Stand Tall’s alarm went off like it did every morning… which is to say, unwelcome and entirely too loud. Granted, this was partly by design. Stand Tall knew that if it were any other way, he would not be getting up for work on time like he was now. As he loped into his bathroom, he paused to cast a glance at his reflection in the wall mirror.
His mane was mussed into a forest of alien geometry, but he took an almost perverse pleasure in it, as if his bed-head were physical proof that sleep was as good as his body was currently telling him. Poor solace for a stallion with no option of returning to it anytime soon.
As he stepped into the shower and felt the weight of the water beginning to return each hair to its proper spot, he gave a long sigh. The morning routine was a sign that the rest of the day was now an inevitable fact with which he would need to contend. Another day going around the horse mill.
Today was not going to be a normal day, however. Stand Tall’s troubles began early when he exited his tub to discover that his towel was not draped over its designated hook. Worse, no extra towels sat in the small closet by the door where they might have been. This presented quite the tactical obstacle to a pony who was currently dripping an entire rainstorm’s worth of water, with hooves, in a house with wooden floors.
The solution was not difficult to grasp in concept, but was off-putting to execute. He would now have to venture across his house to reach the hamper near his door, where his laundry waited. Typically Monday night was when he would go to the unicorn-run laundromat on 36th street only a few blocks away, but the pegasi had scheduled a storm and he had procrastinated. He was paying for that decision now.
He stepped back into the tub and shook himself as best he could, in the process getting water all over the walls and returning his brown mane to its previous state of disarray. A necessary sacrifice given the circumstances. With a small grunt he began to slowly creep across the floor, attempting to keep his weight centered so as to minimize the risk of slipping.
If he wasn’t careful a stray hoof might punch a hole in the drywall. He had done that once, after a night at the bar combined with a stair that hadn’t been there a second before. His landlord had been less than pleased. Years of paying the rent on time and no further incidents had managed to smooth relations, but a repeat event would be an unwelcome disruption to the peace.
Stand Tall managed to reach his used towel without unnecessary complications, which he supposed was the most rational thing to expect. One unlikely event did not increase the likelihood of another occurring. Life wasn’t that convenient; it just didn’t have that sort of innate narrative structure. As he began to dry himself as best he could, he couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed.
Stand Tall ate his usual breakfast of oat cereal, and dressed himself for work, which meant whichever of his three dress shirts he hadn’t just worn and a tie that probably didn’t match at all. It didn’t really matter to him; after all, he wasn’t dressing to impress anypony.
The effects of the morning’s caper had mostly disappeared, but his mane retained a recalcitrant position from having dried prior to meeting the comb. There was nothing to be done about it in the limited time remaining before work. As it stood, the setback had made him about five minutes behind schedule already and it didn’t pay to be late to his job.
That hadn’t always been the case. When he had started at the Equestrian Crown’s Department of Artifacts he had been the only new hire in the last five years. His boss had been an elderly and overweight stallion who rarely arrived before noon and never without a tumbler of brandy. Sir Early Sandwich had fancied himself a stallion of the herd and chose to express that by never enforcing any rules. That had been just fine with Stand Tall, who kept the hours one might expect of a mid-20’s earth pony bachelor with a fondness for alcohol.
Things had changed a year ago, when the department came under greater scrutiny. The Nightmare Crisis had only been avoided due to the discovery of the extremely powerful Elements of Harmony, artifacts which the department had not been tracking or even been aware of.
The public, or at least ponies who feigned to speak on their behalf, wanted to know how such a critical piece of Equestrian national defense had been allowed to sit gathering dust in a crumbling ruin for a thousand years. The criticism was perhaps too harsh. After all, the castle where the Elements were hidden had been lost for generations in the completely uncharted Everfree Forest.
Furthermore, the Department of Artifacts had only been founded in 683 AC during a period of reform initiated by Haynry the Third, which had been designed to consolidate Equestrian rule over the rapidly growing towns through highly professionalized bureaus. Within that scheme, it was indeed the responsibility of the Department to catalog and monitor all magical items of potential significant to the public good. However, due to a lost jurisdictional battle (rumored to have been settled in a game of cards, although this remains unproven) the bulk of historical records on magical artifacts and devices remained under the control of the University of Canterlot.
The reality of the situation was irrelevant to the politicians, however. Blame was in the wind and it had to be assigned. Good old Sandwich retired and Morning Glory became the Head of the Department of Artifacts. She was the polar opposite of her predecessor. While he had been content to ride out the waning years of his career behind a forgotten desk, she was tenacious and hungry.
With a sterling pedigree and a prestigious education to match, she was poised to shoot to the upper echelons of Canterlot nobility. For success in the politics of Her Majesty Princess Celestia’s court, Morning Glory lacked just one critical ingredient: name recognition. The recent scandal was a golden opportunity. If she could recover a major artifact and prevent some catastrophe, she would be a national hero. To secure such a lofty prize, however, a suitable object needed to be located.
