Chapter One — Thicker Than Water
“No account lousy, pickpocket,”Flam grumbled under his breath as he strode down the train tracks. His sides still heaved from his earlier sprint out of Dodge Junction. Left to turn tail and run for a botched job he never asked for in the first place. His ‘partner?’ Well, Rug Burn had taken off long before the situation got dicey.
Flam snorted a laugh, looking up at the expanse of stars. Out-conned by another con-pony, huh? He turned behind him at the now distant lights of town. “I’m still the master con-artist around here, buster! I’ll show—”
His stomach growled loudly, interrupting his rant. Great . . . just great. Four days must have passed since he had a square meal, and Flam had finally reached his limit of patience. At this point he didn’t care where his next meal came from as long as it came. Flim would have refused to steal, but what did he know?
For the first time in his life, he could do whatever the hell he wanted without worrying about Flim’s precious morals. Twin or not, the stallion had an insufferable need to do the “right thing,” even if it cost them the big bucks. These past few weeks, he had been able to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Though, admittedly, that hadn’t worked out quite as well as he hoped.
He glanced at the seemingly endless scrubland before him, then at the tree line in the far-off distance. If he made good time, he would be under the canopy before the unbearable desert heat made further progress impossible. So he plodded along, trying to ignore the painful concussion of his cracked hooves against the unforgiving earth.
Flam never had been one to complain about the miles, more often than not, he had been the driving force behind each new venture. However, Flim had always been there to rein him in and bring some practicality to the situation. Flam snorted as he imagined what Flim would have to say about his latest escapades.
‘Replacing crystals with salt? Don’t you think they’d catch on to that, numbskull?’
“Yeah, probably,” he rasped, surprising even himself with the sound. The voice did not belong to him, not in the way that he remembered at least. Come to think of it, he really didn’t look like himself either. His eyes fell to the tattered grey vest draped over his back like a forgotten wash rag. The only reason he still wore it was to keep the sun from searing his pale skin. It did little good for the rest of his body, however. Flam winced, hoof following his sunburned face to the stubble underneath his jaw. I need to shave . . .
Two Weeks Earlier. . .
“Step right up, step right up!” Flam motioned the passing ponies closer. A quick glance revealed what he already knew. They were ensnared by curiosity and all he had to do was harness it to his benefit. “Come and behold my medicinal marvel!” His words carried across the grassy meadow bordering the road and silencing the soft murmurs from the audience.
A young filly cocked her head to the side, golden curls obscuring her vision. “Medi-what?”
“Medicinal marvel, little one. A tonic certain to cure what ails you.”
One of the bystanders snorted. “Please. You’ve got a few jam jars full of tea.”
“I—I—” Think of a snappy comeback, Flam! “They may look unassuming, but I can assure you that they work. My own brother was cured of his heaves.” That should sound credible enough.
“The words of a passing vagrant,” an bespectacled unicorn sneered. “How reliable. He’d make out water to be wine if he thought it’d earn him a bit.”
An angry murmur went through the crowd as the ponies began to walk on. Damn. Flam stood, nearly knocking over the empty crate his ‘product’ rested on. “I’m serious!”
A few of them turned back to him, shaking their heads before walking on. So much for his ‘magic touch.’ Ever since their split a week ago, none of the typical setups had worked. Without his brother to back him up, it was proving near impossible to hook the saps before they caught on.
Grumbling, he shoved the jars back into his saddlebags and made his way down the dusty road. As a coastal road, it had all the opportunity in the world if only he could capitalize on it. Walking on, he could not help but feel a tinge guilty about mentioning Flim earlier. If one of their snake oils had really worked, Flam would not have landed himself in this mess. Alone, bitless, and without a friend in the world. A sorry state for somepony of his talents.
It took over an hour to reach the nearest crossroads. True to their nature in these parts, the signposts were littered with fliers of all shapes and varieties. A crisp sea breeze shook one loose and it came to reside next to his hoof. Out of boredom more than curiosity, he levitated it to his muzzle and froze.
The World-Famous Skim Family Circus is Coming to a Town Near You!
Flam was certain all the color in his cheeks had vanished. He stood shaking in place as the words reverberated inside his head. They were here? Now? A long-suppressed panic took hold of him.
Without concern for the attention it attracted, he took off down the new road as fast as his hooves would carry him. If they were here, then that meant his parents were here. And following the unwanted reunion would come an equally unwelcome interrogation . . .
Flam continued down the dusty road, pausing occasionally to let out a few hollow coughs from the dust billowing around him. Celestia I’m almost as bad as . . . Flam forced the memory of his twin to the back of his mind. They had split up over a month ago, high time he move on. And yet he found himself compelled to think of him whenever he traveled by himself.
