//------------------------------// // I - Snowball // Story: Mother Dearest // by Corejo //------------------------------// Principal Pursed Lip frowned at him over the large bifocals resting on her nose.  It had been minutes since he walked into the lacquered room and made to sit in the hard, wooden chair—a lot harder than it needed to be.  She hadn’t said a word since “come in.” He stared back at her, defiant.  He had done nothing wrong.  She should have been here, not him.  All he wanted was to go back to the quiet of his room and sleep. “So, Shadow,” Pursed Lip said.  “I was told you were fighting again today?”  Shadow ignored the question, continued staring.  Pursed Lip folded her hooves on her desk.  “You know we don’t tolerate violence here at Nickerberg.  That type of behavior is why you’re here in the first place.” The statement held no sway over Shadow.  His gaze was impassive, simmering. The phone on Pursed Lip’s desk rang.  She lit her horn and brought the phone to her ear.  “Yes?”  A nod, an “mmhmm,” and a “thank you, Red Cross” before hanging up.  She leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the desk, head on her hooves, staring at him. “That was the nurse,” she said.  “You broke poor Double Take’s nose, and—” “Good,” he said. She paused, as if surprised at the outburst, but continued.  “And you bit her ear off.”  Her voice changed to one of iron. He gave her the same death glare he had given Double Take.  The taste of copper still lingered on his tongue, and part of him wanted to spit it in the principal’s face.  “Those were my carrots.” She shook her head.  “Shadow, how many times do I have to tell you?  Violence is not the answer.  I don’t care if she tried to steal your carrots.” “They were my carrots!” “Then you should tell her not to take them from you, not—” “You tell her not to!” “Shadow...”  She stared at him as a mother would a bad foal.  Her weary eyes, the tiredness in her voice said all he needed to know.  “I can’t keep seeing you like this.  You have to learn not to hurt other ponies.” “Well she needs to learn not to take things from me!”  He stood up in his chair. “Sit down, Shadow.”   Her voice had always commanded authority at Nickerberg, but Shadow would have none of it this time.  He remained standing, the fire in his eyes locked with the weariness in hers. She sighed.  His ears flattened instinctively.  He knew what was coming next.  It always came next. She stood up from her desk and strode out front.  As she passed him, she lit her horn, grabbing him about the neck, yanking him off the chair and then dragging him—hooves scraping against the floor—out into the hallway. They passed the dingy, branching doors of classrooms, through the connecting hall, and beyond the dormitories.  Little heads peeked out, silent as mice. She turned a corner, where a large steel door shoved aside what little whitewashed concrete the hallway had for a dead end.  It glowed blue and swung open on rusty hinges. Shadow felt himself lift off the ground and tumble through the air.  He landed face first on a hard, lumpy cushion.  The door behind him provided the only light in the room, and he stared out at the silhouette of Principal Pursed Lip.  The wedge of light narrowed, closing over her silhouette, until a slam of metal plunged the room into darkness. He gazed into the nothingness around him, waiting for his eyes to adjust.  Slowly, the white padded walls came into focus, and he noticed a figure sitting in the corner—not by seeing it, but rather by the cushion he couldn’t see behind it. It stood—another colt—and walked toward him.  Almost in hoof’s reach, he stopped, and he could see the slightest shimmer of light in his eyes. “Hey, Inkling,” Shadow said. “Hey, Brother,” Inkling replied.  The darkness beneath the eyes grew lighter like the cushions behind him, as if Shadow were looking through a hole in Inkling’s face—a smile. It had been a while since he had seen Inkling.  Principal Pursed Lip must have forgotten he was already in here. “Nothing to worry about, right?” Inkling said.  The tone of his voice carried a cheerful attitude he couldn’t help but accept. He smiled back.  “Yeah.” He looked around at the padded walls and ceiling, and then spun about, making himself comfortable as he lay down.  Inkling lay next to him, the heat of his body staving off the room’s chill.  Shadow felt him take a deep breath and settle in for a nap, and he did the same. Here, it was silent, which, he supposed, was exactly what he wanted. ≈≈≈×≈≈≈ Hope couldn’t understand what was wrong with Snowball.   Roselily and Mom always said that cats did whatever they felt like whenever they felt like it, but Snowball would never just up and run away—not like this.  Sure, he ran away when she forgot to leave food out during their family vacation last year, but he was resourceful enough to snatch all the fish out of Roselily’s aquarium before somehow breaking out of the house and terrorizing Mrs. Petal’s koi pond.  She’d never be forgiven for that.  It was odd he hadn’t come around by now.  Dinner was his favorite time of day.  