Dinky was growing up. Mommy let her stay home by herself when she went to work now. She didn't have to have Amethyst or Miss Harvest watch her or anything. She still didn't have her cutie mark and she couldn't really do magic yet except for maybe lifting her blocks sometimes, but growing up was still growing up, even if it just meant you didn't need a foalsitter anymore.
She was building Canterlot Castle today. She'd never seen the castle before, but she was pretty sure she knew what it looked like. It was the kind of thing that any pony who still made things out of blocks just knew about.
Just as she was putting the finishing touches on the wing of the castle where Princess Luna would live, there was a crash of thunder from outside the house. Dinky jumped at the sound and dropped her block. With some quick thinking and quicker hooves, she caught the block before it could hit the castle. But she was so focused on it that she didn’t notice her tail hit Luna’s tower, which toppled over into Celestia’s tower, which fell onto the smallest tower, meant for Twilight. Dinky liked Twilight. She was nice to everypony and very smart. But she was a new princess, so Dinky didn’t think they could have built her a very big tower yet.
Dinky looked over the scattered pile of wooden blocks that had been Canterlot Castle just a few minutes ago, then shrugged and tossed her last block on top of the pile. Leaving the mess for later, which you’re allowed to do when you’re grown up enough to be home alone, Dinky trotted over to the couch and pulled herself up onto it, climbing up onto the back to watch out the window as the storm broke. Rain and hail pounded against the house, shaking the windows and making a sound like a hundred foal rattles all over the roof.
Outside, she could see sticks, leaves, and other little bits of things blown through the air by the wind, which was also whipping the trees back and forth, twisting them almost sideways. Sometimes there would be loud cracks to interrupt the rumbles of thunder, announcing when a tree had bent too far and been broken by the wind. The sky kept getting darker, and between the rain and the dark, it was hard for Dinky to see anything unless there was lightning. Even when the lightning did light things up, it made everything look strange, and all the shapes out there could have been anything.
Dinky shivered at the thought of all the things that could hide in a storm like this and turned away from the window, climbing back down the couch to the floor. She dropped onto her stomach and wiggled her way under the couch, feeling around underneath until she eventually pulled out a small music box. She pushed the little device over to the other end of the room, within sight of the front door. That way, she would be the first to know when mommy came home. It didn’t matter that, being home alone, she would be the first to know anyway. The important part was having her back as soon as she could.
Dinky knew mommy would probably be late coming home. She’d had to do that before, when there was a storm and she couldn’t fly back before dark. But those times she’d been staying with Miss Harvest, and they played games until Dinky fell asleep, and then mommy would be there when she got up. Dinky opened the little music box and started it playing, trying to drown out the noise of the storm. She sang along to the music - a song mommy had sung to her. She was always pretty sure mommy made up the words because she couldn’t remember the real ones, but that was okay. She liked mommy’s words better, anyway.
We can chase the clouds away
So the sun shines again today
Winds will calm and rain will dry
And blue and white will fill the sky
Little fillies soon will play
When the sun shines again today
Dinky pulled her blocks over to the music box and started building again. This time she was going to make the Crystal Empire. Amethyst went there once, and she told Dinky they had a castle tower bigger than anything in Canterlot. It was funny that Cadance was almost as new a princess as Twilight but had the biggest tower. Maybe it was because they had an empire; that sounded important.
We can chase the clouds away...
Dinky looked up at the window in the door, and the sky outside had gotten even darker.
She wasn’t sure she liked staying home alone very much, after all.
Morning came, and Dinky was still alone in the house.
Every other time she had to be out late, her mommy was still there in time to wake her up. Dinky slipped out of her bed and trotted over to her window, peering out just in case the storm was still going and she just hadn't heard it. That's the only reason she could think of for mommy not making it home yet.
