Loveless Chapter One — NightMare
14th of Hale, Year of the Amber Sun — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — 11:47 PM
The lock stuck again.
Lore jammed her key into the deadbolt and forced it with a burst of telekinetic pressure that made the whole mechanism grind. The door swung inward onto a dark apartment that smelled like cold tea and whatever her downstairs neighbor was cooking. Garlic. Always garlic.
She stepped inside and locked the door behind her. Three locks. Deadbolt, chain, and the auxiliary bolt she'd installed herself after the third robbery on her floor this year. The installation was crooked and the bolt scraped when it slid. She didn't care.
Her saddlebag went on the hook by the door. Her tie she loosened with her magic before draping it over the kitchen counter. The tan dress shirt she kept on because the heating crystal was cycling again, humming its low intermittent hum that meant it was working at sixty percent and she'd be sleeping in socks tonight.
The flat was one bedroom, one bathroom, and a strip of kitchen that pretended to be separate. Her window overlooked a back alley where a dumpster lived and, on alternating nights, a stallion who talked to it. The walls were thin. Her neighbor's radio bled through the plaster like it paid rent. The actual rent was what she could afford on a librarian's wage supplemented by Book Club stipends that showed up late more months than they didn't.
The Sombra pillow sat propped against the headboard where she'd left him that morning. One foreleg posed outward, painted smirk, curved horn, cape draped across his printed body in a way the vendor had clearly designed for a specific kind of customer. She was that kind of customer. The pillowcase needed washing.
Lore sat at her desk, lifted the keyboard into her telekinetic grip, and powered on the crystal monitor. The pale gold of her magic mixed with the blue of the screen. She opened The Standard, scrolled past the front page without stopping, and opened her DMs.
NightMare's green indicator dot was already pulsing.
[NightMare]: hey you're late tonight
[NightMare]: don't tell me index started something againLore's ears loosened. She hadn't realized they'd been pinned back since the walk home.
[NeighSayer]: Meeting ran long. Gilded wanted to go through the quarterly budget line by line, which would have been tolerable if he hadn't insisted on reminiscing about every chapter expense since the founding.
[NightMare]: so just a normal meeting then
[NeighSayer]: A normal meeting.
[NightMare]: was redback there
[NeighSayer]: Unfortunately.
[NightMare]: did he do the thing
[NeighSayer]: He held the door open and said "after you, miss Nook" like it was supposed to carry weight.
[NightMare]: oh no
[NightMare]: the door hold
[NightMare]: devastating technique
[NeighSayer]: Don't.
[NightMare]: I'm not saying anything I'm just saying that's a colt who rehearsed that in front of a mirror
[NeighSayer]: I will close this window.
[NightMare]: you won't thoughLore didn't close the window. She pulled her chair closer to the desk and let the keyboard float at her preferred angle, tilted slightly left, and started typing the way she only typed to NightMare: without reworking every sentence twice before she sent it.
[NeighSayer]: The walk home was unpleasant. Construction detour through three blocks near the old factory stretch. Some colt was following me for half a block before I crossed the street.
[NightMare]: following you?
[NeighSayer]: Probably nothing. Drunk, most likely. It's that part of the neighborhood.
[NightMare]: lore
[NeighSayer]: I handled it.
[NeighSayer]: It's not the first time.
[NightMare]: you're a unicorn walking alone past midnight through a neighborhood you have literally described to me as "the kind of place where the streetlights give up"
[NeighSayer]: I have magic.
[NightMare]: cool so you blasted a potential mugger with your horn
[NeighSayer]: I could have.
[NightMare]: have you actually ever blasted anything with your horn
[NeighSayer]: ...I've moved heavy furniture.
[NightMare]: lore
[NightMare]: nopony walked you home?The question sat on the screen. Lore looked at it. Her tail pressed flat against the back of the chair, then curled around the leg of it.
[NeighSayer]: Who would walk me home?She sent it before she thought to revise it. The words sat in the chat window. She should have written something drier, something with an edge, but it was delivered and NightMare typed fast.
The cursor blinked for a while.
[NightMare]: yeah
[NightMare]: same honestly
[NightMare]: ponyville is supposed to be the friendliest town in equestria and I haven't had a real conversation with anypony here in two months that wasn't about somepony's chart or their medication
[NeighSayer]: You have coworkers.
[NightMare]: I have ponies I share a building with between midnight and 8 am
[NightMare]: that's different
[NeighSayer]: I have the Book Club.
[NightMare]: okay when was the last time anypony at the book club asked you something that wasn't about work or politics
[NeighSayer]: Brickspine asked if I'd read the new Trottingham Review piece on pre-Unification pottery traditions.
[NightMare]: lore that IS work
[NeighSayer]: It was a good article.
[NightMare]: I'm sure it wasThe Sombra pillow caught her eye from the headboard. Painted smirk, outstretched foreleg. She'd positioned him that way months ago and hadn't adjusted him since.
[NightMare]: okay real question
[NightMare]: and you can tell me to buck off
[NightMare]: when was the last time you went on a dateHeat flooded her muzzle. Her magic flickered and the keyboard dipped two inches before she caught it.
[NeighSayer]: Define "date."
[NightMare]: you know what a date is
[NeighSayer]: I've never been on one.
[NightMare]: ever?
[NeighSayer]: Ever. Is that the answer you wanted?
[NightMare]: it's the answer I expected because same
[NightMare]: I had colts hovering around me all through high school and I turned down every single one because I didn't know what I wanted
[NightMare]: and by the time I figured that out the friend group had scattered and I'd moved to a town where everypony's asleep before my evening starts
[NeighSayer]: At least you had colts interested.
[NightMare]: trust me that's not the compliment you think it is
[NightMare]: they weren't interested in me
[NightMare]: they were interested in the goth filly who played their games
[NightMare]: I could've been anyponyLore read that last line twice. Her tail unwound from the chair leg and lay flat behind her.
[NeighSayer]: At least somepony was looking.
[NightMare]: ...was nopony looking at you?
[NeighSayer]: Everypony was looking. Nopony came closer. I was the filly who knew everypony's name and made sure they were afraid of it. Four years at the academy. Not a single colt asked to share a meal with me.
[NightMare]: lore
[NeighSayer]: I had my father's donations keeping me enrolled and my reputation keeping everypony at a distance. I was very visible. I was completely alone.
[NightMare]: that's a different problem than mine
[NeighSayer]: I know.
[NeighSayer]: I don't want to be untouchable.
[NightMare]: I know
[NeighSayer]: I don't want somepony who's interested in what I represent either. I want—Lore stopped typing. She looked at what she'd written. Backspaced the last four words. Typed them again. Backspaced.
[NeighSayer]: I want somepony to walk me home.She sent it and immediately regretted it. Her ears burned. She pulled the keyboard an inch closer to her chest, which accomplished nothing, and stared at the blinking cursor.
[NightMare]: yeah
[NightMare]: me too
[NightMare]: except I want somepony to be there when I get home
[NightMare]: like I come off a shift at 8 in the morning and the apartment is empty and the sun is already up and the whole town is out doing things and I'm just
[NightMare]: I don't know
[NightMare]: I want a colt on the couch who asks how my night was
[NeighSayer]: That's disgustingly domestic.
[NightMare]: yeah it is
[NightMare]: what do you wantLore looked at the Sombra pillow again. His painted smirk. His foreleg. The pillowcase she kept avoiding because washing it meant thinking about what it was and why she owned it.
[NeighSayer]: I want a stallion who doesn't ask permission. Who has authority and a plan. Somepony who knows what he wants.
[NightMare]: so sombra
[NeighSayer]: I am closing this window.
[NightMare]: you really won't though
[NightMare]: okay but seriously
[NightMare]: what's stopping you from actually going out and finding somepony
[NeighSayer]: Where? With whom? The colts at the Book Club are either too old, too committed to the cause to function as actual ponies, or Redback Grey.
[NightMare]: what about outside the club
[NeighSayer]: Outside is worse. Half the stallions in this part of Manehatten are the wrong sort entirely, and the rest are taken or the kind who'd chat up a griffon hen before they'd look at me.
[NightMare]: the wrong sort?
[NeighSayer]: You know what I mean.
[NightMare]: I really don't but okay
[NightMare]: same problem though, different town
[NightMare]: I work nights in a place that shuts down at sundown
[NightMare]: every stallion I've met here is married, old enough to be my dad, or thinks staying up late means 10 pm
[NeighSayer]: We're useless.
[NightMare]: completely useless
[NightMare]: two mares who can debate fleet doctrine for three hours but can't get a single colt to buy us a drinkLore's mouth twitched. She didn't smile, exactly. Her lips pressed together and the corners pulled and she made a sound through her nose that she was glad nopony was around to hear.
[NightMare]: okay stupid question
[NightMare]: what if we actually tried
[NeighSayer]: Tried what?
[NightMare]: to figure this out
[NightMare]: like actually came up with a plan instead of sitting here being sad about it in a chat window every night
[NeighSayer]: A plan. To walk into a bar and ask a stallion to take us home?
[NightMare]: I mean
[NightMare]: yeah?
[NightMare]: is that not how it works
[NeighSayer]: You make it sound simple.
[NightMare]: me neither but between the two of us we've got maybe one working brain cell and access to the entire crystalnet so
[NeighSayer]: That is the least reassuring thing you have ever said to me.
[NightMare]: think about it though
[NightMare]: we can figure it out tomorrow
[NightMare]: I gotta go, shift starts in ten
[NeighSayer]: NightMare.
[NightMare]: yeah?
[NeighSayer]: Thank you for asking about the walk home.
[NightMare]: lock your door
[NightMare]: all three of themThe green dot beside NightMare's name went dark.
Lore sat in the monitor's glow with the keyboard floating still in her magic. The tea on her desk had gone cold hours ago. The neighbor's radio murmured something indistinct through the wall. Outside the window, East Manehatten did what it always did at midnight, which was everything, all at once, without her.
She set the keyboard down on the desk. Shut off the monitor. The flat went dark.
She crossed the room and checked the deadbolt. Checked the chain. Ran her hoof across the auxiliary bolt and felt the crooked screws catch under her frog.
Then she went to bed and pulled Sombra against her chest and lay there with his painted smirk pressed to her collarbone and didn't sleep for a long time.
15th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — 10:22 PM
Lore had spent the entire day not thinking about it.
She'd shelved returns at the library. Reviewed Brickspine's latest column draft for the chapter paper, which needed fewer adjectives and more citations, as usual. Tutored two fillies on the pre-Unification period, which she could recite with her eyes shut. Ate lunch alone at her desk because eating alone at her desk was what she did on days when Cinder was using the breakroom and Lore would rather go hungry than share air with her.
She had not replayed the words "what if we actually tried" while re-shelving a water-damaged copy of A Mare's Guide to Social Etiquette near the romance section. That had not happened. And she had not stood in front of the section for four full minutes staring at the spines with her ears warm.
She opened her DMs at 10:22 PM. NightMare was already there.
[NightMare]: so
[NightMare]: did you think about itLore's jaw tightened.
[NeighSayer]: Think about what?
[NightMare]: lore
[NeighSayer]: I've been busy.
[NightMare]: you shelve books and quiz foals about dead generals
[NightMare]: you had time
[NeighSayer]: Fine. I thought about it.
[NightMare]: and?
[NeighSayer]: And the idea terrifies me. I've never walked into a bar with the intention of leaving with somepony. I've never walked into a bar at all. I drink tea.
[NightMare]: okay so we're starting from actual zero
[NightMare]: which is fine because same
[NightMare]: the closest I've come to flirting was when a colt at the clinic asked if I was seeing anypony and I said "I barely see daylight" and he just walked away
[NeighSayer]: That's tragic.
[NightMare]: it wasn't even a joke that's what kills me
[NightMare]: I was being literal
[NightMare]: anyway
[NightMare]: let's actually do this properly
[NightMare]: step one
[NightMare]: location
[NightMare]: what kind of bars does manehatten haveLore's tail twitched behind the chair.
[NeighSayer]: Why Manehatten?
[NightMare]: because ponyville has two pubs
[NightMare]: one closes at 9
[NightMare]: the other is run by a mare who knows everypony by name and hobby and dietary restriction
[NightMare]: if I tried to pick up a stallion there I'd be the talk of the morning market before my shift even ended
[NeighSayer]: And Manehatten has anonymity.
[NightMare]: exactly
[NightMare]: plus you live there so you know the area
[NeighSayer]: I know which streets to avoid after sundown. That's different from knowing which bars are suitable for... this.
[NightMare]: suitable for what
[NightMare]: say it
[NeighSayer]: For meeting a stallion.
[NightMare]: for getting laid, lore
[NightMare]: you can type the wordsHeat spread under Lore's coat, across her muzzle and up past her freckles. The keyboard wobbled in her telekinetic grip.
[NeighSayer]: For getting laid. There. Happy?
[NightMare]: proud of you
[NightMare]: okay so manehatten bars
[NightMare]: what's the scene near you
[NeighSayer]: I don't know the scene. I've walked past bars. The ones near the Book Club's office are either too expensive for two mares on our wages or they attract clientele I'd rather avoid.
[NightMare]: the wrong sort
[NeighSayer]: You're going to keep doing that.
[NightMare]: doing what
[NeighSayer]: Noting it every time I say something like that.
[NightMare]: I'm not noting anything
[NightMare]: I just think you keep tossing half the menu before you've looked at it
[NeighSayer]: Some dishes aren't worth ordering.
[NightMare]: mhm
[NightMare]: okay step two
[NightMare]: what do we wear
[NeighSayer]: I have my dress shirt and a tie.
