End’s Beginning and The Carriage that took us there

My lips glistened with a rather costly lipstick—my very own blood.

The noises around us faded from my mind. They became distant, so very distant, and all that mattered was her. Her, as she held me, and her, now stained with my life’s pulse liquefied. Her thin, weak arms of a scholar surrounded me, so different and distinct than those of the many men and women that had claimed my body before.

The curtains fell.

In the distance, I heard thunderous applause.

“The show must go on,” I told her with crimson-lips. “Mustn’t it, darling?”

Her carriage arrived at the city early in the morning. The coachman yawned heavily, his tired eyes glazed over by an even more tiring three-day journey. The horses, too, were on their last legs, their horseshoes clacking against the cobblestone streets.

Men in clean trousers, clean shirts and roughly-cleaned boots strode out into the streets, ready for another day’s work. Some stayed at home, however, and some waited outside their houses until children in hand-me-down clothes came out, reaching out for their fathers’ calloused hands and following them to school.

Women, some in dresses, some in pants, opened the curtains of their homes, waving to their husbands and children as they left for work. Some stayed at home, and some left for work—the very few who’d disregarded social expectations to do what they wished.

Beggars stalked the streets, some covered with torn rags as they slept, others barely awake and extending their hands towards passerbys. A child in a dirty dress slept next to an elderly woman, both huddled together against the cold stone, the child shivering in her grandmother’s embrace. An embrace cold by the life snuffed out of the elderly woman at precisely half past two in the morn.

All lived in the beautiful and unforgiving city of Canterlot.

The capital of elegance and depravity, of art and magic, of beauty and ugliness, of hate and love.

Not that Twilight Sparkle would ever care about the last one. Not yet, at least. Not yet.

In the distance, dawn came with the arrival of the sun, its light coaxing itself through the carriage curtains. A woman sat inside, her thin fingers brushing the page of an old book, dimly lit by a modern invention.

A lamp that burned entirely with magic.

The world and all its glory waited outside the carriage, and yet Twilight Sparkle could not be bothered to look past alchemy, and metaphysicalities, and words strung together to prove a clever hypothesis. The city held no interest to her unless it was something to be studied and tested. She was blind to so many things, my darling beloved, and it was both her flaw and her virtue. Unaware of the poverty, unaware of the misery, and also unaware of the love, and unaware of the bliss.

All she cared for were her studies and her magic, and she excelled at both. A snap of her fingers would conjure things I could only dream of doing with my meagre magical abilities. What she did effortlessly, I struggled with endlessly, and the reverse was true as well.

But on that day…

All she cared for was to impress Lady Celestia; she who lived in the mansion at the edge of the city, with towers that I could see from my room, along with the rising sun.

I always did love the dawn, but my favorite time of day, and you will have to bear with me now, was the twilight. The light dimmed of its innocence and turned towards something more severe. Purity and sin come together in balance, neither good and neither bad. Just what they were—a mix of both.

But she arrived in the morn with her carriage and her books and her silly notions, and so did I stare out my bedroom window, up in the highest floor of The Sapphire Carousel.

Someone stirred beside me, and I slightly turned my gaze towards the person in question. A man and his half-naked body covered only by thin sheets and an expensive linen comforter. I thought he would wake, but he did not. Instead, he snored rather unpleasantly and his lips then curved into a smile.

I stared at him for a moment.

There was no sign of my crimson lipstick on any part of his body.

Fabulous, I thought. A lady never leaves a mark.

Eventually, I laid back down and allowed myself a smile. One meant just for me and no one else. I stared at the sky in the distance and wondered if I had time to go to the bakery before the first performance.

I wondered, as a carriage in the distance moved through the city, if I might meet someone interesting that day.