She overhauled the department from top to bottom. She streamlined leadership, reallocated assets to fieldwork, and had everypony working long hours combing through incident reports for a hint of artifact involvement. She ran a tight ship and had no patience for anything that got between her and her goals.
Turning from his clock, Stand Tall trotted quickly through his apartment and out the door.
_________________________________________
Stand Tall lived in the middle of a sprawling residential area built along the slope of the mountain. When he had first moved here, he had despised the steep hills and limited space. Necessity had tempered his attitude and now he joined the throng of other hapless bureaucrats struggling their way skywards without complaint.
In Stand Tall’s opinion, Canterlot was one of the worst designed cities in Equestria. An isolated castle in a remarkably precarious location was perfectly suitable in the fledgling years of Equestria, when projecting a sense of authority and power from the throne was integral to keeping the disparate populations of ponies united.
What it was not well suited for, was hosting the ponies who made up the many departments, agencies, institutions, and councils required to govern Equestria in the modern era. The court nobles who had been responsible for zoning had allocated precious space for their priorities: shopping, fine dining, and the many other artifacts of high culture. Interests outside of their narrow frame had been left to sort it out haphazardly.
The traffic level on the sidewalks was lower than usual this morning. Stand Tall attributed this to the later time. The ponies who were willing to grind out an existence in this town tended to be real go-getter types, and many were arriving early and staying late in the hopes of impressing the right pony, which just might unlock the next door in their journey to power.
Stand Tall had been like them once, but he had come to realize that such meteoric rises were largely fictitious for ponies like him. To have a real chance in this town, you needed to be born to the right family, attend the right magic kindergarten, distinguish yourself at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, and be willing to sacrifice everything to get what you wanted. You needed to be Morning Glory. Stand Tall wasn’t, and he knew that.
So he didn’t run to catch up with his professional contemporaries, he didn’t brush past the old mare on 12th street, he patiently waited for the Royal Guard monitoring cart traffic to wave him across, and he arrived at the wide double doors for the Department of Artifacts only slightly out of breath, 10 minutes late.
When Stand Tall had started at the Department, they had shared the building with the Department of Historical Records. They hadn’t had a front office because nopony ever came. That arrangement had ended when Morning Glory arrived. Historical Records was moving to the basement of some distant cookie-cutter office building, and anypony who entered was now treated with a shiny desk and the shiny smile of one Amber Haze.
Amber was a relatively attractive unicorn mare in body shape, but possessing rather unassuming features. She had arrived at the same time Morning Glory did, and Stand Tall got the impression that maybe she had been a friend from school who hadn’t had the same kind of future prospects. He supposed it was a mutually beneficial arrangement; Amber Haze got a job and Morning Glory had somepony she could trust. Ponies like that are rare in a town filled with cut-throat careerists.
However, Amber Haze’s sense of loyalty was doing little favors for Stand Tall, because it meant there was little chance that his temporal error would escape notice. But, nothing ventured is nothing gained, so Stand Tall put on what he thought was a professional-yet-friendly face and approached the counter.
“Good morning, Ms. Haze,” he said, a bit quieter than he had originally calculated, since she had failed to notice him during his approach, and it would be quite counterproductive to begin the interaction by startling her.
She looked up from some binder she had been scribbling in and merely said “Hello,” in return.
Amber wasn’t blunt, exactly, but she was rather task-oriented. She would interpret a conversation as an unwelcome interruption. Since they had been working in the same place for only a couple weeks and Stand Tall was well outside Amber’s normal social circle, it meant that this was functionally a cold call, rhetorically speaking. The odds didn’t look so good.
“As you have no doubt noticed, I have arrived at a later time than I am accustomed to doing. If I may, I would like to petition for a bit of leniency, given that the circumstances which produced this result were outside of my control.”
If Amber had worked this kind of job for long she would have a built-in resistance to any conception of pony mercy. His only chance was to word the request in such a way that he could avoid triggering her mental defenses. Through experience he had found that sometimes a bit of eloquence might confuse a pony long enough to serve his purposes.
Amber appeared to be quite unaffected by his gambit. Perhaps Morning Glory had attempted this tactic one too many times in their youth. Whatever the cause, she certainly did not possess the look of one who was amenable to persuasion.
“I’m sorry Mr. Tall but policy dictates that all entry and exit times be recorded accurately, regardless of expressed reason. Have a nice day.”
Clearly he had been dismissed and nothing more could be gained here, so he turned and headed towards the elevators on the far side of the room. He noticed that while the main traffic areas on the floor had been cleared, various bits of packing material gave evidence to the ongoing transition in ownership.
As he neared his destination, he first heard and then saw Morning Glory herself come around a corner, in conversation with a pony in a United Pony Shipping uniform. Getting caught by his boss in the lobby was not in his plans so Stand Tall pushed the elevator button again, a bit more firmly, in the vain hope that doing so would somehow save him from his uncomfortable predicament.