[NightMare]: to a bar
[NeighSayer]: What's wrong with a dress shirt?
[NightMare]: nothing if you're applying for a position at the bar
[NightMare]: you'd look like you were about to ask the bartender for his quarterly earnings
[NeighSayer]: I look professional.
[NightMare]: you'd look like you came straight from a budget meeting because you literally did
[NightMare]: do you own anything that isn't work clothes
[NeighSayer]: I have my old school uniform.
[NightMare]: worse
[NeighSayer]: What do you wear?
[NightMare]: scrubs, a nursing cap, three band shirts, and a hoodie that smells like hayburger
[NightMare]: so we're both useless on this front
[NeighSayer]: We need to go shopping.
[NightMare]: yeah we'd need to go—
[NightMare]: wait
[NightMare]: "we"
[NightMare]: I just said we
[NightMare]: like I'd be thereLore looked at the screen. Her hooves were still on the desk. The keyboard floated perfectly level.
[NeighSayer]: You did say "we."
[NightMare]: I mean think about it
[NightMare]: it would be insane to do this alone
[NightMare]: either of us
[NeighSayer]: You're the one who told me I shouldn't walk through my own neighborhood at midnight.
[NightMare]: exactly
[NightMare]: so walking into a strange bar alone is out
[NightMare]: I've been thinking about it since last night
[NightMare]: even if I found the perfect outfit and the perfect bar and figured out exactly what to say
[NightMare]: I wouldn't go by myself
[NightMare]: I don't know anypony in ponyville well enough to ask
[NightMare]: you?
[NeighSayer]: If I told anypony at the Book Club what I was planning, it would be over. Cinder would hold it over me by sundown. Redback would volunteer himself as the stallion. And Gilded would lecture me about finding a husband through the chapter's social network like a proper mare.
[NightMare]: so neither of us has a filly to drag along
[NeighSayer]: No.
[NightMare]: except each otherThe cursor blinked.
Her ears rotated forward. Her tail lifted off the chair and held.
[NeighSayer]: You're serious.
[NightMare]: completely
[NightMare]: there's a train from ponyville
[NightMare]: I've got weekends off
[NightMare]: it's not like anything's happening here except gaming and clinic shifts and sleeping through the market hours I keep telling myself I'll wake up for
[NeighSayer]: You would take a train to another city to help me find a stallion.
[NightMare]: to help US find a stallion
[NightMare]: this is a two mare operation
[NightMare]: I'm not doing it alone eitherLore's magic held the keyboard without a tremor. Her posture had changed. She was sitting straighter. Her hindlegs had shifted beneath her and her weight was forward, closer to the screen.
[NeighSayer]: A two-mare operation.
[NightMare]: yeah
[NightMare]: listen
[NightMare]: I trust you more than anypony I know right now and that says more about my social life than anything else but it's still true
[NightMare]: you trust me?
[NeighSayer]: Against my better judgment, apparently.
[NightMare]: that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me
[NightMare]: okay so here's how this works
[NightMare]: we go together
[NightMare]: we pick a bar where nopony knows you
[NightMare]: we watch each other's backs
[NightMare]: we figure out how the buck this actually works in practice
[NightMare]: and if it's a total disaster we go home and pretend it never happened
[NeighSayer]: And the stallion?
[NightMare]: what about him
[NeighSayer]: One stallion and two mares. You realize what that sounds like.
[NightMare]: it sounds like two mares who don't want to do this alone finding a colt who's lucky enough to benefit from our combined inexperience
[NightMare]: look we don't have to share
[NightMare]: one of us could just be the wingpony
[NeighSayer]: Neither of us has ever been a wingpony. Neither of us has ever been anything.
[NightMare]: lore
[NightMare]: that's the whole point
[NightMare]: we don't know what we're doing ALONE
[NightMare]: together we might manage something
[NightMare]: when's your next free weekendLore looked around her flat. The dishes. The thin walls, the radio bleeding through. The Sombra pillow on the bed with his outstretched foreleg and his smirk. The three locks on the door. The neighborhood outside where the streetlights quit.
NightMare was going to see all of this. NightMare was going to stand in this apartment and see the life Lore had assembled from an accident and a train she'd fallen asleep on two years ago.
She's going to see the pillow.
Her tail pressed flat against the chair.
[NeighSayer]: This Saturday.
[NightMare]: I'll look at the train schedule
[NightMare]: I think there's a morning route from ponyville to central manehatten
[NightMare]: gets in around noon maybe?
[NeighSayer]: NightMare.
[NightMare]: yeah?
[NeighSayer]: I don't know what I'm doing.
[NightMare]: me neither
[NightMare]: that's literally all we've ever had in common
[NightMare]: goodnight lore
[NightMare]: lock your doorsThe green dot went dark.
Lore shut off the monitor. The heating crystal hummed. Her neighbor's radio played something slow and tinny through the wall. Below the window a bottle broke against pavement and a colt laughed and another colt told him to shut up.
She sat at the desk for a while with her forehooves flat on the surface and her ears forward in the silence.
Saturday. A mare she had never seen was going to knock on this door on Saturday.
She didn't know what NightMare looked like. Coat color, mane length, whether she wore her tail braided or loose. She'd built an image from months of conversation. A sharp, lazy, sardonic pony who typed fast and thought in straight lines and knew military strategy the way some ponies knew how to breathe.
She was almost certainly a unicorn. The speed at which she composed messages, the analytical precision, the structured approach to tactical thinking. She spoke the way unicorns thought.
She checked the locks. Got into bed. The Sombra pillow sat against the headboard and she left it there.
Saturday. She thought about Saturday until the radio blurred into noise.
17th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — 11:03 PM
Tomorrow.
Lore had cleaned the apartment for the first time since she'd moved in. Properly cleaned, not the surface-level tidying she did when the mess started interfering with her ability to find things. The dishes were done. The laundry was off the spare chair and folded into the closet, badly, but folded. Book Club ledgers had been moved from the kitchen counter to the cabinet beneath the sink where they didn't belong but couldn't be seen. The floor was swept. The bathroom was scrubbed with a solution she'd bought specifically for this and would probably never buy again.
The Sombra pillow sat on the bed. She'd considered hiding it. Had picked him up and held him at foreleg's length and looked at his painted smirk and thought about shoving him under the bed or behind the laundry in the closet.
She'd put him back where he was. NightMare didn't need to see the bedroom.
She's going to see the bedroom.
Lore opened DMs at five past eleven. Two nights of planning conversations sat above the current chat, full of crossed-out bar names, arguments about dress codes, and one disastrous attempt by NightMare to describe flirting techniques she'd seen described on a gaming forum that Lore had refused to dignify with a response.
NightMare was online.
[NightMare]: okay tomorrow
[NeighSayer]: Tomorrow.
[NightMare]: are you panicking
[NeighSayer]: I cleaned my entire apartment.
[NightMare]: I thought you said you clean regularly
[NeighSayer]: I maintain. I don't deep clean. There's a difference.
[NightMare]: lore there really isn't
[NeighSayer]: There IS.
[NightMare]: okay listen
[NightMare]: we need to talk about the part we keep stepping around
[NeighSayer]: Which part?
[NightMare]: you know which part
[NightMare]: what actually happens after we find a colt
[NightMare]: like specifically
[NightMare]: walk me through itLore stared at the screen. Her hoof pressed hard against the desk edge.
[NeighSayer]: We bring him somewhere.
[NightMare]: where
[NeighSayer]: A hotel?
[NightMare]: do you have hotel money
[NeighSayer]: No.
[NightMare]: me neither
[NightMare]: so
[NeighSayer]: My apartment.
[NightMare]: your apartment with the one bedroom
[NeighSayer]: Yes.
[NightMare]: with the one bed
[NeighSayer]: Yes, NightMare. With the one bed.
[NightMare]: okay
[NightMare]: and then what
[NeighSayer]: You know what happens next.
[NightMare]: do I though
[NightMare]: because I haven't done it
[NightMare]: neither have you
[NightMare]: so "what happens next" is a genuine question
[NightMare]: like practicallyThe heat in her muzzle crept past her freckles. She let the keyboard float higher in her magic, as if distance from the device could create distance from the conversation.
[NeighSayer]: The stallion would take the lead.
[NightMare]: would he
[NeighSayer]: That's how it works.
[NightMare]: according to what
[NeighSayer]: According to general understanding.
[NightMare]: general understanding
[NightMare]: lore are you getting your sex education from romance novels
[NeighSayer]: I am not answering that.
[NightMare]: you absolutely are
[NightMare]: okay here's the thing
[NightMare]: the colt we pick up at a bar is some random stallion we've never met
[NightMare]: he doesn't know us
[NightMare]: he's not going to stride in and take charge like some character from whatever smut is on your nightstand
[NightMare]: he's going to be just as clueless as we are
[NightMare]: probablyLore read that and her stomach tightened. She'd been imagining somepony specific. The authority. The curved horn and the painted foreleg reaching across the pillow. She'd projected all of it onto a stallion who didn't exist yet and wouldn't look anything like what she'd assembled in her head.
[NeighSayer]: Fine. Nopony knows what they're doing. What's your plan?
[NightMare]: my plan is we figure it out when it's happening
[NightMare]: that's how it works for most ponies I think
[NightMare]: you just kind of go
[NeighSayer]: "You just kind of go." Riveting guidance.
[NightMare]: you got something better?
[NeighSayer]: I have theoretical knowledge.
[NightMare]: from the romance novels
[NeighSayer]: From ANATOMY TEXTS.
[NightMare]: lore
[NeighSayer]: Equine reproductive anatomy is a well-documented field.
[NightMare]: did you seriously read a textbook to prepare for this
[NeighSayer]: I may have reviewed one at the library. During my lunch break.
[NightMare]: that is the most you thing I've ever heard
[NightMare]: what did you learn
[NeighSayer]: Stallions are considerably larger than I assumed.
[NightMare]: oh
[NeighSayer]: The diagrams were detailed.
[NightMare]: how detailed
[NeighSayer]: I closed the book.
[NightMare]: lmao
[NeighSayer]: It's not funny.
[NightMare]: it's a little funny
[NightMare]: so you opened an anatomy textbook, saw a cock diagram, and slammed it shut in the middle of a public library
[NeighSayer]: I set it down. I didn't slam.
[NightMare]: nopony sets down a book with a cock in it
[NightMare]: you slammed it
[NeighSayer]: ...I may have set it down firmly.She could feel her heartbeat in her freckles.
[NightMare]: okay so we're both going in completely blind and the one pony who did research got scared off by a diagram
[NightMare]: great
[NightMare]: we've got this
[NeighSayer]: Your sarcasm is noted.
[NightMare]: it's not sarcasm I genuinely think we'll be fine
[NightMare]: ponies do this all the time
[NightMare]: drunk ponies
[NightMare]: ponies way dumber than us
[NightMare]: we're two smart mares who just happen to have zero practical experience
[NightMare]: also we need to settle the other thing
[NeighSayer]: What other thing?
[NightMare]: from the other night
[NightMare]: one stallion
[NightMare]: two mares
[NightMare]: who gets himLore's hooves went still on the desk.
[NeighSayer]: We discussed this. One of us is the wingpony.
[NightMare]: okay but which one
[NightMare]: because practically speaking
[NightMare]: I take a five hour train to manehatten
[NightMare]: we find a colt at a bar
[NightMare]: we bring him back to your one bedroom apartment
[NightMare]: and then I sit in your kitchen staring at the wall while you're in the next room?
[NightMare]: lore your walls are thin enough to hear your neighbor's radio
[NeighSayer]: I know.
[NightMare]: so I'd hear everything
[NeighSayer]: I KNOW.
[NightMare]: okay so that's off the table
[NightMare]: unless you want me to go sit in the alley with the dumpster stallion
[NeighSayer]: Don't joke about that.
[NightMare]: I'm not joking I'm pointing out that the wingpony plan doesn't work with one apartment
[NightMare]: so either we find two separate stallions and two separate locations which is twice as dangerous and twice as expensive
[NightMare]: orThe cursor blinked.
[NightMare]: we shareLore stared at the word.
Her ears were flat. Her tail was wound so tight around the chair leg she could feel the wood grain pressing through her coat. The keyboard hung motionless in her magic.
[NeighSayer]: You're suggesting a threeway.
[NightMare]: I'm suggesting we don't split up
[NightMare]: the entire point of meeting up was that doing this alone is the problem
[NightMare]: splitting at the finish defeats the whole thing
[NeighSayer]: That isn't how I pictured this.
[NightMare]: how did you picture it
[NeighSayer]: I pictured being with a stallion. Just me. Like a normal mare in a normal situation.
[NightMare]: okay but where am I in this picture
[NeighSayer]: I hadn't thought about that part.
[NightMare]: yeah
[NightMare]: I knowThere was a pause. Lore could feel it in the gap between messages. Night Drift wasn't typing for a while.
[NightMare]: it's fine
[NightMare]: I'm not upset about it
[NightMare]: but think about it logically
[NightMare]: we go in together or we don't go in
[NightMare]: isn't that what we saidLore's jaw tightened. She typed and deleted and typed and deleted. The keyboard drifted slightly left in her grip.
[NeighSayer]: I've never been with anypony. The idea of my first time being a threeway with a stranger and my only friend isn't exactly what I dreamed about.
[NightMare]: I know
[NightMare]: me neither
[NightMare]: but the version you dreamed about isn't showing up
[NightMare]: the version you dreamed about requires a stallion who already knows you and cares about you and wants to be with you specifically
[NightMare]: and neither of us has that
[NightMare]: so we work with what we've got
[NightMare]: which is each otherLore read it twice. She looked at the Sombra pillow on the bed. The painted foreleg. The smirk. The fantasy she'd constructed out of loneliness and a body pillow bought in a warehouse from a vendor who wouldn't look her in the eye.
