The Big Blank
By TheBandBrony
——
The old mare was alone now. All the light had disappeared from the world save the faint electrical glow from the inside of the shop. If she looked out one of the windows, she might think the window had been painted black. The light from the inside deepened the darkness outside into cerulean ink. She couldn't see past the lip of the windowsill, but she knew she had no audience. She could feel it. Her hooves rested against the floor, picking up the subtle vibrations of sound pulsing through the floor. She was deaf, but she heard.
From the opposite side of the room two ponies, one younger mare and one stallion showing the first signs of dilapidation, watched their only customer. They could trust the old mare to clean up after herself and pay her tab, but once she started eating a particular flavor of mint-amber cupcake she wouldn't stop until she gave herself a tummyache. She would stay home and wallow in sickness, and when night came she would fall asleep instead of coming to the shop and spending bits. They didn't want that to happen, for both of those reasons. So they kept watch.
"I wonder why she comes here," the mare asked to nopony at all. "I'm sure there's some place a mare like her ought to be at this hour."
"Like?"
"Bed."
He chuckled. "Old ponies can be night owls if they want to."
"But night owls usually have a reason for staying up beyond stuffing themselves with cupcakes."
"It must be a pretty good reason to her if she does it every day."
"She needs to find something else to do. Something that makes her smile. She doesn't smile when she eats. She opens her mouth and sometimes I think I see her lips turning up just a little bit and then she closes her mouth. I'd like to see what she looks like when she's smiling."
A streetlamp flickered somewhere far off outside the window, exposing for a brief second a dirt road and the single wall of a building. Then another one flickered. Then another. They went in order, from the farthest lamp next to the faint outline of a bridge at the very end of the street to the lamp pole in front of the shop. Like cool metallic fireflies they flared up and then dimmed out into nothing. The old mare caught sight of this and turned her attention back to the pastry. The two employees did not.
"What do you suppose that was?"
She tapped her hoof against the counter for a moment. Then she turned over the small analog clock sitting on the counter. "It's ten thirty," she said. "The streetlights should have stayed on."
"Maybe it was a test or something. They're probably just going around checking the oil levels in the lamps. They'll go on for sure in a few minutes."
They didn't.
"I'll bet the ignition spell fell apart," he said. "That's it. Something went wrong with the spell they used to light it."
"Those things last for a long time. Twilight told me so. She's the one who casts them."
He shrugged. "She'll have to cast them again tomorrow morning."
So the town remained dark. The old mare didn't seem to notice, or mind.
"She's just sitting there," the younger mare muttered after a while. "She's been sitting there forever. Doesn't she ever move?"
"I heard from Cup she was planning to go up north to the Gryffin territories. She had never seen a gryffin before and wanted to see one before she died."
The mare perked up. "So when did she go? That must have been one sock-knocking adventure."
"She didn't."
She paused. "Oh." Silence. "Oh. How come?"
"Health concerns. Her insurance company didn't want a blind old mare running amok in a potentially dangerous country. Her family wasn't too keen on it either. They wanted to preserve her life for as long as possible." The mare couldn't help but giggle at that. The stallion frowned. "It's not nice to laugh at other ponies' misfortunes."
"I know. I shouldn't. But, the way you said it, it sounded like her family thought she was a little frog that collectors keep in a glass jar and spritz with water every once in awhile so they don't turn into raisins. Look!" She pointed. "She's already halfway pruned!"
This time she laughed out loud.
"Pinkie. That's very disrespectful. She can't even hear you."
The mare quieted down after that. "I guess you're right. A joke isn't very enjoyable if you're the only one laughing at it."
The old mare rapped her hoof on the wooden table. Both ponies turned, but only the younger mare trotted over to her side.
"What can I getcha, betcha?" she asked out of habit, for a moment forgetting her customer couldn't hear her.
"Another cupcake," she said. Her voice whispered a double-toned hush.
"I don't know if that's the best idea."
The old pony ignored her, tapping her tray. "Another cupcake," she said.
"You already had seven, and if you eat any more I'm afraid you're gonna get a tummy ache. Plus, you're kinda here everyday, which is good for us but bad for you. Because, you know, I read in a magazine that old ponies aren't supposed to have too many sweets or they'll get ostrich-peroxide and turn into big blobs of pony-ish stuff and—"
She stopped. It occurred to her as abruptly as the streetlights had gone up and gone out that the older mare couldn't hear a word she was saying. So she stooped down to eye level and shook her head.
The old mare looked at her. The younger pony looked outside, then walked back behind the counter and grabbed another cupcake.
"It looks cold outside," she muttered upon her return.
"Probably because the lights aren't on," the stallion replied.
