Concubine

You sit at the counter of a dive bar on the outskirts of Trottingham, slowly sipping away at your whisky in an attempt to forget about your narrow escape from Ponyville and the experiences within.

The door to the seedy tavern swings open and, as you have done habitually no thanks to Twilight, suspiciously eye up the figure standing in the door frame. Despite the chilly temperature tonight, a light-blue mare weakly strides in wearing a thin cloak. Her head hangs despondently, the hood obscuring most of her face. You can just see her light-blue mane peek out from under the hood. You know her to be a mare just by looking at her lithe frame hidden under the light fabric, and her coat colour because the cloak didn’t completely cover all of her.

The mare approaches the bar as you watch her out of the corner of your eye. Coming up to the stools, she flicks her head back, the hood continuing the motions until it lays across her back, revealing her horn and soft, lavender eyes. Catching sight of you, her eyes widen and she staggers back a couple steps. She clears her throat and promptly takes a seat at the very end of the bar, leaving exactly three stools between the two of you.

You roll your eyes and snort derisively as you finish off your drink, signalling for the bartender to pour you another. At last you could feel the hazy euphoria creeping its way into your mind.

Still watching the newcomer from the corner of your eye, she hails the bartender by silently and briefly raising her hoof. The stallion in question moves down to her and she orders a drink, though you couldn’t hear what. You watch as the bartender grabs a bottle of Everfree Everclear, and your eyes widen. That alcohol is at least ninety-percent pure! Curiosity piqued, you watch as the stallion pours one shot for the mare, wherein she promptly downs it and grimaces slightly at the strength.

Your eyes widen in rapt amazement. Usually when ponies go for something that stiff, there’s usually something inside them they’re trying to kill, be it memories or regrets. Besides themselves, that is.

Usually.

The mare taps her hoof on the counter, and the bartender leaves the bottle on the oak surface. It only had a few mouthfuls left, so it didn’t really matter. Having come here a few days after you arrived in town, you’d noticed how he often did that. The mare levitates out a small pouch from her saddlebags hidden by her cloak and puts enough money on the table to pay for the rest of it. Pouring herself another drink, but slowly sips this one.

Her head slumps on the counter as she brings the glass to her lips at an awkward angle, noticing you looking at her.

“What?” she snaps.

“Geez,” you remark, giving her the stink eye. “With a look that sour I’d think someone was force-feeding you lemons.”

“Hah!” she loudly quips, sipping her drink. “Are your anecdotes as bad as you are ugly?”

“That depends. Are your manners as bad as your attitude?”

She scowls fiercely, turning away from you. A member of the opposite sex with an attitude as snarky as yours? You could get used to it.

You still keep watching her, mostly to see how long it’d take for her to notice.

You pivot on the stool to give yourself a better look at the mare, even though it was just her mane, back and cloak. Your eyes roam down her form, taking in all that wasn’t covered by the cloak. You could see her so-called ‘cutie mark’; a wavy tuft of magic overlapped by a wand. If Twilight’s “special talent” was magic, was this mare’s must be something similar. Regardless, you couldn’t help but look at her with genuine intrigue at how she ended up in a dive bar like this. You know for a fact that this place doesn’t serve the most reputable characters, you being one of them, but thankfully word of your... hasty departure from Ponyville hadn’t found its way this far north.

Yet.

It takes the mare several minutes to finish off the remainder of the bottle, puzzling you as to how she could drink something that strong so quickly. You signal the bartender, whose name you hadn’t bothered to learn, and gesture toward the mare, saying; “Give her another one on me.” He shrugs indifferently and pulls a weaker spirit off the shelf behind him, then half fills a whisky glass. He takes it down to the mare drowning her sorrows.

You watch the exchange take place: The stallion plops the glass down in front of the lonesome pony then gestures towards you with a flick of his head, and the mare turns to look at you in confusion. She hesitantly shuffles up the bar and takes the seat next to you.

“Pardon Trixie for sounding ungrateful, but why did you buy her a drink after she was rude to you?”