She looked back at the screen.
[NeighSayer]: If we do this.
[NightMare]: yeah?
[NeighSayer]: The stallion focuses on me first.
[NightMare]: sure
[NeighSayer]: I'm serious.
[NightMare]: I said sure
[NightMare]: you're the one who needs this more
[NeighSayer]: I don't "need" it.
[NightMare]: lore you read an anatomy textbook at lunch because you couldn't stop thinking about it
[NeighSayer]: That was research.
[NightMare]: it was horny research
[NeighSayer]: I'm going to close this window and I mean it this time.
[NightMare]: but you won't
[NightMare]: because tomorrow I'm getting on a train for youLore didn't close the window.
[NeighSayer]: What if it's terrible?
[NightMare]: then we leave
[NeighSayer]: What if HE'S terrible?
[NightMare]: then we leave faster
[NeighSayer]: What if we get there and I can't go through with it?
[NightMare]: then we don't
[NightMare]: lore
[NightMare]: we're going to a bar
[NightMare]: we're going to have a drink
[NightMare]: we're going to see if there's a colt worth talking to
[NightMare]: and if everything goes sideways we walk home and eat takeout and I sleep on your couch and take the morning train back and it's still the most interesting weekend either of us has had in years
[NeighSayer]: That's a low bar.
[NightMare]: it's our bar
[NightMare]: train leaves ponyville at 7 am
[NightMare]: I'll be at central manehatten station around noon
[NightMare]: don't clean the apartment again between now and then
[NeighSayer]: No promises.
[NightMare]: goodnight lore
[NightMare]: tomorrow
[NeighSayer]: Tomorrow. Lock your door.
[NightMare]: I only have one
[NightMare]: peasant lifeThe green dot went dark.
Lore shut off the monitor. The flat was dark and clean and smelled like the scrubbing solution she'd used on the bathroom tiles. Her heart was faster than she’d allow herself to acknowledge.
Deadbolt. Chain. Auxiliary bolt.
She got into bed. The Sombra pillow was right there and she didn’t touch it. The neighbor’s radio was playing something in a language she couldn’t place.
Tomorrow a mare she’d never seen was getting on a train.
18th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — 8:14 AM
Lore woke up four hours before she needed to.
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and then she got up and cleaned the bathroom again. She wiped the kitchen counter with a damp cloth. She straightened the Book Club ledgers in the cabinet. She stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the Sombra pillow and picked him up and opened the closet and put him behind the laundry and closed the door.
She opened the door. Took him out. Put him back on the bed.
She opened the door again. Took him out. Put him under the bed.
She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Pale white coat. Freckles. Blonde mane, no red, the dye holding. Blue eyes with circles underneath that she normally ignored.
She brushed her mane. She brushed her tail. She put on the one outfit they'd agreed on two nights ago over DMs: the dress shirt without the tie, collar open one button. NightMare had said the tie made her look like middle management. Lore had argued for twenty minutes before conceding.
She looked at the mirror again.
I look like I'm trying.
She left the shirt on.
The train arrived at noon. Central Manehatten Station was forty minutes by hoof from her apartment. She had over three hours to fill and nothing to do with them and her apartment was already clean.
She made tea. Sat at the kitchen counter. Drank it. Made more tea. Drank that. Checked the lock on the front door even though she wasn't leaving yet. Opened the closet and looked at the Sombra pillow wedged behind her laundry. Closed the closet.
Opened it again. Moved him under the bed. That was final.
She sat on the bed and waited.
Loveless Chapter Two — NeighSayer
18th of Hale — Central Manehatten, Maneway Station — 11:23 AM
Lore arrived forty minutes early and spent all of them standing near the arrivals board like a mare waiting for bad news.
The station was the busiest place in the city at noon. Earth ponies moved in every direction with purpose and luggage and foals and noise. Taxi carriages queued along the curb outside the arched windows. The underground Maneway rumbled beneath the floor tiles, sending vibrations up through Lore's hooves every few minutes. Through the main concourse windows, the Crystaller Building's horse-head sculpture caught midday sun and threw its shadow across half the plaza.
Lore had positioned herself beside a pillar near the platform exit. Visible. She hoped. She was wearing the dress shirt, collar open one button, no tie. She'd brushed her mane twice and then a third time in the bathroom mirror before leaving. Her tail hung loose, the red band at the dock covered by the blonde length of it.
She was looking for a nursing cap. Black, with a red cross. That was the signal they'd agreed on. NightMare had described it two nights ago: "black cap with a magenta cross, I wear it everywhere, you can't miss it."
Lore scanned the platform exit. Earth ponies streamed through it in clusters. Manehatten was an earth pony city and the station proved it: for every unicorn or pegasus she spotted, there were twenty earth ponies. She'd lived here long enough to know the numbers, but she'd never stood in a crowd actively trying to find a horn. Trying to find her specific horn, attached to a specific mare, wearing a specific hat.
A unicorn stallion in a suit, fifty paces away. Too tall. A unicorn mare with a foal across the concourse. Wrong age, no cap. Two more unicorn stallions in business attire coming through the exit. Neither wearing anything on their heads.
The 12:03 from Ponyville was four minutes late. The arrivals board updated with a click of crystal tiles. ARRIVED.
Passengers pushed through the platform gate. More earth ponies. A pegasus couple arguing about a map. A family of four with too many bags.
No nursing cap. No horn paired with a nursing cap.
Lore's ears twitched. Her weight shifted from one forehoof to the other and back.
Then she saw it.
The cap. Black fabric, red cross, the magenta bright even under the station's crystal lighting. It was moving through the crowd about thirty lengths away, bobbing between taller ponies.
Lore's eyes locked on it and tracked downward to find the horn beneath it.
There was just mane.
Greyish purple coat. Bluish purple mane in loose, messy curls spilling from under the cap’s brim. Bags under her eyes deep enough to carry luggage of their own.
She wore a black band t-shirt under a hoodie and carried a saddlebag that looked overstuffed and poorly packed. She walked with an unhurried gait that said she’d never rushed for anything in her life and wasn’t planning to start.
No horn.
Lore looked past her. Scanned the rest of the platform. Looked for a second nursing cap. A second mare. Another possibility.
There wasn't one.
The earth pony in the nursing cap stopped walking. She was scanning muzzles now, head turning slowly across the concourse. Her gaze swept past Lore, kept going, then came back and stopped. She was looking at Lore's horn. Then her mane. Then the dress shirt.
She started walking over.
Lore stood very still. Her magic flickered once around the base of her horn, an involuntary spark of pale gold that died as fast as it came. She watched the mare approach. Steady hooves on the tile. A pony walking toward her on four unenchanted legs.
The mare stopped two lengths away. Looked at Lore with tired cyan eyes.
"NeighSayer?"
The voice was exactly like the text. Casual. Flat. A little rough at the edges, like she'd been talking all morning or hadn't slept enough. Lore had read that voice in hundreds of messages and now it was coming out of an earth pony's mouth in a hoodie that smelled faintly like hayburger.
"NightMare," Lore said. Her voice came out more controlled than she wanted it to.
"Night Drift. Since we're, like, doing actual names now."
"Lore Nook."
"I know. You told me like three months ago." Night Drift tilted her head. Her curls shifted under the cap. Her eyes moved across Lore's muzzle with the same analytical sweep she brought to hex grids and battle maps. Horn. Mane. Freckles. Collar. "You're young."
"I'm nineteen."
"Yeah. That's young." Night Drift blinked. "I had you pegged as like... thirty? Glasses. Cardigan. Real strong opinions about paper weight."
"I have opinions about paper weight."
"Yeah but you're like... nineteen." Night Drift's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "Huh."
Lore was looking at the top of Night Drift's head. She couldn't stop. The space between the nursing cap and the brow, where a horn should have interrupted the line of the skull, was smooth. Just coat and mane. The cap sat flat on her head in a way it never could have on a unicorn because there was nothing underneath it to push it off-center.
"You're an earth pony," Lore said.
Night Drift looked at her. "Yeah."
"You type quickly. I had assumed..."
"Speech to text," Night Drift said. "Crystal mic on my desk. I just like, talk and it writes."
"So every message you've ever sent me—"
"Was me talking to a rock, basically. Yeah."
Lore’s jaw tightened. Night Drift’s hooves were broad and flat, planted on the station tile with a solidity that horn-bearing ponies didn’t carry. Working hooves. The kind that dug foundations and pulled carts and—
She cut the thought off.
"It doesn't matter," Lore said. Her voice was steady and slightly too precise.
"Didn't say it did." Night Drift hitched her saddlebag higher. "Which way?"
18th of Hale — Central Manehatten to East Manehatten — Afternoon
They walked. Lore led. The first fifteen minutes were fine.
Maneway Station opened onto the main avenue, wide and clean, electric lampposts functioning on both sides, the pavement smooth under their hooves. Taxi carriages rattled past. The Crystaller Building filled the north skyline, and to the west, the Bridleway theater district's marquee crystals were already warming up for the evening shows, their glow faint but visible even at noon.
"That's Bridleway," Lore said, pointing with her muzzle. "The theater district."
"Mhm."
"And the Crystaller Building, obviously."
"I see it."
Night Drift was looking at everything with the quiet interest of a mare who'd spent a year in a town with two pubs and a hay market. She didn't gawk. Her ears rotated steadily, tracking the carriages, the construction noise, a busker on the corner playing something with a fiddle. She took it in without commentary. Ponyville had trees and silence and sunrise markets. This was something else.
They turned east.
The avenue narrowed after ten blocks. The buildings got shorter. Lampposts started spacing further apart, and some of them were dark at the base, bulbs broken or never replaced. The taxi carriages thinned out. The ponies on the street changed: fewer suits, more work clothes, more mares with foals walking with purpose and without eye contact.
Night Drift's ears rotated forward and held.
"Is the clinic work always nights?" Lore asked. She was filling silence. She could hear herself filling it.
"Every weeknight. Saturday off."
"Do you like it?"
"I mean, it pays for the apartment and the gaming setup."
"That's not the same as liking it."
"No," Night Drift said. "It's not."
Seven more blocks. Cracked sidewalk. A storefront boarded and spray-painted in a language Lore pretended she couldn’t read. Three colts on an overturned produce crate watched them pass.
Five hours on a train for this.
"Those ponies, you know them?" Night Drift asked.
"No."
"They're watching us."
"They watch everypony." Lore kept walking. She held her chin level and her posture straight, the way she always walked through this stretch. Above it. Through it. Never part of it.
Three more blocks. The cooking smells changed from restaurant to residential, grease and onion and something burnt. A stray cat bolted across the street ahead of them and Night Drift's ear flicked but her stride didn't break.
The building stood at the end of the block. Four stories, brick, the fire escape clinging to the east wall on bolts that didn't inspire confidence. The front entrance was a heavy door with a small window in it. It didn't lock.
Lore pushed it open with her magic and held it. The lobby was a hallway with two rows of mailboxes and a flight of stairs. Half the mailbox doors hung open, hinges pried. The floor was tile that had been white once.
"Third floor," Lore said.
Night Drift looked at the mailboxes. Looked at the stairwell. She didn't say anything. She walked in and started climbing.
The stairwell smelled like cleaning solution and, beneath it, something older. A door on the second floor had a dent near the handle, the metal pushed inward in the shape of a hoof or a shoulder. On the third floor landing, Lore stopped in front of her door and undid the deadbolt with her key. Then she reached through the gap with her magic to undo the chain on the inside. Then the auxiliary bolt. Night Drift watched this process in silence.
"This is it," Lore said, and pushed the door open.
18th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — Afternoon
Night Drift stepped inside. Her eyes swept the room, across the counter, desk, monitor, bed through the doorway, window, then and settled on the alley with the dumpster.
"You cleaned," she said.
"You can tell?"
"It smells like cleaning solution. Everything else smells like a city."
Lore closed the door behind them. Three locks. She did it automatically, the movements smooth, deadbolt and chain and auxiliary bolt in sequence. Night Drift turned and watched her do it. Watched the three separate mechanisms engage. Her mouth pressed into a line and then released.
She didn't comment. She set her saddlebag down beside the kitchen counter and looked at the window again. The alley below. The dumpster. A pigeon sitting on the dumpster's lid with no intention of leaving.
"That the alley?"
"Yes."
"The dumpster stallion's spot?"
"He alternates. He won't be there tonight."
"How much is..." Night Drift stopped herself. Looked at Lore. Looked away. "So like... where do I put my stuff?"
"There's a chair." Lore pointed at the spare chair, which now existed as a chair instead of a laundry receptacle for the first time in recent memory. "And I have blankets for the evening. The floor isn't comfortable, but—"
"Floor's fine. Seriously."
"I won't have you sleeping on the floor."
"I've slept on worse, trust me." Night Drift dropped her saddlebag against the wall and sat on her haunches, looking up at Lore. Her tail lay flat behind her on the clean floor. "So."
"So."
They looked at each other. In person. No screen. Just two mares in a small apartment in a bad neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon with a plan that sounded reasonable in text and sounded insane out loud.
Night Drift's eyes drifted to the bedroom doorway. Her ears tilted forward.
"Is that a body pillow?"
Lore froze.
The closet. She'd closed it. She'd definitely closed it. She had specifically, deliberately closed the closet door before leaving this morning. She turned and looked and the closet door was open about three inches, because the latch didn't catch properly, because nothing in this apartment worked properly, and through the gap, visible at exactly the wrong angle, was the edge of King Sombra's painted mane and one red eye staring out from behind a stack of badly folded laundry.
