The Mare in the Moon and Silver Spoon

Silver Spoon struggled against the stone unicorn that still held her against its cold stone chest. Down below, the silver spark of her falling spoon was fading fast and she was desperate to dive after her cutie mark and get it back.

"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!" She cried, straining her back against the unicorn's stony front.

Much to her surprise and sudden dismay, the statue listened to her. The grip around her chest loosened and she began to slip free. Down below, the darkness roiled with unseen danger. Terror clawed at her mind, trying to freeze her cold.

She fought it and tried her best to hold onto one of the unicorn's legs, wrapping her legs around a surface that was suddenly smooth as glass. She held on, teeth gritted and tears streaming down her cheeks as the unicorn lowered his head to push her off.

"No! Wait!"

She plunged down into the darkness below.

~

Don't let me-! her stomach flopped and she jerked awake. Distantly, the laughter of Diamond Tiara, Nightmare Tiara, taunted her. Then she was alone in her room again, with nothing but the sound of her own ragged breathing and the sporadic nighttime noises that came out to play when nopony else was around.

It was just a dream. Instead of relief, all she felt was resignation. Just another Nightmare Tiara dream.

Something about that line of thought just didn't feel right. Nightmares usually ended before they got so bad, didn't they? Shivering under her covers, Silver Spoon tried to go back to sleep. Her mind wouldn't let her forget the details of the dream and kept dredging back small details that she almost certainly imagined.

The hallway and its pictures suddenly became a slide show of her life with Diamond Tiara in fast forward, showing a rapid progression of mean spiritedness that wasn't at all like the filly she knew in private. Sure, she could be a little snarky and hold petty grudges. But that's all they were; petty.

But it was so real. A crawling worm of doubt snaked through her mind, What if it wasn't a dream? That was ridiculous, of course. She closed her eyes and resolutely tried to ignore it, all the while chewing her lip and pushing back the tingling she most definitely did not feel on her flank.

Laying there, trying to ignore the itching on her flank was like trying to ignore the need to breathe or cough. She tried rubbing at it with a hoof under the covers, but that did no good. Her mind kept entertaining the fear that looking would make the dream real, that her cutie mark really was gone.

She flipped back the covers with a kick of her hind legs and sat up. The itching had become a burning, gnawing sensation that demanded her attention. She twisted about to look at her flank in the darkness.

The familiar shimmer of her silver spoon was gone.

Gray fur, ruffled from nighttime turning, was all that decorated her flank. There was no spoon, no heart, not even an impression or a shadow of any kind to indicate her cutie mark had ever been there.

Chills crawled down her spine to settle in a lump in her stomach. Licking her lips, suddenly dry, she reached a shaking hoof that weighed entirely too much down to scrape at her flank. Nothing changed. She tried again. What she was seeing couldn't be possible. Again, she scrapped at her flank.

Again and again, nothing changed.

Mad laughter bubbled up in her mind and gurgled in her throat, but nothing came out except a strangled sob.

Mind blank and unable to even blink, all she could do was stare at the place where her precious spoon had been not even a day ago. And scrape, and scrape to no avail. The harder she pressed, the faster her heart beat, thudding in her chest and thunderous in her ears.

It's got to be a dream still! It has to be!

Icy waves of nausea thrilled through her stomach as edge of the bed rose, then fell.

Suddenly, the edge felt too close and the floor too dark, too similar to the dream. Edging back from the side of the bed, she caught her pillow in between her legs and hugged it close and tight. Something solid to hold onto, something real and warm.

She fought back the tears that came with the echoes of the worst parts of the dream danced around in her mind and played themselves back in the dim moonlight streaming in through her curtained window.

“Take her cutie mark away. She doesn't deserve it anymore.”

Just a dream! Then why was her cutie mark missing?

“...doesn't deserve it anymore.”

I do! What could she do?

“...doesn't deserve it…”

Silver Spoon's breathe caught in her throat and she clutched her pillow more tightly and wet warmth spread under her cheek as she cried to herself, alone and lonely in her bed.

Quietly at first, so that it hardly seemed there, but growing stronger, a voice began to sing a wordless lullaby.

“Mom?” She asked, looking into every shadow, but seeing nothing. But that couldn't be. She was off in Manehatten with her dad, maintaining the wealth of the Spoon family. She almost cried again and pulled her pillow even tighter against her chest. Her parents would have known what to do.

