I-solation
Day 6
The rest of the day was just one big blur for me. When I wake up to what I’m thinking is my sixth morning in Baltimare, I can tell I did indeed get a bath at some point. My fur isn’t full of dirt and grit and actually looks pink instead of some dull mix of gray and red. My flank still has ghost pains when I strain it (how the colts manage to get up to a run in these narrow hallways I don’t know), but I don’t need the bandages around my chest anymore and my face has gone down too. Somepony took care of my mane at some point, because it’s been brushed and braided off to one side. The braid is kinda sloppy, but it almost reaches down to my knees, and I wonder if my mane really does grow that quickly.
Part of the haziness from yesterday has to come from not speaking. Ever. At all. I can’t get a handle on what happened in specifics, but I do remember Miss Veny leaving me alone for a while in the room I’m in now. It’s more like a closet than a room, a closet stuffed with two bunk beds and chests at their feet. I’m lying on the bottom of the left side. I think I must have cried and cried and cried after Miss Veny left. The only clear thing after that was a feeling. And it’s not all gone this morning, just not as strong. All I could think about was how uncaring and vast everything out there had become. Or better yet, how tiny and insignificant I was. Everything felt heavy and crushing, and I wasn’t sure if I would be squashed under it all. And even now, part of me wants to be. For it all to just end.
I’m not sure how she knew, but I think now that she might have been waiting outside listening. Before I could cry myself to sleep, Magic came inside and brought me some lunch. It was just daisy sandwiches, but I was just glad it wasn’t a hayburger. Somehow, I ended up following her around for the rest of the day even if I have no idea what it was she was doing. Maybe it was having to be around all the colts and fillies chatting and laughing without a care in the world, or it could have been just walking itself, but I felt that weight mashing me into nothing but hate. I didn’t frown or scowl or lash out at anypony. I just seethed and hated the world. I hated this ‘home’, I hated everypony in it, I hated the city, I hated the princess for letting this all happen, and I hated Filthy Rich for actually doing it. And I couldn’t express it. I refused to express it. It was mine, and I was going to keep it that way.
My stomach is really growling this morning, so I must have skipped dinner. But it’s not the only thing that’s empty. It took me what felt like forever to go to sleep with how angry I was, but it, like the crushing feeling, seems to have mostly drained out during the night. I feel cold and numb to the world, like nothing matters anymore. I want either of those two back, even if they make me feel terrible, because it’s better than where I am now, not feeling much of anything at all.
I prop the thin pillow on the wall of my bunk and lean my back against it. I fiddle with the braid that is my mane now, noticing that the morning light from the window near the ceiling flicks on my hooves in weird ways. For a bit, there’s no movement in the room, and the most that I can hear is my own, almost silent, breathing and the songs of the morning birds outside. But the thing that interrupts it all isn’t a sound, not at first, but a shadow. A dark shape blocks the light from the window, and I can see something leaning down from the bunk above me out of the corner of my eye.
“You’re up early, and looky at that, sittin’ up by yourself an’ everything,” Magic’s voice comes from the shape.
“Yeah,” I answer, still twirling the end of the braid in my hooves. There’s a silence between us that feels wrong to me, but I get the notion Magic doesn’t care at all. “I’m not worthless,” I blurt out, and I squeeze my mane as if that seals the statement as right.
“Hoo,” the filly above me sighs and before I register how she does it, she swings down to plop onto my bunk. Literally. I’m certain she never touched the floor. It sorta makes me look up at her in surprise, and she’s eyeing me with a definitely ironic smile. “Slow down there Half Full,” she says to me. “You’re tryin’ to figure it all out, aren’t ya?”
“My name is Diamond,” I retort. “I… Why wouldn’t he want me?”
“You’ve got me beat on that one,” Magic says with a shrug. “But my advice, don’t even try to get in their head. Just roll with it, ya know. Tartarus’ll be happy to take’m eventually.”
“But… I can’t just forget like that!” I feel myself hissing in a whisper. “How can you just let go?”
