Walking down the flights of stairs was always a reminder of what we were, and really, what we are. The surface, with its scorching sun and adobe, was more alive. Holes in the earth have always been more quiet. I was born in an adjacent structure, a Stable all the same. The places always felt like they were meant to be whispered in; the idea of having a party or a wastefully fun social gathering felt alien to the place.

I mean to say that Mausoleums are pretty stable.

No, I had business here. Mom had needed some help with the shop on the day of. Books could be gifts, and on ceremony day, people got their relatives gifts. It just happened that this assignment ceremony was also my assignment day. So, I was making my way down into Stable 56 and its office of employment. Basing a critical feature of our society down in a hole made sense. Was it a reasonable fear that we would be driven back down there? I didn’t know, and no one I knew did either.

Stables, bomb shelters built for thousands, were where we came from, plural.

My mind was wandering as the others went about their day. The maintenance staff for these places had a tendency to stay below. They gave my pink coat and side bags a strange look as I passed by. Some people had never wanted to leave these holes, and I couldn’t understand that.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of walking and straining my eyes to look at faded signs, I made it to the office I was looking for. I glanced at it through the glass in the door. The room had a steel desk at its center and an older mare was sitting at it.

Director Of Occupational Assignment said a plaque on her desk.

I rapped on the door three times. She looked at the door.

“Come in,” She said to me, and I did.

“H-hello.” I relied tentatively. She was actually quite pretty.

“What’s your name, honey?”

“Rosetta. My mother runs a bookstore.” I didn’t know why I blurted that out. In fact, she gave me an odd look. I was drying out like a pelt in the sun. She looked to her desktop terminal for a moment before typing out a short message.

“Oh, you were the one who skipped graduation day.” Her voice held an amusement to it. “Afraid of crowds, or recognition?” The mare had softened her voice as she asked.

“Uhh.” My mouth kind of fell open and made noises as my brain stalled. I couldn’t help but think that she was right on both counts.

“You’re not the first and not the last. Really, it’s respite more than anything else, especially if you get to be the bearer of good news.”

“O-okay. Glad to be the receiver of good news?”

“Yep, you’re hearing it from me first, come tomorrow you’re a desert ranger,” She told me with a lackadaisical tone in her voice.

“What?” I said as I shivered. I shifted forward and placed my front hooves on her desk. I was about to either scream at her or cry in her general direction. Before…

“Just joking, how do you feel about studying under Doctor Mildew?” She told me as she placed a hoof on top of one of mine. My lips pursed.

“You’re not lying to me… You’re serious?” I couldn’t believe the mare standing in front of me.

“Yes, I was on the committee that decided you would do well in that position. Cheer up; you don’t get to skip that ceremony without some kind of punishment.”

“So, do I show up at his office tomorrow?”

“Only if you have the slip I’m writing. You do know that Dr. Mildew was there at the ceremony? He wanted to meet you.”

I guess reading through that musty anatomy textbook had payed off with interest. Rosetta was going to be taught medicine. As many problems as the entrance exam had, it’d gotten me somewhere namely, gawking at the head of an important committee. Shit. I looked at my legs. The scratching of a pen on paper caught my attention, but I didn’t look at it.

“Here you go.” I looked back up at her and took the paper with a hoof. As I was sliding it into my right bag she looked at me with a smile. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

I turned around, muttering a thank-you. She enjoyed her job too much.

The walk back up to Paradise Lost was hurried. The people down there were staring at me like I was a parasite under a microscope.

When I made it through the Stable door and into a place touched by the sun, I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t a fan of small places or dark ones. The city above was my home, a mixture of new structures and repaired older ones. Apparently the world ended a century ago, and honestly, I had a hard time believing that sometimes. In Paradise Lost, I could walk a couple feet and a find a bathhouse or drinking fountain. Power flowed in our houses, no one starved, even if potatoes were a little too prevalent in our diet.

I guess the name of the town that existed here before was literally named Paradise. Paradise had been a resort town constructed on the shores of Sall’han, adjacent to a naval base. Interdicting traffic to the enemies of Equestria was a necessity. This place apparently sprung up overnight, and was described as both a tourist trap and a place for sailors to unwind.

