A Charmed Life

by BlazzingInferno

Charmed

These little towns were surprisingly crowded. Charm’s business in them usually consisted of a quick trot to the nearest donation bin and back, often returning to her same seat on the train with time to spare and no more than a passing glance at the town proper or its inhabitants.

Not today. Her meandering walk through town after town, without saddlebag or destination, had started out quietly enough in the early morning with no one but a few early-rising shopkeepers for company. By midmorning the townsponies were out in force, buying groceries and heading to work, and now with the sun at its apex a multicolored sea of bodies seemed to be block most of the main street.

Sighing, Charm took a right down what in Canterlot would’ve been a side street but turned out to be more of an alley: empty, narrow, shopless, and smelling of something worse than its unpaved, dirt road. It was as if she’d stumbled into her own mother’s description of what the life of common ponies was like, right down to the odor.

She turned to a nearby rain barrel and gazed at its still surface. Her reflection stared up at her: a lightly brushed magenta coat, violet mane done up in tight curls, average length unicorn horn, and brilliant rose eyes with tears forming at their corners. “What makes me so different from them… from mother and father, from the aristocrats I’m supposed to like, from the commoners I’m supposed to ignore… Why can’t I belong? Why can’t I be happy?”

The burn-down-the-mansion idea was looking better and better. Offloading a saddlebag of woes at a time wasn’t working anymore. She needed a complete and total change, and she needed it now. Anything at all would be an improvement on this lonely moment.

And then a saddlebag fell on her head.

Charm found herself sprawled in the mud next to the overturned rain barrel, watching papers swirl in a breeze overhead and hearing a high pitched “Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!” ring in her ear. That part alone stung more than the lump forming on her head. “Oooh, what in Equestria…”

And then a grey pegasus was hovering over her, a pegasus dressed in the oddest assortment of clothes, including an ill-fitting jacket, wide-brimmed blue hat with a horn hole, and a pearl necklace that, if Charm wasn’t mistaken, had belonged to her very own grandmare. She might have said so too, if her head were clearer. The pegasus was moving and talking so fast she might simply be a hallucination; that would also explain why her eyes weren’t pointing the same direction.

“I’m so so sorry! I-I was just flying home and d-dropped my dumb bag and… I’m so sorry! Let me help you up.”

The mud was so thick Charm felt like she’d been glued to the street. Extracting a single foreleg took considerable effort, nevertheless she wasn’t about to turn down an offer of assistance. “Thank you, dear, but be careful, the mud is awfully—”

The pegasus grabbed Charm’s offered hoof, gave a mighty heave, and a moment later landed in the mud next to her, screaming more than ever. “Aah! Oh no, m-my clothes! My clothes!”

After a few tries, Charm managed to roll her way out of the mud pit and stand, still reeling from the blow to the head and total chaos that hadn’t ceased since. “I don’t suppose I’ll have any better luck, but let me help you up this time.”

Magic made all the difference. At last the pegasus squelched her way out and stood beside her, covered in mud and the papers that had exploded out of her saddlebag. “Th-thanks. It’s… it’s not like I needed this suit anymore anyway.”

The pegasus hung her head and turned toward the main street. “Sorry again.”

“Wait, wait! Could you direct me to a place to… well to clean up? I can hardly get back on the train to Canterlot like this.”

The pegasus paused and looked back. “I guess there’s the spa, but that costs a bundle. I just sank the last of my bits into that.”

She kicked her back leg toward the now ruined saddlebag half-submerged in the mud, its high end designer insignia still visible. “Thunderlane’s gonna have a heart-attack after I track mud through the house.”

Charm held out a hoof. “A spa, you say? Let’s go at once, then. My treat.”

The pegasus stood there a long time, staring at her with one eye. Finally a small smile peeked through the layers of grime. “That… that would be great! My name’s Ditzy.”

“Charm. Pleased to meet you.”

---

The posh, pink-coated mare behind the spa’s front desk acted just as Charm would’ve expected her too: as if a sewer pipe had burst. “We are not a public bath! One comes here to be pampered, massaged, and preened, not… cleaned!”

Charm rolled her eyes. At last she’d stumbled upon a problem that money could solve. She’d buy the whole business if need be. “I’m sure we can come to an arrange—”

Ditzy set her muddy elbow on the counter, her expression sullen. “How about we start with a mud bath? You offer those, right?”

The mare behind the counter stepped back. “Yes, but—”

Ditzy grinned. “Great, because we brought some extra mud of our own! Does that mean we get a discount?”

“Certainly not!”

“Oh well. We’ll take mud baths, and then… do you have showers?”

The spa mare held up a pearly white towel and tried, unsuccessfully, to nudge Ditzy’s elbow away as she mopped up the mess. “Yes, yes we do. Might I suggest—ugh—aroma therapy, or the steam room? I’m afraid your… clothes will have to stay here, unless you’d prefer they be disposed of in the furnace.”

Ditzy nodded enthusiastically, whipping mud from her blonde mane onto the walls. “Steam sounds perfect. Is that okay, Charm?”

Charm nodded. The living, pony-shaped train wreck was talking to her again, and still smiling amiably. “Err, perfectly, dear. Perfectly.”

