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// Chapter 5: She's Spoiled Rotten 
// Story: Ichor 
// by Ice Star 
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There was no enlightenment or insight brought by poverty. If there was anything it provided other than experience, it was only the most malignant of envy that festered in the mind, eating it away so it only saw falsehoods only Haves and Have-Nots. Though a grown pony consumed by such vileness might procure more sophisticated names for their made-up classes of villains and heroes, nothing would stop it from being as hollow as a thin layer of gold upon the poorest pewter in a clear imitation of intelligence and substance. Little Marigold Blueblood had yet to succumb in full to the nature of this foulness that rotted mares and movements alike, but she lived in the manure that made it most fertile. The seedlings of it were already strong in her, not because weeds of her soul were stubborn, but because she and her dam nurtured them endlessly.

The special variety of poverty faced by Petunia Petals was well-earned. Her name had trotted out from tabloids and into authentic newspapers about what she had done, and even those unaware of this still suffered from the nuisance that was Petunia Petals. No publisher alive nor in history had ever been legally allowed to publish anything on Princess Celestia without her approval, or the secondary agreements of the Celestial Moral Managers appointed to every news outlet, overseeing every story's reporting and even the date and time of publishing. The rotten mistress of a Blueblood careless and cruel enough to take one had no protections except the bustle of Manehattan as an attempt to make everypony forget her and indulge in her desired lifestyle among 'true earth ponies' in their urban trotting grounds. 

As with all Petunia’s woes, they were self-inflicted. All those years ago, she chose to consort with the now-disowned stallion who could only call himself ‘Rhodium’ as of late. She chose to insist that there was nothing wrong when her hoof in the betrayal of love was uncovered. Petunia also chose to subscribe to false ideals and was eagerly letting her daughter be tainted with baseless prejudice before she ever knew a nursery story. 

“Marigold, my little flower,” was how she usually began her thinly-veiled rants, “you must never forget you are an earth pony, unfavored by that sun goddess and doomed to oppression in this society of physical classes. You hear me? If Celestia loved earth ponies, we would not be living here.”

Marigold would stare up at her mother with the special, unblinking stare of a, particularly unremarkable foal. The little filly would always answer obediently: “I understand, mother.”

Then, she would usually return to ironing one of her pinafores, the ones that she wished belonged to one of the private, posh schools in the city that she and Petunia never had the bits for. After all, it was society’s fault that she could not go there and instead had to go to a boring school with no pretty uniform where ponies wanted to know why she got free lunches and second servings. Mother said so. That was why Petunia could not do the cleaning and cooking. Society made Petunia sick forever, and doing such ‘awful drudgery tasks’ would inflict ‘the collective trauma of my class upon an old mare like me’ every time Marigold asked about her duties at home. This was why at the ancient age of thirty-two, Petunia made Marigold do everything. Usually, she was only well enough to do the shopping, and on every trip, they had to stay in the boutiques and uptown shops her mother wanted to go to. Or she insisted on dragging her wheelchair around all the furniture shops in order to request entire catalogs of fainting couches, only to yell at employees about why their illustrations were not accurate to each custom-made product, utterly oblivious to the irony of her screeching demands. 

Petunia rarely thought about how Manehattan was an earth pony city and that of all celebrity and fictional heroes, only earth ponies were represented en masse and with great, unwavering positivity. Equestrian culture was based on slobbering upon the backside of earth ponies for a dozen reasons like that and more, all done with all the subtlety of inserting a cactus in the rectum. Only the unicorn-heavy Canterlot and Tall Tale, or the various cloud cities of the pegasi offered any taste of unicorn and pegasus culture as blatant, and yet so curiously non-oppressive. Every other settlement was up its own rump about being ‘earth pony strong, humble, and good’ or had no predominant influence from any race. Such was the Equestrian way. Only the most deluded of ponies were whispering about classes of this and that, and only the looniest of them all could insist that the ‘noble and superior but woefully downtrodden earth pony’ was under any kind of condemnation in Equestria, except maybe from the most definite opposer of all: doors that were pull instead of push. 

