Clover or Freddy. Caramel wasn’t a good starting point.

Caramel was pretty much the opposite of Pilsner. He was that sweet and kind of shy colt that most mares would be into if they gave him a chance. I don’t know how he knew Pilsner, but they sort of looked alike, and they treated each other like brothers, though more than often Caramel was on the receiving end of his jokes. Caramel was a little smaller than Pilsner – just a regular earth pony, and he had a chocolate brown mane, a little darker then his friend. I'd find him cute if he was a bit more open, but as it was we were just friends. I think he preferred it that way.

To complete the image of him, he was never really into the whole womanising thing like Pilsner was. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He liked fillies a lot, and he used to talk a little bit about how he went out with a filly. Though maybe that was just the impression I got from him when he was hanging around the other guys. Y'know how male bravado can be sometimes. Whenever he and I were alone in the house, he was a lot calmer and... I dunno, nerdier? Is that even a word?

Not that that's a bad thing. I liked him better when he wasn't trying to emulate Pilsner.

I guess he's just one of those guys who's more himself one to one. Certainly when a lot of ponies were around - say during a house party or something - he didn’t speak a lot. Not that that made him weird, though. Usually it was Pilsner or Clover doing all the talking for him, and he just sat and drank it in, occasionally adding a quiet piece to the conversation. He liked to listen, he told me, and judging by the way his rooms were packed with books, he liked to read.

Sometimes, I’d walk into his room to ask for something (usually money to buy food) and he’d look up, inked quill in hoof, startled by my appearance. I never knew what it was he was writing. He never let me look, really. I thought it might have been a diary at one point, but he was defensive about it. In the end, I gave up trying to see what it was. I ended up just assuming it was one, just because the very act of writing your thoughts down was a pretty Caramel-esque thing to do.

But unlike Pilsner, who you had to strap onto an operating table to make him focus, Caramel was serious all the time. Maybe it was just the impression that those oddly blue eyes of his gave. Oh sure, he smiled and liked jokes, but he wasn’t even in the same league as Pilsner. I guess that’s why I called him ‘sweet’ before. Because Pilsner is disgusting.

The stallion in question had turned to face me.

“He won’t be back from Ponyville for a little. And, come to think of it, neither will Freddy or Lucky.”

“Clover,” I corrected him.

“You know he has two names, right?”

“No, he just has the one name, and it’s Cloooooooooveeeeeeer.”

“That’s just what the fillies call him. Colts call him Lucky.”

“Fair enough,” I replied indifferently. It took me a second to realise the innuendo. “Double ew. You’re a bit too randy today.”

“Oh!” Pilsner said, surprised. “No, that’s not what I meant, but that is pretty funny.” He grinned happily to himself, and I had no doubt that he'd be repeating it to Lucky later.

Clover (or Lucky, if you are so inclined) was an old friend of Caramel’s and Pilsner’s. Come to think of it, he might be the answer to the question of how those two met. Clover had gone to school with Caramel, and all four of them had ended up attending the same university. He was keen and eager, a slender bluish grey stallion, with a slick of a mane so dusky black that you’d wonder if somepony had dropped a pot of paint on his head. He held the same height as Caramel, but his frame was more filled out than his lightweight friend. He was a good deal bolder, too, and he loved jokes and games. He was studying to be a businesspony, and he knew a lot about finance and the stock market too, though we often cracked that he’d lose it all before he was thirty.

“Yeah? Why’s that?” he would ask, as he laid down another round of cards on the table.

Now, I’m not saying Clover had a gambling problem. Everypony has their vices. Mine happens to be loud music and strobe lights. I crave the clubs like he craves a good roll of the dice every now and again. He said it wasn’t a problem because he never lost, and that was true enough. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, he turned out to have an extraordinary string of good fortune.

It must have been some weird luck though, because it wasn’t like he was just lucky all the time. Oh, no way. The guy was absolutely and almost absurdly out of luck sometimes, so much so that you’d wonder if his nickname wasn’t ironic. He would always seem to bounce back after a dip though, and that’s why I liked him a lot. His attitude was optimistic without fail. even when things looked beyond bleak, he'd always be the one with a smile on his face. I often wondered which came first... Was his good luck caused by his happy go clover attitude? Some ponies say you’re supposed to make your own luck, so maybe that was true.

