Coco Pommel took the first train out of Manehatten, and her nausea rode with her. Frost licked at the windows, and the sealed, homey care couldn’t have been colder. She was going south, where the chill wouldn’t be the dreary late autumn and early winter mix that plunged Manehatten into gloom. She would need a scarf. What she wouldn’t need was the light, silky coat she wore, the armor of haute couture wrapped tightly around her, protective and defensive.
Her stomach was always unusually weak – a bad trait to have in Manehatten – but anxiously nursing her normal frappuccino made the poor mare feel like her gut was doing a whole Equestria Games routine, tangling itself inside her. This time, it definitely wasn’t the train food.
One could tell a lot about a mare by the purse she had, and Coco wasn’t the kind of mare that anypony would expect to carry an angular, alien-looking Prim Hemline bag. They were roomy and oddly confidence-boosting, and it happened to be the first thing she grabbed from her apartment. Hurried, worried, and all kinds of distraught, Coco had stuffed it with everything she needed for her trip including medications – estradiol, progesterone, her blockers, the works – because gods know how long she would be in Fillydelphia. Her sketchbook and supplies were transplanted from her normal purse with ease, and to make sure she didn’t have to work herself up over asking anypony questions, she stuffed a map of Fillydelphia from a Manehatten library and a scrawled, mouth-written address inside. They were new, ugly things.
What she wanted to be written there instead was a real address. A home. A condo, maybe. Whatever was chic in Fillydelphia, and not the squalor she knew that Cantle Chanel probably had – she couldn’t bear to know those details.
And yet…
“Miss?” asked the voice of the old stallion next to her, “Miss, are you crying?”
“Mmm,” Coco offered in place of a clear answer, her whimper made into a drowned, closed-lip squeak. “Nosir!”
Rushing her words together was no help. The wizened old unicorn turned to her, and she made sure to look up through her bangs, a careful trick that ensured she wouldn’t have to make eye contact. Her hooves moved around in her purse, pretending to be busy, brushing her makeup pouch and discarded ticket stubs.
His horn lit, and he produced a hoofkerchief, one that was soft and pale peach in color. Peach was one of the last colors that Coco wanted to see right now, but she accepted it with a hoarse, strained thank you. Privately, she thought it might have been better if she bought higher-class tickets, or whatever would get her own compartment. A private bench. Anything. It wasn’t like it would be too expensive.
Very little was too expensive when it came to Nelly.
Her hooves were eerily steady when she pulled out her get-out-of-social-situations-free card. The crinkled copy of Vanity Mare hid their faces from each other, and if she pretended to stare at a horizon only she could see instead of walls of type and photographs that had lost their gloss, Coco didn’t feel nearly as sick. For a little while longer, she could pretend that Princess Cadance’s opinions on organic mane dyes and Hoity Toity’s marriage to his fiancé were the most important things in the world. She could fret over not including a copy of Good Stablekeeping when she was done and act like she wasn’t just going through the motions of boredom, however tiny they were.
Retrieving anything else from her purse would just make her cry at this point. Her stupid, over-stuffed purse. Even the encouraging letter from her fiancée she had read and re-read a dozen times before leaving would be the cherry on the sundae of hurt she was feeling.
The rest of her train ride passed in silence.
…
“Is it magic?” Cantle Chanel whispered, her soft Prancian accent caused Coco’s ears to prick. At ten years old, most city fillies like her were not concerned with magic, be it their race’s or another’s.
“Nu-uh, Nelly,” Coco said softly, shaking her head. Her downy blue bob swayed delicately, brushing her chubby cheeks so gently she couldn’t feel the flower clip she put in it. The clip was a present, just like the tie she got from Nelly to go with the hoof polish kit her parents had gotten her, which Coco was extremely grateful for – so grateful that she and Nelly tracked glittery hoofprints all over Coco’s apartment until her mom caught them. “Medicine is different.”
Nelly’s muzzle wrinkled like a grandmother’s. Her freckles jumped with the movement, and Coco couldn’t help but poke her baby fat. She wasn’t that much younger than Nelly, so why couldn’t she lose the chub and be prettier?
“Sounds like magic to me, Coco. Swallow a little pill and it makes you all pretty.”
“Yeah,” Coco conceded, “but it’s not magic! Don’t you learn about medicine in school?”
Nelly’s mouth turned all squiggly with an emotion Coco couldn’t understand. She went to a fancy private school in Fillydelphia ever since she moved, and it had both fillies and colts. Coco always thought that was strange – she had transferred from an all-wrong school to an all–fillies school in Manehatten where she got to take fun craft classes and read with bigger fillies.
It wasn’t anything like Nelly’s school, where Nelly got to take classes so cool they called them special. Nelly got to have a nice teacher lady help her take notes and read comics so letters wouldn’t fly off the page and scramble themselves in Nelly’s head. Coco thought her school sounded really nice, and couldn’t understand why Nelly hated going – Nelly’s school even had a playground instead of indoor recess and the local Filly Scout chapter was popular at Nelly’s school. Coco would do anything to join Filly Scouts – but she hadn’t taken enough medicine yet – including giving up all her Hearth’s Warming presents. But Nelly said she didn’t want to join Filly Scouts.
“No,” Nelly said, running her tongue along the bottom of her teeth, just below her retainer. “I’m not learning about pretty pills.”
