The sharp click of my hooves against the cobblestone road is accentuated by the steady beat of the other ponies around me. There aren’t many, but they are there, like the trees in a park, and just as forgettable. They aren’t important, background noise to fill a void, a single board of a raft upon which I keep myself afloat. The ring of silver shoes on the street has always had a soothing quality to my ear.
It is still early in the evening, the dim sun near the horizon and casting long shadows over the street. Or it would have if not for the thick clouds smothering the world in a horrid, uniform grey, only the light from the tall streetlamps lining the avenue providing the world any color.
The pedestrians pass me by at a trot, heading this way and that. I wonder at where they are headed, try to imagine what they are thinking. That chubby mare with her mane in a bun to hide the fullness of her cheeks. Where is she headed? Home, to a husband too attached to the past to not see what she has grown into, or did she give up early with only a pet to warm her bed at night?
What of that stallion over there, with the thinning mane and chipped shoes? Is he going out to see his mistress, or did he have the dignity to leave his wife before seeking another’s bed?
I scoff under my breath and return my attention to the ground at my hooves. They should be ashamed of themselves, despicable. Better to hide away from the world, save others from having to bear witness to their decrepit lives.
It is only when the last light of the sun disappears, that I stop to realize how lost I am. The street is wholly unfamiliar to me, the buildings indistinguishable from each other in the oppressive grey.
Canterlot has been my home for almost as long as I can remember, but that is meaningless here. My entire life, I’d never left my comfort zone, never straying beyond the theater district or bazaar or a few other select places. Worse, I never walked to any of them. This street, this part of the city may as well be Trottingham for all I recognize it. Indeed the only landmark I can find is the Castle just visible over the lowest roof tops. But that means little. Without the sun in the sky, I have no inclination of its direction.
I’d call the street a slum, but that’s not right. The poorest sections of Canterlot are on par with the richest in some cities. There is no trash clogging the gutters, nor graffiti marring the sides of the buildings, even the dark alleys are clear of debris and vagrants. More than enough light radiates from the tall streetlamps, keeping away the worst of the creeping shadows of night.
It’s then that I notice the lack of sound, only the clip clop of my own hooves trying futilely to fill the void left by the lack of other ponies.
What an odd feeling it is to be completely alone. To stand still in a street, amid the darkness and the glow of streetlamps. To turn an ear and not hear a single equine sound beyond one’s own breathing and heartbeat. I feel it should be more worrisome, more panic inducing, as though I should be running back to find somepony, anypony to keep me company.
The first drop of rain strikes my ear, and I flinch. On something like instinct, I glance up just in time for another to strike my nose. Before I can do much else, those two drops become hundreds, all striking my back and head.
Like a sign from Princess Luna herself, I see my salvation from the storm.
It’s inconspicuous, the building, I don’t think I would have noticed were any others to turn their lights on. The sign above the stairs, writ like chalk upon a black board, reads Tabula Rasa. The stairs themselves lead down half a flight to a door beneath street level. It is not incredibly uncommon for establishments to be so designed, though it reeks of lower class fare.
With the rain starting to come down in earnest, and nowhere else to go, I make my way down the stairs.
The door opens to my magic and I slip inside just as the drizzle turns into a genuine rain. The stallion at the door greets me, but I can’t summon the energy to really care.
The whole establishment seems darker, even, than it had been outside. Every wall has a black cherry finish over ebon wood with chandeliers carrying wax candles to provide a warmth those modern firefly lamps can not contend with. It is a place of brooding solitude, but that sounds a bit harsh to my ear. It seems to promote an isolated privacy so profound that it could be filled, shoulder to shoulder with ponies, and, should I wish it, I would notice their presence no more than if I were at home, in the solitude of my own bedchamber.
I can’t help but feel that this place was not designed to be enjoyed, but rather to be a blank, to remove the lingering impression left behind by any other… like sorbet.
Better than the rain at least.
The door pony says something more, but I don’t catch it and state simply that I will sit at the bar before continuing as though he did not exist. I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t stand the thought to suffer small talk and the empty pleasantries that such a thing would require of me.
The bar is darker than the walls, obsidian polished to a mirror shine. It makes the white coated bartender seem to glow, and I wonder what it does for my own coat. Behind him there is an array of drinks ranging from high end liquor to higher end wine—this is Canterlot, after all, no matter the lower class area—and a mirror is there as well, all but obscured behind the bottles.
My magic shifts through my mane in a vain attempt to straighten the rat’s nest and force out the little rain that it absorbed.