"That's—"
"Is that SOMBRA?"
"It's a historical—"
"Lore."
"It's a COLLECTIBLE—"
"You own a Sombra body pillow."
Lore's muzzle was burning from the dock of her tail to the tips of her ears. Her magic sparked and the closet door slammed shut, rattling in its frame. The sound bounced off the thin walls and the neighbor's radio, which had been playing something soft and indistinct, went silent for a moment before resuming.
Night Drift stared at the closed closet. Then at Lore. Then back at the closet.
"You told me about the anatomy textbook but you left THIS out?"
"It's not—I bought it for—"
"You own a body pillow of a SLAVE KING."
"It's a COLLECTIBLE—"
"Is it NSFW?"
Lore didn't answer. Her silence answered.
Night Drift sat down flat on the floor, hindquarters hitting the tile, and started laughing. She laughed with her whole chest, her forehooves pressed against the floor to keep herself upright.
"It's not—" Lore's voice was strangled. "He has historical SIGNIFICANCE—"
"He literally enslaved an entire civilization, Lore."
"His ADMINISTRATION—"
"Where do you even BUY a sexy Sombra pillow?" Night Drift wiped her eye with the back of her hoof. "Like where do you walk into and say yes I'd like the war criminal in NSFW please."
"It was a private vendor."
"A PRIVATE VENDOR." Night Drift wheezed. "You went to a private vendor for a custom body pillow of..."
"I am not having this conversation."
"You ARE having this conversation because it's in your CLOSET."
"It was supposed to stay in the closet!"
"The latch doesn't work!"
"NOTHING in this apartment works!"
Night Drift pressed her forelegs against her muzzle and laughed until her breathing hitched. Lore stood in the kitchen with her magic sparking around her horn and her muzzle generating enough heat to outperform the crystal and watched the one pony in Equestria she'd ever called a friend laugh herself sick over the worst secret she owned.
When Night Drift finally looked up, her eyes were wet and her nursing cap was crooked.
"Okay," she said. She inhaled. Exhaled. "Okay. I need like... know everything about this vendor."
"You need tea," Lore said. "We both need tea."
"I need tea AND the vendor story." Night Drift stretched her forelegs out and settled onto her haunches. "Like, in that order. Non-negotiable."
18th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — Late Afternoon
The tea helped. Two cups each, Lore's in a chipped mug she'd had since Canterlot, Night Drift's in a mug that said EAST MANEHATTEN PUBLIC LIBRARY across the side because it was the only other mug Lore owned. They sat in the kitchen, Lore at the counter and Night Drift on the floor with her back against the wall, and for thirty minutes they talked the way they talked online. Forum drama. A colt on The Standard who'd posted a fourteen-paragraph essay about why the Lunar Republic was a failed state, citing himself as a source. Night Drift did an impression of him that made Lore choke on her tea.
Then the mugs were empty and the window light was going amber and the thing they'd been avoiding sat between them like a third pony.
"We should figure out what we're wearing," Night Drift said.
"Yes."
Neither moved.
"So like... wardrobe check?" Night Drift pulled herself up from the floor and stretched, her spine popping twice. "What are we working with?"
Lore opened the closet. The Sombra pillow was under the bed now and the closet was just clothes: the bomber jacket with its patches and pins hung at the far end where she never looked at it, two copies of the tan dress shirt, the black tie, and a few items she hadn't touched since moving in.
Night Drift came up beside her and looked in. Her ears tilted.
"That's it?"
"I don't shop recreationally."
"Lore, that's four versions of the same outfit."
"It's two shirts, a tie, and a jacket." Lore pulled the bomber jacket aside with her magic. Behind it, folded on the shelf, was the school uniform. The tan dress shirt, the red skirt, the black silk socks rolled into a tight ball beside it. "And this."
Night Drift reached past her and pulled the skirt off the shelf. Held it up with both forehooves. Looked at it. Looked at Lore. Looked at the socks.
"This is your school uniform?"
"From Canterlot. I kept it."
"The skirt, the socks, the whole thing."
"It still fits."
Night Drift held the skirt against Lore's frame, eyeballing the length. Her mouth pulled sideways.
"So like... you want a date tonight or a restraining order?"
The reaction was too fast and too hard for a joke. Her whole posture locked, jaw tight, her magic pulling the skirt out of Night Drift's hooves in a sharp yank that left the fabric swinging in the air between them.
Night Drift blinked.
"Hey, I didn't—"
"I know what you meant." Lore folded the skirt with her magic. Precise, mechanical folds. She put it back on the shelf. Her hoof pushed the socks in after it. "The uniform isn't an option."
Night Drift watched her. The amusement had left her muzzle. She leaned against the closet frame and waited.
"My father tried to arrange a marriage for me," Lore said. Her voice was flat and she wasn't looking at Night Drift. She was looking at the shelf. "Before the disowning. I was sixteen. The stallion was twenty-nine."
Night Drift said nothing. Her ears went still.
"He declined. Not because of my age. Because I was, and I'm quoting my father, 'difficult to present favorably.'" Lore pushed the closet door half-closed with her magic. "The uniform stays in the closet."
"Yeah," Night Drift said. Quiet. "Yeah, it does."
They stood in the bedroom doorway. A carriage rattled past the window below. A carriage rattled past the window below.
Night Drift turned and walked to her saddlebag. Unclipped it. Pulled out three t-shirts and held them up one at a time.
The first: black, faded print of a band logo Lore didn't recognize.
The second: dark grey, smaller text across the chest that read LUNAR DRIFT TOUR in blocky letters.
The third: black, no print, a few small stains near the hem.
"That's my inventory," Night Drift said.
"They're all black."
"I'm a goth. What did you expect?"
"Something with a collar, perhaps."
"Collars are for ponies with jobs they care about."
Lore looked at the closet. Looked at Night Drift's t-shirts. Looked at her own dress shirt.
"I wear the shirt," Lore said. "Open collar. Mane down."
"Boring."
"Presentable."
"Same thing at a bar."
"What would you suggest?"
Night Drift tilted her head. Her curls shifted under the nursing cap. She looked at Lore the way she looked at a hex grid before deciding where to move.
"Lose a button. One more. Collar wider. And take your mane out of that... whatever you're doing with it. Let it hang."
"It's brushed."
"It's controlled. You look like you're going to audit somepony. Muss it up."
"I don't 'muss.'"
"Tonight you muss."
Lore looked at the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Pale white coat. Blonde mane, straight, brushed flat. Freckles. Blue eyes. Dress shirt buttoned to one below the collar.
She undid another button with her magic. The collar opened wider across her chest.
"Better," Night Drift said. "Now the mane."
"I'll consider it."
"You'll do it."
Night Drift pulled on the plain black t-shirt over her head, tugging it past her ears. She looked at herself in the mirror beside Lore. Purple coat, messy curls, bags under her eyes, black shirt, nursing cap.
"I look like I just got off a shift," Night Drift said.
"You look like you."
"Yeah. That's the problem."
"Take the cap off."
Night Drift's hoof went to the brim of her nursing cap. She held it there. Her ears flattened slightly under the fabric.
"I don't really... I mean, I always wear it."
"To a bar?"
"I wear it everywhere."
"Night Drift."
"It's like... it's my thing. Applejack has her hat. I have this."
"You're going to a bar to seduce a stallion in a nursing cap."
"...when you put it that way."
She pulled the cap off. Her mane spilled out, the bluish purple curls falling loose around her muzzle and ears. Without the cap she looked younger. Softer. The bags under her eyes were still there but her muzzle opened up in a way the cap had been hiding.
Lore looked at her.
"That works," Lore said.
"I feel naked."
"You'll survive."
Night Drift set the cap on the kitchen counter, next to the East Manehatten Public Library mug. She looked at it sitting there and her ears twitched.
"Okay," she said. "Outfits sorted. Now the part neither of us wants to talk about."
"We've been having conversations neither of us wants to have all day."
"Yeah well, this one's worse." Night Drift sat on her haunches on the kitchen floor and looked up at Lore. "Protection."
Lore's ears went back.
"We're two virgins going to a bar to pick up a stranger," Night Drift said. "We need condoms."
"I know what condoms are."
"Great. Did you buy any?"
"...No."
"Do you own any?"
"Why would I own condoms? I've never—I don't exactly keep a supply."
"Okay so we're buying condoms tonight. And like, you should be on the pill."
"I'm not taking the pill."
"Lore."
"The side effects..."
"Are less severe than a foal."
"I'm not pumping my body full of synthetic hormones for a single evening."
"It's not for a single evening, it takes days to—" Night Drift stopped. Rubbed the bridge of her muzzle with one hoof. "Okay. So you haven't been on it."
"I've never had a reason to be on it."
"Right." Night Drift exhaled. "So condoms. Minimum."
"I don't want my first time to involve rubber."
"Your first time is a threeway with a stranger in a bad apartment. It already isn't the dream. We're adding a condom."
Lore opened her mouth to argue. Closed it. Her jaw worked. She looked at the closet where the Sombra pillow was hidden, where the fantasy version of this evening lived: a stallion with authority and a plan, a proper bed, candlelight probably, something she'd read about in a book. That version didn't involve a convenience store purchase on the way to a bar.
"Fine," she said. "Condoms."
"Thank you."
"I'm not happy about it."
"You don't have to be happy about it. You have to be safe about it." Night Drift stood up. "We'll grab them on the way. There's gotta be a corner shop between here and wherever we're going."
"There are several."
"Great. I'll buy them. You'll stand outside and pretend you don't know me."
"I will absolutely be standing outside."
"Figured." Night Drift stretched her forelegs again. Her spine popped. "What time do bars open around here?"
"The ones in this neighborhood never close."
"The ones we'd actually want to go to."
"Further west. Bronclyn has pubs that aren't entirely disreputable. The Haypacking District has a few that stay open late." Lore's ears rotated as she thought. "We should avoid anything north of Bridleway. That's too close to the Book Club's usual circuit. If Redback or Cinder saw me in a bar trying to—"
She stopped.
Night Drift looked at her. Patient.
"Socialize," Lore finished.
"Socialize," Night Drift repeated. Flat.
"If they saw me in a pub looking for a stallion like some common... like I couldn't find one through the chapter's network. Gilded would have opinions. Cinder would never let it go. And Redback would assume he still had a chance."
"So the problem is they'd know you're desperate."
"I am NOT desperate."
"Lore, we spent three days planning this over DMs and you read an anatomy textbook at lunch."
"That was RESEARCH."
"We're buying condoms at a corner shop on the way to a bar where we're going to seduce a stranger into a threeway. We're desperate."
Lore's mouth opened. Closed. Her tail clamped tight.
"Bronclyn," she said. "South of Bridleway. Somewhere nopony knows my name."
"Bronclyn it is." Night Drift pulled her hoodie on over the black t-shirt. "Let's go."
Lore stood in her kitchen in her open-collared shirt with her mane too neat and looked at Night Drift standing by the door in a band hoodie with her nursing cap on the counter and her mane loose around her muzzle. An earth pony. Her only friend. Ready to walk into a part of Manehatten she'd never seen to help Lore do something neither of them had ever done.
"Give me a moment," Lore said. She turned to the bathroom mirror and looked at her mane. Straight. Brushed. Controlled.
She ran her hoof through it, pulling it loose from behind her ears, letting it fall forward across her muzzle. It didn't look mussed. It looked like a pony who was trying to look mussed but didn't know how.
She did it again, rougher. Some of the blonde fell across one eye.
"Better," Night Drift said from the doorway.
Lore locked the door on the way out. Night Drift watched her do it and said nothing.
18th of Hale — East Manehatten to Bronclyn — Early Evening
The neighborhoods improved the further west they walked. Lore noticed Night Drift noticing. The lampposts started working again around the twelve-block mark. The pavement smoothed out. The storefronts went from boarded windows to lit displays, bakeries closing for the evening, a bookshop with a warm interior Lore had browsed once before realizing she couldn't afford anything in it. The ponies on the street carried themselves differently here: slower, more space between them, not checking over their shoulders at the sound of hoofsteps behind them.
Night Drift's ears had been rotating since they left the apartment. Past the ninth block, they settled. Her shoulders loosened.
"Your train back," Lore said. She'd been building to it for five blocks. "What time?"
"Seven AM tomorrow. If I catch it."
"That's barely a visit. You'd be leaving before I'm usually awake."
Night Drift walked three more steps before answering. "I mean... yeah, but the evening train is the only other option and that's a whole extra day."
"You came all this way. Leaving at dawn seems like a waste of the fare."
"The fare wasn't cheap, yeah." Night Drift glanced sideways at Lore. "It's just like... your neighborhood."
"What about my neighborhood?"
"A whole day in it, Lore."
"We wouldn't stay in the neighborhood. I can show you the parts of Manehatten that don't look like where I live."
"There are parts that don't look like where you live?"
"Several. Bridleway. The park. Saddle Row, if you like window shopping." Lore kept her eyes forward. Her tail swished once. "You spent real bits to get here. You should see more than my alley."
Night Drift hitched her hoodie higher. "Sunday evening train. I'll stay."
They walked another block in silence. The Haypacking District opened up ahead of them, the old industrial buildings converted into pubs and small restaurants with string lights in the windows. The smell of cooking food replaced the oil-and-onion mix from Lore's side of the city.
Night Drift stopped in front of a corner shop. Its windows were cluttered with advertisements for cigarettes and cheap cider and a brand of mane conditioner Lore had never heard of. The interior was bright and cramped.
"Wait here," Night Drift said.
"I'm coming in."
