Bronze Tiara

Chapter seven

Having almost drowned a few times, slept in a tree, and woken up before now with a stallion bound and gagged at the foot of the bed. Bronze had to admit at least feeling something in her body was a welcome sensation to have after her little scuffle the previous night. Even if the sensation was a pounding in the back of her head.

“Ugh…” she groaned while rubbing the back of her head with a talon, though the bandage that met her claw threw her off as her eyes shot open and got a look at her surroundings.

Single bedroom, book shelf in the corner with a fainting couch and her cloak draped over its edge. The shelf full of random books with no particular order or genera. Definitely a spare bedroom. Though to who she couldn’t imagine, there weren’t any pictures on the walls, or even a poster. Just the simplest, yet vibrant, aqua paint around the room kept things one step of decorum above white washed walls.

A knock though made her immediately grab hold of the blankets and cover her chest, as in trotted a stallion. The charcoal mane has been slicked back with all the care of a business colt, while his grey coat to keep with the dullness of the room didn’t have so much as a speck of dirt about it, all tidied up from hoof to his cutie mark of gold and silver chain wrapped gems. Whoever he was, he certainly knew how to maintain himself, especially from the stature of a stallion who looks almost built as sturdy as a granite countertop.

“Ahh, you’re awake,” his eyes to almost match the walls met her own, a pair of spectacles that rather enchanted the mare the more she admired them for the first time as they flickered in the light of the room. That was until something finally clicked in the mares’ head.

“It’s you?!” Bronze snapped at first after recognizing the voice from the previous night, and put any thought of his orbs out of her mind.

Immediately the mare tried to charge up a teleportation spell to get her out of this predicament just like the night before. Without so much as a fizzle or even a pop, she looked up at the vacant spot at the top of her head. Her horn was gone, the very thing she envied his kind for had been taken away from her.

“Looking for this?” he asked, and held up the appendage in his own magical grasp.

So close, yet so far away, but with that simple gesture Bronze remained stumped for most words in her vocabulary, “How? How did you manage that?”

“The tools you saw in my shop weren’t just for show, Bronze,” he answered and took a seat across from her on the fainting couch. “You attached it; I can detach it.”

“Okay I figured that much, but how did-?” she stopped cold in her tracks. If it wasn’t for the blanket still across half her body, she may just have chocked it up to the draft of the open window, but the shiver across her spine would argue against that.

A slow creeping smile started to grow across his own face as her eyes grew, “Yes… I know who you are,” he beamed at her, strangely without a hint of malice in his voice. Not one of warmth either, but not hate like she would have expected.

“Okay, aside from my original question,” Bronze shook her head, “How… do you know me?”

Almost instantly his smile fade, and instead of the anger she waited for, Bronze watched as something else started to paint across him. ‘Sadness?’ she asked herself.

“You don’t recognize me… well I figured that, it has been a number of years sense I’d seen you,” he waved a hoof through the air while he talked. Bronze started to wonder if this was somepony who she may have crossed paths with in the past and left on a sour note. Looking out the corner of her eye to the window, she started to wonder what the likelihood of there being something soft to land on at the bottom was, before the pane closed in an aura. “No, you’re not jumping…” he said, having watched her eyes.

“Well, if you’re going to turn me in, now would probably be the time,” she tutted and crossed the talon and peg across her chest, “not much I can do in my current situation anyway.”

“Oh, there is Bronze, I know how determined you can be when you set your mind to it,” he snickered at her, and watched as her eyes still questioned his relation, “I can see you managed to put those few gems I gave you back then to good use.”

With that the bag of bricks above her head fell finally and smacked the mare where she laid. If she even just had one wing attached then she might have still took a chance with that window dive. Tower of a castle or single-story home, either would be a better option than running in to the last stallion she’d thought she see once more… okay maybe second to last.

“M-M-Marble?” she quivered like she had in the past.

