Mourning the Loss of the Unkown

The story of Red Velvet starts with her parents. Her father, a high born noble named Golden Fleece, quite close in the family tree to the princesses, her mother, a common unicorn named Fresh Greens, a grocer by practice. The two fell in love and dated in secrecy. Not only was it unheard of for a noble of such stature to associate with lower levels of society, but in truth, he was already bound to another. The affair continued on and resulted in Greens’s pregnancy. When her condition became clear, she was pressed, but did not reveal the name of her lover. It was during a meeting of friends where she accidentally let it slip that Golden Fleece was the one who impregnated her. Such tremendous news spread quickly through gossip, and even in a town as big as Canterlot, it was not long before the rumors had made its rounds.

	Fresh Greens, immediately upon the arrival of her stallion, begged forgiveness, terrified of what might happen next, knowing that the information would be damning to him. Golden Fleece forgave and reassured her that regardless of what happens, he would find a way to stay with her. Fortune did not make it easy.

	When news had gotten to the ears of nobles, it was, of course, passed down to his wife. She was infuriated at this betrayal of not only herself, but of custom of nobility. She demanded a divorce, taking Golden Fleece to court. Under oath, Fleece was forced to admit to the affair and impregnation of Greens, solidifying without a doubt what had been whispered about town. The divorce was made, his name was in tatters. News of the trial had reached Celestia, who set it upon herself to disown him from the royal name. His assets were frozen and seized, his position stripped, and any benefits his status would afford him were nullified. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of it, he kept his oath to Greens. He took some modicum of comfort in maintaining what little was left of his honor.

	Fleece’s new position in society left him without much of any hope of providing for his new family. His only area of expertise was politics, an area his humiliation and dishonor would never allow him access to. He could not find work in any steady occupation. The story was national news, and no one wanted to associate themselves with that. Instead, he became a day laborer, taking any projects he could as they came. Sometimes construction, sometimes tutoring, any pay that came his way was sorely needed. Greens’s store had lost nearly all of its customers for much the same reason as Fleece, and she was forced to shut it down and sell it for a pittance of what it was truly worth.
This was the life Red Velvet was born into, but both Fleece and Greens were determined to make the best of it for their daughter. They provided everything they possibly could, accumulating debt that they thought was a necessary evil for the sake of loving their foal. Red Velvet slept upon quality bedding, they couldn’t afford luxurious sheets or mattresses, but they did the best they could. She was provided plenty of food, sometimes at the cost of her parents eating less. She was given a few toys, and a few books.

	Red Velvet learned to read quickly for her age. She attended school in the early years of her life, picking up colors, shapes, and even learning time fairly fast. She did not enjoy schooling entirely, but it came to be a place of relative comfort for her. She was provided with something to do, there. The lunches provided by the school were good. She didn’t know what premium food tasted like, but she could tell there were better things out there. She made a friend when she was 5. The filly didn’t care what kind of life she lived or who her parents were, she had fun with Red Velvet, and Red Velvet had fun with her. She liked how Red Velvet was happy, but not jumpy and hyper-energetic. Red Velvet always struck her as easygoing, and her curiosity made for some great adventures.
School also meant something more to Red Velvet. It was a sanctuary where she didn’t have to see what was happening to her mother and father. As Red Velvet aged, Golden Fleece became more and more despondent about his situation. He would disappear for days at a time, only to simply show up back home one day without a word being said about where he went or why. Red Velvet would later assume he went off on drinking binges, but the reality is that he was finding a different poison to forget his situations. Greens never did anything to stop him, she accepted his absenteeism and continued to provide for Red Velvet as best she could while he was gone, albeit sadly. To Greens, it was the best thing she could do. She always knew things were going to fall apart, and the better off her daughter was at the end of it all, the happier she’d be.

	That is, until one day, when Fleece came home from one of his disappearances. He was sober, if not visibly tired, and he ordered Red Velvet to her room, because “Mommy and I need some time to talk about being grown-ups”. Velvet scurried off, but her curiosity kept her ears perked in her room. She could not make out the muffled discussion coming from a few walls away, but the discussion was one that would shape her future. Behind closed doors, Fleece engaged Greens with a story one of his “forgetters” told him about a pony who will pay to take their child. Greens wanted to punch him at that instant, but stayed her hoof, waiting to see what more he would say. Fleece saw the look in her eye and averted his gaze. He admitted that it was not the right thing to do, but, he argued, what choice did they have?  They were indebted more than they could ever hope to pay off, and selling their daughter would give them enough to be freed from the chains of debt. Greens sighed and resigned herself. She knew he was right. Their situation was dire, but still, every movement of her tongue it took to agree with him ate away at her soul. She could only hope that the life her daughter would live from now on would be more comfortable than one being homeless, which is where the family would end up before too long.

	The next day, her parents introduced her to the strange stallion. He handed over a bag of bits and took her away. The last she saw of her parents was the stone face of her father and the look in her mother’s eyes. Hopeless, listless, utterly defeated. The strange stallion showed her her new room. It was on par with what she had before. He then explained to her the rules of the game. She was confused, not sure of what half of what he said meant, but he threatened her if she asked him to repeat himself, so she just nodded and pretended to get it. She would come to fully grasp what he was saying soon enough.

	Stallions started coming into her room, big thick parts of their body wobbling underneath them. She wasn’t sure why, or what to do, she just followed along with what the stallions said. The first few times, she was particularly awkward and unsure. This sparked a brief conversation with her new handler and another handler:
“Lucky her, they don’t expect her to be good, they just get off on the fact that she’s a filly”
“Lucky her, you mean lucky you! She’s a rare one, and ponies’ll pay a premium for something like her.”



