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// Nightlife 
// Story: Alienation 
// by Longtooth 
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	Barring some of the more interesting festivals and events, Ponyville is not exactly a very lively place after dark. There's the occasional Pinkie Pie party that will last until everyone leaves, but even they tend to be over around midnight. That lack of a nightlife means that there's also a distinct lack of places where you can get a hot bite to eat. Distinct, but not total.

I wandered around the streets of Ponyville, getting into the center of the town where the buildings were built closer together and there were some actual alleys for places to be hidden in. I didn't know what I was looking for, really, but I knew that there had to be something. Then I saw the sign. 

It was a little red neon sign that flickered and buzzed above a door that was half-hidden by the walkdown to get to it. In the day, with the sign off, you wouldn't even notice that the door was there. 'Heather's' it said. 

Twilight had heard of the place. She'd done plenty of work for the mayor in organizing taxes and zoning permits and, well, everything the mayor thought she could get away with dumping on her. So I knew that Heather's had a food license. And a liquor license. And a half-dozen citations on its health report.

All I cared about was that I could get hay fries and grilled asparagus, so I trotted down the stairs and pushed my way into the bar. Music hit me the moment the door opened, a raucous country ditty full of fiddles and banjos and somepony blowing on a jug. Twilight had heard similar stuff while visiting Applejack, and at least one western-themed party that Pinkie had thrown. Probably more than one. They tend to blur together after a while.

This music wasn't coming from a live band, but from a jukebox that glowed with stored magic in the corner of the room, and its volume wasn't nearly what it had seemed when I had opened the door. It was just so quiet outside that the sudden noise had seemed extraordinarily loud. For the moment, though, it was all I could hear, and thus the first thing I focused on.

Stepping into that bar was a little like stepping into another world. A world where the lights were dim, the music was loud, and a dozen ponies sat in near silence, cups in front of them and dull looks on their faces. Not that they looked unhappy, just introspective, like they all had deep thoughts they were intent on. the walls of the bar were decorated with pictures and posters so thick that there was practically no place where you could see the actual wood of the wall. A mirror behind the bar reflected two shelves full of bottles, labels declaring various kinds of alcohol and salted drinks. 

The place smelled of sweat and smoke, the tables and the bar saturated with it. I took a deep breath, tasting the air and soaking in the strangely intimate atmosphere of the place.

"Twilight Sparkle," an earth pony mare behind the bar said, shaking me out of my reverie. She had a chocolate brown coat that provided a dark compliment to her red mane. I couldn't see her cutie mark then, but I soon found out that it was a torch. Representing hospitality or something. I never asked. This was Green Heather, owner and operator of the bar. "Are ya lost, dear?"

I shook my head. "Hungry," I replied. "Do you have, uh, a menu or something?"

"Sure thing," she said, pulling a piece of paper with a clearly mouth-written menu on it. "Sit down, dear, ya look a fright."

I obliged her, sliding into one of the stools before the bar. Berry Punch, a local who was a notorious lush, was to my left, and she gave me a sympathetic look. "I heard what happened to Spike," she said. "Is he doing okay?"

"He'll be fine," I said. It was an automatic response, no real feeling or direction behind it. I didn't want to think about Spike.

"Yeah, I heard about that," Heather said, laying the menu in front of me. "What happened there?"

"I wish I knew," I said, pointedly avoiding eye contact with either mare. I looked at the menu, more than happy to see hay fries prominently displayed. Everything else was just as healthy, and probably less so. "Can I get two orders of fries? With, um, with a lot of ketchup?"

"Sure thing, dear," Heather said, pulling the menu back and walking to a door from the bar to the kitchen, she yelled my order to whoever was cooking things and returned to her place. "Do you want a drink, dear? I know you're not much of a drinker, but with a day like you've had, I know you could use a bit of burnin' comfort."

Well, she was right that Twilight didn't like to get drunk. Maybe I'll tell you why, later, it's a pretty funny story. Not being Twilight, and very much in need of some comfort that didn't involve talking to other ponies much, I decided to go with the alcohol option. "Um, yeah," I said. "I don't know what's good."

"I do," Berry Punch  said. 

"Recommend away," I told her. She told Heather to get me some mixed drink, I can't remember what it was. I do know that when I took my first sip of it, I nearly choked. It was strong. Strong and disgusting. It was cold in my mouth, but burned all the way down to my stomach. The aftertaste coated my tongue, lingering well after the time a more conscientious flavor would have politely faded away. It was trying to bludgeon me into intoxication. It hurt to drink.

I'm a bit more practiced now, and I can tell you that Berry wasn't lying. She knew what was good, and she knew exactly what I needed right then. The warmth of the drink hit my belly and started to spread at a prodigious rate, a consequence of my having eaten nothing for quite some time. I’m not saying that I was drunk instantly or anything. Twilight was a lightweight, but not that lightweight. A couple sips, even of something as heavy as this, wouldn’t even get her to the warm, glowy stage of inebriation. Which is why I decided to gulp the thing down and ask for another.

Yes, I was trying to get drunk. Of course I was. I’d never experienced it before. Twilight had, but not me. I still hadn’t fully formed my ideas of where Twilight left off and I began, but I had admitted there was a divide and had decided to explore what it meant. Would it be different for me? Would it be the same? We have the same body, so alcohol should affect us the same way, but how would I really know until I tried?  So when presented with the opportunity to get plastered on my first disastrous night of existence, I took it.

The fries, by the way, were amazing.