'Them Bones'
The picture Silver Spoon had brought with her was giving Scootaloo the creeps.
It showed a filly Diamond Tiara, made up in a manner glamorous enough to tell she had been made up but subtle enough for it to not quite be from a glamor shoot, smiling while glancing over one shoulder. The frame sat on Miss Cheerilee's desk (even after all these years, Scootaloo couldn't stop thinking of her as Miss Cheerilee), Diamond Tiara's eternally-youthful face staring back at anypony who glanced at it; Scootaloo had noticed Silver Spoon make several glances at it already, and since she was trying her best to avoid Silver Spoon that meant there must have been dozens of glances she had missed. She had made her peace with her former schoolyard nemesis -- she couldn't imagine carrying a silly grudge like that with her for her whole life -- but there was something in Silver Spoon's eyes that spoke of a restless sadness, a hollowness in her that just might swallow up other ponies that talked to her for too long.
And, Scootaloo thought, it probably doesn't help to tote that picture along to the reunion.
Her eyes flicked to the front of the room and caught Diamond Tiara's face again. That was the real source of the hollowness -- a ghoulish reminder that one of their class wasn't here, a ghost of the past haunting the room, forever watching but unable to say a word.
-/-
It was deep into the night when Scootaloo finally left the reunion -- the class was down to a very tipsy trinity of Snips, Snails, and Twist, singing songs of their foalhood with increasing gusto and straying further from being on-key, when she made her exit. Being back in Ponyville, such a tiny speck of a place compared to Los Pegasus even with the continued residence of one Princess Twilight Sparkle, was comforting. It was nice to recognize so much of the little hamlet even though many changes had occurred since she moved away, and as it was a nice night she took a small detour from her path to the bed and breakfast she was staying at to see more of Ponyville as it slept.
Her winding path took her by the mayor's office, the fountain in the town square, Sugarcube Corner, Golden Oaks Library with a flickering candle lighting one of the upper windows, and these she all walked past with a slow measured gait. When she passed by the cemetery she quickened her pace a little -- not because she was superstitious or anything, or scared, but lingering by a cemetery just wasn't something a pony did. She did throw a quick glance to the rows of headstones and marble effigies, though, and when she did she saw something that gave her pause. A figure, moving over one of the hills. A figure she recognized.
Apple Bloom had left the reunion early, bowing out because of things she needed to do on the farm, she had said. Yet here she was in the middle of the night, in the graveyard... laying a flower on a grave?
Scootaloo wanted to approach her, but something stopped her from making her presence known right away. She walked up the path, taking no special care to conceal her presence but none to call attention to it either. As fate would have it, Apple Bloom turned away just as Scootaloo was coming close enough to be within speaking distance, and walked off in the other direction. Her path hooked around, and she would have seen Scootaloo easily standing in one of the lantern-lights, were in not for a large and sprawling tree blocking her view. Scootaloo caught a glimpse of her from between the tree's branches; she had a strange, pained expression on her face.
Scootaloo turned and looked at the grave, the single lily Apple Bloom had left looking lonely. The inscription read:
DIAMOND TIARA
Devoted daughter
Gone from our lives but not from our memories
-/-
Sweet Apple Acres had rarely been a bustling center of activity -- the most excitement Scootaloo had ever been involved in there had always been partially of her own making, with the Cutie Mark Crusaders -- but this morning it seemed positively deserted. No critters moved in the trees. The sounds of birds were far in the distance. The only sound was the relentless thwack! of hooves against apple trees followed by the patter of falling apples. Apple Bloom had told her last night to come by any time; since she was planning to catch up with Rainbow Dash that evening, the Apple family farm was her first stop.
"Hey, AB," Scootaloo said with a practiced casual air when she spotted Apple Bloom in the orchard.
Apple Bloom paused her harvest and rushed over to Scootaloo, giving her a crushing hug. She towered over the pegasus; fully-grown, she was nearly as large as her brother, and had she been a stallion she possibly would have been larger. Their conversation picked up where it had left off the night before; it eventually turned to discussing specifics of the reunion itself, now that the event had passed.
"You shouldn't have left so early," Scootaloo said, "you missed Snails trying to conjure a lampshade to put over his head."
"I didn't miss nothin'," Apple Bloom replied, and pounded a tree, "he tries that every Hearth's Warming Eve, too. Never gets it right." Thwack.
"And what's the deal with Silver Spoon? And that picture -- right?"
"I know." Thwack. "She had it at the last reunion, too. It's morbid."
"Maybe she thinks Diamond Tiara will show up one time."
"That ain't likely." Thwack.
