https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U21AhqN67ylGgXoia7S595Q1yH1wE9-q6Xv7ypH6KTo/edit?hl=en&authkey=CJW3kK8D# Derpy’s Bebop by Trelatyraelis It had been raining for days. The weather ponies had planned a storm to keep Sweet Apple Acres untouched by the heat wave coming from south but, as usual, Rainbow Dash had exaggerated the quantity of clouds needed. Now half of Ponyville was soaking wet, while the other half was dry as a bone. Though this was a very interesting atmospheric phenomenon, some ponies were not happy with how things had changed… “It really had to be the half where I lived, didn’t it?” Blues groaned, annoyed. Every attempt to dispel the clouds or move them away hadn’t worked, not even the unorthodox idea of calling in unicorns had helped. Unfortunately, Twilight had been called to Canterlot by the princesses several weeks before to solve a thorny situation near the borders of the dragons’ territory and still hadn’t returned. Someone had suggested seeking the help of ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’, but she ended getting kicked out of town when one of her spells changed the climate from cloudy to icy. Now precipitations of hail and snow occurred every day instead of just rain. After this last effort they decided to let the clouds move by themselves, as they were slowly doing. In those days, the whole mail route had been assigned to a single pony, Ditzy Doo - better known by the nickname of Derpy Hooves. Blues, being a relatively solitary colt, had seen her only a few times, but in those rare occasions, he had always tried to greet her as warmly as possible, especially in those days when he saw the poor mare deliver the mail with ice on her wings. One time, the hail had suddenly transformed into deadly pieces of ice as big as golf balls. He had convinced the reluctant mailmare to stay with him inside until the end of the storm, pouring her a cup of hot cocoa and playing one of his favorite songs on the sax, the "Farewell Blues". She seemed a little... well, blue, and Blues was an expert in understanding those kind of feelings. Not that Derpy was usually jovial, even though she was always smiling. It seemed almost as if her smile was just a mask, covering her true emotions. Every now and then he could catch a glimpse of the real her, especially when he called her name, as if the sound of that word could open a breach inside her disguise. Today was going to be another seemingly normal day for him, his mind full of thoughts, his body aching... but when he opened the door to the wall eyed pegasus her expression struck him. A look full of hatred, and perhaps… sadness? He couldn’t tell. It had been too rapid. She quickly recovered herself and showed him a large smile. “Mail’s here! So, this is the last package for today, I hope? It was pretty heavy.” By Celestia it was heavy. It was the new brass saxophone Blues had ordered one month before. His father’s sax, the one he had been using for all these years, had become unusable with time and there was nothing he could do about it; the instrument was dented, some keys could not be used, the metal was rusting and the bell had thinned so much that it was now very fragile. He’d decided to take a second job plowing at Sweet Apple Acres, helping out Big Macintosh to earn some extra bits, and had bought another one using his hard earned cash and the funds he kept for emergencies. “Yeah. I’m sorry you had to do all that flying through the rain, but from here to Pony Symphony is three hours of walking and with my new job, I just can’t leave home for no reason other than work … you wanna come in, Derpy? The rain is coming down awfully hard and it doesn’t seem like you have much more mail to deliver, do you? I’m dying to see how this new one sounds!” “Thanks, but no. Gotta go. There’s still mail I have to deliver. S-See ya!” and with that she disappeared into the night’s landscape. Blues, dazed by the quickness of the mare, remained still for a couple of seconds on his doorstep, shook himself out of his temporary paralysis and closed the door behind him. *** Ditzy was fighting to keep her tears back, but she knew that was a battle she couldn’t win. Every day the same series of events kept happening. Blues’ house always had to be the last on her route, no matter what she had to deliver him, even if today carrying that saxophone for so much time had really shattered her back. They talked, she went away as quickly as possible, feeling her eyes watering, and on the way home, she would burst into tears. It was that name. That stupid nickname they had given her years ago, before she became a mailmare. Of course, it didn’t affect her now as much as it did before, she’d grown out of it. But…Him. She didn’t know what she felt for Blues, always kind, always gentle, never laughing behind her back. He always seemed interested when they talked… but what she really liked and admired about him was his amazing musical talent. Ditzy loved music. The way a song could rock her entire being or soothe her, make her ponder or forget about every problem, like a charm. Blues was certainly one of the most talented ponies she had ever seen in her life. When he played his instrument, his quickness and mastery were almost supernatural, sometimes it almost seemed like he was splitting in two, playing two rhythms and tones completely different from one another at the same time, mixing them up in an incredible harmony, combining unearthly low tones with barely audible high pitched notes. The first time she had heard him playing with his group, months before, she went into rapture over his changes of tone and velocity, over his poignant slow songs, and those who were so quick the rhythm was barely even thinkable. When she had listened to him everything around her had disappeared, only she, him and the music remained, while she was being cradled and transported by a sweet embrace of notes, losing