Shadow woke up woozy.
He woke up sometime around noon.
And he woke with no sense of location whatsoever.
The poor black colt rolled himself to what felt like his hooves and blinked against the radiance intruding from the windows. Celestia on high it seemed painful to accept the burden of sight. He wasn’t wholly certain, or concerned with how much rest he had the night before, but it was surely some molecular amount based on the start of a tremendous throbbing in his skull.
Nine, a milestone he supposed, but it sure as hay hadn’t felt like one. A lonely festival was all he was able to be afforded, with classic party favors and the like, cake, soda, all nicely to his own sorry self. Great, he guessed, with the casual exception of two separate pains in his stomach. The first was of emptiness, and the self pity afforded by a family birthday. The second was feeling simply too full from the cake he had to himself.
He took an idle glance toward the wide TV screen on the wall, sighing at the grotesqueness of his appearance reflected in the inactive black surface. Green strands of hair stuck out in seemingly random directions, like bed head with an extra shot of caffeine. His wings, bent slightly and sore, seemed to be in similar condition, feathers sticking about and falling off. He gave a quick, halfhearted attempt to preen, but even on a good day he couldn’t hope to reach his wingtips, and now he could only manage an awkward stumble in that direction.
Praise the moon did he feel sick. He managed a sort of weary trudge to the soda machine and let loose the water tap, plunging his whole face underneath the spout. It would leave a mess, not that it was his responsibility to clean up, but it seemed to be the easiest course of action. It felt decent, and it made his tired mind start the lazy shuffle back to reality, and even better, drenched the near cotton mouth left by the long sleep.
Removing his head from the small cascade was like a leap into the light of day. The weak beginnings of the current schedule fell into place across the returning power of his mental synapses. A bath, that was the first order of business, preferably via the floor showers which could soak his wingtips. Then after that the day ahead would include some basic exercises, some flight training with his tutor, and he would be accompanying his mother to a charity drive this evening, something or other concerned with animal rights in Canterlot, he wasn’t wholly sure.
He clambered up onto the windowsill to get a vague sense of current time. The solar sphere hovered at high noon, meaning sun-butt had officially declared it lunchtime. Mealtime would have to factor into the schedule now, although it wouldn’t be particularly prudent to greet the dining hall the way he looked now. Bath, needed a bath.
There was a brief reality check, in which he remembered a time which seemed long ago when he had hated bath time, when he could, on occasion, resist the process entirely. Now he had neither the desire nor the force of will to gloss over it, there really wasn’t much of a point to it. Anyway if he so much as left his room he would be under the judgmental eye of Canterlot elites and scholars, both of whom could scarcely be avoided anywhere in the palace. Since when did he care…?
Now, now he cared. Scarcely two years back he had shunned the idea of Canterlot life altogether, castle privilege was unthinkable. As of the present he had a striking lack of concern for it. Not as though he had much choice with it, as the only one able to tolerate his presence in Ponyville probably had a restraining order on him by now.
Cold, bleak weight dropped into his stomach, bringing the nausea back with it. His mind went to Lightning more often than he cared to admit, and the automatic negative impulse flowed with every single time. It might not have been so painful if he had been more sociable in school, but he didn’t much take to being viewed in the classroom like a tame monkey, and was very much offended when they had tried to get on his good sign based on, in his mind, money alone. After the first fight he had been removed from the system and given private tutors. Loneliness, as it always had before save for those seven glorious months, had again become the norm.
Might skip lunch, he wasn’t in the mood for it anyway, and the awkward stomach cramp had only exacerbated the condition. He retched, didn’t have anything to lose, and then moved on to the singing bookcase, casually letting himself out. He dismissed the guard posted at the stairs with a tired grumble and started down the hall to the baths.
Water was remarkably soothing on his tired muscles, warm against the encroaching cold outside. The castle was, as a rule, consistently running heating systems, but they were imperfect at best, and the castle was massive. The remaining chill made stepping under the water jets less of a chore and more of a long awaited pleasure. At the first touch of water droplets streaming over his mane he was loathe to hold back a sigh. It was late in the day, the washroom to himself, and the quiet expanded itself around the drizzle.
Shadow relaxed for a long while under the steaming water, which with no competitors vying for it seemed nigh inexhaustible. The originally disheveled fur and hair was now slicked down like that of an Atlantic denizen. His hooves were pruning, but he really couldn’t care less. The water was not only a relief to the spiked and painful hairs, but a soothing balm to the char of his skin.
This reminder of pain through lack thereof brought again to mind his latest chasing routines, ones which his tutor could only help with the physics of. The aesthetics were all his own. The routine of crossing the highest sky in pursuit of the luminous chunks of stone or ore which careened across the night sky was what had called forth the blazing comet resplendent among the soaked fur of his flank, the mark of a star hunter.
The happy memories of adrenaline fueled sky chases dominated his mind at the soothing water and lasted solidly until it was shattered by a cacophonous knock on the door. Normally this would’ve been enough to startle him, but for now he was too tired for much to shock him. He idly wondered why someone would come knocking at the public baths but didn’t think it was worth his time either to investigate or get the door.
It came as no surprise when the familiar shape of a tall alicorn crossed the threshold and closed the door behind her. She sighed as she approached, but Shadow continued as though nothing had so much as changed.
“Well at least you’ve got yourself cleaned up,” said Luna “You were missed at lunch, something of a shame since another one of the Cloudsdale Academy scientists came to look at your wings.”
“You’re telling them to find me at lunch now?” Shadow groaned, rolling himself back to all fours and cutting the water flow “Why don’t you just tell them to come put needles in me while I’m asleep if you’re so interested in letting them prod me everywhere I step.”
“Not that they haven’t offered to do so,” said Luna, her magic coaxing the water right out of the colt’s fur “But I don’t think you’d appreciate that very much.”
Shadow glowered in her general direction, a mix of unappreciation for sarcasm and disappointment of not being able to shake the water out of his wings severely soured his mood. “So we missed a few losers who still can’t figure me out,” he said, hopping down from the showering pedestal “Do I have anything else I have to do before my flying class?”
“No,” said Luna “But remember you do have another real chase today, you really should get warmed up so you’re ready.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll think about it,” said Shadow, attempting to appear nonchalant, but the glimmer in his eyes could not be mistaken. Meteor hunting was the thing he lived to do, a single bright spot in the dull march that was his royal life.
“Well think hard,” said Luna, already on her way out “I have to meet with the delegates from the Seapony Union tonight and the reception needs to be finished, you have a good time alright?”
The door closed with a clever snap and Shadow allowed his excitement to manifest in the form of a violent trembling of his wings, too large now to properly flutter. These days in the castle were long and arduous, but there were occasional good moments, and today, he knew, was going to be one.
And even after, there was surely still hope