//------------------------------// // Two // Story: On the Docks // by Mad Brochacho //------------------------------// TWO Font was a pair of thick-rimmed librarian glasses on a tube of mangy, brown hair. His hooves were small, pointed, narrower than most, and hung from his wrists like sharpened spades. He was lanky and thin in a way that made him look like he’d spent most of his life sitting in an office chair. This was probably true. When your cutie mark is a typewriter, that sort of thing comes with the territory. A fat stack of paper with fine print scribbled all over it was growing next to him in the printer tray when I stepped out of my office. As I passed his desk, he stopped typing. His glasses looked up at me and his head followed. “Coffee over on the file cabinet,” he said. “Thanks.” The typing started again. I walked over to the coat stand, pulled my coat down from its hook, slipped it around my waist and tied the straps tight. It was a gray cotton trench stitched around a leather saddle pad, and if you stood nice and straight it covered your cutie mark. In the pockets were a box of cigarettes, a notepad, a pencil, a flip lighter, my leather fold-out and a small flask of Scotch. The box and the flask were both half empty. I reached up, bit down on the brim of my hat, lifted it from the coat stand and flipped it onto my head. It was a good hat, my favorite hat, a genuine Horsalina fedora shipped straight from Canterlot. Close-brimmed, pressed wool, matching gray. We had seen a lot together. I turned back to Font. “I’m going out for a walk,” I said. Font’s typing slowed, but not by much. “That’s news. You headed up or down?” “Up. Just pocket work, for now.” “You won’t be needing your piece, then.” “No.” Font nodded. I walked to the cabinet beside my office door. There was a thermos on top of the cabinet, next to a mug. I poured myself half a cup and stood with the mug balanced on my hoof, waiting for it to cool off some. I wasn’t much a morning pony. I thought maybe if I stared hard enough into the cup the coffee would cool faster, but it never worked. I’d keep trying. Font broke the silence: “That unicorn who trotted in earlier looked awful sharp.” I smiled and turned to him. “She was dolled up something fierce. Accent on her, too. Think she was Canterlot people?” He shrugged. “I figured as much. Turns out she’s local, born and raised.” “Fancy thing like her?” “Yep. Runs a boutique right here in Ponyville.” “What do you know,” I said. I took a sip of coffee. It tasted right and black — Font hadn’t dumped any milk in this time. I downed the rest and raised the mug to him in a toast. “Good coffee. Anyway, I’m headed out. What are you up to?” Font responded in the tone you’d use to talk about a cheating spouse. “Paperwork.” I started for the door. “Sounds like a drag. Toss anything you think I can handle on my desk and I’ll get to it later.” “Will do,” Font said. Halfway out the door, I stopped. I looked back over my shoulder. “By the way, if you find time, do some diving on a joint called Sugarcube Corner. We’re digging for one Pinkamena Pie. Pinkie Pie for short.” It took an awful lot to surprise Font. He was the stoic type. We got along well. He gave me a look I hadn’t seen since he caught me typing on his Model M. “Pinkie Pie?” “Yeah, earth pony from up town. You know her?” “Not really. She’s always dropping invitations on our doorstep. Twice a week, at the least. I’ve seen her a few times.” Font glanced away from the computer screen and made eye contact. “I figured the parties wouldn’t interest you.” I smiled thinly at him. “Good stallion.” He stopped typing long enough to wave goodbye. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.” “Thanks,” I said. I stepped out into the hall. “See you in a while.” “Be careful out there, Bride.” I shut the door behind me. Always was. I went down a story by stairs and passed through the lobby of the office building. The floor was carpeted in a silk rug of Zebrican make, thick pile, the kind that sucks at your hooves as you cross it. There were some electric candles stood on a lounge table with nothing to power them, a few thin antique chairs backed into the corner, some landscape paintings on the wall, a couch, a book stand, a not-bright lamp and no ashtray. The receptionist pony was asleep at the front desk, and didn’t wake up as I passed. I liked our office. Rent was cheap. The lobby double doors opened onto a slim, two-lane paved boulevard which I followed north toward old town. Outside, the air smelled of smoke and straw, like it always did; the smoke pumped out of stacks in the harbor district and the straw smell wafted down from the town center. You got used to the stench, after a while. Booker used to call it the industrial low tide. Booker had pretty words to say about a lot of a ugly things. He was that type of guy. A couple blocks out from the office the streets started to cramp with stands pushing fruits, vegetables, t-shirts, counterfeit watches. The ponies attending the stands looked ready to steal the hat off your head and sell it back to you. They kept to themselves, though, as I passed. You don’t touch a