Nelly couldn’t say a lot of things very well – ‘big words’ as she would huff – and she never got any of the names of Coco’s medicine close to right, as the doctors did. That was okay, though, because Coco couldn’t say them that much better, and Nelly was the coolest pony in all of Equestria. Calling them pretty pills made them sound fun and cute, like something out of a magical filly comic – even when all they would do is make sure Coco never became a deep-voiced, mustached, strong pony because the thought of that always made Coco cry and her whole body feel yucky. Her doctor said that she wouldn’t feel so sick if they could stop that from happening.
All she had to do was take the pill.
Smiling, Coco held her hoof up so Nelly could get a closer look. “Well, let’s see just how pretty this pill makes me.” The little pill practically winked like diamonds in Coco’s hoof.
Nelly nodded, beaming and eager once again. She grabbed the juice box sitting on the kitchen counter and gave it to Coco after she placed the pill on her tongue. It tasted like a pebble before Coco washed it down.
“Ta-da!” Coco cheered. “All gone!”
Nelly hopped up and down, her ruffled petal skirt flopping goofily with her movements, showing her still-blank flank. “Yippee! Now my little Coco’s gonna be a filly!”
Coco didn’t tell Nelly that she had always been a filly; instead, she grabbed Nelly’s hoof and they ran into the next room to greet Coco’s parents.
…
Coco ended up exhaling loud enough to unnerve herself. The hotel room was already carrying an air of disarray that didn’t match the atmosphere of being freshly checked into. The sheets were wrinkled, but that was because Coco had flopped on them with all the grace of a park goose and tried to pull them back when she saw how vibrant and cheerful the pattern was.
The sheets under those were happy pastel shades dainty enough to make Coco look like an earthy, masculine-colored sort. She was too choked to make much of a fuss about those, her own throat in the stage of post-tear strangulation like it was ready to collapse on itself. She knew there wouldn’t be any bob there, but either to check out of a totally, horribly irrational fear – or maybe just to horrify herself – she placed a hoof to her throat, pressing too hard until she gagged and made a pained sound.
Safe.
She was safe, in a hotel room, all alone. Country scenes her train had passed and landmarks in Fillydelphia decorated the walls. Cute little soaps that smelled like strawberry cluttered the bathroom, along with the travel-sized shampoos that smelled so delightful but just never lasted long enough. The towels the unseen staff had stocked were softer than the feathers of Coco’s pet canary, Chantle. Unfortunately, the sink dripping could be heard in the sleeping area, where Coco’s unpacking had been done in scattered spurts of activity, as if to create the illusion that she had brought more than her purse.
Nelly hadn’t been in a hotel room. She had been in an apartment. Her very own. She had lived in a part of town a world away from Coco’s cozy hotel room. Fillydelphia only had rough spots, at most, not whole areas to avoid like Manehatten. Tartarus’ Kitchen had no twin here, or anywhere else in Equestria. The walls had been thick, Coco was told, from an outdated style of building. Nelly had no way to keep cool in the summer because she never opened her windows, and her walls were overstuffed with insulation that made things swelter at bad times.
The letters said she was found before somepony smelled her from outside, which was lucky in cases like hers. Nelly was lucky that she was bad at paying rent, because otherwise nopony would have known where she was. She didn’t have a job or any friends. What Nelly had was utility bills she paid infrequently, a mattress with no blankets, and the address to a pricy spa at home on the three-legged coffee table. Coco was told that all Nelly’s bits would have mainly gone to cosmetics, clothing, or her rent. Nopony was quite certain because investigating the purchases of a pony who lived like she did and lived a life that made her disappear from everypony who cared about her were hard to track down – only the illegal source of her income was obvious. Some of the correspondence Coco had with the Fillydelphia Guard’s forensic division mentioned how it was determined that Nelly bathed approximately every four months and limped from a broken leg that never healed right.
She had never broken a single bone when Coco still had contact with her, and Coco shuddered to know how Nelly could have gotten it – or more properly, whom she would have allowed to do that to her.
The locations of restaurant dumpsters had been found on her empty icebox, the paper worn over years. Apparently the icebox had come with the apartment, as Nelly wouldn’t have been able to afford one. It was unlikely food was ever inside, but a nest of potato chip bags, beer cans, and assorted crumbs dominated what passed as her living room. The dumpsters hadn’t been locations for criminal activity like the investigating guards initially thought – they were the addresses of Nelly’s grocery store.
Nelly knew to get stale foods – and literal garbage – that many ponies who did what she had often didn’t think to access. Coco wondered if starving would have been worse for Nelly, or if somepony would have seen a skeleton of the mare shuffling about at night, hollow face over-painted with poorly done makeup, fishnets chafing her to the point of infection, and layers of trashy clothes to entice and try and lend her fire would have given her food. But ponies who did what Nelly fell into didn’t let themselves be seen by anypony who didn’t pay – to get caught was to pay for their crimes, to lose whatever place they were at in a horrid cycle that Coco couldn’t understand.
Now she would never get to ask.
But lying on her bed, sheets smooth against her back, and staring up at the ceiling with the hollow feeling falling deeper in her chest by the minute, Coco wished that somepony would have seen Nelly once. Even if it was a guard pulling her off to a cell in hoofcuffs, Coco would have been grateful. Coco would have paid a million bits and more to be here to visit Nelly through bars at a holding cell. She would still work under Suri’s cruel hooves if Nelly were waiting for Coco somewhere she could join her without pain and awfulness.
