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The Magpie

by Samsara

Chapter 1: One For Sorrow

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One For Sorrow

As parables often do, we find ourselves following a particular fellow, all alone in the world with little to call his own.  By pony standards he was an average stallion, not too tall, nor too strong, and certainly none too wealthy, but he had a certain charm about him.  Something most ponies couldn't explain, but many of them did indeed feel it in his presence: he was happy, or at least he appeared so.

He could be seen wearing nothing fancy (or nothing at all more often than not), and occupying his normal business routine in Canterlot.  He went by the name Yellow Streak, and he bounded between jobs with a bright smile on his face and a submissive stance in his posture.  If the world threatened to crumble if he didn't stand up for himself, well, the world would crumble for certain.  He was a doormat; a bright yellow doormat that could make Fluttershy seem to have a mountain's endurance.  Some who had met the two of them theorized that they were long lost cousins, neither had ever met the other before.

Yellow Streak's job this particular week was to keep the windows to an office building that supplemented the quarterly supply of parchment to the Princess's guard captain clean.  Certainly not the most luxurious position, but he made due with whatever he could.  It wasn't as though he couldn't find a better job either; something about his honest green eyes just told employers that he'd be the right stallion for their workplace, and he rarely ever proved them wrong.  This week was no exception; he kept those windows so clean that bird casualties in Canterlot were at an all time high, and he even made a few extra bits for his few extra minutes of hard work.  Well worth it, he would say.

You see, on his way back home on Fridays, every week, he would run into what he could call an old friend of his.  Yellow Streak, green eyes and two-tone green mane bobbing with his happy trot back to his quaint little home in the suburbs always crossed paths with a small, black coated and white maned pegasus mare.  He couldn't ever remember where they had met, but she always spoke to him as if they'd been friends for a very, very long time.  Her eyes were a gorgeous shade of bright orange, seeming almost to put the popular fruit to shame by their luster.  She did have an odd name, though, and he always remembered it even to the end of his life: Maggie.

"Hello there, Streaky."  She'd say, whispering to him in a tone that he was sure nopony else could hear, but one that seemed to warm him from the inside like a deliciously well cooked meal.  "How's your luck finding a job?"

"Oh it's been just wonderful!"  He would reply, always ready to share his story with the only permanent friend he'd ever had.  "I have a job washing windows, and they just adore my work ethic!  Look here, I made some extra money today."  And, like clockwork, he would show her the sack of bits he had earned, one among many that he had brought home and stacked up on his table.  He never ate dinner during the weekdays, nor breakfast nor lunch, and he only paid his bills when he absolutely needed to.

"That's a fair amount!"  Maggie responded, each and every time.  His life was a routine, unchanging and unaffected, like a prophecy carved round and round on a sphere.  "What would you like to do with it?"

That, my friends and readers, was the ever burning question.  What would you like to do with it?  It, the money that you made with such hard work.  What would you like?  What did he like?  Well, he liked to eat.  He liked to lavish, and he liked to indulge.  

His trip home that day, just as with every Friday, took a detour past the local liquor store.  He bought what he always bought, one handle of whiskey that a single family had been producing for over a century, and a fifth of brandy that had been aged for no less than twenty five years.  After his purchase, he dropped the bottles off at home and headed out to the "Red Light" district of Canterlot.

Yellow Streak, coward to ask for anything in every day life, would take on a whole new self: he would eat, and eat, and eat, and eat until he felt his stomach was going to explode.  He would spend his entire week's wages, unspent in any way up to that point, on hard liquor, expensive dining, and of course: mares.  He was known by name around a few of the pricier brothels in downtown Canterlot, many of which were happy to reserve a booth for his insatiable appetite for sex.  The girls counted themselves unfortunate if he didn't pay for at least four hours that night.  

He would go home stumbling over, drunk and gluttenous, and bury his nose in his bottles.  One by one, you could hear the clink of bits dropping into Maggie's burlap pouch as Yellow Streak guzzled down his expensive liquors.  In a single night, he'd drain the two all on his own, hoping by the Princess's mane that he wouldn't open his eyes the next morning.  The instant he did, his life would be back to normal, though he'd be always fired from his job (if he wasn't, he'd leave for fear of the routine ending), and he'd be off to find new work.  He cleaned himself up, made sure nopony ever got too attached to him, and wandered off into the morning light, searching for more money so that he, and his best friend in the whole world, could eat again next week.  The routine did have to end sometime, however, though it's perhaps not what you'd expect.  Rather than alcohol poisoning or choking on some horridly overpriced morsel, Yellow Streak died after massive head trauma caused by a full paint can plummeting into his skull from four stories up.  He was walking past a small construction site, one with whom he was trying to get a job, when the accident struck him.  During his autopsy, morticians found remnants of Yellow Streak's last meal before death.

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