//------------------------------// // 6. I May Be Brad, but I Smell Good // Story: The Mixed-Up Life of Brad // by D G D Davidson //------------------------------// The Mixed-Up Life of Brad by D. G. D. Davidson VI. I May Be Brad, but I Smell Good Princess Cadance and her entourage traveled in a private train car. The copper roof shone like a forest fire in the noonday sun, and the walls were made of intertwining strands of particolored, translucent crystal. The inside of the car dazzled Brad’s eyes like a kaleidoscope pointed at a spotlight. It was also stiflingly hot. At one end of the car, surrounded by guards and attendants, Cadance sat on a throne that had been carved from a block of rose quartz and engraved with an intricate pattern of intertwining vines and hearts, which were inlaid with beaten copper. She leaned her cheek on one hoof as three crystal ponies, their bodies glistening like the car’s walls, wove jewels into her mane. She had earlier kicked off her bell boots, and they now stood in a little pile near her hind hooves and clinked in time with the clacking of the train’s wheels. Brad sat on a velvet cushion at the car’s opposite end. Two guards, solid and still as statues, flanked him. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, rested his chin on his hands, and stared at Cadance. “You might as well make yourself comfortable, Brad,” Cadance said. “It’s a long ride to Canterlot. Ask for anything you please, and the crystal ponies will provide it.” “Where’s Twilight?” he said. “Traveling with her family.” “Aren’t you her family?” “With her immediate family—her mother, father, and brother. You’ll meet them soon, I’m sure. Shining Armor, at least, must accompany me to the Council. It’s expected.” “Because he’s the prince, I assume.” “Yes. ‘Prince consort’ is his full title, but we don’t use it much. Personally, I think it sounds degrading. That’s the same title you’re fishing for, by the way, in case you didn’t know.” Brad leaned back, crossed his arms, and stared at one of the walls. The landscape outside was dark, hazy, and ghostly through the crystal. “Why didn’t you build some windows into this thing?” Cadance laughed and flicked a hoof toward the wall. The strands of crystal, slithering like snakes, spread outward from the spot to which she’d pointed and formed a porthole about a foot in diameter. The sound of the train’s clattering wheels grew louder, and a breeze blew in, tousling Brad’s hair and refreshing the suffocating atmosphere. “The crystal ponies do not build as others do,” Cadance said. “Their tools, their buildings, and even this train car, are grown. Like their bodies, the crystals of their structures are alive.” Brad flicked his hand toward the wall in imitation of Cadance’s gesture, but the wall didn’t respond. “Twilight wanted you to have something,” Cadance said. “I hesitated to have it prepared, but in the end she convinced me.” She pointed to one of the guards, who produced a wrapped box and, holding it gently in his teeth, lowered it to Brad’s lap. Brad ripped off the wrapping and opened the box to find, nestled in a bed of tissue paper, a bulbous blue glass vial topped with an old-fashioned atomizer. “It’s perfume,” said Cadance. “Acacia, periwinkle, and arborvitae blended with musk.” “I’d rather you called it cologne. Sounds more manly.” “As you wish. Do you know what it signifies?” “Yes.” “Wear it to the Council. It may help our case.” Cadance tipped her head back and closed her eyes as one of her groomers threaded plaits of her hair through a string of diamonds. “The language of scent is complex, and Twilight tells me you might not have a nose adequate to master it. I understand you have no vomeronasal organ?” “I don’t know what that is.” “A pity that so much of the world is closed to you. The symbols of scents, unlike the symbols of words, are non-arbitrary. Words are meaningless until we learn them: the elegant language of High Ponese is mere babble to a barbarian, and her rough tongue is likewise babble to a pony. But odors are inherently evocative; they carry meanings we can grasp regardless of whether we have studied them, and they can bring to our minds memories unbidden. Even the plants and animals without speech can speak by means of scent: flowers and pheromones, Brad, communicate with a language anypony can understand.” Brad set the box down, snorted as loud and long as he could, and then leaned forward on his knees again. “To me, Princess Cadance, you just smell like a horse.” “Not just any horse, Brad, but the princess of love. In fact, there’s a company that distills my pheromones out of my urine and sells them as perfume. They do a brisk business.” “That’s disgusting.” “As you wish. If we’re really being so candid with each other, you might like to know that your own odor is not terribly pleasant.” “I know. That’s why I try to cover it up.” “Curious, is it not, to mask your natural smell?” “You do it too, apparently.” “I certainly don’t. Some mares do, but only because their odor is sometimes inconvenient, not because it is repellent. But seasonal odor masks are an exception: the true purpose of a pony’s perfume is to augment her scent, not hide it.” She pointed to the box at his feet. “I assume Twilight told you her emblem is friendship?” “I think she mentioned it.” “But there is more than that bound up in the three parts of her signature. Arborvitae is often planted as a hedge, and it can live for many years. It evokes protectiveness and strength, just as the pegasus ponies, by their strength, have often served as Equestria’s protectors. The periwinkle represents memory, eternity, and life; it is reminiscent of the magical power of the unicorns and suggests that Twilight wishes to remember what she was before she ascended. Acacia stands for purity of heart and length of life—and a pure, strong heart is the gift of the earth ponies. All three represent friendship, and together they tell the story of how Twilight came through friendship to combine all three types of pony into her one body.” “And that’s what you call an alicorn, right? Three in one?” “That’s right.” “So if you take these three flowers or whatever, and you add musk in, what exactly does that say?” Cadance gave Brad a warm smile. “Musk is a masculine scent. By wearing Twilight’s signature with musk, you claim to be her counterpart. If you wear it to the Council, it will send the message that she did not coerce you, but you followed her to Equestria of your own free will.” Brad bent down, took the bottle out of the box, pointed it at himself, closed his eyes, and squeezed the atomizer’s bulb several times. A heady, complex fragrance settled around him. When he opened his eyes, he saw Cadance and the crystal ponies wrinkle their noses and pull their lips back from their teeth. Cadance lifted her muzzle with an expression of concentration and pleasure—a look Brad had once before seen on the face of a connoisseur sampling wines—and after a moment she gave a curt nod of approval. “An excellent mixture,” she said. “I was afraid the aromatic acacia would not blend well with the equally aromatic musk, and that the result would be too heavy. But the Crystal Empire’s perfumers are the best in Equestria, and they have proven it again today. So, Brad, what do you think of this, your new signature, the scent by which everypony who meets you will remember you?” Brad squirted a little more of the perfume into his palm, slapped it onto his cheeks, and said, “Might make a good aftershave.” Then he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, let the breeze caress his face, listened to the steady beat of the train’s wheels against the track, and pretended to sleep.