If Nelly had tried some kind of dark magic craziness, that would have been better. Rarity would have gotten a letter to gather her friends and Princess Twilight Sparkle. The Elements of Harmony could have zapped Nelly safe and good again – if Nelly had to tangle in anything with such deep foulness and inherent danger, why not something like that? The princesses saved plenty of ponies, didn’t they? Could earth ponies even do dark magic?
Coco would have given up every pill, every surgery, every bit of marehood that she had achieved and live entombed in the body of a stallion if it meant that somepony would have heard Nelly screaming.
…
Nelly’s clumsy hooves tugged the brush through Coco’s mane again. Coco watched her eyes sparkle in the mirror. A jeweled hair clip shaped like a ladybug adorned Coco’s mane in place of her usual flower one. Nelly’s blonde bob and fringe had been done up in curls secured with a fascinator. Bold shades of maroon and magenta brought out the gentle peach of Nelly’s coat so perfectly, and her skirt fell like layers of petals.
“Done,” the older mare said proudly, patting the pale hair of Coco’s mane. It just barely held a wave from their makeover efforts – and Nelly’s jabs that Coco’s mane was the only part of her that was straight. “It looks like Princess Pommel is all ready to depart—”
“For the Grand Galloping Gala,” Coco finished with a dreamy sigh, one forehoof reaching up to squish her cheek, her silvery evening glove offsetting her creamy coat. She clutched the rouge kit in her other hoof, where it was neatly tucked in front of her lap while she sat. Her skirt flowed over the stool she was on, obscuring it behind a curtain of shimmering fabric and its many layers that made her look more like a maiden plucked from a breezie tale than a young mare so incredibly desperate to do anything to compensate for how apparent her current lack of bottom surgery felt – blockers and hormones had kept her soft and dainty to the point where she wasn’t quietly envious of curves and softness she feared she would never have.
“You look amazing.” Nelly grinned, showing off a radiant smile. There was a warm glow to Nelly that the cooler Coco could never claim. “Just wait until we step onto the train platform—”
“–in Canterlot,” Coco finished breathlessly, ready to swoon over the thought of the city alone. Manehatten was a modern phase, an urban trend, and little more. Canterlot was the once and future of Equestria, the home to a goddess and magic and romance of any kind – and definitely romance, with a Princess of Love alongside Princess Celestia.
Canterlot was culture, and all real culture came from Canterlot. Coco had heard tales of the elegance and acceptance there that Manehatten simply was nowhere near as thorough with. Was it too much that a girl wanted to spend her days longing for more than Bridleway and the most clinical museums? In Canterlot, there were green spaces, galas, the Royal Canterlot Theater, the heart of fashion itself – oh, too long for Canterlot was too long for life.
“I bet you’ll meet the prettiest filly in the world there, Coco.” Cantle Chanel had a momentary smile that exceeded anything Coco would have expected from a fifteen-year-old.
“Oh, Nelly, I’m sure you’ll find somepony there too!” Coco smiled up at her without a hint of shyness.
“Puh-leeze,” Nelly said, fitting a pearl earring carefully, “I’m just glad this silly dress will hide my fat old blank flank.”
Coco wasn’t the bravest filly in the world – not by a long shot. She wanted to say so many things, and she didn’t stay quiet because she was too meek to say anything. There was silence between the two because Coco did know the things she wanted to say – she just knew that Nelly had given up listening as much as she had given up trying to say anything. Nelly had already dropped out of school three years ago, and Coco’s parents told her that Nelly’s parents informed them of some very serious trouble Nelly had gotten into – and while they hadn’t said what it was, Nelly had ended up in a juvenile program and with a line of therapists for eight whole months and Coco hadn’t gotten a letter from her for all that time. Not even a postcard, one of the cheesy ones from tourist stops and local diners.
“Adult ponies can have no cutie marks for a reason,” Coco whispered. Her heartbeat reached her ears. She had never been much of a scholar, merely a good student, but Coco had read into delayed cutie mark acquisition – it was certainly rare, but nothing seen as tragic or something to regard as suspicious or wrong until middle adulthood.
She had brought her findings to Nelly, but Nelly never wanted to see any of them.
“None of them good,” was what Nelly said, something dark and sour in her tone that quieted Coco immediately.
…
The hotel room lobby sold postcards. Each was kept in a cloth pocket trimmed with lace on one of the spinning displays similar to those used for jewelry – Coco had never learned the name for them. There were times when she still just thought of them as ‘spinnies’.
Nelly had come up with that. Perhaps she knew the name for them long ago and couldn’t say or spell it, and when Coco was a little filly and Nelly still had her retainer, that was all she could teach her best friend.
She spun them aimlessly. Coco’s anxiety rose every time she thought somepony might be looking at her, and she tried to look like she belonged in the lobby by staring off into the many pictures on each card. The usual array of images – princesses, maps, vacation prints – was mixed with all that Fillydelphia had to offer. Flowers, landmarks, stores, universities, parks, and entertaining destinations faced her from behind the clean, glossy finish each had.
For a city that had some of the same problems as Manehatten, Fillydelphia was awfully beautiful. Coco hadn’t seen a hint of the mangy underbelly that Nelly had known at any point during her trip.