graycoat’s hat. A few blocks farther, the pavement became rough and cracked and at points it was almost gravel. The stands thinned out and disappeared leaving nothing but empty streets and silence and ponies bundled up in rags next to stuffed shopping carts in the alleyways. This was the no pony’s land separating old town from the new. There were some wooden things slouched along the sides of the road, all chipped paint and broken windows. They might have even been houses. If I caught a stare, I stared back, but mostly I walked. “Graycoat,” everypony seemed to say. What faces I saw weren’t quite mean, only frustrated, desperate. I was an outsider. They didn’t want me on their turf. I could relate, because I didn’t want to be on it, either. I held a stiff pace toward old town. I was walking out of a bad area toward someplace else I didn’t want to be. Such was the job. Slowly, the cement sidewalk turned to dirt, and the pavement gave way to gravel, then stone. I saw some ponies milling about in the distance, on the edge of the market. A gentle clop of hooves and the clatter of wooden cartwheels echoed down the rows of straw-roofed houses ahead of me. Old town. I hid beneath my hat and walked on. The streets were slabbed stone, covered in straw and crowded with hooves. The Ponyville market and I weren’t the best of friends, not at this time of day. The sun was too bright, the air too crisp, the chatter too loud. There were ponies walking everywhere, buying, selling, milling about, getting out of somepony’s way, stepping into somepony else’s way. Everything was too close to everything else. I was sick of the place already. I usually made it a point not to walk this stretch of town before noon. It was a recipe for a bad morning, and this one was no different. Every odd step somepony bumped into me. Some apologized, most didn’t. This was a herd for whom the phrase ‘excuse me’ was a myth and to whom a graycoat from downtown had little to say. I trudged onward until I found enough room to breathe, then stopped. I drew the flask from my pocket, unscrewed the cap and swallowed down a hundredth of Scotch. That smoothed out my throat somewhat, but was little help for the headache. I took a smaller sip and tucked the flask back into my pocket and started along the road uphill to town square. I already knew my first stop. The headache had made that decision for me. ▼▼▼ Ponyville library was a thick and surprisingly alive oak tree standing in a field at the dead end of a sleepy cul de sac. About two years prior somepony had grafted a balcony, some windows and shutters onto the tree, strung some junk up in the branches, hollowed out the trunk, and called it a library. Not much controversy followed. Ponyville was a strange town, ponies had seen stranger things. Then some jaghead prodigy and her talking dragon moved in from Canterlot and called the tree home. That turned some heads. They didn’t stay turned for long. The short acre of grassland that led to the trunk of the library was as non-threatening as the unicorn who lived inside. Thirty yards of nice, calm, suburban crawl, partitioned in by rows of shrubs all clipped into perfect little boxes. Not an inch of concrete in sight. Everything carefully trimmed and cut back. There was a patch of wildflowers growing here and there, but not too wild. The number and placement of the flowers seemed like something somepony on city council had carefully considered. They came in two colors: purple and less purple. On the edge of one flower patch grew a troop of oddly luminescent mushrooms, also purple. I’d seen wild ones before, big fields of them glowing in Everfree. These ones glowed a bit less. I stopped in front of the library door and glanced up at the snarl of branches above me and tried to think of other things to hang on them, but couldn’t. There wasn’t much space left to fit anything else. One branch sagged bow-like around a caricature of a beehive, one more held a lantern, another a dream catcher, two more a pair of Zebrican spirit masks. Swinging upside down from the branch cluster over my head was a whole colony of metal wind chimes, some heavy-looking, some the size of my foreleg. They looked about ready to fall. I whopped my hoof three times on the door. A sharp, distracted voice greeted me from inside. “Come in,” it said. “We’re open.” I went in and shut the door softly. I found myself standing on a navy blue mat with hard-cut edges that was laid out at the foot of the front door. ‘WELCOME,’ it said. Spilled out across the mat were about six volumes of an encyclopedia with golden-trimmed spines and hard, green covers, floating on the blue spread of the mat like lily pads. I cleaned my hooves on the one free corner of the mat and stepped out of the entrance hall. The main chamber of the library was circular and wide and curled around a Canterlotian warhorse bust, which was wooden, painted gold. The walls were a string of inlaid, polished oak bookshelves swirled around with twisting, pre-Trottingham patterns in dark red paint. The room smelled of age. There was enough dust on the air to choke a hydra. There was nowhere you could look without seeing