Emeline Mistdancer
The cold runs over the streets and crystalizes my breath in a wave of icy tingles. The sky is a grey cascade, broken only in clusters by orange beams, the light of a distant sun raised by a distant royal alicorn from a distant royal tower. The silence is calming and it reminds me of youth, but the cold has never been welcome. I shiver in my scarf and coat, and keep trotting down the broken concrete, teeth chattering and cheeks flushed.
An old stallion eyes me from his sidewalk trash pile, his pitiful eyes begging for even a single bit. They are wet and he is sniffling and cold but I do not have a single bit. I stop and look at him with soft eyes.
"I'm sorry. I don't have any money."
He doesn't phase. He only looks at me and then speaks, his words warm.
"It's okay. It's okay."
He looks down, and I begin to walk away, but he looks up and smiles at me, then says, "You have a very pretty face, sweetie. A kind heart, too. I don't need your money. You do. In a time like this, we must look out for ourselves."
Quick thoughts go out of my mind and I don't mull it over for long. I lean down and hug him, the stench of his poverty wafting up and deluding in the frosted air. Our warmth binds in the chill, and when I break the hug he says thank you and a tear drips from one of his old, green eyes.
I start my walk again, hooves clicking on the broken slabs of grey below, and the neon sign a few meters away hums. The wind whistles furiously, my scarf dances in front of me, caught by the drifts of ice and carried away, rolling and twisting, gliding across the murky earth. I quicken my pace and catch it in my teeth, vainly trying to toss it back over my neck before giving up. Unicorns have it easy.
The wind whistles again, but then I realize that wasn't the wind, and I turn to see three stallions standing under the overhang of an old shop across the road. One with a dark, ruffled mane is looking at me with eyes of ice, his eyebrows low and his companions grim in their expressions. His eyes are piercing mine. I turn away and I continue to walk towards my destination, the second neon sign, but that one whistles again and I go faster. It's now words being yelled, but the echoes and the wind make it indecipherable. I don't care, I'm trotting faster, and make it in the building before they've moved too far. The glass door shuts and I wish warmth would hit me, but Blackfeather must've turned off the heat for the entrance chamber like he said he was going to.
I can't lock the street door, because then there'd be no way to get customers to come in, but I do hurry up and hit the call button. It crackles to life and stays crackling for a few seconds, and then Clearwater's silky voice fills the noise.
"Hi! Welcome to the Lotus L-"
"It's me, can you open up?"
"Oh, sure, Emm. Why didn't you just go in the back?"
"Just open up please, there's some cults out here."
The door clicks and swings inwards, dragging across the floor with that faint screech that had left black trails across the floor after years of use. I trot in, glancing cautiously over my shoulder one last time, but they hadn't followed me. They looked too skinny for cultists, but there was always that chance, and the mane was cultist, I knew. The eyes too.
I enter the back lounge, careful not to disturb any of the patrons, of which there were two, both of them groomed and dressed in formalwear, the stark opposite of the stallion just outside. I looked at them and a pang in my heart made me bite my lip. I continued towards the second door. It was warm in here.
They tipped their heads in greeting and I smiled as I passed them, twitching my wing as a quick wave.
"Ma'am?"
I stopped and turned, looking at the one who'd spoken. "Sorry?"
"Are you working tonight?"
Oh. Okay. I gave him a quick shake of the head. "No, sorry. I'm not."
He nodded, and tipped his head again. I turned back and made my way towards the door, opening it slowly for fear of hitting somepony on my way in. Luckily, I did not, and the smell of wine and sound of low conversation washed over me as I shut it behind. The central room was roughly a third full, the occasional table occupied by groups of stallions or even the rarer couple. I trotted slowly through the tables, the soft carpeted floor warm under my still chilly hooves. A beautiful mare, eyes ringed with black, sitting at a table with a suited stallion, nodded a quick hello as I passed, and I returned it.
The music was low and the clinks of glasses and silverware, quiet as they were, still almost drowned it. I made my way towards the stage, ascending the four steps and disappearing behind the red curtain. Clearwater was in the back with Blackfeather and Haze, and when she saw me enter she trotted over, a concerned look on her blue face.
"Are-are you alright?" she stammered. "We were worried sick! What happened?"
"It was nothing," I waved. "It was just scary, is all. You heard about the filly they got, last week, right?"
She nodded grimly and then, clearly and obviously, switched to a more cheerful countenance, lifting the air. "Well, you working?"
Blackfeather chimed in from across the backstage nest, his voice echoing on the old wood. "No, she's off."
I parroted him. "No, I'm off."
Clearwater huffed. "Exuberant. Now I've got to go up there alone, and get celestia-knows-whatted until the sun comes up and get paid half of what I got last week, even though the stuff I gotta do'll be twice as weird."
I was puzzled. "How'd I make it better?"
"They normally just choose you instead."
