>:) For the title thingy: "Space ain't for me, love, but you're worth it."
*Wiggle wiggle* Let’s do this!
Stephen went on a mission. Like, weeks ago. Unlike some of the missions in which he disappears for long periods, Tony knew this trip was supposed to be a fairly short one, and was in this dimension - so there were no time shenanigans at play.
After about a month of Stephen being absent, Tony’s finally talked himself into it. He’s going to space. He’s finding his boyfriend. He’s tired of a cold bed and a lot of worry. He enlists the Guardians to help him, since they’re in contact with Carol - whom Stephen’s on his intergalactic trip with.
Being aboard the Benatar again totally freaks him out at first, and when they reach out to Carol she seems really surprised to hear from them all, doing her best to try and wave them off of everything and trying to send them home. Tony doesn’t know what’s up, but this is making him even more anxious to see Stephen - he doesn’t like that Stephen’s hiding something from him.
Of course, as soon as Stephen realizes Tony’s trying to find him, he portals his way to the Benatar itself and berates Tony for getting himself all worked up and asking him why he came to space to begin with. Tony plainly states that he missed Stephen and was getting worried - Stephen had been gone for a long time!
Stephen makes some comment about day-night cycles, but Tony dismisses that in favour of asking what on Earth took him so long, and what was so important that he needed to be gone for so long without contact.
So Stephen pulls out an odd box, presses a button and lets it open up.
Inside is a ring made of a metal Tony’s never seen, and a stone on it that seems as though it encompasses all the stars.
“I needed to find you the perfect ring. You could have any ring you wanted in all the world, so I had to get creative.”
Carol’s all grins, and Quill hoots and hollars a bunch - even Rocket is uncharacteristically pleased, though Tony suspects it might have something to do with the other engineer’s distinct interest in the metals and stone. Tony can relate. But he’ll deal with that, later.
He needs that ring on his finger. Now. And to somehow not start crying in the process.
“No, no, no. That is a bad idea,” Cypress Knee shook his head. “Normally, dey’re snappy, but dey been extra, extra snappy since that big storm came, tore up the swamp somethin’ fierce.”
“Oh,” Foxglove’s mind was racing. Because that sounded to her like it could have caused a number of problems, from blocking migration routes with downed trees to the rise of water destroying delicate food supplies to changing the lay of the land in a way that was simply unsettling to a creature that was large and therefore somewhat delicately attuned to an environment.
Oh, how awful! She’d been awful! Running away from something that needed help. Her face showed none of this, but on the inside, she was rolling on the ground and considering a wide variety of self-flagellation options. Iris stalks – leaves? What exactly do you call the not flower part of an iris? Well, I guess they’re individual plants, so… “What about Bill?”
“What.”
“Oh, you’re right, I’m sorry, this isn’t the time... What do they like to eat? Is it iris Bills?” She brightened a little under the familiar, joyful prospect of feeding dangerous creatures.
“They eat you!” The big pony’s voice was a high and desperate wail. He was almost on his knees. “Look, you do not want to go in there – I heard… Well, everyone who grew up here’s heard stories.”
“Don’t be silly. Did you see those tusks? They’re primarily diggers and uprooters. It’s probably roots, and lots of them. Maybe old trees...” Images of various animal jaw-structures flashed through her mind. Foxglove was smiling now; it was all coming together in a crystalline plan to help some things and maybe get her umbrella back! “We should probably start with something to feed them.”
“…There’s no we.”
In the moment after Cypress Knee spoke, all the sound in the world came rushing in: the croaking of frogs, filling all the near and middle and far distances from here to the end of the globe; the slow current of the bayou, barely moving over branches and around trees; the cry of a red-tailed hawk, circling somewhere overhead; and closer, Foxglove the fox shaking water out of his tail. Foxglove was totally still, filling in the silence.
“Look, you seem…” He hesitated, looking for an accurate word to sum up the experience he’d been having today. He chewed at it for a time. “…Interesting. An’ not a bad filly. An’ I’m sure this thing is important to you.”
She did not try and argue.
“But look, cher, I’m not going to get myself killed for some crazy stranger. No one should go and get themselves killed – you neither. Dis is where I get off dis here ride.” He tried to gauge her reaction, but had made an involuntary sort of guess; he winced sympathetically, or in anticipation.
Foxglove didn’t react. Not at first. This was not new. It was the oldest thing in her world. She’d learned her lessons well, and understood all the things, layered one on top of another, that ensured it: that the sort of person who could get help from a stranger – no, who could just go a few minutes without being led gently away – was totally different from her. Focused, and good with words, and clear about what she wanted, and louder, and didn’t waste everyone’s time. She’d had the gap between herself and that person outlined so clearly she might have been able to paint a portrait.
