He got one of the stupid mustaches.
“It’s funny!” he protested as we walked through the midway.
“It’s stupid,” I countered.
“You’re just jealous,” he said, his nose in the air, “because you didn’t have the skill necessary required to attain such a glorious prize as this.” He stroked his mustache slowly. “It is, after all, a most prestigious accoutrement to mine beautiful, beautiful face.” He raised an eyebrow at me and put on a Very Serious Expression.
“Acc- D-did you seriously say accoutrement?” I sputtered. “It’s a fake novelty mustache, it doesn’t deserve to be described with words like ‘accoutrement’!”
“Like I said,” he smirked, “jeeeaaalooouuus.”
I suppose it wouldn’t’ve been so bad if it’d matched his mane. Aegis’s mane and tail were this beautiful, rich blue. So did he get something that actually matched that? Like a burgundy, or a soft purple? Nooooooo. You know what he went with? Hot pink, of all things. Hot frigging pink. And it wasn’t a classy mustache, either; he naturally went for the bushiest, wiriest walrus mustache he could find, probably the least classy one available. I suppose I should count myself lucky that they didn’t have any Fu Manechu ones.
“Right,” I said dryly. “Because I, a mare, am soooo jealous that I don’t have a mustache, a facial feature that only appears on stallions.”
“Naturally,” said Aegis. He stroked the mustache again. “It has always been there, you see. An eternal, simmering resentment from the female persuasion. An envy of this, the most magnificent of physical features. It has driven wars, toppled civilizations, brought low the most powerful of leaders. Indeed, Celestia and Luna even now plot to place the mustache on mares. It is an insidious plan that has been woven throughout the centuries, leaving its hoofprints in every single major event in Equestrian history.”
I snorted in amusement. How could someone be this eloquent in this situation? “That’s it. It’s driven you mad with power.” I held out a hoof. “Give me the mustache and nopony gets hurt.”
Aegis’s eyes went wide and he flailed his hooves melodramatically. “No! No! Anything but that! I want the ‘stache! I need the ‘stache!”
“You can’t handle the ‘stache!”
We held a gaze for maybe a moment. Then we both burst out laughing. At ourselves, at the other, at our stupidity. In hindsight, it wasn’t all that funny; just playing up the seriousness of a fake mustache. But then? It felt like one of the funniest things in the world.
I regained my breath before him. “Seriously, though,” I said, my voice level again, “can you please shut up about it? You can keep it, just stop talking about it. It was funny at first, now it’s just annoying.”
“Kinda figured that,” Aegis said, peeling off his mustache. “I just wanted to indulge a little. Mustaches are cool.” He tossed the fake one into a nearby trash can.
“So why don’t you grow one yourself?”
“Can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried, but my facial hair never gets thick enough or long enough for a good mustache. Gets maybe half an inch long, what would be stubble on most other ponies, then just stops growing. Looks terrible, feels really itchy.”
“Bummer. At least I can grow my mane out if I want to.”
Aegis shrugged. “It’s not that bad. Besides, when I was in the Royal Guard, they didn’t let you have mustaches anyway.”
A-ha. I was right about him being a guard. And he talked in the past tense; I was right about him being a former guard, too. Well, probably. I thought I’d ask him. “I thought you were a guard.”
“Really?” Aegis twitched all over a little. “What made you think that?”
“C’mon, look at you,” I scoffed, waving a hoof up and down his body. “You’ve got the haircut, the muscle, everything. And you’re not quite bulky enough to be in the Guard right now. So I’m guessing you were in the Guard, but left semi-recently. Right?”
“Niceeeee,” whispered Aegis, a grin plastered on his face. “You’re sharp.”
“And your name. Welded Aegis? That’s a guard’s name if ever there was one.”
Aegis’s grin turned from an impressed one to a sheepish one, and he laughed a little. “Blame my dad. He’s from a long line of guardsponies, and he nudged me a little to join the Guard. And I really mean ‘nudged a little’, not anything like forcing me. So that might’ve been him trying to push me that way.”
I frowned. “Naming your kid that to push him into a job sounds kinda-”
“No, nonono,” Aegis said, vigorously shaking his head. “He was really open about me going to other jobs. He wasn’t one of those dads who said, ‘You’re joining the Guard, and that’s final.’ Yeah, part of the reason I joined the Guard was to make him happy, but it also was something that interested me, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.” He shrugged.
“Oh.” I squinted at him. “You’re being awfully open about this, considering you barely know me.”
Aegis laughed and shrugged again. “After tonight, I’ll never see you again. And you’re never going to see me again. Are you really gonna care? What’re you gonna do with it?”
He had a point. That was, after all, the reason I told him about my desire to win a giant plush manticore.
“Besides,” he continued, “it’s not really that private. Really, it’s just, ‘my dad wanted me to be a royal guard, so I became one’.” He shrugged yet again. “What’s so bad about sharing that?” He glanced around. “Let’s keep moving. Keep the blood in our legs flowing. And let’s stick to the midway, maybe we’ll find something else you’ll be willing to try.”
“Alright.” As we started walking, I asked, “So, if you don’t mind me asking, why’re you a former royal guard? What made you quit?”
Aegis opened his mouth, then paused. “Tell you what. Agree to tell me what you do when I’m done, and I’ll tell you.”
That was an easy decision. “Deal.”
“Well, it’s…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “To be honest, after a while, I just, I never really felt like I was doing anything. Like, for starters, Celestia doesn’t really need bodyguards all that much. Either she can handle herself just fine, or something that can take her out…” His voice trailed off.
“Would take you out even quicker,” I finished.
“Yeah,” Aegis said morosely.
