We were walking in the sand.
I watched Trixie as she moved before me, as she sauntered down the beach, as she moved her hips like she does. I watched as she left her hoofprints in the sand just at the waterline. I stepped into each one, and delicately placed my hooves inside of the indents. Hers were bigger than mine, broader. I was able to slip within each indent she had left with ease.
“Those are a lot of seagulls,” Trixie said as she looked up at the admittedly massive flock of birds above the shorebreak. The wind caught her mane, and tossed it about her face.
“These,” I corrected, almost by instinct. “‘A lot of’ is treated as an adjective, in this case.”
Trixie turned her head and shot a glance back at me. “You’ve been spending too much time around Twilight.” Her smile was wide, her tone was jovial.
I felt my heart sink into my stomach. “H-Hah. Yeah! She’s really sucking all the fun outta me.”
Trixie raised an eyebrow as her eyes fell to half-lid. “That’s not the only—”
I raised my hoof. “Easy, girl.” I rolled my own eyes and foisted what I hoped was a convincing smirk on to my muzzle.
The seagulls swept about in the air above us.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” Trixie giggled. “I can’t help it; you really do draw out the worst in me.”
“We definitely draw out the worst in each other,” I agreed. My stomach did a flip, and I felt ill. Only for a brief moment, though. The regret and remorse were always just for the briefest of moments.
“You really do spend way too much time with Twilight though,” Trixie said. “I know you’re her student and all, but you need to spend more time with me.” She dragged out the “ee” for a full five seconds. She giggled again, and Trixie pivoted in the sand to face me. “I’m your marefriend, after all.”
I focused my attention back on the gulls.
“I’m so glad I have you.” I looked back at her. Trixie had walked down towards me by a few paces. Close enough to nuzzle up against me. I pressed back, and the fur of our cheeks intermingled like the waves washed over the sand. Her body heat radiated against mine and it felt like I’d been plunged in the cold sea, and the softness of her coat as it glanced across my cheek were as jagged shards of coral. Trixie pulled back from me, mercifully, and she beamed at me as shafts of sunlight filtering down into the cold, treacherous abyss of the deep blue. “I’m so happy.”
“I’m glad,” I said. It came out almost as a croak, as if I’d had the ocean stuck in my throat. I swallowed, and returned to my pantomime of happiness. “You’re amazing, Trixie.”
Trixie let out a dainty little squeal. The sound sliced through me. “You mean it?”
I nodded.
Twilight and I were in love. It was that kind of in love where it only happens when we’re both drunk, though.
Twilight’s not a huge fan of drinking. She’s quite the lightweight. Not like me, who hides behind an ever-growing mountain of empty Sweet Apple Acres Hard Cider mugs and Canterlot Noir bottles.
I felt Twilight’s hooves all over me. She was all over me.
Maybe she’s not the kind of mare who should be drinking. Then again, neither am I.
Twilight looked at me. My eyes did not meet hers. My gaze was unfocused on her chest, the majority of my effort used to keep my head upright.
“And you’re sure Trixie is alright with it?” Twilight had hiccuped part of the way through Trixie’s name.
That weird feeling, like how a gull must feel when it leans into a sharp dive to scoop a crab from the sand, clutched at my stomach. I leaned my head up ever so slightly. I flashed Twilight my smile, this one she must know so well at this point, the one that I always had when I forced down something that scraped at the sides of my ribs and burned away within me.
The words always came so naturally. “Of course. Absolutely.”
And Twilight believed me.
“Trixie is funny,” Twilight giggled. She paused. “I don’t like her very much.”
I snorted and batted at Twilight with a hoof. “Don’t say that!”
Twilight huffed, only half-serious. I hoped. “C’mooon! Y’know it’s...” She blinked her eyes out of sync. I cast a quick glance beside her, where a single empty mug lay on its side, foam like the froth of the sea still fresh on its rim. The mug set before her wasn’t even half empty. “Y’know she’s all... stupid.”
