The Mare in the Moon stared down through the open bay window, watching Marian as she sat in front of a large desk occupying most of the space in her parents’ home office room. The smells of the late evening, cool and dry as the day had been hot and dry, drifted in to ruffle work interrupted by soured thoughts.
Marian lifted a hoof to touch the stack of letters that had finally caught up to her from Manehattan after her change of address had gone through to Dodge Junction. Beside that stack, papers lay scattered across the small desk in her parents' study. Most of them were hers, charts and scratch paper for making calculations and figuring in the final small details she hadn’t been able to review from the city.
She paused in rearranging the messy tangle of papers when her tidying uncovered two letters that lay apart from the stack—one opened, the other not.
One, from her cousin Verity Mare, mayor of Ponyville, had been addressed to her parents' home in Dodge, and dated almost a month before she’d even made plans to arrive. Sometimes, Verity was too clever for her own good.
Dear Marian,
I know you’ll do the right thing, but there is always a place for you here in Ponyville if things don’t work out with Cherish.
Love,
Verity
P.S. Thank you for sprucing up the library, I’m sure the next pony to live there will appreciate it.
That had been quite a time. Marian smiled at the letter and folded it back into its envelope with a careful hoof. It all depended on Cherish, whether or not she would need to take up Verity’s offer.
The other letter…
From:
Marian Mare
604 Fourth Bridle Way, Apartment 14,
Manehattan
To:
Cherish Mare
410 Main Street
Dodge Junction
The postmark date was four years old. She still knew the words by heart. A confessional.
It had been returned unopened.
“Well, if she wants to hear it from my lips…” The imprecation died on her tongue. Shaking her head, she set about tidying and shuffling the last scraps of paper into a semblance of order.
“I hope today’s meeting goes better than the last few,” Marian muttered, standing up straight and setting all four hooves firmly. Neck high, back firm, she craned her neck back and forth to look at herself in the mirror.
Her mane sat in a loose bun, with only a few carefully placed tendrils escaping the fringe to lay artfully against her cheek or tuck around an ear. Her glasses were balanced just right, and the tweaking she had ordered on the holding spell kept them at the right angle for both reading or walking. And necessary. She had been cursed with farsightedness, a true curse for a mare who spent most of her time with her nose in a book.
A quick turn to check her tail, a smooth curl instead of its normal coil after having been left free the night before. A slight twitch to her collar, slightly off center, and she was ready.
It wouldn’t do to show up to such an important meeting looking as if she had only recently fallen out of bed, after all, but too much care into her appearance would make it seem as though she were looking down at them.
Such a touchy lot, her fellow townsponies, but they were hers, though many would argue the opposite: that she was theirs and had just come home. Except, possibly, her sister.
But this was her home. It was. Whatever her sister seemed to think.
Stepping out into Dodge Junction every morning was like stepping out into a memory. The flat-sided, wood-planked buildings looked smaller than they had as a filly, but they were still painted the same shade of nut-brown, and the curtains hung in all the windows were still the same as she recalled—predominantly flower print, with an occasional brighter mosaic of colors in the few homes that could afford stained glass.
The rough cobble-and-dirt path had seemed a little less rough under her hooves in her memories, but the smooth paving of Manehattan had likely jinxed her memory. That had to be it. Just a mis-remembered moment.
But the air coming from the desert to the south, dry and rich with the smells of the cherry plantation just outside of town, all sweet and light, filled her head with images of the candied cherries, freshly made, her parents had bought on special occasions.
It was a smell of the memory of home, and days brimming with laughter and games, and too much time spent reading in the shade for Cherish’s taste. Not that playing town with her little sister had been boring, but…
She pushed away the memories before they led elsewhere and took in a deep breath, letting the smell wash through her without touching her.
And a sweeter smell than most of Manehattan. She smiled into the dry, sweet breeze, already promising to be far hotter than any Manehattanite would have found tolerable, much less pleasant, and set off towards the town hall looming in the distance.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cheer! How are you?” she called to an older mare, her gray-streaked mane pulled back in a bun far more severe than Marian’s. A small herd of fillies and colts trailed behind her, all heading in the same direction as Marian.
“Fine, Marian. Fine and Dandy!” She laughed, the sound warm and rich as her dark pink coat. “Just takin’ the kiddos to the town hall to watch. You’re giving your proposal today, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Cheer. That was three days ago. This is a followup meeting.” Which wouldn’t have been necessary if— Marian forced her thoughts back to order. ”I’m sorry, if I’d known your children were interested, I would have let you know ahead of time.”
“Nonsense. And stop calling me a Missus. You’re not my student anymore, Marian, and I’d take it as a favor to have you call me Dandy.”
“Yes… Dandy.” Another small part of her past, gone.
“That’s—hold up, a sec.”
“You can’t ever go home,” she whispered as Mrs. Cheer—Dandy—turned around to hustle some strays back into the group.
“Handy, you put that down, y’hear! No water balloons in the town hall. Candy Swirl, don’t you dare put that lollipop in Dew Shine’s mane…”
Marian listened quietly, fighting the smile that wanted to come, and the laugh that would follow it.
“Was I ever that bad?” she asked when Dandy caught back up to her.
“Worse! Oh, so much worse.” Dandy laughed, eyes twinkling as she hopped a half-step ahead and settled back in beside Marian as though she weren’t a mare approaching fifty.
I’m almost half as old as she… The buildings shifted, shivered as a memory fought for control, and everything became larger for just a moment. The streets were as wide as a river, the buildings as tall as mountains. And then it was gone, like it had never been; the streets were merely streets, a couple steps across, and the buildings so much smaller than anything in Manehattan that comparing them to mountains made her want to laugh.
