Solstice

The capital city of Evening Tide carries a vacant, naked terror to the tourists on the train. They gasp and coo at all of the residents with their wallets and pity. Sunset isn't excluded from this wave of emotional disbelief, shame and hate wafting up from the sight of the city from her window. As if the city is alive and spiteful, it takes note of their passage on the tracks and shakes the the train with mysterious quakes. They are tolerated, not welcomed.

The stewards smile away as they tell the passengers to remain calm. Sunset can't ignore what she sees. What she feels that doesn't make any sense. But it's true and it's terrifying. The city's awake. The city knows who they are, mere children under it's gaze and who they belong to. Evening Tide is crying and Sunset somehow manages to look away when a steward makes her way over.

The city's tears, this vicious creature's tears are not of sadness but of hate. Somehow, the Princess' sun hasn't touched this place and water, whether salt or fresh cradles everything. And that everything was once something more. Sunset can't imagine it, what this place might have looked like in its heyday, but the city does. The city remembers for all of them.

There's no harmony here. None of those virtues that the Princess has exalted from sea to sea. This land belongs to Equestria, but it is not Equestrian. The city has made itself clear on what it thinks of them. What it thinks of the Princess and how far her rule would be allowed to be felt. And here, it's not. Is this why the Princess has let her go? So that she could return to her homeland and know of this place, no matter how hazy her earliest memories were?

The train slows and comes to a sloshing halt as it reaches the train station. Sunset sits up and gets onto her hooves with a dull, familiar ache. Four months of traveling east as east was willing to go on a train line will do that to you.

With a flick of her horn, she pulls her traveling case from under her seat and walks off into the rain. Doesn't get far dry, her hair deciding to prove it's desperation for a proper wash by collapsing and blinding her for the next hurried steps forward. Whipping her hair from her eyes, she takes shelter under a food stand selling dried and smoked seaweed.

Though the thought of wasting a few more crucial bits to snack on anything passes her mind, she waves the server away and turns back to the rain. It is mostly for the sentiment that she pulls out her train ticket, worn and yellowed, from her carry-on bag. She has spent four worthless months on a single train going on and on and this was as far as her flighty behavior could bring her?

Shouldn't someone have come after her now? Tracked her down to give her a strong lecture and that she should feel the consequences of her actions? Nothing should be this easy and free. What is she suppose to learn in such a place?

This place, old and constantly drowning from the waves and rains, seems proud. The ponies she sees are full of joy as they tilt their heads high in the heavy downpour and trot in the rotting muck. If this place sank under the waves, she doubts that they would even notice. Sickening.

Sunset looks down at her train-ticket and holds her breath for a single second of despair and failure. She's missed school. Her grades surely have dropped. The Princess has completely replaced her with Twinkle. Her scholarship status must be in question by the board of teachers. And even if she wanted to rush home to complete the rest of the year while she still had her scholarship, it would take another four months.

She paid for a round-ticket to Canterlot for her eventually return but it seems like she just wasted her money. Eventually. What a riot. She's gone and committed social suicide! What the heck did she run away from? Dignity can't her a roof of her head. She'd needed them and now she's gone and lost that.

Sunset sticks her head outside into the cold rain and pretends not to be crying along with the city. Pretends not to break under the weight of her stupidity and remorse. Her breath is still held in her lungs. Her body quivers. She exhales and the city keeps on crying without her.

“Sunlight? Is that you?”

“That depends on who that you is supposed to be.” Sunset mutters as a pony, tall and nimble, gallops up toward her, their long tail curiously links around a umbrella shielding them from the rain. “And you are?”

“You don't remember me, do you?” His voice is surprisingly deep but somehow, he feels fragile to her. A old memory bubbles up her stomach and she crushes it down. “I guess I shouldn't expect any better since you stop sending us lot  letters, seven-ish years ago. I never stopped writing you. Got any of my letters?”

“I beg your pardon but you must have me confused with someone else.” She must be confused. She doesn't know this stallion. “I haven't received any letters from Evening Tide. And this is my first visit-”

“Home, yeah.” The stallion butts in.

“Don't do that, Brine. I swear you're so rude and-” Sunset blinks as her mind considers her words. “Your name is Brine and we know each other.” Someone's found her alright. Not the right pony. But...

