“And it will work?” Fleur’s eyes were not on the withered grey stallion, but on the bottle that he held.
Indeed, she had done her very best not to look at his wrinkled flesh or his unkempt black mane, fading in a most unsightly way to white at the front. Had he not heard of mane-dye? And his eyes! Oh, Celestia knew that red eyes were most unbecoming on any pony, but on this stallion they were downright hideous. No, Fleur did not want to look at his face at all. Not if she could help it.
But the little bottle resting on his upturned hoof was another story altogether.
Pink shimmered in its depths, pink and pastel purple and clamshell blue. A little rainbow of colours, but only the very prettiest of them. Nothing brash or bold, just soft and subtle.
Like her.
“Of course it will work,” said the stallion in his raspy voice. “I would never sell a defective product.”
“It’s just…” and for the first time, Fleur did raise her doubtful eyes to his face. His rather undeniably ugly face. She would never be so uncouth as to say it aloud — in Canterlot one skated delicately around unpleasant truths. One never spoke them aloud.
Understanding dawned, his bushy eyebrows rising in a way that made the hairs ripple and Fleur wince. If she were bolder, less respectful of the proper courtesies, she would recommend Paulo Portico’s Beauty Palace to him. With a pair of tweezers and a great deal of elbow grease, Paulo would be able to sort this unsavoury creature out. Paulo was a genius.
“I have not taken it myself, my Lady,” said the stallion, humbly. “I save it for those more…worthy than I am.”
“Hm.” Fleur pursed her lips. At least the potion was not totally disproven by the looks of its maker — but how was she to know it worked?
“There are plenty of others who have sipped my tinctures,” wheedled the stallion. “I can’t name names, of course.”
“Of course,” agreed Fleur, waiting for him to name somepony she knew.
“But a certain Duchess has visited my little shop.”
Her mind racing, Fleur pounced on the word duchess. The Duchess of l’Alhambra — of course. She rarely stirred beyond the bounds of her own estate now, and was well past seventy, but she barely looked half that. Ponies had speculated on her secret for years, and now Fleur was the one who knew it.
“And once, long ago, a pair of sisters visited my predecessor’s shop.”
Fleur looked up sharply. He couldn’t mean — but look at the sly smile on his face; that was exactly who he meant. Was he saying the princesses had partaken of this mysterious potion?
“And,” the stallion continued, as though she needed any more persuasion, “For one so lovely as you are…it would be an unspeakable pity for such beauty to fade. Don’t you think?”
Fleur knew that she was a beautiful pony. Her flowing pink mane, her statuesque form. Her glimmering white spire of a horn, longer than any other unicorn’s. Poems had been written for her. Sonnets. Odes. She possessed an ethereal, almost spiritual beauty. Something almost alicorn.
Before this day was out, she would possess something a little more alicorn.
“Life eternal,” whispered the stallion. “Beauty unchanging. Just for you, Lady Fleur. Just for you.”
Looking the way she did, didn’t she owe it to the world to ensure that she stayed this way forever? It was…it was practically a public service.
No, more than that. It was her duty.
Fleur de Lis plucked the bottle from his hoof — using her magic, of course, lest his ugliness somehow sully the delicate white of her coat — and she downed it in one.
“Fleur, darling! Look this way, Fleur!”
“Lady Fleur! Lady Fleur! Look over here! Give us a smile, Lady Fleur!”
Flashbulbs popped, ponies bellowed, and Fleur stood unmoving in the very centre of the red carpet, a serene smile on her face. Her gown draped marvellously across her flank, revealing just enough leg and a hint of cutie mark. Expertly arranged, as ever, by Skylark; the girl was a treasure.
“Lady Fleur, how do you do it? How do you look so good? Tell us your secret, Lady Fleur!”
For the first time, Fleur moved her head to look at the speaker, faceless behind the flash of his camera. Statuesque beauty was marvellous, timeless, but sometimes a very little animation was required.
“A lady never tells her secrets,” she said, and dimpled perfectly as she did so.
The press redoubled their howls, and Skylark all but bowed as she pulled the door open.
Fifty years. Fifty years Fleur had been doing this. Fifty years at the epicentre of the Canterlot whirlpool, and she was still here. Her position maintained, her beauty unmatched. As ageless as the princesses themselves.
Fleur swept through the double doors and strutted toward the grand staircase just as she had once strutted down the catwalk. The ball was below, all the partygoers already assembled, waiting for her. Fashionably late as ever; no party could really begin until the Lady Fleur arrived.
She halted at the top of the stairs, just as she had practised in her mirror-lined hallway at home, and she struck a pose that would have made an alicorn weep.
But as she snapped into place, her dress, so beautifully crafted and so artfully arranged, tangled in her legs. Her hoof came down hard, too hard, and her dress gave the most terrible ripping sound she had ever heard. The pose forgotten, Fleur lunged for the tear at her waistline, aiming to catch it in her magic and cover it with her perfect pink curls before the press could see — but she reached too far, just a little too far, and suddenly she was wobbling, she was teetering — suddenly the Lady Fleur was falling.
A sudden impact, a sickening crunch. A flare of pain, white-hot and agonising, followed by a sudden cessation of all pain that was almost more concerning.
And then Fleur lay very still at the foot of the stairs, enjoying the whispers of fear and distress, knowing that all eyes were certainly on her. The fall had been a grievous error, but she could turn this around. She looked very fetching when she slept, she knew. Her long lashes swept her naturally rosy cheeks, and her curls framed her face like the work of art it was. Fancy Pants had told her often enough before his slow decline into old age and the inevitable divorce. And since then, Hotshot Hotspur had told her the same thing every morning, his beard tickling her skin as he whispered into her neck. Those Prench stallions were so passionate.
A hoof brushed her neck, feeling for her pulse, and Fleur knew that the possessor of that hoof would surely be marvelling at the porcelain quality of her fine jawbone. She began to rehearse the fluttering of her eyelashes, the look of sweet surprise she would don — oh, you were all so worried for little old me? — when she heard it.
“She’s dead,” Skylark whispered. “She — there’s no pulse. Lady Fleur is dead.”
And Fleur’s heart twisted and shrivelled within her as fear surged.
“Let me through,” said an authoritative voice from the crowd. “I’m a doctor.”
Another hoof at her neck. An ear at her mouth. Fleur stayed very still, no longer sure what to do.
“No breath. No pulse.” The voice was sorrowful, but matter of fact. “The Lady Fleur is gone.”
And Fleur realised that she was indeed dead. A noble could not die and then come back. Not when she had died so publicly.
It was over. It was all over.
Skylark began to sob, and someone gently placed a cloak over Fleur’s face, obscuring the little light that filtered through her closed lids.
And that was how Fleur de Lis, the Ageless Marchioness of Canterlot, finally perished.
The blasted sands of the desert shimmered in the hot evening air. Scoured by the wind, scorched by the sun, the dunes seemed almost to ripple like the waves of the long-dried oceans.
If one stood still long enough to see it, they would roll like those waves did too.
And the sun-bleached bones of the ghost stood atop the little nub of rock that had once been Canter Peak — at least, she thought it had — and looked out at what had once been her home.
A few withered scraps of flesh clung yet to those cracked bones. Blackened and burned by the sun, like everything else that had once lived in this place.
What would happen, she wondered, when her bones, too, were dust? Would she linger still? Would she be scattered across the desert, piece by piece, remembering always what she had once been?
A coat whiter than even these bones. A mane soft and pink as a sunset cloud. Eyes that laughed, danced, seduced — whatever she needed of them. Now just a pair of empty sockets.
Life eternal. Beauty unchanging.
Just for you, Lady Fleur. Just for you.