The voice trailed off into silence.

“Wait! Please, come back!” she called into the darkened room.

Something was watching her from the shadows. Curiously, she did not feel afraid. The presence in her room felt loving and, for a moment, she was able to forget the sorrow that she felt from losing something so precious as her cutie mark.

“Hello?” She asked, lifting her head from her pillow to look out into the gloom.

"In order to gain back what you have lost, you must remember what you have forgotten," the voice answered.

Then the unknown mare's voice and presence both vanished as unexpectedly as they had come. Silver Spoon waited, hoping to hear that kind voice again. The silence stretched on, interrupted only by the whirring of her moon clock quietly marking the seconds passing by.

“What I've forgotten?” She asked finally.

There was nopony and nothing there in the room with her anymore. She was as certain of that as she was that her cutie mark was missing. But, she reminded herself, not lost. She felt some of the anger she'd felt in the dream rising again. “No. Not lost." She stood up on her bed and faced the darkness and her fears, "I'll get it back."

"But how?" she asked herself. The darkness in her room loomed again. There was no more answer from the mare, and nothing in the shadows so much as hinted at a hidden presence either good or evil.

"What will happen when I go back to school without a cutie mark?" The thoughts of all the ponies she had put down for not having a cutie mark came back to her. They had been the ones in the boardroom, she realized; the shadow ponies. They'd come to see the one who had belittled them handed her comeuppance.

Four solid thumps of somepony getting out of bed interrupted her thoughts. It was the middle of the night. Who could be up at this hour?

Besides yourself? She thought, keeping as quiet and still as possible as the hoofs steps got louder and louder, then passed her door without stopping and began to recede.

Upon further reflection, she decided that it could only be Mrs. Peach. She was the elderly live in friend of the family that her parents asked to stay with her while they were off travelling to who the hoof knew where. She'd almost forgotten that her parents had left, again, just yesterday. What was she doing up at this time of night?

The sound of running water answered her question.

What if she sees me without a cutie mark? What will she think?

Worse yet, who would she tell? Mrs. Peach had a reputation as the worst gossip in Ponyville, a reputation she preened and maintained like one of Diamond Tiara's father's pet birds. If she found out, then it would be all over town before breakfast was even lukewarm.

Plodding hoof steps creaked and cracked the floorboards just outside her room again. And again, they did not stop. On they went, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing. She heard nothing else coming from down the hall.

“Thinking about it is getting me nowhere.” But what to do to get somewhere?

Moonlight glinting on her pen sitting atop her desk caught her attention. Maybe that was the answer. Planning. She could make a plan and stick to it.

So what if she had lost her cutie mark? Nopony had to know. There were more than enough frilly cloaks and long dresses in her closet that it would never seem odd that she chose to wear one every day. So she wanted to look pretty. Was there anything wrong with that?

But, she reminded herself, Diamond Tiara will suspect something is up, and if she does find out, she'll eventually tell everypony. Friend or not, she's almost a worse gossip than Mrs. Peach.

"I'll just have to be very meticulous when planning is all," she reasoned and hopped lightly from her bed to sit at her desk.

Her notebook and pen lay together in a pool of moonlight bright enough for her to read by. For a moment, she considered pulling her diary out from under her bed, but she wasn't even sure she could admit to her diary that she had lost her cutie mark.

She opened the notebook and stared at the first page, tapping her hoof lightly against her pen. The task ahead of her felt daunting, especially since she had no idea what it was that she had forgotten or how to go about remembering it. What if she never did?

"Don't think like that, Silver Spoon," she told herself. Picking up the pen, she considered what to do. What was it that Cheerilee said about solving problems? Write out the problem.

She did so and stared at the words. She wanted to erase them and never look at them again. But doing so wouldn’t solve anything.

I've lost my cutie mark.

She pushed down a tingle of panic that threatened to come back up. "Okay..." she mumbled around the pen, "Now what?"

"What's the first step?" Miss Cheerilee's voice came through her mind then, whispering soft assurance. She could almost feel her teacher looking over her shoulder at a math problem she'd started.

"Hide the fact that I've lost it?" she asked. There was no answer. "Try to remember what I've forgotten?"

Still receiving no answer and having a choice between trying to solve the problem and trying to put off solving the problem until she could find the right time.

"But how do I solve the problem if I'm being teased and laughed at everywhere I go?" Still, there was no answer.