And woe upon her if it wasn’t ready by eight o’ clock on the dot. “Mooooom, I still can’t find Snowball!” she said, pulling her head out from beneath the dining room table. “Did you check the basement?” Mom called from upstairs. Hope rolled her eyes.  Of course she did.  That was the first place she checked.  ‘From the bottom up’ as she had always been taught.  “Yeah!” “Well, what about the Petals’—” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll go check!”  She stomped across the living room for the front door, but Snowball wouldn’t be there, of course.  They would have heard Mrs, Petal’s screams and the swish of her broom by now.  She threw on her scarf, stepped out onto the screened-in porch, and sighed, watching her breath curl away in the frostbitten air.  Where in Equestria could he have gone?  He wasn’t on the porch, and the dead of winter was no time for a cat to be out on his own. Half the chairs and tables on the porch were still overturned from her earlier search, leaving the place looking like it had been ransacked by masked criminals.  Hope smirked as she opened the screen door.  Maybe he had been catnapped.  That’d be an interesting ransom to get in the mail.  It’d be on thick paper with magazine letters glued to it.  Leave 10 million bits beneath the Delamare Bridge by sunset or you’ll never see your precious Snowball again.  She chuckled.  Nah… they wouldn’t think he’d be worth that much, not the way she sometimes treated him. She was a good caretaker.  Well, sort of.  He might have been better off feral, though.  Forgetfulness (or was it laziness?) ran in the family, and his kingly schedule didn’t mesh well with that sort of thing.  And yeah, that vacation oopsie-daisie probably wouldn’t be her last.  She found herself at the front gate and shook away the daydream.  She undid the latch, then looked out into the snowdrifts collecting along the street.  Well, time to find him the hard way. ≈≈≈×≈≈≈ Delamare wasn’t the largest city in Equestria.  Canterlot and Manehattan vied for that honor.  But it was respectable when it came to a standard of living—best known for its many sprawling suburbs, East Germane among them.  It couldn’t hold a candle to Upper Clydesburg, but Hope had called it home all her life.  She would have killed herself had she grown up in a place as hoity-toity as Upper Clydesburg.  The name alone made her gag.  No, the more down-to-Equestria streets of East Germane and its snow-laden garden hedges and picket fences won out in the end.  Home sweet home. “Snowball!” she called into the open air.  “Snowbaaall!”   A pair of colts on bicycles passed by, staring.  Further down the street, one whispered something behind a hoof to the other, and he shot a glance over his shoulder at her.  She stared back, brow raised.  Since when was looking for a lost pet so weird? She looked at her side.  Oh, right.  One wing.  She rolled her eyes, then frowned at the colts.   So what if she only had one wing?  Big whoop.  A stupid reason to stare.  She raised a leg to chase after them, give them a piece of her mind. No.  Snowball.  Snowball first.  She shook her head, looking around.  The crunch of the colts’ bikes turned and disappeared down Malton, leaving her with no other answer to her call.  No surprise there.  Snowball had never been very vocal, especially when mad at her.  The little guy was probably following, waiting for her to get frustrated before popping out all cool and suave-like.  He was a vengeful little kitten. “Can’t say I’ve seen any pets wandering around here, Miss,” said an elderly stallion sweeping the afternoon’s snowfall from his sidewalk. Hope smiled at him, though strained.  “Thanks.”   Helpful but unfortunate information.  Though it was already dark out, which would undoubtedly make spotting a white cat in the snow next to impossible, nopony could miss the tinkling of Snowball’s bell.  Maybe he had gone south on Barleyton instead.  She chuckled.  Like a cat would stop to look at the street signs to see which direction he was running away to.  With little to go on, she shrugged and followed her gut. Barleyton was a hub street.  Many of the other roads in the suburb crossed paths or at least in some way ended up leading to it, making it a prime stop for anypony in need of groceries or any sort of odd or end.  For all his cunning, Snowball had probably found his way to Watercress, the fishmonger, at the far end—a rougher stallion who wasn’t afraid to deal with the winged and clawed inhabitants of Little Gryphaly across the river.   The Water’s Crest was infamous for those hot, summer days when the weather decided it was his turn to be upwind of all of Barleyton.  Only Watercress and the gryphons he dealt with seemed immune to the stench.  He must have been something else to shrug off that kind of nasty.  He’d probably even add Snowball to the list of today’s deals if he caught him, for all she knew.  She started walking a little faster. Barleyton bustled with more ponies than usual for a weekday evening.  (It was still evening no matter what anypony said.  