The Sum of a Life's Labors (Solo) (Complete)

[Evangeline Topclaw]

The Sum of a Life's Labors
Mainstreet, Topclaw Teashop Loft Apartment
05, December, Yr. 04
Late Afternoon

The nearby clock filled the room with a steady calming ambiance, it's heavy pendulum giving the impression of a steady pulse. The room itself, a luxurious apartment of silk and screens, mood lights and scent clouds; the room itself was a lot like it's owner- lavish and with a taste for refinement. The silks were genuine, the cottons- also genuine. As were the incenses, carpentry, and exotic alcohols that were locked away in a delicate rosewood chest.

Evangeline sat on a sedan, gazing from the rooms solitary window. The curtains were pulled tight, and the window was barred with heavy bolts of metal- but she still made out the forms of the ponies below. They looked like little opaque figurines from her perspective, strolling along candy colored roads and pausing at the occasional passerby.

She rose from her sedan with a start as a banging sounded off at her door. She walked across the room and started pulling the deadbolts back. The door was heavy oak, and reinforced in the middle by a solid half-inch plate of steel. The bolts holding the door shut went click one by one, until all seven of them were drawn back. The mare on the other side of the door held a small box in her mouth by its handle. "Today's take," she said sheepishly.

Evangeline lifted the box gingerly, and opened it. A couple hundred assorted bits and crowns. It was a slow day, Evangeline mused. "You may go home now," Evangeline told the mare. The mare turned, and walked down the narrow stairway into the teashop below.

Evangeline carried the day's take box to her table. She pulled open the adjacent wardrobe, and drew back the clothing. She lifted on the back panel, and it separated cleanly- behind it was a large metal vault, about the height of a pony.

She slowly ticked in the combination. -06- -08- -72- -44- -89- -00- 55- 72- .

The safe clicked silently, and she pulled it open which revealed a doorway, and a secret room. Evangeline passed through the wardrobe, carrying her take-box with her. All along the walls and shelves and floor, small drawers, all crafted from delicate rosewood. Evangeline counted out the dressers- one, two, three, four- and paused at the forth. She opened one particular drawer. Inside was twenty rolls of tightly packed griffonic Crowns, bundled in neat cylinders, tucked in red velvet. She opened the next drawer- it had but two and a half such cylinders of coinage.

Evangeline slowly pried the griffon coins from her take-box, placing them neatly in the coin-pattern. Once she was done, she slid the drawers shut slowly, and carried her box over to a nearby chest. They were about shin height, and buckled securely shut. They stacked on top of each other like blocks. Eva opened the uppermost one, and dropped the bits from her cash-box into the locker. They clinked atop the loot with a satisfying sound; Eva shivered as she slowly ran her talons through the diminutive Equestrian coin, letting them slip from her hand and pile back into the lock box.

Eva carried the now-empty box from the treasure trove room, closing the vault and placing the wooden panel back carefully. She closed the wardrobe next, and placed the money box back on the table. She flipped a small book open, and scribbled some figures into the books margins. She was only twenty-four hundred short.

She felt a small glimmer of childlike glee as this slowly registered. She began dancing around the room, grabbing the props from her bedposts and tables and adorning herself as a diva.

As the night drew on, she proceeded to get drunk. Alone, bored, it is then left to ones imagination what the bedroom saw that night. But come morning, Eva was sore, and only twenty-four hundred bits short of freedom from Manehattan.

And so it began.