It was as though this were simply a town named Dodge Junction, and not the home it had been for most of her life.
Was it most of my life?
“You look like you’ve bitten into a crabapple. What’s got your tail in a knot?”
“Coming home.” Marian offered a smile to the other mare, then at the small gaggle of foals following in their wake. “It’s not easy.”
“I imagine so, ’specially seein’ your old teacher with so much gray in her mane.” Dandy laughed again. The laugh hadn’t changed, and it was still as, well, full of Cheer as ever. “That’s better. I like that smile. Keep it.”
Marian laughed with her. Maybe it wasn’t all gone, that little bit of memory. Dandy had, and had not, changed in her time away. There were still pieces of what she remembered from her childhood here and there.
Twice more, Dandy had to turn back to gather in a stray or two, or three who had wandered away, thinking, as Marian herself had a few times, that the teacher didn’t have eyes in the back of her head. Then they were out of the houses and onto Main Street, the wide thoroughfare splitting the town in two.
Her eyes snapped to the small diner, still open for business, where she’d had the first of many dates with a charming young stallion. Just as quickly, she snapped her eyes away from the young couples sitting around the tables before she could see herself there, gazing stupidly into that idiot’s lying grin.
She sighed, shrugged her shoulder once to assure herself the hefty sheaf of papers she had brought was still there in her saddlebag, and plodded on.
“The council is still in session, Ms. Marian. Please be seated.”
That was the last she had heard for a half hour. Dandy and her students had been ushered in, the teacher tossing a small, tight-lipped smile over her shoulder as the doors closed again, leaving Marian with the briefest glimpse of the council.
And Cherish.
Marian straightened herself, pushed aside the growing shadow in her head and settled down comfortably on one of the cushions in the hallway outside to go over her notes again. It wouldn’t hurt to be prepared, after all.
Her eyes wandered from the page again, the numbers of the budget fuzzing into incoherence. Another pony came down the hall, his head lowered, his eyes flicking over a clipboard hovering in front of him.
A unicorn in Manehattan wasn’t all that unusual, but Fiddle Free had been the only one she’d known in Dodge. One of her best friends to be sure, but still the only one in town. Aside from Old Mare Gleam at the end of the street, that is.
As he passed, he looked up, and Marian startled herself into looking away. She’d been staring like a school filly on Bridle Way for the first time.
“Good day,” he said, tipping his ears politely.
“Good day,” she replied, the words out of her mouth before she thought about them.
Few of the ponies wandering the halls had so much as given Marian a second glance. Do I still have so much of the town in me? Still? She realized abruptly that she was chewing her lip, stopped, and pushed the paper away with a light hoof. It had to be the hall. It felt off, and she couldn’t put a hoof on why.
Marian stood, stretched all four legs one at a time, and crept down the hall in the opposite direction as the unicorn clerk. Not far. Just far enough to get away from the whitewashed walls of the officious part of the hall, the only part of the hall not wallpapered with mementos from citizens.
Newspaper clippings, essays, photographs. They covered the walls of the long, curving walk like the pride-wall of an enormous family’s home.
She stopped, staring at a photograph and an attached news clipping. She was sitting there, holding a medal between herself and her sister. She had barely been out of foalhood herself, and Cherish was still had the ungainly legginess of a filly. Both of them were smiling, each with a foreleg around the other.
Sisters Marian and Cherish Mare — Fourth Annual Sisterhooves Social.
Marian sat abruptly, her legs unsteady, and plucked her glasses away to brush away the tears filling her eyes.
For the brief moment her eyes were closed, she saw a flash of Cherish again, her teeth gritted, tail lashing, and tears streaming down her cheeks, framed perfectly in the doorway to the barn Marian had lured Silver to. For a moment, she tasted the bile on her tongue as she jerked herself away from the idiot’s kiss.
And then she ran.
Marian looked up from the sheet filled with unfeeling, precise numbers and figures again as the door to the council chambers opened.
“The council is ready to see you, Ms. Mare,” said a young mare, sticking her head just far enough outside the chambers to see her. “If you’ll come in, I’ll be happy to seat you.”
“Thank you, and it’s just Marian.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The young mare backed away and held open the door for her as Marian walked with as much calm as she could muster and scanned the council circle swiftly. Eight ponies, four mares and four stallions, sat on either side of the empty center seat.
The mayor’s seat, her sister’s seat, was empty.
“This way, please,” the mare said, flicking her tail to touch Marian’s foreleg. “The council is at recess but will be returning soon.”
The mayor is at recess. She forced her jaw to unclench and flicked her ears to straight. Cool serenity was what she needed to project, whatever else boiled in her mind or jabbed at her heart. Focus, Marian. Focus on the details.
What if he meant to be faithful?
She jerked as though somepony had pricked her with a needle.
It’s not like you stayed to try and find out, Cherish’s voice said in her head, sharp enough to draw blood. You ran away.
The voice softened, becoming a young filly’s querulous whimper. Why?
She ignored the voice as best she could as she sat at the Petitioner’s table, focusing instead on the empty chair and the more recent petty annoyances Cherish had heaped upon her attempt to found a library in Dodge. Fill out this petition in triplicate, fill it out again, because the clerk misplaced it, provide the council with an in depth prospectus—already prepared—and present a copy of three years of expense estimates, checked and rechecked by a building contractor and an accountant, to the city treasury…
All perfectly reasonable, and all things Marian had been prepared for, and had done ahead of time.
Out of order and not notarized, dated and signed by the treasury clerk—a pointless hurdle.