And what she knew she should do, when she felt that outline pressing up against her again, was not to show it. Nod, and do not cry. So that is what she did, her eyes down and unfocused, the long lashes concealing whether she was thinking anything at all. Even her ears, normally loose in their floppy expressiveness – more so than much of her face – were perfectly straight. Showed she was listening. Important, to definitely be listening. Only the slight downward cast to her posture gave any sign she felt anything. Foxglove the Fox looked up from his sodden tail and pressed against her leg, shooting her concerned looks.
Vague and dream-like visions swam in her head, cycling through things – her time at home, and her time spending the school year in little towns on the edge of the wilderness, and today, and the Boar Ogre’s face, looming, tusks gleaming with wet mud.
It has to be tiring work, digging through the mud, she thought. It’d just slosh back into place. Thinking about that made it easier, and eventually, her expression thawed.
“That’s fine. I think I might still be going back,” She tilted her head and gave this some thought. “But I think I’d like it to actually be forward…” She turned her head up the bayou towards where she started. “…There’s probably a bit of Northeast to it, too…” Cypress Knee shook his head, which reminded Foxglove that she had had a point. “Oh, Foxglove, Tweedle, say goodbye.” The fox glared. The hydra gave him a double-headed little nod. “And me, too. Goodbye.” She nodded vaguely before heading back down the dock and, recalling that they were on the other side from their starting point, leaping back into the water. It was probably good he didn’t actually give her a towel to dry off just yet, he decided.
“Oh, um, thank you for fishing me out,” She said from more or less the same, in-the-middle-of-the-water position she’d met him in. The hydra bellyflopped back into the slow current, soaking the irritated fox who, looking like he was making the only smart decision (besides not going back in at all), simply jumped onto the island of the creature’s broad back. “It was a lovely boat ride.”
“Tweren’t nothing,” He said, watching her as she swam off. “Weird filly,” he muttered under his breath. This would be a thing to tell the colts down at the bar, he’d tell you what.
Is…Is that the big heart, or the little one? Well, I’ll assume little one.
Love to Foxglove means something different when applied to herself than other people – I think. For Foxglove, to Foxglove, love means being forgiven – for your faults, or your errors, or that you sometimes talk too much, or talk too little, or just can’t quite regulate what you’re talking about? Or that maybe you don’t pay great attention and mess up… That sort of thing. It doesn’t mean those things aren’t true, or that people don’t see it, but that you are tolerated anyway.
I think that Foxglove sees her love for her animal friends as part of wanting to make things go well for them, or to keep being with them – they become a part of her “world,” in the Foxglovian sense of the term (which is not so much a physical as emotional space, which frankly deserves its own discussion all to itself).
The sketch for this one’s relatively simple... Which is great, because the idea spawned an elaborate AU amongst my friends, with all our characters as dubiously competent changelings. Changeling!Foxglove has her characteristic difficulty with ponies (and other changelings), and a total obliviousness to (at the very least romantic) love besides, so she is not much called upon by the hive to do traditional changeling stuff -- shapeshifting, infiltrating ponies, replacing loved ones, collecting love, that sort of thing. Even if you do get her to be a convincing pony who doesn’t absentmindedly shift, she’ll probably end up being overly moved by her soft heart, so she won’t be able to finish her job. The hive instead uses her to scout out possible living spaces, pacifying local animals, monsters, and dangers so it’s safe for the hive to live there. No one in the hive knows how she does it, but dangerous monster attacks in the badlands went way down after they started sending her on these mission. Changeling!Foxglove, having comrades to whom she is always connected, is probably a bit more sociable than standard Foxglove... Which mostly just means faster, less hesitant nonsense.
Changeling!Foxglove probably gets by on the love of animals -- not unlike primary form Foxglove. Unless that’s not a thing that can work. Changelings are weird. (By the way, that was the last of those meme drawing requests I have.)
Ask and you shall receive! Those wings were smaller than I wanted, but I ran out of page space. It was fun getting to draw looong, looong legs. Just let my desire for lengthy limbs go nuts; now if only breezies had distinctly long necks, I’d be set. They’d be like tiny giraffes.
I said I might do a more “Part of Your World”-inspired Seapony Foxglove Sketch, so I did. The longing to be a part of a different world is pretty much core Foxglove, so this idea was just too entertaining to resist. The role of Flounder will be handled by Tweedle, who I guess is a two-headed baby sea serpent of some sort in this AU. (Foxglove the fox is totally Sebastian in this scenario. 100%)
I imagine this is in the middle of a rambly, disoriented, “Part of your World.” I should have gone for the big guns and done a more obviously Little Mermaid inspired shot, but I didn’t think about that until the sketch was done. Maybe I’ll do more... Seaponies are super easy to draw.
Is it even recognizably Foxglove, I wonder? It could be more like her, given the lack of other Foxglove identifiers...