I roll my eyes and grin, but inside she brings back memories I'd rather forget, things that the old stallion on the corner would shudder at. Things that kept me fed, alive, and warm, but things that made me feel horrible, sick, dirty and useless.
But I still smile, and that's key.
She says her goodbyes and she and Haze go out onto the floor. I don't watch them, instead I stay back and relax in the warm, wooden loft, the only sound the slow tick-tick of Blackfeather repairing some rafter or other. We don't speak, but I am lost in thought and we already understand each other so well, I don't care. It's not always good to speak, sometimes it's good to sit.
Couples. Why were there couples out there? This isn't a place for couples, unless they've got a lot of free bits and are eager for a third member. Are we one of the last nice places in town? Are we, in this world, now passable for a formal restaurant- with a whorehouse packed in? Blackfeather always tried to keep a classy atmosphere. He'd boil at the term "whorehouse", he'd say we were "escorts" or "showgirls". He loves each and every one of us, we're one big family, he'd never call us what we were. The thought is sad. Are we the last formal place in town?
I needed the bits, when I took the job six months ago. I needed them then and I need more of them now. I took it so I could have food. I took it because Clearwater was taking it, and she was my last light in the falling grey north. But food rose in price, and less stallions came, and now we just get the ridiculously rich, the ones who scoff at poverty and will throw a few bits your way if you charm them right. It's scum.
I'll admit, though. Through the vileness, through the snobbery, I sometimes slip away. I lose myself in drink and lust, and I wake up with piles of bits and a sore body. I hate myself, but sometimes one must slip away from the hell that is their life and pretend they are someone they are not. They must lose themselves in sweat and filth, pretend they are worth something and that they are loved and that they are wanted. I try to find joy in my work in the same way I try to find joy in my life. Both fade with each passing day, just a little bit. I try. I try.
My mind is wandering too far from the lukewarm attic so I bring it back with a blink. Blackfeather's hooves click on the wood as he makes his way out, turning his head and telling me to lock up the backstage loft on my way out.
"Of course."
And so now it is me and the rafts and the orange light bathing the blackness and casting the shadows on my face. It is an old fishing boat lost at sea and I am it's haunting mistress.
I wait there for a while, and I wonder, without putting the thoughts into words, if this is a moment I need to remember. If my children will look to me for bedtime stories and I will tell them of the time when we almost fell apart and that this moment needs to be filed away somewhere deep and close so I never forget it.
A single tear rolls down my cheek as I think that maybe I will never have children anyway, and that I will die in this pit of self destruction, still pretending it is one of self preservation.
I sit, and later it is time to go home so I lock the loft and I smile at the stallions and I leave into the black streets and hold my scarf close.
It is so cold and, at this hour, darker than the blackest of rooms.
* * *
When I wake I am less foggy. At first I think the night before may have been a dream, but when my brain fully boots up I remember it was not. I walked home in the freeze, and slept here in what I call a home under a thin sheet, my breath smoking in the black air. I didn't remove my mascara so when I look in the mirror it is smeared and smudged all over my white face. I turn the tap and wash in the metallic ice water.
Today the sun is rising behind a thick caking of grey that holds up the sky, and I think about Canterlot and how I'd love so much to go there. I would forget about every hardship and every moral and I would be rich and glamorous and happy. I could slip away into the world of drink and flirtation and the glitz that paves the roads there.
I pull back the yellow blinds and look out onto the petite central garden where a few other renters of this building sit at wire tables and smoke their rolls of tobacco.
I just watch a while. I watch their smoke carry away into the air, like a ghost rising from its cold body.
A knock sounds on my door. I rip my gaze from the window and turn to the dark wooden bolt, sliding it back and peering out into the stinking hall. A pair of electric blue eyes stare in deep contrast to the surrounding murk. The eyes make me jump for but a moment, when I realize this face is my mother’s.
“Mom? Mom?” I smile and unlock the door and she makes her way inside, a grin on her old face. I hug her tightly, and we breathe in each other’s warmth.
“It’s no better there, Emm.”
I don’t really care what she means, because I’m so happy to see her. I ask her how she’s been, how she got here.
Her face is not joyful anymore. Her dark mane, the blackest of blacks, falls over her eye as she looks at the wooden floor. She looks up at me.
“We need to leave here. We need to go out of this place. It’s no better there.”
I don’t understand. “No better where, Mom?” The question slips from my lips in a frosty puff. She is wearing a pearl necklace that I have never seen.
“Canterlot, Emeline. It’s no better there. It’s warmer, but it’s no better. It may be worse, dare I say it. Cults run the streets, and Celestia has not shown her face in months. It is no better there. We need to... To leave Equestria.”
The pearls are reflecting tiny rivers of purple in the dim light. I look at her and I don’t know what to say or do.
