“Good morning.”
Sunset Shimmer reached her arm over to the empty space beside her. She had the whole bed to herself, and yet was confined to a single side: the left side. The side without the lamp.
But her side did have its perks: it had the window, after all, and on nice days she could sit up in bed and watch the sun rise. But today wasn’t a nice today, so the curtains were drawn, and Sunset remained in bed.
What time was it? She looked helplessly across the room to where her phone rested on the wooden desk, slowly regaining its charge from a wall socket somewhere down below. She should probably get up, get dressed, and be ready for when the doorbell rang.
If she was being honest with herself, she should have done all that hours ago when she woke up. But getting up took energy, and right now, energy was the one thing Sunset Shimmer lacked. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just one thing, but it was the only one she wanted to think about. Maybe she would just stay in bed, let the doorbell ring, and simply not answer it.
But they would just come back tomorrow.
Sunset groaned and, with a monumental expenditure of the energy she didn’t think she had, sat up. Her whole body felt heavy, from the tips of her fingers to her eyelids, and she briefly considered crawling back beneath the covers. She’d tried, hadn’t she? Shouldn’t that have been enough?
She knew that it wasn’t.
Sunset climbed across the bed, planted one foot on the cold floor and recoiled. Where were her slippers? It didn’t take her long to find them—one of the benefits of a mostly-empty room was that things were easy to find—across the room, exactly where she’d kicked them off the night before. One of them was even upside down.
Well, there was no helping it. Rising like a zombie from a shallow grave, Sunset lurched across the small space to her slippers. She slipped into the first one and nudged the second one with the tip of her toes to flip it over, then put it on as well. She frowned. Her feet were still cold.
Now vertical (and with unfortunately cold feet), it was finally time to check the time. She picked up her phone and unplugged the charger, which promptly fell back behind the desk. She sighed. That was a problem for later, as for right now…
It was a quarter to two. What time would the doorbell ring? Sunset wracked her brain. She knew she’d written it down somewhere, but what was wrong with her that she couldn’t remember something as simple as a date and time?
Well, a lot was wrong with her, that’s why the doorbell was going to ring. There was no paper on the desk, nor anything scrawled on or carved into the wood, which meant she must have written it somewhere else. The kitchen, maybe.
She had had a lot of unread messages. Some from Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash… but those were a problem for later, too. She told herself that she would get back to them, and she would—probably. For now, though, she tucked the phone into the pocket of her pajama pants and moved to the door.
With the absence of a warm body to heat it, the hallway was even colder than the bedroom. When had it gotten so cold? She passed a barren bookshelf and a pair of empty picture frames on the way to the kitchen, making a point to ignore the thing in corner by the front door as she entered the living area. But if she made a point to ignore it, was she really ignoring it at all?
She didn’t know. What she did know, however, was that it was hard to ignore something you could see from practically any place in the house. ‘Open Concept’ they’d called it, and apparently it was all the rage these days. One person could be in the kitchen while someone else watched T.V., great for entertaining and for making the most out of your space. But with no one else here and great big, vacant spaces where furniture used to be, Sunset just thought it looked empty.
The kitchen was nestled in one of the corners of this empty space, with cupboards, counters, and appliances lining the two walls, and an island in the center. It was on this island, affixed to the marble countertops that she’d never really wanted but had been outvoted in favor of—she frowned. How had she been outvoted, exactly? It didn’t matter, because she’d found it: a yellow sticky-note with ‘two-thirty’ scrawled on it, underlined, and circled. There were other words as well, but Sunset ignored those, too.
She checked her phone again. Another unread message from Rarity, and it was now five minutes to two. So, she had time then, time enough to have a shower and maybe get something warm in her stomach.
Cracking open the fridge (not exactly warm, but she had to start somewhere), Sunset stared at the sparse contents within. Condiments, mostly, nothing that could reasonably be scrounged into an edible meal. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise—after all, to stock the fridge she would have to go to the grocery store, and that would involve leaving the house. She tried to think of the last time she’d done that, but the answer just depressed her.
Okay, so she didn’t have any food. That was fine, she’d pick some up later. After the doorbell rang. For now, she’d have to settle for something else. The cupboards were similarly bare, but she did manage to find a bag of coffee ground and a half-empty box of teabags. She still had the coffee maker, at least, and the kettle, so the quest for a hot meal suddenly felt at least somewhat attainable.
She was now faced with a choice: tea or coffee? Coffee would certainly wake her up (they never bought that decaf stuff), but was that really what she wanted? Being awake meant staying up, answering her texts, and going to the grocery store, when all she really wanted to do was go back to bed. Back to sleep. The tea was lavender (because of course it was), and Sunset vaguely remembered someone telling her that lavender tea eased the mind and helped one relax and fall asleep. Perfect.
Her decision made, Sunset retrieved the kettle from its place atop the stove (the top-left burner, always the top-left burner) and filled it up at the sink, before placing it back on the stove and turning it on. She took one of the few remaining mugs from the cupboard and set it down next to the box of teabags and took a step back.
It was probably a poor idea to leave the stove on while she took a shower, but the kettle was old and always took forever to heat up, and, if she was being perfectly honest, fire safety wasn’t exactly at the top of her priority list right now.
