It was past ten and Gilda was thirsty. It wasn’t the sort of thirst that the simplest of beverages could sate. It was a unique thirst, and by drinking to it, it would solve her other problems; headaches, and remembering pesky things. It was an acquired thirst that she found alongside solace and self-pity. She drank that thirst to cure two very specific problems. Yet, in the morning, she’d find herself in much the same predicament; with headaches and things she wanted to forget.

She refused to think it was becoming problematic. Cyclical? Absolutely. Degenerative? Maybe. Looking at her, a pony couldn’t tell it was anything more than her choice of a Saturday night, or reprieve from a long day of work on a Wednesday. She couldn’t even tell if it was more than that.

Perhaps it was no more than that. Having a drink would certainly help answer that question, and if it didn’t, she wouldn’t have to worry about it for awhile.

Gilda approached the bar stool like she approached an old conquest. They would make eye contact for just a moment, and say nothing. Maybe if things went well, she’d come to appreciate it like she once did, but only after warming up.

She ordered three drinks. The bartender was an old-fashion stallion, with the class and dress of a rich butler. He was both impressed and saddened. Gilda wasn’t playing around tonight. He’d seen the damaged griffon more than once, but bits in his pocket every night kept him a bystander. Something upset her, but instead of asking he left her alone. It wasn’t his problem even if he wanted it to be.

She pursed her beak. The taste never got any better, she just felt less and less. It used to be because she’d already drank too much, but now it was because she simply drank too much. The seat felt warmer already.

It was loud. Something loud came from the door. First, it was the sound of a door slamming open, then it was something about half the bar wished would go away.

“Trixie cannot believe how those simpletons could behave so barbarically!” said the loudness. “Bartender! The Great and Powerful Trixie demands her poison!” The loudness sat down next to Gilda.  “An appletini, please!”

Gilda laughed her annoyance of the ‘loud’ to herself. At least it wouldn’t be quiet. She may have liked the quiet, but she liked telling the ‘loud’ to be quiet more. She downed her last shot.

“You’re loud,” said Gilda simply.

“Excuse me?” Trixie replied, taken aback.

“You’re very loud.”

The bartender brought the ‘loud’ her drink. She took it and daintily sipped the glass once before popping the apple slice in her mouth. “Well, for your information, Trixie has had a very unpleasant day! She will be as loud as she wants.”

Trixie closed her eyes smugly and took another sip. Gilda laughed again. She didn’t like Trixie. She watched her wince against the drink’s dismal burn. Her seat grew warmer as the liquid slid into Trixie’s belly.

“Whatever.”

Gilda found her buzz after the bartender found her two more drinks. A buzz wouldn’t drown out the mindless complaining of the pony next to her, but she was getting there. Trixie had only barely finished her first and already she had a blush on her face. Maybe it was the drinks or maybe it was the lightweight loudness next to her, but she still found the heart to laugh a bit. It was a pitiful laugh that would make a parent sad to hear, but a laugh all the same.

“I’d tell you to get a stronger drink, but something’s telling me a pony like you doesn’t know the definition of a bad day,” said Gilda.

Trixie narrowed her eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.

Gilda shook her head. “It means, hard times come with hard drinks.”

“What? You don’t think Trixie has had trying day because of her choice of poison?!” she rebutted pompously.

“Yeah, not really. At least not as bad as mine.”

The bartender came by to gather their glasses. Gilda took the opportunity to graciously buy the next round of the house special, Loud and Aroused: gin, apple cider, pumpkin spice, and strawberry.

“Trixie thanks you for your generosity.” She swirled drink in her cup and took a sip. There was the afterburner wince, but she still managed to make a claim at how good it tasted.

Gilda took her time with this one. She sat heavy and warm in her seat. It was becoming easier to like Trixie. Trixie noticed Gilda staring at her and took the whole cup in one gulp. She ordered another.

“Fine, you can tell me how bad your day was,” said Gilda. “I’ll listen.”

Trixie smiled before expelling an ersatz burp. “Excuse me!” Trixie blushed. “My my, those horrid country ponies are already rubbing off on Trixie.”

“Country ponies?”

The bartender brought by another drink. Trixie slowly grabbed it and pulled it closer. No rush in introduce any more poison so quickly.

“Yes,” she said, looking at it idly. “I’m a traveling showgirl and my most recent show has left me homeless and out of work.”