an old book stacked haphazardly on the floor, slanted on a shelf, lying open on a table. They didn’t look like the sort of books anypony had ever checked out. At a pedestal below the window stood something purple and dust-covered and pony-shaped. I almost hadn’t noticed her. There was nothing sparkling about Twilight Sparkle save the big, star-circled compass rose she wore for a talent. The unicorn looked like something she’d file away on the back shelf of her own library. Her lavender coat shone dull as old felt, her horn hadn’t seen a decent polish since Discord lost his throne, and her mane was cut straight as printer paper, brushed like she didn’t own a mirror. Twilight was as far from Rarity as a pony could get without rolling in mud. She shined a hard smile, though, and had a sharp, honest set of eyes on her. They’d watch you, out from under her bangs, always learning. There was a warm sort of wonder in them. If she wasn’t reading a book, she was treating you like one, and what she learned she wasn’t known to forget. She struck me as someone who had never played an angle in her life and would never need to. Not many people struck me like that, and when they did, it felt awfully refreshing. I threw on my oldest grin. It was a tired smile, past its years, worn down by strobing blue lights and body bags. I was about due for a replacement. “Hi, Twilight,” I said. She stopped levitating her quill, set it down on the pedestal and turned to me. Then she smiled. Twilight smiled better than I did. “Good morning, Ms. Bride. Are you here to check out a book, or —” “Records, same as always.” “Ah, of course. Would you like any help finding whatever you’re looking —” “I can find my way,” I said. I spotted the records shelf across the room and started for it. Twilight kicked at the floorboards with one hoof, her eyes downcast. “Right,” she said. “I knew that.” The disappointment in her voice ran too thick for me to ignore. I stopped mid-step and shot her a quizzical look. “What?” As if in response, Twilight’s head snapped back up and her smile widened. “Nothing! If you need my help with anything, I’ll be right over here,” she said. Her lavender eyes flitted back and forth above her smile, which by now looked as subtle as a brick wall. She must have felt nervous lying to a detective. I knew she wasn’t saying something, but I knew she wasn’t hiding something, either. I also knew my head felt like somepony had bludgeoned it in with one her dictionaries, so I didn’t press the issue. “Okay, thanks,” I said. I started again across the library to the records shelf. I couldn’t go too fast. Someone should have told Twilight to clean the place up a bit, but on this morning, that someone wasn’t me. It was tough going, stepping over books and quill docks and empty pots of ink littered on the floor. I must have looked like a drunk, the way my hooves clattered against the glass pots. I frowned. That was one bad thought. Now I wanted a drink, too. Perfect. I had halfway crossed the wreckage when Twilight spoke again. “So, are you working on a new case? I haven’t seen you in here for over a week.” It took me a moment to realize I should say something back. “Yeah,” I said. “Is everything alright with work?” “Yeah.” I thought I heard the sound of a quill dropping on wood. “Oh,” Twilight said. I turned and gave her a flat look. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. What else was there to say? She must have wanted me to say something, because she wasn’t writing. She looked as nervous as a filly dipping her hoof into the shallow end of the pool. “Work’s been slow this past week,” I offered, “but the drought ended this morning.” That made for about three full sentences more than we usually spoke to each other. Twilight pounced on my words. “That’s odd. Shouldn’t there be plenty of work for a private investigator in lower Ponyville? I see cars pouring in off the Fillydelphian parkway all day long.” “Yeah, we’re up to our stifles in new faces these days, but not every one of them can afford a sleuth in this economy. Tough to afford anything on a factory wage, I reckon.” Twilight frowned. I wondered briefly if she’d ever stepped inside of a factory. She was Canterlot people, after all. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Is your business holding up alright?” “We’ll manage.” I shrugged. Then I stopped. Something wasn’t right with all this. I hadn’t come to the library to chat, I had work to do. “What’s it to you?” I asked, slipping some suspicion into my voice. I might have sounded a rung more hostile than I intended. Twilight bit her lip, then spoke. “I was only curious. I’ve heard the expansion area is going through some difficult times, and since you’re from new town, I thought I’d check to see how you’re holding up.” She smiled a smile so forced it could have made a grocery store cashier blush. Her teeth were big and straight and shining like the title of the newest picture on the posters outside the movie theatre. Then she said something very strange: “That’s what friends are for, right?” “Friends,” I said. That was all I could manage for a good few seconds. The word tasted