He woke with the small morning.
His eyes were a tarnished grey, tired and apathetic. His limps gave a small moan when he moved them. He drifted out then woke again and his mouth felt dry with the small curses he made.
Why do we always curse the damn morning?
The curses were stale and colorless. For a while he lets them hang there in the air wondering how many times he’s done it at this patch above the bed.
The bed was a rectangle of rotten wood with piles of an old mattress on top. Small bottles garnish the top of the mattress in blinks of white and green. For a while it was this familiar collection of objects stacked messily on top of each other. The mattress, the bottles, the silence, and the hangover.
Clarity struck him in the head and he moaned as the pain he’s meant to feel caught up.
There was a groan. Then he hoisted himself up.
To most ponies his room was completely unspecial, another pokey flat in a long list of pokey flats in Staliongrad. In a twisted way it’s often these rooms where the most interesting ones live.
He picked himself up and fell again for three separate occasions. He brought himself up a fourth time and laughed since it seemed like a dance to him. If you saw him you couldn't see it (because he hides it well) but he was struggling on the last fumes of a headache. Apart from the stench of alcohol he smelt of wet hair and bad decisions.
Bad decisions. It was strange but alcohol always seemed like a distant acquaintance not a friend. It was stranger still since he always detested drinking. He hated the stereotype of the strong drinking ponies from Staliongrad. Yet there he was fighting with the last shards of Unity standard vodka at a startling 80 proof.
For a while he had to do with the frozen thinking in a head rotted with alcohol. Despite it, he thought that the steadily rising strength of alcohol (another phrase for completely unregulated) that the unity party had allowed for over four years was a good thing.
To give him credit he only managed to drink at night and alone. He was too self-conscious to do it anywhere else at any other time. Well he would use the word “self-conscious”, but really he’s too quiet approaching boring.
Too polite a stranger would say, too polite.
But if anyone has spent any time with him he has a friendly biting demeanour. A coldness that is charming. He only fumbles for his manners when in the presence of strangers.
A little more light bled into the room. As always he squinted at the invader from the window then threw away any bottles left on the mattress. Staliongrad tried its best to push its smell through the window.
Now imagine a patch of silence.
He stood up and reached for his armour.
Alone he struggled in the glaring light and the armour. The colour red perched itself on the window sill. In contrast to the light, the room was unkind in its smell and unkind in its appearance. A struggle of clothes take the centre of the room. Tinned goods occupied the dirty corners. A picture of him and a mare is the only thing that emerges as noteworthy in the mess. The morning slowly cooked into an early noon and apart from the pain he was surprised at how gentle the morning was.
He let a hoof through his mane, and stamped down on riots of hair (yes it is hair, ponies don’t have fur). It was a shame it achieved nothing, but the hair appreciated the thought. In a heap he moves to the only mirror in the room.
As is the nature of mirrors, this one owned several cracks and a film of dirt.
When he looked in the mirror he was still a gaunt pony suffering from a hangover, no matter how he had pulled and rearranged himself. A crumpled piece of paper sat on an old table and reminded him that his name was “Watchful Eye” and that his rank was sergeant.
Watchful eye was a brown earth pony. He had grey eyes that opened into frowns. There is a frustration, confusion and patience packaged with those eyes. Those timid unfrozen orbs often surprised ponies expecting a match to go with his badly kept body.
A loose bunch of ponies, with looser mouths call him “Watch” on account of them being somewhat friends with him. For a pony with such a personality, he has a large amount of them.
A battered helmet strangles his head and sheets of metal are strapped to his limbs. Any youthful hope of change seems to have evaporated and left the starts of wrinkles on Watch’s face. A tidy shave contrasts with the messed mane. When he moves, it seems as though he’s dragged. Muscles are packed on to bones, but you could say they’re shrivelling.
The brown of his hair is more dirty than vivid.
A cracked face is crowned with a dull brace of red lines. A loud scar screams from his snout to the jaw. The scar was caused by the teeth of changlings, and had the tang of metal left on them. With both the scar and his soft eyes he's recklessly beautiful, in a dangerous sort of way, but only when he smiles. Which isn't often.
He makes his way to the mirror and as usual he frowns at the pony he sees, nothing can change that wonderful, demented face of his. Watch gives himself a closed off stare. The measure of his grey eyes collides with its twin. He never liked looking at himself.
He avoids the mirror and sets the kettle to boil. He tolerates it until it whistles. He takes it off the hob before it properly boils. Watch drinks his warm water because he has no tea or coffee left, the unfairness of the lack of tea or coffee stirs a dull frustration in his chest.
For a second his practiced apathy had deserted, and he stood drowning in the brown carpet and the sharp light.
The only thing he could think of was how predictable his day was going to be. To the time of the hooves hitting concrete, he counts. He waits for the most predictable pony in the world.
Watch stood there drinking the hot water he wished was tea. His legs were stubborn and unyielding. His gaze was made of something that used to burn. For a few moments he was fruitlessly hoping that the pony wouldn’t come. He hoped so hard for that shape not to smudge its way between the door and the sharp sunlight. Hoped so hard he could feel the edges of the shape cut-out in the air.
She came at exactly ten past seven.
She came as a gust of air. As a tidy bun of hair. As a smile.
The solid blocks of pony that make her is fastened into tightly cut blocks of white fur. A blue uniform and a red book fight to tangle themselves around her. A smoothed down face, wide-eyes and blunted cheekbones had meshed together on her head. A tilted officer's cap occupies her head in what she hopes is a jaunty, jovial manner.
She smiles a lot but doesn't own the distinctive smile lines you’d expect. She had pokey blue eyes that could blink between two watery or too sharp. She wasn't muscular but trim.
Overall, attractive in the same way that people find symmetric lines pleasing.
She had a boring and comforting name. Alice. She had a surprising lack of surname which suggested an orphan (he’s made many speculations but they usually hang in the air untouched while she quickly makes a new conversation).
Alice’s smile is so goddamn curved it’s shaped like a question.
“Morning Sir!”
“Come. Do it”
“Sir?”
“You’re going to say it”
“…Sir?”
“I wrote it down. What you’re going to say. So say it”
Her maddening flash of red and teeth has hardened into a confused grin. A small moment. Then a flood of recognition. Great.
“Another glorious day on Celestia’s green earth to do the Unity party's great work!”
Right now in that small piece of space from this line to the last, Watch had never been filled with such an urge to carry on drinking. The phrase itself wasn’t so bad. She just said it every day.
“That’s the one. Get me a damn coffee”
“Yes sir!”
Because life is cruel like that Alice managed to pack a grin between “yes” and “sir”. For a few seconds rays eclipsed off her obtuse rump, then her legs, then the door.
The day he had tried to ignore had finally fallen into the room.