Shyriath

Flickerlight finally fished a green candle from her bag and presented it to Miss Fortune. "Do let me know if you like it," she said, a bit nervously. As preparations for the game got underway, she gave the pack of cards a wary look. She'd never really played any card games; the kind of indoor games she'd been raised on were board games, like fidchell, brandub, or checkers, or more physical things like quoits or darts. "I'm not sure I'd do well in a game like that. Maybe I ought to just, er, provide moral support from the sides here."

"Well..." Flickerlight rummaged around in her saddlebag, and brought out a dark green candle. "I was working on this one last night. 'Tis pine-scented, nothing special."

I'm prone to nostalgia about childhood, so with me it tends to be more a steady trickle than a blast. But in fact, I did have one fairly recently, and it was triggered by the recent movie The Muppets. Pardon the length. (Warning: I'll try to avoid spoilers, but there may be a few mild ones.) Although technically the Muppet Show, and the original Muppet Movie, were before my time, I nonetheless sort of grew up on them. There were always reruns of the show on, and my dad was a fan so we had the movie on VHS (we still have the tape, in fact), so I watched them a lot. And although the show was always funny, The Muppet Movie, in particular, always got to me. Partly that was because of how it was presented as happening in the real world, just with Muppets added in, but it was also the simple-but-appealing theme: a bunch of friends getting to where they wanted to go by relying on each other. And everyone singing "The Rainbow Connection" at the end, all together, that put the finishing touch on it. (If anypony isn't moved by it, then for the life of me I can't see how.) So, fast forward twenty years. For a large chunk of that intervening time, especially since late middle school or so, I'd become pretty jaded. A geek, not many friends, then exposure to the Interwebs and all the stuff on it that can cause a person to become jaded. I still have fond memories of the Muppets, in a distant, sad sort of way, but they're pretty firmly in the realm of "stuff from my stupid innocent days". But then, just in the last year or so, I become a brony, and I get somewhat less jaded than I was. Although MLP:FiM isn't the Muppets, it opens some of the same old doors in my head. Where at some point I might've been excessively cynical about friendship and happiness and other such innocent things, it's not so much the case anymore. So I hear about The Muppets, and although I have a suspicion that it's going to be a pale reflection of the original, I decide I want to go see it. ...Well, all I can say is, the people who made the movie knew what they were doing. It's not exactly the same as the old Muppets, but pretty close. And it seemed specifically designed to pull in people who were of the age to have Muppet-nostalgia, particularly about the first movie, to which it's basically a long-delayed sequel. And it touched on the same old themes as the first movie, with a sort of "whatever happened to when people cared about this kind of stuff?" overtone to it. I found myself wondering where all the innocence had gone... or, I suppose that, for a little while, I stopped feeling like a 29-year-old and felt more like a nine-year old who'd had to go through the trauma of seeing humanity's dark side for twenty years. And then... yes, right near the end, they start singing "The Rainbow Connection". And the audience inside the movie joined in. And then there were a few people in the REAL audience who joined in, too. I didn't, but only because I pretty much started bawling my eyes out at that point. ...so yeah.

Even without details, I think I can imagine what the prank was like, if it was anything like the one I was on the receiving end of back in high school. I like most holidays, but not Valentine's Day. It tends to be my day of bitter resentment.

I've been Shyriath for a long time now... maybe fifteen years or so. It was the name of an OC of mine, a dragon on a fantasy RPing board. (I don't think I consciously had Pernese dragon names in mind when I picked it, but I had read a few of the Pern books by that time, so probably that influenced the decision.) With very, very rare exceptions, I've used that name ever since, and in the unlikely event that someone called me by that name offline I would certainly respond to it (assuming they pronounced it the way I do: SHEE-ree-ath, not SHY-ree-ath). I developed a ponysona to go with the name, so that I have a pony-related self-image in Canterlot IRC and so on, but he's not really an OC: he's just me-as-a-pony, more or less. He wouldn't make a good character; he's pretty boring.

Flickerlight's gaze fell on Blaze Bright's flame. Another pony with fire magic? Now that was a different matter. She smiled. "Since you offer... that'd be lovely, thank you." She added, "I hardly ever meet anypony else with a gift for fire. It seems like you've got a better knack for making it than I do, really. Doing that with magic takes a lot out of me; that's why I keep my igniter around. But controlling it, that I'm good at. I was even a firefighter for a little while, before... well, before I was doing this..." Flickerlight trailed off awkwardly. Her firefighting days weren't something she was all that keen on getting into. "And, er, what is it that you do?" she asked.

