Burgeon Anemone

Chapters

1. Window Shopping
2. Delivery Service
3. Trust Issues
4. Haunted Eyes
5. Clean Slate
6. Sunburst's and Starlight's Renovation Project

1. Window Shopping

"Hi, sorry I'm late. My last client has visited our showroom five times and he still can't make up his mind."

Sunburst smiled and pretended that he didn't mind waiting for the client coordinator. He wasn't normally an impatient stallion, but the waiting room at Sable's Garden Inc. creeped him out. It was decorated in pink and metallic silver, with fake vines wrapping around the fake columns and walls, making him feel like he was waiting his turn at a tacky fair ride. He couldn't afford to go to a nicer place, so what else could he do besides wait patiently?

The client coordinator made friendly chit-chat as she ushered him past the reception desk and into a private office. She wasn't a bad looking mare, except that she was probably old enough to be his mother — like all the other mares he knew.

"All right," she said, seating him and taking her place on the other side of the desk. "Let's just go over your specifications, shall we?"

Sunburst nodded and tried to make himself even just a smidgen less uncomfortable. After all, he wasn't in the absurd waiting room anymore.

The client coordinator reminded him that their consultation was completely confidential and got started. "So, let's go over each category starting at the top." She pushed a copy of his application form towards him and pointed to the first category – beauty. "I noticed you didn't mark down a preference. Let me fill you in about each style. First there's Snow Lilly—"

"I get it," Sunburst interrupted. "I didn't put anything down, because I don't care about what she looks like. All the mares have to be presentable in order to get a contract with you, don't they?"

"Of course," the coordinator said without skipping a beat. "I can set up your selection to be random if you'd like. Usually it's the most important feature for our clients."

"The mares aren't robots, are they? I was under the impression that they were real mares that you chose to describe with flowers names depending on their coloring."

"Yes, that's all true. Then let's move onto the second category – Model. This refers to their best functionality."

Sunburst's eyes ran down the list; Diva, Creative Princess, Domestic Goddess, Queen Rose, and Enchantress. His mouth practically filled with tar as he read the titles. Why couldn't he have afforded a less cheesy agency?

"I wondered if you didn't understand the titles."

"Because I chose Domestic Goddess?"

"Yeah," the coordinator stammered. "It's just no one chooses that one and the others aren't very descriptive." Then she launched into a description of each title. "The Diva is the kind of mare who looks great on any stallion’s side. She's always the pinnacle of fashion and style—"

Sunburst interrupted again. "I read the small print. I don't have any need for a mare who has to be the pinnacle of fashion. I don't need an artist, or a gardener, or a five-star chef. I just want someone who can be more like a personal assistant and do a little of everything."

The coordinator winked at him. "I see what you mean," she said with a little smile. "Now age? You marked under twenty-five and that seems perfect for you. You're what?"

"Twenty-six."

"Gorgeous. Lastly, if there are any special skills you'd like in a model, you can choose from this list."

Sunburst just about lost it. As if this wasn't already embarrassing enough. "Can we skip all that and just get to the price?"

"Certainly," she said, moving the paper out of his way. At that second, she understood that Sunburst wasn't going to be able to buy a nice model, but that didn't seem to bother her any and her attitude didn't change for the worse. "Our lowest price bracket is between two hundred fifty thousand and two hundred and eighty thousand bits. Let me just check to see how many Domestic Goddesses we have in that price range."

Sunburst squirmed slightly in his seat. He really couldn’t afford this.

"There are three, but if you're willing to go up to age twenty-eight, I can offer you two more to look at. Do you want to do that?"

"Sure."

The client coordinator got up from her chair and led Sunburst back through the offices to a showroom that looked exactly like a warehouse, except that the metal brackets were painted pink. The floor was bare cement with yellow stripes around the perimeter of the walkway and the ceiling went up forever.

"The first one is part of our Daisy line." Said the client coordinator as they walked.

"Daisy?"

"They're mares under four feet tall."

Sunburst didn't know how to answer that. He didn't have a complex about his height.

The client coordinator stopped at one pink crate and pulled loose one long rectangular box. The top was glass and a beautiful mare was asleep inside. Sunburst peered in — taking note of the strange tubes that entered the box on the other side. She was in cryostasis.

"She looks like she's twelve."

"She's actually twenty-six. Some stallions just really like being with a mare that is definitely shorter than he is. I didn't think the Daisy line was for you, but I thought I'd offer anyway — just in case it was love-at-first-sight." She moved the box back into place and started them off down the aisle. "The next one is a Carnation."

"Carnation, like the ones you give for Mother’s Day?"

"Yes. Some stallions like to be mothered. The price for this one is actually below the price bracket I mentioned."

"Why?"

The woman pulled out the box and Sunburst saw why.

"Hmm...She has beautiful hair," Sunburst remarked timidly and the coordinator slammed it shut with a bang.

"The next one is an Anemone."

"You don't sound very enthusiastic," Sunburst remarked.

"Well, I'm not. This one is twenty-seven. She also costs less than the minimum fee."

"Why?"

"Her memory has been tampered with. She doesn't remember the last two years and she's been here for three."

"How does that work?"

The coordinator sighed. "Time stops once we put the mares in cryostasis, so they don't age. Good models are only here for a few months before they're picked up. This pony has been here three years. The price keeps dropping because it's more like she's been here for five years, since she doesn't remember two years before she got here."

"How much are you charging for her?"

She stared. "After this one, I've got two models left to show you that are in perfectly good condition. I'm sure one of them will suit you."

"How much?"

"Two hundred thousand."

Sunburst nearly choked. "For a year?"

"No. That's how much we'd want for a lifetime investment."

Sunburst couldn't believe his ears. No mare sold for that little. There had to be more wrong with her than memory loss.

The coordinator pulled out the box and showed him the Anemone. Sunburst was pleasantly surprised. She had shiny purple hair as long as the Carnation.

"Is her hair so long because she's been in here for three years?"

"Yes."

"Why not switch her category? She has beautiful hair. She might sell faster."

"It wouldn't make any difference. Her memory is bad."

She moved to close it, but Sunburst held it open so he could look at her a little longer. She was a unicorn, her coat a nice soft lavender while her mane and tail a much darker shade of purple, which would’ve been boring hadn’t been for the mint green streak that ran through her hair. Like the other girls, her makeup was flawless and her lips painted a perfect raspberry.

"She's lovely. What else is wrong with her?"

The coordinator rolled her eyes and sighed. "You shouldn't do this just because she's a good price. She could have been involved in anything in those two years she doesn't remember — crime, drug wars — anything."

"What's going to happen to her if she isn't bought?" Sunburst asked.

"We don't keep any pony longer than three years and in three weeks, it'll be her anniversary. Basically, it's not cheap to keep these mares like this. She'll have to work here until she pays off the cost of keeping her asleep for all that time."

"So, she'll be doing makeup?"

"Probably not. The staff members who do make-up are highly paid professionals who are worth every bit. Let me show you the other two." She pushed the box in and took him down another stretch.

Sunburst turned around to get the number on the Anemone’s box. It was 44015.

When they arrived at the next one, the coordinator said, "This one is a genuine Rose."

Sunburst stared. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen, but gorgeous, isn't she?"

She was, but something didn't sit right. She was nine years younger than him.

"Show me the last one."

"It's a Snow Lilly."

Sunburst stared at the Snow Lilly. There was nothing wrong with her. She was twenty-two and pretty. The chart said she was excellent at everything she tried to do. She was two hundred and seventy-five thousand bits. That sales pony took him to the only reasonable choice last.

"I'll let you think about it," she said, as she left him to look at the sleeping girl.

Sunburst didn't know what to do. He couldn't actually afford the Snow Lilly. She was perfect, but if he bought her, he wouldn't be able to even buy food without taking out loans and driving himself crazy. Besides, the two hundred and seventy-five thousand only bought her for a year. After that, he wouldn't be able to buy another mare for two more years.

He closed the box and the client coordinator came rushing up.

"Can I do up the papers?"

"Sure," he said, trying to sound cool about his choice. "I'll take the Anemone."

The mare frowned. "You shouldn't do that. There's a no-return policy attached to her."

"But I'm going to. I like lost causes." His voice sounded cool, but inside he knew he was a loser. He just couldn't stand to live alone anymore.

The look the client coordinator gave him was unusual. He couldn't tell if she was pleased with his choice or disgusted. She led him back to her office with a quick step and gave him the papers to sign.

Sable's Garden Inc. disclosed all of the Anemone's personal information since he was buying a lifetime investment in her. Of course, her name wasn't really Anemone. That was just a flower type. Her real name was Starlight Glimmer. Sunburst decided to call her Starlight. He signed for her to be delivered to his home in two weeks. That wasn't the normal chain of events after a purchase. This flowery place liked their customers to wake their product with a kiss, but Sunburst asked her to be delivered. He had a deadline just before her arrival date. If he used her as a carrot, he should be able to get more work done.

Just before he signed the final releases, the coordinator put her hoof over the dotted line. "Are you sure you want to do this? You're a good-looking stallion. Can't you find a date on your own? I'm sure lots of normal mares would love to be with you."

He answered by pointing to the address Starlight was being shipped to.

The coordinator looked at it and frowned deeply. "Then I guess it can't be helped."

They both knew that no pony would go there voluntarily.

"I'm only raising these concerns because you seem like a nice stallion. You have honest eyes and a gentle expression. You even seem embarrassed to be in a place like this. It's just a shame that you won't go with the Snow Lilly."

"She'd come back screaming after the year was up. Not everyone can live happily up there. The weather's not bad. It's the isolation that gets me."

"Yeah. Well, you said you didn't want a mare who was the pinnacle of fashion. Well, just between you and me — you aren't getting one."

"I understand. It's fine."