"You said you'd stand outside."
"I said that about a hypothetical shop. This is a real shop and I'm not standing on a street corner alone."
"Lore, it's the Haypacking District. The streetlights work."
"I'll browse the cider aisle."
"You'll browse three aisles away from me while I buy condoms."
"Correct."
Night Drift went in. Lore followed at a distance that she hoped communicated total disassociation. She examined a shelf of imported oat bars with the expression of a mare who had never voluntarily entered a shop this small and resented the necessity while Night Drift's voice carried from the front counter.
"Yeah, the twelve-pack. No, the other ones. Yeah, those. Thanks."
Lore studied the ingredient list on a bar of oat-and-cranberry with the focus of a mare reading a primary source document. Her ears were hot.
Night Drift appeared at the end of the aisle with a small paper bag tucked against her chest.
"Got 'em. Also got us cider for pre-drinks because we can't afford bar prices all night."
"Sensible."
"I'm a sensible pony."
"You bought condoms at a corner shop while wearing a hoodie with hayburger stains."
"Sensibly."
Night Drift cracked one of the ciders two blocks later and took a swig. Her ears shot sideways. Her muzzle scrunched and her whole face compressed in confusion or betrayal, possibly both. She swallowed with visible effort.
"That's... sharp."
"It's alcohol."
"It's angry apple juice." She looked at the bottle like it owed her an apology. Took another sip. Same muzzle, smaller. "Okay. I can like... work with this."
"You've never had cider before."
"I've had apple juice."
"That isn't the same thing."
"It's from apples, Lore."
They passed the bottle back and forth for the next three blocks. Night Drift's muzzle stopped flinching after the fourth sip. By the sixth she was holding the bottle loosely in her hoof and her ears had settled into a position Lore hadn't seen before, slightly back and slightly loose.
Lore took a sip herself. She'd had cider once before, at a Book Club event where Gilded had insisted on toasting the quarterly report. She hadn't liked it then. She didn't like it now. She drank it anyway because her nerves needed something and tea wasn't available.
Loveless Chapter Three — Silver Draft
18th of Hale — Bronclyn, Haypacking District — Evening
The pub was called The Brass Buckle. Night Drift picked it because it had a sign outside that said OPEN LATE SATURDAYS and because the windows were dim enough that you couldn't see in from the street. Lore picked it because it was four blocks south of Bridleway and she didn't recognize any of the ponies standing outside it.
Inside: long wooden bar, worn stools, a wall of shelves behind the bartender stocked with bottles that had seen better decades. Round tables, most of them occupied. The crowd was mixed: earth ponies in work jackets, a few pegasi near the back with their wings folded tight in the cramped space, pairs and small groups and a handful of ponies drinking alone. The lighting was warm and low and the noise was steady and the whole place smelled like old wood and cider and salt.
Night Drift ordered two glasses of the house cider. She'd already had most of a bottle on the walk and her ears had stopped flinching at the taste. Lore paid for them because Night Drift had paid for the condoms and the calculus felt right. They took a table near the wall with a view of the bar and the entrance.
Night Drift looked irritatingly steady for a pony on her first night of drinking. Lore's second glass was already sitting warmer in her head than she'd expected.
"So," Night Drift said. She took a drink. Set the glass down. "We're here."
"We're here."
They both looked at the room.
It was mostly earth ponies. Of course it was. Manehatten was an earth pony city and its pubs reflected that. Lore scanned the crowd with the methodical patience of a mare who catalogued things for a living. Her eyes moved from muzzle to muzzle, table to table, stool to stool.
"What about him?" Night Drift tilted her muzzle toward the bar. A young earth pony stallion with a rust-colored coat sat two stools from the end, nursing something dark in a short glass. Broad shoulders, decent build, his mane cropped close.
Lore looked at him. Her mouth pressed into a thin line.
"He carries himself like somepony who's given up."
"Carries himself."
"He's hunched over his drink like he's trying to crawl inside it. That's defeat in a coat."
"He's sitting at a bar. That's what ponies do at bars."
"Not ponies worth talking to."
Night Drift looked at her. Took another drink. Moved on.
"Okay. What about the pegasus near the back? Grey coat, dark mane. He's been looking over here."
Lore glanced. The pegasus was mid-twenties, lean, wings shifting behind him in the way pegasi did when they were restless or showing off. He caught Lore's eye and held it for a second.
"Too loud."
"He hasn't said anything."
"His body language is loud. He's fidgeting. His wings are..." Lore waved a hoof vaguely. "It's distracting."
Night Drift watched Lore for a moment. Her expression was flat.
"What about the brown one at the end of the bar? The big guy?"
Earth pony. Heavy build, soft eyes, a farmer's coat hanging on the stool behind him.
"His mane looks like he cut it in the dark with garden shears."
Night Drift leaned back on her haunches and looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then she leaned forward again.
"Lore, that's three colts in five minutes. We're running out of bar."
"None of them were suitable."
"His posture, his wings, his mane. You had a problem with every single one."
"I have standards."
"You have excuses." Night Drift spun her glass between her forehooves. "We didn't take a train and buy condoms and walk fourteen blocks to sit here rejecting every colt who looks at us."
The door opened. A unicorn stallion walked in alone.
Average height, grey-blue coat, darker mane that fell to one side. He wore a light jacket and sat on a stool near the middle, ordering without looking at the menu. His horn caught the bar light. His posture was straight.
Her glass had been sitting untouched for thirty seconds.
Night Drift followed her gaze. Looked at the stallion. Looked at Lore.
"Him?"
"He carries himself well."
Night Drift looked at him again. Looked at the horn. Looked at Lore. Her mouth pressed flat for a second, then released.
"He's cute enough and he's alone. Fine. Let's go."
Lore's ears were warm. She didn't argue.
"Okay," Night Drift said. She set her glass down and angled her body toward Lore. "Before you go over there. We need to talk about the screening thing."
"What screening thing?"
"STDs."
"Can we please have one conversation tonight that doesn't make me want to disappear."
"No. Listen." Night Drift dropped her voice. "When you go up to him, before anything gets serious, tell him you want to cast a diagnostic spell on him."
Lore blinked. "A diagnostic spell."
"Like the ones unicorn medics use at the clinic. They wave their horn over a patient and the magic reads vitals, flags infections, the whole deal."
"How do you know about unicorn diagnostic spells?"
"I work next to unicorn medics every night, Lore. They do rounds with their horns while I'm stuck using monitoring equipment like a regular pony. I've watched them cast it a thousand times."
"You want me to cast a medical spell on a random stallion in a pub."
"I want you to OFFER to cast one."
"I can't cast diagnostic spells. I never studied medical magic. My talent is archival restoration."
"Right. And he doesn't know that." Night Drift tilted her head. "All he sees is a unicorn horn and an offer. If he says okay and stays relaxed, he's clean and he knows he's clean. If he gets squirmy about it, we walk."
"That's deceptive."
"It's practical. And it does something else." Night Drift tapped the table with her hoof. "It tells him that WE'RE clean. Two mares asking for a health check before anything happens. That says we're serious and we're careful. He knows exactly what kind of night this is."
Lore stared at her. Her ears rotated slowly forward.
"...That's actually clever."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"Where did you learn to think like this?"
"I spent ten years reading ponies across a gaming table, Lore. Colts bluff the same whether they're holding bad cards or hiding something worse." Night Drift finished her cider. "You ready?"
Lore looked at the unicorn stallion at the bar. He was halfway through his drink. His horn caught light every time he turned his head. He hadn't looked at anypony since sitting down.
"I wanted to go first," Lore said. Her voice was quieter. "That was the agreement."
"It was. So go."
Lore stood up. Her chair scraped. She smoothed the front of her dress shirt with one hoof, a motion that accomplished nothing, and took a step toward the bar.
She took a second step.
She stopped.
Her hooves were rooted to the pub floor. Her ears had gone flat against her skull. Her mouth was open but nothing was coming out. The stallion was ten lengths away, sitting on his stool, drinking his drink, and every word Lore had ever assembled in her life had evacuated her skull and left nothing behind.
Night Drift appeared at her side. She didn't touch Lore. Didn't push. She stepped past her and walked to the bar with the easy unhurried gait she'd carried since the train station. She slid onto the stool one seat from the stallion and flagged the bartender with a raised hoof.
"Two more ciders and whatever he's having."
The stallion looked up from his glass. Looked at Night Drift. Looked past her at Lore, who was standing six lengths behind them with her hooves welded to the floor and her muzzle the color of her hidden red streaks.
Huh. Two of them.
"You don't have to do that," the stallion said. His voice was low, measured. A little surprised.
"Yeah, I know," Night Drift said. "But my friend back there was going to come say hello and her tongue fell out, so I'm the opening act." She patted the stool between them. "She's smarter than she looks right now. Promise."
The stallion glanced at Lore again. Lore, through sheer force of will or possibly the knowledge that standing alone in the middle of a pub was worse than sitting down, made her legs work. She crossed the distance and sat on the stool Night Drift had indicated. Her forehooves pressed flat against the bar top. She could feel her pulse in her frogs.
"Lore," she said. Her voice came out clipped and careful, the accent she'd paid three tutors to build sitting on top of the one she'd been born with. The R in her name almost rolled. She caught it. "My name is Lore Nook."
The stallion looked at her. Then at Night Drift. Then back at her.
"Silver Draft," he said. He had a small, cautious smile. "Do you two... do this often?"
"Never," Night Drift said, from one stool over. "We've literally never done this before."
"That's... honest."
"We're an honest pair." Night Drift caught Lore's eye and held it. The look said: you're okay, I'm here, breathe. "Buy him his drink, Lore."
Lore's magic wrapped around her bit purse. Her horn glowed its pale gold. The bartender set three glasses on the bar.
She was sitting next to a stallion in a pub and her only friend was on the other side of him and the condoms were in Night Drift's hoodie pocket and somewhere across the city her Sombra pillow was under the bed with its painted smirk pressed against the floorboards.
She picked up her cider and drank.
Silver Draft turned out to be the kind of stallion who talked like he'd been saving it up. He worked at a printing press in the Bridleway district, typesetting theater programs and the occasional concert flyer. He'd come to the pub alone because his roommate was out of town and his usual drinking partners had plans he wasn't invited to. He'd been sitting at the bar for forty minutes before they arrived, hoping some colt would sit down and want to talk about the buckball standings or complain about rent prices or anything, really.
He hadn't expected two mares.
"I'm not like... I don't do this," he said, gesturing vaguely between the three of them with his glass. "Whatever this is. I came here to talk to somepony about the Manehatten Manglers losing their third straight and maybe split a plate of fries."
"We didn't plan this either," Night Drift said. "It just sort of happened."
"You bought me a drink."
"I'm a generous pony."
"Your friend hasn't blinked in about a minute."
Lore blinked. Deliberately. Her forehooves were still pressed flat against the bar top and her posture was so straight she could have been used as a reference line.
"I'm fine," she said.
"You sure? Because you look like somepony told you there's a test tomorrow and you haven't studied."
"I've studied," Lore said, too quickly. Night Drift made a sound into her glass that could have been a cough.
The conversation loosened after the second round. Silver Draft had the easy friendliness of a stallion who genuinely liked ponies and didn't have enough of them in his life. He asked what they did. Night Drift said clinic work. Lore said library and record-keeping. He asked where they were from. Night Drift said Ponyville, originally Coltifornia. Lore said Manehatten, originally elsewhere, and left it at that. He didn't push.
He was twenty-three. He'd moved to Manehatten two years ago for the printing job. He lived in the Bronclyn district, four blocks from the pub. He liked buckball, cheap cider, and terrible mystery novels.
"Mystery novels?" Lore's ears moved forward for the first time since sitting down.
"Yeah. The really bad ones. Like, the detective is always a unicorn with a drinking problem and the murder weapon is always something stupid like a ceremonial dagger."
"Those are formulaic."
"That's why they're fun. You know exactly what's going to happen and it still works."
"I prefer primary source material."
"You read... what, like history books?"
"Military archives. Genealogical records. Pre-Unification naval campaign documentation."
Silver Draft looked at Night Drift. Night Drift shrugged.
"She's like this all the time," Night Drift said. "You get used to it."
"I'm sitting right here."
"Yeah, and you just said 'pre-Unification naval campaign documentation' at a bar. I'm helping."
Silver Draft laughed. It was a short, surprised sound, and it made his eyes crinkle. Lore watched the laugh happen and felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the cider.
Lore was talking faster than she meant to, the cider warming her throat, and a hard consonant slipped through on "documentation" that didn't belong in Manehatten. Silver Draft didn't notice. Night Drift's ear twitched, but she didn't say anything.
Twenty minutes in, Night Drift caught Lore's eye from across Silver Draft's shoulder. One look. A slight tilt of the head toward the stallion. The signal they'd agreed on.
Lore's throat tightened.
She took a drink. Set the glass down. Turned on her stool to muzzle Silver Draft. Her heart was hammering against her ribs.
"Silver Draft."
"Yeah?"
"This is going to sound unusual."
"More unusual than two mares buying a stranger a drink?"
"Considerably." Lore's magic flickered at the base of her horn. She breathed. "Before this evening goes any further, I'd like to offer to cast a diagnostic spell on you."
Silver Draft set his drink down. "A diagnostic?"
"A basic scan. The kind unicorn medics use at clinics. It checks for infections, flags anything... communicable."
Silver Draft's expression shifted. Confused first, then slower, the pieces connecting.
"You're asking if I'm clean," he said.
"I'm asking if you'd object to a check."
Silver Draft leaned back on his stool. He looked at his drink. Looked at the bar. Looked at Lore's horn. His body stayed loose. His ears didn't pin. His jaw didn't tighten.