“Ayo, I was like you when it happened, Half Full. I was angry and didn’t want to do anything with anypony,” Magic goes on. “I wanted to know why, but couldn’t ever figure it out. But when I finally stopped carin’, it just hit me a couple years later.”
“It’s not that easy,” I mutter. “All I can do is hate him. I don’t want to not hate him.”
“Well you’re not alone,” Magic rolls her head back with a chuckle. I glance over to the other side of the room, and it looks like we’re the only ones bunking in this one, which explains why there haven’t been half-asleep groans at the volume of Magic’s voice. “All of us here’ve got somethin’ to settle with somepony. Or we did. It seems silly after a while.”
“I feel straight up crappy,” I say, and while it sounds stupid, even in my head, I can’t find any other way to sum up all the digging and piercing and anger. It’s anger. I might as well admit it and stop trying to make it sound better by calling it hate or something else.
“Nothin’ new,” Magic says. “Anypony can feel crappy at any time for any darn reason. You wanna start to get past it all, you gotta do stuff. Find your place an’ all that jazz.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re all flat broke and have nothing that even looks like makeup,” I sneer, even though I try not to. But Magic doesn’t seem to be offended. Instead, she covers her mouth with her hoof, and her eyes squint before she bursts into a fit of laughing and giggles and starts rolling all over my sheets. I frown in confusion. Being poor isn’t funny is it?
“Okay, okay,” she eventually pauses to breathe and compose herself even though a few giggles slip past. “Let me put it this way instead.” She gives off a couple more laughs. “It’s a shock, sure, and it’s gonna take awhile to recover, but it’ll be easier and faster if you get outta bed and help me with somethin’.”
“Um… what?” I ask, curiosity at least managing to make enough of a dent in the wall of numbness to slip me onto the floor.
“Well, make your bed first,” Magic almost trills at me as she hops off too. “Miss Veny isn’t gonna cut you slack just ‘cause you’re new. And she’d be on my cutie mark about it too since we’re bunking together.” I grit my teeth together when I turn around to face the sloppy, mussed up sheets and squashed pillow. I’ve never in my whole life made a bed. That’s a poor servant’s job, and a low rung servant at that. But Magic’s watching, and I’ll look like a complete idiot if I don’t do something. With any luck, maybe she’ll just believe I do it differently. I at least know enough to toss the pillow onto the floor, but after that, I’m just guessing when I try to smooth out the lower end.
“The fillies are gonna be happy for the extra sleep,” Magic sighs behind me but with her typical upbeat tone. “Here. Watch and learn.” She has me stand by her side and with a sweep of her hooves, she grabs both ends and tugs them to the upper end. A couple hoof pats later, and it looks like the one across the room. “Toss that pillow up there and let’s go,” she tells me, and I follow her trot out the door.
We’re in one of the second floor hallways I think. There’s a particularly bad crayon version of what I hope is Princess Celestia taped to the wall. “Okay, since you’re the newest newcomer, you get to wake everypony else up with me. Here’s what you’ll do. First, keep on my tail, no matter what.” I nod, and I’m already getting anxious about this. Anypony who gives instructions in numbered order inevitably is giving instructions for something risky. “Second, run as loudly as you can. Stomp those hooves like you mean it!” She’s grinning wickedly now, and I get the idea this is probably her favorite part of the day. “Third, scream at the top of your lungs! It doesn’t have to be anything. You can just scream. It just has to be loud, obnoxious, and something you’d frown at on Monday morning. We cool?”
“Is this some sort of wacko tradition?” I ask, staring down the hallway and realizing she wants me to run down this half of the second floor, onto the first, through the kitchen, then back up the other side through the third until I wind up back here. “Because’ there’s no way I’m running that much.”
“You are too, Half Full,” Magic giggles with a rough rub of her hoof in my mane that’s over before I can duck out of it. “Just follow my lead, yeah?”
“Why in Equestria would I want to get sweaty and tired before I’ve even eaten breakfast?” I ask her. I inject a heavy dose of sarcasm for good measure. Who would want to do that except for farmers?
