Understudy
Sunny Flare was late.
This was decidedly out-of-character for her. She prided herself on punctuality, and even if she didn’t, her mother prided herself on raising a punctual daughter even more so. She would not have permitted Sunny Flare to be late, and the consequences would be dire indeed if she were so much as five seconds behind schedule.
Sunny Flare was not merely five seconds late.
The proper young unicorn mare finally arrived at that familiar school auditorium right before the climax of the play. Her understudy had taken over her leading role more than an hour ago, after Miss Flare simply failed to materialize.
The only recourse left to the absentee actress was to take a seat and silently watch as her understudy snatched Sunny’s opportunity – for fame, for critical acclaim, for breakout success – out from under her.
An open chair awaited her in the front row, at the tip of a stage that thrust out like the point of a sword.
The cushion on the grown-amethyst chair, padded enough to appease any noblepony who stopped in to catch a play, was a familiar comfort to Sunny. After all, she couldn’t act in every production they put on at Princess Amore’s Crystal Memorial Preparatory Academy, try as she might.
Sometimes, it was because she was directing the play, a role which Sunny’s mother had secured for her daughter quite easily. Headmare’s fiat here, blackmail held over her theatre professor there, and all that kind of dealing that Sunny preferred not to dirty her hooves with herself.
Other times, it was because an actual professional troupe had come to use the school’s theatre, shooing off all the amateur schoolfoals so the professionals could show them how it was done. PACMPA had a prestigious and well-equipped auditorium, regardless of the academic setting to which it was stapled, and as long as the troupe had established credentials to flash and a cut of the admission went to the school, PACMPA was more than happy to share their stage.
This time, it was the latter, with the key difference that Sunny was one of the professionals, now.
The theatre program had to put on a given minimum number of classic plays, in order to maintain all those accolades that kept the professional troupes – and the gifted foals with aspirations toward the stage – both coming to Princess Amore’s. Though Sunny would have liked to see more student productions (that is to say, to put on more shows of her own writing) when she attended, this point of contention between Miss Flare and Professor Upstage was one in which, alas, her mother was firmly on her faculty’s side.
So the amateurs and the professionals alike put on a lot of classics.
The Snake in Silk was one such time-honored play, penned during the Smanish Reneighssance by Puesta del Sol, and it was one which Sunny, admittedly, had grown fond of after countless rehearsals.
It was a didactic little piece about a nameless prodigy from the gutter – the titular Snake – who had wormed her way into the good graces of a Smanish Doña, with barely-hidden ambitions of replacing her new mistress… only for the schemes and lies she set against her new fellow courtiers to drive everypony against her.
At the point in the script by which Sunny arrived, even the thickest-skulled, most oblivious of secondary characters had turned on the Snake, convening off-scene to ostracize her from the court. The only pony who remained on her side was Doña Ciela Azul herself, who appeared oblivious to the Snake’s transgressions in her house.
At present, the Snake stood alone upon the stage, shrouded in the silk fineries of her station.
Something was off, though.
What were the stage techs doing? Why were the spotlights so bright? All of the chiaroscuro was gone! All the nuance of expression which Sunny knew her understudy to be capable of – every subtle variation on resentment, indignation, betrayal, and heartbreak? All of it was reduced into an ugly rictus of animal hatred by an eye-searing brightness that cast every shadow on the stage back to Tartarus! Which incompetent oaf fell asleep at the control booth?
What a waste of talent, of potential. Her understudy had a lovely face for fury. No doubt, she’d be able to line up countless roles as femme fatales, evil queens, and anti-heroes, going forward.
Roles that could have gone to Sunny, if she had just shown up on time.
Of course, that was all assuming the lighting techs didn’t sabotage the actors’ prospects.
Sunny had just about made up her mind to go up there and chew those bozos out when the confrontation scene went ahead and began in full.
It started with the Snake remaining alone on the stage, all eyes on her.
Meanwhile, all those other courtiers, having discarded their clothing in contempt for the Snake’s silk, had made their ways into the seats as regular audience members, the moment their previous parts were done. Planting these actors in the audience was anachronistically modern – a sort of staging only the professionals unaffiliated with the PACMPA theatre program were permitted to “inflict” upon such a masterpiece, as Professor Upstage would put it.
But as Sunny saw it? Nothing made faux mob justice more convincing than getting the audience in on it.
