On the morning of September 4th, 874 of the Solar Millennium, Petunia Petals was smothering her eyelids with the last bit of pink pearl eyeshadow that she had. The action was done with less grace than a toddler, but that was only because she was still dizzy from the stench left by cheap mane dye that floated through the hotel room. Normally, Petunia Petals had perfectly penciled eyebrows and her makeup was overdone, but not to the point of smudging. The vibrant hues needed to make her gray-pink mane a shocking scarlet starlet bob was always a task she did over a sink, usually in the wee hours of the morning.
She would never admit that, though. To have a dull mane color was one thing, to tell ponies that in a world of rainbows you resorted to what was dismissed as tasteless vanities outside of petty art attempts like theater was another matter entirely. Her whole country was one to turn up their muzzles at mares still cursed with the mind of fluorescent adolescents like her — as if it were a curse at all, she would say to them. Now all of Equestria would see her face printed on papers, reduced to monochrome, and see the headlines that reduced her to the quintessential example of that.
Petunia Petals spit out the now-empty metallic makeup container into the trash. When she spun around and knocked it over, she did not bother to pick anything up. Dawn over Canterlot meant ponies would be awake and working as the princess-goddess raised the sun. Any light at all was nothing she could risk being under anymore, not when the tabloids had good word on the exact hotel she stayed in, primping and preening — every other establishment in the Shooting Star District had chattered on and on about their right to refuse her. A few even had the royal guards drag her out into the streets when they alleged there was anything rude about her flinging a lemonade bottle at their bellhop's head.
Canterlot was supposed to be a good city, and the mare that entered a tourist and became what Petunia had was not a good pony. No matter how much things had felt good to Petunia, everypony was too up their asses gasping and such scandal this-and-that or giving her judgment.
Petunia Petals loathed judgment, for there was nothing in this world she could see worth judging.
...
Petunia Petals dyed her mane red for two reasons. The first was that it always caught the attention of other ponies, and she could ask for nothing else but that. Secondly, she had done it once and never thought to try anything else. She had never actively settled on a red-only sort of style, it had merely happened to her. The only thing Petunia Petals really saw fit to devote her thought to were pretty trinkets, prettier makeup, and if whoever she took to bed would bother to pay for her room. She could spin her image of a tourist into something more exotic by pretending she were from a city instead of the cluster of six labor families that made up the fresh settlement that was Ponyville, otherwise known as Nowhere, Equestria.
Nowhere, Equestria did not want Petunia Petals back, not after knowing what they claimed was her character. There was a word that dissolved like fine chocolate upon the tongue, except without the sense or substance such a word was claimed to have. Petunia Petals did not care for a concept like character because the idea of character did not give her anypony that was fun to sleep with. She wanted a stallion who would look at her and want no more, and when she looked at a stallion she wanted them to know the same.
Instead, they were always mad when she told them the parts of them that really mattered to her. There were always shouts, the kind of meaningless words about how much she was objectifying them or something equally trite. No noise was worse from a stallion than hearing one who ran his mouth. That wasn't what they were for. So Petunia had stopped letting them know what she really wanted was oft called shallow, let them think she was merely in the casual crowd than what ponies claimed was cruel.
She would always be out before the sun rose, and sometimes she would even get to fish a few bits they wouldn't miss from fine-tailored saddlebags.
On the morning of September 4th, 874, Petunia Petals cantered out of a hotel room with her skirt flying and like she would never run again in her life. She had forgotten that a carriage was awaiting her departure — the proper kind, pulled by four harnessed stallions across all roads, with a dozen or more suitcases at the top, and a bench with a fold-out bed in the cramped little cab. Locked away was a set of chamber pots that were meant to serve the passenger's needs on the road, when stops were not possible, or inns were far from sight.
She could afford no better if she wanted to get where she wished, for bigger carriages cost bigger bits. Manehattan was farther away than even the bothersome pegasus ponies could fly in one day.
Now, there was a city that had as ill of a reputation as Petunia, one that claimed no virtue if one learned to listen to the right kind of conversations. There, a bob of bright red could blend in or stand out only as much as Petunia Petals wished it would.
...
When she was old enough, Petunia Petals had been told of divisions. There was a world beyond the half-dozen farmsteads and three shops that made up podunk Ponyville. A world of jubilees, beetle-wing decorated skirts, and croquet contests awaited her if she just were to dump her icky little farmland. She would never have to deal with the foul prosperity of the Apple Family or the genteel attitudes of the much loved Rich Clan.
Something deeply annoying happened to ponies when they had enough bits that Petunia's family had taken care to remind her of from a young age, even if it meant being called green-eyed and simple. Talk of business, stuffy universities, and investments were simply meaningless. Petunia's mother was a grand mare who was careful to ensure her daughter dropped out of school at the legal age of twelve. From then on, Petunia had lived the life of her family — labor from pre-dawn to sunset and saving the supposedly meager bits that plowing, planting, and real work paid. When her peers were off doing meaningless things like university exams, graduating from apprenticeships, or promising sweethearts they would write from military training, Petunia had made something of herself. Princess Celestia had always said that it was the humble laborers who were most valuable to Equestria, never the scholars and those who saw themselves as special. It was one of the few things in Princess Celestia's extensively transcribed dogma that Petunia Petals could agree with.