He glanced wearily up at the horizon and groaned. “Rain? Seriously?” As if his current predicament could not have gotten any worse. By the time he reached the still-distant treeline, it would be pouring. Just my blasted luck. Speaking of . . .
Flam scanned the immediate vicinity, listening, smelling, and waiting for any sign that he was being followed. So far so good, but there could be no telling with those sharks. Ever since last week’s blow-up in Seaddle, he had been forced to maintain high alert. His old “buddies” were not exactly forgiving when it came to debt. Hardly a paltry sum either. At least there was one saving grace . . . the monetary commitment could not be placed on Flim. Though, his gut still knotted at the possibility of it the other “commitments” those thugs could conjure up.
I’ll make it work, I have to. I did it before and I’ll do it again . . .
Five Days Earlier . . .
Making it across the Rocky Mountains by hoof would have been an impressive feat at any time, but given his current state of exhaustion, Flam was just grateful he did not collapse halfway up some forgotten ridgeline. His hooves now plodded methodically along the road winding through some decidedly uninspiring hay fields. Weeds sprung up throughout and the utter lack of upkeep on the fencerows spoke bounds for the hard-pressed farmers of the area.
“Say, Flim, would you look at all the opportunity out—” he stopped cold, looking at the empty space beside him. “Oh . . . right.” Despite having been separated from his twin for days, he continued to talk as if Flim were merely staring off into space rather than lost to it. Idly he wondered where Flim had run off to. Knowing his goody-two-hooves brother, it would be some kind of simple minded, “honest” job. But that would not last him long. No way in Equestria. He would come crawling back to him in no time.
The loud clanging of a bell jolted his attention back to the present. There hanging off to the side of the road was a sickeningly familiar gypsy wagon and a furious looking earth pony stumbling out and kicking the welcome bell aside. The old mare was calling curses as galloped off, pausing every so often to grab a hooful of gravel and chuck it at the wagon. “Damned con-artist!”
Flam could not help but chuckle as a tall ebony unicorn stepped out the wagon, eyes filled with idle amusement rather than terror. “Do be sure to ice that hoof! You’ll trip halfway home.”
“Oh I ain’t gonna be the one tripping, harlot!”
The mare tossed her white and violet streaked mane, threatening to lose the cowl of her gypsy get-up in the process. Instead of a return threat, she merely smiled in that all-knowing way of hers. “Indeed?”
The mare disappeared down the road, leaving Flam a few strides away from the inevitable.
Flam advanced cautiously, lowering his head and hoping for a lucky break. He would not be so fortunate. The fortune teller gasped, trotting over to block his path. “Flam! You’re here at last. I’ve been waiting for three days.”
Flam looked into the slightly older mare’s lavender eyes. “Hello, Séance. Had a vision, did you?”
“I am always having visions, little brother.” She broke into a genuine grin. “But this one was especially welcome!”
Flam groaned, but did not protest when his big sister led the way inside her gaudily painted wagon. Inside incense smoke hung in the air, watering his eyes and making his head as dull as a drunk’s. “Do you have to burn so much?”
“All part of the act,” she said in her mistiest stage voice. “Besides, I need to keep you here a while.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well,” she sat down at the round table occupying the center of the wagon, “I’d love to hear about our prodigal brother’s adventures in conning.”
“So, Mom and Dad set you up, that it?”
Séance shook her head. “Hardly, Flam. I have received some . . . troubling visions and wish to act on them.”
Flam snorted, “Since when do you act on visions? I thought they were pictures that ‘could not be altered.’”
“I’ve changed,” the cold, harsh quality in her voice made his blood run cold. She never spoke like that, leastwise to a sibling.
He sat across from her at the table, resting a hoof on hers. “What’s wrong, Séance?”
She shook her head slowly, biting her lip. “I had a vision shortly after you and Flim left. I—it was most troubling, but I thought perhaps . . . perhaps I was wrong.”
“You’re never wrong.” Nothing she predicted failed to come true, nothing. Still, his heart pounded at her words. “Was it bad?”
“Yes . . .”
Flam sighed, looking around for water and levitating a pitcher towards her. “Who was it for?”
“Blaire,” she whispered.
“Bla—Blaire?” Flame felt the blood pounding in his ears. Of all the ponies in Equestria, Blaire was the last that deserved a troubling prediction. The kid was way too chipper for trouble to come knocking on his door. “What happened?”
“He . . . there was an accident with a lion. They sent it to Blaire as an alternative for putting it down. Of course Blaire wouldn’t have refused but,” she took a long gulp of water before continuing, “the animal was quite dangerous. One of his old college friends provoked it, he stepped in and . . . well, they had trouble getting it off of him.”