The date on the reports had to be after the date on the prospectus—an unnecessary step that had nonetheless cost Marian bits and time. The expense projection had to be alphabetized instead of ordered by cost. On and on… until today, when she could finish her petition. Three weeks after arriving. And she was almost out of patience.
Her ears twitched as she recalled each delay, but she held onto the cool facade with the barest edge of her hooves.
“All rise for the honorable Mayor Cherish.”
Following on the heels of the bellow came Marian’s sister, the mayor of Dodge Junction.
Almost alike in coloring, Cherish’s coat was a darker shade of pink, and her mane a paler gold bordering on white. She wore her hair in a tight bun as Marian did, but where Marian’s held the artful escapee curling against her neck, Cherish’s mane was as tightly regimented and carefully corralled as at any Manehattan private school, and just as forgiving as any Herdmisstress. The stern, flat-lipped smile she gave Marian didn’t help the image.
“You may be seated,” Mayor Cherish said, her eyes seeming to skip over Marian as she swept her gaze over the room. “Today, we are to hear from Marian—” Cherish’s eyes locked on Marian’s, and she let the pause where Marian’s familial name should have been stretch out until the children must have noticed. ”About her proposal for a library. Before we begin, I would like to remind everypony that we do have schoolchildren present, and to keep any discussion to a reasonable and amicable level.”
Marian’s ears tried to fold flat to her skull, and she only kept them upright through sheer effort of will. Cherish would not goad her. She would not be goaded.
“Thank you, Your Honor.” Marian stood, lifting a hoof to touch the stack of papers. “If I may, I have brought freshly revised copies of the prospectus and benefits study. In multiplicate, as promised.” Her teeth still ached from holding the pen steady for so long, or maybe that was from clenching them through the mayor’s opening remarks.
The silence stretched out while Cherish settled and resettled herself on the high-backed bench.
Of all the childish, petty things… All Marian could do was stay standing, waiting for the formality to be answered.
Finally, “You may.”
Minutes passed while Marian passed them out on her own, and she forced herself not to look into the eyes of any of the council members, lest they see through her mask.
“If you will turn to page four, we can begin where the meeting left off.” When Cherish had complained about using the Equestrian Standard Index of Tome Value over time. “The revised figures, recalculated using the Von Hoofington Statistical Index for Tome Appreciation…”
“Ms. Marian,” Councilmare Desert said slowly, “It seems as though you have your rocks all in a row, and while I would agree with much of what you’ve put forth, I must stand with Mayor Cherish. The expense does not seem to match the benefit.”
“If the Councilmare will turn back to page seventeen, I’ve outlined the longer-term benefits, as well. The cost of operating the library would be more than offset by the benefit of long-term opportunities for the community.” She waited half a breath, watching the Coucilmare turn pages. “I assure you that I am more than capable of maintaining the library and all of its books and facilities… with some help from the city, of course. That is outlined on page twenty.”
“Of course,” Cherish drawled, cutting in over Councilmare Desert’s response. “Every little jot and tittle taken care of. Just like Marian.”
“Your honor graces me with her praise.” Marian clicked her teeth shut as Cherish’s eyes narrowed. “My thesis was the study of the benefits of a library to a small town. The test study was Ponyville—”
“I hear my cousin Verity is still seeking a librarian.”
Marian’s voice faltered for half a heartbeat.
Cherish’s thin smile turned to a frown.
Marian forged on. “—and the benefits it gained over a town such as Honey Mead Hill are pronounced. As I have explained.”
Cherish’s smile came back, showing teeth, and she sat up straighter.
“And you have done a fine job,” Councilstallion Quartzite said in what might have been a warm tone, if the frosty glare he leveled on the mayor hadn’t touched his voice as well. “I would ask your patience, again, for a short time while we deliberate.”
“Of course. Thank you for your time.” Marian bowed her head, trying to ignore Dandy’s eyes following her as she turned and walked away down the aisle, each step as carefully placed as though she had been walking on the thinnest of ice.
Marian glared at the glass of honeyed iced tea gathering moisture in the relative cool of the shade. Shimmering waves rose from the road down the path from Dandy’s porch. The height of summer was still four weeks away, and she wanted, just for one measly moment, to feel a cooling sea breeze coming in off of Horseshoe Bay.
Then she could forget the verdict.
“Deadlocked,” she growled, half at the heat and half at the sister who had oh-so-happily given her the news. “Four for, and four against. And she had the gall to tell me she had abstained for personal bias.” She barked a laugh. “Personal. As if she didn’t have a hoof in turning them against the proposal.”
“How do you know she did?” Dandy, sitting across from her and nursing a smaller glass of tea, gave her what Marian imagined she thought was an encouraging smile. “I think you and she are both being foolish. Have you even talked to her outside of an office or council chamber?”
Marian flinched.
“She is your sister, Marian. However much you two seem content to snipe at each other through the pretense of official business, she is still that, and you need to talk to her. As a sister, not as a petitioner who also happens to be her sister.”
“She…” Even without her eyes closed, she saw Cherish’s face, contorted with a snarl, her ears flat, and tears streaming from her eyes. “Why did I come back? When it hurts so much?”
“Home, child,” Dandy said, reaching out to touch Marian’s foreleg. “You said as much. This is home for you, no matter how long you’ve been away. Maybe you could have left in, um, better circumstances.” Marian winced. “But that’s what life is about. You make mistakes, learn from them, and aim higher next time.”
Marian shook her head and finally took a sip of tea. The faint bitter bite of tea hid and bolstered the sweet blueberry honey Dandy favored. A little tang from both slid into her, easing away aches and tension that had become as familiar as her own four hooves.
