Old Friends, Old Feelings
Violent pink splashes against bare brick, lasers pulsing and writhing across the harsh stone in a suggestive dance that mirrors the slow roll of the crowd through which it filters. The light dyes the air the exact shade of bubble-gum, slanting against the ceiling fifty feet above and sliding along the polished concrete that so many hooves stumbled across; despite the brightness of the lightshow, the floor is so packed that the far wall, and the few bleary-eyed figures slumped against it, is cast in a forest of shadows, and the bar that hunches in the back corner of the building is the only pinpoint of light in the darkness. Everybody knew it was there of course; Black Light is famous for its bar.
Back on the dance floor, drums clash with an aggressive intensity. Thunder stutters through the room with each switch-blade quick motion of the drummer's hooves, and the crowd gains a new tempo, a new intensity, to their frenzy. He spins the sticks in his fetlocks with a bit of flair, an impressive feat for an Earther, and grins at the audience from beneath the shaggy, spiked mess of his emerald mane. He's not unattractive: there's a certain charm to his crooked smile and aquiline nose, pierced with a single ring that matches the pair gleaming from his left brow. His eyes are cat-yellow -- caustic, unusual. Even the off-white of his coat has something edgy to it. With each flick of his hoof, another spinning light crawls across the mass of swaying, thrashing youths, flashing from white, laughing teeth and the glisten of eyes with pupils too large, too black for their own good. Here, he's god. He sets the beat to which they dance, over which they have to shout to be heard.
I watch him from the bar. Smoke is in the air, and a haze has settled between us so I can only see the outline of him, the suggestion of a figure who raises his arms and gives life to the heartbeats of the wild teenagers that giggle and grind just beyond the incandescent island that is his stage. Of course, there are other musicians up there. Two to be exact. A thin, all grey Pegasus who seems barely old enough for the bouncer to let him past the doors is propped up in the spotlight out front. Crooning in a surprisingly husky mumble is his main purpose, though he sways a little at the chorus, and occasionally the deep ochre of his eyes will flick to a mare as he reaches out a forelimb in her direction and purrs a suggestive sounding line. Behind him lingers another Pegasus. She's vibrant green as the light is blinding pink -- the mare strums the strings of her bass in a forlorn motion, and tries to blow the ragged tangles of a crimson mane from her eyes every now and again. For what they are, and where they are, they're alright. Tonight, they give the club a pulse, stir up the cocktail of hormones and alcohol in a way that has this place going crazy.
Still, Asche is the best.
I watch as his head ducks to every throb and drop of the beat, a background - a white noise - of clinking, half-full glasses and straining voices going almost unnoticed. I'm solely focused, ears honed and a hind hoof swinging in time to each bob of his mane -- I'm too short to reach the floor, and the feeling of my leg swaying through the air brings a little relief to the constant heat that plagues the whole
building despite a cool Autumn being in full swing beyond the brick walls of the club. A bead of sweat crawls down my back. It tickles, and I shift my elbows along the dark, polished wood of the bar and frown at the little smudges that warm fur leaves on its flawless surface, pushing my almost-empty glass back and forth between my hooves in an absent minded motion.
"Hey there, sweetheart, you want another?" A low, brass voice shatters my concentration.
I keep my head down, peering from a swoop of iron bangs at the source of the voice. He's tall and willowy, and frowns when I shake my head in a definite no. From the corner of my eye, I watch his skinny shoulders slope to the other end of the bar; he chooses a pair of mares to pester, and they flush and giggle almost immediately. Well, if he was only looking for an easy seat... I'd have let him buy me a round any other evening, but tonight I've got other plans.
As light the pale blue shade of clear skies envelopes my glass, the source of which is the starburst perched on my forehead, I raise it high up, giving the tumbler a little wiggle that seems to catch Asche's attention. He seems to catch my drift, and gives a single, out of time nod towards a shadowy corner and what I assume is the door he will emerge from as soon as his newest band comes to the end of their set.
Well then.
"Took you long enough."
I'd know that petulant grumble anywhere. Electrum stands, slumped against the wall, right where I expected her to be. I plaster my face in a cocky grin and swing the door open wide, switching my tail in a hiss of grassy locks that catches her right around the thigh as me and the rest of 'The Clydesdale Bankrobbers' mooch on past. They're not bad guys, those two, but I'm not sad to see them leaving in their own taxi cab, leaving me and Ele in the dark-blue of a dying night.
"Ow -- Asche!"
A sigh turns into a chuckle that I can't stop from escaping. A squeal and she's after me, teeth bared and ears tucked in the midst of the wild ravel of her thunder-cloud grey mane. She manages to nip at the drumsticks stamped on my flank before I trip away and canter away from Electrum and the familiar cloud of her warm smell. It's turned into a chase now, a stampede of hooves across the gravel lot outside Black Light and into the early morning. We blaze across the mile straightway towards town until we tire ourselves out, falling into a slow mosey of hushed whispers, cursing stubbed hooves and unexpected curbs as we wobble and stagger along the wayside and towards the general direction of town.
Sunny Groves is a pleasant kind of place: fields and orchards border a couple suburbs and a relaxed business district woven together by cobble carriage-ways and neat dirt paths. Old-timey gas lamps still burning in the wee hours stand like sentinels at each corner, and all the houses sit on their own plots, framed by gnarled, well-trimmed trees and bordered by carefully tended shrubbery and prize flowers. The whole town has the hush of sleep to it, palpable even at a distance. Regional planning legislation means that anything 'disruptive' needs to shut down at 10 o'clock sharp or be outside of the settled zone, meaning Black Light and the handful of bars and late-operating restaurants run by locals sit on their own compound a mile or so from town limits, patrolled by a handful of the town's guards each night. There's an inn there too, perched in a quieter corner of the outpost, but seeing as Ele lives on the outskirts of town there seems no point in paying for a room when we can toddle along the straight, dusty road leading back into Sunny Groves and tuck ourselves in for the night, free of charge.