The bully in school who had made her life a living hell, sat before her with his hind legs crossed and all the poise of an aristocrat. She may have gotten over her fear of him a long time ago, particularly after a good swing with a hammer, but sitting face to face now with him. Bronze weighed out her options, who knows how long he held on to a grudge, even if they may have broken bread so to speak.

“In the flesh,” he presented himself before her and got up, slowly making his way over to the bedridden mare.

He might have been the one to give her a charged gem fragment all those years ago to help her in a time of need, and even tried to talk to her about some of the designs she had made that would soon become her own body. That said, habit was a hard thing to kick at times. As if by instinct Bronze started to shake as she could sense the hoof of him getting closer, though the ringing of her neck never came, not even a punch like he delivered the night before.

Instead, his hoof found itself on the back of her head, checking the bandage.

“The bleeding’s stopped thankfully,” he said removing it and patting the area with a damp cloth, “I didn’t think I hit you that hard.”

“Ha-ba-zwa?” a nerve ending in the back of her brain failed to fire, while Bronze tried to put together what was happening.

“I’m tending to your wounds… nothing to make a big deal about.”

“I tried to rob your store!” she shouted at him, though what would have normally made some jump, Marble only shrugged a shoulder at her.

“And you failed at that, the spells I had learned to help prevent theft if I was working late. Non-lethal as they might be, I’m still impressed I had to use an ingot to stop you,” he rolled his eyes, and put the damp cloth down on the end table, “Though now considering your current predicament, I believe I’m owed some sort of explanation.”

Clamping her lips shut like a clam, Bronze sat there and wondered how much he really knew of her past and what she had been up to. Though given a group of guards weren’t knocking on his door already, she summarized it didn’t seem like much. With a sigh, and the relaxing of her fight or flight response arguing in the back of her head. The mare just looked at him with defeat across face.

“…What… would you like to know?” she surrendered.

“Well firstly… why were you stealing?” he jumped right to the heart of the matter, “you probably were the smartest one in our school, and certainly could have done a lot with what you managed to build for yourself,” Marble gestured to her engineered limbs, “What happened to you?”

‘That’s… refreshing to hear from him,’ Bronze almost gasped from getting an actual complement from the stallion, though time was of the essence when it came to this and she already had somewhat of a truthful answer for him. “I didn’t have a lot going for me after I graduated,” she slid the puzzle pieces together as she went, “my dad was gone, my mom was gone… where else was I supposed to go? So, I started traveling, picking up odd jobs here and there,” ‘like trying to overthrow countries and level kingdoms,’ she once again tasted the vinegar of her own thoughts.

“Sometimes getting a job is easier than others, though with my… special needs you could call them, it sometimes makes keeping them harder as well,” she brought out the talon for him to see up close, “the gems need to stay charged in order to work, usually I can get a charge from draining a creature that can use magic…” Bronze cringed there for a moment and looked up at his horn, “Sorry about that last night, I know that doesn’t mean much, but it’s about the only thing I could do.”

Though to her surprise, the usually more callous colt brushed it off as if it was a crude joke, “I’ve always recovered fast, no worries.”

With another sigh, and the knowledge he wasn’t going to strangle her for that move, Bronze pressed on with her little act, “the other way was to just drain gems themselves, all gems-”

“-Have an inherent charge of magic in them,” he recited the explanation as if reading it from a textbook, “this is why gems are able to hold spells in the first place. The purer the gem, the more charge it has naturally.”

Blankly Bronze stared at him. The colt that would kick the snot out of her for being smarter than he was, was now tossing out lines from scripture as if he was in a lecture hall. “Yes… they do,” she got back on track, and put her thoughts in order, “I’ve been running on fumes here after a dry spell, and needed a charge, otherwise I wouldn’t be going anywhere.”

While she may have been a near master at reading others like a book. Marble had gotten far better at hiding what he was thinking in the later years, or she just didn’t have the time to figure him out all those years ago. He looked over her frame, back up at her eyes, and mulled over her words for what must have been minutes. The clock on the wall begged to differ and said less than twenty seconds had passed before he opened his mouth.