herself completely inside them, waking up suddenly every time he finished playing, conscious that if there really was a Heaven, she touched it every time she heard that stallion play, with his coat as blue as a pool of sapphires placed on the bottom of the sea. But every time they met, he called her with that name, mocking her. Except for being addressed continuously as “Derpy”, Blues had never done anything to arouse hostility towards her, but it was that which made his sarcasm sharper. He treated her with respect, but kept calling her with that nickname, always smiling, making the mockery somehow heavier for her. What did that mean? It made her angry and confused. Maybe she was overreacting, nobody so kind could seriously- Then that name, spoken as if it was nothing as if it was the most normal thing in the world, not a stupid joke which had stopped being funny years ago. Said from others it had the same effect as of a drop of water poured into the ocean, but when he pronounced it the feeling was the same one of a chair being thrown to her face with incredible strength... All because of a simple fact. She finally understood. She loved his music and, out of mere consequence, loved him. In her brain something had been turned on, an overwhelming passion, the need to feel him close to her, to touch him, listening him play something, alone on a grassy hill at sunset. It was almost as if a defective connection had turned on two lights in two different rooms together with the click of a single switch. She would wake up in the morning and, without a reason, think of what perfume his mane would have in that moment. Random questions about him in casual times of the day just came to her. What was he doing? Was he thinking about her? Maybe right now he was knocking at her house’s door to say hello… and other incoherent thoughts that saddened her throughout the day. She cried because she couldn’t feel him by her side, for him she was just the stupid mail pegasus, just a joke to laugh about. She cried because of her damned eyes. Not that she hadn’t tried to fix them. One year before she had even asked Celestia to help her, but in the way back home to Ponyville, after the “treatment” she had given her, everyone had been staring at her more than usual, somepony even laughing. She didn’t realize what the avatar of the sun had done until she looked at herself in a mirror… and understood why they had been calling her “Bright Eyes” on the road home. Her pupils had become big topazes of a dun yellow, the color of molten gold, quite odd and just too garish, even if they worked. Had the mare played some sort of joke on her? She had asked the princess to change her back a week later, since she had only changed an old nickname with another one, telling herself that if not even one of the celestial sisters could fix those eyes of hers, all she could do was to deal with it. Lost in her train of thought, she didn’t see the chestnut in front of her until the very last second, her vision dimmed due to the torrential rain and tears flowing freely from her eyes. *THUMP* She had been lucky. Had she been flying faster she could have died on the spot, instead of just losing consciousness, waking up hours later with a terrible headache. “What the hay…” She quickly got up from the ground and thought back at what happened before the incident. The feathers on her wings ruffled, her pulse quickened and she just cried out the first thing that came to her mind. “FUCK YOU, TREE! … AND FUCK YOU, BLUES!” Right now she didn’t really care about anything but to beat the ever-loving crap out of him. If anypony could have seen her then, they would have looked at her with fear; her wings spread open, her hooves kicking fiercely the ground and animalistic rage on her face. She, a pegasus that had never hurt a soul, preparing to strike a pony who never had done anything to her but call her by a silly nickname. Her legs moving on their own, she ran as fast as she could to the house of her hated love. Slowly, her fury was being replaced by an infinite sadness. When she was halfway to his house, she started questioning her actions, but it was as if her mind had been brutally torn off from her body. All she could do was run towards him, attracted by a force greater than her. She started crying again when she saw his doorstep and walked towards it with her head down, the tears trailing down her muzzle, mingling with the rain. “Here it is.” she thought to herself, blankly. She didn’t know what to do, everything that had happened seemed blurry inside her mind, did it really happen? All she just wanted to do was stay under that rain for days, not thinking. Just she and the night, forever. She knocked at the door, barely conscious of having done anything, and with every blow she felt some of her energy come back, slowly regaining consciousness of her surroundings. First tapping hesitantly, then harder, until the very frame of the door started moving. Blues opened the door and what he saw filled him with pity. A mud covered pony was standing before him, looking directly at him and shaking, her blonde mane flattened by the rain, a red blood-stain spreading just above her eyes. “Derpy?” the blue colt said, genuinely worried “Oh Celestia, what happened?” “Why…” the mare sobbed, “Why do you keep…” Something snapped inside her. She started screaming, freeing all her emotions in an explosion of anger, “WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING ME THAT!” Unable to control her actions, she tackled him and hugged him, pinning him to the ground. “Please,” she whispered in his ear, “please, just stop calling me Derpy…” *** Blues hugged her back, gently. Thousands of thoughts raced through his mind; was it something I said? What happened to her? Is that blood? Oh god she’s so soft… so many he couldn’t keep track of them. They stayed like that for what he felt like an eternity, in a sweet, cold embrace, with