Rock Quarry reached a hoof over his wife's shoulder and gave her a little squeeze as the taxi stopped in front of the Ponyville Orphanage. She was looking longingly at the building, something that made him smile. They would find their foal in there, he was sure of it. After the disappointments of not conceiving after so long, despite their best efforts, now would finally be the time when they became happy parents. He leaned in and gently kissed her on the neck.
"You ready, Silver Shine?"
Silver Shine turned her head to her husband and gave him a small smile. "I've been ready for years, Rock, and a part of me, I'm not sure where it's coming from, thinks that the foal that we're going to bring home has been too."
"I'm sure you're right." Rock Quarry motioned with his hoof for his wife to get out of the taxi, and he quickly followed behind her. After hoofing the driver ten bits, the two of them began walking towards the orphanage. "Our foal is going to be the greatest, I just know it!"
"Somepony who has longed for parents all of his or her life, and now we get to be those parents to him or her!" Silver agreed.
"It'll be wonderful when we see the look on that foal's face when they find out that they're going home today." Rock Quarry's smile widened as he reached the door of the orphanage. "I think that's going to be my favorite part about all of this."
"Mine too, sweetie." Silver Shine leaned in and gave her husband a quick, loving nuzzle. "Mine too."
"Well then, madam..." Rock Quarry opened up the door and bowed low to Silver Shine. "Let's go make a foal happy."
The couple gave each other a quick peck on the lips and walked inside the orphanage. The first thing that the saw was a blue earth pony mare with her mane in a tight bun and glasses balanced on her muzzle beaming at the two of them. She walked up to the couple and extended her hoof.
"Good afternoon to you. I assume you're Mr. and Mrs. Rock Quarry?"
"That's us," Rock Quarry said, shaking the mare's hoof.
"Excellent." The mare inclined her head in a small bow. "My name is Ms. Caregiver. I have run the Ponyville Orphanage for the last thirty years and let me assure you..." Ms. Caregiver put a gentle hoof on Silver Shine's shoulder. "These foals are among the best behaved, loving, and energetic that you will ever meet. They are all really looking forward to meeting the two of you."
"Well we're looking forward to meeting them," Silver Shine said happily. "We've wanted a foal for such a long time, and we're thrilled that you've given us this opportunity."
"Oh, the pleasure is all ours." Ms. Caregiver beckoned the two to follow her, and the three of them walked down a long hallway filled with photographs. Ms. Caregiver smiled as she looked over the pictures. "I'm sure that you'll find your future child here. These are the pictures of all of the happy parents with their new children, and I know that your picture will adorn this wall by the time you leave."
"Aww, it's so cute," Silver Shine squeed as she examined the photographs. "Look at them, Rock. They look so happy!"
"And so shall we when we find our foal," Rock Quarry said as he looked at the pictures. "Heck, I'd say that I'm already happy just looking at these ponies."
"Well you shall join them soon enough." Ms. Caregiver stopped in front of a large door, behind which the sound of foals playing was coming. "You go on in and talk to a few of them. They won't flock to you, they know that it's best to just keep on playing and let you come to them." Ms. Caregiver opened up the door and pointed inside. "Go on in. Your new foal awaits."
Without a hint of trepidation, the two ponies trotted inside the room where the foals were. Silver Shine gasped quietly when she saw the scene before her, and leaned her head against her husband's shoulder. "They're all... so beautiful."
The room was filled with close to fifty foals, all happily going about their business. Some were playing with a hoofball, giggling and running as the ball bounced between them. Others were sitting quietly in a corner where a stack of books rested and were reading, either silently or to each other. Others still were engaged in games of their own imagination, running around and going on whatever adventures their mind had thought up.
"I... I don't even know where to start," Rock Quarry muttered. He chuckled quietly and shook his head. "I mean, how do we pick just one?"
"I don't know," Silver Shine whispered. "This... this is a little overwhelming."
Rock Quarry nodded and spotted a group of three foals quietly playing cards with each other in one of the corners of the room. He nudged his wife and pointed at the three of them. She smiled and nodded, and the two walked over to the corner. The three foals looked up when they saw the two of them approaching and put their cards down. They smiled at the couple and stood up as Rock Quarry and Silver Shine reached them.
