Soap, as it turned out, was delicious and the bath was delightful. Being dunked into a stone basin full of hot water was like being turned into soup. She kept trying to sample her own broth, but the two mares rebuked her and kept pulling her head up out of the water.

“If you eat soap, it will give you more of the runny shits,” Glitter Glammer said in a voice that sounded as though it was almost out of patience. “Stop drinking your own bathwater, that’s gross! Be a good… whatever you are!”

Soaking in the hot water after voiding her bowels made her feel better. She was fine now, perky even, and hungry. So very hungry. With a quick dart of her head, she scored herself a delicious snack. A slippery bar of soap.

“Spit that out!” Glitter Glammer demanded. “Don’t you dare swallow that! Don’t be a bad she-demon!”

Holding the bar of soap in her mouth, she ran her tongue over it, savouring both its flavour and its slipperiness. It was both soft and hard, it had a weird, but pleasing texture, it smelled good, and it tasted divine.

“Spit it out!” Glitter Glammer said again. “Out with it! I’ll give you candy… that’s better than soap!”

With a quick gulp, she could swallow the delicious soap, but she sensed that the others might be upset if she did. She couldn’t understand what was going on exactly. She wasn’t eating them, she was eating soap—and it was delicious. It seemed that soap was like ponies—not food.

Heartbroken, she spat out the soap and then belched out a long stream of bubbles. The soap landed in her bath broth with a plop. She splashed her tail around, stirring, thinking that she would make for a wonderful soapy soup. She ducked her head down to take another drink of her bathwater and was grabbed by magic.

“You know, when I attended the guard academy, they taught me a lot of things,” Malcanus said in a low voice filled with gravel, “but they never taught me nothing ‘bout giving escaped demons a bath.”

“You could be helping, Malcanus. She’s difficult to grab with magic.” Glitter Glammer glanced over at the enormous draconic pegasus standing next to the wall.

“Nope.” Malcanus blinked and shook his head.

“Stop trying to eat the soap!” Glitter Glammer’s ears stood up as the bar of soap plopped into the bathwater again. “Hold still! We need to scrub your backside… no… give me back that scrub brush!”

She looked at the brush she held in her tail, then over at the bossy one horned pony telling her what to do. She flicked out her long, green forked tongue and licked some of the suds from the brush and then gave it back.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Freckle Speckle said as she began to sniffle. “It’s too much… I’m sorry… I can’t… I can’t…”

The soaked chubby mare moved away from the tub, retreated to a corner, and then began to sob. There was a loud splash as a long, prehensile tail fell into the water. Bathtime was no longer fun. Not at all. Dejected, hurt, and not understanding what was going on, she slumped in the tub and went limp.

“Damnit, this is my fault, I’m sorry, Freckle, I should have…” Glitter’s words trailed off and she let out a frustrated hiss. “Oh, dog farts.”

Ears drooping, she looked over at the mare sobbing in the corner, then turned to look at Glitter. Unable to talk, but still able to communicate, she lifted on talon-finger and poked herself in the neck, then pointed to Freckle Speckle.

“No.” Glitter shook her head. “This isn’t your fault.” The mare blinked and then wiped her own sopping wet mane out of her face with her foreleg. She spat a few times to get soapy water off of her lips, and then sat down upon the drenched floor. Her backside made a wet squelch as she sat in a pile of suds.

“Bad ponies live here. This is the last stop before perdition… the waystation of lost souls. This is the place where a pony comes to get straightened out before they end up where you come from.” Glitter gave herself a shake to free some water from her strange, almost translucent pelt, which shone like a gem in the faint lantern light.

Ears perking, the she-demon focused her attention upon the pony crying in the corner.

“We’re all here because we belong here,” Malcanus said. “And the shepherd is just as bad as the sheep.”

“Freckle Speckle had a bit of a drinking problem,” Glitter said in a low voice as she picked up a scrub brush with her magic. She began scrubbing in an absent minded sort of way. “One night, she was giving her foals a bath. She had two little ones, a colt and a filly. She got tired of them fighting and kicking and screaming… ‘cause that’s how foals are. So, she leaves them alone in the tub to go and have herself a drink.”

