That Cadmium Red Really Tied the Painting Together
Painting a martyrdom used up a lot of red paint.
Toola Roola took a step back from her work and scowled.
“Bullshit,” she muttered to herself. “I have created a towering masterpiece of pure, unalloyed bullshit.” She would go into the critique session tomorrow, and she would prop her five-foot-by-seven-foot photorealistic vision of the death of Jennet of Arc up against the wall next to the work of other sophomore painting majors whose idea of hard work was to stagger into the studio drunk and smudge some paint around for a few hours, and yet her painting would be the most bullshit of them all. If Bronze Bastion decided to smear the classroom walls with his own feces and call it art — which was not impossible or even unlikely — her painting would still be more bullshit than that.
The perspective was grossly distorted. Jennet’s right foreleg was too short. Her armor was warped, which Toola could pass off as an effect of the flames consuming the warrior maiden’s body, but that, in turn, would raise questions about the millions of tiny lighting errors that plagued the entire work. But worst of all, the musculature of Jennet’s left hind leg was an incomprehensible mess.
The model was, of course, unavailable at 9:30 at night on a Thursday, and all of Toola’s consultations of her anatomy books had not helped to resolve the issue. She had tried to examine her own leg, but it was mostly tendon and bone, and was of almost no help with questions of muscular anatomy. And of course, the studio was abandoned, so there was nopony else to look at, either. Just as well; “may I look at your thighs” was the kind of question that was likely to get derailing unless phrased very carefully.
She frowned, and blew her ragged pastel-colored bangs out of her eyes. There was only one thing for it — more blood. A bleeding leg wound would cover the problem nicely. Admittedly burns do not generally cause bleeding, but she had already decided that regardless of actual history, her Jennet of Arc had put up a mighty struggle before being apprehended. She reached over to her little painter’s cart, fumbling for the cadmium red. It was upsettingly light. She held the nearly flat tube up and glared at it.
She had never been the type to squeeze a tube from the bottom and go up, regardless of what toothpaste etiquette or her male lovers might demand, so maybe if she rolled it up, she could gather enough paint.
Maybe.
Initial results were good. The end of the tube swelled satisfyingly, but her blunt little earth pony hooves could not manage to get a good enough grip to get the stuff out of the end. She giggled like a middle schooler — that was another problem she often had with her male lovers. Putting them in her mouth usually solved that , so maybe if she gripped the tube in her teeth right behind the nozzle, leaned over her palette, and bit down…
Bad idea.
The tube exploded, filling her mouth and nostrils with slimy goo. A roaring success with the stallions. A disaster here. She rushed to the sink, spat out red, and, after brief deliberation, decided to rinse her mouth out with turpentine. She’d probably get mouth cancer later in life, but at least she got her teeth white again. Or at least, very light pink instead of very light yellow, like they usually were. So a lateral move. But her lips and some of the pink fur of her nose and chin were stained bright red, and she couldn’t get it off no matter how hard she scrubbed. She was going to look like a five-bit whore for days, and there was nothing she could do about it.
But that was a minor problem next to the fact that all of her red paint was gone. All of it! That had been the last tube! This was a disaster. It was the end of the world! Her painting could not go to final critique in this state! As a friend of hers would say, of all the worst things that could happen, this was the worst possible thing!
Toola began to pace back and forth across the studio. “Think, Toola. Think. You can handle this. Okay, the bookstore in the student center is closed. So is the Shoetrect on Mulland Street. Where else is I can get paint? Can I make it to Stinky Bottom’s?” Stinky Bottom’s Wholesale Art Supply Emporium was amazing, and open until 10:00 every night, but it was eight blocks away.
She made some quick mental calculations.She could do this if she was focused.
Five minutes to struggle into enough warm clothes not to die of hypothermia in the Whinnyappolis winter.
Thirty seconds to gallop down three flights of stairs to the lobby of the Shipper Arts Center.
Five minutes to search her bags and pockets for her student ID, so she wouldn’t be locked out of the building. Another five minutes to stagger back up the stairs, sweaty and weighed down by her coat and scarf, to retrieve her ID card from her paint cart.
