Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Recollection

Wick Clip sat behind the counter, aimlessly staring into the distance, when the chime of the door opening shook her from her mental wanderings. At first she was glad and somewhat excited about finally having someone else there to distract her, and the idea of them buying something didn't hurt matters either. Then she actually saw who had just walked in, and her expression dropped, while her mood turned its momentary elevation into a cartwheel and made it impossible for her to tell how exactly she felt about things.

Completely uncaring of the emotional turmoil ravaging the inner workings of the mare's mind, the stallion let the door close behind him and had a look around the place. He had the same expression a foal would wear in a candy store or a toys store, though Wick wondered if that wasn't just his reaction to anything. "Candles?" he asked, still not looking at the unicorn.

Somewhere in the back of her head Wick wondered how the stallion had possibly missed the rather large signboard affixed to the wall above her shop, or any of the other half a dozen at least things that should have clued him in about her selling candles, but on the forefront she simply latched on to the question as a way to stall for time while the rest of her brain caught up with what was happening. "Yeah, mostly. We don't just sell candles, but that's kind of the main thing." More in terms of representation than in terms of sales, but she didn't mention that part.

"How quaint." The stallion finally looked at Wick. "That's a thing ponies say, right? Quaint? I think it is." He paused, frowning slightly. "We?" he asked, then had another look around. "You run this place on your own, don't you? Does someone else work here?"

Wick blinked. "No. Uh... No, yeah, I do run it myself, I just..." She didn't finish the sentence, and instead switched on to a different topic. "How did you get here?"

The stallion looked at her, and blinked once. "I walked."

"I- Ugh." Wick looked to the ceiling in exasperation. "I meant here to me here. How did you find this place? Why here? What do you want?"

"A place to stay," replied the stallion. "I need somewhere to be for a while, hide where Stella hopefully won't find me. Here just happened to be where I was, you just happened to be the one pony here who I don't know less than everyone else and also I can blackmail you into hiding me. I just followed your tracks." He began to walk farther into the shop. "Sorry about answering those in reverse and yeah, you've got no idea who Stella is and no, you don't want to know." He walked past the counter and farther in still.

In silent puzzlement, Wick watched him reach the shelves on the back wall, pull on a seemingly random candle, and then descend down a flight of stairs through a trapdoor which she was sure had never been there.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Congratulations, Wick, you've got a roommate. No, you can't get rid of him. For one, you'd need to be able to reach his room.

Poor mare. She just wanted to do vaguely sinister things in vaguely sinister ruins...

[Venerable Ro]

This dude's sharpening up fast.

[Saix]

This guy is actually pretty smart even outside of his puzzle solving, even though he seems like he has his head in the clouds.