PatchTheProdigy presents...

Rusty Roses

Nerves and excitement made the pale yellow princess's heart drum out at at least three hundred beats per minute, and her pale blue eyes were shining as intensely as the golden tiara that sat upon her head. An entirely euphoric grin spread across her muzzle, even though she was just staring ahead in the carriage and gently kicking the seat she sat in. Princess Rosy was eager, and she was ready to show the world!

...Except the world wasn't ready. Her father, a white pony with a bottle green mane and a large crown sighed wearily. "Rosy, my dear, please settle down. 'Tis eleven at night, and we need sleep to function."

Rosy stopped her kicking briefly and chirped, "Okay dad!"

...Except the fact that there was no way in all the kingdom she could settle down. Just the very fact that her parents were there reminded her of one very special pony. Patch.

Perhaps it would change with time, the fact that she thought of Patch every time her parents spoke to her. But she would never, ever stop loving Patch like she did. She wasn't just the one who reunited her with her birth parents. She was the beacon in her life; the one variable that never changed.

And now, she was going back to Ponyland to see her best friend and her other old buddies. That would be so exciting there was no way she could stop! She kicked the seat even harder in attempt to quell her incoming energy.

She noted the window out of the the corner of her eye, and dove forth, putting her face on the clean glass material. She could see nothing but dark; however, soon the texture of the road changed to that of Pony Bridge, the five-mile long bridge that would get her to Ponyland was finally being crossed.

Another sigh came from her father. "Rosy, why not go sit front with Crestone and the steeds? That way you'll see Ponyland a little bit early."

Rosy nodded eagerly. Her father wearily grunted as he pushed the button on the front of the carriage, and spoke into it: "Crestone, halt the steeds."

The carriage stopped. Rosy practically threw her crown into her seat and jumped out the carriage's sliding door. After slamming it shut behind her, she jumped up next to a very sleepy blue and brown pony, who was guiding the two very exhausted Clydesdales in the front. Crestone took the hint and continued the ride.

She threw her neck back so she could look at the stars that lit up the night sky, along with the gibbous moon. A smile crossed her features as she looked up, and her blue eyes reflected back up the sight she was beholding. These ought to be the same stars Patch and I used to see through the crescent window in the orphanage, Rosy figured. Memories of those nights when Patch would point out the North Star and all of those other constellations she's learned from books stuck to her mind. It'd always been so much fun to listen to Patch talk about what she'd learned.

I wonder if Patch is looking at these same stars right now.

⁂⁂⁂

The answer to the princess's question was a large, resounding 'no.' Patch's back rose and fell slowly with her breath as she lay, curled up in a ball and asleep. Her head was resting on a light brown blue yarn-emblazoned flank, her adoptive mother's. Knit Knack gazed down at her with affection in her light blue eyes.

A tall gold male with a slightly dustier gold mane held his hoof over his (you guessed it) gold eyes, looking out over the hill on which the trio was laying down. It was long and grassy, with foliage everywhere. On the very top was the Ponyland Royalty Landing, a tall white and cherise castle. If the King and Queen were on a long journey, then they might stop and sleep at the place. Not a single house in Ponyland was worth more than the PEARL, as the locals referred to it.

Davel Aber kept his eyes sharp, the only thing keeping him from falling asleep the repeating thought, Patch wants this, Patch wants this. "What time is it, Dave?" Knit called out to him.

The gold pony pulled his hoof up to look at the watch he'd equipped for just the occasion. "It's almost eleven thirty," he replied in a moderate voice. "Eleven twenty seven, to be exact. They said they'd be here in three minutes."

Dave approached his wife and daughter, staring exclusively at the latter when he got there. He raised an eyebrow and grinned affectionately down at his daughter. "Do ya think we should wake her up? She sure was excited earlier."

Knit nodded. "Yes, I think she would appreciate it."

Suddenly, the nasally sound of an amateur trumpet sounded: bum, bum baam. Both parents looked up to see the royal carriage in the distance, coming at an astoundingly fast pace. Dave and Knit exchanged a glance before parting ways.

As Dave approached, he spotted a very familiar little yellow pony climb off the front, making a stop inside the carriage and grabbing a tiara. Tapping it against the gate once, Rosy pulled it open and dashed up to the golden pony. He could only stand on his hindlegs and spread his hooves out.

"Dave!" the normally-quiet Rosy exclaimed gleefully, leaping into the tie-wearing pony's forehooves with her own little forelegs wrapping around him.

Dave's auric eyes shot wide open at the sudden affectionate gesture. His hooves automatically returned the hug, but… it was weird. Normally Rosy was… well, not a timid pony, but compared with Patch she was. Rosy was a little reserved with physical closeness (except when that involved Patch, of course). Maybe she was just excited.

Suddenly, the sound of slamming carriage doors came, and Dave and Rosy both looked up from their embrace to see the abnormally tall King and Queen approach, carrying their respective scepters. Crestone stood nearby, carrying fur-lined suitcases and looking quite frazzled as he stood there, clearly struggling.

Dave lowered himself to the ground and practically murmured, "Your Majesties."

