Marigold passed this street every day, and she had never seen this shop before. North Haflinger Street was a central Manehattan neighborhood with few shops, and here was one that had to be new. Yet, the gray cobble building was short, being only two stories tall, with a peaked roof and well-lit windows. A large lantern hung from a wrought-iron piece by the door, to be lit when Princess Celestia raised the moon over the world. Everything about its aesthetic and the building’s own obvious physical state was apparent: this was not a new establishment.
Admittedly, Marigold knew two things immediately. The first was that she would rather be over in the Broncos borough of Manehattan Island visiting Corona Park and spending her day along the shores of Buffalo Pond. Instead, she was made to run errands for her mother who was eager for new perfumes.
This shop had a sign in the window, the neat ink letters with a faint flair to them. Perfumes were buy two, get the third free. The twittermite jars at each end, propping up the window display cast a luminous glow more eye-catching than the ordinary firefly lanterns used by most shops, but below the more varied werelight displays the filthy unicorns would put throughout their establishments as a show of how pretentious they were.
Depending on the costs of the perfumes, Marigold could have enough bits left over to get something for herself. Three new perfumes would be enough to convince her mother that she spent all the bits she was allotted for this shopping trip on the old nag herself. It was not like she ever asked for the receipts when she had such an iron grip on all the bits in the household that Marigold couldn’t even manage to ‘save up’ more than three under her pillow before her mother would smell them out.
Then Marigold would be yelled at and her mother would ‘forget’ to buy some groceries for Marigold when she got off her lazy ass and actually took a carriage to the nearest store for groceries that weekend. Marigold never worked on weekends either, so she was never missing from anywhere when her mother would lock her in the apartment with her hooves hog-tied from country pony skill and placed on her back, kept from calling out.
Never touch mother’s money is what Marigold learned since the consequences were worse than having her mouth washed out with soap as a filly. Mother would make her do more cooking and cleaning out of spite after that, hobbling around the kitchen and looming over her daughter and watching her work the stove and prepare the food she would never get to taste, and her mother would keep Marigold from food knowing that her daughter might as well have been named Pansy Blueblood for how easy she could be starved into submission. So far, Marigold’s unfortunate record was three days.
Most of the time, she tried not to think about the way things were. Instead, she rubbed one hoof at her neck with the itching awkwardness of the thoughts, thankful that in one way she was a coward from years of early foalhood having little to nothing to eat in the first place. Even if it left her somewhat scrawny, she was still nowhere near the emaciated state that would get her mistaken for something worse — why, there was a filly in her grade that apparently starved herself willingly (Marigold would trade places with her in an instant) and was already getting mistaken for a whore, half-starved and prematurely aged.
Marigold didn’t know that filly’s name, but she knew that she feared the school or foal services would notice. With how pale she was, it was only a matter of time. Marigold hated the thought of foal services and whatever the plethora of crown-made organizations was that were meant to pluck foals in situations like Marigold’s from her home; if they got their hooves on her everypony would know she wasn’t really a rich mare’s daughter. The family she would be placed with would not like her or give her what she wanted, especially since Equestria didn’t have orphanages and insisted ‘needy’ foals should be placed with families for their supposed health.
How any family could see Marigold as healthy, or be tasked with maintaining their own well-being having to work to give her what she deserved was beyond her. The princess-goddess was corrupt, through and through, and Marigold knew that she could even be placed with a family of unicorns or pegasus idiots. All that could take her away from her city and the chance of bits one day. The mother of Equestria’s oft whispered of Blueblood Bastard couldn’t last forever.
That was why Marigold did what she did; nopony could bring shame to her by suggesting she was breakable like the cripple that birthed her or that she was anything less than a superior earth pony and golden mare. There was no foal who ever felt what she did in the whole wide world, and nopony would understand why she did what she had to. She sighed tiredly, letting the muggy spring coldness chill her coat and stiffened her smile before approaching the shop. With the easiest of nudges, she pushed the door open.
The shop’s interior was swathed in light and rich shadows as welcoming as the fine art prints of Equestrian hearths and lives hanging in Manehattan’s museums. Iridescent glass perfume bottles scattered throughout the many shelves throughout the store were not the only trinkets the unmarked shop had to offer. Various artifacts of all kinds from an array of lesser cultures cluttered the walls: buffalo dream catchers, enchanted Qilinese teapots, self-lighting Saddle Arabian lamps, the other Saddle Arabian lamps for weird ghosts, spellbooks, scrolls, and birdcages filled with mist that never left them. Entire racks of jingling necklaces and amulets — some of which glowed oh-so enticingly — beckoned Marigold with how they swayed.