“Homeless?” said Gilda, neither understand the word nor the application. She answered herself before Trixie could. “If you travel, how’d you lose a home?”

“I don’t have a permanent residence, actually. I stay in trailer that was so wonderfully smashed by an Ursa Minor.” That memory forced the drink in front of her down her esophagus in earnest. It then skeptically ordered her yet another drink. Confidently, the memory told her it was best to wait for the other drinks to kick in before introducing another one. Happily, it urged her to talk to her new friend, a powerful looking griffon. Trixie batted her lashes as the creature.

“Damn,” said Gilda. “That’s pretty bad. All I got is my lifelong friend telling me to get lost.”

“Oh?” said Trixie simply. Or not so simply by the sparkle in her eyes.

“Yeah, coolest pegasus you’ll ever meet, awesome flyer, just has a bunch of loser friends pull pranks on me. Humiliating.”

“That’s awful. Why’d they do that?”

Gilda laughed again. This time she let herself find a vein of black humor in it. “Beats me. This stupid pink pony had it out for me. Weirdest thing was she smelled like cotton candy.”

“Really now?”

“Yeah. Whatever. I don’t care anymore.” Gilda downed her drink and forgot all about it. Trixie kindly ordered her another. “So, how’d a pretty little mare like you get in deep with an Ursa Minor?”

Trixie seat felt warmer as Gilda’s did. Trixie took a sip of her own drink. Gilda’s sharp, half-interested eyes pierced her. Her lungs turned to concrete and her lips trembled. Trixie went to reach for her drink accidentally spilled it over the side of the counter, dripping all over her lap.

Gilda just looked at her as if to say ‘amateur’.

“Oh my goodness!”

She levitated a grip of napkins to pat the mess dry. Gilda smiled and rolled her eyes. This seat was beginning to feel like a conquest revisited.

“So, what were you saying about your friend?” said Trixie as she finished cleaning herself up. She was trying to take a sip from her drink. Her neck was extended over the counter for a drink that could have been simply pushed forward. She reached it, but only by the very softness of her lips. Gilda pushed it about a foot closer to her, and Trixie blushed.

The cup crashed to the floor, exploding glass everywhere. A pony passing by stepped on it. He was too drunk to feel the accompanying pain. Some of it crunched beneath their hoof, and some dug into it. A blood trail was left behind them, as his ‘friends’ dragged them into the back alley.

“My friend Rainbow Dash, she’s gotta be the next Wonderbolt.”

“Oh yeah?”

That name sounded familiar to Trixie. Where did it come from?

“Yup, first and only pegasus ever to do a Sonic Rainboom.”

“I bet she’s a superstar in bed,” said Trixie too quickly after Gilda.

“What?” said Gilda as though she’d just been told the day of her death by the reaper himself. Horror, surreality and confusion all mixed in one. “What’d you just say?”

“I said, she’d probably a superstar in bed.”

Silence.

Gilda silently gestured two more drinks to the bartender with a V-shape of her fingers. She finished whatever was in front of her. Trixie was lying face down on the counter. Her shoulder moved up and down with her breathing. She was humming some tune into the tabletop, before snapping her attention up to Gilda. Gilda ignored her.

“You know, Trixie has heard that name before Rainbow Dash,” said Trixie. Something about her tone was unnerving. It sounded calculated, practical. Much so for a pony who seemed too drunk to hold a glass upright and whom was currently strengthening that accusation with a glass of scotch. “Trixie remembers competing with her.”

Gilda froze up in her seat despite the warmness of it. She was cold as if her lover had found that she’d been cheating shamelessly for some time now. Even worse, the lover wanted a name. Or at least that’s how it felt under the gaze of Trixie. She didn’t turn around though.

“Yeah, I’ve competed with her too,” murmured Gilda, feeling her feathers stand up on end. “She’s my best friend—was.”

Gilda looked over and Trixie was still face down on the counter, humming less coherently than before, if that was possible. Gilda fidgeted anxiously in her chair, running her claws over and around the cup.

“Trix, you’re starting to freak me out. I think you should stop drinking,” said Gilda.

Trixie continued to hum. She hummed the melodies of famous song, songs that everyone recognized, but they were different. They were small changes only a person so impaired may think of. Were Gilda just as imparied she was sure she’d sing along. The seat was getting colder now. Trixie stopped humming sat up and placed her hoof against her cheek. The cessation of music and following silence were that which followed the news of death. She gave Gilda a sultry smile.