Flam grimaced at the image of his baby brother being mauled by one of the animals he loves so dearly. “Was he okay?”
Séance shook her head. “He almost died, Flam. Mom was beside herself. I’ve never seen Dad that angry, never! We tried to contact you, but we didn’t know where you were.”
Probably gambling and racing back then. Flam felt a surge of guilt wash over him. “It wasn’t our intention to . . . run off. We had our own lives to live!”
She sighed, running a hoof through her mane. “I suppose we all did . . . Blaire, Bjorn, and the girls, they’re the only ones who stayed. And you know how Bjorn turned out.”
Flam shuddered at the thought. The burly young stallion was nothing like their parents, Blaire, or Flim. Tough, unyielding, self-centered, and cold as ice. Their never had been any warmth in his heart. It genuinely scared Flam.
Flam got to his hooves. “Well, it’s been . . . interesting, Séance but I have to go.”
“Wait!” A rustle of fabric announced Séance’s intention on stopping him. “Flam, please . . . I had a request for you.”
“If it’s going home, you can forget it.”
Her perpetual holier-than-thou attitude shattered. “Listen to me, Flam! You’re a twin. Flim needs you as much as you need him. Don’t you think it’s time to make up with him?”
“Easy enough for you to say,” he spat, pinning his ears. “You didn’t have to live with him constantly for years on end. He’s a goody-two-hooves who thinks everything can be solved with nice words and hard work! Well life doesn’t work that way.” He charged out the door, slamming it behind him. “Like hell I’m meeting up with him again!”
Flam hated walking in the mud. That had been part of the reason why he agreed to build the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 after all. Better to ride than walk any day of the year. Flam slipped as his hooves made contact with grass for the first time since he started out of town. Looking around, he noted the treeline and—most frustrating—the darkness that had enveloped the area.
Equally frustrating was the chill that had seeped into his coat. The long-useless vest had been dropped some miles ago and now nothing but protruding tree limbs offered protection from the deluge. He flinched at the sound of distant thunder. Low down rotten luck . . .
Apparently the universe this thought as a challenge, because his hoof immediately caught a nearby root sending him tumbling down a small embankment. Groaning, he made to rise only to find himself tangled up in something. The whatever-it-was had ensnared his hooves to the point where he could hardly move. He was immediately reminded of the piles of trapeze netting at the back of the tents. But what kind of numskull put a net out in the middle of the woods. Were they trying to catch a mythical ‘sky fish’ or did they just like to watch unsuspecting travelers get snared in their trap?
With a little more effort than he cared to admit, he lit his horn and surveyed the damage. A net—but not one from a circus. More like a fine mesh that one might use in butterfly nets. And here he lay—an oversized, highly irritated butterfly. Just great . . .
Deciding it would be easier to cut the ensnarement away, he lowered his horn.
At the same instant, a loud cry from the top of the embankment made him jump in place. “Don’t cut it!”
In the dim light afforded by his magic, he could just make out the figure of a petite stallion clambering down the hill towards him. Though shorter than normal, the pony was far from rotund. Judging from the way he maneuvered his athletic frame, climbing down a muddy embankment was just a warm up.
“Wow! Celestia, you really had a field day, eh?” The voice belonged to a younger pony then him, and Flam squinted to make out more of his features.
“What’s a kid doing hanging a butterfly net in the middle of the forest anyway?”
“It’s a bat net! I’m researching bats,” he said with an almost comically pius air. “You’re the one interfering with important research.”
“Important research my hoof! Leave the poor night rats alone, kid.”
“I’m not a kid! I’m twenty-one.”
A year younger than me, huh? Flam made to comment, but the words caught as soon as another burst of magic illuminated the clearing—twice as bright as his own, but the exact same color. His heart stopped cold when he noted bat boy’s face. “Blaire?”
His younger brother gaped at him, green eyes wide with so many emotions Flam couldn’t keep up. The stallion backed away, lowering his ears as if expecting him to out and bite him. “Flam? Wha—what are you doing here?”
“Could ask you the same thing, kid.” His eyes drifted to the mud streaking the kid’s green and white striped mane. He almost laughed at the little goatee growing underneath his baby brother’s chin. That’s adorable. Then his eyes fell to the faded denim shirt clinging to his drenched coat. “Making fashion statements as always hmmm.”
“Denim is plenty fashionable! At least I’m wearing clothes. What would Mom say if she saw you wandering around naked and unshaved like some drunk off his ass hobo?”
Flam snorted, then burst out into tears of laughter. “Got me there, kid!”
“I’m not a kid!”
The harsh quality of Blaire’s comeback made the hairs stand up. “Don’t talk to your older brother like that,” he snarled.