"Yes, that's what you're smelling," Pizza Peel babbled happily. "A prince among foods, pizza. And my specialty. Ah, forgive me, Mr. Monty! I forget to introduce myself! My name is Pizza Peel, good to meet you." He picked up his pizza peel again. Pushing it into the oven, he carefully slid it underneath one of the cooked pizzas and removed it. Setting it down on his counter, he said, "And this, sir, is pizza! On the bottom is a crust, sort of like a flatbread. You top it with olive oil, tomato sauce, cheese, a bit of basil, and you have a basic pizza. The idea is easy, yes? But it is an art, making one properly." The stallion gave a disarming grin. "And still more of an art, making many of them properly, all at once. Would you like some? I'll tell you what; if you like, you can have a little slice to try it." He hesitated, and then added, "On the house!" Pizza Peel was still learning the art of the sale, but spending time with his cousins in Manehattan had taught him much. And one of the things he'd learned was that it rarely hurt to invest a bit in generosity toward customers.

Flickerlight blinked, and swiveled her orange eyes away from the lamp to focus on Blaze Bright again. Although in general she enjoyed the efforts of others to get to know her, usually they tried an indirect enough approach to let her get to know them first, and that was how she preferred it. Having more friends would be nice, but there was such a thing as going about it properly... or, at least, not so directly. At any rate... "Despite the dancing," she said carefully, "I am working at the moment, and I have to get the rest of the lamps on my beat lit before it gets too dark. I don't mind talking as I go, but I shouldn't really be stopping for hot chocolate."

"Your dancing is beautiful, and at odds with such melancholy in those pretty eyes of yours." "Er... thank you." Flickerlight found herself flattered. She hadn't danced in public since... well, since she'd been too young to care. Any positive reaction had to be counted as a win. It just felt a bit odd for someone to comment about it, especially in that fashion. She attempted to cover her discomfiture with work. She unslung the lighting pole from her back again, and levitated her igniter from her saddlebags to light the wick on one of its ends. "Anyway," she said, "'melancholy' is a bit strong of a word. It was just... a difficult moment. The season's had more solitude than I like, is all." A red-orange aura formed around the pole as she held it up for inspection; a little flame flickered on the wick. Flickerlight smiled, and levitated the pole upward to light the nearest streetlamp. Nothing like a bit of fire to make things seem brighter.

Flickerlight nodded cheerfully. "Thank you, I think I will." She levitated her lighting pole, slung it across her back, and strolled out the door.

"No doubt I'll see a few familiar faces on the way back to the terrace. I'll tell them to run." She grinned, and managed to fit the box into one of her saddlebags. Turning for the door, she added, "Incidentally, if you're ever up for a chat, I'm usually working my way down this street around..." Flickerlight hesitated. She worked by daylight levels, not by time. "Well, ten minutes till sundown. On clear days."

Flickerlight blinked. Four for the price of three? "Oh. Thank you. You really didn't have to... well, thank you." Smiling, she levitated the appropriate coins from her saddlebag onto the counter. Feeling that one good turn deserved another, she added, "I'll be sure to tell other ponies about this place."

The stallion was busy at his oven, holding in his mouth one of the wooden paddles that was his namesake. "Mmmf? Nnn mbmmm enght- ugh." Pizza Peel finished arranging the pizzas, and then sat the peel down on the counter. "Pfui. Ah, there we are." He trotted out from behind the counter with an enormous grin on his face. "Hello! Come in, come in, friend! Welcome to Prancing Street Pizzeria! Just having a look? Or maybe you would like a pizza, yes? I have a few baking now, just plain cheese, but if you were wanting one with toppings I can make another, just a few minutes!"

Flickerlight glanced at the menu. Her nose was trying to convince her to get a half-dozen, but she couldn't really afford that many at once, much less eat them all... "Make it three," she said. "Two for me, and I know somepony who'd like the third. Maybe he'll stop by." She knew that Crates working over in Supply had a weakness for cinnamon buns. And maybe a gift like that would get him to be less stingy in handing out the lamp oil to other city employees, too.