Luna's

Luna’s

Chapter 2

After a few cups of coffee, and a night spent mostly failing to get information out of Luna, I noticed that it was late. The clock on the wall behind her ticked on endlessly throughout the night, but I didn’t notice the actual time until it was already past three in the morning.

I pushed my empty coffee mug away, giving the waitress a small shake of my head as I did. The coffeepot she had readied in her magic lowered down below the counter slowly, as if dejected by its rejection. The mare’s dark blue magical aura soon appeared around my abandoned coffee mug, dragging it behind the counter as well. “Everything appears and disappears behind that counter…I hope it’s getting washed at some point…” I muttered grimly.

Luna laughed again in that same creepy way. “I’ll have you know we pass all our health inspections,” she replied with something vaguely resembling pride. Honestly, it was hard to tell through her lazy demeanor and soft spokenness.

Choosing to go with pride, I nodded. “That’s good to know.” I wanted to ask how well they passed them, but I realised that might be a bit rude. I also wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer.

She laughed again. Those same three, high-pitched, soft notes. Never before had somepony’s laugh stood out so starkly to me. Too many labels could be applied to that laugh, none particularly good. While it worried me, I didn’t plan on staying long. Once the fog was cleared in the morning, I would be leaving this hole in the wall, and hopefully never have that worrisome laugh plague my ears again. I pushed out my stool from the counter.

“Ready for bed already?” she asked, anticipating my answer by levitating a keychain up. On the ring were a few old keys. None of the keys looked anything like modern keys, which made me question exactly how old this building was.

As Luna stepped out from behind the bar, I slid down from the stool planting my hooves on the floor. Next to the counter, opposite side of the door into the restaurant, was a large archway that split in two directions. One way led up a set of rickety wooden stairs, the second down a dark hallway. I found myself staring at the abyss, almost feeling it look back at me. It sent a chill up my spine, the sense that an unknown terror lurked at the end of that hallway, watching me, waiting to pounce.

Suddenly, I felt Luna’s hoof touch my shoulder, making me jump. “I wouldn’t go down that way. That leads to the kitchen, and the cook doesn’t like unexpected guests. She says she needs time to prepare…Anyway, your room is upstairs.” She motioned for me to follow her as she stepped on the first wooden stair.

I didn’t realise how much taller she was than me until we were standing in front of one another without the bar between us. She was almost an entire head length taller than me. Without the counter for her to lean against, I thought she might hunch, but no. She stood tall, almost proud. Her frame, slender, almost elegant in the way she walked, but the grotesque dark red jacket she wore as a uniform simply spoiled what beauty she could have. It was a shame. She turned her head back briefly, glancing down at me with a small smirk. That gaze made me feel almost insignificant next to her, a feeling I didn’t appreciate.

“If you’re all ready for bed, you must have a powerful resistance to caffeine.”

“Tolerance,” I replied as my eyes wandered the walls. “Resistance implies a negative impact.” The way she spoke, it made caffeine sound like a disease, and coffee its carrier.

She only giggled. “Whatever helps you sleep at night." She stopped herself and shrugged. "Or not, in the case of coffee.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I would say you have something against caffeine or coffee.” I decided to finally point out.

“We go to sleep, we rest, we wake up, we tire, we sleep again. It’s a perfect cycle.” She glanced back at me still boasting the dreadful smirk. “Caffeine breaks that natural flow, so of course it can’t be good for you. Sleep, on the other hoof, is as natural as death.”

“That’s a rather bleak outlook you have on life if you relate sleep to death…Death doesn’t seem too natural to me…”

“Everything dies, my dear. Nothing is more natural than that,” she said softly.

That sweet tone of hers was unsettling. No one should talk about death in such a light-hearted way. It didn’t seem right. To take my mind off this dreary conversation, my eyes started to wander as I followed her. The grotesque wallpaper from downstairs found its way upstairs as well, with the same aged wood paneling. The old floorboards creaked as we walked, almost sounding like the whines of a poor foal in pain. The sound sickened me. It seemed everything about this establishment was offensive.

After we reached the top of the stairs, there was a sharp right turn. A wooden banister traced the stairwell, doors on the opposite wall all leading down a hallway. I placed a hoof on the aged wood as I continued to follow Luna down the hall.

My hoof glided along the smooth railing as we walked. “Surprisingly sturdy given how everything else here looks like it’s on its last leg…”

“It keeps us from any—” Luna paused to contemplate for a brief moment “—sleepwalking mishaps.” She giggled once more.

“Do you enjoy telling such unseemly jokes?”

Luna only raised her eyebrows with a small smile on her lips. A question, but one I didn’t expect an answer to. Though I could tell from her reaction that the answer was undoubtedly, yes. From what I could gather, she was quirky, to say the least. Kind, attractive, but a twisted sense of humor. This mare was a bigger enigma than I would ever want to solve. Who knew what else lay beneath the surface of such a pony—or better yet, who would want to?

In fact, this entire restaurant was one giant riddle. There were so many things that didn’t add up, but I was too tired to think about them all. Maybe in the morning I’ll think about it.

As we came to the end of the hall, Luna stopped. I looked to my right, and found another set of stairs, but she didn’t look as though she was leading me up them. Was there a third floor from the outside? I tried to recall, but that little detail evaded me.

A sudden blue glow pulled my attention from the stairs back to this door. She took the rusted keys in her magic, and placed one into the keyhole. With a twist of the key, a loud clank came from the aged lock. Luna’s eyes met mine as she turned to me. She stepped back and gave the door a tiny push. She spread her foreleg out leading my gaze inside.

I kept a skeptical eye on her as I stepped into the doorway. When I finally looked inside, I was thoroughly unimpressed. There was a single wooden bed, barely big enough for a fully grown mare tucked away in the corner. A desk with a single piece of paper, an empty inkwell, and a lamp that was already sitting on top of it across the meager living space from the bed. To the immediate left of the door was a tiny armoire, just big enough for all the luggage I didn’t have. “Cozy,” I instinctively remarked with a dry tone.

“You’re lucky. Our biggest room just opened up today.”

“This is your biggest…” I said, barely hiding my discontent.

I didn’t see it, but I could picture her nodding silently behind me with that teasing smile of hers. I closed my eyes, and fought the urge to rub my forehead due to a building headache. “What choice do I have…”

“Not much of one, unless you would rather sleep in the woods tonight.”

A nagging thought popped into the back of my head that I wished didn’t. “Being the only establishment out here and using a tab system…” I heard a small sound, affirming that Luna was listening. I sighed, immediately regretting the question I was about to ask. “Your rooms are reasonably priced, correct?”

I heard Luna giggle behind me which made my entire body tense. “Only one non-menu related question a night,” she casually reminded me as she started walking back down the hallway. “Pleasant dreams.”

I couldn’t stop myself from sighing. With little choice, I closed the door, turned off the lamp, and climbed into the bed barely big enough for a grown pony. My foreleg offered what little comfort it could by covering my eyes as I lay in the dark, silent room. Perfect…