“What’s your pleasure?” the bartender asks as I sit, his voice an odd mixture of rough and cultured, like he scoured his throat with liquor every morning before taking speech lessons.
I point to a bottle of Caberneigh, a 933. A decent enough vintage to chase away the chill left by the rain, and, if I’m lucky, everything else.
He retrieves the bottle as I watch. The way his muscles shift beneath his coat, the way his golden aura leaks from the spirals of his horn, how he doesn’t even notice me as he pours the first glass and leaves the bottle as he goes to attend another patron.
I finish the first glass, not tasting the wine at all, and pour myself a second.
It is only as I bring the second glass to my lips that I catch sight of the mare seated beside me.
How I missed her, I’ll never know. She is in a slick, almost streamlined dress running tight over a sharp cerulean coat. It gives her the impression of constant movement, of flying even as she remains in her stool. But it is her mane that steals my eye. Six streaks of color, a waterfall of rainbows frozen just before it would crash against the dark wood bar. She stares broodingly at her own glass of wine. On second glance, I notice that her dress is ruffled and wrinkled, with spots of brown and black, there is a tear in her sleeve, wings loose at her sides and feathers ruffled.
As my eyes take her in, traveling up and down her form, I’m certain that I recognize her, though I can not place where. She has to be a model or a designer, potentially both, but her cutie mark is covered, and that wasn’t my first glass of wine. I focus on her foreleg and realize that I must be mistaken. No, she is not a model, perhaps she has appeared in a magazine, but her build is all wrong for modeling. The lack of a hooficure should have been a dead giveaway.
I begin to sip at my second glass as I study her.
She is dressed up and not a little. Her make up is the work of an expert and her mane, I get a distinct impression that it is not normally so tidy, indeed, even as I watch, her hoof moves in to muss the flowing locks, creating a much more rough and tumble look that is somehow more right. Between that, her dress, her presence here seemingly alone, and the way she is staring at the nearly untouched glass of wine before her, I make the only logical conclusion that I can.
She planned on being here tonight no more than I did.
I pour a third glass.
She is gorgeous, though. No, handsome is a better word. Gorgeous is something crafted with love and care, a result of dedicated effort, like an artist’s painting or sculpture. I am gorgeous, yes?
No, hers is a more natural thing, like the waterfalls beneath Canterlot, all rough, sharp edges, weakness worn away by the constant assault of elements until all that remains is the more durable bedrock beneath. I’d seen such before, but almost universally in the older guards serving their last few years before retirement. It would be disconcerting to see such on a mare so many years my junior, it would if I did not find it inexplicably captivating.
I have to force myself to look away. My eyes return to the mirror, and the unpainted mare staring back at me. I scowl at her before dropping my gaze and lifting my glass.
What draws me to speak, I haven’t a clue. Any other day I’m sure I would have not said a word. I would have finished my bottle, perhaps had a second, however long it took before the rain subsided, then left. It is possible I feel sorry for her, or my curiosity is getting the better of me, or I’m simply too tipsy to care, or, and this almost frightens me, I see…
I notice the bottle that sits next to her glass and read the label. Without a thought in my head I take it in my magic—along with her glass—and pour the contents down the sink behind the bar.
“What the hay!” she shouts, her voice as craggy as the falls she reminds me of. Her head raises, turns toward me, and I see a guttering fire in her eyes. “I was drinking that!”
I refill her glass with the last dregs of my own wine and hold it up for her to take. “Then you should be thanking me from saving you from that swill. If you do not find this far superior vintage more to your liking I will buy you two bottles to replace that one.”
“Look, lady, I did not come here to sample wines, I came here to get trashed.”
“Yes, I gathered as much.”
She continues to glare at me, and I match her with a confident smirk.
“Whatever,” she almost snorts as she snatches the flute with a hoof and tosses it back in a single, gratuitous gulp that makes me cringe. Her eyes turn up as her tongue swirls behind her lips as though searching her teeth for every drop of flavor. She shrugs. “It’s alright, but I don’t see what’s so much better about it.”
“Better?” I sputter. “What’s better is fifty years of age and a far superior grape! You may as well compare filtered water to drinking from a muddy stream!”
She weathers my lambasting with the dispassion of a seasoned professional. “What’s wrong with drinking from a stream?” she asks all too cheekily.
I reevaluate her. My comparison to the waterfalls was premature. More accurate would be a painted up rock face. Yes, that fits much better. She is like a nondescript boulder covered in paint to hide the blemishes. Whatever I thought I saw in her was part of the disguise. She is nothing but a crude, classless rube who has no place in Canterlot.
