Fowler’s Apothecary & Soda Fountain was a neighborhood institution that somehow clung to life in the face of impossible odds. It sold alchemical brews, pharmaceuticals, magazines of the wholesome and not-so-wholesome variety, candy, snacks, contraceptives of all kinds, and of course, it had a soda fountain. Fowler himself could still be seen on some days, he was withered, wrinkled, ancient, and had a chicken & egg cutie mark.
This place reeked of another era, another time, a phase of culture that was on its way out. It was no longer considered a cool place to hang out—in fact, being seen here could forever hurt one’s social standing in school—but Cerulean genuinely adored this place and treasured the times when her father took her here. She was already a hopeless dork and after today, she probably had a new name too.
“It never gets easier,” Dusky Skies said as he pulled his chocolate malted close.
“What?” Cerulean swallowed the mashed-up remains of her maraschino cherry.
“Taking you on these dates—”
“W-what?” A sudden warmth blossomed and spread over Cerulean’s face.
“I could never talk to fillies in school,” Dusky began, and then he paused to sigh. “I would stutter and stammer and spit all over the place and I couldn’t get a date to save my life. I was the Loose Lipped Loser… got teased about it every day. But your mother… she was this real ray of sunshine, she was. There was just something about her. Took me most of a year to get up enough nerve to try and talk to her. Flight camp was ending.”
“Oh my gosh, really?” Smiling, Cerulean’s lips slipped around her straw and warm adoration filled her eyes while she stared at her father.
“When I tried to talk to her, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I made a mess of things and as I started to leave, she grabbed me. As it turns out, she was sick and tired of talking… all of the colts, all they did was brag about how awesome they were, or how cool they were, or how well they could fly, and your mother, she was sick of that, she was. She took me out for a fly and got me sorted out. I still have no idea how I ended up with the prettiest filly in flight camp, but I did. Being a colossal dork wasn’t the end of me, and it won’t be the end of you.”
“You were a dork?”
“Honey, you come from a fine lineage of dorks,” Dusky replied as he looked at his daughter over the top of his malt. “Your mother, she was a badged member of the Communications Club. Her knowledge of semaphore approaches nerd-like levels of compulsion. She has brains and beauty. Way outta my league.”
“It’s such a happy story, but also so depressing.” Cerulean rolled her eyes, feeling disgusted all of a sudden, and slumped over against the table, overcome by adolescent angst.
“Depressing?”
“Look how things turned out.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Look at your life now… you and Mom… our apartment… all the time you spend working… this shit stain of a city—”
“Language, young lady!”
Cerulean shrugged. “Shining Armor and Princess Cadance got a storybook wedding. What’d you get? You say that you got the prettiest filly in flight camp, but what about everything that comes after? Mom just looks old and tired now. Look at me and how I turned out. It doesn’t feel worth it to me. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t.” When she was almost done speaking, she saw her father’s eyes narrow and she wondered if she had struck a nerve.
When her father did not respond, Cerulean banished the silence with more of her own words. “I’m fed up with everything. I don’t think I can take another day in school. Everything about this city, I hate. I have zero friends… zero. Everypony is just so mean and petty. There’s lots of mixed-tribe families but I’m the one that gets endlessly teased about my mother being a slutty whore that cheated on you. It just never stops. My teachers, all of them, they seemed more concerned about squashing free thought and making us conform than they do about educating us. Vice Principal Withers says I get teased and bullied because I don’t fit in, and that if I would just put a little effort into fitting in with the herd, the bullying would stop. But lately, I’ve been having dreams about another way to make the bullying stop, and that’s using my magic to bore holes through the heads of my tormentors. I’ve been practicing, Dad… I can use my telekinesis to drill a hole through cement. It’s gotten so bad that shooting up the school feels like a good option now.”
Dusky’s ears trembled and his mouth pressed into a tight, straight line.
“It’s so bad that I don’t care enough about my classmates to feel bad for these thoughts I keep having. Every day, it just feels like it would be easier to do, like every day I go to school I get another reason to go on a spree. I’m almost certain that this is how evil unicorns happen, Dad. One day, they get fed up with the constant, neverending barrage of shit, and whatever good sense, whatever good conscience their parents instilled in them just evapourates. And then, BAM! Pew pew pew! Shooting spree. Once the day comes that you realise, that you know that you could kill things with your mind, that knowledge never goes away. What has been thunk can’t be unthunk.”
“Is there a reason why you haven’t, um, done this yet?” her father asked in a low, scratchy whisper.
Cerulean let out a nasal laugh, brief and stuttering, before she replied, “Moondancer.”
“I don’t follow.” Confused, and no doubt scared, Dusky Skies waited for his daughter to explain herself.
“Well, Moondancer got teased. She got put down. The Princess of Friendship even abandoned her and left her in the lurch. Now, Moondancer is a powerful unicorn, Dad, and not only is she powerful, but she’s actually educated, and she was a student at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. And the way I see it, at some point, just like me, and maybe even like so many other unicorns, she had to realise one day that she could kill somepony with her mind. She’s a huge nerd… she’s the Alpha-Nerd, so I know for certain that she’s dealt with a flood of shit, and somehow, she hasn’t gone on a spree.”
“How did this happen?” Dusky asked, his eyes confused and wounded. “How did this point get reached? I thought your biggest concern was your tuba lessons—”
“I like my tuba lessons!” Cerulean found herself blushing again and she toned down her enthusiasm. “The lessons are so complicated and hard and I’m so awful at them that I have to push everything else out of my mind if I hope to accomplish anything. I am absolutely exceptional at how terrible I am at the tuba, which is why I was turned down flat when I tried out for the school marching band. Without my tuba lessons, I’d’ve broke already. Probably.”