"What makes you say that? I mean, she's still technically missing. She could be somewhere in Equestria."
"A pony doesn't just go missin' for that many years. She ain't comin' back." Thwack.
Scootaloo remembered the period after Diamond Tiara had disappeared with an ugly clarity. The way the mood of the town has slowly shifted from a kind of blithe optimism to a hushed avoidance of the subject had been painfully uncomfortable, but what had been terrible was watching Filthy Rich sink all his money into an ever-expanding hunt for his missing daughter, the dark patches under his eyes worse every time she saw him around town. She remembered catching sight of him on the day he left Ponyville, all his possessions able to fit in a single suitcase. He had looked like a ghost. In many ways, he had become one.
"I feel sorry for her dad," Scootaloo said at last.
"I heard he struck it big in Canterlot. Was doin' pretty well for himself." Thwack.
This might have been Apple Bloom's way of changing the subject. Scootaloo made an attempt. "So how's things been around here? On the farm, I mean."
"Oh, real good." Thwack. "We're doin' record numbers with the Zap Apples, best seasons we've had since the Apples first came to Ponyville."
Something about that statement felt connected to the previous topic of Filthy Rich, but Scootaloo dismissed it. Apple Bloom was hitching up to the wagon full of freshly-bucked apples. Scootaloo walked beside her as she hauled it down the path to a tall silo.
"Put up a bunch o' new structures 'round here, too," Apple Bloom continued.
"I saw," Scootaloo said, thinking of the new stables she had passed by to reach the orchard. "I remember when this was the new silo," she said, indicating the round building in front of them.
"Shoot, we must've put up a dozen more since then," Apple Bloom said. "When did we build this silo?" She paused in thought. "Must've been 'round the time Sweetie was learnin' her magic from Twilight..."
"Yeah, and she was teaching me to assemble unicycles," Scootaloo said, remembering clearly her thought process that it would be easier to start with something with one wheel and then work her way up to modifying her scooter (it wasn't). "And teaching you to make potions." She cocked her head to think. "Why was that? That you were interested in alchemy?"
"Zecora, mainly," Apple Bloom said, upending the cart of apples into the silo. "Never did make that many potions that worked out so good, 'side from one or two, but it was still interestin' even if it didn't end up bein' my special talent. It was kinda fascinatin' to know you could mix together a bunch o' perfectly ordinary things and make somethin' that worked like magic, though."
As they left the silo, Scootaloo noticed a small garden growing along the sunny side of the building, containing a haphazard selection of plants. "What's that?" she asked, pointing.
"Herb garden," Apple Bloom replied. "Just a little of some of those can really make a big difference."
The selection of various kinds of mostly-green weed-looking plants now made sense to Scootaloo, but it was the decision to line the border with lilies that stuck with her. She gave them a quick count, and came up with fifteen: the name number of years Diamond Tiara had been missing.
...Had Apple Bloom been smiling when she left the graveyard? It had looked like a grimace, but that was in the dark and only for a second. Could it have been a smile?
Come to think of it, what kind of poison could you mix out of garden herbs? Probably a lot.
And just how easy would it be to hide a body on a farm, with all that space and all that quiet?
Maybe even underneath the foundation of a new silo about to be built...
Scootaloo shook her head. What kind of crazy thoughts were those? This was Apple Bloom! She was one of her best friends.
...Right?
"Hey?"
Scootaloo blinked. "Sorry, zoned out there for a second. What'd you say?"
"I asked if you've been out to Canterlot to hear Sweetie sing," she repeated.
And just like that, Apple Bloom was back to being the same old friend she always had been, all morbid thoughts of buried bones forgotten.
-/-
Scootaloo looked at her own reflection in the train window, the world outside too dark to be more than vague rushing shapes. The trip back to Los Pegasus was a long one. She squeezed tiredness from her eyes, then looked again. Still looked terrible. Her eyes made it look like she had been up all night, really partying hard. She never could sleep on trains, so instead--
She sat upright in her chair, all exhaustion suddenly forgotten. She was back in Ponyville, back years ago, at the day of Diamond Tiara's funeral, half the town gathered around what they knew to be an empty coffin. She had cried into Rainbow Dash's shoulder, her first real confrontation with mortality, and on either side of her Sweetie Belle had been comforted by Rarity and Apple Bloom by Big Macintosh. The solid rain had hid the tears of the adults while outside, but as they stepped inside the town hall Scootaloo remembered seeing redness in Rainbow Dash's eyes. Sweetie's whole face had been red and puffy, as was no doubt her own...
...But although Apple Bloom's face was wet, her eyes had been perfectly clear.