“I know Rainbow Dash,” she said with enough inflection to warrant a decade of history.

Gilda gripped her glass tightly. “Yeah, well I’ve know her a pretty long time too.”

“But do you know she’s a superstar?”

Gilda’s fidgeting broke the glass in her claws. The shards gouged her and blood slowly oozed out. She didn’t care. She wiped them off against her feathers hastily and glanced over at Trixie. The unicorn had her right ear flat again the table with those same knowing eyes. Gilda turned back and put her eyes forward and down. She fixed her eyes on a sink of dirty glasses. Out of the corner, she saw the bartender.

“Hey, put it all on my tab, I gotta split early tonight,” she said loudly.

He shook his head, but smiled. He was disappointed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get paid. It just meant he might have to wait a week or two. Gilda downed whatever was in front of her, got up and started for the door.

“Pardon me, Gilda,” said the bartender, looking at his less-than-aware patron. “Care to explain your friend?”

Gilda stopped in her tracks. Her instinct told her to just walk out and forget about it, but something kept her there.

Had she left, that would have been the end of it.

Trixie was babbling softly.

“I don’t know her.”

“She only talked to you, and by the looks of it she’s done for the night,” reasoned the bartender.

Gilda knew what he was getting at, but forced him to say it anyways.

“Yeah so?”

“Well, that makes her your responsibility. I have appearances to keep and passed out drunk mares are not one of them.”

Gilda didn’t want to argue, especially when this stallion held a significant portion of her current wealth in debt. She picked up Trixie and stumbled out into the streets.

Dead weight was dead weight and Trixie could go grow a rock for all Gilda cared. She still had things to forget and headaches to cure. Trixie was turning out to be anything but her style.

She spotted a horrible idea in the form of a dark back-alley.

Trixie muttered something.

“Just sit tight, Trix. I’ll get you home soon,” said Gilda. She walked towards the alley and spotted Trixie’s home; a large cardboard box. Of the less wholesome thoughts that existed beyond dumping a helpless mare somewhere so depraved, Gilda managed to find one. Trixie’s smirk and batting lashes hadn’t been a bluff and Gilda could smell it.

Gilda’s headache was back and another thirst that lived in her blood was surfacing. Thankfully, quenching this new thirst would also alleviate her head’s pain, but it would be something that would need forgetting in the morning. Since she already had to forget about Trixie in the morning, the choice was obvious. Better to solve one problem than zero problems.

“You’re way too pretty to pass up,” said Gilda, grinning as she walked towards the darkness.

“Th-that’s what Rainbow Dash said...” muttered Trixie before passing out.

Gilda dropped her in shock. She hadn’t meant to be so abrupt and sudden, and the hard thud of the limp mare brought a wave of guilt. Trixie groaned.

Gilda backed away from the pony as though she had a plague deadly to the touch.

“What did you say?” said Gilda.

Trixie rolled over and laughed through broken ribs.

“I think it would be best to find something to eat!” Trixie shouted dryly to the sky. “Trixie is famished!”

“What did you say about Dash, you drunkard?!” said Gilda.

Trixie scrambled to her hooves with uncanny agility and took a dramatic position. She looked like an anxious runner at the start of a race. “Trixie will tell you something sweet, but first let’s get some hay shakes!”

Trixie dashed down the street, laughing like a banshee in the night. The wails echoed against the night sky like they were in a small auditorium; contained. Gilda reacted quickly enough to give her only ten feet of a lead.

Trixie rounded a corner beneath a street lamp.

Gilda rounded the same corner, but Trixie wasn’t there and neither was her laughing. She spun around which unfortunately compounded and verified her next statement.

“What the? I ain’t this drunk yet, am I?”

The light of the lamp was dismal and contained. It singled her out and told her she was alone. She didn’t like being alone. It patronized her by making her space smaller. Gilda was a natural flyer and being inside such a small space was claustrophobic. She was alone in the light, and it was a very bright light. It stared her in the face and made the darkness a concrete half-sphere around her. Her head spun with toxins and the subsequent confusion.

She choked, her breath shallow. Her lungs expanded to their earnest width, but it was filled with dryness. She choked as though she was suffocating. Was she running out of oxygen? She couldn’t be. She was outside. It was still hard to breath though. Was something inside her telling her otherwise?

