The jingle of the keys in the lock, the sigh of an opening door, the click of that very same door being closed; then silence.
The clock which had been mounted on the wall facing the entrance had stopped working months ago, but Roseluck did not need it to tell the time. It was eight o’clock, of course. She always got home at eight o’clock, no matter what. This had been true since she had first opened her stall, and it would be until the day she would be too old and weak to continue. A glance in the mirror installed right under the busted clock told her that she still had a few decades before she would need to worry about that.
The jingle again, and the door was locked. She dropped the keys in the basket she had placed by the door - Lily had described it as a ‘lovely little nest’ when she had bought it, playing on the fact that Roseluck’s keychain was a cute little blue jay - and looked at her reflection once more. A tired mare looked back at her.
The bags under her eyes, which she once attributed to the tiring nature of her work, looked more and more like they were a permanent feature. Seamlessly, they conflated with the little wrinkles she spotted here and there, forming the mask of a mare older than she ever thought she would be. Averting her gaze from the mirror, Roseluck set to removing her saddlebags.
What followed was pure muscle memory, a choreography of movements set to a rhythm so mechanical that she didn’t even think about it as it happened: bags dropped, methodically emptied, their contents left in a semi-orderly pile on the table of the living room in the corner that was devoted to her things. All the while, she thought about her past self, back when she thought she was immortal like the princesses. When she dreamed of suddenly waking up with a horn and wings, of flying away to Canterlot to be adored like them. She had cast out those foolish dreams long ago, but the scars of childish hopes and dreams never truly healed.
Five past eight. Her affairs discarded, Roseluck slipped from living room to kitchen. A note awaited her. Beautiful cursive - most likely Daisy’s, she always dotted her i’s with little flowers - told her where the other two were:
“Hiya Rosie, Lily is off to the theater with her coltfriend, and I’m helping Princess Twilight with some flower arrangements for the castle tonight. Evening work, I know, but I can’t say no to my biggest client, can I? :) There’s some grub left in the pan, feel free to heat that up if you don’t feel like cooking.
Love ya, Daisy”
She smiled at the note, grabbed a nearby pen - the one they used to write grocery lists - and sketched a little heart in response before turning her attention to the stove. True to her word, Daisy had left some fried beans, carrots and potatoes in the pan they shared. Roseluck glanced at the fridge, then back at the pan. Silently, she thanked the mare for being such a caring soul and turned the heat back on, before setting to find some extras in the fridge.
A few minutes later, Roseluck had scrounged enough random leftovers to pass for an actual dinner. The heated up beans, carrots and potato slices ferociously guarded the northwest of her plate whilst a few odd cubes of beets disputed the center to the particularly invasive remnants of a box of prepared maize. It wasn’t particularly fancy, and didn’t promise to be that good; but it was food, and that was all Roseluck wanted out of it.
She ate in silence, gazing pensively at the table as she meticulously annihilated all presence of a meal from the plate, down to the very last crumb. The journal of the day eventually caught her eye and she reached out for it, glancing over at the events of the world to pass time. She wasn’t reading so much as she was looking at the headlines, unable to muster the interest to look deeper into them.
“EMISSARIES SENT TO GRIFFON LANDS, PRINCESSES ‘EXPECT BETTER RELATIONS DOWN THE LINE’”
Roseluck thought about the griffon lands. She had heard Rainbow Dash talk about it once. A drab, brown place, according to her. “Not that awesome,” she had said; but then, that was the conclusion to most of Dash’s stories when it came to visiting places, or to things that weren’t the Wonderbolts.
Roseluck decided that she would love to visit it one day, to see for herself. Maybe she’d even make a griffon friend, and they’d exchange letters! He would be a gentle soul, unlike some of the more brutish members of his kind; a poet, who’d write tender letters about her flower compositions.
Rolling her eyes, she discarded the thought and went on with her glancing.
“NEW MUSEUM OF ZEBRICAN ARTS AND CRAFTS OPENING IN CANTERLOT”
Roseluck thought about her times in Canterlot. It had been a relatively pleasant place to visit, and she would have loved to visit it more often. The horrible events of the Changeling invasion had cut that short however; it was difficult for her not to associate the capital city with the events that led to her close encounter with the changelings. Not wanting to dwell too much on the matters of the past, she thought about Zebrica instead.