“But what about keeping the peace in the rest of Equestria?”
“There’s been peace in Equestria for a loooooong time, and it hasn’t needed the Royal Guard to enforce it. Sure, there’s been pockets of conflict, tribal supremacists and that sort of thing, but I was never assigned to that. The last time I encountered anything major, Tirek was loose, and…” He cringed.
“Ooo. Harsh.”
“Yeah. Took my magic, ran off, and I was just left sitting there until he was defeated. Kinda disillusioned my whole view of the Guard as this…” Aegis theatrically waved a hoof around. “…grand job. So once my term of service was up, I just quit and decided to do something else.”
“What’d your dad think?”
“He was just glad I’d been in the Guard at all, so he didn’t care. He was even supportive when I said I wanted to go into the arts.”
Wait, what? I stopped walking and stared at Aegis. He was a few steps beyond me by the time he realized I’d halted. He looked over his shoulder and frowned at me. “What?”
“You’re going straight from the Royal Guards to being an artist?” I asked, a smile creeping onto my face. “That’s… that’s kind of a jump, don’t you think?”
Aegis narrowed his eyes a little. “Something wrong with that?”
“No, no, not at all,” I said, walking up to him, “it’s just…” I giggled a little. “I’m getting an image of this massive, musclebound stallion with this over-the-top name, Glorious Galvanization or something, with a pencil-thin mustache and one of those tiny hats Prench artists always seem to wear, standing in front of a blue canvas, screaming out, ‘It’s a metaphor for the depressive undercurrents of society, maggots!’ in a deep voice at the ponies looking at it.” I giggled again. “Kinda silly, don’t you think?”
As we began walking again, Aegis thought about it for a moment, then he started chuckling as well. “Okay, I’ll give you that. And that hat’s a beret.”
“Wait, that’s a beret? I thought berets were those lopsided hats you sometimes see in the Guard.”
“Those’re also berets. Just a different style.”
“But the Prench caps have that little sticky-uppy thing in the middle that looks really stupid.” I placed a hoof above my head and made an upward-flicking movement to demonstrate. “The military caps don’t have those.”
“Still berets.”
“They can’t be berets! Berets are way cooler than that!”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong. But they’re berets.”
I sighed. “Fine.”
“Anyway, I’m actually on my way to college to study the arts,” Aegis said. “Up in Manehattan. I was passing through here on the train, wanted to stretch my legs a little, and…” He coughed. “Well, I’m procrastinating a bit. I barely have enough time as it is, but if I get on the train at 10, I should have enough time.”
“College you picked looks good?”
“Oh, definitely. Pretty wide range of topics, and I’ve only heard good things about it. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. Anyway, that’s my story. What’s yours?”
“Greengrocer.”
We kept walking in silence until Aegis nudged me in the ribs. “C’mon, you can’t just leave it there. I told you more, you tell me more.”
I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning a little at the same time. “Alright. My family’s pretty much generational farmers. My parents farmed, my mom’s parents farmed, I farm, and chances are, my kids’ll farm, too. We’ve got a lot of land out near Halterdale where we grow our crops to sell.”
“Hang on… isn’t Halterdale like an hour away from here?”
“More or less.”
“Why’d you come all the way out here?”
“Oh, it’s just kind of a tradition of mine. Don’t ask why.”
“Aight.”
“Anyway, yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty much it. My family grows and sells food, and’s been doing that for generations. Kinda boring, I know, but…”
“Hey, it’s not boring. Food’s gotta come from somewhere, right? Is you work hard?”
I noncommittally wiggled a hoof. “Some ponies might find it hard. I don’t. There’s a lot of it, but no, I don’t think it’s hard.” Then a few memories made me flatten my ears and lower my voice to an almost-growl. “Except when it’s downpouring and you need to make sure the fields’re draining properly so they don’t get swamped. That’s…” I groaned.
“So how do you make the plants grow? Earth pony magic? My dad, he was an earth pony and had way more of a green hoof than my mom did — she was a unicorn.”
“Yeah, that’s part of it.”
Aegis started looking at me curiously. “How does that work? I keep hearing about earth pony magic in this or that book, but the authors never really go into it.”
“Lemme guess: authors were unicorns?”
“Never checked, but probably.”
“Well, it’s…” I kneaded the ground beneath my hooves. “It’s… kinda hard to explain. I kinda just will the plants to grow. And neither Mom nor Dad told me how to do it, so I guess it’s instinctive.”
“Do you feel any different when you do it? Like, tingly in the hooves or anything?”
“Not really, no.”
“Hmm. I don’t know about other unicorns, but my horn-” Aegis pointed at it. “-feels a bit tingly when I use magic.”
“Oh.”
We walked in silence for a few more moments, then Aegis glanced at me. “What, that, that’s it?”
“What’s it?”
“You’re just gonna let all that magic stuff just slide?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why?”
“Well, it’s…” Aegis waved his hooves around. “You’re not the least bit interested in how unicorn magic works?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on! Not even a little?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged again. “It’s just something unicorns do, like my magic’s just something I do, and flying’s just something pegasi do. I don’t see anything all that special about it just because I can’t do it.”
“Not even a little?”
“Magic’s pretty much the feature of unicorns. It’s kinda well-known. Maybe if your horns taste like candy or something, I’d be interested, since that’s not well-known, but I know practically everything I need to know about unicorns through sheer cultural osmosis.”
“Cultural osmosis?”
“Through the grapevine.”
“Oh.”
We kept walking in silence for another few moments.
Aegis coughed. “So, um, since I’m curious about the magic of other types of ponies, do you think you can tell me about yours?”
“Well, I can try…”