The bell rang above the door as Diamond Tiara made her exit from the establishment. Seeing her leave, I walked fully into the main room of Sugarcube corner, and walked to the back of the line that lead to the main counter where Pinkie Pie was handing out all sorts sweets. I was amazed at the sheer amount of ponies lined up to purchase their particular confectionaries, but seeing as how it was midday on the weekend it might not have been all that shocking really. I leaned to the side to look past the several ponies in line that towered over me, four of them to be exact, and sighed when I saw Berry Punch at the front of the line having a full blown conversation with the pony next to her while Pinkie Pie waited for them to pay.
Not that the party pony looked irked by the hold up in the least. On the contrary, she would also add her two bits whenever the opportunity seemed to present itself. The stallion behind the alcoholic mare however, some dark green unicorn with a white mane that I don’t think I had ever seen before, looked like he was trying to suppress an aneurysm from the frustration of standing next to the three gabbing mares. No doubt he had somewhere important to be, and now that I thought of it so did I, but as things were I really didn’t have much choice here other than stand in line and wait my turn, all the ponies did think that I was a child after all.
“Wait,” I whispered to myself, “they think I’m a kid.”
Realizing that I didn’t necessarily have to follow the rules of society due to the innate ignorance of pre-adolescence, I immediately raced out of line and straight to the front, making sure to bump rudely into both mares and even knock Berry Punch’s front hoof out from under her, which almost knocked her to the ground. I stood on my back legs between the two and propped myself up on my front legs on the counter, blissfully ignoring the death glares I received.
“Hey Pinkie, you got my bag?” I asked.
Pinkie looked to the two mares on either side of me, and her naturally cheery smile seemed to become much more embarrassed. “Yeah Ashen,” she said as she started heading back to the stairs behind her, “it’s right upstairs. Let me go get it.”
She ascended the stairwell, leaving the counter full of sweets completely unguarded behind. “That’s a bit irresponsible,” I muttered as I dropped back to my hooves.
“Young stallion,” came a slightly enraged voice to my left. I turned and looked up at the irritated face of Berry Punch as she loomed over me. “Do you really just run around, and crash into ponies without apologizing? Hasn’t your mother taught you any manners?”
“I’m…” I began, fully ready to apologize to the giant just to get her to stop glaring down at me. The word caught in my throat, not because I wasn't concerned about lying straight to her face when I was fully unremorseful for my actions. Fuck no, lying was my goddamn forte, and in most situations like this it was my fallback. Somewhere deep down inside however, that little part of me that still held onto my man card told me that I couldn’t puss out again.
“You know what, I’m not sorry,” I said eventually, taking a more assertive stance. “I would have waited in line if it weren’t for you vapidly flapping your maw, and holding up everything for everypony.” The stallion standing behind her snorted at my retort, earning himself a smack on the back of the head from the mare standing next to him.
“What did you say?!” Berry Punch nearly screeched as she leaned down to meet me on eye level. As she got way too close for comfort I was definitely able to tell that the rumors of her being the town buzz keeper were greatly under exaggerated.
I waved my hoof in front of my face as I leaned away from her. “Geez lady, it’s not even four in the afternoon. There is no way that I should be getting dizzy just from a whiff of the alcohol peeling off of you.” I made a face like I was going to puke. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Her face contorted in what could only be described as pure unadulterated rage, and she made some choking sounds like she really wanted to make a witty comeback but her body just wouldn’t allow it. I saw my chance and pressed my advantage.
“You know I hear that they have programs for mares like you. I believe that admitting you have a problem is the first step, there are like eleven more after that, but I am certain that is the first one. Who knows, maybe given enough time you can really kick this thing and stop being such a nuisance and burden to everypony,” I said, smirking like a jackass.
The purple mare raised her hoof above her head, and then I knew that I had definitely gone too far. I winced and shied away from the oncomming asskicking that I knew was coming my way, but Berry was quickly intercepted by the mare that she had been talking to.