“It’s been too long. If I knew your tea was waiting for me, I’d have come home years ago.”
“Hah! I think you’re delusional. Or maybe its that swill they call tea. What is it? A Manehattan Chaser? That isn’t tea, that’s an atrocity. Feh.” Dandy smiled as she said it, then took a mouthful of her own, and smiled more broadly. “Maybe if I moved out there, I could start my own business. Sell them something better than bottled river water.”
Marian laughed with her old teacher and felt something in her chest shift. It didn’t hurt, but it was as her perception of Dandy shivered, wrenching as though all of the years she had been gone compressed into a single second.
“I’ve missed you, Dandy.” For the first time, the name came out without a hitch.
“Oh, me too, Marian. Me, too.”
The shadows grew longer as Marian sat with Dandy on her porch, watching the tiny part of Dodge that had remained almost unchanged in the eight years Marian had been gone. The houses were still home to all the same ponies, save the one where Old Mare Gleam had lived.
Star Gleam, Dandy corrected her.
“She was the sweetest old mare, Marian, and a fine friend. We lost her just last year, gone in her sleep.” Dandy buried her muzzle in her glass for a long moment. “She was my teacher, you know, and I’m glad that I got to know her as I did.”
Everything else had stayed unchanged. Even the foals, and older colts and fillies playing down at the lake shore had stayed the same. She could see them, dim shapes splashing in the shallow waves lapping at the sandy shore. The wind would carry laughter when it felt like it, and the sounds of their play.
But if she went down there, if she tried to find her old friends, they wouldn’t be there. It was safer, there on Dandy’s porch. Everything could be perfect and exactly as she remembered, until she left to take that first step down to find them.
She took another sip of tea, letting it spread through her like a warm summer day, carrying cool memories of playing in the lake, galloping and jumping and splashing each other for hours on end, enjoying days that stretched on and on without any care except for what to do to avoid boredom.
“Am I so old, Dandy?”
“Hmm? What kinda nonsense are you thinking about now? So old. Pft.”
“I want to go down there,” Marian said, nodding towards the lake. “I want to see my old friends again, and…” See how they’ve all changed.
“Memories are good. Vital, even. But you can’t hold onto what they meant as if you could make them happen all over again. They’re done.” Dandy waved a hoof through the lake as the trees along the street whistled and bent, and a thin twirl of dust danced and swayed along the dry cobbles. “But what they meant is a part of you already. Your friends, young or old, are a part of who and where you are, right now.”
Including a young colt from Fillydelphia.
“The sun setting over the waves of Bridle Bay, the nighttime rainbow glittering above Cloudsdale…” He sighed, settling himself in beside her on his back, one forehoof batting at a cattail in the reeds.
“What are you going on about?” Marian asked when he trailed off, turning to bury her nose in his musky mane.
“Things I could compare your beauty to, Marian,” he whispered, lifting her muzzle to his for a brief kiss. “I would show you the truth, that beside you, they are without compare. Right now, if I could.”
Silver Tongue.
“Why did he have to be a part of me?”
“Ah. That young lout.” Dandy reached over the table and rapped a hoof against Marian’s nose.
“Ow!” She sneezed, shook her head, and sneezed again.
“And well it should hurt! Forget about him. Wait, don’t. Remember him, but don’t… aw, feh.” She settled back, glowering—with a smile—over her tea at Marian. “Don’t let him rule you.”
“That’s about eight years too late…” Marian rubbed at her nose, twitched it, and sneezed again.
“Never too late to be reminded a bad idea’s a bad idea.” Dandy grinned, shaking her head. “Stick him out of your mind. He’s gone, and mores’ the better for it. I hear he’s in Ponyville—” Her smile widened when Marian rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I thought so. You had the right of him, y’know. I don’t blame you… well, I suppose I do. A little, or a lot. You handled your sister poorly, girl. Is it any wonder she holds a grudge?”
Marian shook her head.
“Of course not. I might hate you, too, if you did that to me without knowin’ the why.” Dandy smiled again, but it seemed fragile, somehow. “Did you ever tell her? That he was cheatin’ on her? I mean, you did have proof, right?”
“I did… my own two eyes. He didn’t know I’d seen him, but I did, making out with Rose Quartz, not a month after he and Cherish started making moon eyes at each other.”
“And you warned her, of course?”
“From the start. But did she listen?”
“Did you?”
“I wasn’t the one sneaking kisses and nuzzles around every other corner!” As soon as she said it, she saw Silver Tongue dashing around a corner, his short flip of a tail twitching, and she followed to meet his mouth with hers, so hungry for his touch she could hardly stand still. A dozen times, at different corners, in different hallways, but always hungry for more.
Dandy raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Th-that was different,” she mumbled into her glass, wondering why the ice didn’t melt under the heat of her cheeks. “I-I didn’t know about him, then. But how could I show her what happened to me?”
“And you figured you’d show her, hmm? You know, she came to me after you broke her heart. I seem to recall you went to her when he broke yours. What did you tell her?”
Nothing. She had told Cherish nothing. To protect her little sister. She didn’t need to know that falling in love could hurt so much. All Marian could do was shake her head.
Dandy sipped at her tea again, eying Marian over the rim, and shifted in her seat. “You should have talked to each other. You should talk to each other.”
“I did, later. When I found out she was seeing him. I told her what happened to me.” Cherish’s face popped up in her mind, incredulity obvious in her face. “Do you know what she said to me? She said I was jealous that Silver Tongue had dumped me because I was too caught up in my books! In my books! I-I… told her she was an idiot for not seeing what was right in front of her.”