funny. It felt like something I wasn’t meant to say. What friends did I have in Ponyville? I didn’t consider Twilight or anypony else in old town a friend. In new town, I had Font and there was Nighters. That made two friends. Booker was a friend, too. A good friend. An old friend. We got along. Problem was that Booker was dead. My voice crawled slower than I’d have liked as I responded. “Don’t worry about us, Twilight,” I said. “The city’s never short of someone looking for a graycoat, even if they sometimes forget it.” This seemed to please Twilight. If she’d caught my lapse in concentration, she didn’t make a fuss of it. She smiled. It was a real smile, this time, like before. “That’s good to hear. I should probably finish this letter. If you need help finding anything in the archives, feel free to ask. Okay?” “Okay,” I said. Twilight turned back to her pedestal and levitated the quill from its dock and resumed writing. My headache was gone, now. I stood watching her. She had a bad habit of talking herself through the letter as she wrote, and she wasn’t quiet about it, either. A pony could let out a lot of secrets like that. I turned and slogged the rest of the way to the records shelf. The archive text was thick and green and bigger than any book ought to be. It was the sort of book only a unicorn would read, because only a unicorn could lift the damn thing. I threw open the cover with some effort and started diving through the town archives, searching for a list of parties held within the past two years. It was pointless busy work. Font would probably have the same list of dates pulled up on his computer screen when I got back to the office. While I searched, Twilight’s voice droned over my shoulder. I wouldn’t have been much of a private eye without an ear for gossip, so I listened. Dear Princess Celestia. That was how she started the letter. She was writing to the damn sun and I couldn’t find an ounce of hesitation or nervousness in her voice. Most ponies would have been scared to pick up the quill. I was in the same boat, anyway. Nighters once told me if I ever spoke to Princess Celestia she’d banish me for insurrection. He probably wasn’t far off the mark. Twilight droned on, her letter building toward some hackneyed moral about respecting others, I could tell. I started to tune her out. I just wanted to find the records and leave and get on with this sludge job. You could pay me to work a mule’s job but you couldn’t pay me to like it. I was ready to drop all thought of friendship and walk on home to my single apartment, my reheated dinner, my full-sized bed and a bottle of rye. I’d read finance clippings, and maybe play through a chess problem or two. It’d be nice. It was about ten in the morning and I was already set to sleep. Some days are like that. Then Twilight said something. It came out quick and I almost didn’t hear it. It was two words: Pinkie Pie. I flicked an ear back in her direction. Twilight continued talking to the piece of parchment in what a deaf pony might consider an indoor voice. Something about a party, a prank, a lesson she and her friends had learned. Nothing of interest, but not useless. Twilight knew Pinkie Pie. She sounded close, too. I thought back to Rarity’s words, that Pinkie Pie knew everypony. This would either make the job a cinch, or incredibly difficult. Time would tell. When I looked down to the reference book I was copying from I saw a pencil clipped to my hoof and a list of dates and times scribbled on my notepad. I didn’t remember writing any of it. Maybe that was how Font felt at the end of the day. I tucked the notepad into my coat, unclipped the pencil from my hoof, swung shut the cover of the archive text and left the book where it lay. Twilight stopped writing as I crossed the minefield of books toward the door. She turned to me. I caught her wearing that same nervous expression out of the corner of my eye. “Find everything you were looking for, Ms. Bride?” “Yeah,” I said. But I wasn’t walking anymore. I was turning back toward her and I wasn’t leaving and I didn’t know why. We faced each other across the room. My face was blank but I felt like frowning. Friendly chat among friends, fine. I could handle that. She wanted to talk, I’d talk. “Who were you writing to?” I asked. Twilight waved the question off. “Princess Celestia, my mentor,” she said. “You’re writing a letter to Princess Celestia about some prank one friend pulled on another?” Her mouth slanted into an indecisive frown. “You overheard?” “I tried not to, honest, but if you’re worried about secrets getting out, I’d think about installing some thicker windows.” Twilight’s face reddened. “Oops. I should work on that, shouldn’t I? Anyway, to answer your question, I was reporting on my latest discovery. I moved to Ponyville so I could study friendship, after all.” I blinked. “I thought you studied magic.” “Well, yes. Friendship is magic.” I felt a sudden rush of nausea come on, and it wasn’t because of the cigarette I hadn’t smoked. “Never thought I’d see somepony say that with a straight face,” I said. That ruffled her mane some. She frowned. “Everyone needs