“Makes ya good an’ hungry,” Magic replies brisk and sure. “Besides, how else are all these fillies gonna know we mean business? Now, they’ve gotten more extra minutes than what’s good for them, so in three, two, one… GO! GET OFF YOUR FLANKS AND DOWN TO BOWLFUL! MOVE IT YOU PRISSY WUSSES! WOOOOO!” She takes off at a pace that would make a pegasus proud, screaming at the top of her lungs and slamming her hooves into the floor with each gallop. I can still feel the vibrations in the floor behind her as I feel my own hooves start to go forward. My mouth is open, and I’m taking small, dazed, and uncertain steps but my brain is still trying to process the ‘why’ of it all. Trying. That’s what I’m slowly inching past when a door flies open right next to me and the hollering of the colts inside scares a real, genuine scream out of me. My hooves grip at the wood, and I’m running off down the hall like a madpony yelling about the end of the world. And apparently I can run, because I catch up to Magic’s whiplashed tail before we’ve crossed the dining room.
And once I’m keeping pace with her, hollering and screaming doesn’t seem so weird anymore. My lungs fill up with air, and instead of a scared-out-of-my-skin yell coming out my mouth, a bubbly laughing is echoing behind Magic’s playful taunting. I don’t know why I’m enjoying it enough to laugh, because I never thought I’d have fun with anything ever again. But I am, so I don’t think about how it’s possible. I just go off and keep following Magic as we both yell ourselves hoarse. And by the time we end up back where we started and at last slow down into a trot, we’re both in giggling hysterics. They don’t stop until we wander down into the dining room, where it’s the same chaos from yesterday morning. We get our bowls of oatmeal (everypony else hushes and holds their breath only to break out into mad whooping when I don’t spill any this time), and I sit, eat, and listen to everypony else talk.
It’s not so much because I choose to not say anything, but for once, I’m happy to just hear what else is going on. Everypony teases everypony about anything. And most of the time, I can tell none of the accusations are true. But my biggest surprise comes when the stallion sitting next to me gives me a rough shove that keels me over into Magic, and instead of whapping him on the shoulder (she does that a lot) she calls at me, “So he’s just gonna get away with pushing like that?”
I don’t even bother saying no, but as I search around for what I’m supposed to do back, I surprise myself when I dip my hoof in my oatmeal and splat it all in his ear. And I say as the colts and fillies nearby give a rising ‘Oooooo!’, “Yeah, watch it!”
“I’d listen to ‘er Flat,” a younger stallion yells at him. “I bet it’s the face next time!” And everypony cheers and stomps the table as we go back to eating and hollering at each other while Flat cleans oatmeal out of his ear. He flicks some of his own from his spoon at me, and my giggle gets added to the cacophony filling the whole dining room. I like how it fits in.
And it’s a good thing I get the chance to tell this morning, because mere seconds after it escapes my mouth, Miss Veny steps into the center of the room, and like the ritual I’m guessing it has to be, everypony goes completely silent. “I’ve got the cleaning report card taped to every door, so bunks who have slackers, you know what you’ll be doing today after school. It’s much better this week though, so I want to see it even better this upcoming Thursday. Also, once we are finished with class, I’ve assigned you all into groups that you will go outside with. You young ones can go do rough around in the parks like I know you want to do when I’m trying to teach you mathematics -” A chorus of chuckles and giggles comes from everypony, even me. That’s really been me my whole life, come to think of it. It seems so far away, sitting at this makeshift hall table. “And as for the older fillies and gentlecolts, some of Millet’s friends are going to meet you outside and take you all job hunting. We will not have hooligans in this home while I’m still alive.”
“Hear, hear!” Magic roars at those words, lifting her mug of juice above everypony else’s heads. None of the rest of us are bold enough to follow her lead, but Miss Veny doesn’t seem to mind her outburst.
“Line up now, and get your books, and don’t dawdle,” she continues on before walking out while we all scooch out to dump off our bowls. And it hits me.
“Ah, Magic?” I probe. Surely I won’t have to go into a classroom. I was almost finished with school in Ponyville, and it’s not like Miss Veny knows that. I’m old enough to be out. At least I hope I look old enough to be out.