As I made my way back home, my mind wandered.

Was I really doctor material? There were twenty in the city. For twelve thousand people, it wasn’t a bad ratio, historically speaking. I had always wondered why our city was named the way that it was. Was it some remembrance for the past? What did we lose?

The war and its exchange of super weapons had turned Equestria to ash, and Zebrica was left worse off, somehow. Well, we stuck with the name our forebearers had come to agreement with.

My walk came to an end as I spotted my mother’s book store. If nothing else, I had something good to tell my mom.

When I made my way to Mildew, the next day I found a teal coloured buck with a military cut to his hair. He promptly asked why exactly I hadn’t been at the ceremony. In his office full of awards, all dated to a few decades back, I answered the question the same way I had with the assignment office mare. His mane was grayed to a snowy complexion and his corrective lenses were scratched and thick. All of this was intimidating to me.

“Damn, you’re a dead ringer for your father, in everything but voice and disposition.” He said this, referring to a father I never knew, and without that pernicious tone to his voice. It was simply a fact to him. Mildew shifted vertically, somehow. “If you think this is going to be easy for you, that any part of this can be slept through, you’re not only dead wrong but you’ll probably going to end up killing someone.” His gray eyes bored into my face. My face shifted towards the floor.

“Gods dammit.” There was a pause after his words.

“You read well, and you can keep the stuff in your head, you aren’t a cocky asshole. I can work with you, so all of it really comes down to you. If you want a job where you’ll get five hours of sleep a night, then you’ve found it.”

“I think I’m one of the better candidates. I really do want to help ponies.”

My voice was low but there was commitment in it.

“Alright, you’re going to learn the trade the same way I did; By watching me, reading a helluva lotta books, and working with patients as they come in.”

“Well, medical schools aren’t really around anymore, so it makes sense. I’ll be happy to help,” I thought out loud, to his minor amusement.

He turned his back before muttering, “You say that now.”

I ambled in like I had for the last month, with a loose gait and a lowered neck. Exhaustion was a feeling I had never truly experienced before. I was up at five and asleep by twelve, which was darkly funny. Those medical texts I studied said that sleep was important, and that you should get seven or more hours of it. For the first few days, I felt like death.

My mother, as supportive as always, greeted me warmly when I trotted in. The muscles in my mouth flexed to form a light smile, most of those muscles I could now name. Page Turner always liked it when I smiled. I was the smiling type, so it wasn’t a foreign activity. The smell of cabbage and browned bread perked me up. We had an extra bedroom up top, where Dalliance slept. She could cook, and she pulled in caps for rent. Mom was always more focused on her store, her project of the moment, and ,well, me. The interior of the shop had an ever present smell: Leather, paper, and a just a little rot.

“Rose, dinner is nearly done. You do want to join us, yes?” My mother had an eloquence in her speech that extended to every word she spoke. Her brownish, beige coat and thick glasses gave her an appearance nearly as bookish as the place she ran. Sharp grey eyes and black hair wrapped up in a bun made her appear to be a mercenary librarian, which, was effectively what she was.

“Only if you feed it intravenously,” I said with an exaggerated yawn following shortly behind the statement.

“That’s the spirit! No, If I know you, and I do, you’re starving.” Even so, she walked over to me and gave me a push in the general direction of the table. As I continued to walk under my own power, she snorted. “I hope you act like this to doctor Mildew.”

“Well, he doesn’t satiate my appetite; he just makes it disappear. He doesn’t even require any magic to work that spell.” I sat down at the wooden table set for four. It was big enough for the three of us.

“He is an impressive sack of bones.” She said to me from across the table.

“He’ll only be a sack of bones if he doesn’t eat.” Dalliance said from the kitchen.

She trotted into the room to give me a look over. “Not him, Dally, the doctor he’s learning from. Rosetta is only as emaciated as he normally is.”

“That wasn’t very nice. Bad mare.” Dally said before tapping my mom on the muzzle with the stirring spoon.

“Ooom, smells good.” Page said to her before giving her a light peck on the cheek. They had moments where they forgot that they were alone, or just didn’t care.