“Woah Berry, why don’t we just get out of here okay,” the teal mare said as she stepped forwards and threw a hoof around her friend’s shoulder. She started to walk her irate friend from the premises, but as Berry Punch glared back at me I could see a few tears start to fall from her eyes. I returned the glare until the two had finally left Sugarcube Corner, and when they did I finally relaxed and let out a breath that I had been holding.
Honestly, I didn’t know where that had all come from all of a sudden, but I was feeling...really really good. Maybe it was the adrenaline, if that little confrontation had been enough to actually get some into my system. Maybe it had just been putting somepony else down and making them feel just as shitty as I had. Maybe it was the fact that I had been able to make her feel exactly what I wanted her to feel, able to control her emotions like with just my words in the same way I could control the life and death of an ant with just a magnifying glass. I quickly caught myself, realizing that last one had sounded an awful lot like a burgeoning serial killer. It had probably been just the adrenaline that had me so pumped, yes let’s go with door number one.
I felt a chill run down my spine, my “oh shit” sense hitting me as I stood there staring back at the door. The “oh shit” sense being a lot like the Pinkie sense, except for it being completely useless and only warning me after I was already completely screwed. Or maybe it was just the fact that everypony that had previously been waiting in line for their food had begun slowly backing away from the counter while staring at something just behind me. I turned to see the truly most terrifying mare that I had encountered in my short time here in Ponyville, a very angry Pinkie Pie.
“Ashen Stroke,” she said far too calmly, “did you just make a pony cry on purpose?” I saw her walk out from behind the counter, her straight mane nearly dragging along the floor as she did so. Fuck me, her mane was straight!
“I, I, I, I, I,...” I stuttered.
“That was a very not nice thing to do,” she said as she finally stopped in front of me. I quickly turned to look behind me, and saw that everypony else had quickly vacated the store, leaving me all alone with Cupcakes Pinkie Pie. I gulped and looked back at the pink mare that was frowning very heavily as she looked down at me. “I don’t like when ponies do very not nice things to my friends.”
Plain, yes that was the word I had finally decided on. The beige of the wall paper spread throughout the building, and in particular, this corner that I was forced to stare at for the last thirty minutes, was undeniably, unavoidably, uninspiredly...plain. Sure the wooden support beam that ran vertically down the corner of the wall managed to break up the dullness of it all, but the rustic feeling that the three foot section of wall, that was my entire reality at the moment, was still quite boring. Considering where I was, it was strange that there wasn’t any real splash of color sticking out to me, but then again, who really decorates their walls.
I was sure that there was some corner in some building in a far off land that was truly magnificent. Perhaps, at one point or another, some knight had set it upon himself to seek out this corner of legend, only to realize when he found it that he lacked the words to convey its beauty to the world. So there he sat motionless as the years passed around him, nothing but the majesty of this legendary vertex to sustain him, and sustain him it would. He himself would become part of the legend, the immortal stallion who was fated to stare at a single place for the rest of eternity, not that he would mind for the beauty of that one corner was well worth it, and stare at it for an eternity he could. Then, out of nowhere, an evil would appear…
“Ashen Stroke,” I heard Pinkie call from behind me, prompting me to turn around and look over to her. Next to her Feather Duster was standing there, seeming to be incredibly embarrassed to be here, but this is where she found herself none the less. The scratched her left forehoof against her right and looked at the pink mare who had once again regained her bouncy complexion.
“Can I go now?” I asked as I stood from my time-out spot.
Pinkie Pie nodded. “Uh huh. Just as soon as you told me what you learned.”
I sighed, louder than I normally would have just to make sure that the two of them heard it. “It’s wrong to make ponies cry and be mean and junk,” I replied with an eyeroll.
“Right,” Pinkie Pie agreed, seeming to not catch my tone at all.
I grabbed my backpack that was on the ground next to me and threw it over my back in a quick motion, before I started to head out the door. Feather Duster motioned for me to follow her, and since I wasn’t really in a mood to stay here with the bipolar pink pony any longer I just fell into step behind my caretaker. I had thought that it was obvious to everypony that Pinkie had a screw loose, but when she makes you sit and wait in the kitchen as she talks to herself, while making cupcakes with a freaking butcher knife, then it was about time to call the big stallions in white coats. Not that anypony would do that to the poor mare, myself included, because then how would Equestria have its orbital friendship cannon.
