Why you close up shop so late?
Author's Note
The song that inspired me to write this fic.
Why you close up shop so late?
“Good evening, ma’am.”
To be honest, he might be true. Probably there’s somepony in the world for whom this particular evening is good. His expression when I entered his shop indicated anything but the fact that he had a good evening. Perhaps he was just bored. Who goes to a shop like that at such an hour?
Well, I came here. It’s already dark outside, the only light in this small, backwater town comes from this very store. The owner probably thought about going home when I interrupted him. Well, I won’t be there for long. I’m not a particularly picky client.
“What do you need, ma’am?” he asks, rising from his chair. Well, that’s actually a good question. While I was walking here, I thought a lot about the answer.
“I need to get rid of some varmints,” I say. My voice is monotone, despite my best attempts to make it sound casual. Will it always be like this? I can see his eyes widen. I can see his thoughts with ease. Soon he’ll ask me if I need professional’s help. Well, I don’t. I deal with my problems myself.
“You have varmints on a rock farm?” he asks. I only nod – I don’t want to creep him out more with my voice. Is it really mine? Certainly, it doesn’t sound like my old voice, but maybe I should get used to it.
“Yes. They come at night and steal our rocks.” He probably thinks I’m joking. Maybe he thinks I’m one of those ponies who can say every, even the most absurd line, with a straight face. But then I can see his instincts of a salespony kicking in. He goes to one of the shelves and takes something from it. Then he brings it to me.
A brand-new, double-barrel shotgun.
“You can load it with salt, so you won’t be in trouble when one of, as you called them, varmints was too close to the wrong side of the barrel.”
As a farmer’s daughter, I can appreciate a good weapon. Yet, it’s not something I’m looking for.
“I need something smaller. You know, I don’t think I’m strong enough…”
Of course I lie. I’m strong, kick of the shotgun is merely a gentle stroke for me. If I weren’t strong, I’d still be lying in that ditch not far from the miners’ settlement. If I weren’t strong, I’d probably never get up from there.
I’m strong. But apparently not the strongest.
He looks at me carefully. I know that look and I know exactly what he’ll say.
“You know that suicide is not the answer… I know a good psychologist, I can call him even now.”
I’m trying to laugh, but I’m barely able to crack a small smile. Just another thing they took from me.
“I assure you, I’m not going to kill myself.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but then I move my saddlebags so he can hear the bits ringing inside. He goes to another shelf and brings me a pistol. It’s small, far easier to conceal. I see the letters on the grip: “VIS” on the right side, “FB” on the left.
“I just got it from Ponyland.” He explains. “Eight rounds per magazine…”
He gives me other technical details, something about short recoil and 9x19 mm bullets, but I don’t listen. Eight rounds. He says something about two magazines being added to each gun. That makes sixteen. Still, I’m five rounds short.
Four rounds, I correct myself. Despite what he thinks about me, I’m not going to commit suicide. My sisters and parents wouldn’t live that through. Four rounds, if everything goes well. I guess I won’t have much time to reload, I’d rather have the bullets in magazines instead of lying loose in my saddlebags.
I tell him that I want three magazines. That finally convinces him that I don’t want to commit suicide. That’d be running away, and Pies never run away. They deal with their problems themselves. Even Pinkie didn’t run away to Ponyville. She just decided that it’d be for the best and I understand it.
He doesn’t ask why do I need to fire twenty bullets quickly, without wasting time on loading the magazine. Hell, even if I asked him for a pistol and one bullet, he probably wouldn’t mind, as long as I wouldn’t blow my brain out in his shop. Perhaps he’d just ask me to go outside and after I’d be done, he’d take the pistol from my hoof, clean it and put it on display again.
I pay, take my newly acquired pistol, three magazines, and a box with fifty bullets, and spin to leave the shop. Just before I walk through the door, he asks:
“Where are you going?”
There you are, my dear gun seller. You fear that I’ll follow you and put one of those pretty bullets you generously sold me for half the price in your head? Or that I’ll wait for you next to your house door? Well, mate, you’re wrong. I have better things to do tonight than taking your life.
“I’m taking the road of hate,” I reply. I know that’s unnecessary poetic, but I’m a poet after all. He says nothing so I slam the door and trot out of the town. Maybe he’ll even call the police. Good luck with that. The police in this town consists of an old sheriff who can’t find his way out of paper bag, and a young trooper, who’s now probably drunk out of his mind. That’s why I didn’t go to them for help.
Halfway between the town and the rock farm where I live, there’s a miners’ settlement. Nothing really interesting there; several provisional, wooden huts on the foothills surrounding a coal mine, and a board proudly announcing that the settlement is called New Mine and its population consists currently of 48 ponies.
48 ponies. Twenty strong, earth stallions, rarely seen without their hard hats. Twenty mares, their coats dark from the coal dust. Eight skinny, rachitic foals. Their mothers can barely feed them. Soil here gives birth only to rocks and stones. With some talent and strong teeth you can eat a rock, but it can hardly be called a healthy diet.
I walk down the dirt road, whistling a happy tune. The pistol is hidden in an inner pocket of my dress (I wear it since that memorable day when I found myself in a ditch), the spare magazines are in my saddlebags next to a rock candy necklace – the last one Pinkie made for me before she left the rock farm, just a month ago.
I smile as her face appear in my mind. I’d give everything to meet her again. Sure, Inkie and Blinkie are still there, but it’s just not the same without her.
