Having a post at the Zephyr Heights Museum of History is a great honor. Since its grand reopening almost ten years ago, hundreds have been coming to visit each day. I was like them, ever since I was a colt. Drinking in the once-forgotten stories of the three pony tribes and marveling at the numerous artifacts of our shared past, I found my calling.
But among the treasures of the past one always stands above the rest:
The Curator.
She appears out of the shadows and in front of an eagerly waiting crowd of youngsters and parents. Her finely pressed uniform glistens with soft blue light, almost as bright as her smile. Silver eyes glimmer under the shadow of the cap which helps hide her old injury.
“Welcome to the Room of Coins!” She begins with a beam and a bow. “I am the curator of this humble collection, and will serve as your guide through the fascinating history of Equestrian currency.”
She motions behind her, to one of the glass cases.
“Let me now lead you through this glistening tale of rise, triumph, fall, and resilience.”
With that, she starts backing into the coin collection. The ponies follow, and a couple of youngsters start mouthing a warning. That’s when the Curator’s rump reaches the glass case – and continues right through. As always, this elicits chuckles from the older ponies and excited giggles from the younger ones.
Feigning ignorance, the Curator keeps on walking until she’s firmly embedded into the wall behind the glass case. With smile unwavering, she spreads her front hooves over the splendor, inviting the audience closer.
Her voice is soft and reverent, as though sharing some cosmic secret. Her eyes glisten with the reflections of the coins below; lined up from the most ancient to the latest one – the freshly minted unity bit.
“From our ancient past,” she points to the crude pieces of copper at the left side of the case, “to the gleaming present–”
Her other hoof motions to the modern platinum coin.
“–the ponies and their stories shine through like a long-coveted ray of sunlight. Let us take a closer look at the beginnings of this tale.”
With that, her hoof moves down, passing through the glass. It continues, disappearing in the velvet cushion under the first coin. A second later it reappears, upside down, its frog poking just out of the velvet. The Curator’s hoof becomes a glimmering heart around the copper piece and she speaks again.
“What do you see when you look at this coin?” she asks, looking around and continuing.
“It might seem like nothing other than a crude piece of copper,” she admits. “Primitive, even. A product of a time before industry and modern hoof tools. Despite this, however, it is not just mere unadorned metal. Look. What is that?”
With a surgeon’s precision, she slides her hoof into the coin. The scintillation of her body subsides for a moment. Then, it shines through again. She holds the it just under the surface of the coin – the only bits of the hoof visible are the ones filling in the lines and dents with soft blue light.
“It’s a pony!” a filly’s voice pipes up excitedly.
“Why yes, it is!” the Curator beams. “But what kind of pony is it?”
“A pegasus!” a colt exclaims this time. “Look! His wing’s huge!”
“Yes, the wing,” the Curator nods sagely. Her hoof shifts up a little, making the crude reproduction of a winged pony stand out more. The Curator leans in through the glass and indicates with her other hoof.
“Here it is – bursting out of their withers!” she shows. “And these perpendicular markings and the pits between them – those are the feathers! Well spotted!”
The colt smiles triumphantly and the filly’s horn sags a bit.
“But what is this?” the Curator asks, pointing at the figure’s forehead. “Could it be…?”
The hoof she uses to highlight the marking banks just a degree. The wings lose some of their glimmer, allowing a faint network of spiraling scratches to stand out.
“A horn!” the filly jumps up. “She’s a unicorn!”
“But… but he’s a pegasus!” the colt protests.
“You are both correct, in a sense,” the Curator admits. “Actually, what you are looking at is the oldest depiction of an alicorn. Do you know what that is?”
“Everypony knows!” the colt says. “It’s a pony with wings and a horn.”
The Curator nods.
“Sometimes I forget,” she admits. “You see, back in my days, the alicorns were thought to be a myth, or a race long extinct. All we had were legends and old songs.”
She clears her throat and intones:
“A horn and mind of greatest sage –
– with wings to make her swift as dart –
– she has no fear and knows no age –”
She smiles at another young pony, hornless and wingless, standing meekly by.
“– with earthen’s back and loving heart.”
The pony smiles back.
“Can you guess what the most fascinating thing about this coin is?” the Curator asks the young ones. They shake their heads in unison.
“This coin,” she divulges, “dates way before the first alicorn royalty. Before the dreaded Grognar and Tirac, even! It is, in fact, centuries older than even the oldest myth of alicorns.”
She moves up again, pulling her front legs out of the glass case. Her torso still pokes halfway out of the wall behind, and her raised hoof seems disconnected from her body.