Thirty seconds back down the stairs.
Ten minutes to trot across the quad of Smart Cookie University before collapsing in the foyer of the student center in a wheezing heap.
A horned shadow leaned over her. She looked up. A smiling yellow unicorn levitated a stack of small pamphlets at her. “Hi! I’m Easy Answers! Have you heard the good news about my Harmony’s love for us all?”
Oh, buck, it was the Campus Crusaders for Harmony. Toola’s heart rate spiked as the unicorn slipped a religious tract into her mouth next to her ID. Just stand up, thank her and be on your way, Toola. Do not torture the Harmonists. Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage.
“You see,” said Easy Answers, helping Toola to her hooves, “Harmony loves you very much, and will forgive your sins if you…”
“Mgh nst mk ah rk tho bg thy cnt mve hit?” Toola mumbled through a mouthful of plastic and paper.
The Easy Answers blinked. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
Toola spit her ID and the small pamphlet of religious propaganda into a side pouch on her saddlebags. “I said, ‘can Harmony make a rock so big she can’t lift it?’” Damn it Toola I told you we don’t have time for this.
A look of fear flickered through Easy Answers’ eyes. “Oh no. It’s you. They warned me about you!”
Toola grinned. See, nothing to worry about. “Well, I’ll just be on my way, then. I wouldn’t want to further trouble your faith with…”
Easy Answers looked over her shoulder. “Dumb Ox! It’s that mare!”
A shaggy brown earth pony stallion with a protractor cutie mark shuffled over to them. His ragged black mane covered his eyes. Easy Answers slipped behind him and pushed him forward with her shoulder.
“Okay, so, the problem here is with your definition of ‘omnipotence’,” Dumb Ox began, puffing a stray lock away from his brow. “I mean, okay, it’s kind of confusing because the word ‘omnipotent’ literally means ‘able to do anything’, but nopony ever intended that to mean ‘able to do things that literally don’t make any sense’. If Harmony were to make a rock she couldn’t lift, what would that even look like? At a certain mass, long before any God would have trouble moving it, the rock would probably collapse into a black hole, and then where would we be?”
Easy Answers nodded in satisfaction. “You tell that painted jezebel, Oxy!”
Toola swore internally. Damn it, they’d found a smart one. Or at least an elaborately crazy one. Black holes? Seriously? She didn’t have time for this. “Okay, you’re moving the goalposts, and I’m not running away because I’m afraid of you; I really, really need to get to the art supply store before it closes, so, um, bye!” And she bolted for the back entrance to the student center.
Dumb Ox shouted after her, “Wait you forgot…” but she was gone.
How long had that taken? Three minutes? Five? She raced downhill, shouldering through the Thursday night bar crowd, skidding on patches of ice, leaping over snowbanks, dodging what little traffic there was at night in this sad husk of a city. And she made it. She made it just in time to skid across the parking lot and bang her head against the locked front door of Stinky Bottom’s. It was 10:06, and the store was already dark inside.
“All right, smart ass,” she said to herself, out loud this time, “great job staying on task back there. Now what?”
Now what, indeed. There was nothing else for her down here, except maybe getting mugged. But she wasn’t defeated yet. It was Thursday night, the first serious drinking night of the week. Not really her thing — the muse demanded certain sacrifices, and holding a brush in your mouth was hard enough when sober — but Rose would be holding court at the Grounds. Not a place where anypony would be drunk, but hardly lucid either, with all the coffee, pot, and molly floating around there. That would be a good place to find painting majors, and from there some paint. It was a start, at least.
★★★
The door to Grounds for Celebration used to be a basement bulkhead in an alley. A short corridor that doubled as a public notice board — all of it, even the ceiling — led to a purple bead curtain that opened into a room with dark burgundy walls. Those walls were covered in paintings — all by students or local artists. Some of them were Toola’s; she tried not to look at those. The newest of them was over six months old, and apparently she’d been a flailing dilettante six months ago.
It was a tiny room, crowded way beyond fire code regulations, making physical intimacy impossible to avoid. Toola squirmed in between the flanks and rumps of several dozen ponies on her way to the counter. She felt vile — between the running and the many rapid temperature changes, Toola’s body was covered in a sheen of sweat beneath her coat and scarf, and all this concentrated body heat wasn’t helping matters.