“Yep. She told me that, too. You know what I didn’t tell her?” Dandy reached out to jab the sharp edge of a hoof against Marian’s shoulder. “I didn’t tell her she shouldn’t see the fool. You know why?”
“But she would have listened to you!”
“Oh? You know, I was young once, too. I remember when I wanted something so badly I would have given anything to get it.” She settled back to her hindquarters, one hoof rubbing against her hip. “It was a doll, but not just any doll, mind. This was a second edition Celestia Figurine, porcelain white, with an enchanted mane and tail. She was beautiful, and I had to have her. You know what I did?”
“Pestered your parents?”
“Hah! Well, yes, and no. I tried to steal it. After my parents told me I would never have it if I didn’t behave, well, what’s a six-year-old filly to do when she really, really wants something?” She patted the hoof against her hip again. “Get her flank beat, is what. I didn’t even make it out of the shop before I was bawling like a foal.
“What I’m saying is… and maybe I didn’t say it as well as I could have, but I made my own mistake, and I got my flank beat because of it. I cried over it, hated my parents for a bit, but I learned my lesson. I learned it because I made the choice to steal it.”
Dandy stopped, looked down at her hoof and hip, shook her head, and sighed.
“You had a choice in what you did, she did not, and that makes all the difference. What if I had gotten away with my theft? I might very well be a very different pony, now.” For a moment, Dandy’s smile turned into a frown, then her smile came back, firmed, and she sipped at her tea again, rocking slowly back and forth on her hind legs.
Marian lowered her head to rest on the table, staring into the chunky ice whirling slowly around and around.
Is she right? The question wound its way through memories and maybes that played out in her mind. Memories replayed where she did and maybes ghosted by where she did not break up with Silver Tongue, and where she did and did not end the relationship between her sister and Silver Tongue.
“I still would have tried to tell her,” Marian muttered. “She still wouldn’t have listened… and maybe…” Maybe she would have been there for her sister to come to. Maybe she wouldn’t have run off to Manehattan.
“Of course you would have. Because you love her.”
“I do.” But the looks Cherish had given her… “Does she still love me? I took away her choice! I broke her heart! I didn’t try to contact—”
“So you made a mistake!” Dandy tapped a hoof firmly on the table. “So what if it was a right screwed up goofball of a mistake? She’s your sister!”
“Some mistakes… Dandy, how can I expect her to forgive—”
She never saw the water balloon Dandy splattered over her head and shoulders.
“Dandy!” she screeched, leaping back from the table and crashing down into her friend’s front lawn, lukewarm water soaking into her coat, running down her neck, and matting her forelock to her face.
“Huh. Works as well for self-pity as it does for anger.” Dandy had another two cradled in her forelegs. “I keep ’em for my nephew, y’see.” She grinned, shaking her head. “Sorry for the soaking, Marian, but I didn’t have anything closer to hoof.”
“A water balloon?”
Dandy glanced down at the two held close to her barrel, and laughed. “Yep!”
“W-why—” Marian giggled, brushed a foreleg over her sopping mane. “W-why w-would—” She got no further as Dandy collapsed into a fit with her.
“Just say the right thing.” That wasn’t so hard, really. Not at all. Except it was, and she seemed to be going around in circles on what she should say. And literally going around in circles in front of the wide, stable-inspired home Cherish lived in as mayor.
“Cherish, I’m sorry I kissed Silver in front of—” No. She snorted, lashing her tail at the stupid line.
“Cherish, Silver was cheating on me. I know he was cheating on you, too.” That was no better. She stamped on a half-buried cobblestone and sat down hard, rolling her hoof back and forth over the smooth surface.
“Cherish, I love you. You’re my sister, and…” And I intentionally hurt you.
“I could always leave. Ponyville is looking for a librarian, and I would have stayed longer if I could have. Such a nice town.” But it wasn’t home. “Not yet, but I could make it a home.”
And all she would have to do was disappoint Dandy, abandon her family, and let her sister always think the worst of her.
“Cherish… I was wrong.”
And I have to do the right thing. She lifted a hoof to knock at the door.
I was wrong.
What if she doesn’t want to see me? Marian continued pacing, waiting for the return of the majordomo, whom had been back twice to talk to her and relay messages. The last, ‘Tell her… I was wrong,’ had been nearly half an hour ago.
She paused to look up at the moon starting to rise over the distant mesas to the east, felt the eye of the Mare in the Moon on her, and offered up a silent prayer against the darkness.
Behind her the door opened, and the majordomo, a stocky stallion with more gray in his mane than not, and a silver platter for a cutie mark, stepped out. “The mayor will see you now.”
“Thank you.” Marian stepped past him and turned when he didn’t follow. “Are you leaving? I thought a majordomo, well, I thought you almost lived here.”
His eye twitched, but his face remained otherwise impassive. “She has asked that this meeting be private. Completely private. Good night.”
With that, the door closed, and Marian was left in the dimly lit entryway, staring at a portrait of her sister, smiling as she sat behind a plainly carved desk clean of papers.
The dim lighting made the portrait seem to loom in the narrow, short corridor.
“Cherish?” Her voice drifted down the hallway, only echoed back faintly along with her hooves’ light clumping on the solid wood floor. The house was a straight line, not unlike many stable-houses so popular in the east, with rooms branching off the central corridor. Other portraits, of other mayors, she presumed, sat here and there in between the doorways, with more empty places where future mayors would find their portraits.
“Office,” came her sister’s voice, cold and hard, drifting down from near the end of the long hall.
She was seated behind a well-lit desk, papers scattered across the width of it in a carefully organized mess. Paperweights sat on most, and others were held down by what appeared to be the remains of a dinner.