At these words, Freckle’s sobs intensified and her wailing cries wracked her body.

“She comes back after a few drinks and discovers that her colt has drowned his little sister. She freaks out, which is understandable, but she doesn’t do anything to summon the police. She goes and she has herself a drink, to help her calm down.” The scrubbing brush moved of its own accord as Glitter continued her story.

“Her husband comes home and finds out what has happened. He’s upset, and rightfully so. A whole lot of trouble happens, and at the end of it, poor Freckle, she doesn’t have her husband or her little colt any more. Her husband goes home to live with his mother. She’s not even allowed to attend her daughter’s funeral.”

The she-demon, frozen in place, somehow understood the words all too well.

“And Freckle, with nothing left, she starts drinking. And to pay for her drinks, she does things that desperate ponies do. She ends up in a lot of trouble, the worst sort of trouble, and at the end of it all, she gets a visit from a Warden. She goes to prison, her brain is too messed up from drinking to be repentant, and it’s there that she gets a chance to dry out.”

Glitter blinked away a tear welling in the corner of her eye. “Ten years later, she’s freed. She’s done her time… and the first thing she does once she’s a free pony? Why, she goes and she gets herself a drink. And the trouble starts again.”

Something was wrong. Some dreadful new pain could be felt, a terrible, sickening ache in her chest. She flexed her claws, not knowing what it was, or how to deal with it, and the pain was so bad that she was at a loss for what to do. Much to her surprise, the bathwater she had been swallowing began to leak out of her eyes, much like Glitter’s eyes, which were also leaking.

“She gets another visit from a Warden, and he does the whole Penance Interrogation thing they do. Again. This time, she feels bad for what she’s done, and she wants help. She gets a little help, and she ends up here, with the rest of us.”

Claws scrabbling on the stone basin, the she-demon pulled herself up out of the tub. Water and bubbles ran down from her body in rivulets and she gave herself a shake. She almost slipped on the stone floor and had to fight to get a grip. Her claws left scratches in the stone.

She took a hesitant step towards Freckle, wondering if it was okay, if she would be punished, the threat of iron was a terrible one, and then took another fearful step. She looked at Glitter, then at Malcanus, then turned her head back towards Glitter.

“She doesn’t like to be touched when she’s like this… I wouldn’t. You don’t want to be kicked by an earth pony, trust me… and she’s a kicker.” One of Glitter’s eyebrows rose in a delicate arch as she spoke. “It’s better to let her just cry it out, she’ll be fine.”

For the second time, she stalked Freckle Speckle, but this time, she had no intention of eating her. She walked with her body and her head slung low to the ground, her knees bent, and her long tail trailed on the floor behind her like a serpent. Soapy water trickled down into puddles below her, which pooled together as they flowed towards the drain in a distant corner.

In the faint lantern light, an iridescent sheen left rainbow ripples on her feathers, she would need a good rinse still. The sound of water dripping filled her ears—and the sound of weeping. The memory of a memory lurked in the abyssal depths of her mind. She had wept. She had sobbed and wept and begged… but for what? She could scarcely even remember, it was more like a dream. The ache in her chest grew worse, it was unbearable now and made it difficult to breath.

Now close, she reached out her left foreleg and placed her talons upon Freckle, mindful of her claws. The wailing mare let out a screeching squeal and then smacked the talons away. The she-demon, struck, reacted the only way she could.

She collapsed on the floor and lay in a miserable heap. The pain in her chest was so bad now that it was causing her whole upper body to hitch with uncontrollable jerks. It was painful, but it wasn’t just a physical pain. She too, began bawling. She let out a whining wail, overcome by pain and grief, and it was then that she discovered what it was like to weep in this body… this body felt pain in a new and terrible way. A different way. She was almost certain that she was feeling Freckle Speckle’s pain, and it was unbearable. All six of her legs curled up against her belly and her long serpentine body curled up into a tight ball.

And Freckle Speckle reacted.

She found herself snatched and held in a powerful, almost painful grip. Freckle was wet and a bit snotty. Freckle’s forelegs were powerful, they had a frightening amount of strength, and the she-demon found comfort in them. Together, they wept as Malcanus stood guard and Glitter Glammer watched.