The scent of teas, incense, and the faint aroma of zebra alchemy reached Marigold’s muzzle. Behind whole towers of books written in languages and scripts Marigold could not name — she was a monolingual sort, so no blame could fall on her — and clothing racks overstuffed with robes, hats, and other garments of all kinds, there was a painting. Both the garb of civilians and sorcerers cluttered the view, the fashions ranging from something clearly ancient to the timeless wear of stuck-up unicorn wizards, and then the currently in vogue hobble skirts.
Marigold was never a mare for art. Painting, sculpting, writing, and the like wasn’t unicorn-dominated or a trade overflowing with filthy featherbrains, but it was unfortunately diverse. It’s like they let just any creatures call themselves an artist. Art just never resonated with Marigold and she could not imagine wasting her life creating things that didn’t actually exist.
The painting shouldn’t either. Paintings didn’t move. No images moved unless you flipped a comic book very fast. This sent Marigold’s heart skittering with how unnatural and bizarre it was, reeking of magic that even somepony like Marigold knew shouldn’t exist. The image in the lurid oils was shaded and swirled so expertly that the painting was just below being lifelike, and yet the artist’s surreal addition of certain patterns made the status as a painting all too obvious, something only emphasized by the unnatural array of colors that no painter alive could capture.
Three blank-flanked Alicorn foals were playing together, and Marigold only had a name for one of them. Two fillies laughed and smiled silently, and all three trotted dreamily across the canvas in wavering, slow speeds. The first filly was vaguely familiar, appearing to be a composite of general Canterlotian beauty standards and bore a vague resemblance to Princess Celestia from the colors of her eyes and white coat. Her tiny wings buzzed almost three-dimensionally, making Marigold dizzy with apprehension at the thought of stretching her hoof out. A soft pink mane spilled down to about her wither, one curl brushing from behind her ear and grazing her cheek.
The second filly, Marigold had no name for. Only the long, dark lashes really suggested that the foal was a filly. Other than that, there was more than enough androgyny in the other foal to give way to confusion from the looks alone. Turquoise eyes so enchanting and unlike any Marigold had seen before haunted her as she watched; this foal had a smile wider than any of the others. Of the three, she acted like she could see Marigold, or that she knew she was being watched. Her mane — or their mane, Marigold supposed — was cut short in a fashion befitting either sex and swishing past their jawline, just nowhere near as long as the other two foals. Their bangs fell forward in a mischievous curtain, bearing a distinct curl.
They held up a frog for the white filly to laugh at, grasped in dazzling aquamarine magic. That made Marigold squeak slightly. First, because she knew that carrying living creatures in telekinesis and their handling was a careful act that was never something surging uneducated foals could be trusted with, and this foal too young to even look like either a filly or colt was cradling that frog perfectly! Second, the most animated of all the Alicorns in this picture was the strangest one to look at because Marigold knew from every storybook and history lesson in school about the gods that there was no blue Alicorn other than the older colt with both.
Princess Celestia was quick to include everything Aquastrian in Equestria since King Neptune of Aquastria, her once-lost cousin and only family had reconnected, giving Equestria another ally, storybooks more fantastical fodder, and the harbors of Manehattan too many filthy fish ponies on top of all the other immigrants invading Marigold’s city. She had grown up seeing the tales of the sea god and his illustrations — blue-eyed, long blue mane, fish swimming inside as an adult, the whole ugly sea god deal — in her foal’s books before her mother had thrown them out.
The scowling, taller, colt captured in blues huffed at the other two behind a long blue mane. The sourness to his pale blue eyes was understandable.
Marigold could only gape at the sight, close to frightened, with her gangly adolescent legs shaking in the warmth of the shop. This was the closest she would ever be to one of the gods, and she hated every moment of it.
“Ah, that piece always attracts visitors,” said the voice of the stallion standing next to Marigold. “Did you know that it is thousands of years old? The artist’s signature on the back is one Terra Worldheart, and I have never found nor heard of another piece by them. Have you?”
“SWEET CELESTIA!” shrieked Marigold indignantly, jumping to the side as quickly as a cat dodging a bucket of water. “Where did you come from?!”
Marigold’s demanding hiss was met with a head tilt from the stallion, who adjusted the round little glasses that perched on his muzzle, with nothing else to keep them there save balance itself. “I should be the one asking you that, madam. You are the one who entered my store only to shout, shriek, and scowl at my favorite artifact.”