The bathroom was at the end of the hall. It wouldn’t have made sense for it to be off the master (and only) bedroom, unless of course they’d wanted every guest who had to ‘use the facilities’ traipsing through their unmentionables, but, more than once, Sunset found herself cursing the distance from her bed to the bathroom when she was forced to make a midnight trip.
Sunset wasted no time. She closed the door, ran the shower, discarded her clothes in a heap, and did her best not to look at herself in the mirror while the water heated up. She knew she was a mess, after all, and didn’t need her reflection reminding her.
Stepping into the torrent of hot water and feeling it cascade over her bare skin was the first objectively good part of Sunset’s day, but even this bliss was not to last. Phantom doorbells haunted every quiet moment, and more than once, Sunset found herself poking her head out of the shower and peering through the blinds, making sure that no one was waiting for her at the door. It didn’t help that a pair of rings (formed of residual shampoo and conditioner from a pair of now missing bottles) stared up at her like a pair of wide, judging eyes, from the ledge of the bathtub/shower combo, which made the experience somewhat less relaxing than Sunset had hoped.
The kettle whistled in the kitchen and Sunset let out a dejected sigh. She took hold of the shower’s handle, turning it not so far as to cease the flow of water, but enough for the water to go from hot to ice cold in a matter of seconds. The air was sucked out of her lungs as her whole body clenched in shock. She could only stand it for a few seconds before she had to turn it off completely, leaving her standing naked, shivering, and alone, with no one to blame but herself.
She pulled back the shower curtain, coming face to face with the mirror. Her reflection was blurry, obscured by layers of steam making it look like a vaguely human shaped blob. That was… a surprisingly accurate depiction of how Sunset felt at the moment, and after a few seconds of staring down her doppelganger she finally managed to look away. She grabbed a towel from a hook (the only towel, she remembered) and quickly dried herself off and wrung the last of the chilly water out of her hair. She pulled back on her pajama pants and her t-shirt, slipped her feet back into her slippers, and grabbed a ratty sweater from another hook, before making her way back to the kitchen.
In a much-needed stroke of good luck, the stove hadn’t caught on fire nor had the kettle boiled off so much of its water to have rendered the entire process moot. She turned off the burner, grabbed a tea-bag from the box and deposited it in her mug, before gingerly following it with a stream of boiling water.
There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? The box said to let the tea steep for five to ten minutes, but that seemed like an awful long time to Sunset. She carried the mug over to the only remaining comfortable chair in the apartment and stared at the spot where the T.V. used to be. It was difficult to miss something she never used—thousands of channels and still never anything on—but she did. A useless T.V. was better than another empty corner.
It was half way through the steeping time of her tea that the moment Sunset Shimmer was dreading arrived. There was nothing special about the doorbell; it didn’t play the Westminster Chimes or any other catchy (if forgettable) tunes, no, it was a simple ‘ding’ followed by a ‘dong’, and yet this uncomplicated pair of notes drove Sunset’s heart into overdrive. She found herself pinned to her seat, her knuckles turning white as they gripped the mug so tightly that, had she been in her right mind, she might have feared shattering beneath her grasp.
But Sunset was weak. Too weak to stop what was coming and certainly too weak to crush a mug in her bare hands. She thought she might be too weak to confront the figure who waited on the other side of the thin, wooden door, but nonetheless rose and, as if in a trance, walked over to the waiting portal.
With one trembling hand she turned the knob.
“Hey, Sunset.”
“Hi, Twilight.”
Twilight Sparkle looked amazing. Her hair was tied up in a neat bun and she had a puffy pink scarf woven tightly around her neck. Her purple jacket matched her boots, and paired with her thick black leggings, Twilight was clearly well suited for the winter weather.
Twilight regarded her with a curious look, and suddenly Sunset felt extremely self-conscious about her own appearance. Damp, matted hair, bags under her eyes, ill-fitting pajamas… she felt like a beggar standing before a queen.
“So…” started Twilight.
“Right,” said Sunset, “of course. Come in.”
Twilight wiped her boots on the tired welcome mat and stepped across the threshold. Sunset retreated a few steps, but never turned away.
“Is that tea?”
Sunset nodded. “Yeah, lavender. Kettle’s still hot if you–”
“No, thanks,” said Twilight, cutting her off. “Shiny’s waiting for me in the car. I’m just here to pick up the last of my stuff, but maybe some other time.”
“Sure,” said Sunset, though the sinking feeling in her gut told her that there would not be another time. “Anyway, the box is right there, by the door.”
“Thanks.”
“If you need a hand–”
“No, I think I’ve got it.”
With a grunt, Twilight hoisted the box into her arms and balanced it on her knee until she could get a better grip. With her package firmly in hand, she gave Sunset one long, final look.
“I’ve got to get going,” she said.
“It was good to see you,” lied Sunset.
Twilight nodded. “Sunset?”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself, okay?”
“I am,” said Sunset, followed by a short pause. “I will. Goodbye, Twilight.”
Twilight Sparkle turned and walked down the path to the waiting car. She loaded the box into the trunk, moved to the passenger side door, and climbed inside. Sunset stood in the doorway, the steam from her tea vanishing into the winter air as she watched vigilantly until the car had disappeared around the corner and out of sight.
Sunset closed the door.
Why did her legs feel so weak? She braced her back against the door and slid down into a sitting position facing her empty apartment. She drew the mug to her lips, inhaled the strong scent of lavender, and was about to drink, when she stopped.
Maybe she needed coffee after all.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading.