But outside the skies, while grey, weren't dark and angry. It was exactly the kind of mornings that always came after a big Everfree storm. Dim and wet, but somehow full of energy, like everypony had been indoors too long and had to go back outside. Dinky watched for a little while, just in case the storm was only taking a break, and also in case mommy was flying back just then.
But all she saw were a few ponies who were just starting to clean up from the storm, and, up in the sky, Rainbow Dash and another pegasus flying over the forest, carrying something between them. She watched the ponies for a little bit, until a grumbling from her tummy reminded her that she'd have to keep being grown up and find herself her own breakfast, just like she did with dinner the night before.
As she started downstairs, she imagined trotting into the kitchen to discover mommy had just gotten back, and had only just pulled off her rain cloak before starting a breakfast for them both. The idea of jumping onto her and not letting go all day was all she could think of, and soon she was nearly galloping down the stairs. This meant she missed the last three, stumbled, and crashed into the back of a chair, but she still pulled herself up and ran the rest of the way to the kitchen.
It was empty.
Her heart sank, even though she hadn’t really expected mommy to have come home without going up to see her. She’d just hoped that maybe mommy had decided to do things a little differently this time. But nopony was there to meet her in the kitchen, no rain cloak hung by the door, and no water or mud had been tracked inside.
Dinky lay down on the kitchen floor, resting her chin on her forelegs and sniffling. She just didn’t know what could keep mommy away for so long… She might have stayed there all day if not for her stomach reminding her again of why she came downstairs in the first place.
Breakfast was only leftover muffins because she couldn't get up to the countertop to make toast, and she wasn't allowed to use the stove yet to make eggs. But she liked muffins, so that was okay. They were mommy’s favorite, after all, and having them helped Dinky imagine that she was somewhere nearby.
After her breakfast, Dinky headed out to the living room and climbed back up onto the couch, finding the same place she sat and watched the storm the day before. Except now, she wasn't watching the storm, she was watching all the ponies in Ponyville cleaning up after it.
Earth ponies used heavy ropes to pull the broken trees down and drag them out to a big pile at the edge of town.
Pegasi flew back and forth clearing away all the lingering clouds and looking for problems the others would need to fix.
Unicorns used their magic to replace missing shingles on newer rooftops and pull debris free of thatching on older ones.
Fillies and colts of every sort ran around gathering up fallen sticks and other things that had blown around in the storm.
Princess Twilight flew back and forth, making sure everypony knew what to do.
But mommy was nowhere to be seen.
She kept watching for a while, until things seemed to be quieting down outside. Slipping down off the back of the couch, she looked around the room. She didn’t really want to play the music box today, not until she got to hear the words properly from mommy again. The Crystal Spire sat half-finished in the middle of a pile of her blocks, but she’d built castles all day yesterday, and by this point she’d need mommy’s help to put the highest pieces into place anyway. She sighed and rubbed a hoof against the fabric of the couch before dropping back down the floor and trotting over to a small desk, pulling a coloring book out, along with crayons and a stack of blank paper, all of which she brought back to the couch.
She passed her time that day coloring and drawing pictures of her own, most of which were of mommy, though some had Amethyst or Miss Harvest in them as well. They eventually started to develop an adventurous theme, each drawing an ever-more-improbable adventure that mommy might have gone on to be away from home for so long. In Dinky’s drawings, mommy outflew griffons, explored ruins, unmasked changelings, and fought dragons. As each story came to a close, Dinky would pull herself back up and resume watching out the window.
Everypony was finishing cleaning up the storm, and ponies were going back to business as usual. Miss Harvest had her stand set up next to Applejack’s cart, like usual, but Dinky didn’t see Miss Harvest. Another pony was there in her place, a stallion, but not Mr. Noteworthy. It was somepony that Dinky didn’t know, but thought she might have seen around Miss Harvest’s house a few times. She wondered about that for a few minutes, but then thought of another adventure for mommy to go on and promptly forgot about the carrot stall in favor of her drawings.