Something hot and steamy was offered to her in something that was like a bowl, but smaller. It had a little loop that she could stick a talon-finger through and hold it. It smelled good when she sniffed it, her brain told her it was a little spicy and a whole lot sweet. The only thing better than soap, was sweet.

Now clean and well rinsed, she sat next to a low wooden table beside Freckle Speckle, inside of a different cabin. This one was decorated with all sorts of knick knacks, pictures, and stones carved into things like ponies, birds, and other food-type animals.

Except ponies weren’t food. She had to remember that ponies were not food.

“It’s hot cocoa… drink it,” Glitter said and then she took a sip of her own cocoa.

She tried a sip. The drink was pleasant, sweet and bitter, with a faint hint of something that burned her tongue in a good way. Glitter was glowing, not just her horn, but her whole body. It was almost painful to look at it, it dazzled the eyes and filled the room with radiant light.

“Ugh, the light, it burns my eyes,” Malcanus said, complaining as he squinted.

“I glow in the presence of love, deal with it.” Glitter Glammer shot the squinting stallion a sneer and then took another sip. She smacked her lips, then sighed. “It feels good to glow again… I mean, there’s some love and camaraderie here among us rejects, but right now, I feel like I’m back home, in the Crystal Empire, where each one of us glowed like the sun. The city would be as bright as day at midnight.”

“What a wretched place,” Malcanus muttered.

“What do we do with her?” Glitter asked. “Malcanus… you and I have a duty to these ponies.” She gazed at Malcanus and watched as his expression turned stern and serious. “I don’t think it was mere coincidence that she just so happened to show up here, it could be my mystical unicorn powers having a say, but I think she belongs with us. What do you say, former Warden?”

“Don’t call me that!” Malcanus snapped. “Must you be so antagonistic?”

Glitter’s ears drooped and she gave a nod of acknowledgment as the she-demon slurped hot cocoa from her cup. She returned her attention to Malcanus and her expression softened. “My apologies. I’m used to our good natured ribbing of one another—”

“That is nothing to joke about,” Malcanus bellowed with enough force in his voice to cause everything in the cabin to rattle. “I had my magic taken from me… the very essence of what I was… it was stripped away, burned away… you have no idea how much pain that caused me… the fall from grace was a long one and the sudden stop at the end almost broke me.”

“I’m sure it was.” Glitter’s voice was soft. “I’m sure it did.”

“I have spent my life trying to make up for one stupid mistake made in my hotblooded youth… something done in anger. I have spent every moment of my existence trying to earn back her favour… her trust… I have tried—”

“You have been wonderful, Shepherd Malcanus, and you keep all of us safe. Since you took your post here, we’ve not lost a single one.” Freckle Speckle looked up from her cocoa. “I am sure that Princess Luna knows of your good work and service here.”

“To be back in the Sisters good graces once more,” Malcanus said in a wistful voice.

“Back to what I was saying.” Glitter cleared her throat. “Our guest needs a name. I am certain that Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor will come, but in the meanwhile, our guest needs to be comfortable and well cared for. The others are scared of her, and rightfully so. So we need to keep everypony involved happy. I don’t feel right keeping her locked up in the time-out cabin. The others see it as a place of confinement and punishment, and I don’t want them thinking she needs to be confined.”

“She can stay in my cabin.” Malcanus let out a grunt when Glitter opened her mouth to protest, and he continued, “I don’t sleep in my bed. I sleep standing up. I am always on duty. By allowing her to stay with me, the skittish ones will have some time to adjust to her presence.”

“I find myself in agreement with Malcanus,” Freckle said in a somewhat sheepish voice. “I’ll try to help. I’ll try to teach her stuff, like how to live and not to eat my soap. She’s not so different from a mustang foal, really.”

Malcanus snorted.

The she-demon mimicked him and a stream of rainbow hued bubbles shot out of her snort holes.

Now smiling, Glitter Glammer nodded. “It’s not much of a plan, but it’s a start. We’ll play it by ear and see how this goes.” She raised her cocoa and gave her companions a toothy grin. “Here’s to earning redemption…”

Author's Note

So, having a good night/day? Enjoying a pleasant read? A good escape? I am glad you are with me thus far.