Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining brightly on a spotlessly clean sky, trademark of a competent pegasus weather department, and every color seems to be more vibrant thanks to it. You are sitting on the large north-facing balcony of your estate, sipping from a cup of tea, looking at the scenery before you that might have been more fitting to a painting. Great patches of farmland (your family's farmlands, to be more specific) stretch on halfway to the horizon, bordering a forest that is teeming with life, all of that surrounded by the river that heads to Ponyville.

Birds fly in the sky, paying occasional visits to earth pony farmers below them who seem to carry a few seeds in their saddle bags just for that, and all manner of critters and creatures wander to and from the life-giving river. The perfect picture of coexistence in a plentiful land, crowned by the faraway background of untouched mountains and green lands.

You can even see Canterlot in the distance, that gleaming marble city on the mountainside next to the great waterfall that feeds dozens of rivers on the equestrian valley.

A knock comes from the balcony's glass door, gently shaking you out of your reverie. You float your cup of tea down to its saucer, and patiently wait.

"Please excuse me," you hear the glass door being opened, her voice finally reaching you after a second round of hesitant knocking, which you once again didn't answer, "you called for me, Mrs. Velvet?"

It is Soft Sweeps, as you expected, and you don't need to turn around to know that she is… at the very least confused, if her voice is any indication.

"Yes, I did. Please, come outside Soft Sweeps" you answer calmly, still gazing at the peaceful scenario before you, floating your cup of tea for another sip.

You hear her light steps approaching you, and you go over a few mental notes before starting what you have in mind for this evening.

Soft Sweeps is a young mare. Well, you should stop with the habit of referring to anypony younger than you as "young", but this does apply to her. She had been working in Canterlot at your family's main house for some time, although you are not sure of how long, before being moved to Ponyville when you asked for a pegasus that could be dedicated to caring for Silky Stream.

And that in itself was… maybe just a few years ago? You still recall the final interview you made with her, just to be extra sure. She was brilliantly recommended as an excellent, dedicated and trustworthy maid, and you can distinctly remember the energy she had in her eyes back then, which ultimately caused you to trust her with the most important thing in your life: your own daughter.

But… when did that change? Was it something slow and steady that you failed to notice? You can think back that Soft Sweeps has been growing more and more flustered as time went by, but you assumed it was because she has been in charge of an extremely energetic filly. But was it really that? Could this have been a sudden change, caused my something much more recent?

Whatever it is, your intuition tells you that Silky Stream has something to do with it. She might not have been the cause, but at the very least she was the catalyst. You are sure that Soft Sweeps' recent demeanor has become a lot more noticeable ever since your daughter started going to school.

"May I help you with anything?" the mare is practically behind you now, and you can tell that she is looking around, perhaps searching for Ponpon who would usually be there with you. "I was rather surprised when Mr. Stormchaser said he would be taking the young Miss to school and…"

You close your eyes, taking in the sweet taste of the tea, as well as the slight delay in her voice before she said "young Miss".

"Yes, everypony needs a break every now and then, don't you agree?", you stop for half a second to let that hit her, but continue before she can answer, "and you know my husband, he loves his father and daughter moments. I also dismissed Ponpon for today, so please take a seat."

"Pardon, Mrs. Velvet…?" the confusion in her voice is obvious by now.

But you merely wave a hoof towards the cushioned seat next to yours, as lush and luxurious as your own, and get back to your tea.

You hear her pause for a moment, and you think you can picture the expression she is wearing. She is a maid who has worked for a noble family for some time now, and that is not a job you can survive in without having attention to certain cares and details. You are the lady she serves, and the place you just motioned her to sit in is a seat meant for guests, your guests, ponies of your station and status. And you wonder what she is thinking that you mean by this invitation.

Whatever it is that she is thinking about, you just hope she doesn't think she's walking into a trap.

Well, she technically is, but it's not that sort of trap.

"If you'll excuse me…?" she finally gives in, maybe out of courage, or maybe out of fear that she had been hesitating for too long, sitting on the cushioned seat. She even loses her balance for a few moments as the unexpectedly fluffiness of the thing makes her sink more than she thought she would.

You sneak a peek from the corner of you eye while she is busy reorienting herself.

Her maid uniform seems to be impeccable, covering most of her light caramel coat except for her legs and wings, and her dark mane is tied for convenience. The short dress is still enough to cover her cutie mark though.

But more importantly, you can see that the mare is tense. The well-kept uniform just makes it more clear that she is stiff in some places. And you know those signs well: accumulated stress, the mounting-up of a slow burn over long periods of time, symptoms that most ponies wouldn't be able to notice on themselves unless somepony else pointed them out, or if they had enough life experience for it.