“Oh, your aura doesn’t look good, sweetie,” said the glassy-eyed unicorn barista with the coffee bean cutie mark. “I think you might’ve had a few too many already.”
“I’m straight, Jitters,” said Toola, slamming a bit on the bar. “All the agitation you see is 100% natural bitch rage. Give me a black cold brew. Also, I need to see Rose.”
“Coming right up,” said Jitters, “but Rose isn’t holding audience tonight. Bit of a private party.” She grinned and winked.
“I don’t care if they’re holding a pony sacrifice in there, this is an emergency.”
“Sorry, sugarcube. Nothing I can do. Your drink’ll be right up.”
It took much longer than advertised. When her drink did come, Toola shotgunned it without bothering to add any sweetener. The bitterness matched her mood nicely. Then she ducked down and wormed her way through the crowd towards the door in the back with ‘Rose’s Room’ painted on it in amateurish calligraphy, easily keeping out of sight of the overworked staff. Corvus Corax was curled up in the corner by the door, apparently asleep. Toola reached for the push bar on the door.
“You weren’t invited, Toola,” said the black gryphon, one eye creeping open a hair.
“My invitation must’ve gotten lost in the mail,” said Toola, her hoof easing off on the push bar just a hair.
“Likely story. Don’t go in. It’s a private party.”
“I need to talk to Rose.”
Corvus twitched his tail. “Everybody needs to talk to Rose. You can have your turn when she gets out.”
Toola scowled. “So what did you do to get on her bad side?”
Corvus’ other eye opened. “What?”
Toola grinned. She’d hit a nerve. “What did you do to have to pull door duty on an orgy? Did you not stroke your chin hard enough during one of her performances?”
Corvus ruffled his wings. “Who says I’d wanna get busy with a bunch of nasty little ponies anyway? That shit ain’t attractive.” But his voice lacked conviction.
“Yeah, but what do you owe her, then? You’ve already interrupted your nap for her. If you have to escort me out, your spot will get cold.”
Corvus was silent for a moment, mulling that one over. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m gonna close my eyes for just a second, and what happens during that time isn’t my responsibility.”
And Toola was in.
Harmony, it stank in here. The musty odor of sweat was even stronger here than it was in the main room, mixed with the pungent reek of sexual fluids. A dozen ponies, a buffalo, and a donkey were twisted into intimate configurations on cushions around the edges of the room. In the center, sprawled luxuriously on a futon mattress, was Silvery Rose, being tended to by a freshman mare and a stallion.
“Toola! Oh, that lipstick’s not a good look for you. But do come in.” said Rose, reaching down to stroke the cheek of her stallion. “Please, pull up a cushion, take your coat off.”
“I’m just here to ask you a favor,” said Toola, sitting down next to the threesome. Silvery Rose was a magnificent mare — towering and muscular, silky light gray coat, massive haunches, long crimson tresses flowing in sculpted curls around her thick but elegant neck, and a striking square-muzzled face. She found what nature had given her not to her liking, so she had remade herself in her own image — in that sense, her body was a work of art, and Toola respected her for that. But not for anything else, really.
“Oh, I don’t think I owe you any favors,” said Rose, stroking the faces worshiping the veiny shaft of her massive cock.
Toola sighed. Rose was right, of course. “I know, Rose. But I’m desperate. And it’s a small one.”
Rose’s male partner had moved up to the head of her cock. Toola tried not to stare as he tried to push his face down onto it all at once, and pulled back, gagging and drooling.
“Oh, darling, darling,” cooed Rose, wiping his lips with her red hoof. “Are you all right?”
The stallion nodded.
“We respect the cock. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Rose. May I try again, please?”
Rose chuckled. “Of course you may.”
The stallion was intensely pretty, with a delicately upswept muzzle and glistening violet eyes. Toola had to act quickly, or risk losing what little of Rose’s attention she already had. “I’ll owe you a favor.”