“So you see, this could mean that either the alicorns were here from the dawn of ponykind, or perhaps…” she taps her chin, “...this carving is not that of reality, but of hope. A hope for the unity of all ponykind. In cooperation, in friendship – in perfection.”
The crowd nods and murmurs as she gestures across the glass case again.
“As you inspect these coins,” the Curator says, “you will often find the alicorn motif somewhere on them. Even the hoof, horn, and wing seal of pre-modern Equestria is a symbol of unity etched into these tokens of commerce and prosperity.”
She gives a small laugh, making a show of looking closer at the gathered audience.
“The kind of prosperity your ancestors,” she gives a slight bow, “could scarcely imagine.”
She continues dreamily: “Embroidered satchels, as ubiquitous as they are vibrant. Books and magazines with actual photographs! Colored prints, cheap enough not to ruin a family!”
She pauses, and frowns at a phone one of the colts is fiddling with.
“And... whatever these are,” she mutters and smiles again as the crowd snickers.
“Forgive an old mare for her diatribes,” the Curator apologizes. “I only have a few final words to say.”
She waves her hoof.
“Before I give you a bit,” she smiles again, “of time. To inspect the coins, I mean.”
The calculated moment of levity primes the audience for her closing remarks. The Curator points at the last few coins and her voice takes on a somber tone.
“From time to time, the alicorn motif does disappear,” she admits and points down. The line of coins, old to new, is broken in several places. It splits into duos or trios of smaller bits before reconnecting again into the larger ones.
“Those splinter groups mark the times of disunity, conflict, and strife,” she explains. “The coins reflect this. Small, crude, hastily made. Unicorn coins. Pegasus coins. Earth pony coins...”
Her hoof slides just above the glass, bathing the contours of the coins in her light, lingering at the smaller ones for a moment.
“However!” the Curator claps her hooves. She reaches through the glass again and traces around the last coin on display. The glimmer of her translucent hoof gives the unity bit an ethereal white shine. It highlights its perfect roundness and the intricate engraving of the three magical gemstones.
“Each time they come apart,” the Curator says, “the ponies come back together again.”
She looks up at the audience again, and for a second, her eyes catch mine.
“If we put our minds to it,” she says slowly, “each of us alone can achieve wonders.”
Her eyes glance across the crowd.
“And together…” she trails off. “We all have our differences, yes. But we can make them our strength, instead of a wedge between us. Let us hope we will remember this.”
The Curator lets the sentence sink in and smiles again, softly. She puts a hoof on her chest and bows a little as she sinks backwards into the thick stone wall, giving the audience time to gawk and chatter before continuing the tour.
A sigh later, I get on with my own work. My mop slides across the tiled floor of the Room of Coins. Some silly colt must have spilled soda here, and now the Janitor has to clean it. Maybe the colt was the Janitor. Maybe he wanted to see a bit of the Curator’s performance again.
As I scrub the floor, the lecture continues in the background. I steal a glance once in a while. She dances between – and through – the exhibits, keeping the audience interested, weaving stories and morals that leave them smiling, curious, and wanting for more.
The Curator is the museum’s greatest treasure, and anypony would be honored to work by her ghostly side.
Even a pony who fell in love with the museum when he was young, when he heard one of her presentations.
Even a pony who became a Janitor because he knew he could never match his idol.
I whistle as I scrub the last of the soda, pick my bucket up, and trot out of the room. Later, when I’m on my lunch break, I take it to the Room of Coins. The Curator comes to talk to me between groups of ponies. She’s as professional and courteous as ever, asking me about the news of my life, and sharing a pearl of wisdom or two.
I try my best to be good company, but she could run circles around me in a conversation. She has centuries of practice, after all. Centuries of being chained to this little room she had died in. Centuries of showing off coins and hoping ponies will finally learn.
When she asks me about my aspirations again, I shrug and blush.
She chastises me, but her usual firmness has long lost its edge. She stops and stares forward. I follow her gaze and see a young colt darting from exhibit to exhibit. I’ve seen him here before. He beams when he looks at her, and she smiles back.
I lean on my mop and stand up.
When she touches my shoulder to comfort me, I feel nothing. I smile at her despite this, and lie to both of us, saying I might put forward my curator application this year. Her frown tells me she knows I’m not going to do that. My smile tells her I know she knows.
I could never match her legend, after all.
The Senior hygiene technician called in sick today. Poor old pony, struck by the dreadful stallion flu. The rest of the janitorial staff gathers during the lunch break. We stare at each other for some time before somepony finally cracks the topic.
“Does anypony want to fill in for him tonight?”
