Swift woke up long before her alarm ever sounded, she often did, but tonight she was having difficulty getting back to sleep. She pulled the heavy comforter up and turned over in the bed several times before laying still on her side. The analog clock on the bedside table read 2:37.

After about five more hours of not-sleep later Swift found herself faced with her first great decision of the day: smash the alarm clock or don’t. The upsides to destroying the clock were obvious: it would stop ringing, the raging downside was that she’d have to pay for its replacement.

Ultimately, she decided to spend the energy to get out of bed and turn the stupid alarm off the normal way. It wasn’t like she had enough bits to waste them on every stupid whim she had — no matter how annoying the ringing was. Swift glared down at the clock. Well, I’m up now. No better time to get my day started.

Swift shook her head and snorted in muted amusement at that thought before she walked over to the washroom and turned the shower on to get the water warming up. She was able to hide the evidence of her activities the previous evening from the receptionist because of the dimness of the hotel lobby, but she knew that nopony would be fooled when she was walking around in daylight. Besides, Swift liked to keep clean — grime dulled any tool.

She looked into the mirror and tried smiling at herself like a pony might smile at any other, but stopped after a few moments. She’d pulled her mouth and eyes too wide and what had resulted from the attempt was more of a creepy serial killer smile than a friendly hi-nice-to-meet-you smile. A few attempts later she stopped practicing her smile and stopped wasting the hot water.

***

After she had cleaned herself and the room, she left the cramped space and made her way to the receptionist’s desk. She set her briefcase down and looked over the marble counter at the unicorn engrossed in a copy of the Manehattan Times.

“Is there anything interesting in that?” Swift asked in a dull monotone. She hadn’t meant to startle the pony, but he jumped a little bit in his seat before putting down the newspaper and looking back at her anyways.

“In the paper? Well,” he paused, worrying the paper a bit, “apparently the griffons raided the port and damaged some of the new ships they were building there. They also sent one of the city guardsponies to the ER. Oh! And apparently the local hoofball club is going up to Vanhoover for the championship game against the Phillydelphia Flyers!”

“That’s nice. I guess. I don’t really follow sportsball.” The desk pony’s eyebrows rose and his eyes widened with a small gasp at her nonchalant pronouncement. Did I say something wrong? Surely not following big huffball teams isn’t that controversial?

“You don’t like hoofball?” The clerk’s obvious discomfort melted away as he focused on a topic he liked as opposed to the strange mare in front of him. “That’s a travesty! The Flyers have been having an amazing season, especially since they’re all pegasi playing an earth pony sport.” The clerk leaned in. “Though if I had to bet on a team I’m going to stick to my roots you know? The Flyers might be cool and all, but we need this win if we want a chance to get to the big league!”

Swift waited for him to pull back across the desk and into his chair before she continued speaking. “you have fun with your betting then. I have a train I need to get to.” She then ducked her head down to grab the case and escape the conversation.

“You’re going to the station? I know where that is! It’s really simple. You just take a left out the door and follow Main Street down to where it ends in the giant brick train station. It’s impossible to miss!” He exclaimed.

With her teeth now firmly clamped around the case’s carry handle she merely made a somewhat positive sounding grunt of affirmation before she walked out of the building and went left. Does he speak so much all the time? Surely that has to get exhausting at some point.

Like the talkative clerk pony had said, finding the main thoroughfare was as simple as heading left out of the building, but that didn’t mean she would lower her guard. She was alone here, far from home, and far from help if anything turned sour on her.

As soon as she stepped into the loose crowd on the sidewalk before her, Swift became nigh indistinguishable from any other pegasi headed towards the station. It was a Sunday, so the sidewalks weren’t as packed as they might’ve been at this hour on most days. Many ponies were either off of school or had a later start to work than the usual 9:00 that had become standard over the last hundred years. She stayed near the edges of the walk facing the street and began pony watching on her way north.

Down on the street Swift saw solo and teams of earth ponies pulling expensive carriages and flat transport carts full of goods to destinations unknown. Several unicorns and pegasi were cleaning the massive glass windows of several skyscrapers. Tourists of all races walked into the city’s interior from the direction she was headed, probably after having arrived on an overnight or early morning train. She even caught a few pegasi glancing at her, confused as to why she wasn’t flying to her destination.

About a half hour of walking later Swift found herself looking at a squat steel-walled building with an impressive glass semicircle ceiling. A large set of wide stone steps led up to a set of massively oversized brass plated doors that led to the interior of the station.

Swift glanced to either side of the intersection before she crossed the street — as any normal pony should — made her way up the stairs, and stepped through the impractically sized threshold. The inside wasn’t grand necessarily, the space was mostly taken up by overhead bridges that led to the various play and a few small waiting benches. The platforms had safety rails with gaps only where the passenger cars would open, and access to them was regulated by a ticketing counter off to the left of the doors.

Swift walked over to the line for an elderly mare with bifocals perched at the end of her muzzle. After only a few minutes of waiting it was Swift’s turn to purchase tickets.

“Next,” the mare said. Swift walked forward to the low counter and put down her case. “Destination, name, departure timeframe, and number of luggage items.”

“Whichever station is closest to Cloudsdale at the moment, Swift Wing, as soon as possible, one.” Swift replied. She appreciated the directness of the question, there wasn’t any subtleties that she could miss or convey wrong.

“Purpose for visit?”

Swift blinked and paused for a moment at the request. “I… am going there to look for an old friend of mine that I lost contact with.”

“A personal matter then. Let me take a look at the scheduled departures for something that might work for you dear.” The mare opened a large binder full of train schedules and riffled through to an earlier section. “There’s a train leaving in two hours for Canterlot. From there you can make a switch to reach Ponyville station. Cloudsdale should be fairly nearby; just ask the weather team or the mayor about it, they should know the way. Does that work for you?”

It’s less direct than I would’ve liked, but it gets me to Cloudsdale and that’s what matters. “It will suffice.”

“Okay… your total for the two tickets is one hundred and twenty seven bits.”

Swift grimaced momentarily before she smoothed out her features and reached back into her saddlebags to grab the requisite bits. I’ll probably have to rebalance my saddlebags later if I want to fly at all well after this. That’s half of the crystal bits I have to live on until I can get a job. At least I still have the gold ones. “…here you go.”

“Alright, step on through.”

Swift left quickly for the platform indicated on her ticket, more than happy to stop talking with ponies for a while. Once she got to her platform she put down her case and sat down on one of the benches to wait for her train to arrive.

Swift sat there, alone, for almost an hour without interruption, until her small island of isolation was popped by two stallions coming to sit on either side of her at the bench. “Hello there stranger! Could we interest you in our new product?”

Sweet Saviors no. Please no.

Author's Note

Have a good Night!