I'd seen tee-shirt and chain-wearing ruffians much like these specimens before, loitering around Baltimare and harassing ponies. Never so many together, however. I had always stayed away from everypony. I had no friends because, well, friends always left you in the end. As for acquaintances... you had to trust a pony enough to answer revealing questions in order to receive gossip in return, thus I didn't know anything about the group of ruffians I'd spotted as I walked down the street toward them.
I entered the intersection.
A wolf-whistle escaped the unruly herd. I glared at the black-nosed red roan stallion responsible, his lips still puckered. I credit myself for engaging, not putting my muzzle in the air as my butler Proper Step had trained me to do, nor huffing like the snob he'd tried to train me to be. The filly the servants had nick-named Shy would not have survived by herself in my world.
When the sorry excuse for a grown-up stallion whistled again, I spat on the cobblestones.
His blue eyes widened, as did his grin.
"I'm too young for you," I muttered, then added loud enough to be understood in the shocked silence of the herd, "and far too much for you to handle." I kept eye contact as I continued through the intersection.
Earth ponies. Me, a unicorn.
Not my brightest move, but before I relate how I learned humility and found some self-improvement goals, let me set the stage...
First off—to get it out of the way because it is of scant importance who I had been—I am (or rather had been) the Countess Aurora Midnight, the Earl of Grin Having, Lady Presiding of Sire's Hollow, daughter of Midnight (the black beauty opera star) and Firelight (post-equus, the first Earl of Grin Having). Princess Celestia had dubbed my parents Heroes of Equestria.
Both were dead.
All those titles— Naught but blood money, hoofed down directly from the Crown.
The princess had sent my Mom and Dad on a "mission of opportunity," one from which they'd never returned. And, for that, Her Royal Highness saddled me with their post-equus titles, lands, an estate, the theoretical right to lead one of her armies, the statutory right of the third bit of any taxed, and the responsibilities of administering all that—all at the age of 5. As if that could make up for the loss of my father calling me his little pumpkin or my mother singing me to sleep.
I couldn't give the wealth away to the poor or the oppressed whom deserved it more than I. My wealth devolved from the Crown; it wasn't truly mine. No. I could only renounce.
I did the only thing I could do to truly foul Celestia's plans...
I ran away.
Which is how I found myself in the mideastern seaboard city of Baltimare just before the Running of the Leaves as the climate changed from hot and humid to cool and uncomfortably muggy. The city was a monument to brick as a cheap construction material. There were ten story department-store skyscrapers of tan brick. There were squat factories the size of city blocks of red brick. These myriad factories filled precincts with chimneys that belched soot that colored the sky smoggy brown and everything else black, making dirty the decorative bricks and cement work of every building as well as the white brick of the few patrician homes in this mostly working class earth pony section of the predominantly earth pony city.
Fabled Canterlot—where Sunburst, the love of my life, lived—it was not. The tenements and the so-called brownstones where everypony who was nopony lived were built of reclaimed brick of all hues. Most were covered with faded splats and hints of pink or blue paint that in bygone eras had been used to cover their raw state when it was fashionable and ponies could afford the paint. All were the ghastly chimeras of budget-restrained architecture.
The angry bear of a city hunkered down under a menacing orange and yellow late afternoon sky.
I rather liked it here. Baltimare promised anonymity, delivered in spades.
The wind blew in from the ocean as Celestia prepared to lower her sun and raise her moon. I smiled. My saddlebags bounced against my barrel as my iron horseshoes clattered on the broken pavement, some of it worn cobbles, some tar and stone. The pink overstuffed canvas contained my few bits, notebooks, a special book on spell maths, a repaired lightweight tarpaulin I would not need today, a few clothes, and an instant sesame noodle bowl for my dinner. Everything I earned; everything I owned; everything I wanted.
Today...
Today, I'd graduated!
Just a minute ago, I'd chuckled and skipped like a foal, unable to contain myself despite my need to disguise my far too young age. In this city I could easily be arrested as a truant; I undeniably was one, too young to live alone. I wore my mane and tail in a tight bun, not the pigtails I had been wont to do.
I'd fled Sire's Hollow the instant I'd reached my likely full height. I'd filled out in my haunches and other feminine spots. (Remember parents, if you feed those foals well, they will grow quickly!) I'd slimmed down since and my muscles had hardened visibly—in part from living in parks and street encampments, in part from hustling to eat more than the fescue grass that grew free of charge in the parks, while finding time to keep up my thaumaturgical studies.
One part of my body was hungrier than the other.
My hustling for bits paid off. I'd run away mid-spring. Mid-autumn, I was about to sleep in a real bed. I'd earned the bits. I'd earned the right. To Tartarus with the blood money paid me to forget my real family. I'd earned the rent for a bunk in a hostel and a shared shower down the hall.
The foal I'd been had avoided bath time like the plague. Today I anticipated luxury. I was a foal no longer.
Which brings me back to that fateful Baltimare intersection...
As I approached it, I'd sobered and slowed to a walk. I was glad I did. I'd noticed the gathering of youthful ponies, all older than me but none old enough to be truly adult. "Yearlings!" Proper Step would have sneered. It was a term borrowed from true horses who populated the forgotten plateaus and badlands. The animals matured so quickly it seemed like overnight rather than actually a couple of years. They lacked symbols, tools, and language. Overall, yearling rather well described these brutish ponies in their late teens and slightly older.
The unkempt individuals—loitering in the intersection constraining traffic, such that a wagon had to bump over a curb, and convincing a working pony in blue overalls to decide to head elsewhere—were prime examples of yearlings. They talked loudly, gestured wildly, and bumped pointedly into each other. They chose to wear clothing, but had chosen white low-class tank-top tee-shirts. The stallions wore manes and tails as long as a typical fashionable mare, and all had piled their manes up into what I knew as a "bouffant" clipped in place by black barrettes.
The mares looked overly girly in garish reds or pinks, with makeup and bracelets, except for a buzzed-cut blonde palomino who wore brass stud piercings. (Didn't brass have lead in it...? Poisonous... Oh, never mind.) It worked; she looked tough, more so maybe than her gold chain-wearing stallion companions.
I'd seen the sort around, and hadn't thought about it. I'd never seen so many together, though. I had always stayed away from everypony. I had no friends because, well, friends always left you in the end.
I crossed the intersection, and as I said before, a wolf-whistle escaped the unruly herd. I glared at the black-nosed red roan stallion with his black mane piled atop his head, his lips still puckered. He displayed chains of gold, and a clip of gold on his ragged left ear. Compensating much?
Shy and runaway did not mix. Got a mare trampled under-hoof doing that—and it had during my first weeks on the road last spring...