Burgeon Anemone

"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."