Anything can be interesting, if you let it be so. Case in point...
As the stocker at Bite O'Kale Grocery, Mr. Kale let me take my time building the produce pyramids. Unlike dear lost Sunburst who could levitate a hundred different things independently at the same time, I managed ten when pressed, six with accuracy. Compared to an earth pony who had to use his hooves (or his lips, which is just too ewww to consider), I was fast.
Magic, however, is the mathematics of the physics that makes wishes come true.
Making wishes come true involves wave equations, quanta matrixes, and patterns. I like patterns. It's no fluke that all the great unicorn artists are impressionists or create abstract art with fractals and functions.
I could name a cubist and surrealist off the top of my head thanks to my art tutors: Tableau Palomino or Saleratanio Dappled. Of course, there was Mérens, my favorite impressionist with his series of haystack paintings done from autumn through winter. Standing away from the picture, you see the haystacks; close up, you see only rainbow dashes of colors that make no sense tonally, giving no clue to the detail at the higher fractal level.
I am not implying I'm an artist, just that I find stocking apples fun. I made a game of packing the irregular fruit so none acted as a keystone when plucked. Today, I'd worked with Ambrosias brought in by train from Vanhoover. Varying from yellow to red, I assembled puzzle pieces to create a checkerboard of alternating color.
It attracted customers that might otherwise pass us by.
That made Bite of Kale happy. He paid me for playing!
Sure, he worked me like a draft horse. Beat being bored. I did my best and was accumulating bits. Libraries in Baltimare charged membership fees that I now could pay. However, my magic education, as Ms. Maple at Celestia's school aptly advised, required a teacher. I needed somepony to correct what I misinterpreted, somepony to teach me to see what I was blind to. I needed somepony to learn how I used magic like roses Sunburst had, so I could grow better. I could read an arcana for days, but he had been able to point stuff out and suddenly it clicked.
I needed to learn to do that myself. I needed to attend magic school.
Mr. Kale liked my work and slowly I'd earned his trust. I noticed when colts might walk by and grab an apple; I retrieved it. I fixed it when the old earth pony proprietor didn't add up the accounts correctly. I made sure he took time to eat his lunch and rested up so he wasn't an exhausted wreck when he returned home to Mrs. Kale. Perhaps that's why she always smiled at me when she visited, despite me being young and maybe good looking.
All that earned me time at the register when Mr. Kale took his breaks.
That's how one late afternoon after Hearth's Warming, I found myself alone in the shop packing an emptied Ambrosia apple crate with a stallion's groceries. The sun was setting early and golden-orange light angled in the windows. The heater fan clinked and whined as it compensated for the always open door. It kept it warm enough to be considered only slightly chilly inside.
He said, "Thank you, Gelding."
My eyes flicked up. I felt my skin warm with an adrenalized surge of blood to my limbs. I tried to cover up my actions by blinking, frowning, and looking down to continue to arrange the flour, two canisters of toasted oats, and celery that was next on the counter.
He had a calm, quiet voice. He wore a business-like pinstriped dark blue jacket, not a coat, with a green sweater vest and a puffy cream-colored cravat that protected his neck like a scarf. The ensemble arguably went together, looked dapper in a lower middle-class fashion, but left his hindquarters bare. He stood at an angle to me so the first thing I noticed, beyond his copper red tail, was his whistle cutie mark. His tail swished as he noted my wandering eyes.
I said, "Don't tell me you're named Whistler or Whistlestop?"
He chuckled. The stallion adjusted his black glasses with magic as green as grass. He had dark green eyes to match. His cravat matched his golden fur, while the whole giddy-up accentuated scattered freckles that hid the peppering of grey hairs surrounding them. His thinning mane spread to his face and the side of his head like a barely contained spider-plant, but it didn't hide his ears.
They were torn at the tips and thick and puffy in places, almost like a cauliflower. His nose slanted slightly right, with a dimple in the middle of his muzzle. He'd been struck hard in the face, and despite healers that could fix such things, or for lack of bits, he had let it grow back wrong.
"The 'she speaks in non sequiturs' part seems right on target."
"Pardon my rudeness," I said, whispering, feigning shyness. I didn't want a confrontation here. I packed two bottles of orange pop, then five cans of tuna. I blinked at that. Usually only pegasi bought fish items. I added, "That'll be two silver eighteen copper."
Without looking up again, I picked up the receipt book, jotted the order down and jotted down the arithmetic I'd performed in-horn. The paper sounded loud when it ripped. I magicked him the yellow carbon copy.
Coins jangled on the counter, one spinning for an awfully long moment until it rolled in a circle and dropped with a slight buzz on the protective glass.
"Keeps her magic always active."
I narrowed my eyes, realizing this gentlecolt was likely anything but, considering to whom I'd given the name Gelding. Under my breath, with my voice lowered in warning, I added, "When threatened."
"As you should!" His enthusiastic voice sounded a bit gravelly and abused from years of shouting, but I judged his delight wasn't feigned.