“I… I saw the perfume sale s-sign?” Marigold stammered, dragging a hoof on a Neighponese kirin rug underhoof. “Sir, it was lit up with twittermites and shining all around NoHa. I do not think I could have missed it.”
“North Haflinger Street in Manehattan?” asked the stallion, toying with the starched white sleeves poking out from his Qilinese style robe. It was the style one never saw outside of Qilintown, and his accent was unplaceable, suggesting a once intelligent earth pony had the gall to marry a half-beast. Disgusting.
“Is there another I am unaware of?” Marigold Blueblood sneered, shifting her saddlebags boredly and blowing some of her boring dandelion colored locks out of her face.
The stallion paid her no mind. Instead, he ran a hoof along his queue — a silly fashion that was barely in fashion among the Qilinese immigrants anymore. Goodness, was he aiming to be a caricature straight from history texts?
“Gods, Manehattan?” he muttered to himself. “Twice in one week!”
He turned to her, smiling in a way she could not decipher. His round brown eyes twinkled at her from behind his glasses, as if he were not a crazy old stallion who talked to himself in front of young ponies. “I am Chosen Curio, and young lady, you have taken a step into Uncle Curio’s shop of one-of-a-kind items!”
He kept smiling at her, while Marigold only returned by offering an apathetic teenage stare.
“No refunds!” Curio added cheerfully. "However, there are gift-wrapping services with a large enough purchase!"
“How much are those?” Marigold asked flatly, pointing a hoof to the perfume displays in the window. “My mother would like some.”
Curio blinked. “You do not want to look around?”
“I…” Marigold grimaced, her gaze falling against her wishes. “I rarely shop for myself.”
“Rarely,” echoed Curio, clearly not believing her, his posture pin-straight.
“Never,” Marigold corrected. “I never shop for myself. I am only on a quick errand.”
Curio was quiet, and Marigold watched him trot away from her. He quickly seated himself behind a polished wooden counter with a shelf of jarred poisons from around the world arranged neatly behind him. Perhaps he had been spying on her from there?
“Perfume,” he said, clearing his throat, “is twenty bits a bottle.”
Twenty bits? For good perfume, that was a bargain. Eager, Marigold trotted over to where the window displays and shelves were. Right below a hanging rack of swords was the sparkling row of prettily sculpted bottles. Most were shaped like flowers or fantastic creatures and the glass of each was a different color. Marigold happily selected two bottles, and then slipped the third one into her hoof. They were shaped like a griffon, tulip, and breezie.
Marigold gave the necklace racks a brief look of longing, knowing that anything was more than she could ever afford, and brought her perfume bottles to the counter.
Curio regarded her as strangely as she had when she squinted at Prancian on the bottles. Prance was always fashionable to imitate, and Marigold leafed through all her mother’s old magazines on Prance and fashion when her mother discarded them, trying to pick up a few words and phrases for the sake of pomp. While the alphabet on the bottles was mostly the same as what she could read, many of the words were spelled too differently from what Marigold was used to Prancian words looking like.
“This is not an ugly provincial dialect, is it?” asked Marigold, watching her bottles being wrapped with hoof-tapping impatience. “The spelling for each name was queer if I must say so.”
Curio paused, squinting at her. “You know Prancian?”
“A little. Prance is a nation of fashion and beauty, is it not?”
“These are vintage,” Curio said instead, returning to wrapping her parcel.
“Are you just saying that to mean old?”
“Vintage always suggests age, my dear.” The stallion did not look up at her when he said that.
“So they are so old all their spelling is bad? Is that what you mean?” Marigold demanded, her short-cut tail swishing testily.
“Something like that,” said the stallion, smiling down at his work suddenly. Any hint of non-neutral emotions vanished when he looked at her again. “Is it your mother’s birthday?”
“No,” Marigold muttered, “it is mine. She just wants perfumes.”
“...To give you?” Curio asked, so confused his muzzle crinkled enough that Marigold thought his glasses would fall off.
“No, nothing like that. Mother has never gotten me a birthday present before. She says that my present is being alive and getting to have a mother as wonderful as her. Oh, and then she asks how my rent is coming.”
“What in the gods’ names made your mother choose to do such a thing?”
Why did this stallion care? Or believe her? “I know not, all I know is that I want to still have time to go to Corona Park today and that I have paid her enough rent. Nopony else my age pays the rent.” She gave him a pointed look. “And the park is a long walk.”
