Kukures

by Commissar Rarity


An Old Friend


 Shock, hollowness, and a bit of relief: this strange mixture of emotions were all Lyra could feel. The funeral was over; her mother was buried. She went through the expected niceties – a hoofshake there, a hug here – robotically. The faces of the ponies expressing their sympathies blurred together in a confusing jumble.
 
 She stood at the back of the crowded room. The sound of so many ponies in such a small place was overwhelming. The wake had started a short while ago, and most of the ponies had stayed for the free food and booze and not out of any obligation they felt. Lyra didn’t feel like cider though – and even if she did, the warning labels on her new medicines specifically cautioned against the mixing of the two. None of the drinking ponies seemed to have any desire to talk to her, but that was perfectly fine by her.
 
 “Lyra!” a soft voice with the hint of a Vanhoover accent reached her ears. Lyra glanced to the side with a start. The speaker was a white unicorn with a curly, soft pink mane. The manestyle reminded her of BonBon, which was strange as it was usually the other way around.

 

 “Twinkleshine!” She hugged her old friend with a warmth that had been missing from her earlier hugs.
 
 “How ya been doin’?” Twinkleshine asked, blue eyes sparkling.
 
 Lyra very nearly lied, but at the last moment, her mouth betrayed her. “Not well.”
 
 “Yeh, I can see that.” She glanced over to the cider barrels. “I’m gonna grab a pint. Or two. When I get back, let’s get to some catchings up, yeh?” Twinkleshine trotted off to the cider barrel, and returned with two mugs of cider as promised. She offered one to Lyra, who just shook her head. Through gulps of cider, she asked, “So you been in that concert? I bought the record. None too shabby, yeh? Aside from that, what you been up to?”
 
 Lyra shrugged. “Not a whole lot. Just trying to stay sane.”

 Twinkleshine nodded, stroking her cider mustache thoughtfully. “I can see that. Must be hard on ya. I can’t even imagine.” She shook her head and finished her first mug, setting it on a tray a passing yellow filly was carrying.
 
 “Well, what’s new with you?” Lyra asked, eager to move the topic of conversation away from herself.
 
 “I only got accepted to be court astronomer in the Starswirl the Bearded wing of the Royal Archives!”
 
 “That’s great!” Lyra smiled, actual enthusiasm filling her. Something started to niggle her at the back of her mind.
 
 “Some fella from Los Pegasus almost got it, but he got caught with a mare of the night in one’a’them casinos. They felt it wasn’t right to have court astronomer represented by somepony of such… poor morals.” She laughed, and took a giant chug of cider.
 
 “Would getting drunk count as poor morals?” Lyra eyed the now-empty second cup of cider, which joined its cousins on a different passing filly’s tray.
 
 “I only get drunk on the weekends, and that’s at home. I have a cute l’il stallion who works for me and he takes care of the weekends. He just doesn’t know it yet,” she added with a sly wink.
 
 “Ah,” was all Lyra had to say to that.
 
 “Oh, ’fore I get too dickered to remember: I don’t get much time off and I really wanna catch up with ya, but I gotta go back tonight for my first shift ever. Maybe… eh, you wanna come back to Canterlot with me for a bit?”
 
 Lyra had a feeling the other mare was a fair ways along to being ‘dickered’ already. As she opened her mouth to say no, something clicked in her mind. The library of Starswirl the Bearded, full of reprints of rare, arcane texts. Anything you could imagine was in there.
 
 Including – hopefully – something more on kukures.
 
 “Of course!” She hoped she didn’t sound too eager.
 
 “Yeeee, can’t hardly wait,” Twinkleshine said, slowly edging into the crowd, eyes on the cider barrel. “It’ll be like magic college all over again. Or the Royal Wedding, only minus the mind control and Changelings.” With that, she was swallowed up by the stream of other ponies.
 
 Her friend gone, Lyra made a half-hearted attempt at mingling. She didn’t know half of them as well as she would like, and she liked less than half of them half as well as they deserved. In her distracted state, she bumped into one of the filly waitresses, knocking over a tray of mugs. To her relief, they were all empty.
 
 “Sorry.” Casting a look down, she saw that the filly was the very pegasus she had saved back when all this began.
 
“Oh, hey Miss Lyra!” She scoured her mind for the filly’s name.
 
 “Hi, Scootaloo. What are you doing serving cider?”
 
 “Apple Bloom’s sister said we could if we didn’t drink any of it. Just between you and me, I don’t even like cider,” she said with a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. “Anyway, we’re trying to get our cutie marks in beverage serving. I don’t really like that idea though.”
 
 Lyra nodded. “Did things work out with your mom?”
 
 “Yeah… Didn’t even notice the scooter was new.” She glanced over Lyra’s shoulder. “Oop! Gotta dash! Somepony’s waving at me.”
 
