• Published 31st Aug 2019
  • 3,366 Views, 152 Comments

Local - Seer



Twilight loves living in Ponyville, though the change is a little bigger than she'd first expected. But things like homesickness and dealing with the way everyone seems to stare and whisper are all just part of moving somewhere new.

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Night Owl - II

Okay, first off I want to apologise.

I don’t know if books have feelings, but I feel like assuming they definitely don’t might be unwise for a mare in my field of work. So yeah, I apologise for not writing in you for over a week. But I swear I had a good reason.

Rarity.

I’ve seen her nearly every day this week. We’ve been out to eat, she’s introduced me to her friends, taken me to the local clubs. She even gave me a makeover! I don’t think I’ve ever looked so good in all my life.

Needless to say she made good on her promise to come to talk to me at the library after that day when we first met. And it was like… her presence makes the town different. As soon as she walked in, bright eyed and calling my name in that sing-song way of hers, all the other ponies in the library seemed to brighten up. They spoke to me more but like, properly spoke to me. No more of that curt shop-talk from before.

They asked for my opinion on books, not just where they were. They asked about me, not just the library. It was like, maybe if you think of the town as some far-off island, then Rarity is a port. She’s the way by which you actually enter the new land.

No no, that sounds wrong. It was more like…

It was more like she’s a lighthouse. She guides you, she keeps you safe. And if you’re out at sea and all you can see for miles around is some far-off, high-up light ripping through the clouds… It’s as much terrifying as it is a lifeline. There’s something irresistible about lighthouses, but as much for the way they help you as their mystery.

And once you get to the shore you can look up and some of that mystery ebbs away but, like, it never truly goes, does it? Because then you look up and you see the high tower you can never go in and you can’t help but wonder…

Is it really just a big lamp up there? Is that the source of the light? Or is it something at once more beautiful and terrifying up there than you could ever imagine. And then you go to your new home and try to forget, if not for the light shining through your window every night from the beach.

It’s strange, but that feels like a more apt description of Rarity. Because she might have helped me more than I could express, she might be lovely and kind, someone who’s really trying to be my friend. But still, there’s something unknowable about her. It feels like she always has the upper hoof, always has an ace up her sleeve.

It’s intoxicating.

No wonder so many ponies in the town tend to gravitate to her. She bends that gravity because you always want… No, you always need to know more. You need to know what she knows, need to try to glimpse that mind as much as you can.

She took me out to a local cafe, Sunny Pastures, a couple of days back. And when we were eating and chatting, there’s this confidence she has. Every question I had was answered with a knowing glance, a strategically placed giggle, a wink to disarm. It felt more like sparring than talking at times.

No, that undermines the elegance of it. It was more like fencing. Like a dance where everyone is always trying to gain the upperhand. It was such a rush.

But, like, I also don’t wanna miss out how kind she is, how sweet. How she found out my favourite tea and bought me a lovely tea service as a moving-in present. Of course there’s that mystique to her, but she’s a real friend.

She’s been the best thing about moving here so far because… Well, when she’s not there…

It’s like that feeling you get when you know you’ve offended someone, but you also know that asking how you had done it would make things worse. There’s something about moving through the town. At times, it’s like I’m oil and they’re water.

Like the fabric of the place bends around to keep me external, so that no matter how far I tread into the borders there’s always still a border surrounding me. Like every step I take momentarily drags the stink of the big city with me and corrupts the ground under me and they can all smell it.

But just listen to me. I sound insane.

And yet… and yet. I’m not an idiot. I might be a bit ditzy at times, I know I say ‘like’ too often… but I’m not stupid. I never have been. Sometimes I wish I was, I feel like life would be easier.

Because they are looking. And even though they get so much more cordial when Rarity is with me, enough that I could think for just a moment that I might really be one of them…

They still look.

They still stare.

They still look away when I look back, as if they’re hiding something.

And I really, really wish I was stupid. Because if you’re not stupid, and you think ponies are looking over at you and whispering and watching and muttering. If you walk out onto the balcony at night, and stare at the rows of houses around you that seem almost strategically ordered to leave the library adrift in the centre of a great sea of grass. A lighthouse with no working light.

If you’re sure you’re not stupid…

That either means you’re right, or it means something else.

And I’m not sure which one frightens me more.

...

It’s probably just the stress of moving…

Sure, that’s gotta be it.

That’s what mum would say.

That’s what Rarity’s been saying.


Brilliant white,

Blinding white,

Ivory white,

Off-white,

Unblemished white,

Unbowed white,

White like winter sky,

White like the centre of a blizzard,

White like snowfall upon Cocytus,

White like staring into the sun,

White from blindness,

White from oblivion,

Endless white,

Perfect white,

Same colour as my memories,

Lost in the slipstream of everything I wish I didn’t wish to be.


When I was back in Trottingham, I tended to visit the same places with my friends. We went to the same pubs, the same clubs. There was a familiarity we would gravitate to. But, having been in Ponyville for as long as I have now - coming up to three months this Friday - I’ve realised that not all familiarity is the same.

Because a city like that can be scary. I could have gone to a different club every week if I’d wanted to. But there’s a joy in carving out your own space, your own stake. In a place that will forget you for its sheer size and depth, the attempt to create something that’s yours, even if it’s just the ability to walk into your favourite club with your group of friends and all know exactly what drink you were going to order…

It feels meaningful.

Maybe everyone really wants what they don’t have, that could be the white hot point of truth at the centre of all of this. Because the difference between finding your local clubs, and only having a couple to choose from at all…

It feels overwhelming at times. And suddenly the desire for something new starts to crush you.