I exited the bakery, and had to cover my eyes with a hoof for a moment so that they could adjust to the harsh sunlight outside. Things were proceeding as usual in Ponyville, though I couldn’t really have expected anything else. I tried to look up at the sky to see the pegasi flitting by in the air, but the blinding light of the sun kept forcing me to keep my gaze earth bound. Pegasi had to have some kind of built in sunglasses or something to avoid that kind of harsh glare, I would have to ask Steel when he got back from whatever kind of “training” he was doing.
Feather cleared her throat next to me as I was busy adjusting the weighty backpack that I had. “Are you ready to head back to the manor?” she asked as she waved a hoof towards the carriage parked not too far away.
“Nah,” I began as finished adjusting my bag and started to look up at her. “I was thinking…” My breath caught in my throat as I saw the glare the older mare was giving me. I would have sworn that her eyes were on fire with the intensity of the anger that she was holding back, and I folded like a house of cards. “That heading back to the manor would be the best course of action,” I finished.
“Excellent idea sir,” she agreed as she gave me a little nudge to get me started towards the litter.
I briefly wondered where my man card had fallen as I stepped into the carriage, but quickly got over my cowing as we slowly proceeded forwards. I carelessly tossed my bag on the ground, and propped my head up on a hoof as I gazed out the window. It was only a minute before the buildings of Ponyville stopped passing by me in the window, and the scenery of the country began to replace it. I admired the greens, yellows, and blues, like I had many times as we passed by fields of wildflowers and crops. I supposed that the flowers might not have been as wild as I thought, and could have perhaps been some kind of delicacy. I could just picture Princess Celestia slowly savoring a perfectly groomed Bluebonnet at some sort of fancy banquet.
“Is there something that you would like to talk about, young master Ashen Stroke?” I heard Feather ask, prompting my ears to perk up and turn towards her.
“No,” I replied boredly.
“I know,” she began, only to stop and ponder her words a moment longer before continuing. “I know that you must have been through more hardships than are to be expected at such an early age, but you simply must stop getting yourself into trouble.”
I looked at her reflection in the window I was staring out of. This mare was odd, I decided eventually. Sometimes I could almost forget her age, and she would seem to be just starting her twenties, while other times she spoke like my grandmother. Not literally of course, my grandmother’s accent would put Applejack to shame, but I could definitely hear the concern behind her words. That same concern shone in her eyes as she gazed at me, apparently unaware that I was observing her as well.
“Hardships,” I said eventually. “Yes I suppose you could say I have been through my fair share of those.” I paused, trying to find the perfect wording. “I don’t set out to cause trouble, most of the time, but I will work on changing my attitude in the future.”
I watched her a moment longer, trying to gauge her reaction. She looked for an instant like she would continue the conversation, but eventually she just turned her head to gaze out of the window opposite mine. I pulled my eyes away from focusing on the glass and looked to the passing fields of wheat, golden waves peeling down the rows as we kept up our moderate pace.
If I listened for it, I could distinctly hear the clopping of the ponies that were pulling us down the road, and could even catch a few words of a muffled conversation. They were talking about something mundane, a mare that one of them was dating or something of the like. It may have been useful information, or at least distracting information, but I turned my ears away from it and placed my attention once more in the view before me.
It wasn’t difficult to set my mind adrift, thinking about what I would be doing in the near future. Maybe I would be able to garner some incredibly pieces of information from the books that I was carrying. No, I was certain to learn something incredible, magic was after all some entirely new branch of knowledge that I was now finding myself delving into. Useful information, that is what I would have to be on the lookout for. I would have to compile some kind of glossary across these many tomes that would help me break the cypher on the much more advanced one that I had back in my room.
I itched to begin reading them, but I stayed my hoof anyways. Trying to read in a moving vehicle places a lot of stress on one’s attention and would probably make me miss something important. Additionally, I was planning to take copious notes as I read through these and since I had no paper here I couldn’t. No, I would just have to wait, despite the ever building tension in the back of my mind that urged me to forgo my planning and just crack them open right here.
