“And you’ll give me a cutie mark?” asked Misty with a hopeful little smile.
Opaline slammed her hoof down and turned around. “That measly drop of Dragonfire wasn’t enough!” she bellowed, glaring daggers at the blue unicorn before her.
Misty’s smile instantly vanished, she gasped under her breath and her ears flattened. Staring straight into Opaline’s furious gaze with utter terror in her eyes, she visibly trembled where she stood.
The alicorn inched toward Misty with each venomous word as she continued her tirade. “And YOU won’t be enough, Misty! Not until you prove that you’re actually useful, and GET… THAT… DRAGON!”
Misty’s lips trembled and she glanced at the floor with a deep frown.
Opaline returned her attention to her magic pool. Gently, she whipped her head to the side, and an image of the Crystal Brighthouse in Maretime Bay appeared. All the while, the pink, purple and blue flame continued to burn over her horn. “I’m coming for you, little ponies,” she snarled with a sneer. “Especially you, Sunny Starscout.”
With eyes watering, Misty kept her head down and walked away to her room. Unable to use magic, she opened the door with her hoof and it closed softly behind her. She did not look around the small circular space nor at the minuscule amount of evening sunlight coming through the only window. She walked straight to her bed and climbed on, lying on her tummy. She crossed her forelegs in front of her and let out a deep sigh.
“For a pony made of fire,” she uttered, “I’ve never met a heart so cold.”
With that, Misty was unable to hold it in any longer. Tears began to stream freely down her cheeks, she buried her face in her pillow and wept; she wept harder than she ever had. The pillow muffled her anguished cries, but that didn’t stop them from resonating in her ears. She cried until the darkness of sleep took her.
Misty stirred in her bed and let out a weak groan. Her eyes peeked open, she yawned then lifted her head. Her eyes and cheeks felt completely dry and sticky. Rubbing them, she glanced down at her pillow. A large water stain greeted her—the stain was so large, deep and dark that most ponies would say the pillow was unsalvageable. Misty crawled out of bed. She stretched her neck and both her forelegs and hindlegs, checking the time on her phone which sat upon her nightstand.
2:30 AM
Misty sighed and her ears remained flat as she exited the room.
Entering the throne room of the tower, Misty paused and gazed for several minutes at the spot where Opaline had chewed her up and spit her out just hours earlier. Each and every word of what Opaline said replayed in her mind with the same fury that had originally come with it.
I deserved that, she thought. I deserved that because I failed… again. I failed again.
Slowly, Misty approached the magic pool that sat in the floor in the center of the chamber which Opaline used for her spying. She peered into the still water, yet with no lights on in the room, her reflection was mostly blackened-out. “I just cried myself to sleep. Probably a good thing I can’t see myself right now. Who would even want to look at me after that?”
She raised her hoof and swiped it over the surface of the pool, causing a little splash and her reflection to be distorted in the ensuing ripples. She didn’t stick around to watch the water still itself or her image clear up, nor did she even care if the sound might have woken up Opaline.
Misty made her way into the washroom, closing the door behind herself. Flicking on the lights, the full horror show of her disheveled appearance stood in the large mirror mounted to the wall above the sink. She grimaced. “I was right. Bad idea.”
Her eyes were completely reddened, and the fur on her cheeks where her tears had run down was just as stained as her pillow. While the frizziness of her bed mane wasn’t far from how she kept it normally, it definitely did not do her any compliments. Staring back at Misty was a unicorn mare who was on the verge, yet she had already unleashed all the frustration she could possibly muster. The urge to punch the image did tickle Misty’s fancy for a few fleeting seconds, but Opaline was upset with her enough already without adding, ‘breaking the washroom mirror,’ to the growing list of her failings. “Fitting,” she uttered.
Misty’s grimace turned into a scowl and she looked away. She climbed into the bathtub, closed the shower curtain, and a quick turn of the knob later, steaming hot water was cascading down upon her. Squeezing some shampoo from one of the bottles onto her hoof, she lathered up her mane with the sweet-scented violet liquid. The combination of the feel and sound of the shower water and the shampoo in her mane allowed Misty, finally, some modicum of respite from her sorrow. “At least Opaline couldn’t care less if I take midnight showers.”
As the minutes dragged on and Misty lost herself in her bath, her thoughts suddenly whipped back to when she was hiding from Zipp in the salon. What’s more, she thought about the nice, pegasus stallion employee who greeted her, and told her about the numerous services the salon offered. It was at this moment that Misty felt another pang of guilt, realizing she had only been using him as a means to blend in with the crowd to not be found by Zipp. She never even gave the salon employee a proper hello.
Misty sighed under her breath. “Actually, I’ll just take a rain check!” she said in a mocking tone as she rinsed the shampoo out of her mane. “Now I owe that guy an apology for wasting his time as a phony customer. That Zipp though… I really got to hoof it to her. She figured me out like there was a liar liar tail on fire sign stapled right to my forehead. And I did kind of make it too easy with all my nervous jabbering. And telling them I grew up in Bridlewood like Izzy? Come on! I was practically screaming, ‘hey, I’m not who I’m pretending to be! I’m actually here to steal your precious lantern!’”