I would say it was like a childlike dream dying, but it wasn’t as gradual. I was the ship’s last haunting mistress and when I walked it’s halls I never saw a soul, but somehow I still thought to myself that somewhere there was a warm room full of smiling faces and magical laughter. That one of those empty bedchamber doors would open to a family’s embrace and a four-course meal. And this was the moment when I realize that I am simply the last mare on a dark ship at sea, never to be seen by a soul again for all of eternity.
I look at my mother and I ask her if she wants a cup of milk.
“Please,” she puffs.
“I have to work today, you know.”
“Okay. But tonight we are going to leave.”
A chill runs through my bones as I get my scarf and my manepins. When I’m on my way out the door I ask her if I can use that pearl necklace. She nods slowly and she gives it to me, her magic lifting it and snapping it around my neck. She looks at me for a while and then I leave out onto the grey streets. I trot with no emotion, I am frozen over and I am at a point where I do not care what happens to me.
There is the old stallion again, a few blocks down from the Lounge. His eyes light up when he sees me and he waves weakly. I smile and I reach for anything I might have, but then I remember I didn’t work last night so I have no bits, again.
“It’s okay, you know. I know you don’t have money. I was just waving.”
I am about to respond and I remember my necklace and how I must look. I am wearing everything I own and I live in a shack, but I must look wealthy. This is everything I own, after all, and I work at a place that’s all about “class”. But this contrast I see hurts my heart and I look down at an old stallion who is no richer than I, but who sits on the sidewalk in rags while I stand above him in a dress and pearls.
“Oh, no.”
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
I don’t reply. I just stare at his hooves and then I look up and say “Come on.”
* * *
I hit the buzzer and it’s not Clearwater’s voice that answers this time. I don’t recognize it at first, but then I decipher through the static the tired voice of Candyhoof.
“Candy, it’s me. Can you let me in?”
“Who?”
“Emeline.”
“What?”
“Emeline.”
“Ena...caine? We aren’t open this early, wait till we- Oh! Emeline! Sorry, sorry!”
The stallion exhales with the cold and a bit of amusement. He looks at me and his gravely voice points out that these southerners never can get our names. I smile because he’s right. I remember when I went to Ponyville as a filly and every single pony I’d meet would do a triple take when they heard my name. It’s no more strange than “Candyhoof”, I can assure them. Then my mother would tell them we were from the north, up by the ridges that bordered the trade wind oceans.
The door clicks and slides across the floor where that mark is and we step inside to the warmth. My feathery scarf covers the necklace now.
Blackfeather is there chatting with Clearwater and when my hooves click onto the dark, glossy wood they turn and their expressions are confused.
“Who is this?” Blackfeather asks, his eyes warning.
“Let him stay here, Blackfeather. Please.”
“Oh, you didn’t do it. I can’t believe you actually did it. You know the answer. Make him leave. Now, or you go with him.”
I stand my ground and I don’t move.
He stares more. “Get. Him. Out.”
Oh, Celestia. What has happened to the empire I remember from my filly years, what has happened to the bright sun on the snow and the glistening rain on a beautiful summer night, where have you gone? Did those books lie? Did the stories of love and compassion and happiness make themselves from poison ink in a cave of lying conmen? I do not understand where you have gone and what your rule means or why you do not show yourself anymore or why they want you dead or why my mother is saying it’s no better anywhere else on the face of this planet and I need you to answer me now.
Answer me now.
The silence is deafening as Blackfeather’s eyes cut into my soul and I flinch. I turn to the stallion and he nods slowly and he walks out onto the street as I watch him from the still open door. He looks at the road for a long while, even after Blackfeather stops screaming at me and I’m the only one, just watching him watch the road. He drops an old coin down a drain grate, and then he trots away, smiling at me when he sees I was watching.
“It’s okay,” he puffs. “I wasn’t going to stay there anyway. That is your place. This is mine.”
I turn away from him and I go to the washroom and I put on the eyeshadow and the lipstick and the stockings and I look at myself and I forget everything. I am pretty. I am so pretty. I am beautiful and desired. The dark of my eyeshadow and my mane contrasts the white of my face and my purple eyes cut deep into the black of my dress and the ivory of my pearls. I’m sure to take long enough to be sure we’re open. I spend longer than I ever have.
I trot, sultry and alive to the room and without even a thought I grab a stallion who I think was the one from yesterday who asked if I was working and I kiss him with an anger and he says he’s not paying tonight and I don’t even reply because I don’t care. I am alive with passion and touch and I am not here anymore. We go to a room and then I wake up with a ripped pearl necklace and a strange stallion holding me tight in a bed. I think of getting up but I don’t and I lay there with his body hot on mine.
When he wakes he looks surprised that I have not left, and I ask him, my eyebrows lowered and a sweetness in my voice, if he’d like me to.
Answer me now, my princess.
Answer me or I will kill myself like this, I know I will.