How did y– _…erp.

I was just tricked into admitting something, wasn’t I.

Well, okay, it was going to be part of the story anyway. Maybe I can tell everypony some things out of order, as long as all the details still get across.

So, at the wake, after the dance (where I still think I made a complete foal of myself, no matter what anypony else says), Ruby dragged me up to the study on the third floor. She said it was her father’s office, until he died; then her mom—who had never really felt a need to go inside before—took to spending a lot of time in there, apparently reading all the old, musty botany and oenology books on the looming shelves. I had a feeling she really was just spacing out like miss Pinkamina does.

Anyway, she went over to one of the cabinets and unlocked it, and inside were all these really old-looking wine bottles. She said they were her father’s personal store; not wine the family had made, but rather that he had collected from all over the world. (He was an enthusiast even before he met Berry.) She picked one, then dredged up a glass and a corkscrew from no place I could see.

By this time I was feeling kind of bad for her, and for the party, and for Berry… so, uh, we both got pretty drunk.

At least, I think it was “pretty drunk.” I have no scale for comparison: it was my first time.

My cheeks felt hot, sort of like I was blushing for no good reason; and I had very little compulsion to stay focused on anything (including Ruby’s voice.) I was sitting down… but felt like I should sit down. None of it was unpleasant, though. Just…

Then Ruby put her arm around my waist, and pulled me over so our faces were just a few inches apart. I could feel her breath on my nose. She was staring into my eyes.

“I…”, she began, then trailed off. She leaned even closer.

“I like you, Scootaloo. I… I want you to… to be my Lady.”

“I– uh. …what?”

“I want you to marry me. Come live here; be the new Lady Punch, Scootaloo. I know you’re lonely… alone. Like me. Let’s be together. You’re so… beautiful, I…”

“I… I thought you were just going to kiss me or something.”

“I can kiss you, if it will make you–”

“Uh. Can I, er, uh. …no. No, Ruby, I alrhu– …already have somepony I care about. I, I’m sorry…”

“What? You… who? I’m better than them, aren’t I? I can give you all the things you like, all the experiences… all the world, Scootaloo… I–”

“No.

…sorry, Ruby.”

…

Then she kissed me.

And then I pushed her away, stood up, and went back downstairs.

((OOC: Stay classy, Molestia.))

You know, that’s a funny thought. Miss Pinkamina gets death-threats… but one day I might get jumped in an alley and groomed.

Seriously, though, I don’t have enough hair to need brushing. I don’t even do it in the morning; I just come out of the shower and towel it off and it’s already like this. Miss Pinkamina, on the other hand…

Last week—when she decided to, er, just lay in bed all day—I figured that, if she wasn’t going to get up and get ready for the day, I was just going to get her ready myself. So I sat her up—she didn’t say anything, or even look at me, really; she just stared down at her lap, her eyes half-lidded, her expression blank…

_{It makes me sad to think of her like that, sorry…}

I got her to drink some water, fed her some bits of bread and cheese we had laying about, then started brushing her sorta-knotted morning hair back to its regular straightness.

Then she looked at me.

It wasn’t really a sad expression, but there was something… wistful, to it? She leaned over so that her shoulder was soft on my chest, and sort of… nuzzled me.

Then she called me “mommy.”

I just continued brushing, then pulled her to her feet and took her to the kitchen, and did a crossword puzzle with her. She was still kind of incoherent, but she seemed more, uh… light?

She says she doesn’t remember any of this, by the way.

You would expect it to be something weird and possibly meat-based, right?

Nope. Caramel apples.

I think I’m kind of a harsher critic of miss Pinkamina’s work with sweets than she’s used to; she seems to prefer it that way, though. I mean, she’s made a bunch of interesting and tasty things—lately, for example, she’s been using hooves to make jelly candy—but so far she hasn’t been able to make anything I like better than just a regular apple dipped in ordinary caramelized sugar. _{She says that anything I do like will probably end up banned as some sort of addictive drug, haha.}

Quite a bit of stuff happened. The basic thread of it all is that Ms. Cheerilee seems to have been replaced by an alien or something. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of stories to tell you guys! But I really need to just finish the story of what happened on the night of the wake first, _ehe.

…Starting tomorrow! Because right now I’m gonna go to bed. ‘night Tumblr!

We call it “sword-fighting.”

Almost anypony you can point to would get kinda disturbed if they hear that there’s a foal living out in the woods; especially the ones that think they live in some sort of utopia. They overreact; they demand that the foal get brought back into “civilization” so that they can take care of them.

But when I—er, the foal gets dragged back, they aren’t there. It turns out that making a public fuss about something, and actually caring about helping the ponies involved, are completely unrelated…

I did tell anypony who I thought wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. _{Though, you know, I wasn’t a very good judge of character a lot of the time…}

I told Sweetie Belle first, though, way before anypony else; mostly out of necessity. She kept her word the whole time; I even had to tell her it was okay to talk with Applebloom about it, even after I told Applebloom myself and she proved she had obviously heard it from me.

I also, eventually, told Rainbow Dash… and she—also eventually—did do something about it. She isn’t the kind to make a fuss, I guess. _{(Well, out of worry, at least…)}

Miss Pinkamina, on the other hoof, wouldn’t do anything I didn’t ask her to do. After everything that happened with Rainbow Dash, I think I appreciate her… gentleness, right now. Even if it is also kinda frustrating.

Actually… my hair kind of flattened out, too. Nothing I did on purpose… I think it might just be that our house is kind of damp inside, what with the black-out (pink-out?) curtains, and running hot water all the time when we’re dismembering pony corpses. It puffs back up if I stay outside for long enough, but in a weird sort of frizzy way.

I sort of like it. It kind of makes me feel more… mature?

So, I guess you all saw this a while ago, but Miss Pinkamina officially gave up on her blog. It kind of made me forget about mine for a while as well, sorry.

I mean, she was really bad for a while; she didn’t even get out of bed for a few days… I felt like it was much more important to spend time with her and try to cheer her up, rather than entertaining you guys. Sorry if you missed me, but, well, I don’t think you’re all here to read about somepony who isn’t in love with a wonderful—if sometimes a little melancholy—pink earth-pony. _{(I made her macaroni so many times, Tumblr. I think she finally started cooking again herself just because she was so sick of it. That’s what she gets for not teaching me how to make anything more interesting myself, though…)}

I’ll guess I’ll leave the rest for you all to tease out with questions (I know you have more fun that way.) But I just want you to know that she’s okay now, even if she doesn’t want to talk to Tumblr anymore. She’s back to having fun.

She’s trying to do things on a schedule now, she said. Mondays and Fridays this time.

I don’t know if she’s really going to stick to it, though; when she gets like this, she makes all sorts of things, maps and plans and timelines and charts and stuff. But she never ends up using any of them. She just forgets about all of it the next time she loses her motivation.

I really do hope she does this time. You don’t know how much more, uh, centered she acts when she’s getting all those regular likes and comments from all of you. It makes her feel like she’s connected to the world, I think.

(Thanks for helping her, Tumblr.)

I said. Don’t

talk

about

it.

…

…I don’t think life is over. That other life… the one that I… _before… is over. But now I have a new one—and this life is good.

Don’t tell me what I can’t do.