Speaking of Ele, she paces ahead in the dark, shoulders cast in an eerie gleam from the glow of her hornlight. I watch the toned muscles of her unmarked haunches sashay side to side with each step, saddlebags bouncing against sinew built from her time on the track team all throughout middle school. Perhaps its unusual for a filly her age not to have a mark, but it doesn't really bother me. Sport was never her passion like music was for me. Now, in our second year of high school, she's dropped off the radar as far as the coaches are concerned, but is no less invested in her personal regime. She's dragged me with her a few times, and, to my own dismay, she sure can run for a Unicorn.
In the soft dark, with only the phosphorous glow of Ele's hornlight and the palest shade of the sky to see by, we trot along the dirt track that leads into town. Shadows drop sleepily from the trees that line the streets, stretching over our necks as soon as the first stone breaks up from the earth of the worn road. Quietly, we swing a right onto Hackamore Lane, and creep up the creaky, wooden steps of the porch of the first house we come to and towards the wide, front entrance. It takes a moment for Electrum to hoof the key from her panniers, and I lean my forehead against the cool oak and glass of the door whilst she fumbles the key in the lock, juggling fine levitation and the wide bubble of illumination in a haze of tipsiness. It takes her a moment to manipulate the handle, before the door glides open on silent hinges.
The hallway stretches away from us, infinite in the darkness, an impossible stretch of contrasting surfaces with its unvarnished terracotta tiles and teal silk wallpaper. Dark wooden side tables and Persian carpets peek out from the gloom at me in a sea of subdued colours, a perfume of flowers and linen enveloping the pair of us as the front door swings shut and seals away the light. I'm left to trail after Ele as she pads her way up the stairs, taking with her our only source of light in the whole house. It's not creepy here, but the high-ceilinged rooms are full to the brim with the comfortable indulgence of old money that has been mostly neglected in the age of careers and corporate game-boards. The whole décor fits Electrum's parents to a tee, and, to a degree, I suppose she is just another element of this neglected grandeur. I've only ever met her folks a hoofful of times, if you could call the few hellos shared over Scry calls meeting them, but they seem nice enough.
Ele's father, Noble Metal, is a sight older than his wife but has the smiling charm of any southern gentlemen despite his position as a high-ranking Unicorn general in the Equestrian Guard. From the few short calls I've witnessed I've noticed the only thing that Electrum has inherited from him is his dimpled smile and easy going nature. His missus meanwhile, Shakudō, or 'Aka', is a middle-aged, half-Neighponese Earther on a mission to tear the balls off of any stallion who stands in her way on the road to being a high-ranking bureaucrat, a fierce, rose-copper mare with eyes the startling colour of a tropical sea and a mane like blue midnight -- the obvious mother of her daughter when you put together, their eyes only a shade apart and coats so similar in colour. In the moments when Ele has excused herself from the room, Aka has seemed pleasant enough between hissed threats about her daughter's wellbeing and honest interest in my own. I've come to like the veneer of them that rests about the place: war medals and a glass-fronted Tantalus, beautiful calligraphy and a grand piano gathering dust.
Though Missus Noble is only a weekday warrior of the Canterlot offices, she's usually shut up in her suite of rooms at the back of the house. She hardly leaves even then, only to share an obligatory evening meal with her daughter before she sweeps back off to the coffee and perfume laden air of her rooms. I don't think Ele minds much, and as it's a Friday, her mother isn't even home to care about us coming in so late. Only the old cat, Beau, is there to mind, and makes it known with a yowl as we reach the top of the rickety staircase that leads to the third floor and I stumble against the bustle of her backside. No doubt she'd been waiting, hunched on the thick carpert, for us to stumble in at some unholy hour so she could swan her way into the room and make a bed from an open drawer. Electrum finds it sweet when the fat creature plonks herself on a pile of clean blankets. I suppose I would too, if the old bag didn't hate me so much.
A hot giggle brushes my neck as I watch the arch-backed feline scuttle into the room, and I nudge open the door fully open with a soft push of my forehoof.
"Ladies first."
A confusion of legs sends us awkwardly through the threshold at the same time, and we lean on each other as we sway over to the bed on two legs each, an uneasy waltz across the bare floorboards. I'm suddenly glad of the pillows Ele seems insistent on piling on every available surface of the mattress as they cushion our fall, and I nuzzle into her mane, nose pressed to the warm spot behind her ear as she giggles against the hold of my forelegs. We stay still for a moment, breathing in the silence and the first breath of fresh air that sneaks in the just-open window.
"Hey, Asche?"
"Hmm? Whassat?"
"Do you looovee me?"
She giggles drunkenly, and pushes herself off of my chest and to the other side of the bed. I fake a pause for thought; as we lie there in the dark, I wonder what she would do if I took that question seriously for once. She's drunk, and dumb when she's drunk, yet Ele always knows what to say to set butterflies off in my stomach. I clear my throat awkwardly, and listen to how her breath begins to lull.
"Of course." A practised softness, enough so that it won't disturb her from the approaching sleep. "You're my best friend. Of course I love you."
"I love you too."
Silence for a while. We've known each other for years, but the feeling that shoots through me is not friendly in the least. I'm hot. The sheets pull against my hide too tight, so I kick them off with a soft rustle of linen. I'm glad for the cool air that wisps through the room in soft gusts, and the soft rush of sleepiness that comes after. Rolling over brings my cheek to the chill surface of a pillow, a filling of soft feathers cradling my heavy head with little reluctance on my part. Sleep comes quickly and suddenly, a night of youth disappearing into yesterday like so many similar occasions.
