Chirpy Tunes

By Mobley

• August 18, 2015




Age: 16

Gender: Male

Species: Earth Pony

Appearance: Chirpy is underdeveloped for his age due to a foalhood spent largely malnourished, and as such is smaller than similarly aged ponies. However, with a more stable life at present, he is otherwise well. His turquoise-coloured coat is glossy and well kept, and his large, brown eyes are always bright, looking around in fascination at the world around him. He usually wears a content little smile as he goes about his day. He also possesses a cutely uncontrollable jet black mop of a mane with a matching tail.

Cutie Mark: Chirpy's cutie mark represents a street organ, colourfully painted and ornate, with many pipes. See back story.

Personality: Chirpy is golden-hearted but very timid, shying away from pony-kind and generally fearing company except under a few select circumstances and with a number of friends that can be counted on one hoof. When nopony is around however, Chirpy most often appears happy and wide-eyed, fascinated by his surroundings and loves to tinker with his projects at home. That's not to say that he hankers after an isolated existence; Chirpy is naturally friendly but having been the subject of bullying as a foal left a large hole in his ability to socialize, a rut which often upsets him when he thinks about it too much. Nevertheless, Chirpy tries to make the best of life, and whereas his hobbies once served as a means of avoidance of dealing with the challenges thrown up in his wake, they are slowly becoming means to meet new friends.

Backstory: The first that Chirpy knows was that he was found by the royal guard at a very young age, obliviously wandering the palace grounds. Unable to speak and only able to vocalise in cooing, chirping noises, the guards nicknamed him Chirpy, something that was to stick throughout his life. Attempts to find his parents over the coming weeks proved fruitless, and eventually he was placed in a local orphanage where he grew up. The orphanage was a kind home to Chirpy, and he has many fond memories from that relatively happy time.<br /><br />It was only when Chirpy began to attend school that things began to deteriorate. Small and mute, he was subject to bullying, at first picked on by ponies from better off households, then by others in the class as Chirpy became more and more withdrawn. Eventually the orphans who had been his friends even began to join in, meaning that the torment continued at home as well as school, and Chirpy found himself alone and unhappy. He stopped trying at school and never ventured outside at break time. He stopped eating properly and was unable to sleep well for many years. The staff at the orphanage were sympathetic but were ultimately ineffective in aiding Chirpy, and eventually one night at the age of thirteen Chirpy ran away from Canterlot, unable to cope any more.<br /><br />Chirpy wandered south for days through Equestria's countryside, subsisting on whatever he could find until one day he came to the dilapidated face of a long-derelict stately home, lying just within the northern edge of the Everfree forest. Once a summer retreat for some Canterlot blueblood long since passed, it was run-down but intact, her rooms and out-buildings bare and windows blackened by years of grime, but otherwise it was a potential roof over Chirpy's head, and so he chose to settle down, living in what used to be the servant's quarters. Over those initial months he worked hard to subsist off what fortune had placed into his hooves. To supplement the foraging he had to do in the forest for food, he cut back part of the overgrown grounds to plant a wild vegetable patch and restored the small plum orchard which eventually became productive enough for Chirpy to subsist off alone. With tools salvaged from the collapsed shed he repaired many of the holes in the mansion's roof and bit by bit he built a home for himself, all without a single visit from any other pony.<br /><br />To give himself a hobby in what little spare time he had and to have a little company, Chirpy refurbished one of the estate's large greenhouses, and gently seeking out butterflies from the surrounding forest and countryside he gradually built a sanctuary filled with all varieties and colours of both butterflies and moths. But as much comfort as they were able to give the little pony, Chirpy was still not fully happy. Indeed, he was still without a cutie mark, and with so little time on his hands to explore what it might be, he steadily grew more and more restless.<br /><br />Still, there was just enough time every so often to explore the estate to stave off the boredom. Slowly Chirpy trawled through the dark, untouched rooms of the mansion one by one from attic to cellar, and once that was done he began to explore the grounds bit by bit. It was at the very edge of the estate toward the end of his second year in residence that he made a discovery that was to change his life.<br /><br />Compeletely obscured by growth near the estate wall, Chirpy one morning discovered a workshop. It only took a nudge of the padlocked door for its rotten frame to give way, and Chirpy found himself in a room full of strange mechanical contraptions. Some were small, the size of a bedside table, while others were the size of carriages. Some were plain boxes, others were ornate, painted in once-vivid colours with dancing figurines and carvings adorning them. There were some common features however. All possessed pipes, some just a dozen or so, others maybe into the hundreds, and all possessed some form of crank. Chirpy cautiously turned the crank of the nearest, friendly-looking machine. Its insides groaned as he did, and from a few of the pipes issued an unexpected, out-of-tune 'poop.' The noise startled Chirpy out of the building, but slowly he creeped back and tried again, this time for longer and was captivated by the results. He had discovered a room full of old street organs, and Chirpy spent the entire day trying every crank, the air around the place filled with the cheerful honky-tonk tunes right past sundown.<br /><br />That night, Chirpy slept happily, the first time in years, on the floor of the workshop, and when he woke the next morning he found to his delight a cutie mark on his flank; a street organ in all its glory, its white blue and gold livery unfaded and pipes polished to a burnished shine.<br /><br />Part 2 to Follow.