"I get it... Solve it on my own." She sighed and looked up at the moon through the gap between her curtains. The light on her face felt comforting. Did Luna make the light feel so good? She closed her eyes to bask in the cool light of the midnight moon, letting it soothe the ache behind her eyes and smooth away some of the tightness left over from crying.

Eyes still closed, she mused, "I can't solve my problem if I can't focus on it. I..." Chewing on her pen, she contemplated that possibility and came to a decision, "I need to hide it for now. Just a day, is all."

She wrote down a first step in her notebook.

Hide it.

Now that she had a direction, it was time to start filling out the rest of the plan. She hunched over her notebook and began to plan out the next day.

~

Morning crept in while Silver Spoon made her plans. She knew what she was going to say to Diamond Tiara, to Mrs. Peach, and to the other school foals. A voluminous, heavy linen cloak from her winter was already clasped about her neck, long enough to almost touch the floor and more than enough to cover her flank.

She'd made copious notes, trying to think of every little detail that she could. Some were frankly absurd, even in her mind, and she suspected others of being equally so. One item in her notebook, the name Cheerilee, had a big question mark next to it and a small pile of eraser fluff shreds made a neat little nest about it.

Mrs. Cheerilee was the one big potential hiccup in her day and she was running out of time to come up with something that would convince her to let her keep the cloak on. Mrs. Cheerilee’s list of rules was a short one, but right near the top was the rule against wearing outerwear indoors, and she abided by those rules unconditionally.

The big question mark taunted her. If she couldn't get past it…

“Silver Spoon!” Mrs. Peach called from down the stairs in the kitchen. The smell boiled oats and cream drifted in from under the door. Her stomach reminded her that she'd been up most of the night. It also meant that she needed to be ready for school.

Hoofsteps clattered on the stairs up to the second story. Time was up. She flipped the little notebook closed and slipped it into her saddlebags. She would just have to improvise.

Mrs. Peach tapped a hoof on her door gently. “Wake up, little Spoon. Your breakfast is ready!”

Silver Spoon dropped to the floor from her stool and swept her cloak down about herself just as Mrs. Peach cracked open the door to peek in.

“Oh! My word, you’re up bright and early. No loitering in bed for you today?” She felt the older mare's eyes try to peel away her winter cloak. The decision to wear it in the middle of summer seemed like a silly idea, but none of her summer cloaks had felt long enough.

Silver Spoon fancied she heard something like suspicion in the caretaker’s voice. Play it cool. There’s no way she could know.

“I’m just so excited to get to school! Diamond Tiara and I have the most amazing-” her mind froze. What had she written in the journal again? “The most amazing… thing!” She smiled, wishing that she’d studied more instead of worrying about the Cheerilee dilemma. She might not even get that far!

“A thing? What sort of-”

“A... dance!” She interrupted the caretaker. She paused, then swished the front edge of her cloak with a hoof. “You see, that’s why I need the cloak. I have to have it for the… the dance!” Inwardly, she cringed.

“Oh. Okay…” Mrs. Peach looked as though she believed the lie as much as if Silver Spoon had claimed she was the Princess of the Night. While dancing. She wouldn’t have believed herself. “Well, breakfast is ready.”

Mrs. Peach left the door open as she walked away, the clopping of her hooves on the hard plank flooring not quite masking her nearly unintelligible grumbling about silly fillies and the strange things the foals were up to these days.

Silver Spoon followed after her, misgivings gnawing at her belly. She tried to push them aside. Even if her first test hadn’t gone as gracefully, or smoothly, as she’d imagined, she could do this. What truly mattered was hiding the truth of her predicament; at least for now.

~

“Are you sure, little Spoon?” Mrs. Peach asked her as Silver Spoon backed down the walkway. “You barely even touched your oats.”

“I'm sure, Mrs. Peach,” she replied, “I'm not hungry. Really.”

“You're not feeling sick, are you?”

Again, Silver Spoon got the impression that she was deeply suspicious. She couldn't help but glance back behind her to make sure her flank was still covered.

“I’m sure!” She shouted, then turned and made a dash to the gate, “Bye!”

She slowed down as soon as she turned the corner. One hurdle down. She didn't want to think about how many more remained. Sitting at the table with her cloak on was hard enough and keeping it from flapping open had been awkward at best. She knew her behavior was puzzling to say the least. She dreaded hearing the questions that would come up during her next trip to the day spa.