Author's Note

This is my first attempt at sci-fi and hence I'm really hesitant to call it so (is it enough to call it sci-fi just because technology is present in the story?), at it's core it's still very much a romance just that I'll be taking my sweet time getting there...what? you expected anything else from me? :ajsmug:

If by chance someone who writes sci-fi happens to read this, any pointers about the genre would be appreciated, since I'm mostly feeling my way through this story and I'm probably ignoring lots of elements that go with sci-fi. At least I hope you guys enjoy my stumbling.

2. Delivery Service

Starlight expected to wake up with some unknown stallion’s lips on hers. Didn’t happen. Instead she was awoken by a green metal handcuff coming down on her wrist. She groaned slightly. Had no one bought her? It wasn’t that she wanted to be sold into basic slavery, but if she wasn’t purchased, she would be chained to the wall at Sable's Garden Inc. sweeping floors and distributing flyers on city streets for the rest of her days. When she had come in to be put into cryostasis she had leafed through the pamphlets where mares came back after serving their year with diamonds and penthouses and goodies galore. It wasn’t that Starlight expected that much, but she did expect to be sold. Her disappointment made her lips curve into a frown.

“Oh, stop that!” the female guard programming her wrist band snapped. “At least you’re not going to have my job.”

Starlight blinked. “Does that mean…?”

“Yeah, sweet cheeks. It means you were sold. Hallelujah,” sang the guard sarcastically. She was obviously a left over Flower who had not been bought.

“So, where’s the guy?”

“He left.”

“He left?!”

“Yeah. He didn’t feel like waking you with a kiss and took off. You’re to be delivered to his place.”

Starlight thought his busyness made him rich, but then she remembered to ask for the date. If she had been there a month, he would had to spend a lot more than if she was close to her expiry date. “What day is it?” she asked rather feebly.

“April 2219.”

“Shit,” she mumbled. That meant that he paid next to nothing for her. It was all her fault for having her memory wiped. That invalidated her contract with Sable's Garden Inc. and instead of just selling her for one or two years, they were allowed to sell her for life. She couldn’t keep the unhappiness from her face.

“Why do you look so miserable?” the guard asked, dropping Starlight’s hoof and typing something on her own much larger wristband.

“Because I’m probably being sold to some ridiculous moron for the rest of my life,” Starlight mourned.

The guard lifted her chin haughtily. “I should be so lucky. Do you think I would be acting like this if you were taken away by some stallion twenty years older than you with a fat wallet and serious issues? Oh no, I’m acting like this because even though the guy who bought you clearly has no money, he’s young and…how should I put this? Very nice looking.”

Starlight didn’t know what to say. Had her luck turned around?

“So, what’s the bad news?” the guard ask, obviously anticipating Starlight’s next line. “The bad news is that he’s so broke that he didn’t buy any clothes for you from our stores. He opted for you to wear the street clothes you came in with for the transfer. So that means no ball gown, no bathing suit, and no elegant heels. We’re not even going to give you a speck of make up or a drop of perfume.”

“I’ll live,” Starlight said, stepping out of the casket like box.

“Oh, and we’ll need the nightgown back.”

“Right now?” she asked, holding the tie on the front of her neck.

“No, go to the change room. It’s going to be my pleasure to escort you all the way to his home, in the north.”

“The north?” Starlight gaped, doing a double take.

“Yeah. I wasn’t done telling you the bad news. That isn’t a problem is it?”

Starlight rolled her eyes. She had to go wherever the pony who bought her wanted to go. She smiled, but it looked more like a sneer, “No, it’s not a problem.”

“Excellent. Get dressed, get fed, get in the truck and we should be there tonight.”

Starlight pursed her lips. She wasn’t sure if this was good luck or bad luck, but whatever it was she had to accept it, so she got herself to the dressing rooms.

The truck the guard was using was not usually used for transporting mares from Sable's Garden Inc. It looked more like an army transport left over from the war.

The guard smiled roguishly when she showed her which truck they were taking. “Sorry, he didn’t spring for one of the company vans either. You know the ones, pink all over and full of fruit and Champagne, but look, the window in this bad boy rolls down. Isn’t the fun almost too much?”

“Whatever,” Starlight huffed as she got in the front seat.

The guard got in next to her and they began their journey.

Starlight sat there and played with the bracelet/handcuff around her left wrist. That was the one thing she got to choose herself when she signed her contract with Sable's Garden Inc. They had big clunky ones that were thick and wide that jangled around a mare’s wrist. They had ones with pretty beads hanging on tiny chains. There were some made out of rubber and some made out of leather. Hers was made of green metallic links and inch wide. It was pretty, but something about it reminded her of chains which she also liked. She wanted to remember that she was a prisoner. That way she wouldn’t have any grandiose ideas about the rest of her life.

The last thing she remembered before having her memory wiped was the sight of a stallion she loved. He was asking her to go into business with him. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do and asked him to leave her alone so she could think about it. When she woke up over two years had passed and there was a note from herself explaining that it didn’t work out and she had decided to sell herself to Sable's Garden Inc. It would have been fine, except that she was now a lifetime investment.

She shrugged her shoulders. She just had to roll with it. She had to concentrate on her duty to the stallion who bought her, Sunburst Zenith, it said on the page. If she didn’t he could throw her to prison or sell her. He could even rent her out if he wanted to. He owned her.

Well, it didn’t matter. If her business with the other stallion didn’t work out than there was really nothing left to live for anyway.

It was a long drive north. The flowers were blooming in the city and as they went on, Starlight saw that fewer and fewer flowers were opening and the mountains seemed to be growing. She was being taken to the absolute middle of nowhere, but she didn’t mind. Nothing could bother her. She was unhappy about other things.

Sunburst stood on the dirt road outside his house and felt his shoulders sag. The earth spread out in endless dry prairie before him and turned to ragged mountain ranges behind him. When he was in the city he had seen many beautiful buildings. Most of them were made of reflective crystals that contained solar cells to power the houses. The cities were built in careful designs so the sunlight was reflected between them to create the highest amount of power possible. He had thermal tubing under his front yard that had been installed seventy years ago. It was slightly more advanced than the septic tank out back.

It wasn’t that his house was ugly. Actually, it was the contrary. It was made of stone, had a beautiful angled roof, a delightfully inset entryway with the cutest little roof over it, and a dozen other features that made it worth looking at. From the road, it was practically a tourist attraction, but once some pony got out of their vehicle and came up the walk, they saw the house for what it truly was — a magnificently design rat hole. Not that anyone intentionally designed a home to be that, but after eighty plus years, that was what it had become. The inside was in terrible disrepair.

And he had invited a purchased mare to live here.

He sighed.

Well, he’d do what he could to make her room livable. One of the beauty spots of the house was a two story turret off the southwest side and he planned to do the top room up to be her bedroom. Well, she would be there soon, so he went inside and up the circular stairs to the room. He had to clean, well…everything.

They wouldn’t have got there before nightfall if Starlight’s guard hadn’t been so serious. Neither of them had even traveled all day before. Most of the cities were closely clustered and commutes were quick when most ponies traveled via train. This place was in the middle of nowhere.

Starlight’s butt ached fiercely as she scooted off the seat in front of the house Mr. Sunburst lived. She looked at the house in the yellow light that bathed the country-side before sun set and didn’t know what to think. The place was picturesque, but ancient.

Then the front door swung open and a stallion came ambling out the front door. For a second Starlight thought he might be drunk, but then she saw that the reason his body was so unbalance was because he was dragging something heavy behind him. It was a huge sack with strange things poking at the plastic that looked like some pony’s leg. Then the bag made a weird squishing sound as he dropped it to the ground just outside the fence. That could be guts.

The guard winced.

So did Starlight.

“Excuse me,” the guard said in a nasal tone. She had clearly stopped breathing through her nose. “Are you Mr. Sunburst Zenith?”

“That’s me,” he said wiping his front hooves on to the dry grass.

Starlight peered up at him under lowered eyebrows and followed the guard’s example. There was something fowl on the air. Was this what rotting flesh smelled like? And Mr. Sunburst couldn’t have looked shadier. His red hair was all over the place and his neck and face super sweaty from working on who knows what.

She nodded her head towards him and tried to look like she wasn’t remotely disgusted. Actually, she was scared stiff.

“I’m here to deliver Anemone: model 44015. If you’ll just present your key card, we can finalize the transaction.”

Sunburst wiped his right hoof one last time and reached to the front of his neck where a silver and pink card hang from a string. He presented it to the guard who then grabbed Starlight’s hoof. After scanning the card with the bracelet, she let go of Starlight and gave Sunburst back his keycard.

“She’s all yours,” the guard said, stepping away from the two of them and heading back to the truck.

Sunburst looked around at the empty ground by Starlight’s hooves. “Excuse me, didn’t she come with some luggage or something?”

The guard turned to answer his question. “Sorry, if you’ll look at the packing slip and the package details, you’ll see that no additional clothing or accessories were purchased with this model.”

Sunburst frowned and nodded to the guard that she could leave. He stood silently next to Starlight while the truck pulled away and skidded down the gravel road in a huff of dust.

After the air had cleared, except for the bag of rotting pony entrails, Starlight dared to say something. “You don’t have any clothes for me?”

“Not a stitch,” Sunburst admitted. “I’m afraid you’ll see that this place isn’t like most homes Sable's Garden models usually get assigned to. We’re fifty-six kilometers from the nearest town and, trust me; it isn’t much of a town.”

Starlight looked at the house without a single solar panel on it and then at the stallion with his messy mane and then at the vomit inducing bag laying a few feet away from her. It probably would have been the most depressing sight she had ever seen in her life, if she hadn’t already seen the note she wrote for herself that her sweetest dream ended in misery.

“Can I see inside?” she whispered, sick to her gut as to what he would expect once they were in the house.

“Yeah. Where are my manners?” he beckoned her inside. Then gave her a tour. “This is the kitchen and in there is the living room. There’s a bathroom over there and down the hallway is my bedroom and my study. This door opens to a staircase that takes you upstairs to your room and another bathroom. Then if you go down that hallway it leads to the shed and out to the courtyard.