Petunia had the bits to separate herself from the roots that held her down, to be more than a mare who didn't believe in Princess Celestia, the will of the other gods, or what couldn't be held in her hooves. Life was a candle meant to burn on nothing more than pleasure and labor, and Petunia had spent all her years in one. She threw herself into tourism for the other, and drowned herself in wine-tasting, the luxuries of galas, and the finest places money could buy things in any city.
It was in the mind of ponies that you lost yourself when you had the habit of finding yourself tangled in another pony's sheets in the ways that Petunia did. She had a new stallion nearly every night. That was the kind of thought Petunia found tainted instead of wise, like everypony else seemed to suggest. It was one that even infected her own mother, at least in her eyes. When Petunia had reached the divide between filly and mare, her mother saw fit to explain something she saw as important, something at the very heart of the societies of all sapient creatures, something that echoed in all the words of the gods.
There was a gulf between mares and whores, whether they committed the crime of being paid or not. A whore — and its other, gendered counterparts — could be a state of mind too, according to Petunia's mother, one that encompassed poor, toxic behavior as much as it did a gender-blind crime. All the quacks who called themselves head-shrinkers and good souls and followers of prudence would say so as well — the gulf between mare and whore was no different between the one between stallion and stud or between being sensible and a slag.
Schools said the same thing when youths got old enough. Doctors advised the same to promote the health of ponies. Silly, fraudulent doctors of the mind proclaimed the same in order to promote the myth of mental health that Petunia’s family knew better to buy into, even if her kin agreed with the head-shrinkers on that single matter. The royal guard was tasked with arresting any who took poor behavior a step further by adding the money to the degradation that made it one of the most horrendous crimes in Equestria, in the rare instances that such practices managed to occur under the absolute authority of Princess Celestia. This, according to all the talk on the subject Petunia had heard, was for the betterment of society, and an order from Princess Celestia herself. Petunia was the only pony she knew who was not grateful for this effort, and she was not able to voice that without consequences.
Dash it all, that decadence was exactly what Petunia wanted — though, she wasn’t about to bother with the crime part. Any part of life spent imprisoned was worse than dying tomorrow. Dipping one’s hooves in that matter was enough to cost a pony their future, even if Petunia was always going to be more interested in a present. She was a candle of but two centuries and little more, the same as any pony was. Let her burn it all on this dreaded impulse and irresponsibility that was little more than pleasure, pleasure, and more pleasure. If that's what she wanted, who cared if her family wanted to condemn her?
As she had written to them of her exploits, Petunia found their rejection as unseemly as they found her, that was for sure. Equestria is a land of love, they said as did every other pony Petunia learned was not worth their salt. Love for romance, love for family, and love for one's fellow pony, be it as a friend, neighbor, or some other sort of partner. A respect for life and transparency in relationships, be they romantic or not. Her own family had been the first to allege that Petunia had neither of these loves or qualities. They had not been the first to brand her as a slut, but they had been the first to threaten to disinherit her after writing one of the worst insults in the Equestrian language.
From then on, the only foals they paid attention to were the siblings Petunia Petals had, the numerous ones that never stopped living lives of labor and land.
They had done so long before she was divided from the shrinking mountains of Canterlot by only a window.
...
Petunia woke up many days in her carriage sick and hacking last night's dinner out the window. She was used to having used too many chamber pots provided for her, and the stench of them only worsened her ills. This was not the same sickness that came from drinking too much the night before and finding herself in bed with a stallion that was just as much of a stranger after she slept with him as the moment she met him. No, this was the feeling of the foal that burdened her, the unwanted passenger she had yet to conjure any use for in her idle thoughts. One didn't need to be in a big city like Manehattan to find a sanctuary where one could toss — not literally, of course — the kind of joyless bundle that Petunia Petals had in her.
Still, she was sure there was some reason to keep it; there had to be some kind of charity that could be milked as the brat would eventually milk her. She had heard tales of aid offered to ponies in her circumstances — aid in the oh-so-important form of bits. For as long as she could remember, Petunia had a relationship with bits where she could not decide whether she loved or loathed them. Princess Celestia had a way of doting impersonally and governmentally upon those in need, and what could be needier than the stories that could be sewn to a single parent? Petunia always thought that those types had been right not to be chained down with the delusion that was romance.
But she also thought that there was something more spoiled about those kinds of parents, who insisted their status was in some way special or brave. Those mares silly enough to fall victim to nature’s greatest affliction — pregnancy — always ended up being more spoiled in the little hagseeds themselves, the very ones that they used for their begging. Those little weeds were just hoofcuffs holding back ponies from what really mattered, and they did so in the same way matrimony and other illnesses like it did. In Petunia's mind, she much preferred to see the less annoying version. Something so satisfying came from seeing the rare fate of a stallion bogged down with too many brats to take care of himself or still send those glorious bits to his very deserving, free foal-dam. Foals were the biggest indicator that a stallion was weak and unworthy of ever feeling the touch of a mare again.