She quietly selected two cards and paid for them with murmured pleasantries and idly asked for directions to the Fillydelphia District of Justice – only to learn that in this city, there was no one area reserved for courts, holding jails, and the like. Instead, the majority of buildings for such a purpose – including the one Coco sought – would be outside of the city. All it took to get to this authoritative center and military pseudo-town was a short carriage ride to the harbor, where she would find everything right where it belonged.
The mare’s certainty didn’t sit well with Coco; she knew Nelly didn’t belong there, but never said that.
One postcard was purchased out of fondness. On the front, a dazzling magic school in Fillydelphia’s historical district towered as a wide, impressive edifice. She scrawled the familiar address of Stirrup Saddlesworth and Nadine Needlepoint in Manehattan. Coco scribbled a simple greeting, stiff behind a wall of grief. Then, she added two names to the second card – Neighthalie Needlepoint and Grignon Chanel d’Camargue – and painstakingly printed a few kind words limited by awkwardness and formality. She added no address.
Her first postcard found its way to a post office, where it was accepted by a mail stallion with only a few mumbled words about her trip. Coco had to ask for directions – again, with her voice sliding close to whispers multiple times – to find where to deliver the second. Locating somewhere she had seen only once before could not be done by aimless wandering – there was the call to the Manehattan bustle in her blood and she had an appointment to keep.
Eventually, she was able to find Fillydelphia’s South Side Celestial Cemetery, trotting past rows to find the heart-shaped tombstone of her aunt and uncle. Half the inscriptions were done in Equestrian, and the other half of the flowing cursive carvings was their native Prancian. The postcard was perched along some dried flowers – no doubt from a local friend; Coco hadn’t been here in ages.
No plot next to their grave showed any sign of preparations for a burial, and standing in what was once an undisturbed meadow, Coco saw no fresh plots being dug today. Not even a pre-made, yawning hole was waiting to cradle a coffin.
Cantle Chanel’s burial rights – yes, the rights to her rites – were given to her only living relatives: her mother’s sister and brother-in-law. Coco’s parents. They didn’t want to make the choice, and Coco wasn’t going to tear what was left of the family apart by taking them to court to pry that privilege from their hooves. Days ago, she had stood silently when her parents told her the final decision – they had given up any and all claim to Cantle Chanel’s body and she would be cremated and kept in a criminal vault of the crown, like anypony else who never turned their life around from committing the things she did – things that Coco knew weren’t good, and shamed Princess Luna’s night and Equestrian society and everything else Coco could find written in countless laws and law books, but it was impossible to imagine being put in a sterile urn to be stored away with all the murderers and higher criminal shames of Equestria, never to be visited or be memorialized beyond evidence files and royal records, or courthouse requests for information on the name behind the number she would be assigned.
They had asked her if she hated them for their choice – and she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t. Coco wouldn’t admit to two things. The first was that even though her heart felt like it had been stung by a bugbear and jumped on by a dragon, she could understand why they were doing this – she hated that, and Coco wasn’t a mare who could say she felt hate much. But where else could you keep somepony who had no right to be buried in a citizen’s cemetery – kitchen cupboards?
The second thing Coco wouldn’t admit to was that she didn’t want to see Nelly buried, no matter what.
…
Nelly loved roses like Princess Celestia loved the sun. Every time she visited Manehatten, Coco could count on Nelly to have a fresh bouquet with her, or a rose somewhere on herself. Today, a crown of roses was around her head, perfectly ringing her unbroken, chunky fridge. Having wanted something new, Nelly had gotten her mane cut in a modern, trendy bob similar to Coco’s on her last visit – something seemed to change every visit, and honestly, that troubled Coco. An array of new looks and accessories were like an artist’s attempt to blend pastels to hide an unsightly shade – and there was nothing unsightly about Nelly.
Not even the bandaid across her muzzle – she had gotten it in gym class was the answer Coco was given – marred the sunny feeling that could always be found somewhere around Nelly. Coco just wished she didn’t try these changes all the time – most mares tried new styles because they wanted to grow into something prettier and feel good, not because they were… well, doing whatever Nelly was. Sometimes, Coco felt like she was trying to dress like a spy in her own country, always hiding and hoping to blend away something Coco couldn’t understand.
She couldn’t imagine Nelly being staunchly anti-anything enough to be a spy – if Princess Celestia had spies – because Nelly was fun and amazing, but she didn’t care enough about anything to be a part of it. Coco wished she knew why that was or how to ask – she knew what it was like to be shy and never want to start anything, but to just never want for anything had a distant horror to it. Coco wasn’t sure where she would be without her fashion outlet, or her mother without her sewing, and her father if he didn’t have his perfume talent – so for Nelly to be almost passionless hurt.
They hugged, and Nelly pulled away first – she was always the one to really do things and show impulse – and shot her sunny smile to Coco. “I could’ve sworn you’ve grown since the last time I saw you!”
Coco’s reply was a tiny noise in the back of her throat. “Ohmigods, Nelly, you sound like your mother.”
Her older companion threw back her head and laughed at a volume Coco wasn’t brave enough to reach – she pranced around with her saddlebag charms jingling with her clumsy, youthful steps. Underneath them, one of Nelly’s good school blouses had been rumpled, and the cardigan she wore over it showed off the blank flank that made her look like a grade school student.
“That’s so silly, Coco! I’m nothing like that old nag. She’s so dreadfully dull and you’re the best cousin ever – did I tell you about all her new rules? There's a shorter curfew and everything – no fair, no fair!”
