Wildlife

Sweetie Bell couldn’t take it anymore, she couldn’t handle the leering eyes and the muttering voices and the extreme pity that had befallen her. She took twenty bits from rarity and bought a train ticket, one way. It took her a while to decide where to go, but she knew she needed help, there was Manehatten, but she knew Rarity had friends there, and she did too, same with Las Pegasus. The bustling cities were out of her reach, they didn’t offer her the escape she needed.

She decided on Canterlot, the bustling regal city. It tried too hard to look ancient, medieval. The train station bright, but the rest of the city, the zones that fell aside from what the princess’s overlooked, were slums. Clubs and Bars and seedy motels.

That was her plan to take the seediest motel as her home. Maybe staying in a place as beautiful as her insides would bring her out of her delusion. Maybe she could find a job there. That was all she needed. She tried everywhere too. Waking up early in the morning and showering, finding herself leaving clean but still looking disheveled, she ate at the bar across the street from where she stayed, desperately asking the young barmaids to put it on her tab.

She didn’t have any money. That was the problem, while her successful one-hit-wonder had brought in a healthy pay, any money earned by that would he sent to the carousel boutique. She tried the churches first, she had experience there.But when she walked inside them, and looked at the metal or wooden hanging sun’s and moons, she felt her chest get heavy and her voice would squeak out pathetically, and no one would want that at there weddings and funerals.

When she decided, halfheartedly to cut out the churches she felt herself feel better. The pills seemed to be working, and even though she lived, poor, she was no longer in Ponyville and it was feeling good. She hadn’t written in her new diary since she got it, it had yet to be anointed with words. She had felt good, even writing Rarity to ask her for some money.

“I think I’m turning things around sis.” She had written, and a few days later a man had arrived with a few hundred bits for her. She felt relieved, and worked quickly on paying off her debts. The money felt like a small fortune, she felt rich.

Her eyes were starting to clear up ,and her mane never looked quite as mussed as it had before. She smiled more, and her voice was starting to come back. Her words were starting to flow and drop from her mouth as fast as the wind and snow that were coming.

The first snowfall, cold and bitter brought her looking for a job, she knew she had to audition and decided that maybe an advertisement job for now would work. Advert-Equine was hiring, she saw it in the newspapers, and that seemed like a good place to start.

They offered agents for everything in the field of work. She got there early for her audition, sitting eagerly in the waiting room, a nervous smile on her mouth, thinking to herself, I can do this Sweetie Bell. The voice that called her felt familiar, but she pushed it off as her fretting. Pushed it off as her mind playing a terrible trick on her.

“Audition for a Miss Bell” The voice calls, and she stands up, “Sorry for the small wait, I just got thinking” she sing-song apologizes, until she looks up and sees the face. He’s trying to be professional even through his worry and shock.

Her mind does not respond the same way. She feels her stomach freeze up and her mind. “Feather Weight?” Her teeth grind together, her lips feel dry she backs up a few feet. “I-I hadn’t realized you worked here.” Her heart was pounding roughly in her chest cavity. Her eyes are watering.

The wires of her mind are pulling into rough knots as she surveys the situation. “You did this to me” she whispers. “Feather Weight. Why did you do this to me. Why didn’t you help me.” His words are candor. “Sweetie Bell, I’m on the clock, if you would like to talk about this private matter, we can do so after work.” Her voice cracks towards the end. “Now then, let me show you do your audition room”

For such a lithe pony, the noise that comes out of Sweeties mouth is tremendous. “No. No. No.” She isn’t even yelling, her voice is strange, it’s like a strange cry, and she pushes herself against the wall.

“You left me.” Her horn lights up to push the door open, and she is running fater than she ever can remember herself running. Her hooves kneading against the ground, and when she gets to the station, she buys a one-way ticket to Ponyville.She dosen’t even get her things, just the money she had on her, nothing else was important. Her journal was in her saddlebag, her money was in her saddlebag, and that was her life. Things felt mundane when she got back to Ponyville.

The church had been mostly destroyed, and Sweet Apple Acers had a sign that read. “Closed Till Summer” pushed into the ground. She had been gone for three months, and it felt so different. When Rarity gets home from work, all she hears is Sweetie Bells vast voice screeching “FEATHER WEIGHT, FEATHER WEIGHT FEATHER WEIGHT.”