Eventually, the sky grew dark again, and all the ponies outside went back to their homes. Dinky watched the sun set, still hoping she’d see mommy coming up the Everfree road each time she looked, but always disappointed. She pulled herself away from the window one last time and slipped down off of the couch again, heading back into the kitchen to find herself dinner. She wasn’t very hungry, and settled for an apple and another muffin. After that, she returned to the couch, moving her drawings to the nearby end table and pulling a blanket across the cushions.
She wasn’t supposed to sleep downstairs, but this way she could hear if the door opened late at night.
She curled up under the blanket and sniffled again, holding herself back from crying, because there wasn’t anything to cry about. Just because you’re lonely and miss your mommy and maybe a little bit scared after being in the house alone for two days… None of those were things you ought to cry about.
Tears dampened Dinky’s pillow as she began drifting off to sleep, the only sound the occasional soft hiccup of a filly who was trying not to cry.
She didn’t want to be home alone ever again.
It wasn’t the door but the sunrise that woke Dinky the next morning.
She rolled over and looked around the still-empty house. Her stomach felt funny, and she didn’t think it was just because she was hungry. With a whimper, she slipped down from the couch and made her way back into the kitchen. She took the last muffin from the box on the table, then sat on the floor to eat. For some reason, she just wasn’t hungry, though, and had to throw it out after only eating half of it.
Dinky went back to the living room and sat looking at the door.
She usually had to have permission before going outside, and she still wanted to be here in case mommy came home. But mommy had been missing two nights already, so there wasn’t anypony to give her permission. And it might be up to her to make sure somepony knew mommy hadn’t come home. After all, it would be a grown up thing to decide to do something like that on her own.
Dinky made up her mind and trotted up to the door, rearing up on her hind legs to grab the knob and pull the door open. She hesitated a moment at the threshold, but reminded herself this was to find mommy and set forth into Ponyville. Few ponies were up at this hour, but she had a stroke of luck when then rounded a corner to find Rainbow Dash looking absent-mindedly out at the sky and stretching her wings.
Rainbow Dash would be able to help her! Rainbow Dash was a hero. Mommy told her all about that.
“Rainbow Dash!” Dinky ran towards the famous pegasus.
“Dinky?” Dash shook her head and looked down at the little unicorn, clearly puzzled by her presence. “What are you doing out here?”
“Rainbow Dash, mommy is missing!”
Dash blinked. “What do you mean she’s-”
“I waited and waited, but she never came home after the big storm! And then I waited some more yesterday and she still never came home!”
Dash looked at her in bewilderment, until suddenly her eyes widened and she brought her hoof to her mouth with a sharp intake of air. “Oh, no… You don’t… No one… Oh, man.” Dash shook her head and ran the hoof through her mane.
Dinky tilted her head. Rainbow Dash was making a lot of strange faces. She looked confused, then sad, then worried. But before she could ask Rainbow Dash what was wrong, the pegasus spoke again.
“Okay, hey, know what we should do?”
“What?”
“We should go let Twilight know what happened. She’ll know exactly what to do about missing mommies, and I know just where to find her. Come on.”
Dash gave the little filly a nudge and lead her down the road towards the center of town. The two walked in silence, and while Dinky was glad to be getting help finding mommy, she couldn’t help but feel like something was upsetting Rainbow Dash. The pegasus kept staring off into the distance and chewing her bottom lip. Dinky wondered if maybe Rainbow had been getting ready to clean up the sky, and she’d interrupted her. She hung her head at thought of bothering such a famous and important pony, but her spirits lifted again when she realized their destination - Sugarcube Corner.
As they entered the bakery, Dinky saw the only other occupants were Princess Twilight and Pinkie Pie, who were chatting at the counter. Both looked up at the sound of the door opening.
“Hey, Dashie! Back already?” Pinkie asked. “Ooh, who do you have with…”
Pinkie trailed off as she caught sight of Dinky, and Dinky could have sworn her normally curly hair straightened and even deflated a bit upon seeing her. Twilight had a similar response, glancing back and forth between Dinky and Dash with a worried look.