At any rate, it wasn’t a problem for me. Sometimes he bought cute friends that loved my music around (Yes!). Usually that'd been when he’d been out trawling for tail with Pilsner and hadn’t found anything. Except for other stallions.

“What’s our friend with two names doing anyway?” I asked.

“Uhhh…” Pilsner tapped his chin thoughtfully. “He definitely told me he’d be along a bit later. Helping Caramel with something.”

"What about Freddie?"

"He's doing... Freddie stuff."

I actually knew exactly what that “Freddie stuff” would be. But all the same, I didn’t like the way he said it so sarcastically.

“You got something against musicians?” I said testily.

“Nah,” Pilsner replied, his face instantly cracking into a winning smile.

Freddie, like me, was a graduate of the Canterlot Musical Academy. That's the place up near the palace. Well, technically I should rephrase that. I didn’t graduate there. Instead, I transferred to… Err… A full time job. I started working the club circuit when my first few remixes went alright, and I really hadn’t ever bothered to go back and finish my degree in Music Business. To be honest, it wasn’t really the kind of place for me anyway.

It was the kind of place for him, though. Galas, balls, concerts and opera, and a musical academy for the best and the brightest. That was the stuff ‘Frederic Horseshoepin’ was into. He was the refined soul of us all. I guess if you’d never met him, you’d say he had rich taste, because he loved nearly everything sophisticated and social. He played the piano for an Orchestra, and was pretty wealthy, I think.

But if he was, why he lived with us of all Ponies was beyond me. He certainly didn't find us receptive to his subdued, intelligent lifestyle (except for Caramel), and he could have afforded to live on his own if he wanted to. I guess the social part of him kept him around, and he liked us regardless of our differences.

He spent about as much time as I did being revolted by Pilsner, though his attitude was more one of 'meh' than tired disgust. Usually, he'd just go and play the piano in his room whenever stuff annoyed him. I enjoyed listening to that. I liked his violin practice too, and secretly, I thought he was amazingly dedicated.

He'd spend hours and hours coaxing a soft, sweet melody out of his music, and it was... really lovely. The soothing sounds of his bow on the strings of his Stradivarius, or the rolling notes of the piano. On a hot day like today, it would just reverberate around the house, penetrating that awful heat with the coolness of a gentle breeze. Even Pilsner couldn't help but shrug and say it was nice, and from him that was like winning a medal from the Princess. Doubly so when it came to the fine arts.

But unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual. Whenever I played my music, Freddie would bang on my door and yell rude things at me. Pfft. So what if it was three o'clock in the morning? I'm nocturnal. It's a requirement of my job. He should know that. Bass up to eleven

But yeah, he and I shared a few mutual friends – namely Octavia, and it was through her that I met him.

You wouldn’t imagine that a guy like that would be trolling bars for tail, but there you go. She was sitting at the bar with him, giggling and blushing while he chatted her up, the two of them sipping clear spirits. He'd caught her eye, and bought her a martini.

Grrrr. I had no idea who he thought he was, or how he knew her favorite drink. I just kinda sat on her other side looking annoyed, every single awfully cheesy line causing me to grind my teeth a little. His voice was what really irritated me at the time – he sounded like a total snob, and I thought he was putting it on for Octavia. She lurrrrves that kind of stupid accent. I called him out on it once. Turns out he was just from Hoofington, and 'that’s how they all sound there', or so he told me dryly. Yeah, real smooth, Scratch.

Maybe he had her picked as a hopeless romantic. He certainly carries a few hearts around with him, though I don’t think he pays too much attention to the girls, which is weird. I fantasized about him being a playboy millionaire once. Instead, he’s more of an eccentric genius. He gives off the impression of being well manicured and orderly, but I’ve looked around his room before. There’s music sheets and half written sonatas and all sorts of notebooks EVERYWHERE.

'A perfect harmony of chaos,' he calls it. I call it crazy. Octy thinks he's divine. Her words, not mine.

I think he just loves the attention, because he’s not a huge womaniser like Pilsner is. One’s enough for him. In fact, by the time he’s done, he’ll usually have a filly wrapped around his hoof, plus a cute friend or two that's hanging around. That's how I met Pilsner. I was the cute friend. He hadn't exactly succeeded in picking me up. I was just sitting there and feeling very cranky that my night out had been ruined by some greaseball with a cravat. But all of a sudden, this big, dumb (yet sorta hunky) jock walks up to me and asks me how my night’s going.