“WhaleWish Orphanage with a capital O, not a lowercase one. I'm bringing that up because I do some freelance jobs for them now that I've grown up and live on my own...” Yeah, that really jogs her memory all right. They met at an orphanage. Fun memories that.

And she's missing most of what Brine's been saying by trying not to have flashbacks.

“We were good mates until your aunt came and picked you up.” Ummh, she doesn't want to remember that either. “Which let me ask you, do you think you are too good to talk with us, now? We shared letters when you were with your aunt. We shared letters when you were in the orphanage in Canterlot. We shared letters when you got into that fancy school. But suddenly you stopped responding out of the blue.”

“It wasn't like that. I got caught up with trying to catch up with my peers. They had training and if I wanted to-”

“Pfft, like I care.”

“Then why you'd ask!”

“I find it best to get these things up and out of the dark. Unpleasant feelings need to be sorted out quickly for the sake of our friendship.”

“Friendship! I am not interested-”

“Of course, you're interested. You're going to be spending your home-coming staying with me. I hope you didn't try to make any reservations around here. The hotels are quick to forget you name on their books. You are so lucky that I got a new apartment too. Three whole bedrooms. Two baths. Nice plumbing and it's right over a little restaurant. What are making that face for?”

“Are you serious, we just met... We just met again for the first time in eight years. You don't know me. You don't have to do this.”

“I know. I would like to.  And even if you don't want to stay with me, let's go to my place anyway. It is-” Brine looks to the food stand's clock siting on the counter. “Time for elevenses.”

“Elevenses? Is that another name for brunch?”

“No! Not at all. It's not even past lunch-time yet. You make me sick with your ignorance. I don't remember you at all.”

“That's what I've been saying.”

“Well, you've said too much. Come on, then.” Brine's tail curves and moves past his hold on his umbrella and wraps around her traveling case's handle. “Another name for brunch... You're funny.”

The only reason she follows is because Brine has stolen her bag. That's it. His almost familiar face is a comfort in this dreary backdrop of dilapidated buildings of stone and iron. With the sky draping gray blankets along the distant horizon, she knows that this storm, the city's cries will continue long into the night. And she doesn't exactly have hotel money so maybe she should take up Brine's offer?

Better than train station benches. Now, that is something she could write books on. The quality of benches and the best way for them to be built and stationed in train stations. That would put her back in everyone's good side... 'You have saved the back ache crisis of commuters everywhere!' Hahaha, that was a good laugh.

The roads they practically swim in go up and around like a mound of disorientated snakes. There's no rhythm to their steps as they pass the same place twice.

Or what looks like the same place twice. Or twice, the people same because Brine's been awkwardly looking over his shoulder. Not at her but at random residents; ponies, griffons, dragons and goats who stop whatever they were doing to stare at him. Some of the bolder ones follow, shouting at him and asking for him to stop.

Sunset wonders if she should ask what is going on. What if brick-head Brine got himself into some criminal activity? She could be walking around with some gangster's minion. But then she remembers like one does when they say a known but rude secret in public. Brine wasn't supposed to live this long. He's a walking superstition and his story is supposed to play out the same as the others. Some how, someway, the water will reclaim him and the Lady shall take him to her watery court. Or something. The old story doesn't go that way but she'll recall the right words soon enough.

“How are you doing that?” Sunset asks as her eyes takes in Brine's well-groomed and thick tail. His tail is bright and green like the color of sea foam and stands out against his dark coat.

She checks to see if his cutie mark will give her a clue. Perhaps the tail-maneuvering is a special talent? His cutie mark is a crown and scepter surrounded by swirls. How vague and usual like most cutie marks are? Well, she was hoping to see a cutie mark related to the circus or something. Juggling pins or a burning hoop.

Her cutie mark is no better. Two suns meeting and leaving each other. She's lied to others and said it was a inverse sun and that her power would always increase. Her weakness would become her strength, her fears turn into courage. It was a childish lie. It was a silly hope. And now, it is definitely something that couldn't come true.

With little help from his cutie mark and her thoughts, Sunset waits for Brine's answer.