Eight o’ clock was not nighttime, no matter how dark.)  Often, the busier hours came in the mid-afternoon, when everypony left work, before the sun set and took its warmth with it.  But cheer hung thick in the air.  The streetlamps flickered overhead, and the shops lining the street glowed with their own warm lights so as to beckon in shivering customers.  Garlands and wreaths hung from the lampposts, and foalish laughter bounced overhead.   It always got this way around Hearth’s Warming, but the lack of wind seemed to have coaxed the holiday shoppers out early.  Couldn't blame them.  The temperature often fell well below freezing this time of year, and Old Mare Winter so loved her biting winds. Cinnamon and wintergreen dominated the scents wafting through the street.  Hope breathed it in to the bottoms of her lungs, letting her eyes flutter shut for a moment and envision hot cocoa and oatmeal cookies.  Little Bite’s Bakery was packed to the brim as she passed its well-worn brick and mortar.  No way Snowball would be in there, as much as she wished.  It would be nice to get out of the cold, find him, and grab a treat as a reward all in one swoop.  But life never fell that neatly into place.  Snowball hated crowds. Just past the Saddle Street intersection, where the nice, rustic brick turned to pavement, Hope kept her eyes peeled.  There were fewer ponies about, meaning Snowball might be hiding in a nearby alleyway. “Snowball!” she cried.  Some of the closer ponies ducked or were otherwise startled. “Don’t you be throwing any of those around here, young lady.”  An elderly mare in a plaid winter coat glared at her.  Hope frowned back.  Like she was the sort to start that kind of mischief.  She strutted past the mare with as little holiday cheer as she could muster. The Water’s Crest, a little further down, didn’t have its display outside like he usually did.  Some weird gryphon culture thing, bringing everything in at sunset, apparently.  Normally, Watercress braved the weather—hot or cold—for the sake of his clients, to bargain in the open air of the street.  But as the stars shone above, he had taken his business indoors, where he shifted between customers on the other side of the large store window.  They were all, as expected, gryphons. She stopped outside the door, looking in, unable to enter.  Warm air drifted out to kiss her frost-nipped nose, inviting, despite the powerful stench of fish and feathers.  Another stench pervaded the air.  Dingy, heavy, it landed somewhere between sweat and something else.  The fishmonger’s piercing eyes seemingly glared at every one of his customers at once, his grossly long handlebar moustache poised to leap off his face and throttle any would-be thieves.  She labeled the smell distrust and left it at that.  The vibe he gave off chilled to the bone more than the winter weather on her back.  Nah, Snowball wouldn’t have gone in there with that madpony. Hope turned on her heels to head back the other way.  Though she didn’t expect to run smack into somepony else. “I’m so sorry,” she heard herself say instinctively, a hoof raised to the bump on her forehead.  She had conked it pretty good. It would swell big time without ice.  She looked up to see the other pony. He didn’t seem much fazed by the collision.  Tall.  Dark brown.  Scraggly.  His cheekbones sat hollow beneath sunken eyes, the ridge of his muzzle far thinner than any stallion’s she had met before.  He swayed with a slow wind that had picked up, as if he had neither the weight nor the strength to brave it.  How he hadn’t already frozen to death wearing such a ragged coat was beyond her.  It looked like a strip of cloth two stray dogs had fought over. She bit her lip, stepping back.  His eyes took her in, their icy color running up and down her figure, briefly stopping where wing should have started.  It lasted no more than a second before they shifted back and forth about him.  His head drooped, and he didn’t say a word. “Um…”  She shrank away, giving him a half-smile in hopes that he might soften up.  He hardly noticed, his eyes still darting every which way.  He had a pair of saddlebags, one of them full.  Practically bulging.  His eyes again landed on her momentarily, and he shifted to hide the bag from view. “Excuse me,” he said, almost inaudibly. “No, it was my fault,” Hope said, stressing her etiquette, her wing half spreading for effect.  Celestia knew, he was probably one of those creepers from Neighton, at the west end of Delamare.  Mom only ever had one thing to say about those ponies: keep an eye on them, and never get on their bad side.  “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”   She tried giving him another smile, but realized he was staring her in the eyes.  The air fell still, but a chill rushed across her body. The stallion continued to stare unblinking in the silence that had taken hold, as if there wasn’t another living being within a hundred miles.  Hope took another step back, feeling that he was somehow advancing on her, though he hadn’t taken a step.  