She paused for a second and took a deep breath before continuing.
“If not for that other pegasus… What was her name again? Oh, right… Pipp. If not for her, my cover would have been completely blown and I’d probably be sitting in Maretime Bay jail right now. Even without having the lantern on me, who would ever take my—a stranger’s—word over hers. Zipp’s a local and a national hero. I’m just a nopony unicorn who can barely put a sentence together when she’s nervous and appeared in town just a few days ago.”
Misty sighed once again. “And I’m rambling.” She turned off the shower and opened the curtain, climbed out of the bathtub and grabbed her towel. As she was drying herself off, she couldn’t stop herself from recalling what happened immediately after Zipp had confronted and cornered her in the salon and Pipp came to her defense: Zipp had approached her with a big frown, her ears flat, and a sullen tone in her voice.
“Misty, I am so sorry. I never should have accused you of being a thief… or chased you around town… or cornered you in here.”
Misty then remembered Pipp’s warm smile, and how Zipp’s demeanor suddenly shifted to something more playful.
“Guess I need some more practice with this whole detective thing, huh?”
Finally, Misty thought about how Zipp smiled and offered her hoof to her apologetically. She placed her towel back on the rack and examined herself in the mirror once more. Her eyes were still partially red, but at least the fur on her cheeks was all cleaned up and the color back to normal. Still freshly washed, her mane lay flat on her head hanging over her side and face, but the desire to style it as she liked it wasn’t there. “It’ll get all messed up again when I go to bed anyway. I’ll fix it in the morning.”
As she gazed at herself in the mirror, she saw the friendly faces of Zipp and Pipp in her mind again. A tickle of warmth found its way into Misty’s being and she smiled a little. She opened the washroom door, turned off the lights, and left the space.
Misty took a single, brief glance at the magic pool and Opaline’s throne before returning to her room. Once inside she took a moment to look around, although it was hardly anything to write home about, consisting of her bed, blanket, now ruined, tear-stained pillow, a nightstand with a single drawer, a closet where she kept the few personal effects she did have, and her phone. If it wasn’t the middle of the night, she would have seen out over the mountainside the tower is built on through her window. After a minute, she crawled back into her bed and examined her pillow. “Hopefully this can still be cleaned,” she said. “I’m sure that, ‘getting Misty a new pillow,’ isn’t exactly high on Opaline’s priorities.”
Looking around her room again, Misty suddenly started to think back to what Izzy had called a Traditional Unicorn Sleepover, and how nice the Crystal Brighthouse was both in and out. The first thing she recalled was the warm greeting she had gotten from Izzy, Sunny, Pipp, and to a lesser extent but still a nice welcome, Zipp, as soon as they opened the door for her. Then Izzy asked her what her last name was, and Misty chuckled as she thought about the babbling mess she became trying to make up an alias on the spot. Brightdawn is a good sounding name, she pondered. And those ponies were so nice.
Misty rolled onto her side and gazed at her window, letting out a wistful sigh. She maintained her smile and licked her lips. “That ponycorn was the most scrumptious thing I've ever tasted! I’d do anything to get some more of that little slice of heaven. And Pipp had that little fail with the glitter and got a glitter mustache and beard.”
Misty snorted and had to pull her pillow over her muzzle to muffle her laugh so she wouldn’t risk waking up Opaline. She chuckled for several minutes before quieting down. The games... The snacks... And the stories... I don't even really care that their version of the history of Equestria is completely wrong. I never in my life… Is this… Is this what friendship is? It feels really nice.
But then, the good mood Misty had gained since hopping in the shower came crashing down. Again, her ears fell and she frowned. “If only Opaline could be like that. I try my hardest but it never seems to be enough for her. Still she could give me some credit. Just a little bit.”
Her eyes started to water once more. “Who am I kidding? She’s right just like I was thinking earlier. My hardest has yet to give us anything we can really hold on to, and nopony wants to hold on to baggage that can’t perform. If I don’t shape up, Opaline will probably kick me out.”
Her thoughts went back to Sunny and the others. “And those ponies will find out the truth eventually. When they do they won’t want anything to do with me. Zipp already did, but Pipp saved me from being exposed because she doesn’t know the truth. She’s going to feel like such a fool for sticking up for me.”
Tears began to run down her face but not as hard as before. “I don’t want to abandon Opaline after everything she’s done for me,” she said after several minutes of crushing silence. “But at the same time, Izzy invited me to a sleepover without even having met me before, and I did really have a lot of fun.”
Misty let out another wistful sigh, wiped her eyes and sniffled. She pulled her blanket over herself then hugged the pillow against her chest. “Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. This really sucks. Why can’t it be a bed and a soft place? I want both.”
Finally, Misty drifted off to sleep while imagining Opaline, Sunny, and all of Sunny’s friends, including little Sparky the dragon, smiling and embracing her like one big happy family.
Author's Note
Thanks for reading!