I ignore her and tap on the bar to get the bartender’s attention. He returns promptly as I say, “Please provide this mare with two bottles of whatever it was she was drinking and put the last one on my tab as well. Then bring me a bottle of the 954 Pal’mino Noir.”
The stallion nods dully as he follows my instructions, paying neither of us any attention beyond that.
“Oh, so now you’re going to give me the cold shoulder? Fine, whatever.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, though I’m not sure why. To my surprise, she answers.
“I already told you, trying to get wasted,” she says as she snatches the bottle away from the bartender and pours her own, “or I would be if some ponies would just leave me alone.”
“No. Why are you here, in Canterlot. You obviously don’t belong. And nopony gets that dressed up just to get ‘wasted.’”
“Why do you care?” she asks before throwing her head back and swallowing the entire glass, again.
“I don’t!” I hiss back and match her drink with my own, the wonderful flavors of the fifty year old wine failing to touch my tongue.
“Then why are you asking?”
“I don’t know!”
The echo filters into my ears as I realize that, yes, I did in fact scream loud enough for everypony to hear. I refuse to feel embarrassment, instead leveling a malevolent glare at any pony I catch staring at me. Once the general murmur of the restaurant resumes, I return to my own drink, pouring another glass.
She says something, but I don’t hear it.
I don’t care. I have no reason to. If she wants to be such a nag, that’s just fine with me. I have my own problems, and the last thing I need is to add hers on top of them.
I glance her way again, and she is giving me an expectant look.
"What?" I ask, my voice dull and lifeless.
"Are you okay?"
Yes, is what I want to say. I’m fine, just a little tipsy is all. I don’t need some rainbow maned hussy from nowhere with a ruffled mane and dirty dress trying to comfort or calm me down. Who do you think you are anyway?
I don’t, instead my hoof taps the bar again and I ask for my check. The rain be damned, I don’t want to be here anymore.
He rattles the amount and I reach for my bit purse, noting with some amusement the other mare’s wide eyed expression at the price; it’s probably more than she could ever hope to afford. It’s not there: my purse. My eyes close and my whole body slumps. Of course it isn’t; it’s on my dresser, beside my jewelry box. I didn’t take it because I didn’t get dressed because I wasn’t going anywhere, because I couldn’t stay in that house for another second.
I ask if they take credit, more out of reflex than hope. They don’t, of course. I tell him who I am and who my husband is. He shrugs, an annoyed look darkening his features. I ask if they have a phone—we’d just had one installed last month—so that I may have the bits brought. I can’t even muster a sigh when he shakes his head, a frown pulling on his lips.
I smile. It starts so small but quickly begins to stretch my whole muzzle. The situation is so absurd. Here I am, one of the richest ponies in Canterlot, unable to pay a bar-tab. Then the chuckles start, a single grunt that gives birth to a set of twins and avalanches until I’m shaking on my stool. Everypony is staring at me, but I don’t care; I’m used to being the center of attention.
I stop.
Before anypony can register what is happening, I take off, kicking off the bar and galloping for the exit. Why? It doesn’t matter. Best case, they call the guard and escort me home to retrieve the money, worst case doesn’t even bear considering.
The pony at the door notices a second too late and only half-imposes himself in my way. I check him with a wither and don’t even slow down. The door swings outward as I gallop into the pouring rain. I don’t stop to notice it. The moment I hit street level I turn, skidding on the cobblestone, nearly losing my hoofing, and dash off to the left.
I don’t know how long I ran, but I turned down three more streets before slowing to a stop. My lungs burned even as the icy cold of the rain penetrated my coat. More water seeps in as my haunches hit the soaked, dirty ground. Panting, my heart is going to explode any second, either that or break out—
“You’re pretty fast… for a prissy unicorn that is.”
“Wh—” I try to speak, but my voice fails for lack of air.
“And the way you tackled that stallion, I wouldn’t mind having you on my hoofball team.”
“I don’t— You—”
Is the extent of my articulation before I fall to my side, my barrel expanding and collapsing as I struggle to fill it with as much air as I can. And then I’m up, my neck draped over hers with a wing draped across my back.
“It’s not good to stop like that, you’ll give yourself cramps. Come on, we’ll walk it out until we can find someplace out of the rain.”
I want to protest, to berate her for violating my personal space so brazenly, but I can’t make myself do it. Already the chill is being chased away by her presence. Her wing, as waterproof as any pegasus’, protects me from the elements. I can not help but to lean against her as she leads me down the street.
She walks me a good distance down the road. By the time I started paying attention to anything outside the surprising warmth under her wing and the burning in my chest and lungs, we were in a park and walking under a small pavillion to escape the rain.