"I cannot talk during work hours," I said loudly, hearing horseshoes approaching from the storeroom. I shoved the crate toward him and he caught it deftly.
He popped on a black bowler, which I didn't take as a good omen; Woodcutter had worn one. "Yurt Café," he said and walked out.
I looked down and saw five silver bits where he had moments before set down s2.18 with some drama. On his tab, I swiftly jotted a few pricey fruits and an imported cider, then swept it all into the till as Mr. Kale walked up. I wasn't going to be caught with extra bits on my person.
Wasn't going to happen.
Whistlebutt didn't look particularly rich. If he expected me to come running to return his money, he was sorely mistaken.
My grey-maned dark-blue earth pony employer grinned at me with his too-white, too-straight, obviously false teeth. He had eyes on my filly curves more than what I had swept into the till. I didn't mind so long as he kept his hooves to himself. I had a lot to think about until closing an hour later.
Restocking and helping lock up took another hour, at which time I found myself trotting down the street with a full moon above.
Light snow had fallen during lunch. It crunched under hoof while my breath condensed in little clouds as I approached the round tent-like building at Straight Pole and North Culvert Streets, two blocks west and north of the grocery. The Yurt Café looked trendy and pricey. The "gentlecolt" was going to pay for my order or would have Tartarus to pay. While the exterior was sheathed in primitive canvas, air fragrant with scents of brewed tea and frothed milk smacked me as I walked in. The door tinkled and the mare behind the counter gave an exhausted, "Welcome!"
Whistlebutt stood and motioned to his table. As I trotted up, he said, "I recommend the buttermilk salt tea, a Yakyakastan specialty here. Very hearty and far better than it sounds. May I buy you one?"
His offer got me to sketch a curtsey. A reflex, but I decided to trust my intuition and sit. The warmth of the interior was thanks to the patterned rugs that covered both the floors and walls, all woven with abstract or primitive-style images of furry cows, birds, and ponies. No, I decided they were probably yaks and actual horses considering the elongated proportions. Triangles represented trees. The zig-zag lines represented rivers since they were always blue. The table I sat at had a reddish stone top supported by split logs. The chairs and counter tops were a variation on the theme in the red and blues of the rugs. Unique, all of it. I didn't know where Yakyakistan was, but the beauty of the décor made me hope the land existed and that it wasn't a fantasy land. Magic lighting left the interior neither dim nor sufficiently illuminated.
Business types sat at the other tables and filled the room with a buzz that required you to sit close to hear your conversation partner. Good for uncomfortable talk a pony didn't want overheard.
Whistlebutt sat down, setting down two tea cups in saucers. The tea looked yellow, but it wasn't as if Proper Step hadn't spent time educating my palate. "Taste it once before grimacing," applied. Still, yellow tea?
I looked into his green eyes. He was heftier than me and taller, with a longer pointy horn. He was unmistakably middle-aged, safely in grandsire territory, but muscular despite that and despite being a unicorn.
"You called me Gelding. You didn't mention your name."
"Most ponies call me Coach."
"That's a title." I sipped the tea, then involuntarily widened my eyes. It was good! Buttery, with a strong flavor of milk fat, yet incredibly strong. Black tea flavor powered through, aided by the tiniest unmistakable tang of salt. A caffeine buzz started building.
"You like?"
"I like."
"It is a title. Being called White Towel in my profession—really in all that I've done in my life—just doesn't set the right tone."
I took another sip. It warmed me through and felt smooth on my tongue. "You are forcing me to rethink my theory of parental cutie mark premonition influencing foal names."
He chuckled. Probably thought, nerd! "You're educated."
My patrician accent had leaked out. I looked at him and his ears flicked back involuntarily. I had this habit of looking at ponies with my face tilted down, which exposed the whites at the bottom of my eyes. Three whites, I'd read it was called in the kirin lands across the western sea. I called it predator eyes.
He went on despite his flinch, "You utilize your opponents' misjudgments against them, like letting a mare charge you before preventing her from braking so she knocked herself out against a wall."
I swallowed and put down the tea cup. It only clinked, despite my suddenly racing heart. Was he a constable?
"And you're doing it again, keeping a spell fresh in your horn."
"My tutors taught me how to defend myself."
"But you can fight. Considering how you spoke smack to Trigger and Mustang, I suspect you like fighting."
I looked at him but said nothing. Maybe not a constable. The stray-thought that Trigger had talked about "doing business in the neighborhood" made me think that Whistlebutt was a higher up in the organization Trigger had mentioned. The... C.A. Syndicate.
C. A.? Where had I heard those initials? In a newspaper, I thought. My eyes were off to the side as I thought and Whistlebutt interrupted me.
"Despite the angle of the sun that afternoon, I'm pretty sure I saw blue-green magic knock over Whirlaway. She's one of the Pommel gang's top lieutenants. That was a pretty gutsy move."
I stood up and walked out of the cafe, slamming the door behind me.