Original Description:
Moony had taken her shower, Felix had had his snack …and then there’d been no delaying it any longer. Moony didn’t actually have many seats, so he’d taken her desk chair while she sat on the stairs leading up to her loft bed.
Since coming out of the shower and him insisting they’d sit down, she’d gained a small confused smile on her face. He was fairly certain she thought it wasnät as serious as he’d made it out to be.
That smile gradually disappeared as he told her what had happened.
It had been hard to start, so hard to find the words. But between stammers, restarts and mixing up the order of things, he somehow managed to get the story Discord had told him across.
He’d begun with how Discord created him; she already knew a little of it, but he’d retold it to get his thoughts in order. When he’d gotten to be part that described how Discord had not only used the material of his moms, but of himself as well when making Felix, she’d gasped, and made a move to rise to hug him. Her eyes were sad, kind and a bit pitying and he hated that he had to tell her to sit down again, that that was just the foreword to the actual thing he had to tell her.
As her eyes grew wider and her hooves flew to her mouth, he told her about how his chaos magic would have most likely killed him as soon as he hatched. About how Discord couldn’t find any solution to help him direct it, until he realised that unicorn horns were made just for that purpose. And how…
“…that was apparently right after you and Princess Flurry were taken, and they’d just gotten you back. And they thought– they asked if he could help look– if he could find your- your…”
The words got stuck in his throat, and he couldn’t get them out no matter how he tried. So he just reached up, and with one claw, grabbed a hold of the horn on his forehead. It was a bit rough to the touch; he never bothered to polish it like a lot of unicorns do. It was familiar in its weight on his forehead, steady and strong where it attached to his skull.
“…He found it.” Felix finally finished in a whisper.
The apartment was silent. Outside the window, far below them, he could hear hooves running down the street. Somewhere far away music was playing, and somewhere else ponies were shouting at each other. Even farther away, gulls were wailing and a ship sounded their foghorn.
Moonstone got up, and walked out the door. Her hoofsteps faded as she walked down the corridor.
Felix sat still, not knowing what to do except waiting for her to come back.
He’d thought he’d be there a while, but just a few minutes later, she returned. Opening the door, and trudging in to the apartment carrying a box tied with a string.
She plopped it down on a kitchen counter, ripped the string off and opened the box to reveal… white cubes.
“Juniper Tonic did tell me that he had a stock and to just say the word if I wanted to buy some after the corner store had closed,” She spoke, eerily casual. “Just never thought I’d actually take him up on that.”
Felix had never tried salt licks -nor coffee, tobacco or alcohol for that matter- due to his metabolism, but he knew why so many ponies liked them; ponies cannot really eat gems, but most things with a crystalline structure could be made to store magical energy. The only difference was how much they could hold, with diamonds being at the top of the list. So while it didn’t give nearly as much of an energy boost as a gem would give a dragon or diamond dog, a cube of charged salt-crystals was an easy way to buy yourself a few hours of energy rush.
It also happened that ponies weren’t made for absorbing energy that way, so if you ate too many, the salt combined with the energy rush made you lightheaded and tipsy… And very hung over the next day.
He understood that they were very, very common among students.
Now Moony grabbed two and crunched them up, one after another. She paused, shivered, and twirled around. Strands of her stood up in every direction and her eyes were wide and wild.
“Okay!”, she said, and walked over to sit on the stairs again. “Okay. Okay okay ok-ay…” She shuffled a bit up the stairs so she could shove her head into the covers of her bed, which laid in a messy pile at the end of it. “Buck.”
And that was all she seemed to have to say on the subject. She just laid there, splayed out halfway up the stairs with her face buried in a pile of blankets.
Felix couldn’t stay quiet any longer though. “I’m sorry,” he said. Except it sounded more like a sob, to his own surprise. He hadn’t realised he’d been starting to cry.
Neither had Moony apparently, because her head rose to stare at him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, grabbing his tail to wring it in the need to move. “I’m sorry that I have– that I took–”
“But…” Moony croaked. She swallowed and tried again. “But you didn’t do anything?” She sounded so confused. “Why are you sorry?”
He just sobbed in response.
Moony slid down the stairs and walked up to him. “Please stop crying,” she tried. “It wasn’t your fault.”
When that predictably didn’t work, she hesitantly reached around to hug him. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything. It’s just…”
He hugged her back as she started to sniff too.
“Please don’t be sad.” she said, helplessly into his mane. “This …this wasn’t our fault, neither of us.”
“I’m sorry,” he finally squeaked. “I know, I know that. I just… I was so afraid I’d lose you!”
“You won’t,” she said, forcefully. “You’re my best friend, and nothing will stop that.”
Felix hugged her tighter, as they both tried to fit on a desk chair made for one. It was cramped, but neither really could say they minded.