My mind snapped back to the present as we made a turn onto the long drive that lead up to the Rich Manor. I wondered briefly if I would be receiving some kind of additional punishment for the disturbance that I had caused earlier, but I highly doubted it. As far as I could tell, the staff weren’t allowed to mete out punishments to Diamond Tiara, which would explain her painfully obvious belligerent nature, and I felt that would extend to Steel and I as well. Of course, if they did find it a good idea to ground me or something, that wouldn’t really disrupt my plans for the afternoon, so I really had nothing to worry about.
We pulled to a stop, and Feather Duster opened the door on her side of the carriage, before gingerly stepping down the stairs and onto the drive. I turned, tossing the backpack onto my back with a flick of my head, not bothering to secure the straps, as I also exited the litter. There were two ponies holding the doors open for us as we made our way up the stairs and into the manor proper. The large wooden doors closed loudly behind us, and the light in the reception area cut considerably, though the large green drapes had been pulled away from the windows and gave the room plenty of light. I sniffed at the air, delighting in the improved sense of smell I had attained with this new body of mine, as I caught the scent of some kind of spices wafting through the house.
“When will dinner be?” I asked as I began to head towards the stairs that led to my room.
Feather Duster looked to an aged grandfather clock, metronomically ticking away against a wall. “In just over an hour,” she answered.
“Alright,” I replied as I started up the steps.
“I will come and fetch you when it is time to eat,” she called after me.
“Sounds good,” I droned as I turned into the second story hall and exited the hall. I couldn’t stop myself from nearly sprinting to my room once I was sure that I was out of sight of Feather Duster downstairs. The door the my bedroom flew open, audibly slamming against the backstop as I raced into the room and threw the backpack down next to my desk. I quickly ran back and shut the door, closing it much more softly this time, before racing back and jumping into the chair in front of my desk.
I spent a few seconds to grab paper, ink, and a quill from the desk drawer before unzipping the backpack and dumping its contents out onto the desk. Making sure to stack all of the books in the proper order, the ones I would be reading first on top of course, I spread out three sheets of paper next to each other in front of me and placed my quill in my ink. Grinning like a maniac I reverently lifted the first of the tomes and set it next to the pieces of paper that I had laid out. I clapped my hooves together in excitement at what I was about to discover hidden in the book before me before I opened it to the cover page.
“Simple Ways to Learn Simple Magic,” I read. “Alright, let’s begin.”
Clink. The metal utensils scraping against the plates was somewhat grating. Especially when I was trying to concentrate on something else, but I suppose that it was unavoidable. I gazed over at Diamond Tiara, attacking her salad with anger. I had a good idea of what she was so upset about, but I kept my silence, feeling that it wasn’t really any of my business. Steel however, sitting there with his wings hanging down around him, looked like he could barely lift his hoof. In fact, he had chosen to forgo using forks and was just nipping at the salad without them.
I smirked, taking a drink to cover my grin, but I was definitely feeling better about my own situation with him being so down. If that was what it took in order to get into the proper flying shape as a pegasus then I was definitely feeling at least a little less screwed over by destiny or whatever with being an Earth Pony and all. He noticed me looking over at him and arched a brow at me while he chewed his lettuce.
I had opted not to even try the salad in front of me. I had told Mr. Rich on my first day here that I didn’t like it, but it seemed that he had neglected to tell the cook about it, and so now food was going to waste. I did feel a little bit guilty that nopony was going to eat this food, that is unless the cooks finished off whatever was left after dinner, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to eat it.
Clink. My ears folded back over my head as I heard Diamond savagely impale a tomato with her fork. I rolled my eyes and set my drink down in front of me.
“So how was your day, Steel?” I asked.
He groaned, laying his head out on the white tablecloth in front of us. “It sucked dude. Ace had me do wing push-ups. Think about that, push-ups, but with wings.”
“Ace?” I said as I rolled around some of the tomatoes in front of me.
“Aerial Ace,” he replied with a deadpan, making me snicker.
