//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Coffee // Story: Gusty and Ember // by Tobyc //------------------------------// Chapter 2: Coffee As the train pulled into Fillydelphia Station, Trixie put her saddlebag back on and disembarked. Trotting down the platform, she pulled out Ember’s business card and looked around for a map or an information desk. A week had passed since the meeting in Manehattan and Ember’s prediction had proved on target – Trixie had spent two more nights in different parts of Manehattan, giving comparatively more successful performances. She had then departed the city and travelled south by train, stopping in a few small villages on the East Coast. Her earnings had been reasonably good, so she was taking a couple of nights off to relax, enjoy Fillydelphia, and possibly come to blows with an internationally renowned author. *** An hour later Trixie had managed to navigate her way to the address on the card. She knocked on the front door. Moments later, Ember answered the door with a smile. “Trixie! Come on in!” Trixie stepped inside and shut the door behind her as Ember walked into the kitchenette and opened a cupboard next to the stove. “I put the kettle on when I saw you through the window – tea, coffee, hot chocolate…?” Trixie paused, a little overwhelmed. Noting the clearly extensive range of options in the cupboard, she replied, “I prefer coffee. Mocha, if you have it.” A chuckle came from the kitchenette. “No problem there, Lanie’s the same. Incidentally, do you have a room in Fillydelphia booked yet?” “Not yet, but I passed by a motel a few blocks back with vacan-” “I won’t hear of it, you can set up in the spare room. At the end of the hallway, on your right.” Trixie nodded, somewhat surprised at the offer considering the conversation the two were quite obviously going to be having later. Nevertheless, she walked down the hall and entered the bedroom on the right. She looked around, noting that though there were no decorations, there were pinpricks all over the place. She put down her bags and tried out the bed. It was comfortable, especially compared to her last few nights of camping out, but she decided she probably shouldn’t get used to it. She got up and went over to her saddlebag. She opened it, pulled out Daring Do and the Amber of the Smooze, and left the room. But before she could walk back to the kitchen, two things caught her eye. The other two rooms at the end of the hallway had wooden plaques nailed on the doors and names carved in – the room opposite was evidently Ember’s. Trixie closed her door and examined it – two recently filled-in nail holes, what she guessed to be chisel marks around a rectangular space, and room for, going by the proportions of the other two plaques, about five or six letters. Trixie’s heart sank as she put the pieces together. The anger she’d felt while retrieving the Daring Do book subsided, if only temporarily. She put the book under her cloak for now. Suddenly something clicked in Trixie’s head, shaking her out of her reverie, and she turned back to the third door and reread the plaque: THUNDERLANE. She thought back to what she’d learned from Gusty’s obituary, and she couldn’t stop herself from geeking out. She ran back to the kitchen and exclaimed, “You live with J. Thunderlane Hurricane Jr?!” Ember turned to her in surprise and only just managed to keep hold of the kettle. She grinned. “You’re a fan?” “Buck yeah! His Demon trilogy are all on my desert island list, and his short story collection Hurricane Unplugged is amazing! Is he here?” Ember finished pouring the drinks and started stirring. “No, unfortunately. He’s in Ponyville and Cloudsdale on busin-” Trixie was glad she hadn’t started drinking yet. “Ponyville?” Ember facehoofed, realising she probably should have thought that revelation through. “Two reasons: one, he’s visiting family and friends in Cloudsdale. Two, he’s working on a book with a Ponyville local. He’s been in the area for a little over two months, so he might be back while you're here, he hasn’t been clear on it.” Trixie did the math in her head and froze. “So, he arrived shortly after I left?” Ember nodded, as she passed the coffee mug over. She and Trixie walked into the living room together as she kept talking. “Lanie contacted me immediately after he found out about you and the amulet. It was the first trace of you I’d managed to find in over eight months.” “So when I started working for the Pies… Wait - when you tracked me down in Manehattan, you said you knew I was heading down the East Coast. How did you figure out that much?” asked Trixie. Ember smiled. “I’m a journalist – I have my sources.” She took a sip. “More specifically, though, it was when you got run out of Neighagra that put me on your trail, thanks to learning of your new stage name. So I alerted my contacts in surrounding cities and towns to listen out for a magician called BG Lulamoon or something similar, and I got better and better at predicting your course. You know, I think I was only minutes away