Ævrefreodeh was just about the last place that Apollonia and Lysidice ever expected to end up in. They both were born in Antioch, part of the hippogriff community that had inhabited the town since its founding over 2,000 years before. Although hippogriffs can’t get cutie marks, their talent was centered around cosmetics - hairdressing, hoof/claw polishing, and the like. They used to work in a beauty salon at the suburb of Daphne, but competition there was too tough, and after a while, they were out of a job. Then, another opportunity came up.

When Celestia, to general astonishment, decided to hold the 1982 Summer Sun Celebration in Ævrefreodeh, some bigwigs from Antioch saw an opportunity and decided to build a hotel in the faraway town in anticipation for the celebration, after all the town didn’t have any hotels and certainly there would be visitors that would need to be housed. The project soon expanded into not only a modest hotel, but also a spa, the bosses having banked on making the spa the main draw of the hotel once the celebration was over, basing themselves on other resorts that existed elsewhere.

The hippogriffs, who mostly got the job for being the best among the the few willing to move out to the middle of nowhere, were hired to work in the spa portion of the business, and for a little while, things were busy - the hotel opened weeks before the celebration, and was fairly full in the days leading up to it. Then the celebration was over and reality hit. Nopony was visiting the hotel. Very few ponies even had any reason to go to Ævrefreodeh in the first place, and the few who did would usually stay at friends or relatives’ houses, instead of spending money on a hotel.

And the spa wasn’t the draw it was expected to be, although it was the only portion even drawing income. Mainly, the spa portion’s only profits came out of it being the only hairdressing place in town, and the only pony who was willing to try the other portions of it was Rarity, who tried to get others to do the same, to no avail. So soon enough, once the hotel went into the red, the hotel workers were all fired to save costs, leaving the hippogriffs to run both ends of the building, but that was hardly a worthwhile investment - there was barely any profit being made even then.

In the end, the owners had to sell the building, with the business attached, back to the town to at least get some of their money back instead of closing and losing the whole investment. So Apollonia and Lysidice remained there to run the spa, having taken root in the place by then.

I think I’ve found a better alternative to regular paper to make clothing layers - A4 drawing paper. I had been having trouble with regular paper because often it wasn’t enough for the length of clothing I had to draw.

The swan painting is based on a piece of Greek pottery I saw.

Reposting to fix the lighting.