And Soft Sweeps doesn't strike you as a pony who has the latter.

You sigh, imperceptibly, as the mare finally finishes regaining her bearings and reaches something resembling a sitting position.

"Would you like some tea?" you ask with a pleasant smile, finally turning her way.

You see her struggle with the reflex of moving to the kettle in order to serve you at the slightest mention of the word "tea", before reigning herself back in once she finishes interpreting the rest of the question.

"No Mrs. Velvet, thank you," she answers a moment later.

No tea then, you nod to yourself, wondering if she is actually in pain by how tightly shut she is keeping her wings.

No tea, and no sign that she will slowly ease down either? Something tells you that appreciating the scenery in silence will only cause her to worry more. Better keep her mind busy then, who knows where her thoughts might take her otherwise?

Better keep her talking, you conclude. Perhaps a less indirect approach.

"I have to say, pegasus really are something else," you think out loud, "I mean, as a unicorn I have no idea how it must feel like to fly. It's even a bit worrying to watch Silky fly, sometimes. But the whole walking on clouds thing, and the domain you have over the weather… We can see all the way to Canterlot from here thanks to how clear some pegasi keep the sky," you say, absent-mindedly pointing towards the capital of Equestria as you speak.

And you think you see her nod, mumbling some sort of cautious agreement.

Not going to speak unless directly asked a question? Good heavens, this girl either had maid-ing hammered into her, or she is twice as nervous as her body language suggests.

"You worked on my family's main house before coming here, didn't you? How was it there?" you ask, floating your teacup towards you once again.

You ponder on how long you should sip, as it might make her realize you won't be talking for a short while, or if you should pour her a cup and gently ask her to join you and drink some. But, much to your relief, she finally starts answering before you come to a decision.

"It was… nice, Mrs. Velvet. The mansion in Canterlot is much larger than here, but the other maids were kind to me, and the Velvets were good to us…"

She is speaking in a halting matter, and you stay quiet for a few moments after she stops talking, waiting for the inevitable "but" that surely is about to follow. However, it never arrives, as much as you can practically feel it hanging over the mare. And that causes a thought to bubble in your head…

You are still sure that she is acting weirdly due to something recent, or at least that involves her life ever since she was transferred here… But now, something inside you whispers that there's more to it.

You eye the marble city on the far distance. The way she's hesitating to talk about her previous assignment… something about her life when she was in Canterlot, perhaps?

"Yes, well, if you're saying they were 'good' then I sure hope I'm a bit better than good, over here," you say with a small laugh, "but I don't think I ever asked you, how did you ever become a maid? I mean, you're incredibly good at it, but what led you to it?"

You let the question float in the air for a few moments. Hopefully her answer will give you a hint on what direction to go.

But those few moments slowly become a reasonable amount of moments, and you sip at your tea as a full minute comes by and passes.

You know this sensation. This is silence, the tense, brittle kind of silence. The kind that usually precedes the sound of something breaking.

You calmly float your teacup down and take a deep breath, bringing out the gentlest voice you can.

"You know, Soft Sweeps? I can't shake the feeling that something is up with you, or has been for some time now. Is everything all right?" you turn to face her once more.

[The nursemaid's problem, breakpoints: 40/100]

[Roll: 84 + 11 (Diplomacy) + 5 (Beautiful) + 5 (GRAIL bonus) = 105]

You ask softly, in the same tone of voice you would use if your daughter was scared of something.

And you can see it in her face, she is scared of something. You see tension, then confusion, then perhaps fear or something else. Until her expression changes into something you were honestly not expecting.

She starts crying, and it takes a good amount of your hard-earned experience for you to hide your surprise.

"Soft? What's the matter?" you ask gently, but the mare doesn't seem to listen. Her sobbing grows heavier and heavier, and what little embarrassment she felt while she tried to control herself soon crumbles, and she starts moving desperately to try and wipe her tears with her uniform.

Before you can even think of how to respond, she is already fully crying, her hoofs covering her eyes and her whole body trembling.

You freeze for half a second, the thought of how young she is once again coming to your mind. She may be a maid, and one who is very good at her job, but what about the pony underneath that frilled black and white dress? She worked for your family for some time, in Canterlot, and have been with you in Ponyville for just a few years. But even so, if this is her first tour within a noble family then she must not have much experience at all. And you're not thinking about work experience, you are thinking about life experience.