She had not heard much about Zebrica. She had little contacts with Zecora, the mysterious but gentle shaman of the Everfree, and even less actual attempts at conversations with her. Still, she had seen in magazines that it was a beautiful place. Mare Weekly had called it “the most exotic getaway for you and your coltfriend”, and after seeing the pictures of sunsets over the savannah, of beautiful kasbahs and colorful marketplaces, she had been inclined to agree. The zebras were a friendly, if cryptic sort. Surely, they’d like her flowers too, wouldn’t they?
Noticing that her plate was now empty, Roseluck sighed and set the newspaper aside. There was no point to this sort of wondering, and she knew it. Going to Griffonstone? Wandering the stalls of Zebrican towns? The farthest she had ever been was Canterlot, and she couldn’t even bear to be there outside of business trips, these days.
She grunted, setting the plate down into the sink with a frown. For a moment, she wanted to smash it, reduce the frail, cheap thing to shreds for committing the offense of existing within her field of perception. Then she sighed again and opened the tap, rapidly washing the grease off before leaving it to dry on the side. She didn’t need Daisy and Lily on her case for smashing another plate, especially after the former went out of her way to leave her some food for the night.
They had left her alone, though.
With a pained frown, Roseluck realized she was envious. Lily was a scared, shy mare, and yet she had a coltfriend - a cute stallion, working as an engineer for the company that worked on Equestria’s railroad system. They had been going at it for two years now, and Daisy often joked that they’d best find themselves a pair of hoof bands before Lily ended up with foal.
As for Daisy...
Daisy was the thinking head of the flower trio. She had figured perfectly how to branch their affair out, and it was thanks to her that they now sold to many of the big names of the Canterlot nobility; Tartarus, she had been the one pulling the strings to get them to arrange the flowers for the Canterlot Wedding, and in spite of the less than desirable results of the invasion, their business had boomed like no other.
Since then, Daisy kept a pretty consistent correspondence with a sweet Saddle Arabian mare that she’d met at the post-invasion after-party. Roseluck suspected that they both wanted more than just talk affairs, but neither of them had pushed it beyond business meetings at a trendy little Canterlot café yet.
But her... Roseluck had nothing. Flings that lasted from days to months, without much substance to them. Her work, good but not exceptional. In short, a routine mediocrity, punctuated by little moments of happiness and small achievements that felt more like commas than exclamation points.
Everyday, she went to work at the same hour, accomplished the same few tasks, greeted the same ponies with the same smile. Every night, she came back to her reflection in the mirror, with more or less the same need to just slide into bed and wait for the next day to repeat the previous, bis repetita. She was growing older, and she had nothing.
Twenty past eight. It was early, but she didn’t feel like staying up for the sole purpose of feeling like an adult, so she went to her room. The artificial light, brought on by a press on the switch, revealed her personal mark on the world in its cold white shade. In spite of her foul mood, she smiled as she looked over her most personal belongings.
Her bed throned in the center of the room, surrounded by books loosely arranged in piles of ‘read’, ‘to be read’, and ‘to be read again’. It was adorned by the most beautiful blanket she could find, colored like her mane. Among the white pillows she usually cuddled with, a single plushie stuck out - an old worn reminder of her youth. It was, of course, her Ursa, Mr. Big Star, appropriately named after the huge star between his eyes, still visible on the worn fabric that made up its dermal layer. No matter where she went, the plushie came with - to the point where Roseluck hardly imagined a world where she could go to sleep without it.
Around the bed and the books were the various wardrobes in which she stored her summer hats, scarves and other seasonal items. There wasn’t much to them beyond the various scribbles and drawings of flower arrangements that she liked to duct tape to them, in what she hoped added a little flair to her living space.
Finally came her desk.
It was by far the most nondescript piece of furniture that she owned; a brown, boring, boxy bureau that screamed business and reminded her of work. It was, coincidentally, where she worked on her flower arrangements, and thus it was covered in papers, pencils and rulers of all kinds. Above it, a single lamp loomed, ready to carry her into the night if she needed to - and with it a little note Lily had written, reminding her not to stay up too late.
Her smile waning a bit, Roseluck sat at the desk. Her hoof caressed the current design she was working on, a pretty arrangement of lilies, white and red roses - a beautiful thing, really, if not finished. Then she set it aside, on the pile that had grown to informally represent the things she needed to finish working on.
Diligently, she cleared a good rectangle of free space in the clutter of her desk before opening one of the large drawers at the bottom. Out came a worn cardboard box, the kind that one would get when buying boots for the winter. She placed it as gently as she could on the desk, grunting a bit at the weight.