I cackled. “That’s so mean!”
Twilight stuck her tongue out. Drink turned her into something so unlike herself. Maybe that’s why we were in love when we both found ourselves together in this state.
“Besides,” I said, words hardly slurred as I poured the dregs of the wine onto my tongue. “She is very much not stupid. She may not have book smarts, or street smarts, or know the same depth of spells that we do, and yeah she’s a bit of a walking disaster... but she isn’t stupid.” The speech may not have been slurred or stuttered, but it was loose and candid. The polished-off bottle of the Canterlot Noir clattered and clanked against several of its siblings. “And that’s from one walking disaster to another, mind, when I say that about her...”
All the wine was all for me. Always.
Twilight hiccuped again. “But it’s truuue. She’s so... s-so...” Twilight made a face like she was about to sneeze, her muzzle scrunched up and her eyes crossed just that little bit.
I felt a brief panic in my stomach. It went away with another gulp of cider, pulled from Twilight’s mostly-full mug.
I chuckled. “Yeah. I know she’s so...”
Twilight looked bleary-eyed at me for a second before she spoke again. “She still kinda acts like a—”
“I’m the only colt who makes you feel like this?”
When Sunburst had said it, it almost felt true.
Almost.
“Yeah,” I said. “You are.”
Sunburst made a cute little noise, that small excited squeal he made when he’d read about a spell that particularly impressed him. The elation the sound carried sang in the air the same as the hum of mana, the buzz of his magic I’d never been able to wipe clean from my ears, not in over a decade and a half. Another little piece inside of me died.
“It was always you,” I went on to say. “Ever since we were foals.”
He turned his head, averting my gaze directly, his instinct to wrap himself a bit tighter in his cloak. Absolute dork. “R-Really?”
I wanted to scream. Instead, I nodded. “Really. Why do you think I took it so hard when you left, silly?”
His cheeks were aglow. “W-Well, I’m flattered, Starlight, I really am—”
A deft hoof slipped up to cup him beneath his chin. I felt his little tuft of mane upon his chin tickle the inside of my frog. A shiver played with my spine, and it was only a reflexive tactile response. Our eyes were level, and I stared into his with my best lidded-gaze. “And I know you feel the same way.”
I looked into his eyes, and I felt the vastness of the space between us. I could still feel his beard mess with that sensitive place half-encircled by my hoof, and yet I felt like I could not be further away. Here he was, my prize, the first one I had ever set my sights on. Here he was, brought to me by all the alleyways of fate, finally, at long last. Here he was, all adorable and fretful and just the perfect amount of awkward and charming that had drawn me to him to begin with. There he was, about to be mine.
The hunger burned within my gut.
“Y-You do?” His voice wavered. He looked so vulnerable. So open. So alien and foreign.
My tongue moved as the only muscle on my body that worked harder than my heart. “I do.”
And Sunburst believed me.
The gulls dodged in and out of the surf. They were chasing the crabs that scuttled along the break, their hungry beaks pecking down to snap up any unfortunate enough to be exposed from the water for too long.
“And you still love me?” Trixie’s eyes were shining in the afternoon sun. “E-Even though I used to be a—”
I pressed my muzzle into Trixie’s. It was her favorite way of mine to get her to stop talking.
When we broke away the tears ran free down her cheeks. “Of course,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.
And Trixie believed me.
Why?
Why do I have this void within me? Why is there this fissure, this chasm, that I cannot seem to do anything with except shove ponies into it? This deep dark trench, this empty abyssal plane, this benthic wasteland near some boiling vent where the monster that I truly am inside lives—it doesn’t help. It doesn’t do anything. It just piles bodies at the bottom of this gaping watery pit that will never be filled no matter how many end up down there.
I am aware of the innuendo.
I hate this. No matter what I do, I cannot free myself. No matter where I am, I am always the same. Every night, there is someone different. A pony, a gryphon, a zebra—it doesn’t matter. In every attempt to tie down love, I am lost in myself. I am just an actor playing my part.