“So, uh, I learned how a dialysis machine works, in principal. Word of advice: keep your kidneys intact.” After hearing that, they both looked at me funny before the mercenary librarian rolled her eyes and the mare who had become a second mom to me just shook her head in the general direction of the kitchen. Around them, my desire to sink into the walls disappeared. Comfort can do that to a person. It can make them better.

I followed the instruction. As I was spooning the hot stew into a wooden bowl, I could hear them talking, barely.

“You think we did well? He is going to be a doctor, though I could always tell from his hoofwriting. Do you think that-”

“Yes, yes. If anything you’ve told me about him had a grain of truth in it… he’d be very proud of him. Not that I didn’t help.”

In the moment after hearing that I felt my mouth tighten up and a tenseness in my chest. I felt warm, in that moment all of it made sense. Parents that love you… sometimes you forget that fact, and sometimes they don’t say it out loud enough. Still, in that doorway, I began to cry those periodic tears. My father had died out there. You know, the wasteland. He died of an infectious disease. We had his ashes in an urn.

With a little hesitation, and that low lying joy that comes from realising attachment, I proceeded to grab myself a bowl of the stew, and with a thought, I made a bowl for mom and Dally.

I walked back in to see the two of them looking at their hooves. Laying the bowls down with a finesse I had just started to learn, I gave the two of them that practiced slight smile.

“Thanks,” Dally said to me smoothly as I passed the bowl to her.

“So, do you have a date for Unification Day?” My mom had shifted gears over to my unfinished affairs as quickly as she did anything else.

“Uh, I’ve been really busy,” I said meekly.

Dally shot me a look of sympathy, but Page was a results driven person.

“I know you meet with a lot of the patients before Mildew gets to them; if that isn’t an icebreaker, I don’t know what would be.”

“I don’t think that that’s ethical. If a filly has a broken leg or a buck has a cut that needs stitches… that kind of supercedes my… wants.”

“Well, you have some time, but still.” She gave me her signature expression, her lips pursed, eyes locked on and ears straight up. Then her features softened at a look from Dally.

“We just want you to be happy. You took a risk in becoming Mildew’s apprentice. How hard is it to ask someone if they want go to the soda fountain, or the bar?”

My face clouded. She never understood. I loved her and she loved me, that was never in question. I wasn’t a cut-throat, I just had a hard time with ponies.

“You’ll get over it, everyone likes a doctor,” Dally said after thirty seconds of pregnant silence.

“P-probably.” I said before swallowing a spoonful of stew.

The Salt in the air stayed the same, even on a day when drunk ponies and cynical merchants took to the streets in broad daylight.

It was the look in his eyes that gave him away: Mildew had just told me that I could take a day off to go enjoy the festivities.

I shifted my hooves back and forth, my head had taken its normal ground-facing position. “I’m fine with staying here, Mildew. I’m sure you’ll want a second pair of hooves to operate the stomach pump.”

“First off, you just jinxed us. Second off, you’re what, twenty, and wanting to stay in on today of all days. Third, things are always better in threes.”

I chuckled a little at the ornery doctor. If he didn’t run into mom or Dalliance, then he couldn’t reveal that I’d be lying to them about my activities, or lack of them, today.

“Today isn’t the day for me, alright?” I said with resignation in my voice with a little bit of bite at the end. He wouldn’t ask why, hopefully.

His face looked stony for a second and one of his fore hooves came up to stroke his scraggly facial tufts.

“This is highly unethical, but I have a cure for social phobia. Now, I’ve only found this out through years of being a physician. Have some faith in me.” He said this to me before he turned. His desk was his destination, and I just stood there murmuring about not having social phobia…

It really didn’t matter. He came out from behind his desk with a bottle of brown liquid and a pair of glasses.

“Think of this as more of a pre-game,” He said nonchalantly as he gestured for me to go sit with him at one of the waiting room tables.

“What?”

“You need to get out more. When I was your age I was mainlining- You wouldn’t understand. No, I really just want to get you buzzed enough that you can interact with others the way a regular jackoff would.” He looked at my face for half a second.

He shook his head. A smile then appeared on his face. “Give it a shot.” And then he laughed. Oh, yeah, those were shot glasses that he was filling.