Rose laughed heartily, her slight paunch bouncing beneath a ribcage like a beer keg. “Oh, will you, now.” She gestured around the room. “I think you’ll find that I am richly favored already.”
“I can paint you,” said Toola.
“Oh, Toola, my little pony. The monstrousness of your ego is breathtaking.” She arched her back in pleasure as the stallion began to bob up and down her flare. “Oh! Oh, yes, that is excellent. Miss Peachy, you may turn your attention to my balls, if you don’t mind.” Rose’s mare nodded, and her face vanished behind a vast thigh.
Toola cleared her throat politely.
Rose waved her hoof at Toola, “Fine, fine, you may owe me a favor if it will make you go away. What is it you need?”
“I’m out of paint, all the stores are closed, and my crit is tomorrow.”
“Paint. And you call yourself an artist.” Rose turned her head towards the donkey, who was on her hocks over the buffalo’s face. “Mirabella! If you could come over here when you have a moment.”
Mirabella held up a hoof. “I’m almost… I’m almost… oh… oh my buck. Oh buck! Oh bucking Harmony on a stick!” She dismounted, gasping and dripping, kissed the buffalo’s soggy muzzle, and pulled herself over with her forelegs. “Sorry. Hind legs not working right now. That was a good one. What can I do you for?”
Rose gestured from Mirabella to Toola. “Toola Roola here is in need of some oil paint. Do you have any you could spare?”
“I might. What kind?” said Mirabella.
“I need cadmium red. Whicker and Neighton, if I can get it, though at this point I’ll take anything.”
Mirabella laughed. “Yeah, I think I have that back in my room. I can take you there — I’m pretty much done here.”
★★★
“I’m sorry I pulled you out of there,” said Toola. “I really appreciate it, though.”
Mirabella was dismissive. “Oh, don’t be sorry. I didn’t really like anypony there anyway. Plus you’ve got a pair, busting in on one of Rose’s private parties like that. That takes gumption, and gumption makes me hot.”
Toola shrugged, the gesture almost invisible through her heavy coat. “What can she do to me?”
Mirabella just laughed. She was clearly a townie; she wore nothing but a scarf, hat, and winter jacket in the obscene cold. Toola considered propositioning her as an artist’s model; her thighs were certainly of sufficient muscular definition, and she was even the right species. What transactions might have to transpire to get her back to the studio was another matter entirely.
“Damn, I could go for a smoke right now,” said Mirabella. “You got any?”
Toola shook her head. “No, I don’t smoke.”
“You’re no fun,” said Mirabella with a coy grin.
“I just want to spread the same amount of fun out over a longer lifespan.”
Mirabella laughed and socked her in the shoulder. “Ha! I like you! C’mon, though, I’m getting twitchy.”
They stopped at the Circle Q on the corner of Mulland and Bounder. Mirabella asked the pegasus clerk for a pack of Kruels and a couple of Powerbucks tickets. Toola stood near them, facing the door while both their backs were turned. She watched with an almost cinematic detachment as a unicorn in a zebra mask stepped inside. Time slowed as the unicorn’s horn glowed blue beneath the place where it distended his mask, levitating a snub-nosed revolver out of the inside front pocket of his winter coat. The room seemed to fall away around her, and the unicorn came into sharp focus, like a reverse tracking shot in a cheesy crime thriller.
“Hooves in the air, motherbuckers!” shouted the Unicorn. “Wings too, flyboy. Any of you punks move and I’ll redecorate this place with your brains!”
Toola, Mirabella, and the clerk stood awkwardly on their hind legs. The latter two turned to face the unicorn. “Aw, come on,” said the clerk, “this is the third time this week!”
The unicorn waved the gun at the clerk. “Quit complaining and empty out the register.”
The clerk nodded and began to lower his hooves. The unicorn jammed the muzzle against the end of his nose, squashing it up. “I said, hooves in the air!”
“But I can’t open the drawer without my hooves!” complained the clerk.
The unicorn hesitated. “Um….”
“Have you ever even done this before?” said Toola.
The unicorn turned his gun on Toola. “Keep talking, bitch. I’ve got six really good comeback lines I’m dying to use.”