“I’ll talk to my no account con-artist brother however the hell I want!” Blaire stamped his hooves which might have been an intimidating gesture if not for for his short frame. Blaire's eyes kept flickering around the tree line as if expecting an ambush.
“What?”
“Where’s Flim?” His tone was laced with more ice and venom than Flam could ever recall. What the hell’s got into him?
“Not here. We split.”
Blaire gaped stupidly at him for a long moment. “You split up? But you’re—you’d never do anything without the other one.”
“News flash, kid. I don’t need Flim around to function.”
Blaire smirked. “Your definition of ‘function’ could use some work.” Sighing, he maneuvered the net with his magic until Flam was free. “There. Happy?”
Flam only glared, getting to his hooves to face his brother. Blaire had grown a lot, he reflected. Still a shrimp, but he’d finally muscled out. “You’ve grown up some,” he grumbled, avoiding Blaire’s gaze.”
“Grown up some? Is that all you have to say to me after—after everything?” Anger flashed in the kid’s bright green eyes. “You up and leave without one word! You didn’t even say goodbye?”
“So? You knew were were gonna skedaddle!”
“That’s not the point!”
Flam leaned in closer, “Then what is, hmm?”
“You didn’t ask me!”
“What? We need a peck on the cheek from you to live our lives?”
Blaire began to shake, looking as forlorn as an abandoned kitten. “You two . . . you two were everything to me. I looked up to you . . . I thought you liked having me around too. Then you just—just up and left. Didn’t even say goodbye.”
Flam felt a tightness in his gut at Blaire’s words. We really upset him. All these years, he just assumed Blaire wanted to annoy them. But in reality, the dork thought of himself as one of the gang. “Listen, Blaire. Somepony had to stay at home. And we all know how much of a goody-two-hooves you are. If we took you then what would Mom and Dad say?”
“Shut the hell up!” The words raked like glass shrapnel across his chest. “Didn’t you ever think about what it’d do to me? Didn’t you?! Mom and Dad kept praising you to the heavens when you lived at home. Kept saying how you’d take over the circus and marry well and . . . and fix everything. I couldn’t get the time of day out of them until you two took off.”
“I—we—Blaire, we didn’t know.” Flam felt his entire body going numb as the conversation spiraled out of control.
“No! No you didn’t! And you know what else? The moment you two left, where do you think all that responsibility fell, hmm? Bjorn?! Like hell! That bastard only cares about mares and his precious ‘reputation.’ The twins? They’re as flighty as Séance! Black Jack? We haven’t so much as heard about him in over four years!
Everything—every damn expectation fell on me! You carefree bastards didn’t think about that, now did you? Every waking moment it’s been nothing but obligation after obligation. I wanted to go into field research. But no, I had to stay in the circus. I wanted to move out on my own, but no. Dad insisted that I stay so he can force eligible mares in my face every chance he got. I can’t live my own life! I’m always always caged.”
No, no no . . . It’s all wrong. Blaire was the happy one—the little dork who played with elephants and brought home bugs. This? This wasn’t him . . . “Blaire we didn’t know. If we did then—”
“Then what? You’d up and quit living your own lives and come back to the circus? Like hell! All you ever thought about, all you ever think about is yourself!” Blaire stood, panting with the exertion of his words.
“Guess you’re right in one respect, kid. All I ever think about is myself. But you’re wrong too. Flim and I thought about you, thought about you all the time.”
“Wha-what?” Blaire’s eyes flickered with emotion in the sliver of moonlight that escaped from the cloud cover.
“We . . . even when we first set off it was always about home. Like ‘we’ll make it big then go rub it in their faces.’ For months and months all we could talk about at night was how were things back home? When we started the con-gigs . . . well, that’s when Flim got depressed. But we kept going, kept telling ourselves it would be worth it when we came home. So be as evil as you want to imagine us being, don’t you dare insinuate it was always about us!"
Blaire gulped, nodding slowly. “O-okay . . .” He squinted into the driving sheets of rain. With a sharp nod, he levitated the net onto his back. “Come on. It’s wet . . . And I’m guessing you haven’t had much to eat.”
Flam’s heart skipped a beat. “Why?”
“Hmmm?” Blaire started off at an easy pace and Flam joined him.
“Why are you being so nice to me? After I—we did that to you.”
Blaire shrugged. “You’re an idiot, but you’re still my brother. Plus,” he glanced at him from the corner of his eye, “I want to hear what happened while you were away.”
“It’ll be a long story.”
“We’ve got time . . .”
Author's Note
FINALLY finished writing this chapter. I think it's been lurking in my gdocs since shortly after An Honest Life finished.
A short-ish Bridge novel to set up for Obligations.
Thanks for reading! As always, comments are ever appreciated.
Pics of Séance and Blaire for you!
by HeartsCharm
by Hilis