It reminded her of an anecdote:

Not too long ago, a stallion was trapped in a walk-in freezer late one Friday night. He was making his final rounds, and one lazy slip of the hoof left him stumbling into the a stack of boxes. I front of him, he saw the door close and lock shut. He banged against the door for hours, but no one came to help him. He died sometime over the weekend from hypothermia and its accompanying causes of death. Curiously, he had a clipboard and pen, and wrote out his symptoms and last will in the time.

What he never figured out was that the refrigeration unit went out earlier that day, and the freezer had actually reached a survivable temperature. He had imagined himself to death. Even stranger, the descriptions of his symptoms he left behind were perfectly usual.

Gilda knew of this and that is what may have saved her life. She was aware of her own delusion. She looked to the ground and saw a trail of blood. It was her blood from her claw. The thin, but full, line of blood had made a half-dozen circles.

Something was wrong.

This wasn’t just any alcohol. That Trixie must have slipped her something. She’d drank enough times to know what it was like to be at every level of drunk, but this was different. Gilda tried to slap herself in a self-realizing gesture, but ended up clawing at her face haphazardly. Trixie had been weird all night, it should have been more obvious. Trixie probably gave her the same thing she was on. The drug seemed to bear down on her as the idea seeded itself in her mind.

This epiphany came with paranoia. A foreign substance, doing dirty thing things to her already fuzzy mind. She thought that swaying was in order, so she swayed. Swaying was something that a someone who’d been drugged should do. Next, she should probably breathe shallowly, so she did that.

Finally, they should fall over. That’s when she would know things have gone wrong. Gilda tried, but failed.

“Are you alright?” said the loud, catching her.

“I—you...?” replied Gilda.

“Look! Trixie bought us some food!”

Gilda was met with a heavenly aroma. There was something fried and smothered with cheese. Some grilled vegetables. Much to her surprise, her stomach wasn’t rejecting the idea of nourishment. It roared for it.

“You—you did?” muttered Gilda.

“Of course Trixie did! And she’s here to share them with her friend.”

They had this impasse in front of a closed cafe and resolved to eat at one of its many outdoor tables in the dark. Gilda felt better as she ate a few of the cheesy hay fries. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary anymore, at least not while Trixie was around. The darkness from before still followed her, but Trixie’s shimmering silver mane kept it at bay. It wanted to constrict her and tell her she was suffocating, but Trixie’s mane wouldn’t let it.

She liked Trixie.

As they passed into the closed off seating area, Gilda couldn’t help but feel adventurous. Technically they were trespassing, and no matter what, seeing a day establishment at night was always exciting. The same was true for the opposite. The shadows caught her eye. Their were difference in the lighting that she’d never see without pushing the boundaries of society.

They were giggling now as they ate and walked. The warmness from Gilda’s prior conquest made its way into her gut and heart, so she laughed. She didn’t know why Trixie laughed, but she guessed the same.

Trixie found a window to the restaurant, invoking another giggling fit that was periodically interrupted by a bite of food. They found it was unlocked and there was even more laughter.

“This is home,” said Trixie.

“May I come in,” replied Gilda genuinely..

“Please, we’ve been waiting.”

They climbed in through the window.

They found a booth to sit at amidst the darkness. By the time they finally sat down, about half their food was gone. They quickly went to work to finish the rest. The glossy tables reflected the orange light of the lamps outside. Gilda looked at her claw as it passed between her eyes and the reflection, momentarily blocking it. As it passed a single drop of blood fell onto the table. It dripped into dark, round silhouette. It gleamed and reflected the golden light from outside.

It enraptured both of them.

“Are you alright?” asked Trixie.

“Yeah... I just cut myself.”

“Did you do it because you were sad?”

Gilda looked up and noticed how much Trixie’s eyes were sparkling in the light. Their beauty and her restlessness reminded Gilda of a thirst she had.

“No, I didn’t. It was just an accident.”

Trixie wrapped her scarred foreleg in her cape.

“Oh—” said Trixie with a bittersweet smile. “That’s good.”

Silence.

The stillness and dryness of the air irritated Gilda. She was restless, so she fidgeted. The more she fidgeted the more it felt like she needed to touch Trixie. It was like she was wrapped in a dry cotton sock bundle and the static in her body was building.

Every movement stored electricity and that electricity would need to be expelled in the form of a discharge. Potentially a painful one if enough electricity built up. Even beyond that, it could be fatal. It would be years before she stored that much electricity, but still, it scared Gilda. Trixie was the only precious metal for miles and Gilda wanted to discharge.