“Ms. Marian,” Cherish said, voice as chill as her eyes were hot. “Imagine my surprise when you showed up here, seeking an audience. Imagine my further surprise when your last message said ‘I’m wrong.’ This is not the place to discuss city business. My office hours are—”
“I’m not here on city business,” Marian snapped, her own voice crisp enough to crack. “Not business at all,” she added in a softer tone. “Cherish—” The look she got could have, should have, set the floor on fire around her.
“Cherish. You think you can just waltz in here from the city and dictate what’s best for us? For—” Cherish snapped off the rest with a click of her teeth. “How dare you, Marian. You always were a city pony, through and through. Even when we were younger, you acted as though you were too good for this town, my home.” Cherish stood, slamming a hoof down amid the papers. “My home! My life!”
“Cherish, I was wrong to—”
“Oh, you bet your ass you were wrong.”
“Yes, I was. Am.”
“Why are you here? Why didn’t you stay in Manehattan, where you belong?” Cherish stared at her over the table, glared fire and hate and pain at her.
Pain? Of course pain. You were the one who tore out her heart. “I don’t belong there. This is my home.” Marian waved a hoof at the wall behind her. “And you’re my—”
“Don’t you dare say it. You abandoned—” Cherish’s jaw worked, teeth grinding. “Us. You abandoned us. Mom and dad didn’t know. I didn’t know how to tell them that my coltfriend was cheating on me with my sister. And the worst part? Do you know what the worst part was?”
Marian shook her head.
“The worst part is you were right. You selfish, self-righteous… I hated you. I hated that you were right about him. Why? Why did you try to tell me like that? Why?” Tears shimmered in Cherish’s eyes, but she stared straight at Marian, only a quiver of her lower lip giving any sign of her rigid control.
“You…” Marian stared at her sister, feeling the truth as though Cherish had whispered it in her ear. “I abandoned you. After I hurt you so badly. You knew all along? That he was cheating?” She hadn’t seen it, hadn’t suspected that Cherish had known.
“No… But I’m not blind,” Cherish murmured, lifting a foreleg to brush at her cheeks. The heated edge was still there, and her posture spoke of anger still, but it cooled as she let out a breath. “He left me, Marian, but after I caught him in a barn with some hussy from Canterlot.”
“I’m so sorry, Cherish. If there was some other way to tell you, and make you see…” Another way to break your heart for you. She swallowed the words, but didn’t look away. It was too late, and the talk far too long overdue.
“That wasn’t the worst part.” Cherish stepped around the desk to jab a hoof at Marian’s chest. “The worst part was that you took my best friend away when I needed her the most. You left me, Marian. I needed you, and you left!”
A grandfather clock in another room chimed the hour into the silence that followed.
“I’m so sorry.” It felt like a paltry thing to say, and the words felt like sand coming off her tongue. “I didn’t mean to hurt you so badly. I only thought to save you the heartache that he—” She stopped, jerking her eyes away from the hurt she saw in Cherish’s eyes. It was an excuse, and Cherish didn’t need excuses, nor did she want them. “I’m sorry.”
“I missed my big sister, when she left,” Cherish said quietly, turning away again. “I didn’t understand why she did what she did, and I wanted to hate her, tried to hate her for what she did to me.”
Cherish pulled out a large bottle of golden liquid from a lower drawer, along with one glass. The smell of apples and alcohol filled the small office in moments, and Cherish settled back down behind her desk, the small glass held in the crook of one foreleg.
“I couldn’t hate her. Not after the truth came out. I hated you, but not her. She had always been there for me when we were little, tending my scrapes and making me laugh with the stories she told me. She taught me to love to read, and taught me about being a mare.” She took a short draw from the glass, held it in her mouth, and swallowed after a long moment. “She was almost more a mother than Mother, always off on business with Father.” She snorted.
“I’m still your sister, and I still love you.”
“Are you?” Cherish didn’t look at her, both eyes focused on the glass in her hoof. “You tried to send me a letter once, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it. I had to hear it from her lips, not on some page. My sister would have understood that. She would have come back.”
Marian took a hesitant step up to the desk, then another when Cherish only glanced at her. Her sister’s attention drifted back to the glass, as if she could find the answers there.
“She hated herself for a long time. She thought she had destroyed a sisterhood, but thought she had done the right thing, to save her little sister from discovering a hard truth without…” It sounded stupid, when she started to say it. “She made a terrible mistake, and she ran from it. She never should have stuck her nose in her little sister’s business.”
“No, she shouldn’t have, but I missed her all the same.” Cherish set the glass on the table and slid it across to Marian. “Why did you never come back in eight years?”
“I was…” Marian pushed aside the lie that she was too busy. There had been more than enough chances to escape for a weekend, a week even. She hid the pause in a sniff of the glass, a smile touching her lips at the smooth aroma. “I missed this. You can’t find apple brandy like this in Manehattan.”
“Appleoosan. Their first press just came out of the barrels a few weeks ago.” Another glass thumped to the desk, and she made another measured pour of two shoes. “It’s very good.”
“I was afraid,” Marian said softly.
Cherish nodded once and took a swallow from the freshly poured glass.
“I thought you would hate me if I came back. For a couple of years, I thought that, and I was terrified of… this.” Marian waved the glass between them. “After a while… it just became a habit to come up with some excuse to not go home. One time, I decided that I needed to wash my mane instead of buy a ticket home.” She laughed, the sound bitter to her own ears.