Mirabella clucked and shook her head. “Now you’ve taken your attention off the clerk. If he had a gun, you’d be in deep trouble.”
Toola nodded. “Or a panic button. Some of these places have kick switches now. The police could already be on their way.”
The unicorn swung his gun back towards the clerk, who shook his head vigorously.
“And what’s up with the zebra mask, anyway? That’s really creatureist,” said Toola.
Mirabella nodded. “What were you thinking? That you’d confuse bystanders by dressing as a different species? Maybe stir up some simmering ethnic animosity to cover your escape? I can tell you, as a non-pony Equestrian, I get enough shit every day without jerks like you trying to make things worse.”
“But you’re a donkey!” said the unicorn.
“I’m a minority, though. I respect the struggle of my zebra sisters.”
The unicorn stomped his hoof. “Buck it! That’s it, I’m going to shoot you all and take the money myself!” He’d stopped aiming at anypony in particular, though.
Toola rolled her eyes. “Hey, clerk. How much money do you keep in that drawer?”
The clerk gulped, looking between Toola and the unicorn. “About a hundred and fifty bits, like the sign on the door says. I put any extra in a drop box.”
“Do you really want to rack up three counts of equicide for a couple of day’s pay at a real job?” said Toola.
The unicorn tilted his gun towards the floor, and took a half-step back.
“I work part-time in the dining hall,” said Mirabella. “I make about that in a week. It sucks, but at least I don’t have to do life in jail for it.”
The unicorn stuffed his gun back into his coat, grabbed the cigarettes and lottery tickets off the counter, turned, and ran right into the height chart next to the door.
“Sorry,” he said, “I can hardly see in this damn mask.” He stumbled out the door.
The clerk reached behind him, took a couple packs of cigarettes off the rack, and pushed them towards Mirabella. “Thanks for almost getting me killed. Take those and never come back again.”
Out on the street again, Toola found her heart was thumping against her ribs. The night had a strange newness to it — every line sharp enough to cut bread, every color bright enough to blind. She could taste the cold, and smell the light of the street lamps. Her breath made Brownian curls in the air, swirling in an endless fractal dance. She was alive. She was alive!
“Are you okay, honey? You look kind of shaky,” said Mirabella.
Toola turned to face her. “I really need to look at your thighs.”
★★★
They started kissing on the elevator. They stumbled out of it, staggering down the hall, leaving a trail of winter things and averted gazes on the way to Mirabella’s room. Mirabella fumbled with her key while Toola Roola gnawed on her hindquarters, leaving teeth marks visible even through Mirabella’s fluffy, grayish-brown fur. The pair tumbled through the door, head over tail, and landed in a laundry basket. Toola heard, but didn’t see, the donkey’s roommate storm out of the room with a groan that suggested grudging acceptance rather than shock. She fumbled blindly with a hind hoof for the door, then pulled back and kicked it shut.
“Lick my dock,” said Mirabella, bowing down facing away from her, rump in the air, thighs spread, cunt drooling.
“Your dock?”
Mirabella nodded. Toola blinked. That was a new one on her. “Not the ponut, just the dock?”
Mirabella blushed. “Please? It feels so good.”
Toola put her head warily against one of Mirabella’s rump cheeks. She’d never thought about a lover’s dock before, situated as it was dangerously close to the poopy bits. The complexity of the geometry certainly was appealing, though, with the root of the tail coming out from between the very particular curves of an equine’s buttocks. She lifted Mirabella’s long donkey tail and ran her tongue under it to its base. Mirabella shuddered, fat and muscle jiggling beneath her coat.
“Like that,” she begged. “Again. Please.”
Toola giggled. This was fun. She ran her tongue back and forth until the gray fur was matted down to the skin beneath. “Oh, you naughty donkey. Do you like that?”
Mirabella groaned. “Bite. Bite it!”
Toola knew her new friend wanted pain, but she decided to play dumb, and gave her just the lightest of nips. “Like that? Was that too hard?”
“Harder!”
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to hurt you!”
“Hurt me!”
Toola sunk her teeth in hard, and Mirabella screamed so loudly that the neighbors on both sides hammered on the walls and shouted for them to keep it down.