“Oh, hello there, Dinky. How are you holding up?” she asked, in an overly gentle tone.
“I’m okay,” the filly replied. “But I’m worried about mommy. Rainbow Dash said you could help me find her.”
Twilight turned her questioning look toawards Dash, who responded by holding a hoof up to her own mouth and shaking her head, then turning to Dinky.
“Hey, squirt. How about you find something you want in here, anything at all, and me and Pinkie will take care of it. I need to talk to these two in the back for a minute and explain whats going on.”
Dash nudged Dinky over in front of the bakery display case, then grabbed her two friends and swept all three of them through a door near the end of the counter, which was kicked closed behind her.
Dinky set about finding her treat of choice, eventually settling on what had to be the biggest cupcake she’d ever seen, chocolate with some sort of peanut butter cream filling inside. Just as she was about to take her first bite, though, she heard a loud ‘WHAT?!’ from Twilight’s voice in the back room. Having nothing better to do until they started helping her look for mommy, Dinky sat down by the closed door to eat her cupcake and eavesdrop.
“I guess everypony thought somepony else was taking care of it. She just got overlooked.”
“How do you overlook a child?”
“I don’t know, Twilight! Just… what do we do?”
“We have to tell her.”
“Just like… now, Pinkie? Just like that?”
“Yeah. It’ll be sad at first, but the sooner she hears it the sooner she can start smiling again.”
“Pinkie’s right. We should break the news to her. I can-”
“I’m doing it.”
“Dash?”
“I should be the one to tell her. It should be my responsibility.”
“Dash, you can’t still be blaming yourself…”
“We could have made it back! If I’d flown a little faster, spent a little less time on the ground, searched west-east instead of east-west, or I dunno, skipped part of breakfast!”
“Dash, stop. Stop beating yourself up over this. She was out there losing blood all night. There was nothing you could have done, and it’s not like you were the only one out there.”
“Yeah, and that’s my team. I’m in charge of the weather crew, and if they mess up, I messed up.”
“The weather crew, Dash, not Search and Rescue, not the Wonderbolts. You did everything you could, all of you. Heck, you did more than that, you went above and beyond, alright? You did everything a pony could do, but sometimes… sometimes, that’s just not enough. Okay?”
“But-” There were hoofsteps from behind the door, stumbling as though one pony just had just run into another. “...Okay. Okay, you’re right. Sorry. Thanks Pinkie, I needed that.”
“It’s okay, Dashie.”
“I still want to be the one, though.”
“Dash…”
“It’s okay, Twilight. She can do this. Just let her, ‘kay?”
“...okay.”
The door opened, and Dinky scooted away so it wouldn’t look like she’d been listening in. Dash looked around a moment before she saw her down against the wall. “Hey, squirt. Come sit with me. I need to tell you something.”
Dinky blinked at that before getting up to follow Dash over to one of the tables, taking a seat where Dash patted a hoof on the cushion.
Dash looked out the window for a moment, then sighed and turned to Dinky. “Look, kid… Your mom, she… That storm was really bad. And Derpy always surprised me with how good she was at flying through bad weather. But every pony has her limits.”
Dash paused and kicked her hoof against the chair leg for a moment.
“Your mom had a really bad crash, kid. Even worse than the one that put me in the hospital a couple years ago. And with how bad the storm was, nopony was out there to find her until morning. She got hurt really, really bad and… And we didn’t find her in time.” Dash put a wing over Dinky’s shoulders. “She died yesterday morning.”
Dinky just stared up at her, tears welling up in her eyes. Rainbow Dash, hero of Equestria, had just told her that…
“You’re lying,” Dinky said.
“Dinky, I’m sorry, but-”
“LYING!” Dinky shrieked, pushing away and tumbling out of the chair before running out of the bakery.