“That... Do you mean keep up my sunny-disposition? Sometimes, I think my name should have been Sunset and yours Brine. I'm a delight to be around and well you-”

“I meant your tail.”

“Oh that. Hmm, it's nothing special. I got trained by the matron after she adopted me but I think she was just training me to be her little paper boy. Even now, she finds a excuse to drop out a box-load of papers to be sorted and signed at my job. I'd like to tell her that it's annoying but somehow, I'll walk away with more work.” Brine prattles on as if he's secretly pleased to be annoyed at extra work.

Sunset could understand the feeling of loving secret extra credit. But really, couldn't Brine stick to the point? He hasn't changed a bit. Brine was a dopey, tall and all knobby knees child that always needed her to watch over him and after all this time, all that's changed his height and way of walking.

Maybe he's less of a whiny dope and more of a air-head. And he's gained fine, firm legs. Sunset blinks. Where did that thought come from?

“You still haven't answered the question. How are you holding the umbrella and pulling along my bag?”

Brine is silent and then- “I have no clue what you're trying to ask me. Didn't I answer it? The matron trained me. It's how I do my job which is seventy percent paperwork and thirty percent making sure a lot folk gets theirs done. Wait, I'm wrong. It's a hundred and thirty percent paperwork! Get it? It's a little scribe humor. Wanna hear a proper joke? ”

“Your tail!” Sunset snaps. “Oh my god, I'm asking about your tail! I couldn't do that with my tail holding all those heavy things. Moving parts of the tail without it breaking apart. Is it some kind of shampoo?”

Brine makes a crooked, clever smile that brings back more memories of a distant youth. Brine's always been tall but so easy to push into the water. He's like a sheet of paper just asking to be stepped on. “It's the water, Equestrian. It's the water.”

Out of all the ponies Sunset has met, Brine should be afraid of the water the most.

“Are you judging me for not being whatever the heck you call yourself? You. Do you know who I am? I am-” Sunset sucks in all of her breath and deflates. “I'm nobody.”

Brine bumps into her and snorts.“Don't say that. You're an Equestrian. That's worse than nobody.”

Equestrian this, Equestrian that. Who cares about Princess Celestia? She's not seen in this land but Brine better be aware that this is her land.

“Oh, shut up. You're Equestrian too. All of this place is Equestria.” Princess Celestia has made it so. Her rule. Her law. Brine, what on earth could he know better than her. She's studied under the Princess, meditated on her words even if they confuse her.

How dare he mock the country the Princess has made great!

“No, it's not and they know it. You know it too, from the moment you stepped on this land. This place has been cursed and Equestia has no business getting into it. It may be Equestia on papers and maps...”

He pauses, lingering on the silence. Turns to stare into her eyes and the rain slows to a drizzle. The city's quiet, it's hate lowers into a mild mumble as if waiting to hear Brine's proclamation. His words, it's as if she knows what he's going to say. Sees that fevered look she feels in the bottom of her being.

“Eventually, it won't be.”

“Eventually,” she echoes, her lungs feeling faint. Those words are lies. For her. For him. To her. To him. Did Brine have his own Princess Celestia? His own Twinkle? “Where do you hear such things? Aren't you just propping yourself up?”

Isn't she just propping herself up?

“Well, I'm living proof of eventually and guess what, you are too.” He says with that crooked smile of his. “After all, what else did you come here for?”

'My eventually is in Canterlot.' she doesn't say. 'And I would like you to come with me on that day I return. We can only find eventually or the sublime or the meaning by searching for it. It doesn't come for us. We aren't anything special.

You've proved that you aren't special.

You're still here.

You're still in Evening Tide which is a worse place than Canterlot. They have pride here because they have nothing else. This place is a wet grave and by your words, you aren't dead to this place. You shouldn't stay here.'

Instead, she says, “I have come here because of dignity, because of stupidity and I've found it's lovechild! You should hear yourself. So dramatic. You've haven't changed at all, Bewitched Brine.”

Brine glances away, that smile creeps back into it's cave and he starts walking away. “You're terrible, Sunlight. Bringing up that old name to stop me. You know I'm right. But if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. Just don't call me Bewitched Brine. That name still gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Sunlight!”