“Chill, Half Full,” she says without even waiting for the rest of my question. “You get to work with me, and maybe Millet’ll give you a shot as his assistant if he thinks you’ve got the chops. Out of textbooks and chalkboards we may be, but there’s not a day where we’ve got nothin’ to do.”
“Do… do I really wanna know what that means?” I ask, dropping my bowl in the sink, and instead of heading back into the halls like yesterday, I follow Magic through a door nestled inside a small crevice in the wall. We walk into a kitchen unlike any I’ve ever seen before. There’s no separate pantry and none of the cabinets have doors. It’s just a ton of counters filled either with knife sets and other cooking tools or protected by an extra layer of wood boards. Bags of vegetables, bread, and pickling jars are stuffed inside the no-door cabinets.
“Half Full, it means you’re about to make my and Millet’s life a whole lot easier,” Magic says. I can tell she means it, but she’s also amused. “Millet takes care of our bookwork for Miss Veny since she’s gotta teach all the school guys, but you and me, we’re here to help out Bowlful.”
“Like… how?” I ask. Cooking can’t be all that bad. Ponies don’t go to pay small fortunes for meals in Upper Canterlot because normal cooks prepare the food there. Celebrity chefs have to come from somewhere, and those ponies are looked at with a good amount of prestige.
“Choppin’,” Magic states. “Choppin’ our veggies, peelin’ our potatoes, trimmin’ the daisies. That sorta thing. I’m gonna get started on some pickling, and Bowlful’ll be in here later makin’ some dough. Not the shiny kind.”
“That’s…” I almost say ‘servant work,’ but I don’t. I trail off not because it isn’t true. It totally is. I know that for a fact. But, I don’t know why it takes so long to finally sink in, or maybe it just had to wait until my numb walls and anger thinned out enough, I don’t know… Regardless of why it happens now, I can’t escape the fact that I’m not in a mansion or an expensive hotel. I’m not sitting on the edge of my pool waiting for a glass of water, and I’m not sitting seventeen seats down from Filthy Rich expecting a dish with ingredients that came from the other side of the world. Where I am, what I am, is Diamond Tiara ‘Half Full’ being expected to help keep everypony else in the house from going hungry.
I walk over to the counters with the wood covers (I suppose they’re safe to cut on), grab the biggest knife I see first, and turn and ask Magic, “What should I start with?”
“That’s the spirit!” she says and dances in place, which makes me feel a little stupid with how I probably sounded. “Grab the carrots and the bell peppers and lay into those first. And lucky for you, Bowful doesn’t care all that much about what they end up looking like.” She laughs then and begins moving around and grabbing ingredients and bowls and jars like she’s done whatever it is she’s doing a million times over. I remind myself she probably has and grab a sack of green things I think are peppers. The knife feels odd to grip, but it must be ridiculously sharp, since it slices the vegetable in half without me even putting much effort into it.
And that’s how the work starts. We cut and peel and jar and stir and do every other possible verb to the vegetables and sauces Bowlful has for us. My shoulders end up straining themselves silly, and I have to switch hooves with the knife to give one a rest several times. Magic corrects me and shows me the right way to do it all whenever she sees me about to do something that could ruin the food, but she doesn’t stick around much. She’s darting all over the place, doing at least five things at once if I were to venture a guess. It’s impressive, and I have no other words for it. But even with Magic outperforming me by a long shot and my own bucketful of blunders, I don’t ever feel upset by it. And though we’re at it for hours and hours, I want to keep going. I want to fill that next jar or bowl faster and better than the last. There’s an excited feeling, a rush I get whenever I can actually finish something and hoof it over to Bowlful. I know that it’s me, only me, that’s done it. I’m helping to move things forward, and somehow, I know that by helping, everypony will be able to eat tonight.
Of course, it’s not like the whole kitchen is silent. Magic is in the room with us, which means loud jokes and cat calls bouncing around the walls every couple seconds. Magic is weird in a way. Nothing she says is funny all by itself, but the way she says things and the tap dances she does with them sometimes make it impossible not to laugh. Even Bowlful (who just grunts most of the time) snickers and snorts when she says something that’s good even for her.