Diamond Tiara was waiting at the corner for her. She had to force herself to see her friend as she was, and not through the lens filter of the horrific… Was it a nightmare? Nightmares didn't take away cutie marks.

“What’s with the cloak?” Diamond Tiara asked.

“Oh…” She had rehearsed this question; it had been the easiest one to answer out of all of them. “Bad tail day,” she murmured, looking down at her hooves and pushing her glasses up higher on her muzzle. “It just frizzed up for no reason.”

“You wouldn't want the other fillies to see that,” she agreed, then sniffed and lifted her nose, “You really should stop seeing that barber of yours. Cloud Dancer says the new spa has the most divine mane and tail dresser outside of Canterlot.”

“Cloud Dancer?” Silver Spoon tried to place the name. It didn't sound even close to anypony that she knew, and she was pretty sure she knew most of Diamond Tiara’s father’s friends.

“Oh, that’s right. You haven't heard.” Diamond Tiara bit her lip and looked around before whispering, “Daddy started dating another mare.”

“No! What happened to Rain Flower?”

“I don’t know! I liked her… She...” Diamond Tiara’s lower lip quivered for a moment, then firmed up into a more familiar sneer. “She’s gone now. That’s all that matters, isn't it?” She said it as if she didn’t quite believe it herself. Silver Spoon had rarely, if ever seen her friend so vulnerable.

“I know you liked her, Di.” Silver Spoon bumped up against her friend and the two walked quietly down the road to the schoolhouse. The companionable silence was a rarity. She didn't make one… well, she didn’t make another snide comment about her fictitious tail frizz. It was a small, hollow victory.

She glanced back at her flank for the briefest second and caught herself. All things considered, the day could have started a lot worse.

Their classmates passed them on the way to the schoolhouse. Some tried to chat, but Silver Spoon warned them away with a glance. It wouldn't do her any good to disturb Diamond Tiara’s fragile vulnerability.

“Good morning, girls,” Cheerilee said in a cheery tone, trotting past them with full saddlebags and a fresh, shiny apple perched on her head.

“Good morning Miss Cheerilee,” they chorused together. Diamond Tiara fell silent again, brooding, the rest of the way to the schoolhouse. Silver Spoon was only happy to let her be; she had enough on her mind as it was.

When they got to the schoolhouse, Diamond Tiara stopped her before she opened the door. “Don't you worry. Your secret is safe with me.”

Guilt fluttered through her stomach. Had she done the right thing by not telling her best friend? By lying to her? What if Diamond Tiara would have helped and actually kept quiet? Stop second guessing yourself! It's done already. No turning back.

“Thanks, Di. You’re the best," she said, hoping the lie sounded convincing, and pushed open the schoolhouse door and then held it for her friend.

“I know.”

Inside, Cheerilee was shoving aside the debris of a desk that had somehow been squashed in the middle of the night and on the board was a crude drawing of a pony with an unrecognizable, smeared blob instead of a cutie mark, as though someone had tried -and mostly succeeded- to erase it. Sweetie Belle picked up the remnants of a dunce cap that had been trampled into a mess with her magic and tossed it in the garbage.

“Well, class. I’m not sure what happened last night, but you can be sure that I'll be looking into it. I can’t have any of my little ponies sitting on the ground!“

Last night. Her dream. The pony on the blackboard with its cutie mark erased. Heart thudding, she froze. It had to be a part of the dream still! But what if it wasn’t? What if this was real? What if whatever had taken her cutie mark was letting her know that it was still watching her?

What do I do? If this is a dream, I can just laugh it off. But if it’s real… oh, it feels so real. But then, so did the dream. How do I tell? Do I-

“Silver Spoon?” Miss Cheerilee said, interrupting her train of thoughts, “Is everything alright?”

What do I say? I never- Wait. Simple question.

“It’s fine, Miss Cheerilee. I-” I what?! Think! Something not stupid, please! A crude drawing of a bee on the wall, the work of a younger class, caught her attention. “I thought I saw a bee.” She pointed a hoof at the bee. Why’d I do that?

Cheerilee rolled her eyes and pointed a hoof to the coatrack by the door. “Oh. Well, there’s no bee in here. Now put up your cloak and come sit down. Class is already late as it is.” She turned away again and lifted a hoof towel to rub away the last of the pony figure on the board.

The ground dropped out from under her hooves.