★★★
An hour later, they were barrel to barrel and head to bottom on Mirabella’s bed, faces nestled between each other’s hind legs. Toola’s tongue was so tired she could barely feel it. She ran her other hoof back and forth over Mirabella’s leg, trying to find where the biceps femoris went into the lateral femoral fascia.
A familiar feeling drifted through the sweet haze of post-orgasmic bliss. What was it? Heavy, nagging, relentless — it was guilt. She was supposed to be doing something else, wasn’t she? Whatever. She tried to ignore it.
“That was amazing,” said Mirabella.
“It was.” said Toola.
“How does my butt look? Does it look bad? If feels pretty gnawed on.”
Toola winced. She hadn’t been gentle. There were little pink bite marks showing through the fur everywhere, and a tiny bit of red on her dock. “You might have to wear pants tomorrow, and… oh, shit. Donkey blood!”
Mirabella twisted around and raised her tail. “How much? Is it bad?”
Toola facehoofed so hard she saw stars. “No, for my painting! The cadmium red!” Then she realized how rude that was. “Buck, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a jerk, but I really do need to finish that painting.”
Mirabella raised an eyebrow. “You’re painting donkey blood?”
“Jennet of Arc.”
“I thought she was burned at the stake? Ponies don’t generally bleed when they’re burned alive, do they?”
“Artistic liberties.”
Mirabella snorted, keeping whatever thoughts she had on the matter to herself. “Well, miss bitey pony, normally I’d try and get you to stay for another round, but I don’t think my ass can handle any more of you tonight. My oil painting stuff is in the toolbox under the desk. Get me some Band-Aids from the big drawer while you’re down there, please?”
★★★
Toola positively pranced across the quad back towards the Shipper building. She had her paint, she had a newly enhanced knowledge of donkey anatomy, she’d traded phone numbers with Mirabella before she’d left. And it was barely one in the morning! At this rate, she might even finish her painting in time to get a couple of hours of sleep in before class. She stopped at the door and nuzzled into her saddle bag where she’d put her ID.
She came out with nothing but a slightly chewed religious tract. She shook it to see if her ID was stuck inside it. It wasn’t. She threw the tract down in the snow. The illustration on the front showed two young foals, a colt and a filly, writhing in flames of eternal torment. Will You Escape HELL? it asked her.
Toola wanted to spit at the obscene little thing. “I’m already there, thanks.” She pulled off her saddlebags and tore through them. When that turned up nothing but loose trash, broken pencils, old Kleenex and a dog-eared copy of “Equine Anatomy for Artists” she unpacked them, an item at a time, until she was sure the card was lost. She started to pace. Where was the last place she’d had it? She’d been over half the campus in the past three hours!
Think, Toola. Come on. You can remember this.
She’d had it in her mouth when she’d left. In fact she’d had it in her mouth until she got to the student center. Oh buck me with a fence post. She raced back downhill.
The student center was abandoned at this hour, but the doors were still unlocked. She scoured the whole path she’d taken into and out of the building, and then scoured it again. She was considering expanding her search to places she definitely hadn’t been — the restrooms, the bowling alley, the event hall — when she saw the note.
“Dear Pink Skeptic: You dropped your ID. I have it in room 546, Hoofdecker Hall. — Dumb Ox”
Of all the worst things that could happen, thought Toola, This was the WORST POSSIBLE THING.
★★★
It wasn’t quite the worst possible thing, actually, since Rarity lived in Hoofdecker Hall, too. Toola called her from the phone in the dorm’s foyer to explain her situation, and she came down to let her in, caparisoned in regalia.
“Toola darling! How are you!” Rarity’s fake wings rustled against her floofy dress. Her crown was clearly made of plastic. She made kissing noises next to each of Toola’s cheeks, and blessed her with her magic wand.
“I’ve had better nights. How are you?”
“I am, as the hoi polloi put it, tripping balls. Let us adjourn to my chambers, and you can tell aunty Rarity everything.”