Starlight did her best to hide the fact that she was pleased that he had given her a separate bedroom. She had been briefed about how most clients wanted to sleep with their purchase right away. Others never did. Some mares were bought with the intention of putting them to work, not using them for pleasure. She realized now that when she saw Sunburst she worried that he was going to bring her inside and expect that part like she was a prostitute.

“Here, let me take you up to your room.” He said that line while he removed his icky robe and tossing it uncaring on the kitchen chair. Then he bounded up the stairs like an elephant.

Starlight quivered, and then steadied herself. She must have been ready for worse than this when she signed her contract at Sable's Garden Inc.

He took her up a turret room. Starlight had to do a double take as she found herself in the middle of a sundrenched space. The west view was fantastic, but with one look, she could see that the room was crap. The blankets on the bed were frayed and the carpet was sticking in clumps. The dresser was at least a hundred years old with ancient Daring Do stickers clinging to it in half torn ribbons and the mirror attached to it was broken with a long crack down the middle.

“Here’s the bathroom,” Sunburst said, opening a door on the side. Then he paused for effect. “Well, what do you think of it? Do you think you could live here?”

Starlight smiled kindly. She honestly wasn’t feeling that way, but she didn’t think offending him would be a brilliant tactic at this particular juncture. “It’s wonderful,” she lied. “I should thank you…for buying me.”

Sunburst smiled and then edging his way towards the door said, “I’ll let you clean up. And I’ll bring you a shirt to wear to bed.”

Starlight watched him close the door before going to the window once more to look at the view. It would have been perfect, if she hadn’t seen that garbage bag. He didn’t buy her just to murder her, did he?

Sunburst came upstairs after that with a plaid shirt for her to wear and asked her if she wanted something to eat. She declined, saying she was really exhausted after the trip. Then she honestly did try to go to sleep, except that it was a complete waste of time. She couldn’t stop thinking about that garbage bad and how it honestly smelled like something was rotting. By midnight, she couldn’t take it anymore. How was she supposed to live in this house comfortably when she didn’t even know for sure what was going on? It was probably just her imagination getting away from her and if it wasn’t, than she needed to know that too.

She was wearing the plaid shirt Sunburst had given her. Then she slipped on her scarf and boots and quietly made her way downstairs. The house was completely quiet, so she guessed Sunburst was already asleep. She paused at the front door and wondered if it had an alarm system attached to it and if a buzzer would go off if she tried to leave the house without Sunburst’s permission. The place looked positively archaic, so she undid the deadbolt and turned the handled. No alarm sounded.

It was freezing outside as she stepped out onto the front porch. This close to the mountains the air was dead frigid this late at night. Oh well, she thought as she shivered, this will only take a minute.

She ran down the path to the fence where Sunburst had dropped the bag. Luckily, it was still there. She took one sharp breath in and tugged open the bag. At first it was too dark to see and the smell was absolutely overpowering, but she couldn’t leave until she knew what was in there.

Suddenly, there was a light above her. She whipped her head around to see Sunburst standing in his pajamas a few feet away from her with a lighting spell on his horn.

“What in Tartarus?” his voice echoed through the cold air. At first he sounded confused and then he was laughing heartily. “And here I thought you were running away and instead you snuck out of the house to…” here his laughing could not be repressed. He finally got it together and was able to finish his sentence, “to go through my garbage.” Then he was hooting with laughter again.

“Well,” Starlight demanded. “What is this?”

“You know — garbage!” He came over to her and shone his horn into the open bag. He showed her inside and she saw rotten potatoes, corn, mushy, celery, and molded over oatmeal.

She gagged and fell backwards. “Good grief! Don’t you have a garbage disposal?”

Sunburst pulled the bag closed and tied it off. “Hard to believe isn’t it? Honestly babe, we’re lucky to have hot and cold running water.”

“Then…if the alarm didn’t go off in the house, how did you know I was out here?”

“That bracelet of yours is pretty fancy,” he said, as he stood straight. “Come on, though. You’ve got to explain to me what you were expecting to find out here.”

“Nothing,” she said quickly.

“Nothing?” he repeated. “Uh-huh, I’m going to believe that. Well, we’ll just stay here until you feel like spilling the beans.”

Starlight didn’t move. She knew from her contract that if she tried to go into the house without his permission there were about fifteen different forms of punishment he could inflict that were totally legal. And it was freezing out. She couldn’t last long.

“I’m an idiot,” she muttered.

Sunburst didn’t say anything, but stood there casually and waited for the rest of her story to come out. He was chuckling a little under his breath.

“I didn’t think it could be rotten food. I thought that maybe it was a dead body,” she admitted quietly. Then she moved to run back into the house, but Sunburst caught her off.

“You thought I was a murderer?” he asked, all the humor had run out of his voice. She got a better look at his eyes — they were a nice shade of blue and she had to admit this awful thing she suspected to a pony who looked nice.

She nodded and looked away.

His eyebrows were high as he sighed. “We’re off to a terrific start.”

3. Trust Issues

The next morning, Starlight Glimmer was awoken by Sunburst. He smack her nose firmly with a stack of rolled papers.

She knocked him off and yelled, "What are you doing?"

He laughed and jumped away from her.

"Do you have any idea how much that hurts?" she whined.

"Uh-huh, and do you have any idea how unprofessional it is of an Anemone to accuse her buyer of being a killer?"

Starlight lowered her head. "Yeah. Sorry about that."

"Apology…somewhat accepted. You know, when you were dropped off yesterday, I found myself inexplicably nervous. How was I going to treat you right? How was I going to make you happy? But ever since I found you rooting around in my trash, I'm not particularly worried about those things anymore."

Starlight felt a shiver break out into goose bumps. Sunburst wasn't filthy this morning. He'd had a shower and smelled like spice and prairie breezes, but that still didn't exactly remove the somewhat sketchiness of his general appearance. His chin sported a goatee and his glasses had a little crack on the left lens.

"As I thought about it, I realized that what we need to do now is establish trust between us. That way I'll have a happy slave and I'll be less bored."

"Uh-huh," Starlight said slowly. "And how are we going to do that?"

"Like this," Sunburst said, pulling a black handkerchief from a nearby drawer.

Starlight stared at him, one hundred percent puzzled. "Are you going to do a magic trick?"

Sunburst gawked. "No."

"Then what's that for?"

"To blindfold you with, my dear."

"What?" she squeaked.

He got up and held it out to her. "We need to establish trust. Now, will you trust me enough to put on this blindfold and come on a little trip with me?"

There wasn't a bone in Starlight Glimmer's body that wanted to do this, but she really didn't have much choice. She reached out to take the handkerchief from him when he snapped it out of her grasp.

"I'll do it," he volunteered playfully.

Starlight felt like she was going to die as the black material came over her eyes. "If we're going somewhere, shouldn't I change first?"

"Nope. Nothing to worry about. Probably no one will notice that you're wearing one of my old shirts. I'll help you get your scarf on when we get downstairs." With that, he took her hoof in his and helped her to her feet.

Since Starlight couldn't see a thing, she was forced to use her other senses. Sunburst's hoof was smoother than she thought it would be, and the fragrance of his cologne or deodorant was more pointed. Then she heard the sound of his voice as he counted the steps down to the main level for her so she wouldn't trip. After he wrapped her scarf around her neck he put a coat over her shoulders.

"Are we going outside?"

"Yup. I keep my secrets outside my house. Now to evade further suspicion that I'm a freelance hit-pony, I'm going to show you what I do for a living. You're not afraid of wide open spaces are you?"

"No," she replied, grasping his hoof as he hauled her over the frost covered grass.

"Are you afraid of loud noises? Do you have sensitive ears?"

"No. I used to dance right next to the speakers."

"Are you afraid of heights?"

"No." She had to fight herself from asking snottily, 'Why? Are you taking a survey?' but she managed it.

"Well, I guess nothing I'll do to you will scare you too much."

The chilly air hit her as he brought her out of the house and onto the porch. Then she felt the crunchy frost-covered grass under her hooves as he led her around the house. Then he suddenly let go of her hoof.

"Hey!" she bellowed as he suddenly picked her up and set her down in a seat.

"Calm down. I'm just going to put your seat belt on. Please don't be alarmed, but this is a four point harness, so I'm not feeling around you to get my jollies, okay?"

"Okay," Starlight agreed breathlessly as he secured her. She was totally confused. What car had a four point harness?

Then she felt the door close and within a minute Sunburst got into the seat next to her and with him came a collection of weird clicking noises. "Now," he said once he was in the seat, "Try not to scream too much. It'll spoil my concentration and may make for a bumpy ride."

"What's going on?"

A deep hum started and then a loud chopping noise began. Starlight was okay until she felt them lift off the ground. She bit down on her lip and put her hooves between her knees. She wasn't going to act scared, but even if she said that, there was still hot sweat collecting in her blind fold.

After a couple minutes of waiting, Sunburst said, "You can take your blindfold off."

Cautiously, Starlight reached up and pulled it down. What she saw was simply blue sky and then as she looked down, she saw that she was sitting in the cockpit of a helicopter. The floor in front of her feet was clear and she could see the farm land shooting under them in yellow streaks.

Sunburst was smiling under his Top Gun shades. "Just to get rid of your weird ideas about me, I want to be clear. I'm a charter helicopter pilot and I need an assistant. I've tried to hire girls before, but my hanger is too far away from the town for anyone to commute. I've tried to hire girlfriends for the job and attempted to convince them to move in with me."

Starlight swallowed the knot in her throat, but it just wouldn't go down. She was so relieved and yet terribly cross. Was everything a joke to this guy? Why couldn't he have just told her what he did and what he wanted her for last night before she jumped to any wild conclusions?

"So, do you have a girlfriend?" Starlight asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "We're on a break. I told her I was going to go get some help if she didn't volunteer. She said that I should give up the business and move into town for her."

"Why didn't you?"

"Town? Let me tell you how it works here. Town is tiny. I have no way of making money there. She's being unreasonable and when we get to town you'll see how impossible it really is. So, short answer – no girlfriend."