the rain falling outside. He had been dreaming of her for months, since he had seen her in that bar, slowly bobbing her head at the rhythm of his music. He had lost himself in those eyes and stopped playing, entranced. Fortunately he was improvising, so they just thought it was one of his eccentricities. He had seen the face that would sweetly haunt his dreams for the next few months. Only later he understood who she was and, most importantly, her name. He had asked one of his band members, who couldn’t help but laugh when they told it. He started to caress her mane. The feeling of wetness on his hoof, the heat of her neck… he put his cheek on her neck, without thinking, just to feel that warmth, trying to be closer to her. She stopped sobbing and closed her eyes. Her heart just above his in that position, they could both feel their pulse quickening. He reluctantly put his head down on the wooden floor and looked at her, into those watering, tiny suns. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for anything that I said or did that might have hurt you. Just… just don’t cry anymore. Please.” He moved his chin up and kissed her under the eyes, moving down, following her tears’ trail. He kept doing it for several minutes, continuing even when she had stopped weeping. It was too hard to stop, his mind lost in her scent. He just wanted to cuddle her, tell her it was all right. She started nuzzling his neck, returning his tenderness, moving from his chin down to his shoulders and up again until their noses touched. “I forgive you.” she whispered. He could taste her hot breath against his mouth, smelling of wild berries, so tempting… he couldn’t control himself, he wanted more. It just happened. The kiss, at first chaste, with their lips closed, blossomed like a flower, opened, and was soon filled with nectar. She felt his tongue touching her lower lip and she tried, timidly, to reach for it with hers. His hooves started touching her wings, which quickly unfurled, becoming fully erect in mere seconds. When he stroked the underside of both of her wings, she let out an involuntary sigh, which echoed inside their jointed throats, and when he started to plant kisses on her neck she moaned of pure pleasure. What happened next was something she didn’t expect at all. “S-so…” Blues said, stopping, “what should I call you now?” “What do you mean?” she was sincerely puzzled. “If I can’t call you D- … I mean if I can’t call you by that name, what should I call you now?” She slowly composed herself and thought for several minutes, her rain wet body still pressed against him, in an awkward position, “You ... you thought that was my real name?” “I asked a friend of mine after I saw you months ago in a bar where I was playing… It isn’t?” And then Ditzy started to laugh. An honest laugh, like she hadn’t laughed in months. All her fears, all her preoccupations, all her sadness - were taken away from her, as if a divine hoof had removed an incredible burden from her back. She looked at him, kissed him full on the lips, smiled and sang: “My name is Ditzy Doo, And I love You.” Author’s comments Whoa. That’s the only thing I can think say when I start thinking about this fic. You guys have been amazing, every single one of you, I seriously didn’t expect it to be so well rated, since I’ve written this more for myself than for the public. I started working on this one months ago, in late February, after seeing that pic of derpy crying. It tore me apart, really. My eyes started watering a bit and I thought about what could have happened, what was the story behind that image and then, BAM! Inspiration struck me. But I didn’t answer that call. If I did probably the story would have been completely different, but who knows? I just let it go ... what a fool I was! Luckily derpy called me again one month later. I was looking at some pics in ponibooru, and I saw a crying pony( I think it was Luna) . Suddenly something inside me moved. I searched the web far and wide , looking for that pic, and finally found it in a gallery in derpyhooves.com. I was in bliss! it had took me hours but now I could finally see it again and study it. to whoever made that image: I couldn’t have done this without it and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I quickly started writing the story that had been hatching inside me for so long on the first notebook I found lying around. It felt so right. The words flew for my mind to the paper creating the beginning of the story you’ve read and ( I hope) liked. It was good writing it , but correcting and translating has been a real pain. I wrote it in a mix on English and Italian, mostly using Google translator for the parts I wasn’t really sure about, which was really hard for me, since I’m kind of a perfectionist. What you’ve read is a corrected version by midnight shadow (thanks, bro), who replaced some words here and there and helped me correct it to the best of his abilities. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “ Trela, you just wrote a goddamn 6 page fic not a 400 hundred page long novel, for god’s sake!” I know. I just wanted to tell you all my story, since now there’s even people who want A SEQUEL. Now let’s focus on that. I wrote 1 page of that sequel. it’s mostly derpy and blues waking up months later, I wrote down a plot and I’ll see where it leads me, but if it gets cheesy, if it gets too cliché, I’ll delete it and we’ll never talk about it again. I also named the document “what do I have to do with you now. docx” so ... don’t get your hopes up. I just want it to be as good as this one. I don’t wanna add a crappy sequel because it will give more votes or more people will read it, fuck that. I haven’t written Derpy’s Bebop for the 200 stars or to get the 50 comments( even though I’m SUPER-duper happy about it : 3) anyway, thanks again to everyone, I love you guys and I love being a brony. Trelatyraelis, we’re done here.