Belles of Bridlewood Detectives: The Chain Pony

by Short-tale

Chapter 1: The Body

I stared at my ruby red typewriter in disbelief. The jet black keys pressed themselves as I thought. It was odd. Ever since Izzy Moonbow and her friends brought back magic it’s been like this. I just had to think and the words appeared on the page. It was like I couldn’t stare at a blank page anymore. It always filled itself with writing. Some of the words made sense, some didn’t.

I was a poet. Gloomy Sonnet, beat poet of Bridlewood. For some reason ponies liked the poems I wrote. I never understood it. But I was encouraged, even paid to write. So I did.

I needed that blank page. The world was a myriad of influences. A banal savage place where only the cool or callus really thrived. The blank page put me at ease. On it was nothing. Silence. It was like I was on equal standing with everything on it. I, too, was nothing.

The magic made the words I thought splatter themselves in a cacophonous brick of text. I looked at the spent page and sighed. I had to focus. Or not focus. Letting the words flow is a process. It’s about focusing on not focusing and just going. But it wasn’t going. Not where I wanted.

The page found its way to the trash can on its own as well. All I did was lift my hoof to grab it but it skidded across the rounded pine desk and jumped into the caged can I kept next to me.

It wasn’t going to happen again. I couldn’t write like this. I need to go out and fill my mind with the true underbelly of the town to show others. Maybe the kids were moping limply in the park. That always felt right. It was preparing them for the misery of life.

The door to my log cabin opened itself in anticipation. Like a gaping maw ready to swallow me into the saccharine nightmare this town had become. It was too convenient. Too excited. The magic brought with it a euphoric wave of cheer and hope. It was painful.

I found the playground with my own hooves. I didn’t float there this time. It’s hard suddenly having all your needs fulfilled with just a small inkling.

The foals ran around excitedly, having wars and games and fun. It was so loud. The frustrated bored silence that used to prevail here was perfect to pull inspiration from. It was like the trudge of adulthood. Each day steadily marching, mind blank, mechanically ticking away the time of life. Once dreams die or are achieved there is little motion other than continuing the status quo.

I looked at the trees and the city. It was still the strange backwoods town I grew up in. I heard that the unicorns in the past gave up modern technology in an effort to get back to their roots. I guess they hoped the magic would return to them if they were closer to nature. It didn’t.

Then we had no magic and no convenience either. But I didn’t mind. The only thing I needed was my typewriter. And now the magic was back thanks to some pony named Sunny and I wasn't sure it was that great.

The summer breeze suddenly turned cold. Like a long finger of ice that traced down my spine. I shivered and turned to look where it came from. There was nothing in the dabbled patches of sunlit earth and vibrant green brushes. All was surreally pleasant. I missed my old desaturated world.

The wind blew again and I felt the frozen heart of malice and discontent. It was something I used to seek. I peered into the soft undergrowth. Nothing moved that could bring that wind.

I found a pull within it. A sad, unmasked smell of dissatisfaction. Was it mine or was there something else that felt that? I cautiously made my way through the bramble and twigs that marked the fringe into the woods. My scarf got caught and I nearly lost my beret to it. With a slight adjustment of the angle, I made my way through.

I followed the stark breath of cold as it pulled me further and further into the woods. The birds merrily chirping and playing squirrels added a false sense of safety that I knew was wrong.

A raven squawked its wood-knocking call. It was echoed by others further in. My legs were heavy and the air became cloth. I pressed against the invisible barrier and followed that icy blast.

The air got colder as I crested the rust-colored, crunchy hill. I could see something in a small valley below. A form of some sort. My head began to hurt and my horn glowed. The rich dark blue light was all I could see for a moment.

Then there was a pen. A pen and a notebook hovering in the air in front of me. They were glowing in that strange blue light that was my magic. For a moment I just stared. I didn’t know why they came out. But I thought of opening the notebook which it happily obeyed.

The first few pages were a mess. A bunch of scribbled words and outlines of poetry snippets I had tried. Most were trash. But the last page had a hastily written verse on it.

“The chains ensnare the foolish,
Bet nothing you can’t stand to lose,
The winner will take all,
In autumn’s flight and stiff cold breeze
The melodies battle
As one crescendos the other is gone.
Lost in shadow
The chains hold them close
Be wise and fear them
At each crossroads, the lone darkness stands
Desires always steer them.”

I looked at the poem trying to remember if I wrote it. It didn’t seem likely. It wasn’t my normal flow. But each word made me shiver. Something wrote it. And used my pen to do it.