None of them deserve this.
Trixie doesn’t deserve this.
In Our Town it was the worst. That was when I had been most out of control, exactly because I had all the control. Any mare or stallion I wanted, I had—and it was misery. I preyed on the vulnerable and the weak. How they forgave me for it, I’ll never know. How Sugar Belle can see me in the streets and wave to me, smile as if nothing had ever happened, as if I had never done any of those things to her and everypony else—
Maybe she thinks it’s different now.
I like to pretend it is different now. That I am no longer a hunter. That I’ve found real love. Perhaps I’m not a hunter any longer. Perhaps I never was. Perhaps it was all a fanciful illusion, perhaps it was all a craven melodrama, delusive romanticism of what I truly am. Maybe I wasn’t some sleek and shiny, tragically sexy apex predator from the depths of the sea. Maybe I’ve always just been a mite-ridden scavenger, skulking at the edges of the depths, never to plumb the fantastic realm but rather to opportunistically clutch at those who I only saw as momentary satiation for some unstoppable appetite.
I want to love, and to be loved. I want it to be real. I want to possess hearts, and I want them to possess mine. In being unable to give them mine, I feel as if I can never truly have theirs. How do I find it? How do I gain it?
I want real love that I can share all around, to all of them, to those I can trust. And I can trust them.
But they can’t trust me.
"Kiss me again," Trixie begged as her eyes shone in the afternoon sun that granted me no warmth.
I knew Twilight didn’t mean it. She was just drunk. She wasn’t like that normally. She didn’t think things like that. She certainly didn’t say things like that.
I should have been disgusted.
“Don’t say things like that,” I said. My voice was so quiet. My voice was so soft.
I should have been disgusted. I wasn’t.
“I-I didn’t mean it,” Twilight immediately blubbered. It was very unbecoming, seeing her like this. Seeing a princess like this. Princess didn’t mean perfect. Not by a longshot.
“Does it upset you?” What was this? Why did I care? “What she once was?”
Twilight looked very uncomfortable. I felt a kinship there with her, all of a sudden, how she looked completely out of her element in a way I would never have the courage to show. “I... I don’t know.” She wobbled in place. “I don’t... for h-hi—her, it somehow seems...”
“Maybe we’ve had enough of talking.” The words slipped from my tongue so smooth. “Maybe we should put those lips to... better use.”
“And you’re sure Trixie doesn’t mind?” Sunburst looked so adorable as he fretted like he had.
“Of course not,” I murmured. I was practically on top of him now. My hoof rested on his flank, tracing a small circle around his cutie mark. I felt him shiver, shake. There was a roar in my ears, like a tsunami as it raced towards the shore. “She knows what we have. She knows that what we have is something that goes deeper than anything.”
Sunburst’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know how I feel about comparing love that way.”
My heart skipped a beat. I’d gotten too cocky. I’d gotten carried away by the show. Chewed on the scenery.
Sunburst pressed one of his hooves to my chest. The look he gave me was so earnest. So genuine. So full of honest care for me, and for her. “I don’t mind sharing you, Starlight. I really don’t!”
This was no time for stage fright.
“But I don’t see our love in competition to Trixie or Twilight’s or—”
I leaned in to kiss Trixie.
I leaned in to kiss Twilight.
I leaned in to kiss Sunburst.
Our lips broke apart.
“Did you mean it?” Trixie breathed, delighted. “Honestly?”
I watched as the seagull clasped the crab in its beak. Its little legs flailed, its pincers snapped.
“Of course.” The words were so easy. “Why wouldn’t I?” So fluid.
So rehearsed.
Crunch.
I looked back at Trixie. I’d never seen her this happy. “I love you.” Her voice trembled. It quivered. Shook.
The sound of the crab’s exoskeleton shattered by the seagull’s beak echoed in my head.
I smiled back at Trixie and spoke my line.
“I love you too.”
And Trixie believed me.