"Sure," he said. "Go ahead."
He said it the way somepony says "sure" to a coat check. Relaxed. Unbothered. The posture of a stallion with nothing to hide.
Lore's horn lit. She leaned forward on her stool, the pale gold shimmer steady, and passed the glow slowly across Silver Draft's chest and shoulders the way she'd seen medical unicorns do in health pamphlets. She had no idea what she was looking for. She had no idea what the spell was supposed to feel like. She kept her expression neutral and her magic steady and hoped the light looked purposeful.
Silver Draft sat still for it. Relaxed. His breathing stayed even.
Lore pulled her magic back and let the glow fade.
"Clean," she said. Her voice didn't waver.
Night Drift took a drink to hide whatever her muzzle was doing.
"Thorough," Silver Draft said. He picked his drink back up and looked between the two of them. "So which one of you is in charge here? Because she bought the drink but you did the spell."
"I walked over here on my own," Lore said.
"You stood in the middle of the pub like a statue," Silver Draft said.
"I was composing myself."
"For how long?"
"Long enough."
The three of them were smiling. Lore noticed she was smiling and stopped noticing because it felt normal and then noticed again because nothing about this evening was normal.
She finished her cider. The glass hit the bar. The warmth in her head was steady now, not spinning, just present. A softness in the edges of things.
"Silver Draft," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Would you like to come home with us?"
The words left her mouth and hung in the air above the bar. She heard them as if somepony else had said them. Night Drift's posture went still beside her. Silver Draft's glass stopped halfway to his mouth.
The pub noise filled the silence. Somepony laughed at a table behind them. The bartender wiped a glass.
"Both of you?" Silver Draft said.
"Both of us."
He set his glass down. Slowly. His ears rotated once, forward and back, recalculating his entire evening.
"I came here to talk about buckball," he said.
"And instead?"
"And instead two mares who've never done this before, one of whom reads military archives for fun, are asking me to come home with them." He rubbed the back of his mane with one hoof. "You're serious."
"We're serious."
"And you've really never..."
"Never." Lore's voice was steady. The cider was helping. "Either of us."
Silver Draft exhaled. His cautious smile came back.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay. Yeah."
18th of Hale — Bronclyn to East Manehatten — Night
The walk back was the walk to Bronclyn in reverse, and that was the problem.
They left the pub three abreast, Silver Draft in the middle, the evening air cool on their coats. The Haypacking District was still warm and lit, string lights in the pub windows, ponies on the sidewalks, the smell of food from the restaurants. Silver Draft walked with his hooves loose and his head up and the energy of a stallion who couldn't quite believe his night.
"So how do you two know each other?" he asked.
"Internet," Night Drift said.
"We met on a history forum," Lore said.
"A political forum," Night Drift said.
"A forum with a history section."
"That happened to be political."
Silver Draft looked between them. "Is this going to be a thing all night?"
"Probably," they said at the same time, and then looked at each other. Night Drift's mouth twitched. Lore's didn't, but her ears softened.
The lampposts thinned after ten blocks. The pavement cracked. The storefronts dimmed. Silver Draft's stride shortened by half a step. He probably didn't notice.
"So... where exactly do you live?" he asked. His voice was lighter than it had been.
"East Manehatten," Lore said.
"East Manehatten where?"
"Near the old factory stretch."
Silver Draft's ears twitched. "The... near the old factories."
"It's not as bad as it sounds."
"It sounds pretty bad."
"My apartment is on the third floor. Three locks on the door. The building is secure."
"You need three locks?"
"I like locks."
Night Drift, on his other side, said "It's fine. I've been there all day. It's a normal apartment."
"In the factory stretch."
"Near the factory stretch."
"Those are different things?"
"Very different things," Lore said, with a conviction that was doing more work than it had evidence for.
They crossed the fourteen-block mark. A storefront with boarded windows. A streetlamp with no bulb. Three ponies on a corner who watched them pass without expression. Silver Draft's shoulder brushed against Lore's, a half-step closer that he probably didn't mean.
"Listen," he said. He slowed down. "I don't want to be... I had a great time at the bar. You're both really nice. But this neighborhood—"
"Is where I live," Lore said. Her voice was tight. "Every day. I walk these streets every day and I'm fine."
"You told me you carry your apartment key in your magic so you can unlock the door before you reach it."
Lore's jaw clenched. She had said that. Somewhere in the bar conversation, between the cider and the laughing, she'd mentioned it like it was a charming detail about her routine and not a survival tactic.
"Lore's place is safe," Night Drift said. She stepped forward, putting herself between Silver Draft and the instinct to turn around. "I'm a nurse. I spent five hours on a train to be here. If it wasn't safe, I wouldn't have come."
"You're a nurse from Ponyville."
"And I have good judgment."
"You've never had cider before tonight."
"Those are... unrelated facts."
Silver Draft stopped walking. He stood on the cracked sidewalk under a lamppost that was working, barely, its crystal dim and flickering. He looked east, down the block, toward the part of the city where the lights got worse. He looked back at Lore and Night Drift. Two mares, one in a dress shirt with her mane falling across one eye, one in a hoodie with her curls loose around her muzzle.
"Third floor?" he said.
"Third floor," Lore said. "Three locks. Clean apartment. Tea, if you want it."
"I just agreed to a threeway and you're offering me tea."
"I'm offering you hospitality."
Silver Draft looked at the dark block ahead. Looked at them. His weight settled onto all four hooves. His ears stopped rotating.
"Lead the way," he said.
They walked the last six blocks together. Lore led, the way she always led through this part of the neighborhood, her magic already reaching for her key in her saddlebag three blocks before they reached the building. Night Drift walked on Silver Draft's left, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. Silver Draft's ears rotated steadily, tracking sounds in the dark.
The building stood at the end of the block. Four stories, brick, the fire escape bolted to the east wall on bolts that hadn't inspired confidence that afternoon and didn't now. The front door didn't lock.
Lore pushed it open. The hallway. The mailboxes with their pried-open doors. The stairwell that smelled like cleaning solution and something older.
Silver Draft's stride slowed at the mailboxes.
"Third floor," Lore said, and started climbing.
Loveless Chapter Four — Lore Nook
18th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — Night
Three locks. Deadbolt, chain, auxiliary bolt. Lore did them in sequence while Silver Draft stood in her kitchen and looked at the apartment with the same sweep Night Drift had made that afternoon. Kitchen, desk, monitor, bed, window, alley.
The three of them stood in the apartment. Silver Draft near the door. Night Drift near the counter. Lore between them. The apartment felt smaller with three ponies in it than it ever had with one.
Silver Draft looked at the alley below. The dumpster.
Night Drift filled the kettle.
"Tea?" Night Drift asked.
"We just invited him here for sex and you're making tea," Lore said.
"Hydration is important."
"She's a nurse," Lore told Silver Draft.
"Something like that," Night Drift said from the kitchen.
Silver Draft stood in the middle of the room with his hooves close together, aware of how much space he occupied and how little the apartment had. His jacket was still on.
"So," he said.
"So," Lore said.
Night Drift set three mugs of water on the counter because the kettle was going to take too long and she'd apparently decided hydration couldn't wait for tea. They drank the water standing up. Nopony sat. The mugs emptied. Night Drift set hers on the counter and looked at the bedroom doorway and then at Lore and the look said whenever you're ready without saying it out loud. She picked up the spare chair and carried it into the bedroom. Set it beside the bed, about four hooves away, and sat down.
"The cuck chair," she said.
"Don't call it that," Lore said.
"It's what it is. You wanted to go first." Night Drift settled onto her haunches and folded her forelegs across her chest. "Go first."
Lore looked at Night Drift in the chair. Looked at Silver Draft in the kitchen doorway. Looked at the bed. Her bed. The sheets she'd changed that morning. The mattress that was too thin and the frame that creaked when she rolled over at night.
The Sombra pillow was under the bed. She could feel it there like a physical weight, his painted smirk pressed into the floorboards.
"Do you want me to..." Silver Draft started.
"Come here," Lore said. Her voice came out sharper than she intended. More like an order than an invitation. She softened it. "Please."
He crossed the room. The apartment was small enough that it took four steps. He stood beside the bed and looked at Lore and his ears moved in a way she recognized from her own mirror: the involuntary rotation of a pony who was nervous and trying not to show it.
They stood facing each other beside the bed. Two unicorns. Two horns catching the light.
Lore didn't know how to start. The romance novels she would never admit to reading had been useless for this part. They skipped from tension to passion like the gap between was a page break and not an actual physical negotiation between two ponies who had never touched each other.
Silver Draft leaned forward. His muzzle came close to hers. His breath was warm and smelled like cider and something under it, something that was just him, warm and alive and present.
He kissed her. His lips pressed against hers, warm and dry and tasting like cider, and every thought she'd been holding went quiet. She kissed him back before she decided to.
His teeth found the base of her mane. Light. A nip, not a bite. The pressure traveled down her neck and her spine responded, warmth dropping through her belly and settling lower. Her tail lifted without her telling it to. The muscles at the base of her dock relaxed and her tail flagged to one side. Involuntary. Mortifying.
She heard Night Drift shift in the chair. Didn't look.
Silver Draft's jacket came off. Lore's magic pulled it from his back and set it on the floor because she needed something to do with her hooves and her magic was the only thing she had control over. Under the jacket he was lean, his coat smooth, his breathing faster than it had been at the bar. She could see the tension in his shoulders.
They climbed onto the bed. The frame creaked. The mattress dipped under their combined weight. Silver Draft's forelegs bracketed her haunches as she settled onto her belly, hindlegs tucked, and she could feel the heat of him behind her.
His cock dropped from his sheath. She didn't see it but she felt it, the soft heavy weight of it resting against her inner thigh. Warmer than she expected. Softer than the anatomy textbook had implied. Not rigid the way she'd imagined. Flexible, almost, the shaft giving slightly when it pressed against her coat.
She was wet. She'd been wet since the nip at her mane, her marehood slick and swollen, her nub winking in slow rhythmic pulses she couldn't control. Each wink sent a spark through her lower belly and she pressed her face into the pillow to keep her expression private.
"Is this okay?" Silver Draft asked. His voice came from above and behind her, close.
"Yes."
Night Drift leaned forward from the chair. She held out the paper bag from the corner shop.
"Forgetting something?"
Lore stared at the bag. Silver Draft stared at the bag.
"Right," he said. He took the bag with his magic and pulled out a condom. There was a pause while he opened the wrapper, the foil crinkling in the quiet room, and then a longer pause while he rolled it on. His magic fumbled at the base of his shaft.
"Do you need help with..." Lore started.
"I've got it." He didn't have it. It took him three attempts. Night Drift watched from the chair with an expression that was going to cost Lore later.
He pressed forward. The head of his cock found her entrance, slid against the slick folds of her marehood, and pushed.
Pain. A deep tight ache radiated through her pelvis and up into her stomach. Her hymen gave way with a sensation she would later describe as unremarkable and at the time experienced as the worst thing that had ever happened to her body. She gasped. Her magic flared, pale gold light flooding the room for a half-second before she choked it down. Her horn buzzed with feedback, the ten million nerve endings lighting up in response to the surge, and the combination of the horn's sensitivity and the pain between her legs made her vision go white at the edges.
"Are you..." Silver Draft started.
"Don't stop," she said through her teeth. "Give me a moment."
He held still. She breathed. Her vaginal muscles did what the anatomy textbook said they would: adjusted, constricted, then relaxed around him, accommodating the shaft with a precision she hadn't expected from her own body. The pain faded into pressure, then fullness, then past fullness into territory the romance novels called "bliss," which wasn't right at all. A stallion was inside her and the reality of that was so far from what she'd imagined lying next to a body pillow that she almost laughed.
Silver Draft moved. His hips pulled back and pushed forward, the shaft sliding against her inner walls, the medial ring dragging across her entrance on each stroke. She felt every ridge of him. Warm. Soft-firm. The texture of his cock against the slick velvet of her insides defied every word she'd ever trusted.
He lasted forty-five seconds.
His breathing hitched. His forelegs tightened around her haunches. His thrusts shortened and quickened and then the flare swelled inside the condom, the pressure blunted by the rubber, and she felt his release as warmth and pulse without the heat she'd expected.
He pulled out. The flare deflated as he withdrew, and the sudden emptiness left her blinking at the headboard.
She lay on the bed with her hindlegs still tucked beneath her and her mane sticking to her face with sweat. Her marehood pulsed. Her nub was still winking, slower now, each pulse an unanswered question. She hadn't come close.
"Sorry," Silver Draft said. He was breathing hard. His coat was damp at the shoulders. "That was... I didn't—"
"It's fine," Lore said. Her voice was remarkably even for a mare whose entire sexual education had just been demolished in under a minute.
From the chair, Night Drift said: "Water?"
"Please," Silver Draft said.
Night Drift got up, walked to the kitchen, and came back with one of the mugs from the counter. Silver Draft drank the entire thing. Lore lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the Sombra pillow under the bed and how he would have lasted longer. Except he wouldn't have, because he wasn't real, and real stallions lasted forty-five seconds and needed water.
"Can you go again?" Lore asked. She was still looking at the ceiling.
"Give me a few minutes."
"That's fine."
Night Drift sat back down in the chair. She crossed her forelegs. Her expression was carefully neutral and Lore hated her a little for it because she knew, she absolutely knew, that behind that neutral face Night Drift was composing jokes she would deploy at the worst possible moment sometime in the next six months.
Silver Draft went again after five minutes. A fresh condom. This one he managed in one try.