The King tilted his tall, ruby-headed golden rod and nodded his acknowledgement. Crestone quickly gave the Clydesdales water dishes before arranging his hair, setting the suitcases down, and approaching Dave with a clipboard. He cleared his throat. "Er, yes. You are Davel Phillip Aber, construction worker for… Pony Construction?!" Crestone gave the paper he was reading from an extra hard, odd stare before looking at the gold pony. "...Is this information, er, correct?"

Dave nodded and smiled. "Yes sir. Pony Construction is the local construction business."

Crestone gave the other male a shocked beyond belief look before clearing his throat and saying, "Er, I see. Davel Phillip Aber of Pony Construction, adoptive father of Patchwork Pony. Wedded to Mrs. Knit Knack… Knit Knack Aber of unemployment?"

Dave nodded, stifling a chuckle at the royalty aide's shock and settling for a grin instead. "All right except for one thing: she runs her own business. Flea market stall."

"Yes." Crestone scribbled something on his board before sniffing. "Could I please see… Patchwork Pony?"

"Cowabunga Rosy!"

Patch dived in and landed in a bow in front of the King and Queen. The latter's lips turned up in a smile and her yellow eyes glinted amusedly. "Now, now, no need for such formalities with us, Patchwork. We are still eternally grateful for your role in getting our beloved daughter back."

The peach pony grinned, and her ears fell just slightly to the side. "Oh, uh… sure, Majesty."

The Queen waved her scepter dismissively. "No, no, Mary will do just fine."

"Wow… okay, Mary. Yeah." She glanced towards Rosy briefly before smiling back at the queen.

"Yes. So, I take it you'll take great care of our prized daughter in the three days we can spare her?" the King responded. "Oh, yes, and you are permitted to call me Francis."

"Mary-Francis…" Patch muttered, before cutting off a snigger under her breath. "Oh yeah! Rosy and I'll watch each other's backs. She'll be returned to you in one piece, I promise." Patch grinned and pulled the smaller pony against her in a side-hug.

"I, hem, expect so," Crestone added to the conversation, marking something on his clipboard. He nodded definitively. "We shall be back at approximately o'eleven hundred hours… say, sixty hours from now."

"You can count on it, Majesties," Dave replied, bowing his head just slightly.

"Of course. I trust you will take care of her, and I'll miss my Rose so much." Mary smiled and leaned over Patch and Rosy. She bent down and gave the younger of the girls a huge hug, which Rosy returned in kind.

"I'll be okay mom," she added. "Don't worry about a thing."

The Queen nodded. "Yes, I-I know and trust that you'll be okay. In case of an emergency, we are just a carriage ride away, and there are guards stationed here."

"I know mom."

The pink-maned matriarch nodded solemnly before turning her attention to Crestone. "Yes. Then, Crestone, begin unpacking our luggage."\

The drowsy blue pony bowed so low to the ground that his knees twitched. "Majesties," he murmured.

The King and Queen exchanged a quick glance before the King bent down and planted a kiss on Rosy's forehead. Then the royal pair walked away, the queen letting out a weary sigh within earshot of the girls.

The moment that the sound of their hooves hitting gentle cement became quiet and somewhat distant, Rosy nuzzled up to Patch and a giggle erupted out of her. "It's great to have you here, Patch!"

The bigger peach pony, who'd formerly been staring inattentively at the royal aide unfastening the Clydesdales from the carriage to lead in, turned towards her friend and grinned putting her hoof around her neck. "Heya Rosy. How have you been?" She stuck her head up and yawned loudly.

"I've been doing good," Rosy replied, grinning widely. "I really wanna hear about all the girls! How did Melody do with Key to My Heart? Whatever happened with Bon Bon and the recipe contest?" Rosy nudged the other pony as she said the latter.

"Oh. Oh!" Patch replied, her eyelids blinking out of synchronization. "Yah, it was pretty good. Mels won the contest. Bon Bon is… fine."

Dave chuckled as he put his hoof on Patch's shoulder. "Ol' Patchy here is pretty tired."

Rosy looked at her friend's unfocused eyes and the smile fell off her face briefly. Wait until tomorrow, Rosy. You know how she is with remembering when she's tired.

But then she nodded and let a small smile grace her muzzle once more. "Alright, tomorrow then."

⁂⁂⁂

"Rosy?!"

Rosy grumbled lowly at the overeager voice, clenching her eyes shut and burying her face back in the hardly princessworthy pillow. Her neck ached miserably from her sleeping position; in a ragged, ripped-up old sleeping bag that Patch's parents had that was the color of a pine tree's leaves. The scent of her friend got her to sleep, but she was aching from the lack of seven hundred-count sheets, or a comfortable mattress that did just the right amount of sinking around her form.

Besides, she was used to being woken up by the gentle filtering of sunlight through her eyelids, not the rough prodding that a pony was then doing to her shoulder. "Rose, when did you get here?" she asked, her voice cracking in the middle.

It was then that her mental flashcards halted and she remembered just who that pony was. How could she forget, even in a sleepy daze? Her eyes shot open and she found herself immediately facing a pair of gold eyes and a muzzle with a huge smile across it and hot breath that smelled, oddly, like toast. "Last night," she replied, smiling in turn at her older friend. No need to mention you were half awake and totally forgot about it...