“What do I do about this?” Dusky stared at his daughter with pleading eyes. “I don’t want you growing up to be the next Lord of Darkness—but I’d still be proud of you if you did—I don’t know what to say right now—how do I help you?”
Cerulean shrugged. “I’m surprised I even told you my ruthless, evil, and cunning master plan.”
“So… today… when the incident happened… rather than go on a spree and shoot up the school with magic and let the stupid leak out of the heads of your classmates, you just showed your ass a bit and cussed out your teacher—”
“Yes.”
“I’m okay with that!” Dusky reached across the table, grabbed Cerulean’s fetlock, and squeezed it with his own. “That’s my girl! You cuss them out!”
“Daddy? What are you doing?”
“Being supportive.” Once more, Dusty’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the right thing to do, right? I mean, given the choice of those two outcomes, showing your ass a little and cussing a bit seems quite reasonable and I want to reward you for doing the right thing—”
“Oh my gosh, you’re such a dork.”
“And suddenly, I’m back in school again, with some filly saying I’m a dork.” Still holding his daughter’s fetlock, he stared at her, and Cerulean could see that her father’s eyes were misty. “Desperation does bad things to ponies, Cerulean. We make just enough money to scrape by, but not enough money to get out. We are thoroughly stuck and it is making your mother crazy. She wants to cancel your tuba lessons so we can save that tiny bit of money, but I kept telling her no and we kept fighting about it. I’m glad I put my hoof down.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“No, baby, it’s worse,” her father replied. “We can’t even afford to move away. There’s no money saved and we’re living from paycheck to paycheck. Your mother, she’s been wanting out for a while, but we don’t have enough to get reestablished someplace else. This is how they getcha, Cerulean. If you think school is bad, wait a few years. I wish I could make you feel better, but lying to you seems like a real bad idea right now.”
This wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she appreciated her father’s honesty. Ears drooping, her glasses crooked, she looked down at her father’s fetlock, still wrapped tight around her own. So, it was true then… waiting and surviving school would only lead to worse things, just as she suspected. What life could she possibly have in this city? What future? How terrible it must be to be a pegasus that couldn’t fly away. The thought was as crushing as it was bleak. What hope could there possibly be?
“You know, Dad, some ponies get born into absolutely perfect lives… but what about the rest of us?”
When Cerulean’s father opened the apartment door, crying could be heard. No, not just crying, but the muffled sounds of screaming. On the small, ratty sofa, Cerulean saw her mother with her face pressed into a cushion and her mother was screaming. Her father moved—almost flying—and in an instant he was at his wife’s side, pulling away the cushion and trying to give her a much needed hug.
Meanwhile, Cerulean stood in the door, unmoving, stunned, shocked, and emotionally spent from her day.
“What’s wrong?” Dusky asked.
After sucking in a deep, phlegmy breath, Cerulean heard her mother shriek the words, “Our son is gone!”
“What do you mean, ‘our son is gone!’ What happened? Slow down, take a deep breath, and tell me what is going on,” Dusky demanded while he gave his mate a gentle shake to set her straight.
“He assaulted a filly in the bathroom—”
“HE WHAT?”
Cerulean’s mouth fell open.
“No, no, he didn’t do that, at least, I don’t think he did… it was that filly he was dating! I think he had a quicky in the bathroom because our son is retarded, but the school insists it was assault and they were going to press charges on that dumb little whore’s behalf—”
“Fairweather, slow down.” Dusky shook his wife a little harder this time, and in response, she clung to her husband. “Remember to breathe.”
“The school was going to press charges on her behalf, but Indigo, he copped a deal to join the guard if the charges were dropped—”
“HE WHAT?” Dusky, his teeth bared, shook his head from side to side.
“He’s gone, Dusky. Our son is gone. We’ve lost him. He shoved me when I tried to stop him from signing, he shoved me and then he punched me in the face… but I think it was an accident—I don’t think he meant it!”
“Are you okay?” Dusky took Fairweather’s face between his hooves and stared at her, and Cerulean watched as her mother slipped her forelegs around Dusky’s neck.
“No,” Fairweather replied, shaking her head, and then she collapsed against her husband. “I dropped the baby… again. He’s gone, Dusky, I was almost arrested when I tried to stop the police from taking him away. Why would he do this, Dusky? We told him no, that he couldn’t join the guard. Why would he do this to us?”
“Because our son is retarded.”
Cerulean could hear all kinds of emotion in her father’s voice, and in turn, this made her feel all kinds of emotion, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She felt like throwing up and the pimple on her teat was once more unbearable as her blood pounded through her veins. What had her brother done? Traded one Tartarus for another, it seemed. With the war going full tilt, he was probably going to die someplace dreadful. On top of everything else, they were to become a blue star family, with a family member engaged in the hostilities.
Just thinking about it made Cerulean feel numb.
“The big heroes always somehow survive the war,” Cerulean muttered, “but what about the rest of us?”
Turning about, she stumbled away, dazed, and she could hear both of her parents sobbing now. She staggered out the door, shut it behind her, and then leaned up against the wall of the hallway just outside of her apartment. The sound of her mother bawling was too much to bear and Cerulean wondered if this was what having a nervous breakdown felt like.
Stricken, Cerulean wandered off, leaving her parents to console one another.