Coco gave her lip a tiny bite – she would never say something so mean about somepony she cared about, and somepony who cared about Nelly. Curfew wouldn’t be a problem for Nelly if she hadn’t run off again – she had heard her mother and father whispering about it when she crept out from her room one night. The last time she heard them so frighteningly worried was another time about Nelly when…
Dismissing the thought, Coco nudged the door to her room open entirely and pointed proudly to the wall. A bold new poster hung there, boasting the autographs of the entire Flankfurt production of My Fair Filly.
“Mom and Dad got really good tickets for my birthday,” she said, smiling happily. “I have a bunch of pictures from the train ride – oh, and they gave me these really cool stamps on my passport and everything! When we visited grand-mère she got me a train book – c’mon, let me show you! Maybe you can get your cutie mark in train facts, Nelly!”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that anymore,” Nelly whispered; her voice was thin and quiet, like when an adult was very, very angry – but Coco couldn’t remember the last time an adult’s voice was ever so dark. Where in Equestria could Nelly have learned to sound so scary?
“I… I just thought that—”
“You thought what?” Nelly demanded, standing at her tallest, face flushed with rage. “What did you think about my cutie mark?”
“I thought that since you’re so good at remembering things you could get a trivia cutie mark! Or that we could play and you would finally get yours – if you just tried something and really, really cared about it–”
“I’ve tried everything!” Nelly shrieked in the empty apartment. “Don’t you dare tell me that I haven’t tried! You don’t know what I do – maybe I don’t need a cutie mark!”
“Nelly, everypony gets a cutie mark! I have mine! Everypony I know who isn’t a baby has theirs and I know there’s something you’re good at because – because we haven’t tried everything and how could you not want to know something about yourself?”
“Horseapples, you really are stupid!” Nelly’s whole face was redder than her roses and she was worse than Coco had ever seen her – and all Coco wanted was for her mom or dad to be home from work now, or her breezie godsmother to swoop in and make Nelly nice again.
“Why are you being so mean to me?” Coco whimpered weakly, hoping Nelly didn’t know there was a lump in her throat and that was why she had a big frog voice. “I just wanna help y-you.”
“With what?!” Nelly stomped her hoof. “What is it my little kid cousin could help me with?”
“I-I heard Mom and Dad saying you were doing something bad – they didn’t want me to hear but they said you were selling something dirty, like worms, right?” Coco blurted desperately, lowering her ears and trying to shy into the corner of her bedroom, close to her canopy bed and dollhouse. “All you have to do is clean-up, r-right? When I’m bad I have to clean my room – what if you had a clean slate? Isn’t that why you had to go to that camp – o-or what if we sold something nice, like treats? I don’t like it when you keep leaving a-and I don’t get to tell you things – everypony says you have to see doctors and go to more pr-programs and camps but I don’t want you to go anymore! I joined th-theater and g-got my cutie mark, so I’m sure you’ll–”
Nelly’s glare made Coco want to disappear forever and even after that – if something could happen after forever. “Grand-mère still thinks you’re a colt, Cyril.”
Coco didn’t even wait until Nelly ran out of the room before she stumbled back against her dress-up chest and started crying. Never before had Nelly said something so mean to her – or never been there for Coco when she was upset. When Coco heard somepony pulling at the apartment door’s chain and the harsh slam that followed, she cried out for Nelly to come back – even if it was just to pick up the flowers she had dropped.
Nelly didn’t come back that night, and when Coco’s parents did, they had to go get a guard. Soon, posters with a clipped version of Nelly’s latest class pictures were strewn over the kitchen counter – and this wasn’t the first time Coco had seen such pictures of Nelly.
Of course, they found her. Nelly had tried to walk into a dentist’s office when she got a toothache – that retainer was still trouble for her, and years only made her more impatient to get rid of it. But Coco didn’t get to see her long after that – another incident meant another round of therapists, programs, juvenile programs, and Celestia-knows-what for Nelly. Coco wrote her endless letters – apologies, updates, mailing sketches – and made sure that she brought each one to the closest post office herself and mouth-wrote her aunt and uncle’s address clearly.
She got one letter back after months – it was from her aunt and uncle, saying that Nelly wasn’t at home. She wouldn’t be able to respond. She had to stay in a hospital – not the kind Coco understood, either. Her parents said Nelly could stay in this hospital for months, but that she wasn’t sick in a way that Coco could understand – and that she even had to go to school there, which sounded awful.
But this would be a fine introduction to what came later – the years trying to stay in touch, with every letter she ever sent returned right to her, whether it was when she still lived with her parents or after she moved out. Nelly would simply disappear soon – leaving behind a family that loved her and missed her more than anything, and Coco unable to get answers from her aunt and uncle about the whereabouts of a lost mare who wanted to stay that way. Every letter she sent to all the apartments and seedy housing areas Coco felt had a chance of holding the mare she searched for would find their way back to her doorstep.
…
The carriage driver mumbled a generic see-you-later kind of farewell when Coco stepped out. There was salt in the air that she could taste as soon as the wind hit. Old, stately buildings teemed with gold-armored guards. Cobble streets were filled with their timed steps and the rattling sound of supply carts going back and forth in the military community. A uniformed military postal unicorn trotted by her, and Coco swallowed nervously. Everypony here was strong and toned – and armed – while Coco stood in the shadow of the arch, looking at Fort Firefly looming in the distance.
