The Hands of our Fair Empire
Emeline Mistdancer
The cold runs over the streets and crystalizes my breath in a wave of icy tingles. The sky is a grey cascade, broken only in clusters by orange beams, the light of a distant sun raised by a distant royal alicorn from a distant royal tower. The silence is calming and it reminds me of youth, but the cold has never been welcome. I shiver in my scarf and coat, and keep trotting down the broken concrete, teeth chattering and cheeks flushed.
An old stallion eyes me from his sidewalk trash pile, his pitiful eyes begging for even a single bit. They are wet and he is sniffling and cold but I do not have a single bit. I stop and look at him with soft eyes.
"I'm sorry. I don't have any money."
He doesn't phase. He only looks at me and then speaks, his words warm.
"It's okay. It's okay."
He looks down, and I begin to walk away, but he looks up and smiles at me, then says, "You have a very pretty face, sweetie. A kind heart, too. I don't need your money. You do. In a time like this, we must look out for ourselves."
Quick thoughts go out of my mind and I don't mull it over for long. I lean down and hug him, the stench of his poverty wafting up and deluding in the frosted air. Our warmth binds in the chill, and when I break the hug he says thank you and a tear drips from one of his old, green eyes.
I start my walk again, hooves clicking on the broken slabs of grey below, and the neon sign a few meters away hums. The wind whistles furiously, my scarf dances in front of me, caught by the drifts of ice and carried away, rolling and twisting, gliding across the murky earth. I quicken my pace and catch it in my teeth, vainly trying to toss it back over my neck before giving up. Unicorns have it easy.
The wind whistles again, but then I realize that wasn't the wind, and I turn to see three stallions standing under the overhang of an old shop across the road. One with a dark, ruffled mane is looking at me with eyes of ice, his eyebrows low and his companions grim in their expressions. His eyes are piercing mine. I turn away and I continue to walk towards my destination, the second neon sign, but that one whistles again and I go faster. It's now words being yelled, but the echoes and the wind make it indecipherable. I don't care, I'm trotting faster, and make it in the building before they've moved too far. The glass door shuts and I wish warmth would hit me, but Blackfeather must've turned off the heat for the entrance chamber like he said he was going to.
I can't lock the street door, because then there'd be no way to get customers to come in, but I do hurry up and hit the call button. It crackles to life and stays crackling for a few seconds, and then Clearwater's silky voice fills the noise.
"Hi! Welcome to the Lotus L-"
"It's me, can you open up?"
"Oh, sure, Emm. Why didn't you just go in the back?"
"Just open up please, there's some cults out here."
The door clicks and swings inwards, dragging across the floor with that faint screech that had left black trails across the floor after years of use. I trot in, glancing cautiously over my shoulder one last time, but they hadn't followed me. They looked too skinny for cultists, but there was always that chance, and the mane was cultist, I knew. The eyes too.
I enter the back lounge, careful not to disturb any of the patrons, of which there were two, both of them groomed and dressed in formalwear, the stark opposite of the stallion just outside. I looked at them and a pang in my heart made me bite my lip. I continued towards the second door. It was warm in here.
They tipped their heads in greeting and I smiled as I passed them, twitching my wing as a quick wave.
"Ma'am?"
I stopped and turned, looking at the one who'd spoken. "Sorry?"
"Are you working tonight?"
Oh. Okay. I gave him a quick shake of the head. "No, sorry. I'm not."
He nodded, and tipped his head again. I turned back and made my way towards the door, opening it slowly for fear of hitting somepony on my way in. Luckily, I did not, and the smell of wine and sound of low conversation washed over me as I shut it behind. The central room was roughly a third full, the occasional table occupied by groups of stallions or even the rarer couple. I trotted slowly through the tables, the soft carpeted floor warm under my still chilly hooves. A beautiful mare, eyes ringed with black, sitting at a table with a suited stallion, nodded a quick hello as I passed, and I returned it.
The music was low and the clinks of glasses and silverware, quiet as they were, still almost drowned it. I made my way towards the stage, ascending the four steps and disappearing behind the red curtain. Clearwater was in the back with Blackfeather and Haze, and when she saw me enter she trotted over, a concerned look on her blue face.
"Are-are you alright?" she stammered. "We were worried sick! What happened?"
"It was nothing," I waved. "It was just scary, is all. You heard about the filly they got, last week, right?"
She nodded grimly and then, clearly and obviously, switched to a more cheerful countenance, lifting the air. "Well, you working?"