Starlight Glimmer should have known she wasn't going to end up being a pampered palace brat like some of the other girls who signed up with Sable’s Garden Inc. It wasn't like she was a runway model – and she meant that literally. Once a year they woke up the best models they had in stock for a show and in the three years Starlight had been there, she'd never been chosen. How was she going to catch some rich pony's eye when she was probably the lowest price model they had?

"Are you upset?" Sunburst suddenly asked her. Actually, he kind of screamed it at her over the chopping sound of the rotors.

Starlight didn't know what to say. Her brain was a jumble. Usually a model should be happy that her purchaser didn't want her for a love interest. Unless she was sadly mistaken, he probably just wanted her to sit on the other end of the transmitter as a safety precaution. Well, she guessed she was happy. It could have been worse.

Then her brain started humming, 'how could it be worse?'

He had no money.

He had a bad sense of humor.

He was making her live in the middle of nowhere.

He was going to make her work.

She couldn't figure out what that guard at Sable’s Garden Inc. had been talking about. He wasn't hot. He was sketchy and shady and his snout had a weird white spot in the middle. She looked at him again to make sure she wasn't jumping to conclusions. But looking at him was a slap in the face to her ego. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. She bet he made most mares hyperventilate. The problem was that he wasn't the stallion she loved.

"Are you all right?" Sunburst said. "You look sick. You're not going to throw up, are you?"

"No," Starlight said quickly. "I'm fine."

"Good. We'll be touching down soon. See that puny cluster of buildings over there? That's where we're going."

Starlight nodded.

Even though Starlight had been fine during lift-off and flight, her stomach took a turn for the worst when the helicopter touched down. It felt like a fast moving elevator going down and she thought her stomach had somehow ended up in her knees.

She stuck out her tongue and unbuckled her harness. "What are we doing here?" Starlight asked. There was nothing around but old grain elevators and empty-looking warehouses.

"I brought you here to go clothes shopping," he said. "But we'll have to walk a bit. This is the only place I can set down within the town boundaries."

Starlight waited for him to come around to her side of the helicopter and open the door for her. She felt rather touched. This was nice. He brought her out to buy clothes. Now that sounded like the sort of thing a purchaser should do. Day one: shopping spree! She smiled and hopped down.

But he wasn't kidding when he said they'd have to walk a bit. They walked past old green houses and oddly old looking mansions.

"They used to be farms," Sunburst explained. "Before it became illegal to eat cabbages."

"They look nice."

"They were. They're like my house – old tech – except they're newer. Some of them have intercom systems installed. The best I've got is a door bell."

Starlight didn't know what to say to him. He sounded positively archaic. Well, when she got her run of his house, they'd get an intercom system … but not before they got a garbage disposer.

Once in town, Sunburst took her down the main street to a tiny café.

"Is this where your girlfriend works?"

He rolled his eyes. "I said she's not my girlfriend, but there's nowhere else to eat, so get in and don't say anything that might embarrass me."

"Like what?"

"Like, don't say I bought you."

Starlight gawked and clattered her bracelet at him. "They're gonna find out."

Sunburst untied the blindfold from around Starlight’s neck and tied it around her wrist. "There. Satisfied? We're not going to spend that much time in town anyway. There'd be no end of the harassment from the locals if they knew I bought you. Come on," he said, grabbing her hoof. "Let's go in."

Inside the café was a lot like the inside of a waiting room of a mechanics garage, except you couldn't pour your own coffee. At least that was what Starlight thought as she scooted her butt onto a bar stool. The floor needed to be re-tiled, the wall needed to be re-papered, and the unicorn working behind the counter needed to be made-over…badly.

"Hi Moon Dancer," Sunburst said, talking to the mare.

"Hi," she said, pouring him a cup of coffee and staring at him and Starlight by turns.

She set out a coffee cup for Starlight as well, but Starlight refused. "No. I'd like unsweetened apple juice. No coffee."

"I don't have unsweetened apple juice," Moon Dancer responded, flicking her dyed-too-many-times ponytail. "Do you see unsweetened apple juice on the menu?"

Starlight glanced at the wall behind the mare's head. "Well, do you have some apples? I'm sure it wouldn't be that much trouble to squeeze them."

"No. I don't have fresh squeezed apple juice on the menu either," Moon Dancer snapped.

Sunburst was snickering behind his hoof. "Just bring her the closest thing."

In a second, a short glass of brown colored something was placed in front of Starlight. She took a sip and gasped. "Are you trying to poison me?"

"What?" Moon Dancer burst – totally outraged.

"What's wrong with it?" Sunburst asked levelly.

"I don't know. It tastes like she put something in it. Something toxic."

"Did you spit in it?" Sunburst asked Moon Dancer.

"No!" the girl shouted.

"Okay." Sunburst took the glass from in front of Starlight and took a swig of it. "That's how it normally tastes."

Starlight Glimmer frowned in dismay. "Yuck," she said sadly.

"Moon Dancer, just bring her a glass of water," Sunburst said reasonably.

"Like Hell I will!" Moon Dancer said as she stormed into the kitchen.

Sunburst hopped off his stool and chased after her. "Don't be like that, Honey," he said as he ducked under the counter and followed her in.

If Starlight Glimmer had any hopes that their conversation wouldn't reach her ears, she was on the losing side. She could hear everything and so could the two baseball capped farmers who sat at the other end of the bar.

"Who is she?" they heard Moon Dancer shriek.

"What do you mean, 'who is she?'" Sunburst's voice tumbled after hers. "We already talked about this. We've been talking about for the last four months. I asked you to move out with me and you always said no. Then you broke up with me. I already warned you — repeatedly — that if you didn't do what I needed, I would find someone who would."

"That brat?"

"That brat," Sunburst said evenly.

"She's wearing your shirt!" Moon Dancer wailed.

"So? You've worn my shirts dozens of times and what has that meant? Nothing."

"Well …" Moon Dancer stuttered.

"Well, nothing. I'd go to a different café if there was one. Now, I know you need the business, so just be a good girl and bring us both a couple pancakes. Can you do that, Honey?"

"Stop calling me Honey!"

"Get over yourself. I call everyone Honey."

"Even her?"

Sunburst came out of the kitchen and holding the door open answered Moon Dancer. "No. I call her Anemone."

Author's Note

It feels weird to add technology to MLP, even if a helicopter does feature in an episode (heck, there's even a toy of it!) still, writing sci-fi with ponies is a little odd, just bear with me a little longer guys. As always thanks for the lovely comments!

4. Haunted Eyes

"So, what was that sludge your girlfriend wanted to feed me?" Starlight Glimmer asked Sunburst as they walked from the only café in town to the only clothing store in town.

Sunburst rolled his eyes. "She's not my girlfriend. It was nothing weird…I think. It was only juice crystals."

"Juice crystals? What are those?"

He laughed. "You've never had juice crystals? Well, I guess if you're used to unsweetened, freshly-made apple juice then I guess you've never been subjected to the glories of flavored sugar water that never goes bad – ever."

Starlight didn't say anything else, but she felt flat. The pancakes were good, but now her stomach turned since she really had no idea at all what was in them. She hadn't grown up anywhere special and her family wasn't particularly rich, but there was an apple tree in her backyard growing up. Looking out at the prairie, she knew there would be no more apple juice out here. It was stupid, but that fact hit her harder than anything else that had happened since she had 'woke' up. There was no going back and this new world was…dismal.

Her hopes had plummeted since breakfast and now she was feeling suspicious about the prospective shopping trip. If that was what breakfast was like, could clothes shopping be much more promising?

Sunburst suddenly stopped her in the middle of the street. "Listen," he said, turning to face her. "Before we go in, I have to tell you the conditions of your shopping spree so that you don't get too excited or disappointed."

"I doubt I'll be too excited," she said, sniffing back a little condensation in her nose. It was cold out.

Sunburst said gruffly, "I only have two hundred bits for you to play with and that has to buy you everything."

Starlight thought she was going to faint. "Everything?"

"Well, this is a discount store, so you can probably spin the money out a bit," Sunburst said positively. "You know how to do that, right?"

Starlight scanned her memory. She knew that officially she was twenty-seven, but in her head she was still twenty-two since nothing happened to her while she was in cryostasis and she couldn't remember the two years before that. Her brain was a complete blur.

Sunburst seemed to realize she was trying to get a grip on herself. "Are you okay? Are you having a hard time remembering how to do normal small things, like shopping?"

Starlight didn't answer him.

"You've got to be kidding me. There is a mare who doesn't know how to shop left in this world." He laughed.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "It isn't that. I was trying to remember the last thing I wanted to buy."

"Diamonds?"

"No."

"Rubies?"

"No."

"Emeralds?"

"No! Will you quit with the jewels and just let me think a minute?"

Just as Sunburst shut up, the clouds in her head parted and she remembered what it was that she wanted. Then she described it for Sunburst. "It was a camel hair coat with massive flare sleeves and it was double-breasted, but both buttons were only on one side of your chest. It cost a small fortune, but…"

Abruptly, Sunburst grabbed her by the foreleg and hauled her bodily into the store.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Starlight complained, just before Sunburst spun her in front of the mannequin display set up in the entrance of the store. Starlight couldn't believe her eyes. There it was. Her coat! There it was and not just in brown, but in red and grey and navy and yellow and white and cream and…they were on sale for thirty bits apiece. "Wow…"

Sunburst rested his hoof on the shoulder of one of the headless mannequins. Then he grabbed its empty sleeve and tossed it over the opposite shoulder playfully. "Except that these aren't made of camel hair. These are made of old pop bottles and every old lady in town owns at least two."

Starlight's shoulders sagged.

"I guess that's what happens to high fashion after a few years have passed," he said quietly. "But you won't find anything that's the height of fashion here. That's why I didn't buy a Diva. Just pick out what you can tolerate – even if it is eons out of style. No one will see it back at my place except me anyway. Buy what's comfortable that will last long." Then Sunburst turned his back on her and headed off to a different department.

