Every New Beginning Comes from Some Other Beginning's End (Prologue)
It sits there, on the bed. A grand thing—very big and very old fashioned with a red velvet interior and a hard brown exterior punctuated by leather straps.
It sits there, on the bed, taunting her. She feels like it’s expecting to be filled, greedy for payment or treasure. But she doesn’t know where to start.
How does one decide what to take when they have to leave behind everything they know?
She groans lightly, looks around her room. For the first time it occurs to her that the framed flowers on the wall and the bedspread will never grow. When she returns, they will be exactly as she left them. And while that's comforting, it is also disconcerting. Things aren't meant to stay the same.
She thinks, probably, even more because of her bloodlines. The lightheartedly dreaded mixture of two of the most energetic beings in Ponyville.
Yes, her family strives on change. They’re always on the go, always floating and being tugged and pulled in every direction. But they always stay together, too. First and foremost, they always stay together. They are family. A strong family.
First and foremost, they stay together.
But today, she’s leaving.
Of course, she knows that it won’t completely crumble her relationship with her family. No, no, her older brother proved that distance means nothing to a family as bonded as theirs. Had been proving it since he was thirteen years old.
Or maybe that was just her brother’s very nature leaking through—that colt had always been the strongest link out of all of them. The one who always kept them together.
Either way, she knows that there are letters and ways she can communicate with her family to keep the bond strong. She’s still worried though.
There is a knock on her door then, and she jumps, realizes she’s been glaring at the suitcase for something like five minutes now.
Her door opens just a smidge, just enough that her mother can peak her head inside.
“Hey. I have a present for you.” Momma sings and then opens the door wide to reveal the aforementioned present.
“Lightning! Oh my Celestia, what are you doing here?”
She hears a muted oof as she crashes into him, but she pays it no mind.
And this is what is saddening her the most. Yes, there are letters and ways she can communicate with her family to keep the bond strong, but there are not ways that she can physically show her affection. Physical shows of affection are way better than words could ever hope to be. It’s a fact.
Lightning smells like sweat and burnt ozone, and feels solid and strong. But most importantly, Lightning smells and feels the way Lightning has always smelt and felt.
“So what are you doing here?” she asks again after she lets him go.
He flexes a wing with a casually smug grin. “Thought my baby sister might need my help moving to her new apartment.”
She feels herself flinch. For just the tiniest, most insignificant of moments, she feels herself flinch.
Lightning is on it like a hound. “What’s wrong, Suzy?” he coos.
“I don’t know where to start.” She tells him truthfully, too distraught to pick up on the foalhood nickname. “What do I pack?”
“Pack the special things first.” Momma advises from her place near the door. “Things you can’t do without.”
Lightning nods in equal part agreement and encouragement.
She looks around her room—the exact same one she’s had her entire life. She knows where everything is, naturally, but it all somehow feels essential. Logically, she knows that she doesn’t need to take everything, and frankly, taking things like her doll collection might be embarrassing.
But another part of her is overwhelmed by the sheer number of memories every single object in the room holds, and for a moment she fears that if she leaves something behind the memories that object is carrying will forever be lost.
She feels something warm and velvety wrap itself around her back, and she’s been the subject to this type of affection enough to know that it’s probably Lightning’s wing.
“Hey, Sue, talk to me.” Lightning murmurs, gently encouraging her to speak her inner turmoil.
“I can’t do this.” She whimpers, snuggling close to her brother. Immediately, she's pried off of his chest and made to look in his eyes. Lightning always took challenges head-on.
"Sure you can." Momma says the words first, coming up next to Lightning and nudging the colt in the chest. "Lightning used to get really upset about leaving too. So we played a little game."
Sue pauses at this. She had never heard of her brother's unwillingness to leave. Every time she had seen him in the days before his departures found him bright and confident and full of energy—the way he always was.
"Momma." Lightning whines a bit in a rather un-twenty-three-year-old-way, but she's not really paying attention any more. Instead, she's looking at her mother curiously.
"A game?"
"Yeppers!" Momma exclaims, and then puts both hoofs on Sue's shoulders. "It's a packing game. I spin you around while you have your eyes closed, and when I stop and tell you to open your eyes the first thing that they land on—you decide if it's going or not."
Feeling very much like a filly, she smiles softly and closes her eyes. Momma spins her around, and it's kind of a slow process, and a bit childish, but she likes being reminded of her fillyhood before she has to make such an adult decision.
The first thing her eyes land on when Momma tells her to open them are the pictures on her desk. She walks over to them with a small smile which grows with every step.
The frames are familiar, as her eyes sweep over them she remembers a hundred memories of her friends and family. From the warm, ever-sunny and joyful filly hood, to the awkward pre-teen hood, to the drama-filled teenage hood. It's all there in random snaps of time, unspecial to anypony but herself and maybe the ones who are in them.
With a clean sweep, she gathers the ridiculous amount of photos in her forelegs, pressing all of them against her chest lovingly. Lightning helps her carry them over and plunge them into one suitcase.
And suddenly her fears nearly disappear, because she's not really leaving behind the ones that she loves. They exist in her mind, and she exists in theirs. And these photographs prove it.