Rarity’s rich hoofball player daddy had gotten her a single room, and Rarity had converted it into a fully functioning studio, complete with shelves of fabric, three sewing machines, and a dozen mannequins of varying degrees of realism draped in partially completed outfits. Some outfits were class assignments, some were commissions, some were experiments. Toola examined the mannequins while Rarity fixed drinks, and nearly jumped through the roof when one of them moved.
“How do I look, miss?” said the white earth pony stallion with a wink.
Toola tried to catch her breath. “Good. The mini-dress suits you.”
Rarity laughed, and floated Toola a glass of red wine. “Don’t worry. Happy Camper won’t bite. At least, he won’t bite you; he’s quite gay. Would you care for anything stronger than wine?”
Toola shook her head, and took enough of a sip of the wine to be polite. “No thanks. I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight.” She walked around Happy Camper, admiring his dress — the way it flattered his lines without revealing too much, the contrast of its red fabric with his white fur, the spectacular boldness of the rainbow-colored boa around his neck. “Speaking of which, I admire yours.”
Rarity smiled. “Why, thank you, darling. I do try. I have things I wish to accomplish in this world, and fashion is the key that will open those doors.”
“A means to an end, then.”
“Society, darling. Praise. Fame. Popularity. Acceptance amongst those whose acceptance matters most.”
“But your family is already rich.”
Rarity snorted. “Ponyville rich. Anyhow, money scarcely matters. Do you have any idea how much Blueblood owes? The Canterlot elite would never accept Rarity Belle, daughter of Hondo Flanks. But Rarity Belle, the up-and-coming fashion designer? There is somepony worth knowing.”
“So the work itself isn’t satisfaction enough for you?”
Happy Camper yawned.
Rarity shrugged and lay down on her bed. “If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it. But all we do is a means to an end. We have to work if we are to live. If we are to live well, we must work hard. And if we want to live fabulously, we must do fabulous work.”
Toola lay down next to her. “I don’t know. As long as I can remember, I’ve felt… like, a force, outside of me, asking me, wanting me, telling me to make things. And if I let myself get distracted, I feel…”
“Guilty,” said Rarity, stroking Toola’s cheek with the frog of her hoof.
“Guilty,” said Toola.
“Rarity, if you don’t need me…” said Happy Camper.
Rarity waved a hoof at him. “Please be patient, darling, I am speaking with my friend. Toola. Toola. You work too hard. And if I, of all ponies, say you work too hard, then you very certainly work far too hard. Let yourself be distracted. I could be… very distracted by you.”
And they kissed. Rarity’s kiss was like the flicker of a cool breeze on a hot day — so soft and so and refreshing you could hardly believe it had happened, and so quick you suspected it might not have.
Happy Camper looked at his watch meaningfully.
“Rarity, you’re high,” said Toola. “I’m taking advantage of you.”
“I am, and you aren’t,” said Rarity. “But I will always be your friend, no matter what you choose.”
“Ditto. But I need to paint. Also I may have fallen just the tiniest bit in love tonight. Too soon to tell, but hooves crossed.”
“Oh, how lovely for you!” Rarity patted her leg. “Anyhow, I understand. Happy Camper, will you escort Toola to her friend’s room?”
★★★
Dumb Ox’s room looked as if he’d begun to hastily clean it, then gotten bored and given up. Large amounts of laundry were visible under the bed, but the odd stray sock still littered the floor. Flattened stripes marred the carpet where large piles of books had been pushed up under the windows at the far edge of the room.
Still, it smelled all right for a young stallion’s room — and Toola had been in more than a few of those. There was a drafting board with a partially drawn blueprint on it, a star chart, a periodic table, a lot of pictures of robots on the wall, and an open book about the Camel Cosmological Argument face down on the bed.
Dumb Ox slumped wearily against the door, holding it open for her. “Hey. It’s you. Hold on.” He went to his dresser, took Toola’s ID in his mouth, set it on the floor between them, and pushed it forward with his hoof. “There you go. I tried to tell you you’d dropped it, but you left in such a hurry.”
“Could have happened to anypony,” said Toola, taking the ID and putting it in her saddlebags.