"Hello," Silver Shine said warmly. "What are your names?"
"My name is Wind Racer," the first one, a pegasus filly said. "I'm pleased to meet you."
"We're pleased to meet you too, Wind Racer," Rock Quarry said before turning his attention to the one in the middle, a unicorn filly. "And what's your name?"
"My name is Shimmering Arrow, sir," the filly said, reaching out a hoof so that she could shake theirs. "I'm really glad you wanna talk to us."
"We're happy to talk to you, Shimmering Arrow," Silver Shine said. "And what about you?" She said to the third one, an earth pony colt. "What's your name?"
"My name is Tilled Earth," said the colt. He gave the two a smile and took a deep breath. "I'm really glad that you've come over to talk to us. Most ponies don't."
"Really?" Silver Shine frowned and tilted her head. "Why is that?"
"I suppose it's because they can tell we've been here a while, even though none of us are older than ten." Tilled Earth sighed and shook his head. "I myself have been here for six years, which is farther back than I care to remember."
Rock Quarry clicked his tongue. "That's a shame."
"I know, but it's not as bad as me." Shimmering Arrow looked down at the ground and flattened her ears. "I was born here and my mother gave me up for adoption immediately."
"Well that's--"
"I'm third generation at this orphanage, I'm afraid," Wind Racer said gravely. "My grandmother was born here, but she was never adopted. She married another orphan here at sixteen, had my mother, and gave her up for adoption. My mother also married here at sixteen, then gave me up for adoption when she had me." Wind Racer sighed. "Genetically, I've been here for almost sixty years."
Rock Quarry and Silver Shine exchanged a look of bewilderment, unsure of whether or not they could believe what they were hearing. However, the foals were not even close to done.
"I come from a broken home," Tilled Earth admitted. "When I was two, my father got drunk and burned down my house to collect insurance money to pay his gambling debts."
"Yes, that is unfortunate," Shimmering Arrow said with a nod, "but my father was the mayor of his town, and he burned down all of it and the next town over for its insurance money."
"I was adopted once and it was a pretty broken home too." Wind Racer sat down on the floor and poked at the cards she had been holding. "My adoptive father tried to assassinate Princess Celestia, and would have if his arrow hadn't gone wide right. My entire family was branded traitors to the crown and our good name besmirched forever. They couldn't afford to keep me after the government took everything, so I came back here."
"My mother once tried to start a war with Griffonia," Shimmering Arrow said solemnly. "She impersonated the Griffonian Princess by gluing fake feathers onto her body and tried to assassinate their emperor to frame it on Princess Luna. The scheme was uncovered, and that's why I'm here."
Rock Quarry scoffed and shook his head, completely unable to believe his ears. "Now wait a minute here. I'm not sure that's all tr--"
He was cut off by a scoff from Tilled Earth, who waved his hoof at his friends. "At least your parents loved you. My father used to make me carry cinder blocks on my back with dynamite strapped to it. He'd light the dynamite and tell me that I had until it went off to get the blocks to the barn."
"You're lucky," Shimmering Arrow muttered. "I wish I had to carry cinder blocks. My father would never let me get off that easy, and if he did, you probably had a longer fuse than my father would have used. I had to earn my place in my house by building a new one from scratch every time we moved. I had to harvest the materials myself too. At night I had to sleep upside down on a tree branch with only a four inch by four inch piece of newspaper for a blanket."
"That actually sounds fun compared to what I had to go through." Wind Racer ran a hoof through her mane and shook her head. "My father used to take me to the highest tower of our city and drop me off for the amusement of his friends. Sometimes he'd get his crossbow and fire down at me. He was a pretty good aim after a few years too. When I was lucky it went right into my head for an instant kill, but I was rarely lucky."
"Now hold on," Silver Shine said, holding her hoof out to the three of them. "Now I know you're--"
"I died of pneumonia no less than eight times when I was growing up," Tilled Earth said sadly. "If Princess Celestia wasn't such a kind ruler I wouldn't be here today. She knew my father had burned down our house, killing my entire family, but she also knew that I had nothing to do with it. She did say after the seventh time that she couldn't do it anymore, so I had to crawl back through the gates of Tartarus into the land of the living."
