Never discount how well a spa treatment can change your attitude!
Helping Hoof found the Lotus Flower for me, which likely opened despite the cancelled wedding and thwarted invasion thanks to gold bits meant for the wedding afterparty tomorrow. I wasn't going to complain if everypony thought it reasonable. After a lavender-oil hot rock massage by the light of twenty-four dancing candle flames—and a divine eucalyptus steam that sweated out the memory of cloves from my body and soul—I fell asleep twice in a bubbling hot-tub, despite the lemon tea I sipped. They hailed a taxi for me to the stable just blocks away because I needed it. Since I danced continuously any night that I worked, which had been most nights recently, my exhaustion had to be emotional not physical.
I crashed, red satin bedspread still on, making like that embarrassing foal picture my parents kept on the mantelpiece—spread eagled, wings out, basically boneless. No diaper, though.
I found myself flying.
I know, big shagging deal, Mop! I mean, pegasus? Right?
I flew in the cool late afternoon skies over the onion dome towers of the castle and the beautiful white buildings of uptown Canterlot. Below, ponies cyan, pink, and mauve ran for cover. It wasn't my winged-shadow bobbing and playing across the storefronts and the walls of homes that spooked them. It was the wingless shadows and the buzzing sounds ahead and behind me to my right.
Shapeshifters.
No, Riverdale called them changelings.
I flew alongside gleaming black ponies with faceted green eyes that refracted the sunlight into rainbows. They trailed eddies laced with cardamon, cinnamon, and clove scent—like pony-shaped just-out-of-the-oven, but nevertheless flying, morning cakes or dainties. All sported cheese holes in their flattened legs. Though everypony's holes were different, I saw how they ruddered by walking or gesturing in the air with their flattened legs.
What disconcerted me most was the polka music that issued from the closest's carapace in the area of its heart. The sound seemed muted, almost hidden. The next emitted a folk tune heavy on tambourine and mandolin. I couldn't decide whether it was more like they had swallowed a music-box or that some sort of freakish black body armor had swallowed a pony soul.
Regardless, I pointed away from each group of pastel ponies I saw (and even the horsey-colored ones, too), more keen-eyed then they.
This was the typical texture of my nightmares with a different cast of characters. I always succeeded. I always beat Discord at wordplay or trans-dimensional checkers, despite being turned to a squirrel or a turnip. I'd waltz with Princess Nightmare Moon until Twilight and her friends rejuvenated the both of us, though that meant I became a foal, which reminded me of the foal picture. (I knew Mum and Dad loved me, so I'd dutifully even show it to a colt-friend if I did ever succeed in landing me my special somepony. )
Just a typical nocturnal session after any crisis of love and self-loathing. But I felt I was missing something. I looked to my left.
I jerked away and gasped. I saw a golden-blonde pegasus flying in tandem with me. She had long wings with feathers that fluttered, turned, and angled to maintain the straight and level with every change in lift and headwind. She had ropey raven black hair and her mane blew behind her, revealing startling deep blue eyes. She stared at me.
Being copied was the one thing I'd missed in fighting the changelings! Up until now, I'd fooled them so thoroughly that none had thought to duplicate me. Despite the danger of being found out this represented, it thrilled me to see it up close. Every detail, down to the sparkle polish on my hooves, and the braid I kept on my rear fetlocks. I grinned.
She grinned. (You could tell by the stains on my teeth that I'd drunk tea since Mom had given me my first sipper cup.)
I snapped my tail like a whip.
She snapped her tail like a whip.
I winked.
She winked with fluffy black eye-lashes... and in perfect synchrony.
Now my heart began to race. I reached out my left hoof.
She reached out her right.
We both tapped glass.
I woke with a loud, "Ugh!" that hurt my ears. I wasn't on the flat. I pedaled my legs, but it was no use. The surface I lay upon bunched under my attack and slid nonetheless. I landed on my rump with a thump at the base of the bed, only to be buried in the ludicrously slippery, albeit luxurious, satin sheets and bedspread.
I concentrated desperately to maintain the dream as it flitted away, finding it difficult to keep from laughing at my predicament.
It struck me.
"A mirror?" I tapped my forehead repeatedly. "Oh, come on! Not even a real duplicate changeling!?"
I pulled down my lower lip, then burst into laughter, rolling on my back.
If nothing else, my subconscious was deliciously evil.
Eventually, I had to queue up on my iSing a loop of ambient tinkling piano tracks, some augmented with rain sounds, to quieten the chatter and endless analysis battling it out in my mind. The mirror and the idea of duplicate changelings reminded me I didn't like ponies looking at me, evaluating me. Like being in school and thinking about being from a foreign kingdom and having a funny accent.