I look at the sky. The stars shine just like a week ago when I was also walking this path, back to the farm after running some errands in the town. I look at the Mare in the Moon – a silent witness of everything that happened on that Friday evening. For a moment I have a feeling that she knows exactly what I’m going to do. I shudder, but she doesn’t react. Just like she didn’t react back then.
Well, Mare in the Moon, Luna, or whatever you were called back in the days when the two sisters ruled over Equestria, you can’t stop me now. I made my choice. Next time it could be Inkie or Blinkie who’d meet twenty miners coming back from the inn on a Friday evening. They aren’t as strong as me… Well, Nightmare Moon, I guess you don’t really understand that. You and your sister didn’t have so good relationships, did you?
The air is cold, but it’s not bad. It helps me clear my mind and focus on what I need to do. I can’t let emotions rule over me. I have to be precise. Twenty ponies. Twenty bullets. I trot forward, repeating these words like a mantra. The wind blows across the rocky plateau, littered with rickety bushes. I can hear the crickets chirping and occasional squeak of a mouse.
I can see a wooden board in front of me. I know the lettering by heart. It doesn’t really interest me. What really caught my attention is a small rock lying next to it. There’s nothing special about it. Actually, it’s more like a small pebble. A stone who wanted to be something bigger… A rock. A boulder. A mountain. Just like me, before…
Stop it. It’s a rock. It doesn’t feel. It certainly doesn’t want to be a boulder. It has no ambitions. It doesn’t make plans for the future. Just like me – my only plan for the future involves a miners’ settlement, a gun and twenty 9x19 mm bullets. What happens next, doesn’t matter. I’m like that rock, I can live through almost anything.
It’s strange, but when I woke up in that ditch a week ago, I felt only physical pain. The feeling of being tainted, humiliated – I didn’t have it. Just the pain. It took me a while before I got out and went back home. My parents were still asleep – they were used to the fact that I was the most independent of their daughters (maybe except of Pinkie) and I was often coming back from the town late. Not that I am a party girl, like my sister. There are a few well-known geologists living in the town, and I often spend time discussing various things with them. I wanted to become a geologist too. Now I don’t know what I want to do anymore.
I sigh, then I load the gun, checking if everything is in place. One step down the dirt path. Then another. Even though it’s dark I can see the silhouettes of the miners’ huts. I hope they had a good evening and are now asleep, drunk, next to their wives and foals. Not that it’d change anything if they were awake. But it’d make things easier. I’m not like all those murderers I’ve read about, who want their victims cower in fear. I don’t want to see them suffer. I simply don’t want them to hurt my sisters.
I’m only a few yards from the nearest hut. The door isn’t locked. Those miners never lock the doors – the whole population consists of just 48 ponies, they all know each other, who’d dare to break into their colleague’s house? I push them open, the gun ready in my hoof…
Half of an hour later, I walk back to the board. I thought I’d feel something. Joy? Disgust? None of these. It was almost like a boring chore. I was precise. There are still four bullets in the third of the magazines I bought and twenty six in the box. I don’t know what I’ll do with them yet. I’ll never use them to kill anypony, that’s for sure.
Most of them were asleep, indeed. I walked at one of them while he was having sex with his wife. She was screaming at me. She thought I’d kill her too… I didn’t. Some of the mares were trying to stop me, but I knocked them down, even though I had more bullets than I needed to kill everypony in the settlement. The foals were crying, but they couldn’t do anything.
If there’s something I regret, it’s the foals. But it’s not my fault. Their fathers could just leave me alone when I told them so. They already had a good evening that day. But they wanted it to be even better and that’s why I had to do what I did.
I stop by the board. The stone is still there. I pick it up and examine it carefully. I’d never thought that I could relate to a rock, but apparently it’s what I just did. Except the rock probably didn’t do anything violent in its “life”…
Well, up till now. I smash it against the board, leaving a large dent where “4” used to be. It didn’t crush upon the impact. It may be just a small stone, but it’s strong like the mightiest boulder. Not even the smallest dent tarnishes its surface. Just like what I just did didn’t taint me. It was just a chore. I use the rock to carve a new number on the plank.
I take a step back to watch the effects. It’s almost unchanged, save from a small detail. I can’t help but read it aloud, to the crickets, mice, and silent Mare in the Moon:
Welcome to New Mine
Population: 28.
For a moment, I watch it in awe. I’m not proud of what I've done. But I’m not horrified by it either.
“Time to go home, Boulder,” I say to the stone. I’m going to carry him everywhere in the inner pocket of my dress – where my gun used to be before I put it in my saddlebags like a tool I don’t need anymore. Maybe I’m sentimental? Maybe I want to have at least one souvenir from that night?
I head to the rock farm, thinking about my sisters. Inkie and Blinkie are safe now. Pinkie is far away, but if something happens to her, I’ll sure be there to protect her or to take revenge.
I’ll sure be there.
The wind is blowing cold, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything, except of the weight of Boulder in my pocket. As I’m closer to my home, I take the gun and remaining bullets out of my saddlebags and throw it into the hole into the small lake near the path. I’m sorry, gunsmiths from the distant Ponyland. I assure you that I’m satisfied with your work, but it simply outlived its usefulness.
Finally I’m home. I take off my dress and lie down in my bed, carefully placing Boulder on the nightstand. Just before I close my eyes, a final thought appear in my mind.
That really was a good evening.