He mounted her the same way, forelegs bracketing her haunches, his weight settling across her back. This time she was ready for the shaft. It slid inside her without pain, her muscles opening for him, and the fullness that followed was different from the first round. Warmer. More deliberate. Her body had catalogued the shape of him in the interim and knew what to do with it.
He started slow. Long strokes, the shaft pulling back until only the head remained inside her, then pushing forward until the medial ring pressed against her entrance and held for a half-second before slipping past. That half-second. Every time the ring caught at her opening, a pulse of warmth spread through her lower belly and her nub winked hard enough to make her gasp into the pillow.
She shifted her hindlegs wider. The angle changed. His cock pressed against the bottom of her canal on each thrust, hitting a spot a few inches inside her entrance that the anatomy textbook had mentioned and she'd dismissed as academic. She wasn't dismissing it now. Each stroke across it sent a jolt up through her spine and her tail flagged higher and her breathing turned into something she didn't recognize as her own.
Her muscles were working around him. Pulling at the shaft on each withdrawal, gripping the medial ring, squeezing in rhythms she hadn't asked for and couldn't stop. She was doing this. Her body was doing this on its own, and the sensation of her own pussy working his cock while he moved inside her was so far beyond anything she'd constructed in her head that the Sombra pillow under the bed felt like a relic from a different mare's life.
She was close. She could feel it building, a tightening low in her belly, her winking accelerating, her muscles clamping harder with each stroke. Her horn was glowing faintly, the pale gold leaking without her permission, and she could feel the nerve endings in it resonating with every pulse between her legs.
Then the flare swelled. His thrusts shortened and his breathing hitched and the head of his cock ballooned inside the condom and he came with a grunt that was honest and graceless and had no resemblance to anything she'd ever read in a book.
Her body seized around the flare and then released as he pulled out. The orgasm collapsed. Her nub winked twice more, hard, and then slowed. The warmth in her belly faded the way a held breath fades when you finally give up and exhale.
She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Twice. Twice he'd pulled the finish out from under her.
Night Drift was watching from the chair. Her ears were forward. Her tail was still behind her, flat against the seat. She hadn't moved since sitting down except to get water.
"Lore," she said. Quiet.
Lore looked at her.
"Can I help?"
The question hung in the room. Silver Draft was lying on his side at the edge of the bed, breathing, his cock retreating into his sheath. The overhead light hummed.
"No," Lore said.
Night Drift didn't move. Didn't flinch. She sat in the chair with her hooves folded and waited.
"I don't..." Lore started. "I've never..."
"I know."
"I came here for a stallion."
"I know."
"This isn't what I..." Lore's tail clamped against the mattress. Her nub winked. She felt it and hated that she felt it and hated more that Night Drift could probably see it from the chair. "I don't know if I'm..."
"You don't have to know." Night Drift's voice was steady. Patient. The same voice that typed in lowercase and let silences sit in a chat window until Lore was ready to fill them. "I'm asking if it's okay. Just that."
"I said no."
"Okay."
Night Drift settled back in the chair. Her ears stayed forward. She didn't look away and she didn't push and she didn't move.
Lore lay on the bed. Her marehood was pulsing. Her nub winked again, slow, insistent. Twice Silver Draft had brought her to the edge and twice his body had pulled the answer away from her. She could still feel where the orgasm was supposed to have been, a hollow ache low in her belly that wouldn't fade.
She looked at the ceiling. The stallion she'd imagined. The authority. The control. The painted foreleg across the pillow. She'd wanted her first time to end with a stallion who made it right.
Her nub winked again. Her muscles clenched around nothing.
She looked at Night Drift. Sitting in the chair. Patient. Unhurried. An earth pony mare who'd bought condoms at a corner shop and sat in a chair for an hour and hadn't asked for anything until now.
Her ears were flat. Her body was arguing with every framework she'd ever been given and she could feel herself losing.
"Okay," she said. The word came out rough. Severyanian on the vowel.
Her tail loosened from its clamp. Her nub was still winking in slow frustrated pulses and she was suddenly, acutely aware that Night Drift could see that. The sheet had slipped past her haunches at some point and her marehood was exposed, swollen and slick, and Night Drift was right there looking at her with those tired cyan eyes and not looking away.
Night Drift stood up from the chair. Her hooves hit the floor one at a time, steady. Three steps between the chair and the bed.
Night Drift stopped at the edge of the mattress. She looked at Lore. Lore looked back. The overhead light caught Night Drift's curls and the bags under her eyes and the plane of her muzzle, and she looked exactly like herself, and Lore didn't know what to do with that.
Night Drift climbed onto the bed. The frame creaked differently under her. Louder. An earth pony's weight sat lower than a unicorn's, denser, and the mattress dipped toward her. Lore felt herself tilt on the thin padding, gravity pulling her an inch closer before she caught herself.
The heat came off her coat in waves, hotter than Silver Draft had been by a margin Lore hadn't expected. Earth pony blood ran warmer. She'd read that somewhere. The reading hadn't covered this.
Night Drift lay on her side facing Lore. Close. Her foreleg rested on the mattress between them. She didn't reach. She waited.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," Night Drift said.
"Okay."
Night Drift's muzzle touched Lore's neck. Just a press. Warm breath against her coat. Then a nuzzle, slow, moving up toward the base of her mane. Lore's ears flattened and then slowly, slowly, rotated forward.
Night Drift's hoof traced along Lore's side, down over her ribs, across her belly. The touch was different from Silver Draft's. Less urgent. More deliberate. She moved like a mare who'd learned patience through ten years of gaming sessions and long nights talking to a screen. She brought all of it to the surface of Lore's skin.
Her muzzle followed where her hoof had been. Down Lore's neck, across her chest, along the curve of her belly. Lore felt Night Drift's breath trail lower and then her lips found the teats above Lore's groin, the small sensitive nubs tucked between her hind legs where nopony had ever touched her.
Night Drift's mouth closed around one. Gentle suction, her tongue pressing flat against the tip, and Lore's hind legs kicked out involuntarily. A sound ripped out of her throat that she would have killed to take back. Her marehood clenched so hard her nub winked twice in rapid succession and stayed out, trembling.
"Sensitive," Night Drift murmured against her belly.
"Don't TALK about it."
Night Drift sucked again. Lore's horn flared gold and the overhead light flickered.
Her hoof moved lower. Down Lore's belly, past the curve of her hip, along the inside of her thigh. Lore's breath caught. Her marehood clenched and her nub winked hard enough that she felt it in her teeth.
Night Drift's hoof found her. Gentle. The pad of her frog pressing against the swollen folds of Lore's pussy, wet and hot from two rounds with Silver Draft. Night Drift's touch moved in slow circles. Finding the nub each time it winked. Pressing against it with a steadiness Silver Draft's body couldn't sustain. She had all night and she moved like she knew it.
Lore's spine arched. Her hind hooves pressed against the mattress. A sound came out of her mouth that she didn't authorize, something between a gasp and a moan that she would have been mortified by if she'd had the cognitive resources for mortification, which she didn't because Night Drift was touching her like she was solving a puzzle and she'd just found the edge pieces.
"There?" Night Drift asked.
"Don't stop."
Silver Draft, recovered now, moved behind Lore. Night Drift tossed the last condom from the bag without looking. Silver Draft caught it in his magic. He had the routine down now.
Night Drift didn't move from Lore's side. She stayed where she was, lying on her flank with her muzzle near Lore's ear and her hoof still resting against Lore's pussy. Lore could feel the heat of her along her entire left side, earth pony warmth soaking through her coat, while Silver Draft settled behind her and the cooler weight of a unicorn stallion pressed against her haunches.
She felt his cock against her thigh. Hard again. The shaft pressed along her folds and Night Drift's hoof guided him without being asked, her frog shifting against Lore's marehood to give him a clear line. Night Drift was handling her pussy like a logistics problem.
He pushed inside. Third time. Her muscles knew his shape now and opened for him in a grip that was snug without resistance. The fullness was familiar. Night Drift's hoof finding her nub at the same moment the shaft bottomed out against her g-spot was new.
Both at once. Inside and outside. The medial ring dragging across her entrance while Night Drift's frog pressed circles against her winking nub. The two sensations layered. Each thrust pushed her forward into Night Drift's touch and each circle pulled her back onto his cock.
They were staggered at first. Silver Draft quick and shallow, his stamina already draining. Night Drift slow and deliberate. Lore’s hips jerking between two tempos she couldn’t synchronize.
Then Night Drift adjusted. Her circles quickened, matching his pace, the way she read hex grids and adapted. Lore stopped trying to move and let them move her.
Night Drift's muzzle dropped to her teats. She sucked one into her mouth while her hoof kept working Lore's nub, tongue and frog moving at the same tempo, and Lore's vision whited out for a full second. Silver Draft's cock inside her, Night Drift's hoof on her nub, Night Drift's mouth on her teat. Her body was happening without her.
Silver Draft's forelegs tightened around her haunches. Night Drift's mouth was still on her teat, her hoof still on her nub. She was pinned between them. A unicorn behind her and an earth pony beside her and the heat between the two of them was suffocating in a way that made her press deeper into it.
Lore's forelegs gave out. Her chest hit the mattress. Her horn was glowing without her permission, pale gold light pulsing with each stroke, amplifying everything below her waist. The glow brightened every time Night Drift's hoof crossed her nub and dimmed every time Silver Draft's shaft pulled back and she was blinking light across the bedroom walls like a broken lantern.
The tightening came back. The same one Silver Draft had stolen from her twice. Low in her belly, coiling, her muscles clamping harder with each stroke. Her nub was winking fast now, each pulse sharp under Night Drift's frog, and Night Drift pressed harder on the next circle and held the pressure and didn't let go.
She came.
A slow deep contraction starting in her core, radiating outward. Her vaginal muscles clamped around Silver Draft’s shaft in waves that made him grunt and flare inside her. Her hind hooves trembled. Her breath stopped. Started again in a rush. She said something. She didn't know what. The word came out in Severyanian, thick and uncontrolled, the accent she'd spent years and bits burying breaking the surface like a bone through skin.
Silver Draft finished inside her for the third time. He pulled out and collapsed sideways on the bed.
Night Drift removed her hoof. Wiped it on the sheet. Lay on her side next to Lore with one foreleg draped across Lore's back.
The three of them lay on the narrow bed in the quiet apartment in the bad neighborhood and breathed. The neighbor's radio played. The heating crystal hummed. Outside, East Manehatten continued its permanent schedule of being everything, all at once, without them.
Silver Draft spoke first. "I need more water."
Night Drift laughed. Short, through her nose.
"Kitchen counter," Lore said. Her face was in the mattress. She didn't move.
Silver Draft climbed off the bed. The frame protested. His hooves hit the floor and he walked to the kitchen and Lore heard the sound of water running and a mug filling.
Night Drift's foreleg was still across her back. Warm. Heavy. Present.
"Are you okay?" Night Drift asked.
"I have no idea," Lore said into the mattress.
"That's fair."
"I don't know what any of this means."
"It doesn't have to mean anything right now."
Lore turned her head. Night Drift was right there, her tired cyan eyes close enough to count the flecks in them. Her mane was a mess. Her t-shirt had ridden up. She looked like she always looked: exhausted, sardonic, warm in a way she'd never admit to.
"Thank you," Lore said. She didn't know what she was thanking her for. All of it. The train. The corner shop. The chair. The hoof.
"Don't thank me yet," Night Drift said. "I'm going to make fun of you for the rest of your life about this."
"I know."
From the kitchen, the sound of Silver Draft setting down a mug. Then silence. Then footsteps. He appeared in the bedroom doorway and looked at the room.
He was looking at it now. Actually looking, the way you look at a room when the urgency is gone and your brain is your own again.
A framed certificate hung above the desk: East Manehatten Chapter, Neighsay Book Club, awarded to Lore Nook for outstanding contributions to the chapter archive. Beside it, a smaller frame containing a printed column from the chapter newsletter with Lore’s name at the top.
The shelf above the bed. Neighsay’s collected speeches, two volumes. A pamphlet with the chapter’s logo. The plastic war helmet with its white circle and crosshairs, sitting between a stack of folders and a framed photo she’d forgotten to move.
And under the bed, a corner of fabric sticking out past the frame. A painted red eye. The curve of a dark horn. King Sombra’s smirk, visible at exactly the wrong angle, staring up at him from beneath the mattress he’d just had sex on.
Silver Draft's jaw set.
"Neighsay Book Club," he said. His voice had changed. Flatter. The warmth from the bar had left it.
Lore sat up. She pulled the sheet across her body. Her ears pinned back.
"It's a reading group," she said.
"It's a..." He stopped. Rubbed the back of his mane. His eyes went to the window, to the dark alley, to the neighborhood beyond it. "I should go."
"It's midnight. You'd have to walk through—"
"I'll find a cab." He was already picking up his jacket from the floor. His movements were quick, efficient, the easy friendliness from the bar compressed into something tighter. "This was... you two are really nice. This was good. I just..."
He looked at the pillow under the bed again. Sombra's red eye stared back.
"I should go," he said again.
Night Drift sat up. "You want us to walk you to the main road? The cabs don't come down this far."
"I'll be fine." His jacket was on. He was at the bedroom door. "Thank you for the drinks."
Three locks. Lore undid them with her magic from the bed, too tired and too bare to stand at the door. The deadbolt clicked. The chain slid. The auxiliary bolt scraped in its crooked housing.
Silver Draft opened the door, stepped into the stairwell, and pulled it shut behind him.
Lore's magic re-engaged the three locks from the bed. Deadbolt. Chain. Auxiliary bolt.
The apartment settled.