You can imagine what I was like. Oh, yes, thank you, Cadence. An idiot who thinks he's your gift to mares,that’s exactly what I wanted. Even with my glasses on and me looking away every five seconds, he can’t even tell that I don’t want to talk to him. That doesn't deter him, of course, so he just makes clever small talk for half an hour, drawing me into the conversation. Sneaky git.

I soon found out he wasn’t drunk(!) and that he knew Freddie quite well. He even introduced me to his friend Caramel. I was surprised. Like I said before, who would have thought Cara and a guy like Pilsner could have been friends?

Turns out he was actually pretty nice as well. Or, so I was led to believe at the time. Knowing him much better now, I can testify that he’s pretty much the lazy slob you're picturing, albeit slightly less stupid, and a little bit funnier.

I guess that’s what makes Caramel so different to the rest of them. He’s not any kind of rogue, devil, jock, suave bastard, slob or smooth operator. In fact, outside of the odd, redfaced blush with some drunken thing hanging off his neck, I’ve never even seen him with a filly before. Like Clover, he was from a bit to the south of Canterlot. It wasn't as far south as Ponyville, but it was certainly down that way. You could hear it a little in the way he talked wasn’t an overdone drawl, but it was definitely a Southerner’s accent. Come to think of it, maybe that's why he's so quiet.

Anypony ever noticed that country stallions don't talk much?

Clover was a city boy, and had been for a long time, but Caramel had attended boarding school, and loved the land more than any town. I think it might have been his idea to travel down to Ponyville, though it was definitely Pilsner’s idea to make a booze cruise out of it.

“So, come on, tell me about it," I said, forcing my thoughts back to the here and now. Caramel’s in trouble?”

“Well, not really.”

“Sooooo… what is it?”

Pilsner looked doubtful.

“Alright, I'll tell you," he said. "But you’re gonna wanna take a seat. This is a long one.”

I pushed the still half full watering can off into the garden, and levitated a handful of deckchairs over to us, snapping them open and taking a seat on one. Pilsner sighed happily as the massive saddlebags slid off him, landing on the decking with a loud thud.

“What exactly do you have in there?” I said.

“Oh, just my essentials,” Pilsner said dismissively. I used my horn to flip open the top of the satchel, and I upon seeing the bag’s contents, looked at him dumbly.

“Weights?”

“For lifting, of course," he replied, apparently unbothered by their huge weight in his pack. "And, fruit,” he added, leaning his neck into the other bag and withdrawing a rosy looking apple. “Here, catch.”

He tossed it to me, and I caught it halfway with my horn. I slowly levitated it before my eyes, turning it this way and that, inspecting for any obvious filth. Pilsner sighed as he looked at me.

“Am I really that dirty?” He said.

Instead of answering, I simply looked over at the watering can. Immediately it sprang to life, shooting above his head and turning upside down, and dumped the remainder of its icy cold contents onto him. He didn't even flinch, but the smile fell from his face, and he snorted unhappily.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he said, parting his now drenched auburn mane with both forehooves. I smiled at him.

"You needed to cool off, anyway," I replied, taking a bite of the shiny red apple.

I'm sorry for going off on another tangent, but I'm just gonna rant for a second. Man that was a good apple. It was crisp and sweet, almost tangy, and my eyes almost watered from behind my glasses as the flavour hit my tongue. It wasn't overpoweringly sour or bitter, and the perfect green white flesh of the fruit was beautifully ripe and juicy, just enough to make your cheeks sting a little bit in protest, but not enough to make it intolerable. It was like sex in your mouth.

...Except... Not literally. Ew. You're gross for even thinking about that.

“Oh wow,” I said, losing track of the fact that I was being impressed by fruit. Pilsner did not seem to mind my strangeness, though, and he took an apple for himself, slumping down onto the other deckchair.

“They’re good, aren’t they?” He said, taking a bite.

“Mmmf,” I mumbled back in agreement. I swallowed, and tried again. “So what’s wrong with Cara?”

“Oh, right!” Pilsner said. “The story.”

He leaned forward, an eager look in his eyes. That was a very familiar pose, but he lacked the beer in his hoof that so often preceded such tales.

The sun beat down from beyond the veranda's shade, and I settled in to hear his story.