For all you know right now… for all you care right now, she is just a young pegasus mare, and for whatever reason it might be she is crying her eyes out in front of you.

Life can get to anypony like that, sometimes. As much as it pains you even your own daughter might have a moment like this, not many years from now. You feel a knot in your heart when you think about it… Heavens, going by the way you're feeling, Soft Sweeps might very well be your daughter right now. Just a young pegasus who can't bear the weight of something very heavy.

"Shh… it's okay Soft, don't worry…", she very nearly jumps in fright when she realizes you just sat down next to her. You can feel her body tense up in fear when you put your hoofs around her, but you don't care. You just caress her mane gently, bringing her into a hug.

"Its all right… just let it out…"

And her nervousness finally starts bleeding out of her. Her crying grows heavier as she hugs you back in an almost fierce way, but soon you can see her wings untense, sagging to her sides, and her grip on you grows weaker and weaker, until she is only lying against you in a hug.

You undo her tied mane with a bit of magic, and keep her in a hug while stroking her mane.

"There, there…" you finally say. She's still sobbing slightly, but seems to be much calmer now. "Now, do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

Your tone of voice all but says that she doesn't have to, if she does not want to. But you feel a tinge of relief when you see her taking a deep breath.

"I… I'm sorry Mrs. Velvet. It's just that… I'm so scared…"

You feel her slightly pushing against you, and you let her go, the two of you sitting side by side on the same cushion. She keeps looking down while she talks, but you can see that she keeps the side of her body pressing against yours, almost as if she's afraid of letting go.

And true to her words, you also feel that she is trembling a bit.

"I'm scared that I will lose my job… or that I'll screw up somehow and…" she looks up, towards the distant Canterlot, a few more tears appearing and running down her face, "my family lives there, you know? Back in Canterlot. We never really had much but," she chuckles a bit, the sound half-mixing with a hiccup, "you wouldn't believe how glad I was when I got my cutie mark. Me and my siblings did the best we could to help at home, although there wasn't a lot we could do. But once I got my cutie mark? There in the capital, nobles will fight tooth and hoof to employ a pony with a feather duster on her flank. They almost only employ ponies who were borne for the job, so once I got mine me and my family knew I did it."

She kept her eyes on Canterlot, and you can see a hint of a smile creeping on her lips as some memories come back to her.

But it's the broken sort of smile. The tears that keep flowing down her eyes make it abundantly clear.

"And I did it, Mrs. Velvet. Started small, working for whoever would employ a filly, and climbed my way up as I got older. It was terrifying, sometimes, getting scolded by a noble when I did something wrong or when I had to spend whole days away from home, but I brought every bit I earned back to my family. Even if sometimes I was t-treated like some back-alley pegasus that dirtied half the things I cleaned that day."

Her voice trembled a bit as she talked, though her eyes kept themselves looking at Canterlot.

"But I started working with more maids as I got hired to bigger places, and they'd give me a hoof. Help me lie about my age and all, help me with my chores when they realized I wasn't keeping up with the job because I was too tired or hungry or..."

She stops for a moment, looking down to the ground again while taking a long sniff, trying to reign in a few tears, and you can't help but think back at how she said the other maids were "kind" to her on your family's house in Canterlot. You have been in Ponyville for years now, so you weren't there when she was first employed, but just how far from being a fully grown mare was she, when she started working there?

Or maybe the right question is not "how far from being a mare", but rather an outright "how young was she?"

"And then they sent me here…" her small smile totally disappears now, "and I… please don't get me wrong Mrs. Velvet, I love working here but… Sometimes I just miss my family so much… but I can't spare the bits or the working days on a ticket to Canterlot. I mean, thank Celestia for Ponpon taking me in to live in her home, but I even send over the bits I save on rent and…"

She covers her face with her hoofs again, and you can feel her lean more heavily onto you.

"I can't lose my job Mrs. Velvet, I… I just can't," she finally stops speaking, and you can feel her sobbing slightly every now and then.

"Soft, Soft… why didn't you ever tell me about any of this?" you ask gently, but honestly, "you work for me on paper, sure, but I'm still a mare just like you. And what's with this fear of losing your job? You're one of the best maids we have here, and Ponpon showers you with praise whenever we are talking about housework. Me and Stormchaser even trust you with being Silky Stream's caretaker, so why do you think like this?"

You put a hoof around her again, on a side hug. A lot of things make a little more sense now. Ponpon is an experienced maid that has worked with you for years now, and she also has a house-cleaning cutie mark now that you think about it, but she always seemed a little protective about Soft Sweeps. She must have taken Soft Sweeps to live with her on the very first day she arrived, from what you can tell.