You shrug. “You look like you needed it.” So, Trixie is her name? And did she just refer to herself in the third person? She must be drunker than you thought.

“Trixie thanks you for the drink, and apologises for her rude behaviour.”

“Don’t sweat it, I’m used to it by now.”

She grimaces slightly. “That bad, huh?”

“Trixie, you have no idea. But since we’re on speaking terms, why don’t you tell me how you ended up in a hell-hole like this?”

She sips her drink. “Have you heard of Trixie Lulamoon, travelling magician?”

Magician? So that’s what her cutie mark must mean. “Can’t say I have. Should I know who you are?”

She lets out a relieved sigh. “Trixie is glad somepony hasn’t,” she says in a bitter-sweet manner. “Though, why haven’t you heard of her?”

“Being kept prisoner tends to take up a lot of your time,” you say dryly.

“You’re a convict?!” she exclaims in a hushed manner, eyes widening. Her eyes dart around the bar to make sure nobody else heard.

“Strictly speaking, no, I’m not. It’s a long story.”

“When you’re a travelling magician with a history of notoriety, time is the one thing you’ve got.”

You eye her up. “You want the long or the short of it?”

“Short, for now.”

“Right... It all began the day I wandered out of the Everfree Forest nursing a broken arm, hadn’t eaten in four days, slept very little, no fucking clue how I got where I was or how I got there… You get the picture. Some freaky pink mare accosts me when I was wandering into Ponyville, and—”

“Ponyville!?” she says, aghast. “Do you know of Twilight Sparkle?”

You snort contemptuously. “That’s who kept me locked up.”

“Twilight Sparkle kept you prisoner?!”

“Here’s the deal. I was in the local hospital for a month in the intensive care unit after that pink pony found me. Twilight volunteered to take me to her place to recuperate, but the only available room was in the basement. Next to her laboratory.” You take a longer draw of your drink. “And before you ask, she didn’t mention anything about you.”

“Trixie should be grateful for that, at least.”

“Because of my alien nature, my kind wasn’t protected by any known laws. Several weeks of experimentation, putting it lightly, I managed to escape. Been on the run since, and for good reason.”

She grimaces. “Trixie extends her sympathies.”

You smile slightly. “Thanks, I guess.”

“May Trixie inquire as to… what happened?”

“Let me put it this way. Where I come from, a lot of movies and shows depict aliens probing humans to learn what they can. Twilight got rather overzealous.”

“Trixie only can imagine…” she says with a wrinkled muzzle.

“I don’t understand why she insisted on probing my backside. What did she think she was to learn? How to harvest farts?” Trixie’s eyes widen and she tries to stifle a giggle.

“Fortunately for me, she learned that the hard way exactly why you don’t do that sort of thing.”

She grimaces retrospectively. “How bad did you give it to her?”

“Right in her face,” you say with a shit-eating grin, Trixie snorting with laughter.

“A toast to the humiliation of Twilight Sparkle!” Trixie slurs, raising her glass. You both clink your glasses and take a large swig. Yeah, maybe this is the last drink for you. Pony liquor tends to be a bit more hard hitting. For you, at least.

“So what’s your beef with Twilight?” you inquire.

“One day, Trixie was scheduled to perform a show in town. The performance was going smoothly, then that… that mare! She and her friends insist on showing-up Trixie!”

“That’s what got your panties in a twist?” you say with a teasing smile.

“No!” she immediately defends, her face absolutely beyond flushed. “Towards the end of the performance, Trixie was performing high-level magic tricks. That rainbow-maned one, the farm pony, and Twilight herself stole the limelight! All three humiliated Trixie, and she was laughed out of town!”

You laugh loudly at that. “Sister, at least you weren’t violated by medical instruments day after day.”

“That was only the tip of the iceberg,” Trixie amends, seemingly ignoring you. “Don’t even get me started when I returned to town…”

After persuading Trixie with another drink while you drank a glass of water, she began to tell you of the Alicorn Amulet: some freaky necklace that corrupted Trixie’s magic, but your jaw dropped when she told you that she essentially tried to enslave the whole of Ponyville.