The Salt Lick. Maybe it’s called so for the taste of sweat on the air. It always seems so overfilled in there, and why wouldn’t it? Where else would ponies even go? The other club? Which is probably just as packed and heady with pheromones?

The sheer symbiosis of everyone on that dance floor. It’s like it’s one organism, just like the markets. But this time it’s a new feel. A hot, sticky collective of grinding bodies, contrasting with the open pavilion to be filled with the airy concentration of commerce. The Salt Lick is sweat-soaked pandemonium. All the dancers are fixed on the pursuit of contact with another body. Sex-drunk and sweat-soaked and almost deafblind for the throb of the lights and thump of the music and density of the crowd.

Except, of course, for me.

I always seem to have enough room in the Salt Lick. I can swing and dance and stretch my limbs without hitting a soul. It’s remarkable really, how the crowd seems to unconsciously contort to keep me very literally excluded.

And I can have contact if I wish, don’t get me wrong. When Rarity, or one of the other ponies that have come out with her and are charitably calling me a friend by extension for the night, dances with me then we can touch as often as we like.

I can thread my hooves with hers as we throw and pull apart. Sometimes we might be serpentine, rhythmic and pulsing in the creation of some seductive display for the crowd she always gathers. Sometimes, and I don’t think she’d admit to this the day after, we’d sling our arms around each other’s necks and drunkenly, desperately, sing along to the music, interspersed with needy glugs of cider like mares dying of thirst.

And yet, the crowd never encompasses me. Not really.

It’s like walking through a dark forest, the bodies are the trees. And from the gloom between them, I still see the eyes. I still hear the whispers even above the thump of bass. And when I’m there alone, I have time to reflect on whether those eyes and voices are real or not.

Because either they are, or they’re not.

And Celestia save me, I’m not stupid.

So today, on my tenth visit to the salt lick, I told Rarity the truth. The truth that had been growing in the back of my mind for weeks now.

I told her I was thinking of leaving, of going back to Trottingham.

Going back home.

And, in return, Rarity told me to stay. She told me things would get better soon.

She told me about the curse of the library.

Apparently the last few librarians had left abruptly, and in less than pleasant circumstances. Most hadn’t even discussed why. They’d just resigned suddenly and without fanfare, not to be seen in the town again.

And ponies in these small towns weren’t like those in the big cities. It’s the opposite of the desperate fight to leave your mark in the city, against a backdrop that will quickly forget you after you’re dead or gone. Here ponies were forever painting on the same canvas. And on a canvas like this, a single pony could leave a big mark indeed. Those generations, that essence of the dead, was felt through the decades.

This wasn’t the impersonal towers of Trottingham, this was a place steeped in tradition and folklore. This was a place where providence was rarely scrutinised for what it actually was. Nor was pain.

So after all these librarians had seemed to leave so quickly, ponies had started talking. Some ponies had even gotten the notion that there may have been a curse on Golden Oaks. Something that infected each unlucky inhabitant and something that could infect you if you get too close.

And so they all told me, Rarity and her friends, about the way that most ponies knew deep down it was ridiculous. But that there was still some residual unease. And maybe, as a result, the townsponies would stare a little. Maybe they’d whisper as I passed. Maybe they’d take a while to get close to me, because no-one wants to be cursed. Even if they know there’s no curse, not really.

And I smiled and nodded. I sounded relieved when I told them I was glad to hear the problem wasn’t me. I might have had confidence I’d convinced them, were it not for Rarity. Were it not for the brilliant, beautiful, terrible, terrifying spark of recognition and knowing in those eyes. Those spellbinding eyes that seemed to see everything.

And so I made my excuses and headed to the toilets. I hadn’t been lying, I did need to piss after all. But I’m not stupid, certainly not stupid enough to not understand the way that prophecies could be self-fulfilling. How the idea of curses can beget curses. And at once, as I moved through the crowd that never seemed to touch me I understood my predecessor. Some lonely, lonely mare. Sick to death of the way that the crowd would actively move around her in reactionary disgust.

And I tried to shake off the feelings of distrust. That the silly explanation of a ridiculous local rumour didn’t even go half the way to explaining the magnitude of the exclusion. Of the stares and the whispers and the subterfuge and the sneering.

I entered the bathroom stalls tonight with that heavy on my mind, diary. I couldn’t help but laugh at how, despite my worry that they had been lying, that there was something happening here more deep and dark and rotten and warped than I could fathom, and that the curse of the library was just a convenient story to tell to the outsiders who found themselves on the exterior of whatever… this was.

I couldn’t help but laugh because, even if they had been lying, they’d managed to tell the truth. I still can’t help but laugh now, at that and the way I seem to talk when I’m drunk like this. Thank Celestia the spell doesn’t translate all the slurring. But I can see it’s picking up everything else. Self-mythologising again and speaking like I’m narrating the fucking Odyssey.

Maybe I’ve been writing too much poetry.

I took a picture with the camera that was left unattended on the sinks. A local tradition. And I painted on my face my biggest, most desperate smile because that was how I felt tonight. And then I signed my name and wrote ‘Tenth time at the Salt Lick!’ because they couldn’t stop me pinning myself among them when it was like this, when I placed the photograph right in the centre of the crowded wall’s worth of smiling faces.

And still I couldn’t and can’t help but reflect on that truth the whole time. The one that they’d accidentally managed to tell. Because even if their little curse was just something made up for those lucky few despised outsiders…

Who could say that living like this, for whatever reason, isn’t being cursed?