She shoved her mother’s bits — because every bit was her mother’s bit — over the counter glumly. “I have one afternoon to be a fourteen-year-old filly, and I would appreciate oh-so-much if you would not squander my time.”
Curio’s lips drew into the thin line of a disappointed adult showing the universal frustration Marigold noticed everypony seemed to have for her. They exchanged bits for the parcel without any further discussion, and the emptiness of half of Marigold’s saddlebags pleased her. Anything would fall into that if the angle was just right.
With a hop and a skip, she giddily began her trot to the door. And just as she knew she would, Marigold had to side-step a shield rack, only to knock it over and crash into the amulet display in a clumsy fall of flailing limbs and a filly’s shriek. Metal clattered over her and the sound of dozens of neckpieces falling on top of her rang out discordantly.
“I apologize! I apologize!” Marigold Blueblood wailed, kicking out repeatedly from under the pile. Everything only scattered more as a result of her thrashing.
With one blind lash, she was able to hook something with the motion of one of her forehooves. Her breathing came in shakily, and Marigold delighted at the metal running against her hooves. As of now, everything was just as she planned. All that she had to do was find…
Aha! A metallic piece, wide and cold, grazed Marigold’s hoof more sharply. Either this was some kind of strap for the necklace or an entirely ornamental feature… and soon it would be all hers.
Over the cacophony of clashing and noise she was making, Marigold caught the sound of hoofsteps. Curio was calling out in shock, and his worried trot managed to be distinct enough for her to pick out. When he reached Marigold, she had already secured her best fearful look, puppy eyes, and jittery shake. For how valuable his artifacts were, Curio’s main concern was pulling Marigold out from enchanted shields, other artifacts, and ensuring she would not slip on any of the countless stray necklaces that were currently impossible to keep track of.
He lent her a hoof up, and she accepted, pocketing her prize with the other.
Tsking, he muttered about the sudden clammy quality of it, and Marigold whimpered out a few more apologies, oozing timidity. Her discretion in motion and nature was well-practiced from swiping snacks on the schoolyard. This was no such thing, and if caught she could see herself shoved in a juvenile program for reforming delinquents and having to work off a fine.
“By the gods, I had not meant to—”
“Please,” Curio said, brow creasing and frowning worriedly, “I have much to tidy up. Just go be a foal for a while. You have only one birthday left after this, yes?”
“Y-Yes, sir. Do you really not want…?” The weight of the jewelry in Marigold’s saddlebag made her want to sing instead of stammer.
“Neptune’s waters and Elysium’s light!” groaned the stallion, bringing a hoof to his face. “I know what I said! Off with you! Get, get!”
Marigold nodded shakily, turning around and cantering right out the door, letting it slam behind her. She leaped into the traffic, her heart pounding and dashed across the road at full gallop before she continued at full speed through the rest of the city, feigning that an angry cabby cart pony had spooked her.
Once she made it to Corona Park and secured an empty boat to ride on the pond, Marigold finally unpacked her treasure. The piece was heavy and certainly an expensive one to have stolen, and unlike anything Marigold Blueblood had ever seen before. There was an unnatural warmth to the necklace as it rested in her hooves, and the darkly colored strap was the same shade of smokey black making up most of the trinket. The cuts were at an angle not carved by any magic Marigold knew of — the working was far too precise, and Marigold had handled some of the few magic-made pieces her mother had. This was nothing like them. The Alicorn figurehead spreading its wings over the center was menacing, minimal, and smooth to the touch. The dark red accents were so morbid paired with it, and Marigold was unable to guess what kind of stone they might be from.
At the heart of the necklace was a single gemstone, cut to show off dazzling facets of juicy, ruby red. Sparkling up at her, it was nearly as big as her eye and undoubtedly, absolutely gorgeous. The warmth became a steady heat when Marigold smiled, hugging her new necklace to her chest as she felt the piece’s temperature rise. She would do anything in the world to hide something as amazing as her own necklace from her mother.
This… well, what she had was hardly a necklace, was it? Perhaps a brooch? Or maybe…
Alicorn Amulet, chimed two words, lithe and sharp as they stabbed through whatever she was going to think. The tone of them was whispery, soundless, and without the inflection or distinctiveness, her own internal voice bore.
...That, Marigold, would have to figure out later. Cautiously, she slipped her Alicorn Amulet (it did have a ring to it) back into her bags and tried to enjoy the rest of her day, knowing that returning home with three bottles of perfume and none of her change would put her in a world of trouble.