friends, Ms. Bride. I’ve seen friendship save lives in the last two years. It’s not something to ignore.” Twilight lifted one hoof skyward, closed her eyes, smiled softly. “In fact, I would even say that friendship is what holds this town together.” I stared at her and stared hard. There was a silence. The library felt stuffy all of a sudden, like someone had vacuumed out all the air and pumped in something that tasted and smelled like air, but wasn’t. At that point I should have chosen my words carefully. Instead, I said something stupid. “Look, maybe old town’s glued together with friendship and love. Maybe that’s what trims the hedges. Maybe it keeps all your apple trees and gardens growing nice and pretty. What do I know? I’m just some dick from south of the line. But Ponyville won’t be a town much longer, Twilight. Soon it’ll be a city proper, and there ain’t much that can hold a city together but guns and sirens and squad cars.” The slight hint of a frown on Twilight’s face grew into a full-sized horseshoe as I spoke. She looked disappointed enough to write a letter about it. Maybe she would. I’d gone from being a friend to an acquaintance, and because of that the town must have held together a bit worse in her eyes. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was no use scaring off Twilight. She was the closest thing I had to a contact in old town, and the city’s librarian to boot. I looked down. It was where my head wanted me to look at that particular moment. There was a thick, hardcover novel lying at my hooves on the floor. I gave it a soft kick to the spine. The book slid forward a couple inches, stopped, and left a book-shaped outline lying in the dust where it had been. “Spike out of town?” I asked. Twilight grabbed the thin string of conversation and ran with it. “Yes. He’s in Canterlot for the week, on his yearly checkup.” “Checkup?” “Dracologists collecting data, checking to make sure he’s healthy, that sort of thing.” “Oh,” I said. There was another silence, a gap in conversation too wide for comfort. I wasn’t sure how to fill it. Twilight coughed into her hoof. “So! Anyway. Are you excited for Pinkie Pie’s party tomorrow? I mean, if you’re going, that is.” I stared blankly through the other pony, not quite looking at her. It sure would have been nice of Font to tell me my target was hosting a big one the next day. A detail like that could have saved me some time. Parties were like gold mines to a sleuth. Too many ponies talking, too much gossip, too many ways to not mind your own business. “What’s the occasion?” I asked. She smirked. “It’s been about two weeks since the last one. Pinkie Pie never let an occasion get in the way of a good party.” For some reason, I smiled. It was a wan smile, but a warm smile, the kind I caught myself using around Font. The kind I remembered smiling as a kid. It just came out of nowhere, and it didn’t feel tired or forced or past its years. I felt a shred silly wearing it but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know what to think about this. “So... you’re coming? Or you’re not coming?” Twilight’s voice smacked me out of my stupor. It didn’t quite knock the smile from my face, though. “I’ll be there,” I said. “Great!” Her face brightened like she’d accomplished something. It occurred to me that I might be one of her friendship experiments. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, either. “I can’t recall seeing you at one of Pinkie’s parties,” she said. “You probably haven’t. Afraid I miss out on the lot of them. Work keeps me busy, most of the time, and I’m a lousy drunk.” I cringed. Always back to the damn bottle. “Can’t say I have an excuse, now.” There was that odd silence again. I poked at the brim of my hat and searched along the floor for another book to kick. “I should get back to work,” Twilight said. “Likewise.” “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” “Tomorrow.” “Okay. It was nice seeing you again, Ms. Bride.” I was already back in the entrance hall on the blue mat with the lily pads. I glanced over my shoulder at Twilight. “Right back at you. And ‘Bride’ is fine, by the way. ‘Anna’ works, too.” “Alright then, Anna,” Twilight said. She smiled. I smiled back. We were all smiles, good and happy. It felt nice to be in old town. I said goodbye and went outside and stood on Twilight’s front walk. There was a stiff breeze blowing in now from the east that howled through the branches of the library, and the sun was shining hard enough to make me squint. I pulled the flask from my coat and took a swig. Then I felt around inside my pocket for the pack of cigarettes, fished it out, lit a smoke, and left a trail of ash running away from the base of the tree and out the cul de sac. I wasn’t smiling. What did some Canterlot jaghead know about friendship, anyway? I had friends. I had three pressed suits. I had a lighter. I had rolled up friends in a little box. I had Booker’s GI flask in the coat pocket over my heart. I had a coat, a hat, a gun. I had work, I had the city. There wasn’t much else to have. Special thanks to: Abacus, for his glorious vector of Anna and his grammar nazi services.