“Miss Cheerilee-”

“Silver Spoon…” Cheerilee sighed, turning back around. Silver Spoon shivered, the cutie mark was the only thing she had managed to erase. “Please do as I ask.”

“Please! I need to-” She started again before being interrupted by Cheerilee stomping a hoof firmly and pointing the hoof cloth covered hoof at her.

“Silver Spoon, I am willing to put up with a lot from you. Not following the classroom rules is not one of those things.”

Shame burnt her ears and her cheeks, but she couldn’t back down. She stamped her hoof firmly on the floor and shouted “You need to listen to me!”

The faint murmuring that had been going on in the class halted. Everypony was staring at her in open mouthed shock. Nopony ever yelled at Cheerilee, and especially not her students.

“Fine.” Her voice turned flat, “I’m listening. What do you have to say?”

“It’s… private.” She knew what others would think. She knew Diamond Tiara was thinking it. It was more than a frizzy tail. She could feel the stares on her, trying to get underneath her cloak to see what she was hiding. She shivered and looked away from them.

“Let’s go outside to talk then, alright?”

Cheerilee ushered her out of the classroom and into the schoolyard, empty save for the balls and game areas. “Everypony else, please start reading chapter four out of your history books.” She shut the class door behind her and led Silver Spoon a little ways away, out of easy earshot.

Of course, as soon as something exciting happened - like exactly what was happening then - everypony had to see what was going on. Silver Spoon glared at her classmates staring out at her. It did no good; they were going to stare whether she willed them to or not. She shifted a hoof step to the side so that most of Cheerilee's hind legs were between her flank and the bank of windows.

Cheerilee was looking at her expectantly, the worry still there, but beginning to fade. She was running out of time fast and her mind refused to do anything but suggest useless, obvious lies.

I could always… She bit her lip and felt a weighty decision settle about onto her back. The day obviously wasn't going to go as she planned. She couldn’t even remember anymore what the plan had been. Helpless tears trickled down her cheeks as she pondered what she was going to do. She fiddled with the clasp on the front of her cloak. Just a twitch and it would come off.

“What is it, Silver Spoon? What’s so important that you had to interrupt the class to tell me?” Silver Spoon felt Cheerilee’s leg drift around her neck, “What’s bothering you so much?”

“Miss Cheerilee,” she cried, “I don't know what to do! I lost... I-” She couldn't say it. Her hoof pressed harder against the clasp. She took a deep breath and leaned into Miss Cheerilee's embrace, seeking both comfort and the strength to do the only thing she could think of to do, no matter how painful it was. Now or never.

“Please, I need your help!” A quick twitch of her hoof and it was done.

“Of course I will help, my little pony. You were about to say you lost... something? What did you lose?"

"I- I-" She still couldn't say it. She waited, hoping that the wind would do the hardest part for her. No wind came, and Cheerilee hadn't seen her undoing the clasp, apparently. Resigned, she lowered her head to tug at the cloak and let it slide off her back.

Cheerilee stepped back to let the cloak fall away. "Now, what did you…” her voice trailed off.

Moments ticked by. A bird chirped in the distance.

Silver Spoon was afraid to look up, afraid to see the look of... anything on her teacher's face. Her fears resurfaced. What if Cheerilee was disappointed in her? What if she was afraid? What ifs and might bes started to pile up in her mind, each one clamoring for attention.

Each one brought an image of Cheerilee's face twisted into a wild caricature of one of her fears. Disgust, contempt, loathing... She didn't want to see any of those things.

But the silence was worse. “Miss Cheerilee?” She whispered.

“Sweet, merciful sisters! Your cutie mark!”

Cheerilee's exclamation jerked her attention back around to the schoolhouse. Had they heard? Somepony had. Her heart skipped a beat.

Diamond Tiara had stuck her head out from the schoolhouse door and was staring at her, mouth agape. She thought she saw confusion, then shock. An array of other emotions flittered across her friends face, too subtle to guess at. But the one it settled on was one she was all too familiar with.

It was the face that Diamond Tiara showed when she felt betrayed. She'd seen a small hint of that this morning. How long had been dealing with Rain Flower's leaving? This was fresh. Hurt played across her friend’s face before it twisted into an angry scowl. She glared for a moment longer before she disappeared back inside.

What Diamond Tiara had said earlier played through her mind again like the echoes of her dream.

"She's gone. That's all that matters, isn't it?"

Silver Spoon had never felt so alone.