Seven-year-old Marigold knew this was why her mother took a carriage down to her terrible public school and screamed bloody murder at the principal when she found out Marigold had been cast as Princess Platinum in the Hearth’s Warming pageant. It was clearly a sign of the malicious cultural devaluation of earth ponies to have them be clothed as their ever-so-spoiled and definite oppressors. That was almost as bad as when Marigold had to bring reading homework home, and dear Petunia Petals had feigned a stroke to scare her daughter into throwing the book away because it was ‘inappropriate and evidence of vile indoctrination against lower classes’ due to the pictures of pegasus and earth pony foals playing together in a park, sharing snacks, and implementing all the basics of phonics her daughter had learned in the text narrating the park adventures. 

The only books that Petunia Petals harassed her child about reading were the ones the local librarians could never give her because Princess Celestia had banned them from Equestria's borders. On that day, Marigold had to make the long commute home again wondering if her mother would make her eat soap again for being the bearer of such obviously tragic news. That happened whenever Marigold said something dirty and bad, even though her mother never took up hooves against her in any other way. Petunia could go through phases like that, and Marigold was certain it was normal, just like when her mother had thrown out all the books in the house upon learning that not enough were written by earth ponies and that they were 'anti-working class instruments' because that was somehow a real form of prejudice that her mother never shut up about.

“My little flower,” Petunia said today, “I need another glass of lemonade. Go easy on the ice too, Marigold.” Petunia was ever-so-theatrical to put an extra air of desperation and woe-is-me in her tone, making it sound like she would faint in seconds without her precious beverage. 

Marigold scurried over with the silver platter gripped in her mouth, and then upon the glass pitcher’s handle because her mother was obviously too weak to pour it. She usually always was, just like how she was usually too weak to do anything that was not fanning herself or leafing through newspapers and magazines. The only thing she was never not once ever too weak for was doing her makeup, and Marigold was always scolded when she asked to help do her mother's pretty lipstick. 

“Thank you, little flower,” murmured Petunia. She feebly adjusted how she held her painted, feathered fan and tugged a hoof at the necklaces burdening her neck. It was like a terrible self-made collar, somewhere between an insult to zebra culture and a parody of a mare attempting to indulge in Canterlot fashions. 

“Mmmm,” responded Marigold. She often thought jewelry was bad for her mother because she knew her mother did not buy the nicer ones and instead insisted that she would maximize her purchase by using what would get her as much as possible. Petunia usually got horrible rashes from everything she wore and insisted that it was a curse placed upon good earth pony-made jewelry by evil unicorn jewelers who sold terribly pricey goods and charged nothing fair to a mare in need like Petunia. 

Petunia said that she needed all the jewelry and things she bought for the house — a variety of rugs, vases, silkscreens, and trendy trinkets — in order to compensate for coming from a ‘podunk town’ and that ‘acquiring deserved higher class goods transformed that class status’ in order to improve her life. Those were the kind of incomprehensible filibusters given to a young filly when she innocently asked her mother why they had a new end table with a gorgeous glass top and gold filigree designs, but not enough food in the pantry.  

To Marigold, rambling was usually better than ranting. Petunia was always prone to the most vicious rants at the drop of her silver inlaid mane-combs. Once, Marigold had been sent on one of her mother’s errands downtown in the jeweler's district so far away from their pitiful, over-stuffed apartment. She had gotten terribly lost in a rainstorm because little Marigold had never been given enough bits for a carriage (‘You do not need their labor like I do, Marigold!’). A guard found her crying and walked her home, threatening to contact foal welfare services if a filly not even old enough to go to school was found alone halfway across the city again. 