“It looks like you still wouldn’t be going anywhere,” he gestured to her peg, “I know you’d try and fix yourself up better than that if you could.”

Looking at the sorry excuse for a limb, Bronze just chuckled, “the gems in the old one were… burnt out, little else I could do but cut the dead weight.”

Marble looked up at the clock on the wall, and once again to Bronze as she wondered what was going through his mind. “Well you’ve been running on fumes more than just in terms of gems,” he looked over her body once more, where ever she had been in her travels, it was taking a number on her. Getting up, the colt turned an eye to her over his shoulder, “You can walk I assume?”

“Yes, though why?” Bronze asked as she got up to her feet, thankful that she still managed to get some sort of magic drawn from him.

Following the stallion out the room, the rest of the home was a far cry from the guest bedroom she woke up in. Little trinkets dotted along on shelves as they walked, paintings of lakes and mountains that all seemed to have some of the same hoof strokes, likely from the same artist. Yet most of this was lost on the mare, as she followed the stallion down the stairs to the ground floor.

Marble stepped inside of the kitchen and held the door for her as she walked in past him. Without a word, yet still the smallest hint of a smile, the stallion opened up the fridge and with the expert touch of his horn started pulling out ingredients. All the while, the mare stood dumbfounded as she wondered how she just went from petty burglar to house guest.

‘It’s going to be laced with poison, he’s going to beat me to death with a pan…’ she wondered while the colt worked, ‘…cook me in an oven?’

Getting something in her stomach before hitting the road, with or without his permission, may have been a good idea. It was the morning now, and she could cover a lot of ground in one day when her mind was set to it. Though something about it just seemed, wrong almost, to Bronze as she by second nature started to back up. She was close to the door already, and with Marble so intently whipping up whatever it was he was making, she could have easily-

“Hi-ay there!”

Bronze about shot off the ground, even without her wings, from the voice behind her. Turning around on her peg, barely up to her chest stood a unicorn filly, no more than ten years old. The deep emerald eyes of the youngling lit up before the older mare as she back peddled further in to the kitchen.

“Dad I didn’t know we were having company,” the filly exclaimed, “I would have brushed my mane.”

“You look fine there, Topaz,” Marble smiled across to his aptly named daughter, as Bronze saw the same gem she was named after matched both her coat and her fathers’ eyes, while he soon went back to working the kitchen, “This is Miss Bronze Bolt, an… old acquaintance.”

‘To put it lightly…’ Bronze kicked herself, “Ahh… good morning,” she politely held out her talon for a hoof shake. Unsure what else she should even say to the young one. She didn’t have to wait long though; Topaz already had eyed her up and down.

“That looks so cool!” the filly yelled and started looking over Bronzes’ limbs with the utmost of interest. An interest that lead the mare on back to the table, and in a seat, “I’ve never seen prosthetics like these before, did you make them yourself? How do you get them to move? Can you even use magic? Are you a sort of arcane blacksmith? Did-?”

A plate of pancakes, eggs and hay bacon quickly occupied the fillies’ vision and silenced her onslaught to the mare. Bronze shook her head to try and get all those questions in order, before a similar plate met her own vision and her eyes turned to that of a smiling Marble fixing himself one. Just as quickly as Topaz started rattling off questions, she started shoveling flapjacks in her gaping mouth. How the young one managed to do that without choking, Bronze had little clue.

“Yes, she made them herself, getting them to move is her own special talent, she can use magic just in her own way, and Miss Bolt is a little bit of everything,” Marble answered for her as he sat down, took a bite out of his omelet, and turned his attention to the mare across from him who was still trying to process half of what she just heard, “This here is my little girl. A wonderful student, adept trouble maker around the house, and probably the chattiest pony I’ve ever known.”