Familiar anxiety washed over her, and she all but tippy-hoofed over to the nearest armored pony, a stallion working out a wing cramp. His helmet was off, so his head revealed a clipped orange mane and the pale blue coat on his head, and large pinto splotches – but the rest of his body was still masked with one of the standard colors: greys, whites, and blues.
“Excuse me, sir,” Coco began timidly, rubbing at the engagement band on her hoof. “Could you tell where the Fillydelphia-Firefly Morgue is located? I-I had–”
“It’s over there ma’am,” the stallion said swiftly, the ‘ma’am’ smoothing her nerves, “right past the third row of barracks and to the left.” He lowered the wing that he was pointing with, taking in her pale looks. “Would you like me to walk you there?”
“Yes,” Coco whispered, eyes darting around. She wondered if he was actually asking, or if she didn’t have that much of a choice. “There’s somepony I have to see there.”
To her surprise, the stallion blinked worriedly. “Er–I’m sorry. Right this way, ma’am.”
He nodded somewhere in the distance and Coco followed, her mind calmed somewhat by the protective presence, and she noted that the stallion bore a striking Vanhoover accent she hadn’t picked up on before.
…
“Nelly, you can’t do that!” Coco protested. “School is important!”
“Puh-leeze,” Nelly scoffed, stirring her towering milkshake’s swirly straw like she didn’t have a care in the world. “There’s nothing important about school – who told you something so silly?”
“You did! Everypony has! You’re going to ruin your life!” Coco tapped her tiny hooves on the cafe countertop nervously, letting the conversations droning on around them mask their serious situation – and turn up her sense of anxiety. “Aren’t you too young for this?”
“Non, Coco,” Nelly insisted. “Equestria lets you drop out of school at twelve, with a parent’s permission – I can’t imagine what Princess Celestia was thinking when she came up with that law.”
She was probably catering to the rural earth pony population, Coco thought, unsure if that was true. “Auntie and Uncle shall never let you do that!”
“Oh, I know,” Nelly said, giggling coquettishly.
“Then how do you plan to do this?”
“Not telling,” Nelly singsonged. “You can be such an egghead sometimes, Coco. Would you stay in school if you didn’t have to?”
Young Coco tilted her head to the side, only aware of how in over her head she was. Some time had elapsed since their major fight in Coco’s room and Nelly’s latest incidents. Since leaving the hospital in Fillydelphia, Nelly was supposed to be on her best behavior – only she wasn’t acting accordingly at all.
“Yes,” Coco said, eyes downcast and hooves playing with her straw wrapper. “All my friends are at school. I’m learning a lot of important things–”
“No you aren’t.” Nelly waved her hoof like she was the queen of the world. There was some whipped cream near her freckles. “You don’t know how to have a good time or make the bits come in – ugh, Coco, you don’t understand that there are thrills in life that mean more than romance, families, schools, and yes, that means your foalish theater things too.”
“Yeah,” Coco mumble-grumbled, “like what? What is so good you have to–?”
She was going to say ’ruin yourself for it’ because Coco couldn’t think of what else to call throwing away everything in one’s life for some mystery fixation – but then she stopped herself, thinking that maybe it was too mean. After all, Nelly was still visiting her and playing games – they were still cousins and friends.
“If only you weren’t asexual,” Nelly sighed, hoof propped on the counter and a distant, annoyed look reserved for babies and fools in her eyes, “then you would understand what life is really about.”
Yes, Coco was most certainly so over her head with what was going on that she was drowning. Maybe she could go find a guard – there were always guards roaming Manehattan, but could they help her set her best friend straight?
“Nelly!” Coco hissed through clenched teeth. “That’s a secret!”
“I’m not telling anypony, am I?” Nelly insisted. “Besides, it’s a dumb secret.”
“There’s tons of ponies around us! What if they tell somepony who knows–?”
“Oh, cut it out, Coco. You’re so freaked out about this – listen, if there are pills that could make you into a mare, then I’m positive some doc has stuff to give you that would fix that right up.”
“Nelly, stop it!”
“Why should I? You keep acting like you know what you’re talking about – like you’ve really lived.”
“You don’t have to be like this – listen, let’s pay and go home. Maybe you’ll stop being such a bully–”
“Fine, fine. Listen, I’m sorry, okay? Coco, sometimes when you spend enough time in crazy places you start to say crazy things.”
Swallowing, Coco nodded. That made sense, didn’t it?
“So, when I talk about school and stuff–”
“Nelly, aren’t you good at school stuff? I thought that you liked gym.”
Nelly’s muzzle wrinkled like she had eaten a lemon. She moved her tail close to the hem of her skirt in order to hide her blank flank. “Nu-uh. Coco, you had to read the menu to me ‘cause the letters were being all–” She waved a hoof because she didn’t know the words. “I don’t like school, okay? And sometimes when I get frustrated, I say dumb stuff.”
“Mmm,” Coco said through milkshake slurps.
“Just don’t tell anypony I said that stuff ‘kay? Then I promise not to tell your fillyfriend that you’ve still got – y’know – the wrong stuff.”
Coco shivered and looked at the shiny tile of the floor. “...Okay.”
A few weeks later, Nelly was back in Fillydelphia and Coco’s mind had returned to her honors classes. How could it not when those were going to get her into fashion school? She had been ready to discard her school saddlebags on the couch when she came home, only to find her parents, wide-eyed and wanting to talk to her.
