Apropos of the Sinners

by SpitFlame

Introduction – Chapter IV – The Second Wife

Eight years following Stardust Gleam’s suicide, Bronze Pocket remarried another mare, a pegasus named Petal Breeze. He took his second wife from a very young age, from the far north of Equestria, where he happened to have gone off to for some contracting business. Bronze Pocket, though he led a drunken and debauched life, never stopped investing his capital, and always managed his deals successfully, though of course almost always somewhat shabbily.

Petal Breeze was a little orphan, left without relations in early childhood, when she was found by her benefactress. This benefactress—an old mare from the olden days of Canterlot high society—was also Petal’s mistress, even her tormentress: a miserable pawnbroker, a wealthy hoarder, the widow of a general from long ago, some say she was almost as insufferable as Bronze Pocket. You would think the two were made for each other, gloomy enough as it is to think that.

Nevertheless, Petal was a meek, gentle, uncomplaining mare—who once was quickly taken out of a noose that she had hung up in a cloud. It was nearly impossible for her to endure the depressing and eternal nagging of the old mare, who was apparently not even trying to hide her wickedness in public. Bronze Pocket felt an utter infatuation with Petal, who at the time was a teenager nearing her coming of age. He was a sensualist, who for the longest time had been a depraved admirer only of the coarser kind of beauty and attractive finesse. But Petal’s sheer innocence was too great to resist, and her pathetic eyes cut his soul like a razor. He hastily offered his hoof in marriage.

Most likely Petal would not have married Bronze Pocket for anything if she had learned more about him. But she was from a whole other city, psychologically tortured in her room every single day; she would have preferred to drown as an infant than stay with her pawnbroker of a benefactress. So the poor mare traded a benefactress for a benefactor husband.

The old hag was positively fuming upon learning of this inopportune decision. She lashed out at Petal for nearly a week before she was slated to move out to Ponyville, even hurting her quite badly. Bronze Pocket, with his sickly sweet, insolent eyes, cast a mocking glance at the benefactress on the pick-up day. He laughed, and sprayed saliva when doing so. He got no money, not a single bit, for this transaction; but that did not matter to him. Perhaps his obsession with Petal truly was only a sensual attraction.

Given the fact that he did not receive a single bit for taking the orphan mare home with him, he stood on absolutely no ceremony with his wife. He took advantage of the fact that she stood “guilty” before him, went on and on about how grateful she should be that a stallion like him would deign to save her life, taking advantage, besides that, of her extreme meekness. Young, promiscuous mares would gather in the house right in front of Petal every night, and orgies took place. All Bronze Pocket aimed to do was twist his wife, to revel in her shaking innocence, to see just how far he could push her. He would constantly force Petal into things she felt impossibly uncomfortable with. This young mare, who had been terrorized since childhood, developed a brain fever and died some years later, quite possibly the result of a mental breakdown.

Two years before dying, however, she bore Bronze Pocket his third child, a daughter this time, Airglow Sky, and unfortunately, for the rest of her life, Airglow struggled intensely to remember her mother. Not exactly a face, but just some sort of reminder, an abstraction, perhaps notes of her voice, or the scenery behind her, anything. It was strange to expect a two-year-old to remember their mother, whose name, incidentally, was never brought up in front of her.

Following Petal Breeze’s death the same thing happened with the daughter as with the two brothers: she was completely forgotten and tossed aside by her father, and wound up not set up for adoption, but living in the cottage of one of the servants. The pony who took her in only began serving Bronze Pocket six months after he married Petal Breeze. He was a withered old stallion, divorced from his wife many decades past. This servant’s name was Shovel Rod: a gloomy, obstinate, and frankly stupid earth pony, whose position at the time resembled something between a serf and a butler, albeit a poorly treated one. There are many words to be said about Shovel Rod, but perhaps now is not the best time. We will get to his brief history later on.