Starlight stepped up to the display and touched one of the yellow coats. Sunburst was right. But still, she'd wanted one for years before she'd lost her mind. She picked out her size in blue and slung it over her foreleg. This was what her life was like now and she wasn't going to cry…even if she felt like it.

After that, she pecked around the store smelling weird scented body wash, testing the elasticity of hair bands, and trying on clothes so cheap she had to shake her body after she pulled them off. Eventually she made her way back to Sunburst and showed him her purchases. He reviewed them without comment and paid for them with a credit card. She winced. That meant he didn't have the money in his normal account. He was buying on credit. She hoped it didn't max him out, but she couldn't do anything about that. She had to have clothes.

Before they went back to the helicopter, they stopped to pick up an order of food Sunburst had waiting for him at the grocery store and picked up a parcel from the post office. It was an awful lot to carry, but Sunburst made her carry everything she had bought in her new saddle bag while he pulled a loading cart in which he put the parcel on top of the boxes that contained the food. He pulled the cart without complain all the way to the helicopter landing.

"You can stay here while I walk the cart back," he said charitably with a chipper grin on his face.

Starlight smiled back at him wearily and tried to look happy. He was trying to be nice to her by not making her walk back to the store with him, so she made herself comfortable and rested.

The town spread out before her through the windshield, a pitiful cluster of unpainted buildings with pathetic clumps of yellow grass between them. Starlight hadn't seen a single flower on her way to this miserable place. How was she going to survive here?

She cast her eyes downward and played with her long mane.

Time passed and somehow Sunburst snuck up on the door and swung it open.

"Oh! You're back," Starlight said, dropping her hooves and forcing a smile on her face.

Sunburst hopped up into his seat and suddenly a cluster of flowers floated up to her face. They weren't real. They were made of purple ribbon and carefully clustered together with silk leaves coming through the breaks.

Starlight was speechless.

"Sorry that they're not real. We're in the middle of nowhere and not even greenhouses ship out here without reason, so it's all I could get. Don't worry. There will be flowers, just not for another couple months."

Starlight was so choked up she couldn't say anything, but Sunburst seemed to get it and started the chopper.

"We'll talk back at home."

Sunburst did have something he wanted to talk to Starlight about, but he didn't know how to broach it. To put it simply, it was bad news – for both of them. Ever since the apple juice, she had seemed down. It wasn't until he saw her shopping that he realized how messed up she was. She looked completely hopeless. Now he looked across at her in the cockpit and knew that what the coordinator said at the agency was dead on – she was damaged goods. Now he realized that he shouldn't have laughed when he caught Starlight going through his trash. She had her memory wiped. She could have been doing anything in those two years. Anything. Even murders.

Well, the police couldn't have been looking for her, because if they had been it probably would have taken them thirty whole seconds to find her at Sable's Garden Inc. But that could just mean that they never found out what she'd done.

A chill ran up his spine. He'd heard of models who had killed their owners before.

Argh! Now he had the willies.

He couldn't help it and glanced at Starlight again. She did look a little deranged. He'd never seen hair that perfectly long and undamaged on a girl before. Usually they wore their hair to their withers like Moon Dancer – just long enough to pull into a ponytail. Starlight's coat was dull and practically transparent, like she'd been locked up for years. Add that to her vacant expression and he wasn't sure if she was the ghost or if she was the one being haunted.

Sunburst pulled his gaze away from her and looked at the horizon. I am not sleeping with her. I am not sleeping with her. There is nothing to worry about. He chanted it over and over again in his head. He wasn't taking advantage of her or raping her or whatever those nasty ponies had been doing to the models that went nuts. Nothing was going to happen. She slept on a completely different floor. He had to calm down.

Now.

It wasn't really working. He kept on chanting.

Back at the house, Sunburst and Starlight unloaded the chopper and put their food away. It was such normal work that Sunburst shook off his spectral suspicions of her and got on with it.

After that, Sunburst got in his truck and took the helicopter back into the hanger. As he crossed the yard coming back towards the house, he saw Starlight up in her tower putting her things away. That was as good a place to break the bad news as any, so he went up to see her.

He tapped on the door.

"Come in," she said and he came in.

She was standing by the door, putting her things in the closet. That was how the room looked. It was an irregular shape even though the tower was a perfect circle, because a little space was shaved off one side for the stairs up, the closet, and the bathroom. That put three identical white doors in a row. He hoped she was never too drowsy to forget which one was the bathroom in the middle of the night.

"Everything fit okay?" Sunburst asked cautiously, as he moved over to the other side of the room and place himself in front of the window frame.

"Yeah," Starlight nodded, taking another hanger out and putting a tank top that cost only a dollar on it.

Sunburst sighed. He knew it cost only a dollar. She'd bought six of them.

Well, he couldn't procrastinate any longer. "I got a transmission from the Royal Bank of Canterlot. Does that name ring any bells with you?"

He watched Starlight gulp down uncomfortably. "Yeah, that was where my debt was. Don't tell me the money that Sable’s Garden Inc. transferred to my account wasn't enough to cover my debt."

Sunburst nodded gravely.

Starlight's face went from white to red and she stormed, "I was repeatedly assured that the payment would be enough unless no one bought me. Wasn't that true?"

"They said the principle was paid, but interest rates went up while you were in cryostasis and now they want another twenty-thousand bits."

Starlight stared at him.

He clenched his teeth together and gave her a half-hearted smile. "They say I'm on the hook for it."

Starlight's ears lowered. "Sorry about that."

"Just let me ask one thing," Sunburst said patiently. "Do you have any idea what you spent that money on?"

She shook her head weakly. "No. I was broke before my memory wipe, but I wasn't in debt. Back then, no one would have given me credit."

Sunburst sat, pondering that. "Well, I'll ask RBC to send me your financial records for the past ten years and we'll see if we can figure it out. In the meantime, we need to figure out a way for us to earn twenty-thousand bits by New Year's Day."

Starlight shook her head sadly. "So you don't have the money?"

"Well, I have money and I don't. Right at this moment – I don't have twenty-thousand dollars. I spent nearly all my available cash getting you."

Starlight chuckled darkly. "Was I worth it?"

"Putting the topic of money aside, I can tell that something's bothering you," he said quickly. "And I can tell you to put it away and to put it away, but it won't get put away, will it? You obviously sold yourself to start a new life because something was bothering you back then, too. I bought you for the same reason. I want to start something new. And I want to help you adjust to this new life, so let's think of some things to help you."

Starlight thought for a second then stuttered, "I can't think of anything that doesn't cost money."

Sunburst hesitated too. "Well, I plan to spend a little money on my new endeavor. I suppose I can do the same for you."

Starlight shook her head, picked up a pair of scissors and went into the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror, snatched a clump of her hair and put the scissors to the roots.

"No!" Sunburst screeched, diving at her. He grabbed the scissors in one hoof and in so doing, knocked her completely off balance. Reflexively, he grabbed her waist with his other hoof and held her up.

Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him.

He breathed heavy and brought her back down so she stood on her four hooves without letting the moment become any more awkward. "Whew! Don't cut your hair for nothing."

Starlight looked confused and Sunburst felt her eyes on him as he put the scissors away. "But Sunburst! You didn't buy me to be your lover. Why should it matter to you what I do with my hair?"

"But Anemone," he said, mimicking her tone of voice. "I don't care if you want to cut it. I just think that if you're going to do it anyway, then let's cut it the profitable way."

"The profitable way?" Starlight repeated.

"Yeah. I know someone who can pixie you right up."

Author's Note

Hello my dear readers and lurkers! I know the story is a little slow at this point, I'm still working out some details with the plot, but it will pick up promise!

People that leave a like are great but people that comment are super-duper-extra-special and deserve all the nice things in life. Sooooooo...you know what to do right? :raritywink:

5. Clean Slate

Sunburst sat in a strangely lumpy chair in town. If he had thought for one second that Starlight would have been willing to chop off her glorious locks, he wouldn't have left the city without having it done professionally, but now that they were out in the sticks, he had no choice. Now he sat in the back of the only salon in town, which was more like a stallion's room at a truck stop than a beauty parlor, letting one of his insane friends cut her hair.

Actually, it was Moon Dancer's step-mother, Twilight Sparkle. She was only six years older than Sunburst. In many ways she was more Sunburst's contemporary than Moon Dancer who had just turned nineteen. Truth be told, Sunburst would have rather dated Twilight than Moon Dancer, but there weren't that many mares in town to choose from and Twilight was unfortunately and irrevocably taken.

She was the one who told Sunburst to go buy a mare. He hadn't known that Twilight was a purchased mare until one night when she was closing the café and he was staying late because he just couldn't bear to go home to…nothing.

"Listen, Sunburst," she said pushing her dark purple mane out of her eyes and speaking levelly. "Give up on Moon Dancer. She likes you to pieces, but if you make her go out there, she'll hate you forever. She's never lived anywhere but here and if she puts herself in your saddle bags without ever experiencing anything for herself – there's going to be a problem. And it will be your problem."

Sunburst twitched and refused to comment.

Then she wiped her soapy hooves off on a tea towel and sat down across from him in the booth. "Unless I'm reading you wrong, you don't even like Moon Dancer that much. It's just that she's the only one around."

Sunburst peered up at her. "There is someone around I like even better."

"It's no good, Sunburst," Twilight said. She smiled wanly and put her hoof in front of him on the table. "Do you see this?"

Sunburst saw the sparkling bracelet and asked, "You never take it off, what about it?"

She saw his eyes on her bracelet and shook her head. "This is stronger than any contract, than any ring he could have given me,” she said, flicking the bangle on her wrist. “Divorces are easy to get. Those kinds of contracts are easy to make and break. This isn’t.”

"What are you talking about?"

"Flash bought me."

"Really?" Sunburst exclaimed. He knew that purchased mares were common among celebrities and playboys, but here in his little town? No way!

But Twilight had reassured him that it was true.