Within minutes the two of them were stepping into adjacent tubs of even more mud, thankfully the kind that was lavishly scented and enriched with coat-restoring minerals, or so they’d been told. Charm lifted one of her coated hooves into the air, wondering if she could even tell the difference between spa mud and that from the street.

“Oooh, wow!” Ditzy, meanwhile, had slipped in up her neck. “I’ve always wanted to try this! Thanks a million, Charm! I’m so sorry I… well, you know.”

“It’s no trouble. In fact before you… arrived I was looking for a certain change in my life. This is hardly what I expected, but one can’t always choose such things.” Rarely could they, in fact.

With a loud, rippling squelch Ditzy sat up in the mud bath and leaned over to look at her. “But you said you’re from Canterlot, right? I figured Canterlot ponies get to do fancy stuff like this all the time!”

“I suppose some might. My life is… troublesome.”

“Tell me about it! Up until now this was shaping up to be the worst day since I moved to Ponyville. I got fired for falling asleep at work, the bank manager wouldn’t even talk to me about my loan application, I wrecked my business suit… but now—” she spread her wings and fell backward into the bath, splashing mud everywhere “—this is how I always dreamed of unwinding at the end of a long day. Someday I’m gonna do this every week… if I ever get my business started.”

The full breadth of Ditzy’s story took a moment to sink in, particularly since Charm had raised a foreleg to shield her face from the splatter. “Your own business, you say?”

Ditzy sighed, her voice turning sullen. “It’s kind of been my dream since I moved here, to be my own mare, to own my home, set my own hours… But I dunno. I really messed up today and… maybe I’m just not good at anything.”

Heaving a sigh of her own, Charm tried to remember the reassuring lies she’d been told as a filly. “Everypony has a talent or somesuch, you included. You gained a cutie mark, didn’t you?”

She sniffed. “Yeah… but it’s just a bunch of bubbles.”

Charm shut her eyes and chuckled for a moment. Perhaps the cutie mark destiny talk applied to working ponies only. “For your bubbly personality, no doubt.”

Ditzy laughed. “Yeah, right. I got it back in Cloudsdale, and that’s totally not what it’s for. See, the weather factory’s got this big machine with bubbles floating in it and… why’d you think it’s about my personality?”

“I for one couldn’t have talked my way in here, looking the way we did. I doubt I could’ve shrugged off the day you’ve had, either. It’s truly inspiring.”

With the loudest splash yet, Ditzy clambered out of the mud bath. One of her eyes darting around and the other drifting off to the left. “Thanks. I-I’ll see you in the steam room?”

Stunned, Charm simply nodded. “Very well. I shan’t be long.”

---

Charm saw no reason to lag behind, especially not when a hot shower awaited. She had no idea why ponies paid to get so dirty.

Within fifteen minutes she stepped into the steam room and found Ditzy there, seated on a wooden bench next to a pile of towels and, strangely enough, an equally large pile of balled up tissues.

Ditzy sniffled loudly as Charm approached. “S-sorry. I um… I really needed to hear that is all. M-maybe I’m not cut out to run my own business. It always felt kind of off, b-but nothing’s felt right since… never mind.”

Charm sat facing her on a neighboring bench. “I… well… you’re welcome, I suppose. But I’m sure if you kept at it—”

“Nah. I’m clumsy and I forget stuff, so owning a business is a dumb idea. But I guess I can still be my own mare with a regular job… so long as it’s a good job! No more double shifts! No more making hay fries! I’ve gotta do something that I’m good at and that I can feel good about—” Ditzy stood on her hind legs and thrust a hoof in the air. “—and I’m sick and tired of making ponies fat!”

Charm chuckled and clapped her hooves. “Bravo, then. I wish you luck in your next endeavor, whatever it may be.”

Ditzy grinned, but then stared open-mouthed at Charm’s flank. “Oooh, wow! Of course! I should’ve known you’d have a cutie mark like that!”

Flushing red, Charm grabbed the nearest towel and wrapped it around herself. “It’s nothing special, I assure you. Nothing at all!”

Ditzy smiled all the brighter. “Of course it is! You’re like the most generous pony I’ve ever met, so I’ve course you’ve got a generosity cutie mark!”

Charm slipped off the bench, thankfully landing on the towels and not the hard floor. “Generosity?”

“Yeah! What else could one of those horn-basket things filled with food mean? You were super-nice after I… um… dropped my bag on you, and you paid for us to go to the spa, and now you totally changed how I see my own cutie mark!”

The steam must have gotten to Charm’s brain, or maybe it was the blow to the head; she couldn’t have heard that right. “Did I?”

For the first time in ages she thought of the clothes and jewelry she’d given away, and what effect they might’ve had on the ponies who’d found them. Ditzy’s life had been changed, yes, but more by Charm herself than by her second-hoof belongings.

The next thing she knew, Ditzy was on the floor hugging her. “Thanks for everything, Charm! You turned my whole life around!”

Comments

[Level Dasher]

Someone in a previous comment made a note about the cornucopia being symbolic in that way, too. Good on them and good on Ditzy.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Cutie marks are rarely so simple that they contain a single meaning. Oh, a pony may associate theirs with whatever activity or mindset made it manifest, but the sum totality of a person cannot be expressed in a single layer. That's just not how people work.

Also, Best Pony casually and unthinkingly doing Best Pony things is always great.