But you're still slightly, only slightly, disturbed that Ponpon never told you about any of this. You just hope that Soft Sweeps won't see you and your husband as terrifying nobles anymore.

"It's because…" she starts answering, but you can feel a final bit of hesitation on her voice that lasts for a few seconds. "It's the young miss, Mrs. Velvet… I could clean this whole estate from roof to basement if you asked me, but I've never been good with fillies. I mean, I could take care of my younger siblings just fine, but the young miss is a noble filly, and she…"

She stops for a while, but you don't interrupt her. You can feel that she's mustering her courage to say something, and whatever it is she is slowly convincing herself that she can trust you. You can also feel the weight in her words as she says them, like your daughter being a "noble" filly makes her some sort of delicate timebomb.

You feel another knot in your heart, and you wonder exactly what sorts of experiences she must have been through while at her work.

"It was fine before she went to school, Mrs. Velvet. I could keep up with the young miss, and she's the sweetest filly I ever met. But the thing is…" she takes a deep breath, as if finally steeling herself, "sometimes after class she just ups and disappears. I have no idea where she goes, and she won't stop doing it no matter how much I ask her to. But most of the days she just disappears as soon as the school bell rings, vanishing in that stampede of foals, and I spend the rest of the afternoon terrified, looking for her and…"

You feel her almost curling up, her voice growing smaller and smaller.

"And I just lost my job by telling you this, didn't I? I'll... I'll go see myself out and…"

She tries to push away from you and stand up, but you keep her firmly in your hug. She looks up to you and sees the disappointed expression on your face, and you feel her curl up in fear even more.

Of course you are disappointed, but not at her. At yourself, mostly, for not realizing you had such a problem sooner, and at your daughter for apparently completely disobeying her own caretaker this much!

You know that you might have reacted differently if you simply discovered that your daughter has been running away almost every day after school. But also knowing a bit of context can make a whole world of difference.

Sure, anywhere can be dangerous for an unaccompanied filly, even Ponyville. And you can see in her eyes why she is so terrified about it. But you can also see she has more reasons than a pony would normally have to be feeling like this about the whole situation, so you know you can, or rather that you must, forgive her for simply failing to report that.

So this whole situation rests on you, both for not noticing it before, and when it comes to making it right.

"Soft Sweeps," you say with a firm and serious voice, although still keeping her in a hug.

"Y-yes Mrs. Velvet…?" she meekly replies.

"You are among the very damned best maids we have in this house, and I wouldn't accept your transfer to Canterlot, or anywhere else for that matter, even if I got a letter from my father," you un-hug her, but still keep a grip on her with both your hoofs, and you look her in the eye as you talk to her, "and I hope that you can trust me if you ever need anything, or if anything complicated like this ever comes up again. And I mean anything."

Her terrified expression has now turned into one of surprise as you keep talking.

"You are also getting a raise," her eyes and mouth go wide open, "and I'll be taking care of Silky's recent antics personally."

You finally let go of her, and the open wings she was just about to use to escape from you sag down to her back like a pair of balloons.

You smile at her, a genuine smile of happiness from the fact that she opened herself to you, and that (you hope) she trusts you a bit more, even if just by a little. Right after that you get up from her cushion and sit back on your own, floating the kettle to serve a second teacup and raising your own towards you.

"Now, about that whole importance of taking a break that I said earlier, you can take the rest of the day off if you want but," you nod towards the teacup you just served, "I would love to drink a bit of tea with a friend. If it catches her fancy, that is."

The wide-mouthed Soft Sweeps slowly turns back to… normal. A refreshing normal, a non-flustered Soft Sweeps kind of normal that, now that you think about it, you haven't seen in a long time. Her expression slowly opens a smile, and you turn to face the scenery when you realize there might be a threat of tears on her eyes again.

You hear her sniff one final time, but you make sure not to pry as she clears her eyes with a hoof, and soon enough she reaches for the cup of tea that is waiting in the table.

"I'd love to, Mrs. Velvet!" you hear her answer.

And you sigh in relief as a pleasant afternoon of tea opens itself before you.

You have learned that Silky Stream, apparently, goes somewhere else after school. This might be some sort of rebellion against Soft Sweeps, the mare she was supposed to listen to, this might also be an attempt at running away, or this just might be something else entirely. Whatever it is, you will use this information to follow through in your investigation.

A choice to address Soft Sweeps' personal (familial) situation will not be directly presented, but write-ins about it will now be accepted.

Soft Sweeps is now extremely loyal to you.