Blackfeather chimed in from across the backstage nest, his voice echoing on the old wood. "No, she's off."
I parroted him. "No, I'm off."
Clearwater huffed. "Exuberant. Now I've got to go up there alone, and get celestia-knows-whatted until the sun comes up and get paid half of what I got last week, even though the stuff I gotta do'll be twice as weird."
I was puzzled. "How'd I make it better?"
"They normally just choose you instead."
I roll my eyes and grin, but inside she brings back memories I'd rather forget, things that the old stallion on the corner would shudder at. Things that kept me fed, alive, and warm, but things that made me feel horrible, sick, dirty and useless.
But I still smile, and that's key.
She says her goodbyes and she and Haze go out onto the floor. I don't watch them, instead I stay back and relax in the warm, wooden loft, the only sound the slow tick-tick of Blackfeather repairing some rafter or other. We don't speak, but I am lost in thought and we already understand each other so well, I don't care. It's not always good to speak, sometimes it's good to sit.
Couples. Why were there couples out there? This isn't a place for couples, unless they've got a lot of free bits and are eager for a third member. Are we one of the last nice places in town? Are we, in this world, now passable for a formal restaurant- with a whorehouse packed in? Blackfeather always tried to keep a classy atmosphere. He'd boil at the term "whorehouse", he'd say we were "escorts" or "showgirls". He loves each and every one of us, we're one big family, he'd never call us what we were. The thought is sad. Are we the last formal place in town?
I needed the bits, when I took the job six months ago. I needed them then and I need more of them now. I took it so I could have food. I took it because Clearwater was taking it, and she was my last light in the falling grey north. But food rose in price, and less stallions came, and now we just get the ridiculously rich, the ones who scoff at poverty and will throw a few bits your way if you charm them right. It's scum.
I'll admit, though. Through the vileness, through the snobbery, I sometimes slip away. I lose myself in drink and lust, and I wake up with piles of bits and a sore body. I hate myself, but sometimes one must slip away from the hell that is their life and pretend they are someone they are not. They must lose themselves in sweat and filth, pretend they are worth something and that they are loved and that they are wanted. I try to find joy in my work in the same way I try to find joy in my life. Both fade with each passing day, just a little bit. I try. I try.
My mind is wandering too far from the lukewarm attic so I bring it back with a blink. Blackfeather's hooves click on the wood as he makes his way out, turning his head and telling me to lock up the backstage loft on my way out.
"Of course."
And so now it is me and the rafts and the orange light bathing the blackness and casting the shadows on my face. It is an old fishing boat lost at sea and I am it's haunting mistress.
I wait there for a while, and I wonder, without putting the thoughts into words, if this is a moment I need to remember. If my children will look to me for bedtime stories and I will tell them of the time when we almost fell apart and that this moment needs to be filed away somewhere deep and close so I never forget it.
A single tear rolls down my cheek as I think that maybe I will never have children anyway, and that I will die in this pit of self destruction, still pretending it is one of self preservation.
I sit, and later it is time to go home so I lock the loft and I smile at the stallions and I leave into the black streets and hold my scarf close.
It is so cold and, at this hour, darker than the blackest of rooms.
* * *
When I wake I am less foggy. At first I think the night before may have been a dream, but when my brain fully boots up I remember it was not. I walked home in the freeze, and slept here in what I call a home under a thin sheet, my breath smoking in the black air. I didn't remove my mascara so when I look in the mirror it is smeared and smudged all over my white face. I turn the tap and wash in the metallic ice water.
Today the sun is rising behind a thick caking of grey that holds up the sky, and I think about Canterlot and how I'd love so much to go there. I would forget about every hardship and every moral and I would be rich and glamorous and happy. I could slip away into the world of drink and flirtation and the glitz that paves the roads there.
I pull back the yellow blinds and look out onto the petite central garden where a few other renters of this building sit at wire tables and smoke their rolls of tobacco.
I just watch a while. I watch their smoke carry away into the air, like a ghost rising from its cold body.
A knock sounds on my door. I rip my gaze from the window and turn to the dark wooden bolt, sliding it back and peering out into the stinking hall. A pair of electric blue eyes stare in deep contrast to the surrounding murk. The eyes make me jump for but a moment, when I realize this face is my mother’s.
“Mom? Mom?” I smile and unlock the door and she makes her way inside, a grin on her old face. I hug her tightly, and we breathe in each other’s warmth.
“It’s no better there, Emm.”
I don’t really care what she means, because I’m so happy to see her. I ask her how she’s been, how she got here.