His presence seemed to surround her, the shadows of the darkened street enveloping and trapping her in his gaze. He stepped forward, slow, observational—like he was afraid she might try and attack him at any moment.  He took another timid step before darting off down the street. It wasn’t until he had turned the corner that she allowed herself a breath, a hoof up to her chest.  Never come down to this end of Barleyton again.  Noted.  Got it.  Thanks, mom.  She allowed herself a sigh and a re-settling of her feathers before heading home. “Snowball!” she cried. ≈≈≈×≈≈≈ He watched her go.  Behind the alleyway dumpster he had waited, listened to her calling out for her ‘snowball.’  When she passed, he crept out, eyes transfixed.  Graceful, elegant, captivating like a cherished memory.  The way her seafoam-green tail danced in the wind brought a smile to his face.  How such a pretty mare could still be so in such a world.  She must have been younger than she looked. He shook away the thought.  He had to get home, and the crowds were sure to be scrying. The coat about his shoulders did little to stave off the chill that cut through to the bone, but the numbness was merely an old friend.  He stole down a side street, for the bridge leading to Neighton.   The lamplight became sparse on the other side—neglect, not scarcity.  Figures stood beneath the blown-out lamps, their eyes glimmering with distant lights, lips dancing with words not meant for outsider ears.  Their eyes crawled across his back.  They all stared—they always did—but they stayed away.  Only their eyes bothered him.  Itches he couldn’t scratch.  They couldn’t see what he carried in the darkness. It was long past twilight when he made it to Turin Street.  The chill of the drifting snow had numbed his ankles, but he would be in from it soon.  Shadow to shadow, head down, eyes up.  The snow crunched louder than gravel and broken glass.  Two ponies walked the far side of the street.  One small.  One big.  They weren’t looking. The light post was out in front of his house.  He smiled briefly as he stole up to his stoop.  Key.  Lock.  A long creak—open, shut.  Silence. He pressed his ear against the door.  The wind howled outside, slow and solemn.  His muscles relaxed, and the rough wood against his face as he slid to the floor.  Safe at last. A moment’s rest.  He could afford no more.  He headed for the back room, heartbeat rising.  Their prying eyes couldn’t reach him here, but the eyes to come—that he wanted watching—held power greater than he ever wished to feel. He slipped through the door, and off came his saddlebags.  The single bulging pouch began to jerk and twitch, its contents pushing out against the ragged canvas, hissing like a lit fuse.  He paid it no mind, instead focused on drawing the curtains.  The thick material blocked out the light of the full moon and its mare, leaving the fireplace to plunge the room into orange and yellow. He turned to the fussing bag, eyes now fixed upon it.  A swift motion undid the button, and he plunged his hoof inside.  He winced momentarily as he fished about, feeling the claws and fangs digging deep into his hoof. Its vengeful hisses meant nothing to him as he drew it out, raising it high.  The cat hissed louder, its paws a flurry of white, intent on tearing to ribbons any bit of flesh it could reach.  Still he ignored the pain, transfixed for a moment in time on the being he held in his hoof, how it struggled and raged.  A blink, and he remembered his place.   He shoved the cat to the ground, pinning it with his body weight.  Its cries became shrieks as he slowly crushed the life from its lungs.   Out came the blade, risen high above his head, and down it fell, without hesitation or remorse. Again.  Again.  The knife rose and fell, and with it the life he sought.  It poured over his hoof, spackled his face, filled the air with a metallic tang.  He didn’t stop until long after the movement ceased. He sat there in his room, his breaths ragged and heavy.  It was done.  Come dawn, she would know.  And that’s all that mattered. The stallion reclined his head, leaning back on his haunches for a deep sigh, the wet warmth on his face turning cold.  It would be a while before she asked again.  That alone made him smile. He gazed down at the mess beneath him, and he noticed a shimmer around its neck.  He reached for it, and as he touched it heard the jingle of a bell.   The sound took him by surprise.  He regarded the little silver bell, turning it over in his hoof before cutting away the collar.  He lifted it up to watch the flames dance upon its surface, but noticed a round, polished medallion beside it.  There it gleamed in the firelight, as if the glow came from within, and he couldn’t help but admire its simple beauty.  He turned it over, and his smile faded to curiosity. Etched in black: SNOWBALL The stallion turned it over in his hoof again, his gaze unfocusing.  He whispered, “Snowball…” Slowly, his eyes drifted from the medallion and into the living room, where they came to rest upon his front door and the one-winged mare somewhere beyond it.