Night Drift sat on the edge of the bed. She was looking at the closed door. Her ears were flat. Flat in a way that had nothing to do with the bar or the bed. Her jaw was tight and her tail hung off the mattress edge without moving.
"Well," Night Drift said. Her voice was clipped.
"Are you..."
Night Drift stood up from the bed. She pulled her t-shirt down where it had ridden up and walked to the main room. She grabbed one of the blankets from the stack Lore had set out that morning and dropped it on the floor beside the kitchen counter.
"Night Drift."
"I'm on the floor." She kicked the blanket flat with her hoof. The motion was harder than it needed to be.
"You're upset."
"I'm not upset."
"You're making a bed on my kitchen floor."
"Because that's where I'm sleeping." Night Drift grabbed the second blanket. Folded it into a pillow shape. Set it at the top of the first. "It's fine."
"It isn't fine. What's wrong?"
Night Drift stopped moving. She stood over her floor bed with her back to Lore and her ears pinned and her shoulders tight.
"I sat in that chair for an hour, Lore."
Lore didn't say anything.
"I sat in that chair. I watched. I helped. I got you off when he couldn't keep up." Night Drift's voice was even. Controlled. The same flat delivery she used for everything, but thinner. "And then he left before I ever got a turn."
The words settled into the apartment like the heating crystal's hum. Steady and impossible to ignore.
"I came here too," Night Drift said. "I spent bits I don't really have on a train ticket. I bought condoms at a corner shop. I drank angry apple juice for the first time in my life. I walked through your neighborhood in the dark twice." She turned around. Her cyan eyes were dry and tired and looking at Lore without flinching. "And I'm going home tomorrow having done exactly none of what I came here to do."
Lore sat on the bed with the sheet pulled to her chest. Her mane was stuck to her face. Her body was still warm from everything that had happened and the guilt had settled into the center of it.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be sorry. It's not your fault he bolted." Night Drift looked at the floor bed she'd made. Looked back at Lore. "I just need to not be in that bed right now."
"Night Drift."
"What."
"Don't sleep on the floor."
"Lore—"
"I told you I wouldn't have you sleeping on the floor. I meant it then and I mean it now."
"That was before..."
"Before what?" Lore's voice caught. "Before you touched me? Before I asked you to? You think that changes whether or not I want you comfortable tonight?"
Night Drift's ears moved. A slow rotation forward that she didn't seem to notice.
"The bed is small," Night Drift said.
"I know."
"We'd be right next to each other."
"I know."
"And you're okay with that? After everything? After..." Night Drift gestured vaguely at the bed, at the room, at the space between them. "All of that?"
Lore looked at the sheet. Looked at the bed. She thought about the Sombra pillow under the mattress with his painted smirk. She thought about her father's world with its two categories for mares. She thought about the Book Club and breeding programs and biological imperatives. She thought about Night Drift's hoof between her legs and the patience in it and the sound she'd made that she'd never be able to take back.
She didn't know what any of it meant. She didn't have a category for it.
"Get in the bed, Night Drift." The R rolled. She didn't catch it. She didn't try.
Night Drift stood in the kitchen with her floor blankets at her hooves. She looked at Lore for a long time. The bags under her eyes. The curls stuck to her muzzle. The faintest pull at the corner of her mouth that wasn't a smile yet.
She left the blankets on the floor. She walked to the bed and climbed in. The frame creaked. The mattress dipped. She lay on her side with her back to Lore, her tail flat against the sheet between them.
"For the record," Night Drift said. "I'm still mad."
"I know."
"And you owe me."
"I know."
Lore looked at the closet. The door was open three inches. Through the gap, the bomber jacket with its patches hung at the far end.
She looked at the space under the bed. Sombra's painted mane sticking out past the frame.
She looked at Night Drift's back. The curve of her spine under the black t-shirt. The purple curls against the pillow.
Lore reached out with her magic and turned off the light. The apartment went dark. The neighbor's radio murmured. The heating crystal hummed.
She lay on her back and listened to Night Drift breathe.
Loveless Chapter Five — Night Drift
19th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — Morning
Lore woke up first.
The room was grey with early light. The heating crystal had cycled off sometime in the night and the apartment was cold and the sheet had migrated entirely to Night Drift's side of the bed. Lore lay on her back on a bare mattress with her forelegs folded on her chest and looked at the ceiling and listened to Night Drift breathe.
She was a loud breather. Each exhale had a soft rasp at the end that Lore had listened to for most of the night because sleep had come in fragments and the fragments had been full of things she couldn't sort.
Night Drift was curled on her side, facing away. The black t-shirt had ridden up past her ribs and the bare strip of greyish purple coat rose and fell with each breath. Her curls covered most of the pillow and some of Lore's pillow. Her tail was flat on the mattress between them, the same position it had been in when she'd climbed in.
The strip of coat between the t-shirt and the sheet. The curls. The shape of Night Drift's ear, relaxed and slightly back, the way ears only sat when a pony was fully asleep and trusting.
She got up without waking her. Made tea. Stood at the kitchen counter and drank it and looked at the floor blankets Night Drift had thrown down last night and never used.
Night Drift appeared twenty minutes later. She stood in the bedroom doorway with her mane crushed flat on one side and exploded on the other and her eyes barely open.
"Tea," she said.
Lore handed her the library mug, already filled. Night Drift took it with both forehooves and drank standing up.
They didn't talk about last night. Night Drift drank her tea and went to the bathroom and came back with her mane slightly less destroyed and her face damp. She pulled on her hoodie. Looked around the apartment. Looked at Lore.
"So," she said. "Bridleway?"
"Bridleway."
19th of Hale — Central Manehatten — Afternoon
The city was different on a Sunday.
Quieter. The work-week urgency was gone and the ponies on the streets moved slower, mares with foals, couples walking close, groups of friends heading toward the theater district or the park. The sun was out. The Crystaller Building threw a short shadow. The lampposts were decorative here, polished brass, functioning.
Lore had made this walk in reverse last night with a stallion between them and a bag of condoms in Night Drift's hoodie pocket. The street looked different in daylight. Everything looked different in daylight.
Saddle Row was exactly what Lore had promised: an entire street of boutiques neither of them could afford. Window displays behind polished glass. Dresses Lore would never wear on mannequin forms. Accessories that cost more than her monthly rent.
Night Drift stopped at every third window to comment.
"Who buys a hat that big?"
"Somepony with a head to match."
"Lore, that scarf costs forty bits. For a SCARF."
"It's cashmere."
"It's theft."
They walked. Night Drift's hoodie was zipped against the morning chill and her nursing cap was still on Lore's kitchen counter and without it she looked different in the daylight. Younger. Her curls caught the sun and the purple shifted to something warmer at the edges. The bags under her eyes were still there but they sat differently when she was smiling.
She was smiling a lot. Small, dry, directed at shop windows and overpriced hats and the absurdity of two mares with empty pockets walking down the most expensive street in Manehatten the morning after the most ridiculous night of their lives.
Lore caught herself watching. The way Night Drift’s ears moved when she was amused. How her shoulders sat. She looked away, and her ears warmed.
Bridleway was busier. The theater marquees were lit even in the afternoon, crystal displays advertising shows with names like Hinny of the Hills and My Fair Filly. Night Drift read each one out loud in a voice that suggested she'd never been to a theater and wasn't sure she'd survive the experience.
"My Fair Filly. Is that about a—"
"It's a musical."
"About a filly?"
"About a common mare who's taught to speak and act like Canterlot nobility. It's a classic."
"So it's about faking your way into a social class you don't belong to."
"It's about transformation."
"It's about lying with fancier words."
Lore's mouth did something she didn't permit. The corners pulled. She pressed them flat. Night Drift saw it anyway.
"Was that a smile?"
"No."
"Lore Nook almost smiled at my joke."
"It wasn't a joke. It was an oversimplification."
"That you almost smiled at."
19th of Hale — Manehatten Park — Afternoon
The park was green and open and larger than Lore remembered. She didn't come here. She lived in East Manehatten and the park was in Central and the distance between them was measured in blocks but felt like something wider.
They walked along the river path. Swan boats drifted on the water with couples in them, pairs of ponies leaning against each other, hooves dangling over the sides. Night Drift watched the boats with an expression Lore couldn't read.
They stopped on the stone bridge. Leaned against the railing. Below them the water moved slow and green and carried leaves from somewhere upstream.
"Ponyville has a river," Night Drift said. "Smaller. You can see the bottom."
"I wouldn't recommend looking at the bottom of this one."
Night Drift leaned her foreleg on the railing. Her shoulder was close to Lore's, the space between them the width of a breath.
They stood on the bridge and didn't talk. At the Book Club, silence meant somepony was about to criticize. At the library, silence was the default and meant nothing. With Night Drift, silence meant she was there and wasn't leaving and didn't need the gap filled.
Their shoulders touched. Lore didn't move. Night Drift didn't move.
A swan boat passed beneath the bridge with a young couple in it, a pegasus stallion and an earth pony mare, their forelegs intertwined, his wing draped over her back. They weren't looking at the water. They were looking at each other.
Night Drift watched them pass. Her jaw shifted. She straightened up from the railing.
"We should get moving. My train."
"It's only three."
"Station's a walk."
"It's twenty minutes."
"I need to get my stuff from your place. My bag, my cap." Night Drift paused. "The cap especially. I feel naked without it."
"You survived an entire evening."
"Barely."
They walked back through the park, past the rock, past the flower fields. The avenue took them east to Lore's apartment, then back west to the station. A long loop. It could have taken the afternoon. Neither of them slowed down.
19th of Hale — Central Manehatten, Maneway Station — Evening
Night Drift put the nursing cap on in Lore's apartment. She adjusted it in the bathroom mirror, tucking her curls under the brim, centering the magenta cross. The cap settled onto her head and the mare in the mirror became the mare from the train platform yesterday: tired, goth, the nursing cap as permanent as Applejack's hat.
The walk to the station was quiet. They took a different route, further south, through blocks that were lit and functioning. Lore didn't take her through the factory stretch. She didn't know if this was kindness or shame.
Maneway Station was busy with the Sunday evening crowd, ponies returning from weekends, families with luggage, the same current of earth ponies that had been flowing through this concourse when Night Drift had stepped off a train twenty-eight hours ago.
They stood near the platform entrance. Night Drift's saddlebag was on her back, repacked badly, the zipper straining. The paper bag from the corner shop was gone. The remaining cider bottles were in Lore's recycling.
"So," Night Drift said.
"So."
"That happened."
"It did."
Night Drift adjusted the strap on her saddlebag. Looked at the departures board. Looked at Lore.
"I'll be online tonight. After my shift. Probably around eight your time."
"I'll be there."
"We're not talking about—"
"We're not talking about any of it."
"Good." Night Drift's mouth pulled sideways. "Except the anatomy textbook."
"Obviously."
They stood in the station noise. The platform gate was open, the train boarding. Night Drift's eyes were tired, the bags beneath them deep and familiar.
Night Drift stepped forward. She pressed her muzzle against Lore's neck, just below the jaw. A brief, warm press. Sharing breath. The oldest kind of equine closeness.
Lore held still. She felt Night Drift's exhale warm against her coat.
Night Drift pulled back. Hitched her saddlebag.
"Lock your doors, Lore."
"All three of them."
Night Drift turned and walked through the platform gate. She didn’t look back. Her nursing cap bobbed above the crowd, the magenta cross catching the station light, and then she was through the gate and around the bend and the platform was just other ponies.
Lore stood beside the pillar where she’d waited yesterday morning for a unicorn in a nursing cap. The train pulled out and she watched it cross the railroad bridge and disappear toward the mainland.
19th of Hale — East Manehatten, Lore Nook's Apartment — Night
Forty minutes home. The lampposts dimming, the pavement cracking. Key in her magic from three blocks out.
The building, the lobby, the mailboxes, the stairwell.
Third floor. Three locks. The door opened onto a dark apartment that smelled like cold tea and the fading remnants of last night.
The door closed behind her. Deadbolt. Chain. Auxiliary bolt.
The apartment was hers again. The library mug on the counter, still stained with Night Drift's tea. The chair in the bedroom. The floor blankets in a pile where Night Drift had thrown them and never used. The bed unmade. The sheet smelled like two mares and a stallion and cheap cider and the cleaning solution she'd used yesterday morning when she'd been a different pony preparing for a different evening.
Lore sat at her desk. Powered on the crystal monitor. The blue glow filled the room.
She opened The Standard. Opened her DMs.
The green dot beside NightMare's name was dark. Five hours until her shift ended. Five hours until the dot pulsed.
The cursor blinked in the empty message field.
Lore looked at it. Her hooves hovered over the input pad. She didn't type anything. She closed the window.
The monitor went dark. The apartment followed.
The bedroom was three steps away. The closet door was open three inches, the latch doing what the latch did. Through the gap, the bomber jacket with its patches hung in the dark.
Kneeling beside the bed, her magic reached under the frame and found the Sombra pillow wedged against the wall where she'd shoved it yesterday morning. The pillow came out trailing dust. She held it at foreleg's length.
His painted smirk. His curved horn. His outstretched foreleg reaching for a mare who wasn't there.
She looked at him for a long time.
She put him back under the bed. Pushed him deeper this time, past the frame, against the wall where she couldn't see the painted mane sticking out.
One more check. Deadbolt. Chain. Auxiliary bolt.
She got into bed alone. The mattress dipped on her side and stayed flat on the other.
She lay in the dark and listened to the noise outside the window that carried on without her. She closed her eyes.
She slept.
by YuriFanatic
by YuriFanatic
by YuriFanatic
by YuriFanatic
by YuriFanatic