"They're on in here. The ovens are still on, too. We don't need heaters in the winter because of those things. It shouldn't be cold."
"Actually, I turned those off a little while ago. Right after the old mare came in."
"Oh."
"I always turn the ovens off when she comes in."
"What if another customer comes in, though? We can't just turn her away. That'd be mean."
"When was the last time another customer came in this late? She must have a sixth sense about it or something, because she's always our last customer."
She nodded. "Yeah, okay. You're right. It seems a bit weird though. Like—I don't know. I don't want her to feel like we're waiting for her to leave. That would make things super awkward for her."
"I don't think she minds."
"True. What about somepony else who might need a cup of late-night tea or a five-alarm cookie?"
"At this hour?"
"It's happened before. I'm just afraid we might be shutting our doors to the ponies who need places like this."
"I'm pretty sure that one little pasta place by the Mayor's office is open all night. They could go there."
"A pasta place? No siree. In a restaurant they'll sit you down at a table and give you a menu and expect you to order food. And you have to sift through the whole menu to find the drinks and the desserts. And the light is so dim you have to light the menu on fire with the pretty little candle on your table to read it. And everything smells so un-foodlike. Metallic—like the whole building's been put through the dishwasher with the silverware."
"I take it you don't like the place?"
"You kidding? I loved it. Twilight and I went there a few weeks ago. I had the pasta primadona or something like that. It was dee-licious."
"So why knock it?"
She gestured to the building around him. "Because it's not here. Here the dessert is always at the front of the menu because the desert is the menu. And everything is so well-lit, even at night. And it smells so nice. Just take a second and smell the air."
"I've worked here longer than you. I know what my shop smells like."
“When was the last time you just enjoyed the smell of something nice? Really enjoyed it?"
"Right here, this morning, after we made that first batch of peanut brittle for the Doos' family party."
"Do you remember that smell? It wasn't just the peanut brittle that made it memorable, was it?"
"No."
"It was because—"
"Because she was standing right there as we pulled it out of the oven, and she looked so happy, and she tried to give us a few extra bits because of how last-minute we were able to pull it off—"
"Yes. That's why."
"But this old mare isn't Miss Doo. She doesn't smile when we bring her food."
"Who said you needed to be smiling to be happy?"
They were quiet for awhile.
"I don't think she's happy."
"Why's that?"
"I'm not the authority you are on the matter, but I just don't get a happy feeling from her. She comes here all the time and sits there. Hasn't she got anything better to do?"
"No. No she doesn't."
"I don't mean to be mean, but when you do the same thing over and over and over again you suck the happiness out of it."
"How many batches of peanut brittle have you made before the one you made this morning?"
"Too many to count."
"And yet making it still made you happy."
"Yeah, but that's different."
"How?"
"I was sharing the peanut brittle with someone else."
"So it's the company."
"Maybe."
"So maybe she's here for us."
"Who is us? The place is empty."
"Us-us."
"But then why doesn't she come over here and talk to us-us?" He immediately regretted saying this.
"She's learned to live with silence, I like to think."
"So what else does she come here for?"
"The reasons she doesn't go to that all-night pasta place. She knows what she wants, and she doesn't need to look for it. She can see clearly. She can enjoy the smell."
"I care about her patronage, and I'm glad she's—err, enjoying herself here. But." He paused, his eyes flickering like the streetlamps. "Cup was up late with the kids, and she's been so tired lately. Trust me, foalsitting is a cakewalk compared to foal-rearing. I just want to go upstairs and crawl into bed and fall asleep lying next to her."
"That's nice of you to say."
"I can tolerate waiting for her. She's good for business. But I didn't want to deal with turning off the ovens at this hour. If I wait to turn them off, I'll just end up cleaning them while I'm down here."
"So, we'll just wait until tomorrow morning to clean them?"
The old mare rapped her hoof on the wooden table. "Another cupcake," she said.
This time the stallion glided to the old mare's side. He threw away the empty paper wrap and got her a new one, but before he put it down in front of her he held up a hoof and mouthed "one more." she paid him no mind.
"Yes," he said as he returned to the younger mare's side, "We'll just wake up a bit—"
He felt a hoof on his shoulder. He stopped. The younger mare was staring at their customer in a tranquil state of confusion. It was as if she had been hypnotized. Her eyes were glued on the old mare, who opened her mouth and began to hum a rhythm encumbered by softly spoken words.
"Our Mothers,
"Whose love binds us to them and they to us,
"Our dear Mother who raises the sun,
"Our dear Mother who raises the moon,
"Two sisters born of the universe and entrusted keepers of our mortal world,
"By their command and under their guidance do we prosper,
"With our labors bearing fruits that nourish us
"And friendships that sustain us.
