Fresh Coat
There’s an undeniable allure to fresh paint. Maybe it’s the wet glossiness of it, maybe it’s the smell of it, maybe it’s the cleanliness of it. Seeing something that wasn’t painted with a new, fresh coat of paint changes it.
It changes the whole setting. The house, which was once dull and peeling, is now new and vibrant, standing out from its neighbors. Nothing else has been changed; the thatched roof still needs to be renewed, and there’s still a broken window pane in one of the dormers.
At the same time, some of the character of the house has been lost. The scuffs and scrapes that show its age, the battle scars it’s gotten over the years. One of them was from your own hoof. You’d been playing around and scraped down the wall—that had broken up the gathering quick. Everypony had galloped home, worried about getting caught, but nothing ever came of it. Nopony cared.
You cross the street to get a closer look. Someponies elect to paint their own homes; this one’s being done by a professional. She’s already done the street side and now she’s moved on to the side. Before you even get all the way to the corner, you can see the painter, a gamboge unicorn. She’s got a cap on to protect her mane, and an apron to protect her belly—she’s still got paint stains on her coat.
The brush is held in her aura, painting a line of fresh paint on the wall before returning to the paint bucket. It’s a mesmerizing process to watch—she’s working her way down the wall, lost in her own little world of painting, and for a while, you are too. She works from right to left, slowly backing her way down the ladder as the wall gets covered in a fresh coat.
Down at the other end of the alley, you can see the tail of her cart. Seeing tradesmares’ carts isn’t that unusual. Sometimes they fade into the background; if a pony’s working inside, you can’t see them.
Her ladder is blocking the alleyway and it’s bad luck to walk under a ladder, so you go around the house.
She’s left her cart leaning on its shafts, a simple harness hung over the front. Inside are the tools of her trade: cans of paint, paint brushes, a couple of paint-stained drop cloths, and a lunch box.
You look up and down the alley—nopony’s there but you. Then you look back in her wagon
CHOICE:
Steal her lunch, you’re hungry (villain)
Use some paint to vandalize a nearby wall (chaos)
[CHOICE A: Villain]
Your stomach growls, and before there’s time for a second thought, you grab her lunch and then gallop down the alleyway. Free food is the best food, after all. Painters surely make lots of money, she can afford to buy more food if she gets hungry. At the rate she’s painting, she’ll be done with the house before she gets hungry, anyway.
Once you’re a few blocks away, you slip down another alleyway—a shortcut to a road hardly anypony takes, and a bridge over the stream that cuts through town. You don’t go on the bridge; instead you slide down the embankment and settle in under the arch. It’s one of your favorite hiding places in town.
You unlatch her paint-splattered lunch box and peek inside. You’ve hit the mother lode; two sandwiches, a bag of chips, and a bottle of apple juice.
When you’re done eating, you push her lunch box into the stream and watch it slowly fill with water and sink—the perfect crime.
[CHOICE B: Chaos]
From your vantage point, you can see her reflected in the window of the house across the alley. She’s about halfway down the ladder, completely focused on the wall she’s painting.
You peer into her cart and grab out a bucket of bright pink paint. You know it’s pink because there’s a streak of paint across the lid.
You also snatch a small brush and a paint-stained screwdriver. Prying off the lid of the paint can isn’t easy, but you get it open.
When it comes to painting, you’re no Marechangelo, but a big smiley face isn’t that hard to paint. Sure, there are some streaks in it where you put too much paint on the brush and the top of the face is kind of squished since you couldn’t quite reach high enough to make a better circle, but overall it looks pretty good.
For a moment, you consider putting the paint can back, but what’s the point? It’ll be pretty obvious what happened here.
Instead, you leave the paint can and brush in front of the house, and trot across the alley, taking one look back at your masterpiece before you depart.