Calling that little slip-up a hagseed, to borrow her parent's word for unicorn foals, felt more accurate than all the papers in Canterlot burning that Petunia was a harlot — which Petunia didn't see anything wrong in. The little bastard spawn was half-unicorn anyway, seeing as Canterlot was one of the few cities in Equestria where the stick-heads weren’t kept in their place. Equestria was supposed to be a land that valued innocence, but what was innocent about the weed that was flowering within her? Why brand the creature of beauty she was with a term that was supposed to be unfavorable? How dare her hagseed be pitied over the real victim in these circumstances!
From the very beginning, she had called the little thing an accident because it made her sick to think of it as anything else. What better name could there be for such creations? Before the accident was the best way to refer to what was the greater damnation of her life, one greater than even the scandal of the sire!
He had been on purpose; everything about him had always been so. Petunia was hooked on his every look from the start as much as his eyes had been undressing her before she even realized it. When he showed himself that he was willing to fulfill her wants for money on top of being better than any other slice of a male she had ever had, Petunia wasn't going to say no. She wasn’t sure if she would let him get away with saying the same either, not when he looked like real fun and she knew plenty of ways to get a stallion to come to his senses.
She had made the first move, knowing a stallion of luxury and lust when she saw one. He had been looking at her like he wanted her their whole first meeting, then thought to tell her that he was married when they were done.
Petunia Petals told him she would never mind.
Eventually, neither did he.
Let the rest of the world continue to talk as though love were something real. All her life, Petunia Petals knew that a pony began and ended with what was between their legs — and what they could do with it.
Petunia Petals never had any problem with being a mistress. He was the one stallion she had ever come back to, and the sole reason was skin deep. But why would she care? She may have come back to him, but it would have to end eventually, when she got bored. The more he kept insisting she take preventive potions and other remedies she usually lied about being on, the faster that was likely to happen. That’s how things were supposed to be, all the ways she could leave him, and Petunia wasn’t about to let anypony who would dare bring up the shackles of exclusivity not wake up alone the next morning. Those were always the stallions she took extra care to abandon as clearly as possible, even in a city where ponies sought legitimate courtship more than they ate oats.
The rest of the world was sick when it got out that she was the mistress of Rhodium Blueblood, eldest of the two Blueblood Brothers, heir of the Blueblood clan, and a very married stallion. His family had been the adopted familial plaything of the royal scum that was the goddess-princess since before Petunia's great-great-great-grandmother had been born.
His wife was ill with despair, and a mare Petunia had never met wanted her purged from the world like she was a disease. Rhodium's stately parents took their daughter-in-law as one of their blood, and cast out the stallion who had been of their line. Petunia always thought that had to be a farce, for those of such rich, elite class could want for nothing but blood and coin, and yet that worthless little pegasus mare was still the one who they claimed as their own, even all these months later. Rhodium denied the results of the paternity spell, even when the little half-blood fetus shone palely upon a magi-scan because of the ‘half’ of Petunia that was loathsome grew within her with half of the worst kind of blood. Parental fraud of either variety had always been a serious crime in Equestria, and these kinds of tests were never taken lightly. Not when the unique magical heritage of the unicorn parent was literally brought to light with each one. That appointment had been the only time Petunia ever let a unicorn touch her with their tricky magic, at least outside of every horned stallion she had slept with.
He thought that Princess Celestia, who kept his family as the most polished of her pawns, would have an iota of sympathy for him. How pale her bedmate had been when she declared him, his behavior with her, and all that transpired between him and Petunia a pox on society and more. He grew paler still, like he had been stricken with something, when she stripped him of the Blueblood name, exiled him from Canterlot, and demanded he funds the existence of a child he would be barred from ever knowing. Equestrian law was blinded by the tender years doctrine, but Petunia wasn’t about to canter back to court and demand they rob her of a potential asset because her nation was blinded by marehood, seeing it as though it were a virtue in its own right.
Still, Princess Celestia had never looked more nauseated and imperfect than when the answer to the question she asked Petunia Peals — 'Didst thou know Our once-nephew was married?' — was a guiltlessly delivered 'yes' spoken with a shameless smile, and peeled of all honorifics. That old nag, Princess Celestia, seemed sicker still when Petunia informed her that knowing made her like it just a bit more, that she was aware of what she was doing each time she met Rhodium after, and that she was never forced, paid, or coerced into anything.
What reason did she have to spare the details of her liaisons?
The only knowledge that plagued Petunia Petals her whole trip was knowing she was not alone.
...
Petunia Petals stepped on board the ferry to Manehattan Island, her unborn passenger a bump under her now too-small dress, and told everypony who never recognized her that she was merely a mare who had changed.
These words came from a mare who would never do such a thing.