Patch suddenly backed up, and her eyes widened. Her jaw fell a good few inches. "Wow, Rosy, you're getting so big!"

Without any warning at all, Patch roughly pulled Rosy to her hooves, wrenching that neck injury with her rough handling. The princess's face contorted in pain for a brief moment as she was yanked up. Rosy stood there, her awful bedhead still on and her neck still aching while Patch's jaw dropped even further. "Wow. I don't mean to sound like old Grandma Quilty, but... You're so much bigger than you were the last time I saw you!"

Just standing next to Patch, fully awake and not totally euphoric, she could, indeed, see the difference. Before her ascension of princesshood, the younger yellow pony would have had to tilt her head just slightly upwards for her eyes to meet those of her best friend, as Patch was an entire head bigger than she was. But right that instant, she was at the tip of her muzzle in height, and had likely grown two inches in the months.

Of course, that was just assuming that Patch hadn't grown an inch. "Wow, I guess you're right."

"It must be the magic from that crown of yours," Patch theorized with a grin. "Kingsley and Queeny are taller than pretty much anyone I know."

"Hmm, I guess." To be totally honest, it'd seemed totally pointless before Patch mentioned it. Maybe she'd ask her parents about it when she got back to the Isle of Pony.

"Seriously, wow. You're growing up so fast. I mean, I'm not the youngest out of our friends, but I'm still getting to be the smallest," Patch went on. "Bon Bon and Melody are the worst. They're getting so big, and so beautiful. Me… ahh, I'm still just me."

Rosy frowned, her eyebrows falling downwards. "You're awfully pretty too Patch. And you'll see, you'll go through a growth spurt soon."

Patch shrugged. "It doesn't matter that much. I mean, I'm better at hide n' seek, and I'm still a, hmm… maybe a seven in looks."

Both girls giggled. "Yep. I bet mom is making breakfast right now, hopefully blueberry pancakes, so what do you want to do first?"

Rosy shrugged her indifference, but cringed again at her shoulder pain. Patch raised an eyebrow at the gesture. "Uh, are you feeling okay?"

"Oh, it's no big deal: it's just my neck," Rosy explained earnestly. "I'm just not so used to sleeping on the floor anymore. Usually they give me fluffy sheets, a really nice mattress and a lot more pillows." Rosy blushed a tiny bit as she realized the swooning note in her voice. "I just have to get reused to it is all."

Patch put her hoof around and pressed at the pressure point. She hmmed, perhaps unknowingly, as she felt around it. Rosy noted that she herself relaxed a bit under her friend's touch.

Three pinches to the pressure point later, and Patch backed away. "There you have it. The tension oughta loosen up. So now that that's settled… what do you want to do today?"

Rosy, never much of a leader by nature, simply replied, "Well, what do you have planned?"

Patch's ears shot up. "Hey, how'd you know I had a plan?" the peach pony asked, a shocked and confused (Shonfused? Cocked?) expression on her face.

Rosy rolled her eyes and giggled. "Well, you always seem to have the plan on where to go. And whenever you're really excited about something, you plan for it."

The peach pony thought for just a moment, and then chuckled. "Heh, I guess so. The only thing that I have to do today is help Bon Bon out. See, she has this brown wooden chair she wants to be painted blue. And unless we get sidetracked, that shouldn't take more than an hour. But other than that, we-"

Rosy gasped sharply inward, and her pupils grew with the idea now swirling inside her princessy head. "Let's do that right after breakfast!"

"Huh? Why are you so excited to see Bon Bon?" Patch asked, grinning easily though clearly still confused. "I thought I was the only one who got that excited."

Rosy pulled her brush, a jewel-encrusted pink one, up to herself from her sleeping bag, smiling gleefully as she ran it through her light pink locks. "Well, Bon Bon is my friend, and I want to see her and all, but it's Rusty!"

Patch blinked, probably getting a mental image of the light-colored boy pony with the dusty orange mane and the freckles on his muzzle. He rarely went anywhere without his favorite blue baseball cap. "Oh yeah, you were pretty good pals with Rusty back in the day, weren'cha?"

Rosy nodded as she switched parts in her hair. "Yep. He and I are such great friends… he's probably the one I miss the second most around these parts. Oh, we might play baseball or go roller skating… we did those things all the time, see, when we could play together all the time."

"Yep, you and him were pretty tight. Sounds like a good idea. Yeah, let's do it, Rosy." Patch vigorously nodded her approval. "'Soon as the pancakes are done-"

"Patch! Rosy! Food!"

Patch jumped up on the spot. "Ooh boy! Coming mom!"

Then, the taupe pony dashed out of the room, her hoofsteps audible against the carpet all the way up to Rosy.

.

The pale yellow princess sighed and shook her head, grinning with amusement at her friend's excitement. Sometimes Patch could be such an odd little weirdo, but aw, she loved that about her

And she was just as excited to see her old buddy again, so she skipped down after her friend, a huge smile across her face.