//------------------------------// // Needles and Pins // Story: Between Needles and Knives // by Dancewithknives //------------------------------// Fellik City, Diarchy of Japone’ Habit is a powerful thing. Habit is the reason why school ponies wait for the last moment to do their work. Habit is the reason why individuals take the same route to their job each day. Habit is why birds hunt for worms after it rained. Sentient animals, like ponies, stags, and griffins, for as advanced as they believed themselves to be, were also the victims to habit, and this was easily apparent in the street vendors across the world. Wherever crowds massed, be it baseball diamonds, protests, riots, parades, or masses of ponies walking to work in the morning, one of the most common sights among all of these crowds was the average street vendor. Whatever the reason for the mosh pit of individuals to be wherever they were, it was hungry work. Sitting down, gawking, protesting, shouting, listening, whatever it was, it was hard work to do. Like blood in the water, whenever there was a reason for the population to gather, one would be sure to find the sharks of the street vending trade close by to sell their services to the crowd. When word spread quickly that the National Offices of Archives and Securities had a break in and that the fire department had been called to put out a fire, the vendors were on their way. It was a fool’s errand to think that the military or the security could contain and control the mass of ponies who had found their way outside to watch the spectacle of the police trying to create a crime scene. From the top of rooftops, out of windows, on porches, the balconies, the imperial square, and the streets around it, hundreds of citizens had gathered to exchange gossip and use the frustration of their security officials as a means to spend the evening. Thousands of pennies had exchanged hooves by the time the masses went back home to bed. Community service teams would spend the next day cleaning all of the trash that had been littered by the assembly. To say that the vendors would sleep well that night would suffice, and with the monumental volume of traffic the street sales ponies had in only a few hours, it would be understandable that one would not remember a sharp-dressed stallion buying a haydog and paying with a silver penny and not waiting for the change. Like a spore breaking off from the rest of the fungus, this one individual walked out of the mob and went off on his own way while carrying his haydog close by. He walked through the city of Fellik, traveling at a leisurely pace after splitting from the group of citizens. With every block, he moved through the social classes of the city. The Imperial district, with its grandiose government buildings, elaborate monuments, and high class bistros and boutiques, was the height of pride and excess. Within a few blocks, the pompous ego of bureaucracy eventually gave way to more modest settings. The expensive marble buildings were replaced with apartments made of bricks. Families called this place home; many of the lower level government employees had settled down here. Whereas the excess of the high-class buildings were shown by the professional and grand designs of the structures, the pride and heart of the middle class was seen in the personality of these homes. Tributes for the changing seasons were in the windows. Porches and balconies had decorations to liven up the homes of the things that lived there. Whereas the previous district had beauty, this one had personality. Finally, from excess to simplicity, he had arrived at the rocky bottom of society: the slums. The buildings were made of concrete, muted and dull grey. There were no balconies or porches to decorate. The one coating of paint over the building’s materials had weathered and chipped away to show the true ugliness beneath the spirited appearance of society. The windows, for the few that existed and were not broken, were too small to properly decorate or take pride in. When officials are elected, they promise many things, and they do act on a few of them. This colony of concrete eyesores was one such example. The ignorant masses were a politician’s best friend, and it did pay to have friends in low places. So, with the many promises to house and care for the homeless, the result of those promises were these projects, grouping the outsiders, the street wanderers, the derelicts, and the unwanted all in one generally avoidable area. Here, the work orders to fix cracks in the concrete sidewalk went unanswered, the garbage in the streets blew with the wind, and the few trash barrels would only be emptied once every two weeks. Somehow, the streetlamps were lit every night, for as shocking as that sounded. The trash, the population, the state of which the buildings were in, it all added together into an overhauling scent that could not be specifically described, but could be summarized in one word: poverty. These ponies were not real to the rest of society, just numbers, objects, and things to be used and as the navy blue winged unicorn approached one of the many intersections of this grid like slum, he found one such thing. She was young, very young, the type that one would desire to marry, and pretty, too. The white pegasus stood on the corner of the street, wide awake, and acted almost timid as she controlled her breathing and tried her best smile to attract the stallion dressed in a fancy suit. She stepped away from her corner, but did not approach her potential client. The sky blue dress of hers looked