When had she purchased the boots the box had come with? It was more than likely that they had been worn out, thrown out, and outlived by the cheap cardboard that was made to help carry them from store to home. The price tag had fallen off eons ago it seemed, leaving truly no traces of its glorious past as an actual shoe box.
What truly mattered was not the box, though; boxes are only worth the value of the items they contain. This particular box, old and worn as it was, contained a treasure that was priceless to Roseluck.
The old cover slid off with ease, and Roseluck carefully leaned in to extract the prized possession with both hooves, slowly pulling it out of the box, gently putting it on the desk in front of her. She checked that everything was in place, tick-ticked on it, grabbed and set some paper, and leaned back to appraise the item. Truly, her typewriter was her favored possession.
After checking the ribbon for the fifth time, she finally leaned back. New paper was in place. She had the house to herself. All she had to do was start writing. The tip of her hooves rested on the typewriter’s textured keys, tentatively typing out a title.
She frowned, thought, pulled the paper out, wrote another title. It looked better, so she continued. Her hooves tip-typed away, dexterously wringing themselves in an effort to bring forth the stream of consciousness she sought for.
The minutes flew by, and she was in another world. She was Gilded Shield, courageous sergeant of the Equestrian Guard delegated to the Equestrian embassy in Griffin lands, fierce and loyal, embroiled in a complicated love affair with a griffon official. The world was falling prey to a tenebrous conspiracy, but she was ready to do everything in her power to prevent war.
She was Gavius, the young and inexperienced griffin prince whose heart was stolen by Gilded Shield, ready to give his life for her no matter what his father thought of it. She watched him as he fought for his mare, to prove to her that he was more than her first impression of him. She was the soldiers, the lovers, the members of the Griffin King’s court, and the King himself. She was the servants, the nobles, the ambitious and the cowards.
She was...
She was sitting in front of her typewriter, still. Minutes had passed, ideas had flourished. Yet only a few pages were written. She glanced at the little alarm clock she kept by her bed.
Nine O’Clock. Nigh forty minutes of brainstorming, and little to show for it. Roseluck sighed.
She remembered the day she had bought her typewriter. It had been a sudden impulse she had been hard-pressed to explain, the result of reading so many books for so many years. That was how she had explained it away to the others, when they had asked. As the days turned into months, the months into years, without any results, people had stopped asking about it. The once proudly exposed typewriter had ended in a worn shoe box, only exhibited at night when she was alone.
She knew, though, why she had bought it. It was the same reason she felt bad when watching the mirror. The same reason why she thought of exotic places to visit in spite of knowing she would never do it, imagined romances in some alluring settings, where artists and creators of all kinds fell for her.
Deep down, Roseluck knew that she was unhappy with where she was. No matter how well she did her work, or how happy she was at times - it was a seething unhappiness, a bubbling ocean that was all too quick to pull her down under when she let her guard down.
She wished so badly to write about beautiful worlds, great love stories, dashing princes in armor. If she was not to be a princess, then she would write about them. Alas, she was a florist, not a writer; in spite of her feverish attempts, nothing that she did would come out right, or sound remotely as good as what an actual writer might make.
Roseluck felt the burn of tears welling up in her eyes. There was nothing she could do. Wordlessly, she returned the typewriter to its cardboard coffin then buried it back into the dark depths of her desk, to be forgotten for another night.
Ten past nine. In the darkness of her little bedroom, under pillows and blankets, squeezing a plushie, Roseluck closed her eyes, shielding herself from reality for a time. Soon enough, she was asleep.
She didn’t see the door to her room slide open, nor the concerned gaze of Daisy lingering on her curled up shape for an instant. She didn’t hear the door close again either.
Tomorrow, perhaps, she would write her story.
Author's Note
One of the random attempts at writing I've made over 2018, and quite frankly the one that most resembles a story - if only because it touches upon a lot of issues I have. Write what you know, heh.
It had been sitting in my google drive for months, and wouldn't ever have been pulled out were it not for a late night conversation with sweet, sweet Props, to whom I transfer at least part of the credit/blame for bringing it out for all to see. Big thanks to Cas, sinchat, and all of the Lemur as well for being around and making me want to try writing again.
Much love to everybody who bothered to make it far enough to see the author's notes, too! You're great. Thanks for taking the time to read my little story.