Her face is not joyful anymore. Her dark mane, the blackest of blacks, falls over her eye as she looks at the wooden floor. She looks up at me.
“We need to leave here. We need to go out of this place. It’s no better there.”
I don’t understand. “No better where, Mom?” The question slips from my lips in a frosty puff. She is wearing a pearl necklace that I have never seen.
“Canterlot, Emeline. It’s no better there. It’s warmer, but it’s no better. It may be worse, dare I say it. Cults run the streets, and Celestia has not shown her face in months. It is no better there. We need to... To leave Equestria.”
The pearls are reflecting tiny rivers of purple in the dim light. I look at her and I don’t know what to say or do.
I would say it was like a childlike dream dying, but it wasn’t as gradual. I was the ship’s last haunting mistress and when I walked it’s halls I never saw a soul, but somehow I still thought to myself that somewhere there was a warm room full of smiling faces and magical laughter. That one of those empty bedchamber doors would open to a family’s embrace and a four-course meal. And this was the moment when I realize that I am simply the last mare on a dark ship at sea, never to be seen by a soul again for all of eternity.
I look at my mother and I ask her if she wants a cup of milk.
“Please,” she puffs.
“I have to work today, you know.”
“Okay. But tonight we are going to leave.”
A chill runs through my bones as I get my scarf and my manepins. When I’m on my way out the door I ask her if I can use that pearl necklace. She nods slowly and she gives it to me, her magic lifting it and snapping it around my neck. She looks at me for a while and then I leave out onto the grey streets. I trot with no emotion, I am frozen over and I am at a point where I do not care what happens to me.
There is the old stallion again, a few blocks down from the Lounge. His eyes light up when he sees me and he waves weakly. I smile and I reach for anything I might have, but then I remember I didn’t work last night so I have no bits, again.
“It’s okay, you know. I know you don’t have money. I was just waving.”
I am about to respond and I remember my necklace and how I must look. I am wearing everything I own and I live in a shack, but I must look wealthy. This is everything I own, after all, and I work at a place that’s all about “class”. But this contrast I see hurts my heart and I look down at an old stallion who is no richer than I, but who sits on the sidewalk in rags while I stand above him in a dress and pearls.
“Oh, no.”
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
I don’t reply. I just stare at his hooves and then I look up and say “Come on.”
* * *
I hit the buzzer and it’s not Clearwater’s voice that answers this time. I don’t recognize it at first, but then I decipher through the static the tired voice of Candyhoof.
“Candy, it’s me. Can you let me in?”
“Who?”
“Emeline.”
“What?”
“Emeline.”
“Ena...caine? We aren’t open this early, wait till we- Oh! Emeline! Sorry, sorry!”
The stallion exhales with the cold and a bit of amusement. He looks at me and his gravely voice points out that these southerners never can get our names. I smile because he’s right. I remember when I went to Ponyville as a filly and every single pony I’d meet would do a triple take when they heard my name. It’s no more strange than “Candyhoof”, I can assure them. Then my mother would tell them we were from the north, up by the ridges that bordered the trade wind oceans.
The door clicks and slides across the floor where that mark is and we step inside to the warmth. My feathery scarf covers the necklace now.
Blackfeather is there chatting with Clearwater and when my hooves click onto the dark, glossy wood they turn and their expressions are confused.
“Who is this?” Blackfeather asks, his eyes warning.
“Let him stay here, Blackfeather. Please.”
“Oh, you didn’t do it. I can’t believe you actually did it. You know the answer. Make him leave. Now, or you go with him.”
I stand my ground and I don’t move.
He stares more. “Get. Him. Out.”
Oh, Celestia. What has happened to the empire I remember from my filly years, what has happened to the bright sun on the snow and the glistening rain on a beautiful summer night, where have you gone? Did those books lie? Did the stories of love and compassion and happiness make themselves from poison ink in a cave of lying conmen? I do not understand where you have gone and what your rule means or why you do not show yourself anymore or why they want you dead or why my mother is saying it’s no better anywhere else on the face of this planet and I need you to answer me now.
Answer me now.
The silence is deafening as Blackfeather’s eyes cut into my soul and I flinch. I turn to the stallion and he nods slowly and he walks out onto the street as I watch him from the still open door. He looks at the road for a long while, even after Blackfeather stops screaming at me and I’m the only one, just watching him watch the road. He drops an old coin down a drain grate, and then he trots away, smiling at me when he sees I was watching.
“It’s okay,” he puffs. “I wasn’t going to stay there anyway. That is your place. This is mine.”