“Yeah he looked like a flying type.” I tapped my chin with a hoof. “Now that I think about it you have Steel in your name. Should I call you Skarmory?”
“Please don’t,” he replied. Apparently too exhausted to care enough to emote.
“Alright,” I said shrugging. “So he made you do wing push-ups. Anything else.”
Steel held up a hoof like he was going to list off something before realizing that he had no fingers and setting it back down in the chair he was sitting in. “Push-ups, sprints, some weird flapping training, more push-ups, more sprints, and finally stretches. Also he said that I needed to get my feathers taken care of because they need to be preened or something.”
“Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. You should probably just get a doctor to remove those things from your back.” I heard a fork drop and looked over to Diamond who was staring at me like I had just said the most horrifying thing ever.
“What?” I asked.
“Did you seriously just tell your own brother that he should get his wings chopped off?” she asked incredulously.
“Hmm, I suppose I did,” I admitted.
The room fell into a deathly quiet, which was quickly broken by the doors to the kitchen being opened and Dusty walking in with three trays of food. He passed them out with ease, using his magic to levitate one to each of us before he turned on a dime and exited the room once more. I watched him go, a little bit surprised that he hadn’t seen fit to say anything, but with a shrug turned my attention to the steaming plate in front of me.
“Grilled cheese?” I asked, looking at the long sandwich that smelled strongly of american cheese. How did they have american cheese?
“My favorite,” Diamond as she picked up the sandwich and took a hungry bite from it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like grilled cheese. In fact it was an easy meal to make, and one of the only ones that I actually knew how to make well, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. They had to get the milk for the cheese from somewhere right, and I think I had seen Twilight get some milk from cows once on the show. Although, in another episode it was shown that cows are clearly intelligent, so as I stared down at the grilled cheese in front of me I felt that eating it would be something like breast feeding from a woman I didn’t know. With that creepy ass thought making itself known in my mind I gently slid the plate away from myself.
“Not hungry?” Steel asked, already halfway done with his own sandwich.
“Umm...yeah.” I replied, thanking my stomach for not betraying me. I was feeling a bit peckish, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait until morning. The realization with the cheese had thoroughly killed my appetite, and I had to think about what other weird food things I had missed so far. Dusty mercifully distracted me before my thoughts could turn on me by entering the room once more.
He held a letter levitating in his magical grasp in front of him, and was still reading it over as he approached the table and came to a stop. “It seems,” he began, eyes still scanning the paper, “that Master Rich will not be returning to the manor until next Saturday. Apparently he has been held up by work and will be unable to make it back.” Seeming to be done with what he had been saying he gave the note to Diamond Tiara before he turned to head off once again.
“Seems like it will take a while before you’ll be able to really talk with anypony. Kind of sucks that your only friend left, but those are the breaks sometimes I guess,” I said offhandedly. Looking up as I heard a chair being pushed roughly away from the table, I saw Diamond Tiara glaring at me like a certain purple earth pony had not too long ago, before she hopped out of chair and hurriedly exited the dining area.
I watched her go, she slammed the door harshly as she made her way out, causing me to wince. Dusty gazed at me with his stoic eyes before he also turned and left the way that he had come in, closing the doors behind himself much more quietly. There was a harsh pain in my chest, knowing that I had just said something cruel to a child for no particular reason, even if she probably deserved it in some cosmic way.
“What happened with Silver Spoon?” Steel asked.
I sighed and looked over to him. “She is going on some really long trip somewhere. Seven months from what I heard.”
“Damn,” he said with a nod, “you’re a douche.”
I let my forehead collide heavily with the table in front of me. “Ow.”
“Injuring yourself won’t make it any better you know,” he went on as he took a bite from his sandwich. “You gonna eat that?”
Without looking up from the ground that I was now staring at, I hit the edge of my plate hard enough to send it sliding across the table to Steel. “It’s weird,” I said.
“The grilled cheese?” he asked between the food in his mouth.
“No not the cheese, dumbass. Although when you think about it for a minute you will find out how weird that is for yourself. What I was talking about is how I have been pissing ponies off for no reason today,” I replied.