Nopony speaks up. Nopony wants the graveyard shift. I never had the displeasure yet, but the idea of staying in the cold marble halls of the museum, dark and echoing, after hours, does not appeal to me at all. It is haunted, after all. Who can say what other ghosts come out during the night?
Not to mention it means doing two shifts back to back.
“Let’s draw straws.”
Nopony objects.
I pull the short straw. They smile and chuckle as the weight falls from their back and onto mine. They tell me the Senior has sent some notes on proper procedure. Just do as you’re told, don’t ask questions.
I skim the notes again, thinking I misread them. A lot of general, sensible things, of course.
Let the guard know before you clean each room. Check exhibits, windows, doors, before moving on. Don’t drink the milkshake in the fridge.
But the last part…
I read the paragraph again and again. With words twice underlined, or written in capitals, more important than “make sure there are no missing artifacts” and “if you see a burglar, run and raise the alarm.”
I swallow and gather my courage to go through with it.
The corner shop is a sheet of timeless quiet cracked by the buzz of fluorescent lights. I blush as I give the tired clerk the things, hidden among a common mix of sandwiches, snacks, and soft drinks. His empty eyes don’t move as he scans the things, and I give him the well–prepared, exact change. I run out of the store twenty seconds later and gasp for the cold air.
The magazines burn through the satchel and into my side as I trot back to the museum.
This is IMPORTANT:
The first order of business is to buy two copies of the adult magazine “PLAYPONY”. Make sure to get the month’s special PONIES AT WORK edition. Tear out all of the magazines’ pages. Line up ALL the pages on the floor in the Room of Coins, in order. Make sure the pages CAN BE READ from above! This must be done before midnight. Then, the Room of Coins must be LOCKED. Come back at four in the morning, knock, wait for a minute or so, come in and clean up.
But it’s the last line that makes me go through with it in the end:
This is at the Curator’s behest.
With shaking hooves, I do as I’m told. The luscious forms of stallions and mares taunt me as I diligently tear pages out of the magazines. Did the Curator really ask for this? Is the Senior playing a prank? The insult I’ll be giving her if he is…
Trapped in a single room for hundreds of years. Bearing with her the wisdom of centuries, yet unable to walk outside her own exhibition. Firm, strong, and wiser than any living pony could be. Understanding and charming. The ultimate unreachable standard for any would-be historian–
–become janitor–
–spreading pages stained with vacuous articles and lewd photos between the glass cases glinting with ancient coins.
I shudder as I quietly lock the door behind me. As I pull the key out, my courage finally betrays me and I slink to the floor.
Time tumbles on. Finally, my mind calms enough for me to get up again to take my leave. Whatever the reason for this, I hope the Curator didn’t see me do it.
As I take my first steps away, I notice a faint blue glow shining out of the Room of Coins’ door lock. A shine of pale blue I know too well; the shine of the Curator.
Admitting to the shame of having lowered an eye to that keyhole would be beyond many a gentlepony. But a Janitor admits to it, albeit with hesitation.
I see her then.
Hovering in the room, lying on her stomach, peering down.
Her bright luminescence sends glints across the pages of the magazines below. Her loosened mane, stained crimson at the poll, falls over the far side of her face, framing it like a painting. Her eyes are fixated and wide, her lip bitten, her hoof reaching—
I avert my gaze and return in the morning.
I gather all the pages, mind clouded by the sleepless night and jumbled by the half-remembered scene witnessed. Each article and picture, scandalous as it is, suddenly begs me to find some deeper meaning in it.
I stumble out of the museum as the morning shift arrives. When I come home, I collapse on the bed. The Dreamlands refuse me – the pages’ contents are still fresh in my mind. I take the stack out and study them, one page at a time, to the utmost detail. I keep looking for some hidden piece of wit and art, or perhaps some telling information about the current culture, ponies, and their desires.
But it’s just porn.
The Curator has been an idol to me for as long as I could remember. Perfection personified; a goal to strive for but never achieve. But last night, I saw another side to the ancient ghost; beneath her charming, professional persona and careful control, I saw a pony reading a lewd magazine, and blushing the same as I.
That night, I saw a pony.
Ancient and wise, proper and strong, with sensibilities carved by a different era…
...but a pony nevertheless.
I wonder if my curator application gets approved.
Author's Note
Centuries ago, a Janitor took the wrong step on the wet floor of the Room of Coins. Her body was carried away, but her spirit lingered. Faced with exorcism and terrified of moving on, the ghost offered her services as guide to the museum's visitors. A curiosity at first, as decades went by and personnel changed, the Janitor rebranded herself as the Curator. With gained knowledge and experience, she became the one to set the terms of her employment.
And what were her demands?
Lewd magazines.
Ghosts are people too.