"Does Moon Dancer know?"

"Of course not! Flash told her that I was a live-in nurse."

Sunburst remembered the story. It was easy to believe since Flash Sentry had been ill for so long. It seemed only natural when he brought someone to town to take care of him. Sunburst had tried to date her back then, but she had told him immediately that she and Flash planned to get married. That way she could help raise Moon Dancer and look after the diner.

Sunburst sighed in relief. He was strangely comforted when he found out that it was all a lie. So, nothing was wrong with him. Twilight didn't reject him because Flash was better for her. It was because she was a purchased mare and she did whatever she was told.

"Will you get anything from him when he dies?" Sunburst asked callously. He'd never liked Flash Sentry.

Twilight wiped her nose and said, "No, and they have to do a number of tests after he dies to make sure that I didn't hasten it along. Besides I have nothing to gain. He's already signed the papers. When he dies, I'll go back to Sable’s Garden Inc., I'll be sold again and the proceeds will go to Moon Dancer. That's what he decided."

"Bastard!" Sunburst swore crossly. "Couldn't he have given you your freedom?"

Twilight sighed. Her dark purple eyes always looked a little sorrowful and tired, but her eyes flicked up and her lips curved into a smile. "You shouldn't feel sorry for me. I got myself into this mess and you know what? Flash is a lot nicer than my last purchaser. Sure, he's crazy and sure, he works me hard, but he's never once hit me. I'm fine with him. I hope he lives forever."

Sunburst rubbed his eyes. Hearing all this was a little overwhelming for him. "All right, so you're fine. What should we do about my problem?"

"You need a mare to live out at your place?"

"Well, I'd rather have a mare than a stallion."

"Because you'd rather have someone to cook for you and clean for you and basically be your slave?" Twilight said casually.

"You make me sound like a pig, Twilight, but I'm really not. I'm just lonely."

She crossed her forelegs, taking the proof she was purchased with her. "Whatever you want her for, I think you should go to the city and buy a mare rather than mess around with Moon Dancer."

Sunburst kicked the table. "Leave that alone. Moon Dancer already turned me down, and I already asked her more times than I wanted to, so it's not like I am going to haul her off by her hair."

"So, what about buying a mare? Haven't you got any money?"

"I never thought about it before. How much would I need?"

"I don't know. All I'm saying is that you should look into it."

Sunburst's curiosity was ignited. "So, how did Flash Sentry choose you?"

Twilight pulled her hair off her sticky forehead and leaned her back against the wall inside the booth. "He went in and asked them to sell him the cheapest one they had in the Domestic Goddess category. That was me."

Sunburst was astounded. Twilight was amazing. She was patient and beautiful and somewhat capable and basically as good as anything he could imagine. And she was the cheapest one they had!

It was then that he made up his mind to give it a try.

Now Sunburst sat in a lumpy chair in Twilight's makeshift hair salon that was actually an unusable extra bathroom, he realized that he recognized Starlight's brokenness much faster than he recognized Twilight's. He hadn't seen it before, but Twilight was messed up too. That was why she tolerated Flash, who was clearly a rotten husband to her and a pitiful father to Moon Dancer. And now as he watched Twilight's scissors snap shut in somewhat clumsy irregular motions, he came to understand something else. Twilight wasn't getting better.

Sunburst grimaced. Then he turned his head away.

He'd already thought about it a hundred times. He didn't have to buy Starlight. He could have just waited for Flash Sentry to kick the bucket, and then he could go to Sable’s Garden Inc. and buy her for himself.

It didn't work.

The plan was flawed. Who knew how long Flash would take to die. He wasn't drinking himself to death in a huge hurry and his disease didn't seem to be taking a turn for the worst. As a matter of fact, he was getting steadily better since Twilight came into his life. Moon Dancer told him that Twilight was slowly petering down the drunk's alcohol intake. Well, goody for her, the maniac would probably never die.

And as for regretting buying Starlight, Sunburst hadn't decided on that path yet. If he was desperate, he could always sell her again. That was what Sunburst thought before he bought her. Now he didn't think he would have the heart to do that. If he ever decided to let her go – he had to free her. He couldn't sell her. She might end up in the hooves of the sort of stallion who had beaten Twilight and Sunburst didn't want that.

Besides, something was wrong with her.

She sat in the broken hairdresser's chair and looked at herself in the faded mirror. She looked like a cancer victim. Twilight could give them a lot more money if she didn't spare Starlight and took off all her hair at the roots. But even though her appearance had been attacked heavily and she looked like a pony doll before the toy maker put the hair on – she didn't seem to feel anything. She didn't cry. She didn't wince with each snip the scissors made. She didn't seem to feel anything.

She got out of the chair and Sunburst awkwardly handed her one of the hats she had purchased earlier that day. "You can wear this," he said.

Starlight reached out to take it from him, but her hoof slipped and the hat fell on the floor.

Sunburst stooped to pick it up. Then he put it directly on her head. "I don't want you to be cold on the way back home." Then he turned to the hairdresser. "Thanks, Twilight."

She nodded and said, "I think I'll be able to get close to three thousand bits for it the next time I go to the city."

"When is that?"

"Sometime next week."

"Transfer me the money when you get it."

"Will do," she said. Then she turned away from them and started wrapping the hair.

Sunburst put his foreleg around Starlight's withers and led her out of Flash's back door. She shivered slightly as they came into the yard where tiny stars of snowflakes were coming down and settling on the heaps of abandoned appliances that Flash stacked out there. He suddenly took of his jacket and covered her with it.

"Where's your jacket?" he asked, making an effort to keep the temper out of his voice.

Starlight breathed hard in the cold air. "Sorry. I was dumb. I thought Spring was here."

"Well, the truck will warm up fast," he said, pushing the gate open for her and giving her shoulders an extra squeeze.

Back at Sunburst's place, Starlight stood outside. Sunburst had parked the truck in his hanger and Starlight had decided to get a better look at Sunburst's land. There was more there than just a house and she was curious to see what he had. When she told Sunburst what she wanted to do, he laughed at her and gave her his scarf to tie around her neck. Then he went into the house to let her wander.

So she wandered.

Sunburst's house was an L shape with abnormally large awnings. The long part of the L was the front of the house and the short part of the L was the back. The long part comprised the kitchen, dining room, great room, main bathroom, and a tiny wing off one side that had once been a conservatory which made up one of the sets of serifs. The back of the house was Sunburst's bedroom and then his room that had nothing in it. Then he had a bathroom that for some strange reason had huge windows in it that matched the ones in the conservatory at the other end of the house. Starlight stared at it. Non-hazy windows in the bathroom? That seemed like a serious breech in protocol. Anyone at all could see inside, but then again – this was the middle of nowhere. There was no one to see anything.

Starlight's tower came up in the corner of the L. The staircase to it was right beside the door that led into what Sunburst called the courtyard. Starlight supposed that it had been a beautiful and well cared for garden, but now it was in shambles. Well, at least it didn't have old washers and dryers in it.

Starlight sighed. She was starting to be impressed by the strangest things.

Starlight walked up to the gazebo that stood by itself in the corner opposite her tower. It was in pitiful disrepair as well, but it was pretty. That could be a good project for her, she thought as she circled it. She could fix it. But how? She was pretty sure the only reason she got assigned the category of Domestic Goddess was … Starlight's mind hit a blank.

Why was she in the Domestic Goddess category?

She scraped the sides of her head and put her hoof up her winter hat in a vain effort to remember. Her mind was a blank. She didn't remember signing the papers at Sable’s Garden Inc.

Giving up remembering, she decided to think about it in a more deductive way. She wasn't a chef, so Enchantress was out. She wasn't a gardener so the Queen Rose category was out. She wasn't a fashion expert so Diva was out. She guessed that Domestic Goddess was their catch-all for girls with no skills.

Well, even if she had no skills, there was nothing she had not been willing to do for that pony back then. It was a shock for her that she had decided not to keep the memory. Didn't she love him more than anything?

Starlight felt her scalp again.

He liked long hair. She'd obviously grown it out for him. But for her, the length had seemed strange when she woke up. It made her feel like she was borrowing someone else's skin, borrowing someone else's hair, borrowing someone else's life. Granted, her hair was longer now than five years ago, but chopping it all off made the slate feel clean. New clothes and a new haircut – things were starting to come together.

And Sunburst wasn't such a bad guy. She could see him now holding a mug and standing in the front room watching her. He was probably still laughing at her. Well, what she was doing wasn't funny.

She turned her back on him and came face to face with a gigantic deer. Her eyes went wide. It was humongous. Starlight had never seen such a big animal that wasn't caged before. Its eyes were huge and so close she could see the veins in them. What should she do? If she ran away, wouldn't it chase her? Starlight stood perfectly still, watching it's antlers with apprehension. That was what you were supposed to do when a wild animal came up to you, right? She didn't move a muscle, but flaming hot panic that began in her neck was racing through her whole body.

The deer took a step towards her.

She was paralyzed. Biting her lip, she tried not to scream. The deer wasn't moving. It was just standing there watching her.

Minutes passed.

It seemed to be sizing her up, but what for? Deer’s were herbivores. Well, maybe it thought her yellow coat looked appetizing. Starlight reached down and pulled up a pathetic little clump of dead grass. The stalks weren't very long and Starlight had to reach far to get it close to the animal's mouth. Starlight's heart pounded. Then the deer chomped down the grass and almost chomped down Starlight's hoof with it. She pulled her hoof away, taking a puddle of deer slobber with it.

Then Sunburst came striding up with a smug little grin. Then he jumped and the deer seemed so deathly afraid of him that it took off at a dead run.

Starlight's shoulders fell.

Sunburst chuckled deeply. "You…" he sputtered.

"Me? Why was it scared of you and not me?" Starlight demanded.

Sunburst caught his breath, but he was still unmistakably merry. "You stood still. All you needed to do was jump once on the spot and it probably would have taken off."

"How was I supposed to know that?"