I turn away from him and I go to the washroom and I put on the eyeshadow and the lipstick and the stockings and I look at myself and I forget everything. I am pretty. I am so pretty. I am beautiful and desired. The dark of my eyeshadow and my mane contrasts the white of my face and my purple eyes cut deep into the black of my dress and the ivory of my pearls. I’m sure to take long enough to be sure we’re open. I spend longer than I ever have.
I trot, sultry and alive to the room and without even a thought I grab a stallion who I think was the one from yesterday who asked if I was working and I kiss him with an anger and he says he’s not paying tonight and I don’t even reply because I don’t care. I am alive with passion and touch and I am not here anymore. We go to a room and then I wake up with a ripped pearl necklace and a strange stallion holding me tight in a bed. I think of getting up but I don’t and I lay there with his body hot on mine.
When he wakes he looks surprised that I have not left, and I ask him, my eyebrows lowered and a sweetness in my voice, if he’d like me to.
Answer me now, my princess.
Answer me or I will kill myself like this, I know I will.
The Hands of our Fair Empire
"Bits, I found some bits. Scraped them together, I'm sorry."
I wake up again, my body feeling numb. The afternoon light seeps in through the curtains and illuminates the dust in the air, cascading onto the bed. He stands at the side, his eyes blue and soft.
"Seven bits, it's all I've got."
I nod. "It's okay," I whisper. "I wasn't going to charge."
"Bullshit, that's not right. Here." He sets them down on the bed stand, just below the mirror that reflects me wrapped in sheets looking up at him with deep eyes.
He shakes his head. "I'm sorry I did this. I'm sorry about the necklace. I can pay it back, well, I can try to pay it back."
I look at him with his dark mane rustled and his eyes looking down at the floor.
"No," I say. "Please, don't feel bad, it's my fault. It is."
He avoids the contact of my eyes. "I've got to leave."
"Okay," I say. As he turns to trot out the door, I open my mouth again, a little grin forming on it. "You know..." He turns around. "At least you were good."
He chuckles a little, but under the surface his mind is so aflame, he wants nothing more than to get away from me and forget about me and everything I remind him of. Okay. That's okay. I would too.
That's okay.
He regards me for a few more seconds and then he turns and leaves. The room is silent, the curtains motionless. It is as of time has frozen over for all of eternity, and I no longer have to worry about being all I can be before I die.
But then my ears adjust and it's not as silent as it'd seemed. Muffled, distant creaks in the building, and a wind whistling outside the closed curtains. I tussle with the sheets and get up, my hooves clicking on the oiled wood and creating a sound that haunted. It was cold in the bed chambers, BlackFeather figured that it wouldn't be a stretch to think its occupants to be able to keep each other warm enough, and we'd save on the heat bill. But my partner's warmth is gone and I am breathing out smoky mists, standing there in a black dress too skimpy for the chill.
I go to the curtains and look out onto the grey expanse. The street is empty and the shop doors are boarded up, signs in the broken windows that say they will be back soon. Snow sinks down, the flurries spinning and chasing each other like in a filly's game, blowing every which way in a frozen drift.
A crack appears on the window in front of me. It is on my reflection and slices me in half, down the middle of my face. It must be cold. So cold.
I go out of the chamber and breathe in the warmth of the circular lounge. I sit there for a while and look around. My head is crystal clear, unlike the murky-brown water spewing out of the fish-head fountain that serves as the centerpiece of the cyclical chamber, the ceiling reaching overhead only a few feet and cushioning the trickle of the water.
Seven bits. I hold them in my hooves, looking down at their rusted golden faces and seeing a hint of purple in there, reminding me that I am alive and not a ghost. It is a sinking ship, boards darkened and soggy, and I sit in a lifeboat that will not unlatch. I am not the last mistress and so in this way I am no more important than the boards. No more than anything.
I get up and go out to the central dining hall, making sure I look cleanly and refined in the mirror before I slowly trot in the darkened hallway, the illusion of warmth swooning me with it's embrace.
"How much?"
I jump. It's Haze. She was ahead, her eyes gleaming in the low light.
"Sorry!" She laughs. "Spooked?"
I catch up with her, smiling. "Is the shift done?"
"You answer my question, I'll answer yours."
Okay. "Seven."
"...Bits?"
I blink. "Yeah, seven bits."
"You're slipping."
"My question."
We're down the hallway, entering the Dining Hall.
"Yeah. Shift's done, it's almost dark. Plus the snow, everypony went home anyway." She chuckles. "But seven bits? A whole shift?"