A smile, a genuine smile crossed his face as he looked at the food filled cheeks of his daughter. Bronze just looked back and forth from one of them to the other, unsure what to say or what to even do at this point. So, she did the only thing she could, she took a bit of her pancakes, “please to meet you little one.”

Topaz nodded eagerly from across her diminishing stack of cakes at the newcomer and quickly dived back in to it, much to the joy of her father who simply just chuckled at her. Bronze though still wasn’t sure what he was trying to play at here, “So… you’re feeding me?” she asked the obvious.

“The food on your plate should give that away.”

“I drop in… unannounced,” she chose her words carefully from over the fork in her talon, “and you’re feeding me?”

“Well, it would be cruel to ask you to fix a few things around my shop while still hungry, or around the house for that matter,” he raised a brow to her over a glass of orange juice, and watched as her own brow followed his, “After all there’s always something to be fixed up here and there, and I’m sure with your skilled hooves… or talon, you’d be able to get the job done. I work with gems and small tools, not bigger ones.”

Bronze took another bite of her stack and crunched a slice of hay bacon in half, while her eyes inquired to what he was getting at. ‘You’re really letting me pay you back like this, or is this going to turn into blackmail?’ she asked herself between crunches, “I’d be… happy to. There must be something else though I can do as well to, repay, for the hospitality?”

Marble just shook a head at her and waved off the comment with a hoof, “Oh it’s nice to see an old face… as hard as that might seem,” he looked up at her from over his fork, “besides, it’s better than traveling in and out of towns all day. Gives you something to do, keep your nose clean… so to speak.”

While blood flushing her cheeks wasn’t a completely unknown phenomenon to the mare, it was something she wasn’t inherently used to either. Even with the purest intent pouring out from his eyes that he had shown, Bronze couldn’t help but wonder what was possibly making those gears in the back of his head turn.

“Thank you… Marble,” she about brimmed up with a tear, before beating it back down to the lowest part of her eye. Settling for her own genuine smile, she only hoped it conveyed how much a helping hoof mattered right now, even if she had always been a reluctant one to take them. Especially given how they had run into one another, “I wasn’t expecting this when I… came to visit,” she kept up the mask around Topaz, as Marble nodded in acknowledgment, “But thank you for the warm welcome.”

A loud belch from the bottom of the youngest’ stomach broke any sort of thought train in Bronzes’ mind, as Topaz covered her mouth up just a little too late to save it, “Sorry about that dad.”

Marble however, just waved it off while he finished up his plate, “Oh it happens, complements to the chef,” he continued working on his plate and kept pace with Bronze, “Why don’t you go get cleaned up, myself and Miss Bolt have a few more words to have.”

With a nod and a scamper Topaz trotted out the door and up the stairs. Once she was sure the young ears were out of range, Bronze looked dead in to Marbles eyes. “You’re letting me pay you back, after trying to steal from you no less, by fixing a few things around your store and even home?”

“Well, you did break in, and made somewhat of a mess of the back room,” Marble rolled his eyes, “It only seems fair.”

“Life isn’t fair… I should know,” she ground her teeth at that no truer aspect of existence, “there has to be some small print in what you’re saying.”

Something in the back of his own mind flipped, as Marble winced from that remark. It may have been subtle, and he may have not even realized he did it. Though Bronze at least knew him enough to pick up on that little cue like so many others give away.

“Bronze, take it for what it is,” he looked back at her with only a light beam, as he tried to hide something behind it, “You said you’ve been down on your luck, who would I be to not offer a hoof.”

The mare sat there and just stared at him, whatever his intentions, he managed to hide them well. Arguably better than she had ever been able to. There wasn’t much she really could say to an offer like that, after all what other option did she have?

“Well… I’m going to need my horn back,” she blushingly grinned at him while they both continued munching on their breakfast.

“Understandable,” Marble nodded to her, “And don’t worry, your hammer is still in the cloaks pocket,” he watched as her eyes shot open slightly from the mention of it, and the stallion rubbed his jaw, “Just keep it holstered this time around.”