 Lyra looked to see who it was as Scootaloo expertly weaved her way through the crowd. It was the town drunk, Berry Punch. She was standing on a table, moving her hips in what Lyra could only assume was meant to be a sexy dance. Colgate stood nearby, a look of horror frozen on her face.
 
 There was nothing here for Lyra anymore, and the antics of Berry Punch were signaling the end of the wake. Lyra began to slink out of the room, avoiding unwanted attention. The only thing on her mind was packing for her Trip. The capital letter was evident in her mind, and it surprised her. It hadn’t seemed so important to her until just now.
 
 She left the building in a gallop. She had to get home, and fast.
 

***

 
 As she walked home, Lyra’s mind couldn’t help but wander back to when she first met Twinkleshine. They had both been young mares, barely out of school and into university.
 
 Lyra had been living with somepony else during uni, namely one Octavia Melody. Octavia was a quiet sort, having moved to Canterlot from Prance. The two would talk in hushed tones all night about music theory, and their respective instruments. At the time, Lyra wanted so bad to play her ancestor’s lyre. It was almost all she could talk about to Octavia. Likewise, Octavia had a dream – a rather foolish one, in Lyra’s estimation – of playing stand-up bass in Flank Sinatrot’s band.
 
 Octavia admitted the whole idea was a little foolish. “A foal’s dream in the night,” she poetically called it. And yet, she still held onto it, learning the bass at night and the cello at day. Soon she stopped talking to Lyra when she came home, simply collapsing on the bed, dead for the night.
 
 This had a natural side-effect: Lyra was now lonely. She wasn’t too big on many of the other unicorns at uni, especially not the ones in the magic school. The one mare she tried to befriend was a little awkward and not too fond of other ponies, so Lyra had given up.
 
 
 In fact, she had almost given up entirely on meeting a new friend when she met Twinkleshine. It was at a local bar, of course. Lyra went there strictly to play her lyre. Occasionally she tried the guitar, but found it unappealing. She still would, if somepony requested it though.
 
 It was a smoky establishment, despite the fact that nopony ever smoked. This always made Lyra feel slightly ill. Either she was developing a smoke allergy, or she had one already.
 
 One night while strumming her harp to an old pegasi tune, a white pony with a pink mane had stumbled up to the stage where she and a drummer sat, playing their music.
 
 “That,” Twinkleshine had drunkenly slurred, “is one fine playing thing.”
 
 Lyra had only nodded with a fake smile.
 
 “You,” Twinkleshine continued, “is one fine player.”
 
 Lyra nodded again.
 
 Twinkleshine plopped her very drunk flank flat on the floor in front of Lyra. “Do you know…” She hiccupped. “Do you know the song ‘Promise’?”
 
 Lyra held up one hoof, and set her lyre down. She levitated her guitar over, and after plugging it in, began to strum it. The chords of ‘Promise’ began to fill the room. The sunglasses-wearing drummer that usually stayed silent during her playing began to supply the much-needed beat to the song. Twinkleshine bobbed her head in time to the song.
 
 Once the final sounds of the guitar faded away, Twinkleshine burped and said, “Y’know, you’re not so bad even.”
 
 Then she passed out.
 
 
 Lyra dropped her guitar – well, it wasn’t her guitar, it was the establishment’s guitar – and hopped down to Twinkleshine’s side.
 
“Girl, don’t even worry ’bout her,” the drummer said, flicking his sunglasses down with a spark of magic. “She comes in here every weekend and does that. Usually somepony drags her home.”
 
“Do you know who?” Lyra asked.
 
 The drummer shrugged. “Always the same. Some powder blue pony. Think the name’s Moondancer.”
 
 “Moondancer ain’t comin’ anymore,” the barkeep called out. “She said last week she was sick of hauling her friend’s flank back home all the time.”
 
 “Oh.” The drummer shook his head. “That girl’s way too uptight.”
 
 “I’ll take her home,” Lyra said. “Does anypony know where she lives?”
 
 “She wears a bracelet with her address,” the barkeep replied. “Probably for times like these.”
 
 Sure enough, on her left foreleg was a bracelet with a Canterlot Heights address. Lyra had to squint to make it out.
 
 “Is there a way I can get a cab?” she asked, trying to pick the other mare up off the ground.
 
 The drummer hopped down from his station behind the drum set. Walking over to her, he said, “There should always be a few outside. Here, let me help.”
 
 The two ponies managed to each loop a foreleg around her neck and half-walk, half-drag her out the door. Outside, they managed to hail a passing hansom. With a great deal of effort, they managed to shove Twinkleshine in the back of the cab. Lyra hopped in beside her.
 
 “Thanks for the help,” she said to the drummer. He smiled and waved at her as he trotted back inside.
 
 
 The ride was short, and to Lyra’s surprise, Twinkleshine awoke on the first jolt.
 