…
Two weeks later and many pounds lighter, Marigold Blueblood found herself on that same stretch of North Haflinger Street. Just as before, she was on another one of her mother’s pointless vanity quests. Only instead of attempting to locate a shop in that part of town, she had been returning from one of Manehattan’s other neighborhoods with the pulled-tight buckle of her saddlebags stabbing at her stomach. Twelve pairs of new earrings and a cumbersome amount of mare’s interest catalogs on home decorations weighed down her plodding steps.
Marigold stared around the street, taking in the fresh spring day’s bustle with a hint of sullenness in her exasperated expression. On a nearby poster, a glamorous mare clutched Wonderbolt derby tickets in her hoof and smiled brightly. Spilling out from under her exquisitely elaborate hat were curls bearing lighter highlights in a shining new style that Marigold would have loved to try herself.
Her mother had not found the necklace, which was stuffed deep into the inside of Marigold’s mattress. She had not bothered to give it a more careful examination since the name of the so-called Alicorn Amulet was revealed to her, as she would need time alone to figure out what to do with her not-so-mundane prize. Escaping to one of the local libraries under the excuse of studying for school had turned up no mention of a so-called ‘Alicorn Amulet’ in any of the books Marigold checked, and she was not about to put in a request for any that might exist. She would figure out just how the Alicorn Amulet worked on her own, as a strong earth pony who needed no silly texts by unicorns. After all, it only made sense that a unicorn author would not want their work on such a fantastic piece of jewelry to be found in an earth pony city.
Every night, Marigold had stuffed her hoof into her mattress where the Alicorn Amulet was tucked away. She tapped at the bloody stone on it, rubbing it like it might give her luck and wishes and all the good things she deserved. It was the only thing she managed to keep from her bitch of a mother, and it filled her with a burning lightness unlike any other.
With that, there was also the awe at the shopkeeper not noticing something as blatant as a missing piece known as the Alicorn Amulet! Such absurdity! Anything with so much as the whisper of the divine to it was coveted, and anything good slipped through Marigold’s hooves. For her to not have guards at her mother’s door and a blurb regarding her act of theft in the papers, her name only stripped away because she was a minor, and the rumors fanned throughout the city like flames was a miracle.
Marigold Blueblood did not even believe in miracles. Or that a wish was a thing that came true. She did not look to any stars, though she knew that by their signs she would be an Aries in the hemming and hawing of ponies who cared for such things. Those things had no place in grown-up talk, Manehattan, or everything else with relevance to Marigold’s life and the real world.
Swallowing, Marigold continued her casual trot down the wide boulevard, trying not to look conspicuous. That shopkeeper, Chosen Curio, was the kind who probably had a residence above where he sold his wares and the Royal Guard would know him. Other ponies out and about would no doubt recognize her as whoever Curio was so bitter at, for what shopkeeper did not want to warn other clientele about thieves?
Marigold was within a block of Chosen Curio’s shop before a better idea occurred to her. As much as news could spread in Manehattan, the city took the sink or swim to finding things out. What was not learned and spread was buried in this city, and what transpired had not spread city-wide for the offense it was…
...so perhaps there were ponies who would not know of the theft, even in NoHa. Marigold trotted up to one pony and asked, batting her eyelashes and sweetening her tone with all the innocence to which she had little claim, and asked him if he knew of Chosen Curio’s…
...he told her that he knew of no such shop, and trotted away, calling her creepy as he did so.
Marigold stamped a hoof on the concrete and found another pony…
...who also said no…
...as did the next…
...and the pony after that…
...and the filthy zebra after that pony…
...the couple three ponies after the zebra denied knowing the shop…
...and the other twelve ponies she asked following the eight ponies after the couple…
...all while she was within one block of the store.
Confusion tugging at her incessantly like an unruly autumn wind, Marigold dashed to where she knew the shop was. Her breathing was thin with her mother’s punishment still in effect, and her ribs ached with every dizzying breath.
Crossing the street in a mad blur, Marigold pushed past crowds of ponies shouting belligerently at her. She cared no more for subtlety and turned to where Chosen Curio’s shop should be positioned right across from her…
...Only to see nothing but an empty lot containing naught but overgrown dead grass, with no bench or stepping stones to attempt to refine it. Just a single completely abandoned, gods-forsaken place, all as if nothing had ever been.
Only the Alicorn Amulet was left buried in her mattress when she got home, heart still racing long after she had slowed. The fog of adrenaline only let the dawn of just what a puzzle she had worked her way into fall upon her, all while the bloody gem of the Alicorn Amulet winked up at Marigold Blueblood from where she held it in her forehooves.