When her story comes to a close, you say; “Look, from a position of indifference, I don’t really care about that crap. Problems start when you make the decision to fuck me over.”

“I take it you gave Twilight the what-for?” she asks with a knowing smirk.

You return the grin, but somewhat crookedly. “Yeah, she got a taste of her own medicine in every sense of the word. I didn’t stick around long after that. Hiked the train tracks until I managed to climb on a train at a random platform, stayed on for as long as I could, and wound up here.” Despite your inebriation, you could still hold a conversation. “I mean for fucks sake, this psychotic purple cunt treated me like a lab experiment without a second thought!”

She scoffed. “After Trixie’s ordeal, work is difficult to come by. Ponies don’t want someone performing tricks when you’ve tried to enslave an entire town. But, Trixie relishes when someone betters her rivals,” she says with a grin wider than it should have been. “Ugh… What’s the time?” You pull out the pocket watch you swiped from the laboratory table—you pilfered plenty of items during your escape—and flip it open. “Eleven-thirty.”

“Uh oh, Trixie needs to return to her carriage. Need to travel to West Fillydelphia tomorrow.”

“You from there?” you ask.

“Just… headed home for a little while…” As she got up off her stool, her hoof caught on one of the legs and she promptly fell on the floor with a heavy thud. Yeah, she was in no shape to make her own way back to her… carriage, did she say?

“Allow me to assist you,” you say, extending your hand.

She curiously eyes your digits through her beer-goggled eyes and tentatively extends her hoof to take it. You help right the toppled mare and she leans against you as you make your way out the door, your bag of pilfered items in tow. When you open the door, the frigid night air wafts over the both of you, chilling you to the bone. Given how ponies don’t wear clothes like you do, Trixie must be feeling the brunt of it. It shows as her teeth chatter against one another as you walk in a random direction, guided by the drunk mare under you.

“What did you say you w—” she hiccups “—ere? A hyoomin?”

“Eh, close enough,” you shrug. “Where the hell are we going anyway?”

“Trixie parked her wagon by some trees so nopony would bother her.” Your eyes scan the surrounding, seeing lots of trees. Dive bars don’t tend to have the most flattering scenery. “Gonna need a bit more than that to go on,” you say dryly.

Her eyes narrow in the darkness as she strains herself to locate her carriage. “That way!” she proudly proclaims, giggling like a schoolgirl. Trixie continues to stumble in the direction she indicated, only you preventing her from face-planting on the ground.

Ground, meet face. Face, meet rock. Face, meet hospital. You chuckle to yourself.

You had been following the treeline for the last fifteen minutes, and by this stage you’re not even sure you were going in the right direction, so you ask if you were.

“Trixie is adamant! The trees were on her left coming here, so we need only keep them on our right on the way back.” Sure enough, after five more minutes of walking, you come across a peculiar looking carriage. It looked like a trailer you’d hook to your car to go camping in. Only, instead of a tow bar, it had a harness attached to the front of it.

You inelegantly haul her up to the door on the back, and Trixie lights her horn to unlock it, and it swings open to reveal the inside. A few cupboards here and there for clothes, magic props and other necessities, with a decent sized bed at the end with ample room to lie. Perfect for one person, and there could potentially be room for two, provided you didn’t mind entangled limbs.

But that wouldn’t be a problem.

You watch with comical interest as she struggles to step up and into the carriage, but she finally manages to do so. Fortunately she didn’t see you smile at her clumsiness.

“Trixie should thank you for being such a gentlecolt.”

“Don’t sweat it,” you say with a dismissive wave of your hand. “If it’s all the same for you, can I tag along for a while? I’ve got nowhere else to go and someone to talk to would be nice.”

“Trixie wouldn’t mind the company on her journey.” You watch as she gets into her bed.

You turn yourself to begin walking away, but not before saying; “Anyway, I’ve got a room in the piss-poor excuse of a hotel down from the bar. I’ll be by in the morning.”

Not even ten seconds later, you laugh when all you can hear is snoring.