"You were so cute trying to feed it." Sunburst wiped away an imaginary tear. Then he pulled himself together and suddenly brought the indigent Starlight into a hug. "You know what I've decided? This place is going to be good for you. You'll see."

Starlight put her hooves around him too. He wasn't the one she had always wanted, but under the circumstances, he would do just fine.

"Let's go in the house. I'm going to tell you what I bought you for."

"Huh?"

6. Sunburst's and Starlight's Renovation Project

"All right," Sunburst said as Starlight took a seat at the couch in the living room. "Here's the deal."

Starlight sat poised and ready. If he could be straight with her during this conversation, then all her questions about what her life would be like with him would be answered.

"So, as you know, I run a charter helicopter service and I make good enough money doing it that it seems like a pretty dumb idea to switch it up with another career. Now the thing is, and this has been happening for years, I get customers up here to get a view of the mountains and ice fields from overhead. They want coffee, they want sandwiches, they want donuts, and sometimes they even want a place to stay overnight. You should see how disappointed these people are when the only place I can recommend to them is the café I took you to in town. The other thing is that my house, though a run-down heap, is actually gorgeous. Sometimes people who are driving by stop to take pictures and occasionally I've had people come up to the front door and ask for a tour. But usually, they come half-way up the walk and then turn away because they realize that this place is only pretty from a distance." Sunburst took a breath and looked Starlight straight in the face. "I bought you to help me turn this place into a tourist spot."

Starlight gaped. Her eyes unconsciously flipped to a spot on the wall where the wallpaper was torn off and she could see the drywall.

"I know what you're thinking," Sunburst said briskly. "It'll take forever and it'll cost a fortune, but I'm not kidding how much money this could make. If we work hard at this, we'll have enough to pay your debt by the end of the year, which is good, because your bank is demanding payment by then. Remember?"

Starlight winced and swallowed a hard lump in her throat. She didn't really have a choice. "Where do we start?"

"Well, I want to start with this room. I think we should scrap the whole living room concept and go for something a little closer to a dining room in a restaurant. I think we should get a sofa to go in front of the fireplace. Then we should put one arm chair in that corner and then one in the adjacent corner and then a table in between them. Then another table and chair set that could look into the conservatory. Then I want to put a window seat in that bay window."

Starlight could see what he was talking about. It could be a very charming room if they changed some things. Well, most things.

"With some work, this place could be the pretty little romantic spot that becomes a couple's favorite place to run away to for the weekend," Sunburst continued.

Starlight nodded. "Sounds good!"

Sunburst smiled. "Great! Let's start by going through the furniture and deciding what stays and what goes."

Take One

"How can this thing be so heavy?" Starlight gasped, trying to lift the massive tube that used to be the carpet in the living room. It felt like her horn and neck were going to snap off.

"Normally, I'd say we should cut it up into manageable pieces and carry those, but I think it should go to a better place. Don't you?"

"Doesn't 'a better place' normally mean the garbage?" Her magic was slipping around the carpet.

"Don't let it drop! Come on, Starlight! Toughen up! I really want it in my workshop and we're going to use the workshop a lot during the renos. You'll be happy when it's there and you can kneel on carpet instead of cement."

Starlight groaned.

Sunburst let his side of the roll droop. "Okay. I'll tell you what. Once we get this out there, you can start ripping down the wallpaper in the living room."

"What?" Starlight asked. She was a little breathless.

Sunburst started tracing a little pattern on the backside of the carpet. "Well, I saw you eying it and I saw your lip move in kind of a snarl. You think the paper is really ugly, don't you?"

Starlight was horrified. How could he have read her expression so easily?

"You want to pull it down, don't you?"

Starlight knew this was bait, but what about it? He owned her. She had to do what he said no matter what, and if he wanted her to let her rip down that hideous garbage? Well, then, who was she to argue with him? She heaved up the carpet and tried again with her second wind.

Take Two

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

"Sunburst!" Starlight screamed, running past the kitchen and into the corner where the staircase to her tower was.

There he was with a sledge hammer pounding on the wall with complete abandon. He had white dust on his cheeks, and the red of his hair was turning into a pale shade of pink.

"What are you doing?" Starlight gasped in surprise.

Sunburst stopped beating the wall and turned around to greet her. "Hi! Isn't this a great idea? We don't need this whole casing to the stairwell. Don't you think it hides the beauty of the staircase? I've always thought it needed to go and now is the perfect time to get rid of it."

"But I thought we were starting with the living room/dining room area? We haven't even finished taking out all of the carpet yet."

"True, but we should start with what inspires us, right? Like I let you work on the wallpaper. And right now, I wanna get rid of this wall." He hit it again and a sheet of drywall came loose.

Starlight stared at the ceiling doubtfully. "Are you planning on taking out the studs and everything?"

"Probably. Why?"

"Aren't you worried there might be a load-bearer in there? What if you bring down the whole tower?"

Sunburst turned to her and smirked. "I'm not going to take down the load-bearer. Honestly!" He whacked one of the studs and something above them went CREAK!

Starlight shuddered.

"Well," Sunburst said hesitantly. "Maybe I'll redo the drywall around that one and make a pillar."

"Good," Starlight said, inching away. "I'll still be able to sleep up there tonight, right?"

Take Six

"This stuff smells awful!" Starlight whined through her mask.

Sunburst pulled his own mask down. "You said you thought these arm chairs were worth saving if only there were refinished. Well, I told you how to refinish them and the first thing we need to do is get this blasted paint off."

"But the stripper doesn't even take all the paint off it because there's like ten coats of paint on it. How many frick'n times was this piece of crap painted? They painted it white, orange, brown, and we haven't even found the wood yet. For all we know this chair could be made out of plastic."

"Don't be silly," Sunburst said, completely undaunted. "It's too heavy to be made of plastic."

"Then metal, and then they'll be no pretty wood to uncover. This was a dumb idea."

"No," Sunburst said cheerfully. "It was a good idea, but if you're tired of doing this I could finish it up for today and you could go work in the conservatory."

Starlight shivered, tightened her mask and got back to work scraping the brown paint off the back of the chair she was working on. She'd rather do this then go into the conservatory. It was freezing in there. Sunburst kept reassuring her that they did have a few warm months in the middle of nowhere and that the conservatory was a nice enough place to sit in for at least half of the year. Starlight remained unconvinced. But it wasn't just the temperature that sent her scrambling. There were also loads of smelly rotten plants in there that needed to be dug out, so the choice wasn't complex.

Starlight smiled though. Sunburst let her work on anything she wanted to. It was just as well. There was no T.V., or regular web access, or anything else to do anyway.

Take Eleven

"Purple," Starlight said, holding a color wheel up to the living room wall.

"Purple? Really?" Sunburst asked doubtfully. "I know I said that I wanted the place to be romantic, but purple? I don't know if I can live in a house with purple walls. It's too…"

"Girly," Starlight supplied, choosing another color. "What about cranberry, then? But that's not very summery and you really wanted this place to be summer spot, right?"

"White?" Sunburst asked.

"Too boring," Starlight hummed.

"Should we paper it again?"

"Only if you take my advice and do lavender brocade."

Sunburst picked up one of the catalogs Starlight had been leafing through earlier. He stopped at a page. "Is this the one you were talking about?"

"No." She flipped to another page and pointed. "That one."

"Huh? Well, I like the pattern. I think that wallpaper is a pretty simple way to make this place look done up, but why — for the love of all that's holy — does it have to be purple?"

Starlight snapped her color wheel shut and joined him by the catalog. "Well, if you don't like purple, what do you recommend?"

"Green." Sunburst chose a forest green. "What do you think?"

"I hate it."

"What about one of the black and white ones then?"

"Hmm. They're prettier," Starlight conceded. "But I already went through the effort of scraping and sanding and staining and picking out new fabric for those miserable crap chairs and if I could have just slapped another coat of white paint on them instead, then—"

"AAA!" Sunburst pretend-screamed. "I get it! Stop. Not white, but not purple."

"Rich colors. Rich!" Starlight emphasized.

"Red?"

"Argh! Too slutty!"

Sunburst turned the page and both of them stared.

"Light green?"

"This green?"

They agreed in a second.

Take Fourteen

"Starlight!" Sunburst yelled. He had combed the house three times and he couldn't find her anywhere. He scowled. He knew she was hiding from him.

Ever since he showed her his cordless power sander with all the attachments, he hadn't been able to get it away from her. She had been on the hugest sanding binge. She had already sanded four picture frames, two side tables, and, believe it or not, all the kitchen cabinets. Well, he'd had it! He could never find it when he wanted it and whenever he did find it, it was only because he followed the soft humming the gadget made.

So, now he stopped and listened for it. He was positive he could hear something. It was up the tower. Slowly, he mounted the steps and went up. Starlight's door was open, so he stuck his head around the corner. He expected to find her doing some other ludicrous project, but instead the room was empty. The sound was coming from the bathroom.

Sunburst turned to the bathroom and grimaced. He didn't want to approach Starlight in there. Besides, he never came up here. That was why she left her door open and apparently why she left her bathroom door open too, because it was open a crack.

Then the humming stopped and Sunburst heard Starlight singing, "We got hearts as strong as horses."

Sunburst was about to turn away, thinking he had imagined wrongly that she was bathing or something. After all, who would be stupid enough to leave the bathroom door open if they were naked? She was probably in there doing some reno project that he hadn't given her permission to do.

Well, he was going to confront her about it!

He swung open the door and there was Starlight, sitting in the bathtub with her neck up in soapy water.

Sunburst was gob smacked. Embarrassed to his ears, he was about to turn away, but Starlight seemed quite collected and asked, "What do you need?"

"Sorry," Sunburst said, still quite red. "I was looking for my … and I heard a noise up here so I thought that you'd squirrelled away my…"

Starlight turned on her electric toothbrush.

Sunburst felt sick. That was the noise he had heard. He had caught her brushing her teeth and bathing at the same time.

