A Fancy Fleur

I wondered about her later that night, lying on the bed of one of the Carousel’s more expensive rooms, a thin silk bedsheet covering half my naked body as the tips of my fingers toyed with a pink crystal hanging from my neck. I wondered about my mysterious stranger and her gaze that had frightened and enraptured me, her strange equations and the haunting words she’d offered me.

I wondered if perhaps she wondered about me too.

“What are you thinking about, my dear?”

I turned my gaze and found a man in his late thirties lying beside me, the thin sheet similarly covering his naked body from view. I don’t judge my clientele, but Lord Fancy wasn’t the most physically attractive of men, it’s true. Thin and gangly, and with blue hair that seemed ready to fall off at a moment’s notice, his appeal lay not in his looks but his intellect and eccentricities.

And his kindness.

“I met a girl today,” I said almost without consent, embarrassed like a child confessing a crush. Which I was, I suppose.

“A girl?” said a dulcet voice. “Vraiment?”

I turned to my other side, and my eyes fell on a beautiful woman in her early thirties who was less inclined to cover up as Fancy and I were. Unlike her husband, Fleur de Lis shone with the sex-appeal and sophistication that often comes with being a foreigner in this dreary city. Many thought her vain and shallow, a rich socialite from abroad who cared for nothing but to look pretty. Very few knew that she and her husband were behind some of the most outrageously large anonymous charity donations in Canterlot.

I never tended to befriend my clients. We were polite to each other, and I was always sincere with my emotions and kindness, but ultimately we were engaging in a transaction, a service. It sounds callous, does it not? I don’t mean for it to sound so, but one usually does not go out for gossiping outings with their local cashier or their therapist.

And yet, Fancy and Fleur were… different, in that respect. Or they were with me, at the very least.

They were my very first clients when I left cabaret dancing to try the more intimate aspect of the businesses six years ago when I was only twenty. This eccentric rich couple who’d just moved to Canterlot, looking for new places and people to give them new experiences, and what a surprise for them when said experience burst into shamed tears in bed even before services had even been provided.

What was supposed to be a night of debauchery for them became a night of consoling and comforting and building me up.

When they left the next day with promises of returning for me, I was again reduced to tears when faced with a tip triple in size to that of a month’s wage.

They became frequent clients after that, and I am reasonably certain that they would do most anything for me just as I would do most anything for and to them.

“Why, Fleur!” exclaimed Fancy. “We must have been lacking today if our diamond is thinking of her and not us after tonight.”

Fleur lifted her hand and brushed her fingers against my cheek. “Will you tell us the details of your nights with her, at least?”

A heated blush rose up my cheeks, and I swatted her hand away. “Pardon me! I only said I met a girl, not that I wanted to bed her!” I protested, faced with two of the very few people who found it easy to fluster me.

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, my dear,” he said, reaching to the nightstand and taking his monocle. “Where did you meet her?”

“At that bench in King Pike’s station while waiting for the train.”

“I say, the one where that child died?” he asked, raising his eyebrow. “Interesting spot to be on the hunt for lovers, my dear.”

“Quite romantic,” she added with a giggle.

“You know, I don’t know why I’m even telling this to the pair of you,” I said with a huff. “I’m not being paid to expose my love life!”

“You’re right, my dear,” he said. “You’re being paid to thrill us.”

“And ça, mon ange, is quite thrilling,” Fleur added, and then fluttered her long eyelashes at me. “Allez, s’il vous plaît.”

“As I was saying,” I relented, ignoring the blush on my cheeks, “she was sitting on the bench, reading a fairytale book, I think, and using it to write down equations in a notebook.”

Now that caught their attention.

“Interesting,” he said. “What was she doing?”

“I don’t know. That’s exactly what I was trying to figure out when she…”

I fell silent.

Fleur pressed me. “She…?”

“She looked at me,” I said rather lamely, and I was upset to hear how… uninspired that sounded compared to how intense it had felt.

It certainly didn’t help that neither Fleur nor Fancy seemed to be impressed, as well.

“She looked at you,” Fleur repeated, and the couple was surprised when I sat up, as compelled to properly express the effect the woman had on me as I was irritated by my failure in doing so.

“It was more than that!” I said helplessly, holding onto my necklace as though it would somehow inspire poetry into my words. “She… She looked at me. Really looked at me like… like…” I gave up eventually. “I don’t know how to describe it, but… I can’t stop thinking about it.”

It would haunt me later on. The fact that I couldn’t describe what had transpired at that moment between us, why I had felt so utterly naked before her gaze, and it would take me quite some time before I ever found out.

You see, on that fateful day Twilight Sparkle and I met, she knew exactly why she’d stared at me in such a way. In the precise moment she saw me, she was overcome with the impression that she knew me and yet she couldn’t recall why no matter how hard she tried.

It makes sense that she couldn’t figure it out, doesn’t it? At least, it does now that I think about it in retrospect. Because, you see, Twilight Sparkle had never seen me before, and that is precisely why she knew about me.

Nevertheless, let us not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Defeated, I lay back down on the bed, once again playing with the necklace on my chest.

