My Face
The face other ponies see is not my face. It is a mask.
The mask sticks to my face, melding perfectly with every curve of my muzzle, every blink of my eyes. Every smile, every frown, every twitch of my ears it follows perfectly—unless what I’m doing isn’t something that I should be doing. Even my tongue and my mouth are covered by the mask, down to the vocal cords. This comes in very handy.
Because I don’t like taking the mask off. Not any more.
“So, Caramel, what are we gonna do next?” the blue-coated pegasus mare blushing and leaning against me—Wind Whistler, I think her name was—asked. It was a fall day, lingering right on the precipice of winter, and the Apple family and I had a betting pool going about when we’d finally see snow. I suspected Applejack was going to bribe Dash with some of her cider reserve to win the bet. Again. Still, it was unsportsponylike to not take part in the bet, no matter what tricks I suspected others of using.
We leisurely trotted down Stirrup Street, taking in the sights and smells of Ponyville in the fall. The growing chill in the air hadn’t discouraged all the vendors—though it was getting on to the end of the day, many of them remained at their stalls, hawking their wares in an effort to have fewer things to carry back at the end of the day. Even now, a few singled out Wind Whistler and I, calling out to us how some trinket or other would make a great gift.
To my annoyance, she turned her head in passing interest at a few.
The mask smiled and spoke up to get her away from persistent salesponies. “Hey, whatever you want. I guess we could always go check if the barn on the Acres isn’t occupied, eh?” The mask’s smile deepened as it nuzzled her.
She blushed, as both I and the mask knew she would. “Oh, Caramel, you’re so daring.” Both of us chuckled at that.
How wrong she was.
The mask said, “How can I be anything but when I’ve got the cutest filly in town swooning over me? I’ve got such charm.”
She swatted me with a wing, a playful look in her eyes. “Ugh, but I wish you weren’t so sleazy all the time.”
“Hey, if it keeps you with me, it’s gotta be worth keeping up, right?” The mask was in fine form today.
In a more sarcastic tone, I added, “I mean, I’ve gotta guard my fragile, sensitive core from the harshness of the world.”
Growing fearful that I would betray us, the mask said, “Or at least that’s what I tell all the mares to get them fluttering after me.” We brushed one of her wings, making sure to linger on one spot on the left.
“O-oh, Caramel… I swear you were secretly born a pegasus sometimes…” I had a knack for dealing with wings. Always had, always would.
As she started rambling about something inconsequential, my eyes wandered out beyond the thinning ranks of stalls toward a distant hill… but I knew I couldn’t let my gaze linger. All the same, a quick look couldn’t hurt.
Big Macintosh stood on a hill overlooking Sweet Apple Acres. The sun flared behind him, glowing red as it slid beneath the horizon. The glare made me squint, but I would have sworn on my life that he was looking right at me.
My heart skipped a beat as I froze in place, ripping free of the mask for a few moments.
“Why, Caramel, you look frightened,” the vapid mare I was pretending to care about said as she strode in front of me. “Why don’t I make your vulnerable little self all better.” She wrapped her forelegs around me in a hug, but my eyes never left Big Mac. Peripherally, I was aware of her nuzzling my neck, and I nuzzled back mechanically, not wanting to let my disguise slip.
Mac.
The reason I’d stayed in Ponyville. The reason I tortured myself working at Sweet Apple Acres, stealing glances at what I could never have. Ever since I was a colt, that red lug had been on my mind constantly, rolling around at all hours, his easy smile and calm demeanor endlessly taunting me. His lips, whispering “Mel,” his special nickname for me without end. His smile, so rare these days, as he labored behind a stoic mask of his own, pretending that we meant nothing to each other.
And then, reality would come crashing back. In this case, it arrived in the form of my eyelids slamming shut to save my eyes from Princess Celestia’s burning orb behind the object of my desires.
I swear she did these sorts of things on purpose sometimes.
“Mel? What is it?”
Even as I turned back to her to answer, I wanted to slap that stupid, worried frown off her muzzle. How dare she use that name. That sacred name. Nopony had the right to speak that name; only one pony, one very special pony, was allowed to let that name escape on even the tiniest of breaths, and although he hadn’t used it in years, I still wanted to guard it like a treasure.
In its idiocy, the mask must have told this pony-shaped distraction we wasted our time on that I liked being called Mel. Maybe it liked being called Mel. How many other perversions had I let it get away with in my indifference, in my ceaseless fantasizing?
No more.
“Don’t call me Mel,” I said, straining against the yearning of the mask to hold me back.
“M-Mel?”
“I said…” I took a breath to calm myself. “Look, I just don’t like that name, okay?” I pulled back from her, consciously separating myself from her false comfort. It wasn’t what I wanted.
“What’s wrong? Why are you acting so strange? You were just… staring into the sunset for a while.” Her ears were flattened now, but her honeyed tone whispered of genuine concern. Ah, how she deserved somepony better than I.
Better than the mask, for sure.
“Sorry, Windy,” the mask purred, eager to salvage the situation. “Just zoned out for a bit. Too busy thinking about you.”
“Oh, really?” She shielded her eyes with a foreleg and looked up at the hill, her tone full of disbelief. “Was there somepony there?”
To my delight and disappointment, Big Mac had already left the hill; the mask would have an easier time. I slipped back into it, letting a me that wasn’t me smooth-talk a mare I cared nothing for back into a good mood.
Before the mask snapped my vision back, I glanced at the Apple family house. If just one night, I could invite myself over for dinner, try to smooth things over…
But no, the mask had other plans.
The two of us left, chatting away like a couple of fools. I kept willing myself to try to make plans, to try to turn around and just speak to Big Mac, even once.
But the mask wouldn’t let me.
The longer I wear it, the harder it is to take off. Eventually, this mask will be my face.
And then nothing will be wrong.