from catching you in Vermount.” Trixie nodded. “Okay, so what now that you’ve found me? I guess you realise that I’ve finished the book by now,” she said icily. Using her telekinesis, she pulled it out from her cloak and threw it on the coffee table. Ember froze, her face displaying that she really hadn’t been looking forward to this conversation. “Right.” “Did Gusty know about ‘Princess’ Sparkler?” asked Trixie, her fury starting to spill over. “That when you wrote, as one of your main villains, a hammy, narcissistic, lying blue unicorn with delusions of grandeur, a talent for stage illusion - and significantly less character depth than the rest of her cult - you were basing her on me?” “Gusty found the caricature as amusing as I did,” retorted Ember, who instantly regretted it. Wincing, she rubbed her forehead and muttered, “Okay, that came out wrong.” Trixie was stung. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She spent a lot of that Hearthswarming week ganging up on me with Checker.” Ember removed her hoof from her forehead and stared at her. “What are you talking about? Checker cares about you more than anypony.” Trixie snorted. “Oh, please. You didn’t grow up with her. You didn’t see how smug she got after I was banned for life from future Hearth’s Warming Eve pageants.” “You didn’t see how worried she was when she found out nopony knew how to get in touch with you for Gusty’s funeral. Or when Lanie told her what he’d heard about the Ursa,” replied Ember calmly. Trixie had no response to that. After a few minutes, Ember finished her coffee and broke the silence. “Trixie, for what it’s worth, I deeply regret writing Sparkler the way I did. Even if you didn’t know, even if it never impacted your career, your reputation, I still realise it was insulting, exploitative and wrong.” Trixie looked at her. “But you didn’t realise it at the time?” Ember shook her head. “It was – is – one of my biggest shortcomings – I suck at predicting how ponies will react to what I write or what I say, especially those close to me. And that’s part of why my partnership –why my friendship with Gusty and Lanie meant so much to me – they helped me keep my failings in check, I did the same for them.“ Trixie nodded, beginning to soften towards the mare who’d come so close to libelling her. “How did you three meet? College, you said?” Ember nodded. “First year at university here in Fillydelphia. I had my Journalism, Lanie had his Psych, Gusty had her Equinology. But we all ended up in the same Popular Fiction elective, and as the three biggest Daring Do geeks in the class, we just gravitated towards each other. “Even back then we made a great team. We never officially collaborated on any course work, but with all the time we spent bouncing ideas off each other, everything felt like a joint effort. At the start of the second year, we moved into a sharehouse off-campus together. We all kept up with our own goals, but we still got a lot of worthwhile creative writing accomplished between us – granted, most of it was Daring Do fan-fiction, but none of us could say it hasn’t paid off.” She chuckled at that thought, as did Trixie after a moment. After a brief silence, Ember spoke up. “Thinking about it, I never answered your question before, why I wanted to bring you here.” Trixie blinked. “So, not just to apologise?” “Not just a verbal apology, at any rate. First of all, I want to work out a deal for royalties, over the Princess Sparkler issue.” “Wait, is this going to involve signing a legal waiver or a non-disclosure agreement or something?” asked Trixie. Ember raised an eyebrow. “You’d really be willing to go public about being the inspiration for “a hammy, narcissistic lying blue unicorn with delusions of grandeur”, a detail that has so far had no impact on your reputation and is largely unknown outside of one of my friends and maybe your immediate family?” Trixie went red. Ember continued, “Which is why I’m offering to do this off the books. That’s if you’re not interested in a paid position on the project I’m planning.” Trixie stared at her. “Go on.” Ember inhaled, then said, “When you called me out on creating Sparkler before, you mentioned her having ‘significantly less character depth than the rest of her cult.’ And you’re right. Making her an insane, violent, bitchy comic relief character with only a token reference to the kind of traumatic backstory that the rest of them had - it was a mistake, regardless of who she was based on. What I want to do is write another book to flesh her out, and I have a story in mind. But whether or not this book happens is entirely up to you.” Trixie took a moment to process this. “I’m… I’m really not a writer, wouldn’t Thunderlane be better suited -” Ember shook her head. “He has two projects on the go with different partners at the moment. And I’m not looking for a co-writer right now, what I’m looking for is a… creative consultant.” “A consultant? Just what is this story you have in mind?” Ember leaned forward in her chair. “Daring Do and the Alicorn Amulet.”