	The stallions never tried to penetrate her. Even they knew she was too young for it. Because of this, she never understood why they wanted her to do what she was doing until much later. She did learn, however, how to do it better. She learned how to utilize her tongue. She learned that teeth were bad. As she grew a little older, she started being able to suck, and she learned to use that too. This was her new life, and she didn’t much question it, because the strange stallion promised a lot of bad things if she tried.

	The next big change came along a year down the line, when she met her first mare of a client. Color Wheel was her name, she was a school teacher, and a well-respected member of the community she worked for. She would have been Red Velvet’s teacher that year, if Red Velvet wasn’t living the life she was. Color Wheel hated herself for this, but she found some consolation in her rationality that the life of this child is already spoiled, and if it meant being able to control herself and stop herself from ruining the innocence of another child, then it was what she had to do. Color Wheel approached and Red Velvet was not sure what to do. Color Wheel lead her through it and she learned quickly. By now, Red Velvet had begun to tune out during these sessions, and even though this was different, she did the same. Her mind wandered to what she wanted most out of life. She dreamed of a steady family, one with a stallion who didn’t vanish all the time, and with a very well cared for filly. She definitely wanted a filly. She snapped out of her dreaming to realize that Color Wheel hadn’t yet finished, which surprised her. This was certainly a different experience for her, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

	As Red Velvet grew older, she started doing something that she knew how to do well, wonder why. She pondered numerous things, what it meant to be a good pony. Was she living the life of a good pony? Were her “friends” good ponies? She started asking some of her “friends” who visited her more than others if they could bring her books about those questions. They did, and Red Velvet quickly found out that she hadn’t been practicing her reading. She struggled through the books to the best of her abilities when her handler wasn’t watching. There weren’t exactly holidays for her line of work, but some days would be predictably less busy than others, so she could afford to stay up an extra hour or two in the mornings.

	Her handlers would still find her reading repeatedly, though. They would confiscate her books, snatching them off the bed and using them to bludgeon her. Never too much, leaving major marks on the property would earn them less money, but enough to enforce the negativity with the words he would spit out at her.

	“You disobedient bitch! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Reading isn’t for you, you’re a whore. A stupid, dirty whore. You aren’t supposed to get smart, what good is smart going to do you? You’re supposed to look pretty, that’s it. No pony cares about how nice you are or how smart you are, you’re just something these sick bastards use and leave. Think you’re smart enough to get THAT, bitch?”

	Each sentence punctuated with another bruise, before they left with the book.



	Times did not get any easier on her. She had aged enough for penetration, and numerous stallions preferred it, and many of them preferred it abusively. Some nights she would be left bleeding, only to have to take more the next night, but Red Velvet’s spirit did not break. For each abuse, she resisted with more questions to be answered. She started to pick up a little science along with her philosophy questions. She was particularly fond of reading about meteorology, rain especially. At this point, a few of her “friends” had been with her for several years, and have watched her grow up. She could never think of them as a father, but she took comfort in their presence, because she knew that they knew her as more than a sex toy. They kept things nicer, they touched her softer, and they would tell her things and give her more books.

	All good things come to an end, however. Her handler, seeing this happening, and noticing that she was growing into something more than the average pony, moved her to a new position. She was no longer just another room in the hallway, or the masseuse who took stressed business ponies to the back room, she was now an escort to the nobility. By this point, the scandal her birth caused was not totally forgotten, but no one really knew what had happened to the filly Fresh Greens and Golden Fleece had, or who she really was. Nobles and ponies of wealth across Canterlot desperately sought Red Velvet for hire. She turned out beautiful, and everypony wanted to be the one to say that she was his date.

	To this point, she never really had a name. The only ones who ever called her by a name were her parents and the precious few ponies who had stuck with her for so long. To everyone else, she was just a thing, a piece of meat, or a bitch, so it left her truly baffled when she had to start socializing and others were genuinely interested in her and who she was. Of course, she lied about her past, but she still kept her name, and it became the name for nobles looking for a quick date.

	The socializing wasn’t all awkward for her, though. The time she had spent studying did not go to waste. She could hold her own on a decent level of philosophical conversation, which delighted a number of ponies who had “never met a mare so deeply devoted to matters of intellectual thought”. She learned much from these conversations, from offhand remarks to genuine discourses, every little tidbit of information was not wasted on her ears. The more she came to know about the world beyond the bed, though, the more disinterested she was.

	Fate’s weaving broke on night, when it was storming ferociously. Inside, idle conversation murmured and the occasional chuckle from an older mare continued, but inside her mind, she was looking at her client with contempt. When he decided it was time to take her home and complete his transaction, she fled into the storm. She rushed to her apartment, gathered what little she had for her own, stole from her handler what money she should have had for herself, and ran. She knew that the next day, the hunt for her would be on, so she could not spare even a moment. She managed to catch a late train to Fillydelphia, where she found a rundown apartment.

	She stayed in Fillydelphia and managed to find a small job with a company managing connections and logistics. It was only an entry level position, and she was convinced she was only hired for her looks, but by the time she finished training, she was making an honest living. It stayed this way for several months, but things started to change. At work and in public, she began to get glances. The same look each time, insecure but reproachful. She didn’t know what it was until she finally accosted a pony and asked why. She learned that the noble who she had fled from had given out her name and revealed who she was, trying to aid her handler and other handlers in recapturing her. She continued on with her new life as long as she could, until eventually she was approached by her manager. She was being let go because “the company does not want to be associated with somepony of questionable moral character like herself”. Frustrated that her past was following her still, she went home to find that it had been ransacked and a note was left, threatening to foalnap her when they find her. She left immediately.

	She needed somewhere small, where news spreads slowly if at all. Somewhere she knew she could hide and make friends before things got out of hoof again. She got on the train and left for Ponyville.