Burgeon Anemone

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.”