 “And yer pretty too,” she muttered.
 
 “What?” Lyra asked.

 “Oh. It’s the harpy filly. I was jus’ sayin’ to my friend Moon… Hey, where is she?” Twinkleshine’s slur suddenly vanished and she seemed more aware.
 
 “She went home, I guess. They said she said she didn’t want to deal with taking you home all the time.”
 
 “Her loss.”
 
 She remained mostly silent the rest of the ride, but Lyra filled the silence with prattle about music. It was gratifying to her to finally open up again, after weeks of not being able to talk to Octavia. To Twinkleshine’s credit, she listened very well and made the occasional comment.
 
 As the cab pulled up to Twinkleshine’s apartment, the mare looked over at Lyra and said, “You seem like a nice gal. Wanna hang out sometime?”
 
 Lyra smiled. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
 
 “Sweet. How bout tomorrow sometime?” Lyra nodded in response. “Good! See ya then.”
 
 Twinkleshine hopped out of the cab and Lyra watched. She almost thought that–
 
 
 –that she was about to run into somepony.
 
 “Oh, sorry,” Lyra said, skidding to a halt. The pony she had almost run into only nodded with a slight smile. “I was totally lost in thought.”
 
 His green eyes glinted in the sun as he replied. “Oh, no worries.”
 
 Lyra stepped around him, and was well on her way to her house when he called out after her.
 
 “Excuse me, miss! I have a question.”
 
 “Yes?” Lyra stopped and turned to face him.
 
 “I was wondering…” He took a step forward. “Have you seen my friend around? Dark fellow, green eyes. Bit of an overbite. Name of Cookie Barrel?”
 
 She frowned, combing through her memory. Nopony similar to his description came to mind. There weren’t many dark-coloured ponies that she could think of.
 
 “No, sorry.”
 
 The other pony sighed. “Ah, well. I’ll find him somewhere. Thanks anyway, ma’am.”
 
 He trotted off. Lyra watched him for a short bit, mulling the short encounter over in her mind. He didn’t seem like a bad sort, and she hoped he found his friend.
 
 She started walking again, setting herself back in the direction of her house.
 

***

 
The suitcase was sizable, emblazoned with an insignia of three plastic-wrapped candies. Most would assume they were just hard candies, but Lyra knew better. They were lozenges, which made sense. BonBon’s cutie mark were lozenges – she specialised in voice work and had been on the radio several times.
 
 Regardless of her friend’s work, Lyra had to nick it from BonBon’s room. All she owned were overnight duffle bags, and since the other mare had a dream of becoming a travelling actress, it was a no-brainer to borrow the suitcase. She still stuck a few of her duffle bags inside, for a reason that was important. It was just escaping her.
 
 “Lyra?” She looked up at the sound of her name. BonBon was standing in the doorway. “Why are you packing?”
 
“I’m… going away for a bit. I… I don’t know how long.”
 
 BonBon frowned, but Lyra didn’t notice. She was too busy packing, adding some mare essentials to her pile of travelling hats and boots. “Ly… What’s wrong with you? I know you’re upset at your mom’s death – but this isn’t like you at all. You’re strong. You don’t run away from things. That’s what I do.” Her voice broke, and she stopped talking, looking away in embarrassment.
 
 Lyra paused in her packing. “I’m not strong, not at all. Remember that concert? I was sick to my stomach for weeks beforehoof, and I couldn’t play without feeling like I had to throw up for a month afterwards. How is that strong?” BonBon didn’t answer. “How is that strong?”
 
 “I worry about you, Lyra.” BonBon’s voice was soft and to the point of braking again. “I care about you. You’re the best friend I have. You’re my only friend who isn’t hanging on to me, hoping I make it big. Whatever you’re planning… Just think about reconsidering, okay? I don’t want to lose you. I-” She stopped talking, looked down, and walked out slowly.
 
 Lyra shut the suitcase, and stared at where her friend had stood. After a long while, she stood and dragged herself and her suitcase away.
 

***

 
 “You ready?” Twinkleshine’s voice was almost lost in the bustle of the crowd around them.
 
 “I sure am,” Lyra replied. She was more than ready to go. Her eagerness was palpable, her face turned up in that manic grin of hers.
                              
 “Let’s go then, yeh?”
 
 The train whistled, and a flower of black smoke blossomed from the engine. Twinkleshine hopped up the steps, levitating Lyra’s suitcase. Lyra followed her, pausing at the top.
 
 As the train began its rhythmic chugging, she looked back over her shoulder. BonBon stood on the platform, watching her leave. It might have been a trick of the light, but Lyra could have sworn she saw the glimmer of tears in her friend’s eyes.
 
 Lyra felt a sharp stab of guilt cut deeply into her heart. And then BonBon disappeared, swallowed by the passing scenery. Her eyes burned with fresh tears.