Totally different from being a DJ on a stage.
I didn't like having my soul on display. I still had that shy thing going on and it made my heart palpate. Sure, I could fluff my long fringe over my eyes anytime I wished to hide in plain sight. But it went further. Yesterday, I'd put on display for everypony to see the part of me that Princess Nightmare Moon had helped create. That wasn't me. Not the pony I wanted to be.
It terrified me.
I meditated desperately for over two hours until I woke to sun streaming down into my west-facing window. I blinked at the open drape. The top of the window cast a shadow that left a tiny lozenge of light on the grass-green carpet. I found myself nose to the glass, trying to ascertain what time it was. Certainly past noon.
I'd overslept!
Housekeeping hadn't woken me. I threw on a black blouse and shot for the door, only then seeing a note pushed through the threshold. Somepony had written Mop on it in very refined cursive.
Sound check at 3:00. Relax. Have a sandwich at Cannoli's. I'm taking care of everything.
—Helping Hoof
I melted into a puddle. Too bad he was older than Dad. I might be finding me some brown gray-maned stallion love, otherwise.
I trotted out to Cannoli's. In the halls, in the pony-attended lift, in the lobby, and at the brass appointed doors, everypony greeted me. Uptown Suites Stable was a high-line stablery where everypony had to be polite, but still. I felt evaluated. I hoofed it.
The door tinkle-bell rang as I stepped into Cannoli's to be assaulted—in a good way—with humid waves of basil- and garlic-flavored air. The big cyan unicorn stallion running the joint, Cannoli, faced me and said, "Hey there! Good afternoon, Miss Mop! I'll have your sandwich right up!"
With a hoof, he shoed a black stallion in a business suit and purple mare in a plaid scarf down a seat to make room at the end of the white speckled counter. Simultaneously, he levitated a plate and a coffee mug full of steaming water to create a place setting while plunking in two tea bags and pushing down the handle on a hissing sandwich press.
"Sit, sit, young lady."
I looked at him, and at the two patrons who regarded me briefly. I adjusted my fringe over my eyes, but stood there.
The sandwich press hissed like an angry cat until he opened it and scooped the flattened and grilled bundle of green bread and dripping cheese from the steel jaws to my earthenware plate. He said, "Baked ziti with cheese, garden vegetables, and red sauce on zucchini bread. Helping Hoof suggested it. The Suites called that you had been seen crossing the lobby."
"Helping Hoof?" Right. I hadn't told Cannoli to call me Mop. Helping Hoof had given him my name.
"He knows his food."
I nodded and sat as Cannoli ladled a reddish-green tapenade of olive oil, minced olives, and diced red peppers over the sandwich and cut it into 12 hoof-sized pieces. The messy delight tasted savory and cheesy and... amazing, like something Mum would have whipped up to cheer us up on a hard day, except that she would have fried it. I kept eying the patrons as I ate, but if anybody remembered me, they didn't show it.
I set my iSing to play tracks I'd planned for tonight and dropped the ear drops in my ears. After drinking my tea and relaxing a bit, I thought more clearly.
What would make anypony conclude that I'd cleared the promenade of ponies on my own initiative? Nothing. Anypony on stage would have cleared the house in an emergency. It just happened that I'd done it without actually being told of the emergency. That meant that the only ponies who might have noticed I'd done something extraordinary would have been those who saw me when I flew through the city, telling ponies to hide. Anypony might have done that—ought to have done that. Likely nopony, except cheeky Riverdale, would have identified me joining up with the changelings to actively misdirect them.
I was some random DJ, assuming anypony even noticed I played dance music professionally.
Pumpernickel played in my ears, an ambling rhythm of plucked bass guitar alternating between a dum-dum-dum drum and a prance horn line with a strummed lead acoustic guitar accompanied by a whistling don't-care warm spring day melody. Maybe there was a dit-dit-ding dulcimer there, too. It should have made me feel care-free.
As the white castle walls and golden onion domes rose ahead while my hooves clattered on the cobblestones, I noticed the eyes of ponies with shopping bags, others in black suits rushing to meetings, aristocrats in lace promenading down the street. Rubies, emeralds, amethysts—the color of eyes that glanced my way. Nopony stared.
I shuddered, trying to get it out of my mind. At the end of Alicorn way, I walked up to the gate. Two brass armored royal guard stood at the portcullis, talking to an orange pegasus asking directions. They didn't notice me. I turned south toward the promenade.
Really, nopony was interested in me.
I took a deep breath. Silly me. Really.
I trotted with a bit more enthusiasm, but immediately heard hooves closing in from the rear, trotting to catch up.
"Mop! Please, may I speak with you?"
I recognized Octavia Melody's patrician accent. Of course. She knew my secret.