"Come on, Haze. Mind your own business."
We are stopped now, and her eyes are cutting into mine.
"Some of us," she breathes, "Can't get seven damned bits in a three-shift day. Some of us'd kill for your attention level. I'm just a little pissed you don't always take advantage of it."
"I do."
"What was that? This morning? What was that?"
"He was cold."
"I'm cold. You're fucking cold."
"I wanted to let him in."
She leans closer. "I want to let my brother in. But I know I can't. You've got a house. I don't. I live on the street behind this fucking building and hope and pray that cultists don't rape me and murder me every night. My brother is sick and dying and I don't know of what."
A tear breaks on her face.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what I can say.
"And you, Emeline, have beauty. You've got beauty and potential, and, and the wings which are all the rage with them, but yet you splurge yourself on a guilt-soaked free-fuck while the rest of us get spit on and lucky if we even get picked."
Silence.
"I..."
"What?"
I whisper, no longer looking at her. "Sometimes you need to let go."
I meet her eyes. They are dark. She shakes her head.
"Don't you get it?" Her voice breaks. "You're the only one who hasn't."
* * *
On my way out the heavy street door I'm stopped by BlackFeather.
His jet black face is flecked with grey, his ruby eyes calm.
"I trust it won't happen again, Emm?"
I look. "No."
"You understand, don't you?" He searches my face. "You have to understand."
"I do."
I did. The wind howled and flurries blew into the warmth. We couldn't fall like the others. We could not lose our professional niche. The first pony we served a home and not a service would open our doors to the rest.
BlackFeather's face glows in the grey light. The flurries spin.
"Black..."
He listens.
"Are we going to be okay?"
A long pause. He breathes, unsteady. "I don't know."
As if on queue, a scream, distant and muffled, made its way down the street. It was so far, but it was the scream that signaled the end of a life. It was the funeral and the burial and the hearing. I listen. Then, I look at him, sad and searching.
"Okay."
But then he continues.
"Tomorrow, though, it's nightmare night."
I start. Oh, no. "I-I'd forgotten!"
He cocks his head. "Why so jumpy?"
The lights hum above and I look around, searching for any other sign of life. I think we're alone. Just me and BlackFeather.
"Emm," he prods, concerned. "What's wrong?"
I close the door. "I'm leaving, Black."
He doesn't ask why, we're past that now. "Can I do anything to help?" Are instead the words he asks.
I smile, but I can't hold it together. "No," I sputter through tears.
I am not crying for the loss of a job or the loss of the bits, I don't even know why I am crying but I sob harder than I can remember sobbing. The cold seeps over us as the heat shuts off like it does at this hour before holidays, and I simply hold him and let the water flow, formless and misty, pattering on the wood and echoing like a drip in a lost cavern.
"Oh, BlackFeather. My mother says its no better in the city. No warmer in the south."
He just breathes, old and understanding. "Then where, Emm, do you plan on going?"
"I don't know."
"But you have to go, right?"
I look and him and control myself. I look at the dark whorehouse entranceway and then I think of the streets and the screaming and the snowy nights. The smoking and the bed with no sheets. The old stallion who sits on the corner and the sun that chokes behind grey sludge.
"Yeah, I do."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." His face is calm and I can trace the lines of complexion on it and I can see in his eyes the reflection of a world that I have never known. He speaks, his voice gravelly. "But maybe, you'd like to stay until tomorrow? Nightmare night is our busiest one- at least, it was last year- and you might appreciate the bits when you leave."
I nod, slowly, to myself.
Then I look at him. "One more, then. One more night." He smiles.
"Okay, Emm. Okay."
I open the door. The sound of snow is a lullaby.
"I'm glad I got to meet you. I'm glad you're getting out."
"Bye, Black."
The howling wind whispers in my ear that these buildings I pass are nothing but dust in its eternity. It says that they will fall and turn to dirt, and then out of this dirt trees will rise, touching the sky through the grey clouds with their branches, eternally tall and silhouetted.
The snow floats silently as I trot, the crunch beneath my hooves keeping time with my heartbeat. My scarf is not warming. There is little wind.
A hellish silence fills my mouth and my gut, it's blackness clouding my mind and eyes. I trot home, further still as the sun dims like a flame without fuel and the twilight sinks around me. There are no stars and there are no words I can say that will show you what this is, what it truly is.
