I slammed the tray down on the counter of the tavern and rubbed the coarse scarf that covered my heart. Unlike Adagio and Sonata, I saw no reason to have it for all to see, even if the earth ponies have been under our control for weeks and we didn't need to disguise our hearts as necklaces any longer.
Ponies lumbered about and not just because of the ale served here - magic clouded their eyes when you looked too close. Their simple minds were just as clouded by our magic that only grew stronger the more we sang.
Well, it was mostly Adagio singing and Sonata copying her. When I joined them, I was just backup. Adagio still was mad at me for putting so little effort into singing but I didn't exactly put much effort into anything any more. What was there to care about? Or do? Or loathe? Or love? Or... anything?
What's the point in trying? I'll still feel emptier by the day. Sonata complains about being hungry often even though she's distracted by everything else the very next second.
She doesn't talk to me, and I don't talk to her.
I'm not sure if I mind.
Or if I care.
But I still notice it.
I barely see her. Adagio usually has her tagging along in a group of ponies that call out to the golden filly. She's started wearing the meager cosmetics they give her, and saying more stupid, more sultry things to the stallions that adore her like she's some sort of breezie tale pretty mare - she sure looks older with all that stupid paint on her eyes.
The ponies here keep treating us like adults, even when Sonata is the only one who actually is one. I told a few of them my age in pony years, and they just looked at me like I was stupid. They're the ones that are stupid, since they don't know that sixteen is when any equine isn't a little foal, and can be kicked out and told to make something of themselves. A proper adult. They can live their own lives at sixteen.
It's not like Sonata could. She still hasn't learned much of anything except that not everyone is thinking like she does and she still barely understands that, but she hangs on Adagio's every word.
She acts like Adagio's the one leading us.
Like I haven't tried to find her uncle in a world where no one seems to have heard of a single god and acts like they never existed in the first place. Even Sonata started to repeat these things and gods, gods, oh gods I just wanted to hit her because that's got to be the stupidest thing that she's ever said - which is saying something.
I remember the name of my uncle - it's Neptune! It's just like the king, and only a snooty noble with no vocabulary but a whole lot of money would bother to break the taboo of naming their unicorn brat after a god. It's even worse than naming their brat after family! Or other things that steal all identity when it comes to names!
It's still not as despicable as how Adagio leaps from bed to bed of every stallion like there's some kind of gross slut competition, or how she's taught Sonata to act, how she copies blindly and how I just do nothing, do nothing, and do nothing...
I've asked hundreds of thousands of the ponies that are drawn to the tavern with our magic if a single Neptune exists - it can't be that long, I would explain to them. Neptune should still be alive. Ponies live that long, at least. But all I got were stares. They told me ponies can barely make it past fifty.
These are ponies who clearly don't know anything! They think that ten foals is a small family and marry when they're still foals themselves. Plus, they don't even bother to keep half of them - at least - alive! They're too busy downing ale and plowing fields - and each other - as if this was the last valley in the whole word. Trying to remember what they named each of their foals isn't even in their top twenty priorities! Most of them can't even count past ten so it took forever to get one who could count to fifty!
There's no Neptune. None at all. This valley is just a sea of mass graves of half-grown fillies and colts that no one could spare the peat to burn, and not one of them has even heard the name before. There isn't even a unicorn lord by the name! These idiots can't remember how old they are, the names of all their foals, or how many they've had or lost, but the names of the unicorns who take most of their garbage food is always fresh in their minds, and the blood of family they have lost to the other tribes.
I've been stuck here in this dull place for so long with those two. Now Sonata and the rest of us work shifts when we aren't luring patrons with our songs that have ensnared the whole countryside. There won't be a manor to live in or an uncle to take care of us. We're going to have to work here the rest of our lives. I don't have anywhere to take Sonata.
She's never going to be properly fed or warm. The rude stallions who come here and say things to her that she doesn't understand, trying to offer her copper coins for rotten things before I beat them until I'm dragged off by one of their slur-shouting buddies still screaming at them and telling them to back off - those stallions will never love her. Adagio will pull me aside and tell me that my behavior almost got a good pony killed when I would never kill a pony - even a vile one like them. They aren't good.
I try to tell her this and a whole lotta other things - like how I overheard Sonata telling her she thought a mercenary earth pony mare passing through was pretty, and how next week it was a different mare... I don't see why this needs to be kept secret, they can't really be that backwards, can they?
They are and because of it, Sonata will never find love even if some mare who thought foolishness was cute came along.
Sonata wouldn't leave Adagio no matter how much I even attempted to persuade her. Day after day would be spent thinking of ways to convince her to follow me and desert this awful place full of things she was just too dumb to make sense of.
It all seemed so hopeless - and it really was the more I tried to think about it. Everything became a reminder of the life I could have had and nagging thoughts followed me everywhere.
So I stopped thinking about everything that wasn't food put in front of me or the plainest tune to hum for singing. I didn't pay attention to anyone, not even Sonata or Adagio which wasn't too hard. That part I didn't mind. It's not like any of this mattered. I give up, this emptiness gnaws at me too much for anything to be of importance.
It's not like anything matters.
That is why everything felt better and at the same time felt so much worse.
Starswirl the Bearded arrived shortly after if only to prove me wrong.
Everything can get worse, and it will.