“Dinky!” Dash jumped up to give chase, only to find Twilight’s wing in front of her.
“Let her go, Dash. She won’t want to talk to anypony right now. Give her some time.”
Dinky didn’t go home. Rainbow Dash would just come looking for her there. That and Dinky was terrified that the house might still be empty, and then that might mean Rainbow Dash was right. Instead, she curled up deep in a small thicket of bushes near the schoolhouse. She and Pipsqueak found this little niche during a game of hide-and-seek at recess a few months ago, and it always made a great hiding place.
She wanted to hide now.
She didn’t want to think about mommy being gone.
Or no more surprise muffin breakfasts.
Or not telling anypony about all the adventures she drew.
Or not being held up to put the highest blocks on the tower.
Or not hearing songs with all the wrong words that still sounded exactly right.
Or not hearing stories about all the things you’d see while delivering mail, which were just as made up and just as right as the songs.
She just wanted to curl up, hide from all of those things, and cry.
So she did.
And eventually all of the sobbing, coughs, and hiccups faded away as she exhausted herself and fell asleep in a bed of leaves.
She woke when she felt something soft brush her coat, and saw strands of gold in the corner of her eye.
“Mommy?” she asked as she pushed herself up, but no one was there. Leaves swayed in the breeze, brushing across her coat, and between them, golden rays of sunlight streamed through the thicket and caught in the corner of her eye.
It looked like it was nearly noon, so Dinky stood the rest of the way and brushed herself off, trudging along towards the other end of Ponyville. She wasn’t sure how long the walk was, because she wasn’t paying attention to things like that right now. She just walked until she found herself in the shadow of Rainbow Dash’s cloud home, and there she lay down in the grass and waited.
Soon, she heard wing flaps, and then hooves striking the ground. Somepony lay down next to her.
“Hey, kid,” Rainbow Dash said, quietly. “You okay?”
Dinky shook her head.
“Anything I can do to help?”
Dinky shook her head again, but still curled up closer to Dash, who wrapped a wing around the unicorn filly. The two lay in silence for a time.
“...can I see mommy?”
“Huh?” Dash started at the sudden question.
“You found her, right?” Dinky looked up at her. “I want to see mommy again.”
“Anything I can do, kid.”
Rainbow Dash flew them both to the Ponyville Hospital, but when they arrived, they didn’t go up the stairs to the left of the nurse’s desk like all the times Dinky and mommy had visited people here. Instead, they went to the right, passing through an unassuming door in the corner of the room. There was a small plaque on the wall by the door, but Dinky couldn’t tell what it said. It was a word she didn’t know yet. All she knew it this place was cold and smelled funny, and it upset her tummy a bit.
Rainbow Dash lead them down a long hallway, eventually stopping to talk to a stallion in a white coat behind a desk. Dinky couldn’t really follow what they said, but both kept glancing back at her, and she thought she heard Rainbow Dash say something about taking responsibility again. Then the stallion got up and went into one of the many doors lining each side of the hall. A few minutes passed, and he came back out, saying something to Rainbow Dash as he went.
Dash lead her to the door he’d gone through. Inside, there was a table with wheels on it, and on top of that, something under a sheet. Dash pulled the sheet back, and Dinky saw a glimpse of grey coat and blonde mane. Dash picked her up and put her on the side of the table.
“Take as long as you want, kid. I’ll be right here.”
Dinky looked down her mother’s body, and ran a hoof through her coat. It was almost like she was sleeping, and Dinky could imagine her getting up and everything going back to normal. But even a child would notice that her chest didn’t rise and her wings were bent at terrible angles. Dinky crawled between mommy’s forelegs and pressed up against her. She was cold, too.
Dinky noticed Rainbow Dash was quietly crying as she stood next to the table. She wondered why Dash would be crying for her mommy, but decided to ignore that and just enjoy the feeling of being together with mommy one last time.
