Oh, won't you go, make the most of a bad existence
cause you're so much older than she ever planned to live with
cause you're so much older than she ever planned to live with
Sabrina began to realize that she felt bad for the sanguine-toned mare. She was so young and yet, here she was, dancing and singing for her supper. Sabrina screwed up her face in some internal battle against hypocrisy. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Dearest really did just… like doing this shit. But there was an image of her head of a busker on a city sidewalk with ankles half-deep in the refuse of an overflowing storm drain; then there was that one kid at the corner of Westshev and White with the sign that read WILL RAP FOR FOOD.
Sabrina wondered what it felt like to not have to do something and to still do it.
Dearest announced her name back to her and nodded as though she had any say in the matter. She whipped out that weird analogy again and began walking; obediently, Sabrina followed, stuck in some weird mood halfway between feeling nothing and not dreading what was coming next. Her hooves were a steady rhythm on the cobbled Solterran streets; she kept pace a little behind Dearest and was on the verge of being… if not happy, then comfortable, until her new acquaintance threw her head over her shoulder and asked that loaded question.
Immediately, Sabrina clammed up. Her lips pressed together and the muscles in her cheeks tensed. No pressure, Dearest said, as though being able to think and speak freely was as easy as breathing. This was someone with no ghosts in their head. A closet empty of skeletons.
Everyone has a story. Some are fairy tales-- they’re okay then bad then better. Some people, Sabrina’s learned, can roll in shit and still come out smelling like roses. Puck was like that, until he died. He was a prince, though, so maybe the rules were different for him.
Just think on it. “Think I’d like it if you’d mind your own b--,” she muttered, then swallowed the ire, sharp like glass in her throat, and amended with: “Don’t hold your breath.”
They ducked into a little shithole dive that was less of a bar and more of a broom closet clawed out as an alcove in the stone. Chilling magic made the air less awful than outside but did nothing for the slight dankness and the smell of misery, which Sabrina was as intimate with as her own soul.
She completely disagreed with what people said about misery and company.
The magic made her slightly nauseous, but she swallowed it down. Dearest jumped straight into the mire and started yelling at one patron, something about marriage; Sabrina tuned it out. It was a topic she avoided at all costs, even in jest. Gentle chuckles escaped the small crowd of patrons and Sabrina had to hold back a sigh as Dearest turned her attentions back to her. She started talking about how she had to annoy this old fool into paying attention to her and oh, see, I like annoying people, and you look easily irritable. Am I right?
“Some people like being alone,” she said in a tone that suggested she was intimately familiar with the subject. “You’re lucky he didn’t smash you over the head with a glass. ‘Swhat I would’ve done.” All of her patience and restraint had been spent on Puck. Anyone who sidled up next to her these days got a face full of teeth.
Sabrina pulled her wings in tight to fight next to Dearest at the bar; she didn’t want to thwack her over the head. “Whiskey, neat,” she said to the barkeep, who seemed to know Dearest and what she wanted.
“So, uh,” Sabrina started, clearing her throat, “how do you find a place like this? Aside from needing somewhere to crawl in and die.” It was kind of a shitty way to ask what's a nice girl like you doing in a bad place like this but Sabrina had never had that level of tact, charisma, or give-a-damn.