"Give to us love and order measurable in the light of the day
"And the subtle whisper of the night."
She bowed, her mane almost touching the cupcake. Then she straightened and ate.
“She didn’t do that when she ate the last cupcake, did she? Why does she do that?" the younger mare asked.
"Do what?"
"Say that weird chant before she eats. She does that all the time she comes in here, and I never had the nerve to ask her why." She paused, almost confused. "Oh. Wait."
"It's just her way," the stallion said.
"It sounds like one of the old tribal chants my zebra friend—the one who lives in the Everfree forest—says right before she mixes a potion."
"Before we met you, there were a bunch of religious ponies in Ponyville. Probably before you were even born. I was too young to be caught dead with their kind of lifestyle. It wasn’t cool to believe in something bigger than yourself back then. We were the center of our own universes.”
“I’d love to hear the rest of your awesome story about being old, but—the chanting?”
“Oh. If I remember right, she's blessing the food. She's just a religious mare. A lot of older ponies are religious, in one way or another."
"About what?"
"About the princesses. Way back in the day before Ponyville got populous there was a fairly large religious contingent in the rural areas of the country. They worshiped Celestia as a Goddess."
"As a Goddess? But she's just like us."
He shrugged. "I suppose you'd know her better than I. Ponies need something to cling to. For some it's religion. For some it's cupcakes. For her, it's both."
“So why’d they leave?”
“The town got too crowded to sustain simple living. Shops like this supported a lifestyle of frivolity they wouldn’t tolerate. So they left.”
"It seems kind of silly, if you ask me."
“If they didn’t feel comfortable living here, I wouldn’t want to make them stay if they didn’t want to stay here.”
“Not that. Just the whole concept in general. Maybe it’s because I know the princess.”
“It's not nice to look down on other ponies for their beliefs."
"Yeah." She paused. "You're right. I just don't get the blessing part of it. A cupcake tastes the same, whether it's got a blessing on it or not."
“Pinkie.”
“Sorry. Can’t they just change?”
“Change doesn’t come easy. If it did, we’d be living in a utopia. Or a dictatorship. Depends on who’s doing the change.”
The old mare knocked on the wooden table. The stallion went to her side and shook his head. His mouth opened to speak, but he closed it and shook his head again instead.
“Another cupcake,” said the old mare.
The stallion shook his head again. He shrugged, then pointed at the door. The old mare got up, looked out the window at the night, soaked it up through her skin, and nodded. She dropped a few bits onto the table and wandered out, her walk an indecisive limp gently rocked by sugar.
“I don’t feel right, making her leave like that,” the younger mare said. “She liked it here.”
“We stay open late for her every night. I’m sure she understands. I’m gonna head upstairs then.”
“Sounds good. Leave the light on, though? I just remembered I gotta go run a thing over to Twilight.”
“She’s still awake?”
“Of course she is.”
“Alright then. Turn it off when you get back inside. Good night.”
“Good night.”
The younger mare didn’t need to drop a thing off at Twilight’s. The night enveloped her, and she was alone. Why did she lie to her boss, her friend, like that? She felt the answer sitting at the front of her mind but all that was there was a blank. One big blank.
She looked back through the window. The seat occupied by the old mare was empty. She knew she had to go, and go she did. She couldn’t tell where. All around her it was nothing, black, blank. She walked and went nowhere. The roads were circles. And the old mare, she was a circle, a path that led into the shop and out again, a blank. The prayer she said to herself was a blank. One big blank. One big Blank. Our Blank, whose Blank binds us to them and they to us, our dear Blank who raises the Blank, our dear Blank who raises the Blank, two Blanks born of the Blank and entrusted keepers of our mortal Blank, by their Blank and under their Blank do we Blank, with our labors bearing Blank that nourish us and Blank that sustain us. Give to us Blank and Blank measurable in the Blank of the Blank and the Blankity-Blank of the Blank.
A light shone in her face. She smiled, and stared into the window of a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. The sign above the door read The Pasta Platter. She tried peering further inside, but the vague light veiled rather than revealed. Aside from the flicker of a few fancy candles, she could see nothing. She suddenly longed for the light of the shop and turned over her shoulder, as if by instinct.
Alongside the bend of the road stood a small house, made of gingerbread and sweet smells. From the windows beamed a light, solitary and quiet. She had walked in a big circle.
She looked back towards the restaurant, and for a moment the dark made her dizzy. She shook her head. It was probably just the sugar from a long day’s work of tasting her own creations getting to her. It would go away soon enough.
Author's Note
Apologies to Hemingway.