“She stared at me,” I continued, “and she was so beautiful that I simply had to say something to her and I…” Shame burned me and I looked away when I continued. “I asked her if she knew that a boy had died on that bench.”

Fancy’s laughter filled the room. “My dear girl!” he exclaimed, delighted by my utter lack of romance. He turned around and grabbed a cigarette from the nightstand, lighting it up with a summoned magical flame and taking a long drag before turning back to me with a wide grin. “That is certainly one way of making a memorable introduction.”

“Non, non, non, mon ange,” Fleur murmured when I tried to cover my face in shame, wrapping her arms around me and peppering my face with kisses. “Do not let this silly man embarrass you. Allez, what happened next?”

“Well… Nothing, really,” I continued, safe in the arms of Fleur. My mind moved on to Twilight’s somber statement of being forgotten, and I found myself incapable of relaying it to them. The rest of our exchange felt too raw to me, too personal to tell others.

It was a memory I wanted for myself and myself alone.

“The train arrived,” I continued, “and then I left, and I suppose that’s it.”

Having it said out loud, I can admit it was disheartening. An opportunity I only then realized I had missed in favor of making an impression on this odd girl.

“That’s it?” Fleur asked when I moved away. “Did you not ask her name? Where she lived?”

“No,” I replied. “In truth, I don’t think she even lives here. She was… She was so different, I’m sure she was a tourist or something of the sort. She was probably visiting, so I doubt I’ll ever see her again.”

At this, Fancy’s expression changed.

Thoughtful. Quiet. Mischievous.

“And you say you met this girl at King’s Pike station?” he asked, and the practiced nonchalance in his voice would have warned me something was afoot even if Fleur hadn’t gasped first.

“Non!” she said. “Mon amour, tu ne penses pas que—”

He smiled. “That is exactly what I’m thinking, my flower.”

“What?” I asked, sitting up. My eyes narrowed, as they often did in the company of those two. “What are you two hiding from me?”

“We have gossip,” Fancy said with careful measure, “of the celestial kind.”

As soon as the words left his lips, I covered myself involuntarily and then forcefully put the covers down the second I realized I’d done as such. Even then, it burned me, and it burned me even more when I felt Fleur pull me towards her in a comforting gesture.

I loathed that that woman in her forsaken mansion still held power over me, and yet how could she not?

“Something we found out during one of Upper Crust’s soirées,” he continued, and held my gaze when he asked, “Would you like to know what?”

No, I wanted to say. No, I am not interested in what she has to say, or think, or do, or be prejudiced about.

And yet, I wanted to know.

How could I not when all of Canterlot City lived and breathed by what Lady Celestia did or said?

“What?” I asked, failing to sound unresentful. “Has she fallen off her high horse and broken a leg?”

“Oh no, much worse,” he said, lying down on his back. “The dear Lady has taken on an apprentice.”

My heart sped up, and I was barely aware of Fleur cuddling up to me, her fingers gently tracing circles on my naked stomach. “An apprentice?” I asked, and the side of me who’d once idolized the Lady could hardly ignore the jealous pang.

“The daughter of some nobles from the North,” he continued. “And rumor is her magical abilities surpass even those of Lady Celestia herself. Fairly good-looking too, they said.”

“Oh?” I said with contempt. “And I suppose this apprentice is a prejudiced square as well, then?”

Fleur sighed, kissing my neck. “Mon ange,” she murmured. “These grudges… They do not suit you.”

Before I could protest, Fancy Pants went on. “An interesting name, too. Twilight Sparkle.”

I snorted initially. “Twilight Sparkle?” I said, disgusted by these two words and so painfully unaware of the fact that they’d soon enough become my favorite to say. “What a pretentious name. Twilight Sparkle.”

And yet, no sooner had I said her name again, I was overcome with a much more concerning emotion.

Familiarity.

At that moment, I was certain that I had heard this name before, and recently too.

But where, where, where? I couldn’t recall for the life of me where I’d heard of this so-called talented mage, and though I felt it hanging by the tip of my tongue, Fancy drew my attention before I could dwell on it further.

“A beautiful foreigner living in the Lady’s mansion,” said the Lord and his smile turned devious. “May I ask, my dear, what’s the nearest station to the mansion?”

“The nearest station? King’s Pi—” I caught myself in the middle of my sentence and a gasp of horror soon followed. “No. No. Absolutely not. No.”

“Mmm, it would be romantic, non?” Fleur murmured, taking me in her arms. “Notre petite diamant amoureuse de l’étudiante de Celestia.”

“I am not in love with her!” I protested. “And she is not this Twilight Sparkle pers—”

And only then did I remember where exactly had I heard her name before.

“Stars alive!” I gasped, clamping my hands against my mouth. “Sweetie Belle’s private tutor! That’s why I’d heard her name before! It’s her!”

I’ll never forget Fancy Pants laughter after that, echoing throughout the room.

“My dear, dear girl,” he said after a long and final drag on his cigarette. “It seems that fate has grown tired of being ignored.”