faded in a few spots, almost like a hand me down from her grandmother. A pink jacket hung and kept her warm for whenever she walked the cold streets to survive. She took a few steps forward, swaying her body with each step which made the scarlet ribbons on the tip of her tail, the bow in her mane, and the scarf around her neck sway with her, and said, “You look lonely, could you use a little company?” Although it was in the middle of night, the automatic crossing lights on the streets glowed red, ordering him to stop at the intersection even though there were no wagons on the street. He turned his head to see the young mare who looked like she would rather swallow her pride- among other things- than starve for the night, and shook his head, “No.” The pegasus, who was required by law to place needles and pins in the shoulder of her dress to show what she was, retreated back to her corner. The stallion, returning to his watching the street for when to cross, reached into his jacket and removed a piece of paper. Like it was a napkin, he placed the haydog that he had been carrying for several minutes and wrapped it up around the bun. He leaned forward, and took a large bite out of the meal, two parallel lines of mustard stained his facial fur and lips as his teeth cut into the membrane that held a mixture of spices, hay, cornmeal, and wheat together. He threw the meal into the nearby garbage can that was overflowing with trash and then wiped his lips with the paper before of disposing of it as well. The mare in the dress, watching the largely unconsumed haydog go to waste, looked at it and then at the owner, “Are… are you going to finish that?” The pony who had stopped at the intersection did not respond. Instead, as the light turned from red to green, he looked up into the sky, breathed in the air, and unbuttoned the top two latches on the bottom most layer of his ensemble, releasing tension and somewhat filtering and cleansing his system with the cool night air. In another motion, he loosened his tie and reached into the opening to his chest and pulled out a necklace and letting it hang on the outside of his clothing. The mare chanced a glance at his jewelry, and was somewhat disappointed. It was a simple string that held a small glass container that looked to carry sunflower petals. The mare, not seeing any protest from the odd stallion who was acting like he had taken a weight off of his chest, ignored him and went to the trash can. Lying at the top was her prize. First, she grabbed for the haydog, bringing it to her mouth… but then having second thoughts to eating straight out of the trash. She set it back down, and grabbed the paper that the stallion had used as a napkin and wiped her hooves with it. The scrap of paper, which had been balled up, was unfolded by the female, but as she began to clean herself, she noticed a very important detail. This was not just a random piece of paper. She unfolded it all, stretched it out, and began to scan it with her eyes, speed reading the document in seconds. All the while, the one who had thrown the parchment out, stood still with his sunflower petal necklace. It had been a long night for the two, and with the rising sun in the distance, the darkness was at its end. The projects, being tall enough to shield the streets around them, kept the night alive for a few moments longer. At the top of their cement tombstone stature, light began to find its way into the world and burn the darkness into nothing. The mare, no longer acting like a timid filly trying to be an adult, folded the piece of paper in half and then stuffed it down the front of her favorite dress. In a stoic and controlled tone, she said, "Good work, Peace." Always the first one up on every day, rain or shine, Town Crier, the newspaper deliverer for this district, walked down the street with his personal wagon full of cubed newspapers, making the early morning trek to his stand to await the morning surge of ponies waking up to start their day. He moved towards the intersection and stopped. The crystal light above him was red, but, even though it would be breaking the law, he could have walked through. When he went to work, nobody was out. If not, then he wasn’t doing his job right. Anyway, being a good citizen, he stopped at the intersection and waited for his right to proceed to his destination. He yawned, adjusted the straps to the wagon and rubbed his eyes. He looked at the street, and unlike what he expected, he saw two ponies awake at this hour! He focused on them, but then went back to himself, “Just some guy and a whore heading to a place to do business,” he told himself. He returned his focus to the street light, waiting for the lamp to turn from red to green, but then the thought occurred to him. “If I have to stop… shouldn't they be going?” He looked back at the stallion in a suit and his mistress in a dress, and called over to them, “The passing sign is green, ya know.” Without warning, an intense light attacked Town Crier as he stood in the street, coming from the two ponies. He covered his irises and rubbed them until the burning sensation stopped. He looked for the source of the pain, and found that the sun had finally poked over the buildings and lit him up. He must have just been looking at a bad angle and did not expect the rays to hit him, he thought. He looked back to the street… but saw the two ponies were gone. Odd, did he imagine them there? Town Crier shook his head, shrugged his shoulders to himself, and continued on his way to his job, not giving the strange anomaly any more thought.