The hidalgo, Armaduro Brillante, here played by Amaranth Gray, threw the first wadded-up piece of paper (glamored to look like a stone) and the first accusation. Sunny failed to notice him when she took her seat, even as he stood just a few rows behind her. In his prior scene, he had brought evidence to la Doña of the Snake’s scheme to steal her title, and now he made himself the leader of the mob against her. “Usurper,” he branded her, right as the “rock” hit.
The Snake barely had a moment to counter his claim with a plausible lie before others – nobleponies, kin of la Doña, house servants, and a few opportunistic audience members who decided they no longer needed their playbills – joined in. The Snake couldn’t lie fast enough for all of them, and soon, their collective jeers and shouts drowned her out completely.
It was meant to feel good. Very good. The scoundrel was getting her comeuppance. Watch her as she tears up her silken dress to shield herself from the trash being lobbed her way. Hear her as she begs for la Doña to save her. Bask in the dramatic irony that she doesn’t know that la Doña has finally begun to turn on her, too, two scenes prior. Wasn’t it cathartic?
It should have been. Perhaps it was for the others in the audience.
But for Sunny, who was quietly seething – both at losing her role and at the technicians’ continued failure to do anything about the overly-bright lights – there was nothing here she could emotionally latch onto.
Well, maybe she could take some smug solace in her foreknowledge of the play’s twist.
Because, as it happened, this scene would conclude with Doña Ciela Azul coming onto stage with, by all appearances, the intent to deliver the final blow to the Snake and finally cast her out…
But, instead, la Doña would intercede, blocking any further projectiles with her body and shaming the mob. Once more, getting the audience to participate was a delightful call. Sunny was sure to see some ponies squirm – especially those who had given up their programs to participate.
And then a monologue on the merits of mercy would spill from her mouth, bringing the play towards its conclusion. The Snake was to be given her pardon – likely to squander it, given her final line, but, perhaps, to turn herself into a respectable courtier.
Things… weren’t proceeding according to that plan, though.
The accusations and recriminations were going on a lot longer than they should have. Everypony was out of paper to throw, and a good half of them were out of new insults, too. They were stalling, and Sunny could surmise only one explanation for why:
Ciela Azul had missed her re-entrance.
What had waylaid her, Sunny could not fathom. Punctuality had not been one of her problems, either, but it seemed there was an epidemic of tardiness that night.
Regardless, even the actors were losing steam. Plenty of ponies could read wicked lines from a script; fewer could convincingly improvise their cruelty.
Her understudy was one who could improvise. Between the Snake’s cries for help and messy, heaving sobs, she crafted all sorts of unscripted abuse to hurl at her tormentors. Her tongue was not as coldly incisive as Sunny’s, whose uncanny knack for accidentally drilling directly into ponies’ deepest insecurities had landed her (and, by proxy, her school) in some trouble with the families of her schoolmates, like a falling icicle at just the wrong time; rather, the understudy’s words burnt with an indiscriminate heat that scoured the whole body and psyche for kindling.
On the topic of kindling, something was wrong. The stage lights were only getting brighter and brighter.
Sunny smelled smoke – and it was coming off of the Snake’s rags. Needless to say, that wasn’t in the script.
Just as the ‘F’ in “Fire!” was leaving Sunny’s lips, however– the Snake began to shriek and run about the stage, trying to flee from the lit fuse that was her ragged train.
Well, surely that would clue everypony into something being wrong. Miss Flare could conserve her energy for the evacuation. The auditorium may have been hewn from crystal, but that didn’t preclude the cushions on the chairs catching fire, nor the ponies in the audience from inhaling entirely too much smoke.
But before she’d withdrawn her second hindleg from her chair, she became distinctly aware that nopony else in the theatre had budged an inch from their seats.
Did they not realize the danger? Were the lights too bright for them to see the flame? …Did they think this was part of the play?
No, that was ridiculous; the actors in the crowd remained just as calm, and they knew full well the lead actress wasn’t supposed to catch fire.
Sunny looked back at her understudy. The blaze had raced up to nip at her flanks, and she was rolling around on the stage to try and smother them. All that seemed to accomplish, however, was spreading the flames to the rest of her ensemble.
Sunny should have gone.
She should have been out of there a minute ago.