With a little flourish, he finished filling the glasses. He picked his up with his right hoof while I hesitantly did the same. “Bottoms up,” Mildew said before stopping his drink.

“Did I teach you how to transplant a liver yet?” He said suddenly, spinning his glass in his magic on his hoof.

“No.” I said before dumping the liquor down my throat. I gagged loudly. My body thought that I had just swallowed fire.

“Say thank you. I pulled a shampoo bottle out of a stallion's ass for this. Well, he gave me this so that I’d never mention it again, but fuck, it’s Unification Day, and I almost took it to my grave.”

“So that was why he was walking funny. I wrote that he thrown out his back... And that was a week ago.” My volume had crept up. He actually smiled at me.

“That’s the spirit. Soon enough, you’ll be one of few people here close to qualified to remove an appendix.” He clapped me on the shoulder before refilling our glasses.

“Or remove a shampoo bottle and tell about it,” I said a few seconds later. I shook my head in his direction. Mildew was a pretty cool boss, not very scholarly, but cool. His temperament was an alien one to me, but even the alien become commonplace after a while, and what becomes commonplace can be loved.

The night, with its wooping and discord, had dragged on. True story: the table in front of me got more interesting the more I drank. Rubbing a hoof on it was just way better. I couldn’t tell you why, though. All the while, Mildew and I had chatted about whatever floated into our heads. I had learned what he had mainlined, so, so long ago.

Mildew was, for lack of a better word, an interesting fellow, and when he was intoxicated, he was a lot more open to suggestion. I had begun with questions about his life, all the cool shit he had done. The guy had been five when the Unification Day had occurred. To hear him tell it when his blood was cut with ethanol really was something.

“Unification Day, it wasn’t a day just by itself, but they don’t want to have a couple months of awkward dick measuring negotiation commemorated. The best way to describe it is this: Imagine that you’re in a public bathroom and the stalls are full except for one, so you have to piss, and at the stall, you kinda give the other guy’s cock a look. I mean, you don’t wanna be the smallest one there, you know?” I nodded and was happy that not all the lights were on. Bathrooms had always been weird for me.

“And you see that theirs is about as big as yours. So you then look back at your own. Maybe you start talking. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you don’t feel insecure. Basically when the Navy Vault opened up both them and us figured out that neither would win a fight for that fucking water talisman, and so we became friends. I was a little guy at the time but when we started helping them tear apart those hulks to salvage their desalinators and the reactors, I knew we were fine. Honestly, just being able to see that big ball of fire in the sky? That made my childhood. My parents got electric bulbs and a UV emitter in the classroom, that’s it. That’s why all those old timers are crazy as shit, you know?”

“I-I do now,” I slurred out. All told, I downed half a dozen shots of rock gut, Mildew told me later, which is good for a first time, apparently.

“You’re drunk. I’m cuttin’ you off. Goodnight, and drink some water when you get home,” He said to me before waving a hoof in the direction of the door.

“What was my Dad like?” I asked quietly. I think the very words I said sobered me a little.

“Oh, fuck. Ponies can say a lot about you. And they do. Don’t ask!” His voice shifted from that of the cool uncle to that of the long lived physician. “But they can’t say that you don’t ask the hardest questions. Your Dad. Imagine a Stallion who knew what he wanted and would do whatever it required. He was large, brash, and he had more loyalty in him in his left testical than most do in both of theirs. No, really, he had more than they have in their bodies, myself included.” His eyes looked into mine, though they glazed over a bit.

“He died on an expedition into that shit-caked desert to the south. That’s what they say, the elected officials, the bureaucracy. All the well-to-do folks. I learned a long time ago that the rules that those types play by are a lot different than the ones we live by, or are forced down our throats, but, I mean, who cares if a good stallion dies to keep all this peace? All this not-starvation? All of this wonderful medicine?” His orbs focused again in the low light. His spine straightened. The conspiratorial tone and the undertone of anger disappeared, it was like an electrical switch had been flipped.

