Dust and Sand

It was weird not to feel sand under his hooves, he mused, idly walking down from the train into Canterlot proper.

His armour was stained and scratched, the winds of Appaloosa having taken their toll.

“There ye are laddie!” A shout from his left wheeled the guardspony around to find himself enfolded in a big hug from a large Pegasus. Chatting as they walked down to the old watering hole, they regaled each other with tales of their deployments with their laughter joining the chorus of the lively city.

Big bushy eyebrows waggled at him, “So, meet any nice lasses on the frontier?”

He responded with laughter, “I couldn’t have seen them for all the work everyone needed to do!”

His companion raised a hoof to his thick beard, “Did you get my letter?”

“Yeah, hard to believe through, she really runs an escort service?”

“Aye, a couple of our division have actually stopped by her place, just to check the security of the queen of course, checking for magical bugs, ya know the drill,”

“No way!”

“Oh indeed laddie, straight from Celestia herself, something about foreign dignitaries and keeping them and the city safe,”

He chuckled, that did sound like their sun princess alright. Pausing for a moment, he swirled his glass of berry juice before, “I was thinking about whether it would be good to visit her,”

His companion looked at him silently for a moment, eyes tight and hooves on the table, “You’ve never shown much interest in escorts before laddie,”

“Why would I, it’s dangerous… you never know when you are going to get blackmailed, and the sun forbid word gets out that you used an escort,”

His companion hummed, reaching up to stroke his beard, closing one eye while looking upward.

“Being a guardspony is dangerous work, you never know when one day Tirek or some other nasty gets free and we’ll be the first to fall,”

“I know what I signed up for,”

“Do you laddie? Do you know what you look like?” waving at a mirror, his companion gestured him to look.

Bloodshot eyes stared back underlined by bags, his brown coat dry and clumping up in places where the armour didn’t cover it.

“You,” his companion stated, leaning back into his chair, “Look like you’ve been working all day and all night and never stopped to take care of yourself. Yes, escorting can end poorly, but you and I both know we rarely have the time to make friends, let alone anything more then that on deployment. What harm is there in supporting the local economy and using some of those bits we’ve earned?”

He stared into his drink, the dark juice providing no answers to his conundrum. “I don’t want my first time to be bought mate. I’m more then capable of doing both my job and findi-“

“Oh it’s not your capabilities I doubt laddie, but your perceptions! I know you want to find someone who you love and who loves you etc before your first time…” His companion paused, having got up from his seat in his interruption. Laying his hooves on the table he spoke softly “I just wonder if maybe you’re in the wrong job for the kind of pony you are.”

On his way back to the barracks, he found himself at the crossroads near the main marketplace. The barracks was north from here, his family a train ride west, his old blacksmith workplace east deeper into the city. Somewhere south was Ember’s location, and he recalled his dreams of grapes and wine.

Making a choice, he moved forward, unsure if he had chosen well, but determined to see it through regardless.