Ahead there are three forms that stand huddled around a flame. I pass them cautiously, and they look up at me with crystal blue eyes and dark manes, the fire reflected in a dance of warmth on their faces as I pass. They burn not trash, but a pile. A small pile of three corpses, each sloppily thrown onto the next. I freeze, looking.
A colt's body shrivels and blackens upon the broken concrete, it's eyeholes filled with organs and veins. I am no longer frozen and I gasp in terror, icy irises pierce.
"It's okay," one croaks. "We aren't going to hurt you."
"You're too nice to look at."
I waste no time and hurry past. Then my ears ring with a crack-crack-crack and heat waves over me, shocking sound, and I turn, startled. They lay dead, blood pooling from their wounds, a stallion stands opposite the corpsepile with a smoking rifle suspended in his magic.
He fires again, the bodies jiggling under the bullets, the sound louder than I'd have ever imagined.
"Are you okay?" He asks, from across the way.
I nod.
"Are you... Are you really okay, ma'am?"
"I am."
He laughs. He laughs.
"Fuck you, all of you fuckers."
He shoots the burning corpses as well.
* * *
When I unlock the door the last of the sun's light has gone and I am fumbling for cold metal in a black abyss. The door creaks and within my eyes adjust to the dull orange glow of the oil lantern. My mother is there and she is closing her eyes, bowing her head to the window and whispering.
"And furthermore, protect my daughter, my lady. Oh, please, keep her safe."
She opens her eyes just a crack, and she says for me to join her. I make no move, only watch in silence as she closes her eyes again, confident I have complied despite the fact that I have not.
"Tomorrow, raise the sun. Raise it before the clouds and let it's light shine on us all. Let us bask in it and smell the salt on the trade winds once again. This we ask of you, as your loyal subjects. Grace forever."
When I do not echo the closing verse she realizes I am not next to her and she looks up.
Her eyes are scared. "Why didn't you talk to her with me?"
"I'm sorry."
"What- what happened to the necklace?"
I walk to the bed and fall into it. I don't remove my makeup or unpin my mane. I look at her, the room sideways. "I'm sorry."
"Talk to her, Emeline. She can hear you."
I do not speak. I only look at her, so tired. Then the oil lantern hisses, and it fades. The black washes over us but neither have moved.
"I'm going to work once more tomorrow. Just once more."
"Why?"
"Because it'll get me some bits."
"I don't care."
I stare into the black.
"I can't see you come home like this, your face all dolled up and your eyes dead. I can't watch it happen to you anymore. I can't stand the thought of... you... And some scum stallion in a room... and just for coin."
"I'm working tomorrow."
"It's not work."
I lie there for too long. Our breathing is a shallow, nearly inaudible ambience behind the wind's screams. Then, I answer.
"You're right. It's not work." I shudder. "It's the only thing I have left. And it makes me smile for a moment- if only for a moment- when I am eyed and wanted- and for a short while, loved. I feel depression, and, and sadness, but I feel alive for a while, I feel as if I am there- which is more than your fairy tale prayers can do, even for yourself."
She stays silent for an eternity as well, until the last ghosts of my words have echoed off through the walls and into the eternal nocturne.
"I love you, Emeline."
I almost cry. I almost parrot her words. But I do not. I will never believe in anything again.
* * *
Morning is melancholy and my mother is sleeping as I wake and heat the lantern. Over it, I heat some tea and I put some cream in it. I open the cupboard where I keep the food because I thought I still had some hardtack in there. A morsel.
I unlock the door and head down rickety iron scale stairs to the central apartment terrace where the chill nips at the dead grass. I sit at one of the garden tables (making sure it wasn't the one with the broken leg, I'd gone through that before) and I inhale the steam that rises from the cup, taking a sip. A single stallion sits at another table, smoking a long cigarette. I imagine he'd be reading the newspaper, if they still printed. He's young, about my age, I assume. One of the silly pastel southerners, a sky-blue coat like Clearwater's with a longer, tousled mane swept back over his ears, named "Daybeamsunraysparkleshimmer," no doubt.
I smile, doing that little exhale thing you do when something's mildly amusing.
He looks up. "I shaved it, cunt!"
He's horrified when he realizes I'm evidently not the party he'd assumed I was.
"Mustache. I had a mustache, and it's this... Running joke."
I look down and take another sip. The morning haze is misty and awakening around me. Snow patters the earth.
"Sorry," he mutters.
My thoughts return the night before, and I see that colt shriveled and blackened on the snowy streets.
I haven't talked with anypony for a while, so I finish the warm drink and look up at the technicolor stallion from across the cold maze of tables.
"A mustache, you said?"