But Magic wasn’t joking when she said the work never stops. Chopping up foodstuffs doesn’t last all day, so she leads me up to the top floor of the building to see Millet. We pass Miss Veny in a larger room on the second floor, and all the fillies and colts are listening to her with rapt attention as she draws something that looks important on the blackboard. Seeing Millet in a chair, in what I guess is the building’s only office, behind a desk, and with paper neatly ordered all around him just doesn’t seem right. He’s very quiet, focused, and doesn’t look up at us for anything. He’s not unfriendly, but he’s a completely different pony here than he is when he’s surrounded by all the younger colts. Magic tries to get him to show me some of the paperwork, but he gives us a small satchel of bits instead and tells us to go the market for our week’s supply of fresh vegetables.
We do, and Baltimare seems so different when I’m walking out in it with Magic. She knows just where to go, which ponies to talk to among the stalls, and how far she can push prices. I can’t help but take notice of how she does things, since a little thought in the back of my mind keeps poking me about me being in Magic’s place at some point. Only, I’ll be by myself, and everypony back home will be waiting for me to come back with more than they thought we could afford to have. Because from the weight of the sacks the two of us end up carrying back, Magic drives a harder bargain than anypony who’s on the other side of the counter.
We eat a snack (even Magic doesn’t go so far as to call a couple slices of bread and an apple, lunch), and she leads me to the wash closet. All of the cooking cloths and bath towels and cold weather coats are in buckets waiting for us, and I dread having my hooves in soapy, scalding hot water for the time it’s going to take to clean all of them. I wince at how hot Magic heats the water, but she insists it’s for the good of both me and her and the ponies who’ll be using what we dunk in it. Scrubbing on the washboard is the most exhausting, sweaty, time-consuming thing I’ve ever done ever. We work on them for longer than it took to do all of the food prep, and I realize why Magic is so lean and fast if she does this every single day.
When we finally finish, I simply fall onto my back with a huge sigh while Magic pulls the plugs on the drains. I have no doubt I’ll be very ready for bed by the time the moon pops up. “Eh, you’ll get used to it,” Magic says, and she pokes at my rapidly falling and rising stomach. “Aaaand you might wanna get outta the way.” I look to my side, and the horde of the youngest fillies and colts is barreling toward us. Every one of them is caked in dried mud and most have twigs and leaves in their mane and tails. They streak past us and leap into the empty bins Magic and I had just been using a moment ago. Somepony turns the water on, and cheers and cute yelps come from the gathered young ponies.
I find myself twidling with my braided mane as Magic and I watch the fillies gradually scrub and soak off the dirt and tree parts from their bodies. I don’t know why it’s my mane that starts my thoughts off this way, but with all I’ve gone through at this point, I hardly even try to understand it. All I know is that the mane in my hooves, braided up or trimmed to perfection, is still the mane of a royal pony. It still has a silkiness to it, and it still feels like only special hooves are allowed to care for it. It’s not the mane of somepony who cuts vegetables or carries heavy sacks through city streets. And it’s definitely not the mane of somepony who spends the better part of her afternoon scrubbing at towels so fillies and colts can have a way to dry themselves after a much needed bath.
It’s a royal mane. And it’s not the mane I want to have. It’s not the mane ought to have. And the thing Magic said to me about just doing things makes sense now. I’ve done. I’ve accomplished. And I feel better knowing that than I know I would sitting around trying to forget and trying to force myself to move on. “Magic, do you have a pair of scissors?” I ask her, and I pull my eyes away from the fillies and colts. I’ve been staring at them for a while I think. “And do we have much time before din - I mean, supper?”
“Yeah, I’ve got some,” she says and shrugs. “And yes again! With another team pony, we got done with that load twice as fast.”
“Will you cut my mane then? Short. Really short.” She looks at me with wide eyes for a couple seconds before they narrow, and she grins with a small nod.
“Right this way.” She swings a hoof I guess in the general direction of our bunk room and wraps it around my neck as we walk there. “Yeah, you’ll make it, Diamond.”
“You know this how?”
“You’re already walkin’ there now, sister.”