After that, Marigold had been forced to eat soap for calling the guard nice (except for his yelling at Petunia) and talking to him in the first place, even though he had approached her first to ask if she was lost. Her mother said never to talk to a pony in armor, denounced the stallion as a filthy featherbrain, and told Marigold that if she kept trying to think good of the guard they would rape a little earth pony of her class. Because Marigold had less idea than usual what her mother was going on about, she was given a lengthy and graphic explanation about what would happen to her and what her mother meant by that strange, new word. 

“Mother, do you require anything else?” whispered Marigold softly. She watched as her mother’s eyes cracked open more in order to squint at the filly standing in between the sunlight of her balcony. 

“Not right now, flower. Go back to your chores.” Petunia sank back into her Qilinese silk pillows and sighed. An identical stack propped up the mangled hind legs encased in their usual cloth wraps and bandages and barely peeking out from her mother’s petticoats. “Oh, and in ten minutes bring me a glass of iced tea.” 

Marigold bowed her head, the limp dark yellow of her mane falling in her golden eyes. “Yes, mother.” 

She tottered back to where a pile of her mother’s laundry still needed to be ironed. Marigold had no nice clothes because she went to public school, where there were no uniform traditions. Petunia reminded Marigold of this at least once a week, citing it as the chief reason why her daughter never got to have any of what her mother called 'retail therapy' or cute velvet bows like the other fillies at school. She only went to that school because Petunia Petals had gotten countless letters from the Crown refusing her requests to home-school Marigold and pull her from school. Petunia was always particularly upset by those, insisting that nothing she taught was inappropriate and that Marigold was being brainwashed against earth ponies and this mystical working-class her mother raved about every time another reply was sent regarding Petunia's latest resubmission. 

Most mail with the Royal Seal of Princess Celestia’s Eternal Crown only pleased Marigold’s mother. Without the monthly letters with those smile-inducing checks, Petunia Petals would be entirely without income, and Marigold Blueblood would never have anything to eat instead of having things to eat sort-of most of the time. Petunia did always remind Marigold that those checks were one of the few things that Princess Celestia did right, even though Marigold knew that was the kind of talk that sounded suspiciously like what her teachers called traitor-talk, which broke a lot of Princess Celestia’s laws. Every time one of those checks came, Petunia repeated her usual speech about how everypony was owed bits and that they should not have to be injured for life or needy like she was. 

Marigold never gave too much thought about giving ponies bits for just anything. She did love bits and their sweet golden looks. They felt better than the first snowflakes of winter on her tongue. Plus, Marigold resembled bits more than she did her mother, except for the fact that they were both earth ponies. If the world had listened to Marigold when it was made, she would replace Princess Celestia with a god of bits instead of having something silly, like the sun. To her, the idea of replacing all the gods with bits upon bits upon bits sounded even better. Except for some errands, she never got to touch any. It was why her school gave her lunches instead of her mother buying anything to pack them with. Petunia Petals was usually busy getting herself new things, which meant Marigold was left to look at everything in store windows and her mother’s apartment (her mother never stopped reminding Marigold that she was not the owner) and then why she had nothing.

Why did getting run over by a carriage get you everything? That was the million-bit question for Marigold Blueblood. When she was four, a carriage ran over her mother and she squawked and screamed for months, in court and out of court insisting that the cabby pony was a no-good, awful attempted murderer. Then that cabby pony lost their job and their ability to be hired as a cabby pony forever. After that, Marigold remembered what it was like to see her mother smile for the first time: the first time that check came in the mail. 

Marigold was just a little filly not yet fully aware of the extent of her mother’s awfulness or how close to squalor they really were because of her mother's budgeting ability. The bits received monthly were numerous enough that if Petunia were anything but the imbecile she was, her apartment could be quite high-end in a desirable neighborhood and her daughter would not have to muse on if getting run over by a carriage would enable her to get a winter coat or finally be able to have a toy to call her own. Instead, Petunia placed herself between poverty and pampering, losing herself all the more to the insistence of delusions that were more of her own making than anything she regurgitated from banned attempts at political and philosophical ravings.