Coco wished she had told somepony about the things Nelly said sooner. She had done exactly what she had said and more – pulled herself from school with the only authority a filly her age had, and fled home again.
Only this time, nopony would find Nelly, and that moment over milkshakes would remain one of the last times they saw one another.
…
“And you are?” asked the unicorn mare, her white lab coat was as clinical as the City of Fillydelphia patch on it as official. She adjusted her wire glasses with magic, unbothered by the chill of the morgue.
“Her cousin,” Coco whispered through chattering teeth. “I’m here to m-make sure that it’s her.”
The mare frowned, pulling a clipboard out from somewhere – under her coat or maybe stashed in some magic place, Coco didn’t know – and turned back a few pages. She was the third morgue unicorn that Coco had seen since stepping inside. Manehattan made one used to seeing lots of earth ponies, but she knew that the morgues of Manehatten had to be staffed only by unicorns too – it was just as normal as there are no earth pony surgeons and such. You wouldn’t ask an earth pony to perform an autopsy any more than you would ask a seapony to live in the desert.
“Whose cousin?” the mare said again, tapping her hoof so that the clicks echoed. Her name tag boasted the name Macaria Macabre.
“Cantle Chanel’s,” Coco said. “She was brought here–”
“Is she civilian, criminal, or E.U.P.?” Miss Macabre asked, tucking a strand of her long black mane behind her ear.
“She was a criminal, miss,” Coco admitted, dragging her hoof on the floor. “Involved in self-exploitation crimes–”
“There are quite a few of those here,” the morgue mare went on, “and I do not have that name listed in my papers – was she brought here under a different name? If what you mentioned is her real name, it is unlikely she used it – and what was her particular offense, if you happen to know it?”
Coco met the mare’s eyes, their steady violet hue framed with cat-eye makeup that gave her a constant, expectant look. “She was, but I don’t know the name. I have a picture of her as a filly in my purse and some papers – I can prove that I’m family. My cousin – she was involved in, umm, prostitution specifically. I wasn’t given a lot of details about that part – do you maybe have some birthdays? Something? I just need to see her face, please–”
“Oh,” murmured Miss Macabre, “there is only one mare we have that matches that description – goodness, it’s nice to know she had a fine name – since the other two are…” The mare twirled a pen in the air with her magic as she trailed off. “Their investigations are just starting – your mare, your cousin has had much more progress made… at least in that area.”
Coco shivered when the morgue worker of all ponies winced trying to put something gently. “Will I be able to see her? Do they know who did this to her?”
“Yes and no,” Miss Macabre said, still twirling her pen. “You may see her once you wash up; I’ll grab you a coat. Do I know what the status on her investigation is? No, I’m afraid that’s a different group of ponies to chat with entirely – I’ll be able to direct you to them once we can be absolutely certain that this is your cousin. Murder is murder regardless of the victim in this godsdamned city, and I won’t have some creep shredding ponies of any sort up for lesser crimes.”
Nodding, Coco followed along.
…
“Are you absolutely sure that you want to see her?” Miss Macabre’s eyes ripped with sudden concern. Her clipboard had since vanished, and the mare stood near a vault door that sent Coco’s heart racing – it looked like the door to an oven.
From where she was hovering nearby, Coco gave a nod. Her knees were shaking, and she could no longer tell if it was from her anxiety or from the cold that permeated this place. The sterile air made her breath whistle with each inhale, puffs of fog escaping her with each step further into the rows of oven-like doors so plainly numbered.
“Of course,” Coco insisted, “she was my family. If I don’t claim her, who else will?”
“Most ponies who get involved in self-exploitation and lose their lives aren’t claimed by anypony,” came the matter-of-fact reply. “They’re usually just expected to fade away to anonymous urns locked up somewhere, not quite handled as criminal or citizen remains if they go unidentified. So few ponies want to do anything but wash their hooves of the sort.”
“That’s awful…” Coco whispered, reaching up to pat her tie under her jacket.
“Perhaps, but it’s also quite understandable – nevertheless I’m glad you’re an exceptional sort, Missus Pommel.”
“It’s still ‘Miss’,” Coco corrected, listening to her hoofsteps echo behind her, “at least for now.”
They stopped in front of a door bearing the number forty-four, and Coco saw that the way the metal was forged allowed the workers to slip folders in a kind of pocket. Miss Macabre retrieved the file folder with her magic, murmuring how lucky they were nopony else would have another shift for a while and they hadn’t interrupted anything that was in progress.
Coco grimaced, blanched, and debated if she should hum a tune to stay busy or if it would sound too creepy due to the morgue’s acoustics. Opposite of the wall of freezers – was that the right thing to call them? – was a shelf filled with colorful chemicals, potions, medical instruments, and magical devices stretching as far as Coco could see.
“So, while your photos were more than serviceable–” Gods, was everything this mare said so careful? She cuts open dead ponies for a living and sewed Nelly’s insides up, told me my pictures were a ‘strong positive’, and still manages this unflappable, inoffensive persona? “–I need to know that what I read off to you is correct, just for procedure’s sake, okay?”
“Mmm,” Coco affirmed, nodding and shivering. She pulled her borrowed coat more snugly around her. “Please, go ahead.”
“The pony you claim as one Miss Cantle Chanel was an earth pony.”
“Correct.”
“Miss Chanel was a cisgender mare with no evidence that she took any hormones or received any surgeries that could be described as sex-altering.”