“Are we done here?” said Happy Camper, giving Dumb Ox an evaluating once-over. The two stallions’ eyes met, and lingered for a second before Dumb Ox looked away.
“Hold on,” said Toola. “I need to talk to him.”
Happy Camper rolled his eyes. “You two have fun. I’m going to go waste my time with Rarity.”
Toola closed the door in Happy Camper’s face, walked over to Dumb Ox’s chair, sat down, and curled all four legs up underneath herself. She fished around in her saddle bag until she found the tract, and then threw it onto his bed. Dumb Ox looked at the tract, then looked at Toola. “Huh?”
“Why?” said Toola.
Dumb Ox’s massive shoulders shrugged, and he climbed up on his bed. “It’s just a little comic book.”
“It’s a comic book about little foals going to Hell. What did they do? Swear? Talk back to their parents? Not eat their vegetables?”
Dumb Ox looked at her strangely. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“You gave me that tract. Why? Do you think I’m going to Hell?”
He lay down on his back, and put his hooves over his eyes. “Listen, I stayed up to give you your ID back. I have an exam tomorrow. Can I go to sleep please?”
“Bullshit. You could have just left it at the front desk.”
“All right, I was going to use it as an opportunity to witness to you, but you took too long to get here and now I’m too sleepy.”
“You want to witness to me? Then answer my question. Do you think I’m going to Hell?”
Dumb Ox sighed. “Everypony has a sinful nature. Without Harmony’s forgiveness, we can never enter into her grace.”
“So yes, then.”
“It’s nothing personal against you. I’m just… trying to help people. It’s not what I want to be true. I want everyone to be good and happy and go to be with Harmony when they die, but I don’t think that’s the way things are.”
Toola grimaced. “You really think there’s an invisible spirit watching our every move and silently judging us?”
“It’s either that, or nothing happens for any reason, and we’re all just here to entertain ourselves as best we can until we die.”
Toola snorted. “I think you’re ignoring a lot of other possibilities, pal.”
Dumb Ox rolled over onto his side, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Well, it is a little black and white to look at it that way. I don’t know. What do you believe?”
Toola sighed. “Do you want the truth, or the answer that will make me sound sane?”
“I hope you’re not keeping me awake just to lie to me.”
“There’s something out there that wants me to make things. Paint paintings, mostly. Not nice, or pretty paintings. Not paintings that are going to make people happy or sell for a lot of money. Just the realest, best, truest paintings I can make.”
Dumb Ox nodded. “Uh huh?”
“It’s not just a metaphor. My muse is real. I’ve never seen her, or heard her, but I feel her all the time.”
“That’s what Harmony is like for me.” He poked the book on the Camel Cosmological Argument with his hind hood. “I read all these books to prove to myself that feeling is real, but… well, if it isn’t real, I don’t know what is.”
Toola pursed her lips. “So you understand.”
“I do! I totally do! And if making art is what brings you closer to Harmony, then I think you should do that. Speaking of which, did you ever find that red paint you were looking for?”
Toola nodded. “Yeah. I should get back to work, now.”
“Go ahead and let yourself out.”
Dumb Ox went back to reading as Toola let herself out. As she closed the door, she heard the soft thump of a book falling on a sleeping face.
★★★
Toola Roola sipped her third jumbo-sized cup of putrid dining hall coffee. She had another just like it in reserve — she hadn’t gotten any sleep after all. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but feel proud. Most of her classmates had already become abstract expressionists over the past year, as this was the style that allowed the most time for drinking. Sable Bristles was the latest to fall — her investigation into cubism had brought her to the surprising discovery that it was actually a very precise technique, and this week she had brought in a color field painting. Bronze Bastion was sitting next to a brown smear on the wall, and removing soiled rubber gloves.
“So let’s begin,” said Professor Found Object, setting down her coffee and adjusting her glasses. “What do we think of Toola’s piece?”
“The word ‘kitsch’ comes to mind,” said Bronze Bastion, tossing his gloves into the trash can. “I want to see it on the side of a devotional candle.”
“You painted a donkey being burned alive?” said Sable Bristles. ”Isn’t that kind of creatureist?”
Toola grimaced. It was going to be a long critique.