“You always did have a thing about keeping your mane just so. All the better to accentuate your height. Celestia, how I envied you for that.” Cherish lifted a hoof to touch the not-so-severe bun behind her ears. “I tried to emulate you for so long, but I never could manage the fine work like you could. I thought you kept it up because you wanted to be a city pony. I thought you had left us to live your life in the city, and never mind your family.” She took another drink of her brandy. “I hated you more for that than anything else.”
Marian winced, sniffed again at the glass and took a long draw as the silence hung between them—brittle, but no longer heated. “Did you know that I never really fit in? City ponies, real city ponies living their day-to-day lives, don’t coif their manes, or burnish their tails, or put them in an elaborate coil. They dress more like you, but their lives are so fast, Cherish. I was spinning on my hind legs for a year before I could adjust.”
“And you still had every stallion in a hundred paces ready to be wrapped around your hoof at a word, and half the mares as well.” Cherish snorted, rolling her eyes and tossed down the rest of her glass.
“Not as such.” Oh, there had been stares. There had also been grimaces, and glares from stallions and mares alike. And more than her share of leers. “Some of them thought I would be easy, too overawed by the city to see past their games. Half of the rest thought I was a bumpkin trying to imitate what I thought a city pony was like…”
Fueled by the sweet burn of apple brandy, Marian told story after story of life in Manehattan. Absent the ready laugh, and the sisterly hugs, of course. But Cherish did laugh, and she smiled, and she kept refilling her own glass and Marian’s.
We can never go back to the way things were, but maybe that’s for the best.
Marian pushed her glass across the table some hours later, if her recollection of the slow chiming grandfather clock somewhere in the house was accurate at all. The night seemed fuzzy in her memory, but she remembered all of it, and was glad for the smile Cherish offered her.
“City life is nothing like what I imagined. Not living in a city, anyway.” Cherish tipped the carafe over once more, refilling Marian’s glass before her own. She frowned down at it, swirled it, and took a tiny taste.
“It’s very different from home, that’s for sure.” Marian took a matching tiny drink of her brandy, the warmth easing down her throat pleasantly and adding a tiny bit to the small furnace in her belly. “I missed home. I think I always missed it, even if the ache got easier to bear. It never got less, though.”
The clock tick-tocked loudly in the late night calm, and the sound of gears ratcheting heralded the next chime. When it faded, Marian felt the change as though the chime had been a signal. Something eased out of the room, a tension that had been felt, but never acknowledged.
Maybe it was her imagination.
“I missed this.” Cherish waved her glass between them. “Talking with you.”
“I did, too. I missed you, Cherish.”
Maybe it was the alcohol, or the night, or the frustrations of the last few days, but whatever the cause, admitting that she had missed her sister broke something inside her. “I’m so sorry,” she choked out through a sudden sob. “For what I did, for not coming back, for—” She tucked her chin to her chest and clenched her teeth shut over the babble spilling from her lips, and the sobs wracking her body.
A moment later, Cherish was beside her and running a hoof over the arch of her neck. She didn’t say anything, and Marian was glad for the silence. She didn’t want to say anything else, and didn’t want to hear Cherish crying, either. Not until she was in control of herself again.
Cherish sat beside her until the ache subsided, and she was able to rein in the sobbing. She mastered herself by small turns, and relaxed as her sister pulled her into a tight embrace.
“I’m glad you’re back.”
As simple as that, as simple as family, she was home.
“Me too.”
Adjusting to small town life again was, in its own way, as difficult as it had been to adjust to the swift pace of city life. It wasn’t there in the big ways. Dodge Junction was as busy as some parts of Manehattan had been, especially the suburbs only reachable by light rail.
It was there in the small ways. The hundred and one little things that added up to make a city a city were missing: the crossing-lights, and the constant bustle of ponies crossing the street, almost always at the lights; the not-so-subtle stink of too many ponies living together; the ever-present flavors in the air of every street vendor whose major purpose had seemed, at times, to offset the other smells.
All of that, and more, was missing in Dodge Junction. The savory smells of baking goods, of roasting vegetables mixed with too-ripe fruit were all there, but that was it. Oh, if she tried, she could still smell the odor of the outhouse and septic tanks, of ‘fertilizer’ being spread and mixed with soil.
And there was the biggest change of all: Marian no longer worked in a library. Cherish had recused herself from the rest of the proceedings, but the damage had already been done. The proposal had been rejected, but without prejudice. She could, if she chose, petition the city to reconsider the proposal at a later date.
She would, though Cherish had told her a few days afterwards that she would have to recuse herself again, if she were still mayor by then. In the meantime, her books still surrounded her in her parents’ home, of course, and she had found a job as a bookkeeper for the city—part time.
All of this, she considered as she sat with Dandy on her porch, both of them sipping tea and watching the sun drift down behind a bank of clouds, prelude to the evening’s magnificence. Already, gold-chased clouds were scudding by overhead, and it wouldn’t be long before they turned magenta, and then purple.
“She’s gonna be late,” Dandy muttered.
“Give her time.”
Dandy glanced at her, a tiny smile creeping over her lips. “Of course.”
Minutes passed. Marian refilled her glass from the pitcher, and set it down.
“I’ll go check the casserole,” Dandy said, giving her a nudge as she clambered to her hooves, taking her glass with her, but leaving the pitcher.
Marian made a small noise and watched her friend totter into the house. It hurt, still, to see her so old. Eight years…
The distant horizon blurred, and she blinked away tears. It surprised her, how often they came on her, even four weeks after deciding to make her stay permanent. But four weeks had been a long time for her to get to know her sister again, and appreciate the strength of will she had grown in Marian’s absence.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Cherish turned the corner at the far end of the street, moving at an easy canter. She tossed her head, and Marian lifted hers, finding a smile tugging its way onto her lips.