It was not to be. Her conversation completed and she turned towards the elevators herself, catching sight of him immediately. This was not a difficult thing to accomplish. There were no obstacles or visual impairments in the 20 feet between them, and Stand Tall was a bit larger than the average stallion. He wasn’t a giant by any means, and had met many ponies bigger than himself, but every stallion has an innate understanding of where he falls in the physical hierarchy. He figured he was at about the 75th percentile in terms of size, likely due in large part to his earth pony stature.
“Mr. Tall. Late again I see. Please meet me in my office.”
Stand Tall was divided with respect to Morning Glory’s voice. On the one hoof, she avoided many of the common pitfalls. She was not overly cheerful or cold. She sounded like a perfectly reasonable pony. He figured it fell somewhere between schoolteacher and lawyer. It was also a bit lower in pitch than one might typically suspect for a high society filly, but that helped her avoid coming across as shrill (an unfair complaint sometimes levied against mares).
On the other hoof, though, Stand Tall hated it. He couldn’t help but feel belittled by it, like she somehow thought she was better than him. He knew that she wasn’t doing it consciously. She had simply lived a life up to this point where she actually was better than the ponies around her, in probably every available metric.
If her political career took off like it appeared it was going to, she would eventually hire some overpriced speech therapist to sound more relatable to the general public, but in the meantime Stand Tall just had to get over it. It would not do to harbor petty resentments against his boss over something as trivial as her tone of voice. That minor annoyance would only grow if he dwelled on it.
When Morning Glory had told him to meet her in her office, her intention had clearly been to depart and then not interact with him again until they actually were in the office. It was only after completing the sentence that she realized they would have to travel there together. Stand Tall could almost see the calculations forming behind her eyes.
The delivery pony had long since abandoned her, there was nothing that the front desk would need to report given that the work day had started approximately 11 minutes ago, and no other plausible excuses for further business on the floor were forthcoming. After a split second of hesitation, barely noticeable if you weren’t looking for it, she continued her approach and stood next to him, facing the elevator doors, silent. Soon enough, this strategy would fall apart and she would be forced to converse with him, but the elevator arrived almost immediately.
Stand Tall felt a bit betrayed by the elevator's belated promptness. He had a much longer history with this elevator than she did, but it seemed her authority prevailed even in this case. His only saving grace was that he had occupied the side of the elevator with the buttons. Ever since he was a foal, he had enjoyed pushing elevator buttons. A small effort, a satisfying click, a light in response, and then the inscrutable machine responded by taking you where you wanted to go. It was what he imagined magic felt like.
“4?” he asked, a little spitefully. The vagaries of fate had granted him an opportunity to get a small measure of revenge.
“Yes,” she replied, not showing any indication that his maneuver had struck home. Nothing further was said for the remainder of the ascent.
Stand Tall’s desk was located on the third floor, with the rest of the Historical Incidents division, but he eschewed stepping off there in favor of accompanying Morning Glory to the uppermost floor of the office. When Early Sandwich had occupied it, he had filled the space not occupied by his desk with an assortment of decadent diversions. There had been a practice putting green, a dart board, and even a liquor cabinet. Once when Stand Tall had come up to give a report he had been offered a scotch, and he certainly hadn’t turned it down.
Those days were gone. Now the floor held a small waiting area for valued guests who couldn’t be bothered to wait on the main floor with the commoners, a couple glass-walled conference rooms with elegant wooden chairs, and the same corner office with the same desk of weathered mahogany, but recently polished and featuring a much more organized set of office supplies.
Stand Tall stepped out of the elevator and started moving towards the office. A part of him wondered if perhaps waiting and following her was more respectful. However, that part was overridden by the specific details of the situation. Stand Tall was a stallion, Morning Glory was a mare, and Stand Tall had found that it was generally prudent to minimize the amount of time he spent behind mares in professional situations, for the sake of both parties.
He hadn’t yet been required to attend any of the sensitivity or workplace behavior classes that were becoming popular in organizational management circles, but he figured it was wise to stay ahead of the game on these kinds of issues. It only takes one mistake to ruin everything and Stand Tall wasn’t going to be that stallion.
As they were walking, Stand Tall spied his reflection in the glass. It had been a bit windy during the walk this morning, as it is wont to do considering the lack of natural barriers on the side of a mountain, and his mane was a bit worse off than he had anticipated. It was too late now to do anything to fix it. She had already seen him and would undoubtedly notice his last-ditch efforts. It was just typical that his worst hair day in the last 5 years would happen on the same morning as whatever serious conversation his boss intended to have.
Upon entering the office, he took a seat in the chair opposite the desk. Morning Glory sometimes entertained important ponies in this office, so the seat was of equal opulence to the one she occupied across from him, and was at an equal height. This reduced but didn’t eliminate the uncanny sensation that he had ended up in the office of Principal Corn Rows, who had put him in detention the week before he got his Cutie Mark.
However, those memories were quickly set aside when Morning Glory looked Stand Tall in the eyes and said, "There has been a robbery."
Author's Note
Updates will likely be infrequent. Constructive criticism or advice is appreciated.