“Don’t you usually do that?” he went on, completely ignoring my comment about the grilled cheese.
“Most of the time I am trying to be funny or make a point. Today though...it’s like I am trying to hurt them for no real good reason.”
I distinctly heard him licking his hoof, which opened up a whole different world of bad eating habits that I wasn’t in the mood to indulge at the time. “Yeah, well maybe there is some kind of dark magic effecting you,” he said unhelpfully.
“Psh,” I dismissed as I lifted my head and looked up to him. “It’s probably something a lot simpler than that.” I rolled my shoulder and jumped down from my seat in a graceful bound.
“Where are you going?” Steel asked as he picked up my grilled cheese and began to chow down on it.
“I’m going to apologize before Pinkamena finds me again,” I said as I opened the door back to the main hall.
“Pinkamena?” I heard him ask as I closed the door behind me.
I walked over to the stairs that led to the second story and began to ascend them. Unlike earlier, there seemed to be no servants bustling through the halls, I supposed that once dinner had gotten under way most of them left to go back to wherever they lived so that they could eat with their own families. Dusty and Feather seemed to be the only two that really stayed at the mansion the whole time, I wondered briefly if they had any family before shaking my head and getting my mind back on focus. I didn’t know where Diamond Tiara’s room was so I just had to keep passing doors that I had already seen until I came upon the right one.
It took a little bit of doing. Not really, I just really had to look for the room with a tiara emblazoned on the front, before I was standing in front of her door. I lifted a hoof and knocked on the front, waiting for a reply or some kind of indication that the pony inside had heard me. When none came I knocked again, and then after that I knocked again.
“What?!” Diamond Tiara shouted from the other side of the door.
“Uh…” I stalled, “I uh, I came to apologize for what I said downstairs. Can I come in?”
There was silence from the other side of the door for a while, so long that I had almost decided to just walk away when the door slowly opened to reveal the pink filly. She still looked obviously pretty pissed, and I was happy to see no tears. She moved away from the door and allowed me inside before she quickly closed it behind herself and set a chair in front of it so that nopony could get in. I looked around at the incredibly pink room, everything unshockingly reminding me of a barbie dream house, but pulled my attention away from the overwhelming pink to look back at the girl in front of me.
“Well,” she said.
“Right,” I replied, scratching the back of my neck as I looked off. “I’m uh, sorry for being mean.”
She huffed and walked over to her bed. “That wasn’t a very good apology,” she chastised.
“Okay, seriously though I am sorry for pissing you off and saying something like that. I saw you and Silver Spoon talking at Sugarcube Corner, and I was a total dick when I said that to you. So yeah, I’m sorry,” I said as I took a step towards her.
She continued to look me over with a harsh glare, before it suddenly just disappeared. “Alright,” she said.
“What? Just like that you aren’t mad anymore?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not like you were wrong. My only friend in the whole wide world left, and daddy is never here so I’m alone and don’t have anypony to talk to. School is just going to be terrible now.” Okay now she looked to be heading towards that teary place that I really didn’t want her to be in.
“Well I mean, you aren’t really alone, Steel and I live here, and you have all of these servants around all the time,” I said, trying to steer her off in some other direction.
She just rolled her eyes at my words. “Servants can’t really be your friends, and I know you two don’t even like me. Don’t even try to lie about that.”
I was just about to do exactly that, and I was sure that I could convince her that I was on her side, but something just felt wrong about it. I continued to look at her, standing there, her big eyes telling me that she was vulnerable right now and on the edge of just breaking down. I had to give it to her for not already having broken into tears, she was definitely stronger willed than I had at first given her credit for.
“Fine,” I said after a moment. “You aren’t exactly my favorite pony, but I am willing to give being friendly acquaintances a try. Plus your father would probably have me out on the street again if I wasn’t willing to go that far.”
She smiled at that. “Yes, daddy might do something like that.” She gave a laugh that made me uncertain as to if she was actually joking.
“Heh,” I laughed along, before I extended a hoof into the space between us. “Acquaintances then?” I asked.
She looked at my hoof for a few seconds, before she cautiously reached towards it with her own. “I suppose we are.”