“Sorry if I’m late. The clerk had a few more papers to sign than he’d let on,” Cherish said, by way of greeting. “You have no idea how much paperwork goes into the running of a small town.”
Marian set her glass down and went to catch her sister in a brief, tight hug. “Yes. I’d heard something like that from Verity, too… Poor mare.”
“Bah. She’ll turn out fine. She had no opposition at her last re-election. Nopony wanted the job but her.” Cherish pulled back and pushed her muzzle against Marian’s neck. “What’s new with you? I’m sorry we missed each other for lunch yesterday, I still haven’t got your new schedule down, and meetings are a pain to work around.”
Marian returned the nuzzle and resumed her place behind the table, making room for Cherish. “Mom and Dad are coming back from their overseas bookselling trip. Finally. The letter came today. They say they should be able to catch a train out of Baltimare next week, weather willing, and if seas are fair.”
“That’ll be nice. The family, all back together again.” Cherish confiscated the remains of her tea and sniffed at it, then sipped. “How does she do it? I swear, every time I try to follow her recipe, I end up getting something that only tastes tea-like.”
“At least you’re brewing it right. I managed to burn a batch of mine. You’d think I hadn’t been doing my own cooking for…” She let the thought trail off and pulled her gaze up to the horizon.
Cherish didn’t ask her what she had meant to say, only shuffled closer and leaned her head against Marian’s neck. After that one night, they hadn’t spoken of their time apart other than in brief snippets, quickly avoided. Marian knew they would have to address it more fully in time, but for now, it felt good to let it go. There were plenty of other things for them to talk about, edging around the hole in their relationship.
That evening, though, Marian found her mind empty of things to say, and Cherish seemed to feel like the silence was good enough. So, she sat shoulder to shoulder, flank to flank with her, and watched the sun set together.
The silence lasted until Dandy called them in for dinner.
A month longer, and then two passed like that. The silences grew shorter, the edgy quality to them fading away like a bristly tumbleweed rolling away, into the distance.
Marian moved into a small apartment after her parents came by in a whirlwind of greetings and hugs, and left just as swiftly, off to broker a deal in Saddle Arabia for printing rights to some of their histories.
It was what had pushed her into sitting in the petitioner’s booth again, waiting patiently while the council mares and stallions debated. Cherish was nowhere to be seen, as she had promised, but Marian felt her presence all the same. She was certain her sister would contrive some way to peep in on the proceedings from a curtain or cracked doorway—of which there were many.
In the time between then and now, almost a year in total, the town had seen a veritable boom. Some were even jokingly calling it the Cherry Bomb, for the Jubilant Cherry Ranch was at the center of it all.
That, too, had been in Marian’s updated fiscal benefits forecast, and she had even petitioned Cherry Jubilee for assistance. The gift pledge, which Marian had hinted might be considered a charitable donation worthy of a tax-break if the city decided to go forward with it, had been enough to guarantee her wage for two years, a not inconsiderable sum of forty-thousand bits.
But it all came down to the construction costs. An even heftier one hundred thousand was her projected cost for the two-story building, not including the books, which she had spent almost a month wheedling and writing letters to various other libraries begging the donation of old editions.
Some had pledged books that would have been donated to individual schools, and the Canterlot Royal Library Society had pledged four entire cases full of history and reference books, donated in the name of the newly returned Princess Luna, with the only stipulation being that the shelves they rested on be titled after her.
Marian pulled herself out of her thoughts as the mares and stallions filed back in, all of them smiling and nodding at each other. Marian’s heart rose as they sat and turned those smiles on her.
“Thank you all for your patience,” said Desert Rose, the mare taking Cherish’s role. “After some deliberation, we have decided that a library would do our small community a great deal of good, and with the groundwork you’ve laid, Ms. Marian, I would like to say that I am quite impressed with the list of pledges, and an endorsement from Princess Celestia herself.”
“By way of a letter, Your Honor,” Marian replied. “I did not speak with her personally.”
“Even so, the letter praised your efforts in the Ponyville library.” Desert Rose pulled herself straighter and pulled out the stamp of approval, worked it on the green pad of ink, and sealed Marian’s future with one quick tap. “The proposal to fund and build a library for public use in Dodge Junction is approved.”
The library ended up being one of the most popular places for young ponies to hang out. When the travelling playwrights, the carnivals, or the odd party pony wasn’t in town. Which generally meant Tuesdays and Thursdays were her busy days. Or when Dandy assigned reading, once a week, always timed to keep Marian on the tips of her hooves.
Routine settled in, and the bookshelves filled as promised pledges arrived, and gaps were filled in with a small donation fund that Marian contributed to, along with a number of other ponies. Most of the bits came with cards suggesting books or authors, too.
Her sister came by often to chat, to vent, to read, or watch the fillies and colts reading, or reading to each other in one of the magically soundproofed reading rooms.
“It makes my heart swell when I see our little ones so interested in learning, Mare,” she would say. Then she would sigh, and Marian knew she was thinking about starting a family of her own. A topic still too weighty for her to feel like she could test the fragility of their sisterhood on.
Some day… Maybe some day she could talk to Cherish about her own wish to start a family.
That day would come on its own. In the meantime, she was happy enough that her family was whole again.
As whole as it had been before she’d left, at any rate, and more worn.
Author's Note
Bonus background info!
Marian is both a reference to The Music Man, and in this specific instance, to the MLP Comics, specifically Friends Forever #9. She is the love interest of both Flim and Flam in the comic. The story ends where her story in the comic starts.
Sadly, there was no musical number in the comics, or in this story.