"Yeah, sorry. I'll go now," he said, pulling the door shut when suddenly, he saw his blue sander on the floor of the bathroom. To be exact, it wasn't on the floor. It was sitting neatly on a folded towel on the floor with a string tied to the handle of the sander and the other end tied to the towel rack. Sunburst stooped to pick it up. "What is this?" he asked, his voice accusing.

"Your sander?" Starlight supplied, biting her lip.

"Clearly. I mean, why is it tied to the towel rack? It isn't a dog."

"Well, I thought it might get away."

"Uh-huh."

Intermission

"Has that money from Twilight come in yet?" Starlight asked, knocking on the door to Sunburst's bedroom.

He came out and shut the door behind him. "Yep. She finally transferred it."

"What took her so long? Didn't she know that we spent all our money on stuff for the house and we've been eating cardboard boxes?"

Sunburst rolled up a piece of paper he was holding and whacked Starlight in the nose with it.

"Hey!"

"Don't talk about Twilight like that. I'm sure it just took her awhile to arrange things with her buyer, or maybe she needed to find a new buyer. I'm sure it was something like that."

Starlight rolled her eyes. Sunburst's outburst was only the tip of the Twilight ice burg. When the power tools were silent, he spoke of her endlessly during their work. "You know what's great about Twilight…", "Twilight makes the best…", or Starlight's favorite, "Let's call Twilight. I'll bet she knows how we can solve this." Starlight knew Sunburst didn't mean to be tiresome. Actually, he wanted to keep his affection for Twilight quiet, but he failed. Part of it was that Sunburst wasn't used to having his every word listened to. He was too used to being alone all the time. The other thing was that having Moon Dancer as his in-town love interest was clearly part of his public image, but he never talked about her. He didn't complain about the way Moon Dancer got under his skin or act like he missed her. It was obvious to Starlight that even though Sunburst didn't want to go public with his feelings – Twilight was the one in his heart.

Starlight got that easily enough. Twilight was willowy and very beautiful. Plus, she had this slightly lost look to her that just screamed to any nearby male that she needed protection. It was very natural for Sunburst to respond to her that way.

So how did Sunburst respond to her, Starlight?

Starlight rolled her head to the side. She was probably sitting somewhere between subordinate and friend in Sunburst's books. And she was fine with that…for now. She knew the exact moment she wouldn't be fine with it anymore. That would be the moment when he found someone he could really love. A stallion could own a mare and marry a different mare at the same time.

Well, that time might never come. After all, Twilight was owned by Flash Sentry as well as being married to him. Sunburst didn't have a hope with her.

Take Twenty-one

Sunburst came into the kitchen. "What's that wretched smell?"

Starlight was jabbing at the sink with a skewering stick and clearly losing her mind to panic. "How am I supposed to know? I didn't do anything. It backed up on its own."

"What are you doing to it?" Sunburst said, looking over her shoulder.

"Well, what else am I supposed to do? The guck won't stop coming out."

"You could try a plunger."

"A what?" Starlight gasped. The water level in the sink was rising.

"Step aside, little filly. I've got this."

Starlight jumped back and Sunburst jammed the plunger into the sink, literally saving Starlight's day. She came up behind him and looked sideways into the sink. It was bubbling and the water was draining.

"Thanks," Starlight said, grateful he had known what to do.

"What have you been running down the sink anyway?" he asked, but the look on his face was good-natured.

Starlight smiled and put her hoof on his shoulder. "Who are you blaming for what? I just got here. The question should be: what have you been running down the sink?"

"Whatever. Use this the next time it happens," Sunburst said, turning away from her to rinse off the plunger.

It wasn't very much like a knight wiping the blood off his sword, but Starlight was just as grateful.

Take Twenty-three

"We should get the wrought iron patio set," Starlight argued.

"But the table is so small," Sunburst argued back.

"Yes, but we could take it out to the gazebo in the summer," Starlight whispered in his ear.

Sunburst perked up. "Huh," he said, wiping his shivering ear with a hoof. "I hadn't thought too much about the gazebo. If we're going to do that, we should really make up the garden better. How's your green hoof?"

"I don't have five hooves," Starlight said darkly.

"Never gardened before?"

"Well, I never hung wallpaper before and I did it. I never refinished furniture before and I did it. That isn't what bothers me. I honestly wouldn't mind doing it, if only it weren't so cold outside. I'm not used to it."

Sunburst seemed to rethink his suggestion. "Actually, forget it. I'll do the yard. I want you to be in charge of the kitchen when we have guests. We'll start by offering muffins and sandwiches and stuff like that. So, you take care of that and I'll take care of the yard."

Starlight paused. "Does that mean that we can have the iron set?" she asked quietly, pointing to the picture on the screen.

"Sure, Starlight-Anemone. Order it!"

Take Twenty-nine

"This one, and this one, and this one, and two of these."

Sunburst followed Starlight around the superstore with a shopping cart. This was the first time he had brought her to the city since he had purchased her. It was just a day trip to buy kitchen wares, but she was very excited and having a bit of a heyday.

"Wait. Wait. Wait. What's that?" Sunburst asked, halting her one-pony-party.

"Which one?"

"That?" he said lifting out a blue floppy rubbery thing.

"A muffin tin."

"A muffin tin? How so? It looks like a piece of tent tarp that melted in the sun.

"You're so negative!" Starlight exclaimed. "Look, you take this little tool and you can reshape the cup. So, you can make muffins in the shape of hearts or stars or suns."

"How about circles?" Sunburst asked dryly.

"It does that too! Isn't it amazing?"

Sunburst yawned. He thought it was too cute that she was so excited over heart shaped muffins, but he keeps that to himself. He'd never seen a female so easily pleased. If someone showed that contraption to Moon Dancer, she would have snorted her coffee up her nose and grouched saying that it was a waste of time. Twilight would have smiled patiently and moved on. But Starlight was so happy and the tin didn't cost very much. Sunburst hoped it worked well for her.

She tossed something that looked like a syringe in the cart and Sunburst scooped it out to see what it was. Another doohickey for baking – for cookies this time.

Sunburst looked into the cart. Everything, from the plates to the mixers was blue. It rang a bell with him. Something else in their house was blue.

"Starlight," Sunburst said, grabbing her by the withers and pulling her up to his side so she had to look straight into his eyes. "I just noticed something about your shopping habits and I wanted to ask you a question."

"Shoot," Starlight said, glancing at his hoof draped over her side.

"Did you buy all your kitchen-wares to look exactly like the power sander?"

Starlight started to giggle. Then she put a hoof to her forehead. "Yeah, I guess I did."

Take Thirty-six

"So, Sunburst," Starlight said, stretching her legs out over one of his as they sat on the window seat in the living room he had just finished. "Now that we've finished the living room and the kitchen, I was thinking about what you said about guests staying over. What room were you planning on renovating for them?"

"I wasn't planning on renovating anything," Sunburst said, casually resting his hoof on her socked leg. "I've been saving the carpet in the nothing room forever. It just needs to be aired out. I suppose that if you desperately want to do something in there, you could take the leftover wallpaper that we used in here and do one of the walls."

"But Sunburst, I've stuck my head in there. Isn't that the most boring room in the house? If you really want this to be a memorable spot, you should redo the tower. If we let our guests stay up there, they will never want to leave."

Sunburst rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I hear what you're saying and don't think that I don't agree with you, but we can't do it now. We're out of money. As it stands, my first trip of the season is next week. It's a couple who told me I should turn this place into a resort that serves coffee and snacks, so I know they'll be here for that. After that, I've got enough ice field tours booked to keep the furnace running during the winter, but we need to earn extra money if we're going to pay off your debt by the end of the year. So, stop thinking about renovations. I know it's liberating to make this old Hell-hole look like new again, but if we don't pay that bill, the only renovation you'll be doing is installing wheelchair ramps."

Starlight frowned uncomfortably. She didn't know if he was joking about the debt collectors breaking his knees or not.

"I got your bank statement," Sunburst said suddenly. "Do you want to look at it?"

"Wow," Starlight said cynically. "They sure took their sweet time getting it to us."

"Don't fret it," Sunburst said, taking out a stack of folders from a box next to him and pulling up the statement. "It took them awhile to find everything. Some of the records were very old. Apparently, they've already changed systems twice since then."

Starlight took the first bunch of papers away from him and scanned through the dates until she found what she was looking for. Then she said, "Okay, this is the day before I lost my memory."

Sunburst peeked over her shoulder and commented, "And the next day someone deposited one-point-three million dollars into your account? Do you know what that was for? Do you mind me asking?"

"No. Besides, it shouldn't bother you. I sold myself. The original contract that I examined the last day I remember was for nine months."

Sunburst whistled. "That's a lot of money for nine months."

Starlight smiled and looked distant. "You know, at that time, the money meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn't care about the money and I made him raise the amount over and over and over again. I made him double it once and triple it again after that." Starlight absently withdrew her legs off Sunburst's knees and tucked them under her.

He let go of her and his chin lowered an inch.

"After that, I naturally didn't spend any money at all until the contract was over – nine months later. Then the withdrawal activity looks pretty normal. See? I was paying electricity bills and buying food like I normally did and because I earned so much interest in those nine months, I hardly touched the principle. Now as we get closer to the time that I sold myself to Sable’s Garden Inc., it looks like I was travelling a lot, and my balance goes down accordingly."

Sunburst leaned in closer.

"Now," Starlight said, wetting her lower lip. "We get to the day before I had my memory wiped. I withdrew all my money, took my whole overdraft and maxed all my credit cards! Why the heck did I do that? How much does it cost to have your memory wiped?"

Sunburst shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, but I bet it doesn't cost one-point-five million. I thought getting your mind wiped was pretty equivalent in cost to getting a face-lift."

Starlight sighed. "We'll have to research it."

"Can you think of a logical reason why you got your brain wiped?"

She nodded.

"Did it have anything to do with the stallion you sold yourself to?"

She looked down to evade Sunburst's gaze. "It had everything to do with the guy I sold myself to."