The loam’s crunch heralded another pony. It was far closer to me than it should be. I should have heard it before. But I must have been in a trance.

It was a warm gray mare with a moss green mane. I had seen her around town before. I couldn’t remember ever talking to her but I rarely talk to other ponies. I stared at her and she stared back.

“Hello,” I tried. She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. I figured this was a normal greeting for ponies. She waggled her ears but said nothing.

“Hello?” I tried again. The head shook but she didn’t respond. Was she a real unicorn or a forest spirit or ghost? It felt like the kind of time ghosts should come out.

Eventually, after a long uninterrupted silence, I turned and marched down the hill. I could hear the unicorn doing the same. I tried to ignore her like she was doing to me. That same rogue cold snap rushed at me from the bent form at the bottom of the hill. Then I saw a hoof.

The hoof was attached to the lying thing on the ground. My heart sank. The cold flowed through the wind and onto my soul. My stomach jumped. The form took shape and I was walking to a pony laying on its side at the bottom of the hill. Then I ran.

The other unicorn started running behind me. The birds stopped chirping. The squirrels weren’t around anymore. The summer sounds fled the scene and all that remained was the crunching of the leaves under our hooves.

The pony wasn’t moving. It wasn’t breathing either. The breath of life stilled and the eyes fixed on some point that the soul fled to. Its face contorted in a permanent scream from a dry, open mouth.

I reached my hoof out and lightly touched the corpse. It was cold. Like touching a rug that’s been in the fridge. I pulled back. My heart quickened. Was there something I should do? Some sort of chest pushing I recalled. But I couldn’t think of it. My mind had gone blank. Like those eyes.

I turned to the pony behind me. She stopped running and stood a bit further behind me. I didn’t know what she wanted. She took a step forward then another back. She looked like she was playing a game but her expression was horrified.

“Do you know that life-saving thing?” I asked. She didn’t respond. She wiggled her ears again strangely. I stared in wonder. It was like watching a dancer as it glided along the stage. Each movement flowed gracefully into the next. I snorted in annoyance. She wasn’t going to be much help.

I decided if there was any pulse at all I would at least make an attempt. I knew it wouldn’t be useful but it was better than saying I watched him die. I placed my hoof on the downed stallion’s neck. I felt nothing. And the head was stuck in that unnatural angle. At that point I realized he was gone.

“Arrgh, stupid twig!” A high-pitched squeaky voice called out from a patch of briar. “Let me go!” The briar shook and out tumbled my worst nightmare. Some sort of cheerleader! It was a unicorn with a bubblegum pink mane and a cool gray coat contrasting the other mare. She wore a neck warmer and hoof warmers.

“Oh there you are,” she cried at the other pony. “What are you doing out here?”

The unicorn wiggled its ears.

“Oh, right I forgot,” the bubblegum one cried. Then she started to wiggle her ears back. I watched these strange unicorns as they wiggled and swirled their heads around. I stood next to the corpse wondering how I got here.

“Oh my! Who are you?” The cheerleader finally said, looking at me.

“Gloomy. Gloomy Sonnet,” I said. It didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t that well known.

“Oh, I’ve heard of you. I’m Lyrica Songstrider, I dance.” She struck a pose like a fashion queen. It seemed strange with a dead body between us.

“Is that what you two were just doing? With your ears?”

“Oh no! We were signing.” Lyrica said with a slight bounce. “She’s deaf.”

“Oh…” I felt stupid. That’s why she didn’t respond to my words. She couldn’t hear them.

“This is my friend, Silent Strokes,” Lyrica went on. “She just ran off and aaaaaaah! Is that a dead unicorn?!”

The gray color drained from her face and her perky pose faulted. It felt like one of those wacky hoof flailing tube ponies as they bobbed through the air.

“Yes,” I said in my normal deadpan voice. I have been told it’s disconcerting. I just normally don’t emote much.

“Did you kill him?!”

“No.”

The unicorn was practically hyperventilating. She shook like a fragile fall leaf on an aspen. Until Silent placed her hoof on her. Her ears moved again as she looked her friend in the eyes.

“I need to calm down?! You just ran off in the middle of a painting to find a dead body with some morbid pony in the middle of the woods!” Lyrica was hopping up and down like a frustrated bouncy ball. Or maybe a basketball.