“You’re a good buck, really, as much shit as I give you. Don’t go digging up someone who died two decades back. What matters is the here and now. You look like you understand,” He said to me, someone with more on his mind than when he had entered. I intentionally made my parting words extra slurred, or maybe it was the Ethanol in my blood. All I know is that I felt like I could do anything. In the next couple days, I could retrieve my father’s medical records. And from there… I didn’t really think about that.

I woke up. The bed I was in belonged to me, and my head felt like it had needles embedded in it, needles that vibrated. Well, instead of getting off of the bed, I lay there for a moment and thought about the night before. Some things were hazy, but I did remember waking up on the kitchen floor. My body had finally finished the first step in breaking down the alcohol in my bloodstream, so I had wandered into my bedroom.

My attempt at sleeping it off was kind of successful… I knew that I had to get some food and water in my system, mostly the water, though.

I cursed under my breath as I made my legs take my weight. The promising physician in me that had hidden itself away spoke to me then. That toxin breakdown you did, it used up a lot of water. Get water in yourself.

And with that thought, I had a plan. As I walked into the kitchen, I saw Dally sitting at the table, writing something down. She looked kind of frantic.

“You cramming for an assignment, or something?” I said to her. Her eyes widened at me. They dilated on the spot. That was curious; she was normally the most laid back pony I knew.

“No, I’m just writing some things down, my boss at the glass plant is gonna need some new employees soon. I think there’s an expansion in the works, you know?”

I nodded at her. There were stranger things than Dalliance speaking like she has a final that she didn’t study for right around the corner. I tried to pick up a glass with my magic. It lifted half an inch before a splitting pain pierced my skull. Hangovers suck. I must have winced just before the glass on the kitchen island came back down with a crash.

“You okay? Did you hit the liquor hard last night, or something?” Dally asked me from her chair. She said it in a halting, joking tone that, for her, masked concern.

“Yes, and yes.” I turned my head to look at her. Was there something going on that I didn’t know about? There was a twitch as I shrugged my shoulders. I walked over to the glass and grasped it with a hoof, the magic field it could project not seeming to be affected by a hangover. I pushed the tap open with the other leg. All it required was for me to bend over the counter. Sometimes I felt that being tall was lucky. As the glass filled, I remembered my training. If you're dealing with dehydration, you should wait and take small drinks.

The glass filled, I started to slowly drink my glass. I didn’t even feel how dry my mouth and throat were until the water touched them. It took a few minutes, but I downed the glass. Dalliance stayed quiet in the other room, which was strange, considering she was the mare that would have conversations with cashiers on the other side of the city.

I needed to pee, so I walked into the bathroom on legs that felt more steady. After I used the toilet, I caught a look of myself in the mirror. I’m not the kind of pony that focuses on their appearance, but seeing my turquoise eyes bloodshot and red mane ruffled made me smile. I look pretty rugged. Taking an inventory of my body didn’t seem to be a bad idea. I swung my head to look at my flank. Yep, my coat was still pink and my mark still showed a open book with a pencil and wrench sitting on it. I turned around and gave my ass a once over. I smiled furtively. I had always suspected that ponies were built to stare at their own asses. I mean, not many creatures can both make glass and turn their heads as close to backward as us.

I still had a dock and black pair of testicles, the right one in the mirror hung lower than the other one. Again, the young doctor in me spoke up.

The one that hangs down is the one making sperm. The other one is hanging around in reserve. Even alone in the bathroom, that fact made my cheeks redden. The thought of having all that sperm just lying around was kind of weird. There were a couple of my tertiary school classmates that I wouldn’t say no to. There was a mare who had taken biology III with me a couple months ago, she had a red mane like me and a pair of hips to write home about. We had been partners in the lab. I could never just ask her for a date or anything. That stallion in Equestrian History with that scar on his face, too, but every word out of his mouth had been painful though. I would have dicked both of them though, or both at the same time.

That mental image had my shaft peeking out. I cleared my mind and thought of differential equations for a minute. I gave myself a minute before exiting the bathroom, shaft back in its sheath. I had reading to do.

Even on a day off, there was always reading to do. Somehow, that didn’t bother me too much. It kept my mind from other things for a while.

Author's Notes:

Tell me what you liked and what you didn't. For writers, feedback is basically cocaine.