Her legs should have permitted her to leave.
They failed her, in that regard.
Sunny should have sounded the alarm.
She should have cried “Fire!” at the first whiff of smoke.
Her lungs should have permitted her to speak.
They failed her, in that regard.
Sunny should have yelled at the lighting technicians.
She should have shown up for her part in the first place.
Her magic should have permitted her to do something for the flaming mare at all.
She failed her, in that regard.
All she could manage was to feebly stand and watch as the pony in her place was devoured by a blistering inferno. Layers of soot-covered silk were consumed into smooth-burnt skin were flayed into blackening muscle were stripped off of charcoal bones at a rate both hopelessly fast and torturously drawn-out, all while her screams threatened to shatter the moon in the sky. The last words out of her mouth were the plea, “Save me,” before smoke began to pour out of her mouth like tar-black vomit.
But the image that would scar Sunny the longest was the one which most perplexed her. In her last desperate moments, Sunny’s understudy extended a hoof to Miss Flare, reaching down from the stage to her front-row seat. As the fire ate away the mare’s flesh, it… must have consumed her hooves, too.
She had bones beneath her hoof – far too many, and far too spindly.
Sunny Flare began faint as the audience burst into an uproarious applause that throbbed with every heartbeart.
…
Sunny Flare opened her eyes. A ceiling fan lethargically twirled overhead, which was all she needed to know.
She always had the most interesting dreams when she slept on her back. Doubly so under the heat of silken covers she really had no reason to be under in this dead heat of summer.
Squinting in the morning light, she realized she had left the eastern-facing blinds in her room wide open, overnight. Though it was unlikely that she had been peeped on by a passing pegasus during that time, the possibility still filled her with dread.
Shrouding herself in her sheets, she slipped over and shut the slats with the pullstring. She may have been far too groggy to use her magic, but she was always deft with the point of her horn.
Now that she was out of bed, she might as well go through the paces of her morning routine.
Mind on her dreams, though, before she forgot–
As usual, the life she led in slumber was always so much more interesting than her actual, disappointing day-to-day.
The real Sunny Flare didn’t have an acting career to speak of, let alone an understudy. It just never took off. Once she was out of an environment in which her mother could impose Sunny’s inclusion in theatrical productions… Well, everypony wanted to be an actress. What made her special in a sea of dainty young unicorns?
– water for the face, comb for the mane and tail, brush for the coat –
Her prospects as a playwright or theatre critic were… similarly abysmal. She hadn’t even been to a play since graduating. The hypocrisy was not lost on her.
Though, come to think of it…
Now that she was properly awake, Sunny realized something. The Snake in Silk wasn’t even a real play. Had her dreaming mind just fabricated a masterpiece of the Smanish Golden Age of Theatre wholecloth?
…How much did she still remember?
Breakfast could wait.
– makeup, laid out like a painter’s easel: primer, concealer, a metallic lavender hair spray labelled “aurichalcum”; a darker lilac eyeshadow dubbed “hepatizon”; and she couldn’t forget the less-inventively-named copper and gold –
She’d probably have to tweak some character attributes. Sunny had already died of shame once, when Amaranth Gray revealed her foalhood crush on him to the entire school; she’d prove it possible to die a second time if he, now a married and successful actor, found out she’d written that dashing, honorable hidalgo Armaduro in his likeness.
The Snake wouldn’t be an issue, though. Funny thing – Sunny recognized the other actors and actresses. They were all her peers in the PACMPA drama program: Taffy Shade as Prosperamienta, Mulberry Cascade as Tintera de Cuervo, Cold Forecast as Doña Ciela Azul herself…
But Sunny had no idea who on Equus her understudy was supposed to be. She’d never seen the mare before – she was sure of it. She wouldn’t need to change a thing. Obviously, physical details like that apricot coat or the gold-and-crimson waves of her mane were extraneous, so long as the actress cast as the Snake could play the muscles of her face like the strings of a Smanish guitar.
If Sunny could one day sit in the audience and watch the Snake’s journey through every twist of hatred and hurt in some actual competent lighting…
Well, fantasizing about it didn’t get the writing done.
With one last flick of the fetlock, the final touches on her makeup were finished, so she could reopen the blinds. Her room once more illuminated, Sunny Flare fed fresh paper into her typewriter…
And heard her mother calling.