“Also correct.”
“Good, good,” murmured Miss Macabre absently. “Do you know what her cutie mark was?”
“She never had one.”
“Ah, that’s fairly typical for her lot.” Papers flipped. “She was between fifteen and thirty years old, by her dental records.”
“Nelly was twenty-seven.”
Gloomy violet magic ignited and scribbled something down. “Poor thing. Do you know if she ever had foals or was with one?”
“N-No, I’m afraid not. We haven’t seen each other in–”
“Understood. Her death is classified as a homicide. Does this match any of the information you were provided before you came from Manehattan?”
“Yes, that is absolutely correct.”
“Do you know if she was married or in any kind of relationship?”
“Erm, no. I think I would have found her sooner if that was the case… do ponies that… y’know… even…?”
“Hardly, they’re all quite unattached – I suppose they have to be in order to slip past notice. Marriage brings up one’s records, after all. Now, could you describe any conditions she had – mental, magical, or medical? Anything at all that comes to mind?”
“Nelly was allergic to peanuts,” Coco offered, once again rubbing at her engagement band. “She wore a retainer for the longest time – there was always something off about her teeth until she was, oh, twelve or thirteen? She got everything taken off close to when I last saw her. Her tonsils were taken out. She had crippling dyslexia, pierced ears, and a few concussions from gym classes as a filly. A couple of her back teeth were filled in. I… I know it isn’t the same, but both our mothers were Prancian immigrants. I was born here, but Nelly came over later – her first language was Prancian.”
“Hmm.” Miss Macabre tapped her pen against the file folder’s edge. “I’ll not that, but it’s not especially useful to me – that’s information for the guard, if you want to be the one to champion her investigation and such. Would you say she was bilingual?”
“Not properly, I don’t think so. Sometimes Equestrian did confuse her – maybe she had a more severe learning disability, since she read at a low-grade level. Or it might just have been, erm, what’s it called when…”
“Conflict with her imprinted language?”
“Oh, yes, that’s it!”
“Did she ever dabble in any kind of magic – dark, inherent, or otherwise?”
“I don’t think so – I’m told she could rarely pay a water bill, so I don’t think she could have afforded to buy magical trinkets. Not to speak ill of her, but I never thought… I never thought she was clever enough to steal either. Her own magic was somewhat average, I think? Mine isn’t much good, but it’s hard to try and cultivate earth pony magic in Manehattan – and, erm, I’m a designer; I don’t need much of it.”
“I wouldn’t rule out her getting her hooves on something through illegal means – Coco, you’re a smart mare and have given me some good information that matches what I saw in that mare, but next to everything your cousin was up to was illegal, that much the guard told me, and even trying to stick her hoof in resources where it didn’t belong could have been considered exploitation and pulled the rug up on her crimes. It’s a messy, complicated situation I’m glad I don’t have to deal with – the dead don’t exactly have to go to any court but the gods’ own. Just… don’t be surprised if you learn something about her you don’t like, okay?”
“I-I… okay.” Coco’s forehoof drew languid circles on the tile in front of her. The hum of uncounted runes reached her ears, making her mind buzz faintly – how could these unicorns stand to be locked away with nothing but magic and death? “Is there anything else you need from me?”
Miss Macabre’s hornlight intensified, curling along the handle and edge of that heavy metal door. Frosty blue-white light pulsed from the magical carvings. Were runes supposed to look so sinister? “I need to ask again: do you really want to see your cousin? Once I open this door, there isn’t a way to go back from what I’ll be showing you.”
“Whom you’ll be showing me.”
Massaging one of her temples, Miss Macabre closed her vividly colored eyes and replaced her file folder. “Yes, whom I will be showing you,” she mumbled, before her tone became much more abrupt and direct. “Miss Pommel, I’m not sure if you fully understand just how little is left of Miss Chanel. She is far from old dead, and when I say that her remains are stored in here, I do mean her remains.”
“I have to see her! Please!”
Nodding grimly, Miss Macabre motioned for Coco to take a few steps back, which she obeyed. Without further ado, the latch on the freezer was lifted and an intimidating metal slab – at least Coco thought of it as a slab – was drawn out. The majority of the metallic surface and contents were covered with heavy sheets somewhere between the drabbest blue-gray and completely colorless. Coco’s soft exhales paled in comparison to the size of the chilly clouds of mist spilling out from the freezer, the silvery stuff laced with the distant glow of interior runes and the gleam of frost.
There wasn’t a pony shape underneath. Coco thought that there would be – that it would look like somepony had stashed a sleeping Nelly under ugly, shapeless bedsheets and let them soak up blood until the dull reddish-brown stains became overwhelming. The peak of something similar to a muzzle was clear, but the series of lumps under those sheets stirred a clawing panic in Coco’s stomach. They weren’t pony shapes – if she didn’t know better, she would have sworn they were groceries somepony had stashed under there – maybe some smashed melons, lumpy sacks of something, and a couple baguettes for the longer lumps.
“Ready?”
“Y-Yes,” Coco stammered, and without further ado, purple magic drew back the heavy sheets. The sound they made was like a tarp, and Coco thought of rain, because the sight of who was under there made something patter up and down Coco’s back.
She stared at true remains, and the lost Nelly stared back up at her cousin with dead eyes. Coco’s eyes shrank with horror, roving over the site of what was halfway to being a mare – in more ways than one – and most definitely her best friend.