“The unicorn was dead before we found it,” I told her. She shouldn’t be worried about him. He’s gone. Dead bodies aren’t contagious. Unless sickness killed him. But it didn’t look like a sickness.

“Oh that’s great,” the loud unicorn snarked. “He’s still dead. Why are we just standing around him? Shouldn’t we be calling somepony? Like the peace force?”

“Probably. But we don’t know what happened. We should try to at least get an idea.” I began to look at the ground to see if there was anything that could tell me what. I wasn’t good at this stuff. I just felt I was drawn here so I might as well help. I guess.

“Oh! Look! Hoofprints!” Lyrica was pointing to the ground in front of the deceased. I heard that’s how you’re supposed to refer to them. The deceased. I watched her as she hopped from unseen hoof print to hoof print. “These steps are massive. And it has a small groove next to it.”

A rustle from the ground caught my ear as Silent pulled something out of the brushes. It was a broken fiddle. It looked like it had been smashed with a rock. The strings still held it together but the body was in half and the bridge clung sickly onto them. Silent “said” something.

“You’re right, this must be Fiddling Joe.” Nodded the dancer. I noticed that her ears moved every time she talked like a nervous tick. But she was probably just “talking” to Silent.

“I don’t know much about fiddle players,” I admitted, looking at the roughed-up leaves that marked the trail. “Do they go to strange places to find inspiration too?”

“I don’t know. Hey! What are you doing, Silent?” Her ears twitched with her voice and I realized she was only talking because I was there. Unless she needed to talk to sign. Some ponies are like that.

Silent was halfway down the large hoofed trail and didn’t see Lyrica’s signs. We followed her to catch up.

“I guess we should send the signal now,” I said, hoping that Lyrica could control her magic better than I could.

“Right.” The golden light grew from her horn and shot through the air in a stream of sparklers. She was a show pony through and through.

We caught up with Silent and followed the tracks.

---

It was a four-way corner. They're known as crossroads and I remember reading they can be very dangerous at night. I didn’t know why though. That’s where the trail ended. There was no sign that the maker had come from anywhere. Or at least that’s what Lyrica said. Silent made a sullen pouting face.

“This is where it started. Both of them were here,” the once perky pony said. She had whined the entire trek. The path was too rocky. This was going to chip my hooves. The town's ponies were going to think we did it. What if we come across the real killer?

I found solace in my mind. The world can disappear and I might not notice. I found the silence in my head calming. It’s like the blank page. It helps me get ready for the poetry to flow. But the sudden arrival at the crossroads stopped my thoughts.

“Do you feel that? Well, Silent wants to know.” Lyrica looked at me with an eyebrow raised. Her face waited to see if I could sense this “crazy feeling” that her friend could.

I walked around the site and felt that cold feeling in the air again. I walked around it to see how large the spot was.

“Yes,” I said flatly. She looked at me longer, waiting for me to elaborate. It was a common assumption. I waited for the look to fade or for her to speak. Eventually, she turned back to Silent.

“Well what do we do now?” she asked verbally and with ear gestures. They were returned. “Why were you there, Gloomy? And what were you writing?”

“I kind of felt the type of cold that touches your soul and threatens to make your heart sink. So I followed it.”

Lyrica’s mouth dropped open in response. “You felt something like that and followed it?! Why would you do that? You should have run away.”

“I don’t. Most of the inspiring things I find are when you’re supposed to run away. They are the true world around us. If I don’t stop and find them, others won’t truly know what the world is like.”

It was like a sacred calling. Somepony had to show the world as it is. To not be afraid of the bad things so we can know. That part of life that is overlooked and left in the shadows.

The wind grew a little cold after my speech and Silent began to sign more furiously. There was a strange gleam in her eyes. She ran to one side of the road then the other. It was almost like a frantic dance.

The cold began to seep into my joints. It was a reminder of what growing old and frail would be like. Every so often I would catch something dark out of the corner of my eye. Some sort of black mass. I wondered if the others noticed it.

“Can you two crazy ponies stop? I think I’ve seen all I want to see. Can we go home now?” Lyrica’s voice cut in and out thanks to the wind but I could make out the gist of it. She kept glancing around and backed away from the cold that hung by the crossroads sign.

Silent’s ears flopped but she nodded. She looked at me and scuffed the ground a little. Her ears flew into motion again.

“She wants to know if you want to join us. She has some paintings she would like you to see.” Lyrica was already trotting down the street.

“Ok” I had nothing better to do. I doubted my typewriter would work any better after this excursion than it normally did.