It would be unpleasant. It may even hurt. Gilda didn’t want to hurt her, but she needed to have this to keep herself alive.

“Trixie...” said Gilda nervously. “Do you want to maybe sit on this side of the table with me?”

Trixie’s eyes were wide and innocent.

“But, there’s not enough room.”

“I uhh... you’re right.”

So quickly that defeat came, that Gilda no longer felt protected by Trixie’s mane. The darkness of the lamp told her she was alone, and it was right. Trixie didn’t like her. She never liked her. Her lungs turned to concrete in her chest, and a lump sat in her stomach. Her seat was cold.

“Well, you’re pretty big, so maybe I can sit on your lap,” conceded Trixie.

Gilda would have smiled if beaks could do that. The warmth returned to her seat, and she could breathe once more. She felt a little immature for thinking so childishly before. She had jumped to conclusions, but it was fun to overreact a little.

Trixie stood up and went to cuddle Gilda. The static discharged, but instead of disappearing, it flowed from one body to the next and back again.

As these things generally go, it escalated. At first, closeness was all that mattered, warmness and making as much surface contact as possible. It came to involve mouths and anxious extremities. For a while, extremities ruled. They decided how sensation would be rationed out, but once mouths were introduced, the game changed.

This continued for some time until the final step made its debut. It was found deep in the gut, at the center of the being. It was powerful and the mere touch of it, created connections that’d last forever. That also changed the game.

It was like a grand exchange with pleasure as the commodity. Investment into creating pleasure was sure to return in full. With each escalation from one stage to the next, the market changed. Supplies and demands shifted, and the epicenters of production moved. To create the greatest profit, they’d utilize every asset at their disposal. Tongues, claws, hooves. Everything.

Then it collapsed. They cornered the market, established monopolies over the other and then it collapsed.

They laid there panting without words. Neither of them knew what to think. In honesty, they weren’t thinking much of anything. First they’d catch their breath before thinking too hard.

“What do you remember?” said Trixie through ragged breaths.

“I—I don’t know,”replied Gilda truthfully.

Trixie was silent. Gilda heard a cracked voice and high squeals. Trixie was crying now.

“Hey, what’s wrong, babe?” said Gilda with a comforting smile.

Trixie cried harder. Then she remembered. She looked around for something sharp, a shard of glass or a knife. She cocked her head in a seemingly random selection of angles that more or less covered everything in sight. Upon seeing no such sharp object, she curled up in a ball. She held her scarred forelegs close to her chest. They felt like cheese graters against her coat.

“Nothing! Nothing is wrong with Trixie!”

The sobbing and tears quickly turned her into a slightly soggy ball of fur. The stark contrast to the euphoria from before struck Gilda as almost surreal. She tried to appear pensive. When other ponies cried, it was best not to trivialize their emotions. To avoid doing that, one should appear pensive. Still it felt strange to be so pensive after such an exchange.

“Rainbow Dash, told me to never tell anypony, but I’ve had her!” exclaimed Trixie. “ I’m dirty and tarnished and so is she!”

“Wh-what?”

“No!” she screamed to no one in particular. “I didn’t have her! I took her!”

Gilda still wasn’t ready for words. Her head had been spinning for an hour at least, maybe longer. Conversation seemed distant, tiresome, and overly difficult. Still, she tried it.

“It’s okay. It’ll be alright.”

“No, it won’t!”

“Yes, it will,” said Gilda, annoyed.

“Trxie don’t even know your name!”

“It’s Gilda!”

There was silence as Trixie’s jaw went slack, and her crying stopped. She didn’t look any better. For a moment, Gilda thought she said the magic words, but it wasn’t the case. The words were a powerful magic, but not of the healing kind. Her friend, her lover, she didn’t look relieved of comforted, she looked like she’d heard a ghost.

That sentence had estranged them. The silence grew thicker.

“Gilda?” stammered Trixie finally.

“Yeah?”

“She talked about you... Rainbow Dash, she talked about you...”

Trixie tightened up and began to use her own teeth to draw the precious cathartic blood to fuel her self-destruction. She’d never cut with her teeth before and wondered if this meant she’d do it in the future. It spilled on her lips, and she liked the taste of it. It was a thirst that needed quenching. Trixie was always thirsty and had many thirsts.

“What?” said Gilda, none the wiser.

“I-I’m so sorry... She was so honest... She told me she loved you and I still didn’t stop myself... I’m so, so sorry...”