"At least your body was intact!" Shimmering Arrow cried. "I was eaten by timberwolves every third Saturday of the month for three years! Let me tell you, those teeth hurt."
Rock Quarry and Silver Shine heard the door open behind them, and they looked back to see Ms. Caregiver looking at them with a smile. A smile that quickly faded when she saw just who they were talking to. She shook her head and facehooved before closing the door again, leaving the couple to the foals.
"Couldn't have hurt as much as the time I was murdered by all six Elements of Harmony." Wind Racer scoffed and crossed her forelegs. "To this day I don't know what I did to make them so angry at me, but they just took me right out of the orphanage and murdered me for no apparent reason. The Element of Kindness did live up to her name, though. She only beat me twice with a rusty pipe as opposed to six times for the rest of them."
"The Elements?" Tilled Earth rolled his eyes. "You're lucky to have been killed by the Elements. I was killed by three nobodies. I still don't know who they were." Tilled Earth clicked his tongue and sat down. "Then when I resurrected I had to come home and eat my once daily meal of two dried beans and a half eye dropper of water."
"Two beans and half an eye dropper?" Shimmering Arrow grunted and sat down next to her fellows. "You were lucky to have that. I was only fed half a bean and a quarter of an eye dropper of water once a week. It's all our family could afford, you know."
"I was only fed once a year if I was lucky," Wind Racer said with a sigh. "Even then I'm pretty sure the food was so microscopic that it hardly did anything. I didn't even get water! I didn't even know what you were supposed to do with water until I was six years old."
Rock Quarry had had enough. He turned his head to his wife and jerked it towards the door. She nodded back to him and the two walked towards the door and out of the playroom. When they were out, they saw Ms. Caregiver sitting on a nearby bench, her head in her hooves and muttering something to herself that they couldn't quite make out. When she heard the two come up to her, she looked up at them and sighed.
"I see you met some of our more... colorful foals."
Silver Shine frowned and tilted her head. "Are they always like that?"
"Yep," Ms. Caregiver grumbled. "Every time new parents come in looking to adopt, they tell those stories." She sighed again and shook her head. "I can take those three out so that you can talk with a few of the others. They will follow you around and keep telling more of those stories. Trust me, they have an endless supply."
Rock Quarry glanced over at his wife with a questioning look. She gave him a small smile and a single nod, allowing him to turn back to Ms. Caregiver.
"Actually, we've made our decision."
* * * *
Silver Shine hummed a happy tune to herself as she took a cake out of the oven for dessert that evening, and reached over to where a tub full of icing lay, and ignited her horn to cast a cooling spell on the cake so that she could put on the icing. As the cake cooled, she heard the door open behind her, and she turned to see Wind Racer trotting up to her with her saddlebags on her back. Silver Shine leaned down and nuzzled her daughter.
"Hey, Wind. How was school today?"
"It was great, Mom!" Wind said happily, putting her saddlebag on a chair near the kitchen table. "I don't have too much homework. Just a few pages of math and one of spelling."
"Good, I'm glad."
Silver Shine turned back to the cake, but the door opened and closed again, heralding the arrival of Tilled Earth. Silver smiled at him and nuzzled him when he came up to hug her. "Hello, Earth. How was school?"
"It was great, Mom!" Tilled Earth's smile fell, and he sighed sadly as the door opened again. "I have a lot of homework, though. Ms. Cheerilee told me to do thirty pages of math and a hundred in my spelling book!"
"Oh you're lucky!" Shimmering Arrow said as she walked into the kitchen. "For science Ms. Cheerilee told me that I had to discover a new species of frog by tomorrow! I have to go into the Everfree Forest and everything!"
"Ooh, can we trade?" Wind Racer asked. "Ms. Cheerilee said that for homework I have to master a Sonic Rainboom and do a fifty page paper on the science behind it with doctoral math equations and everything!"
"Wow, that sounds super easy," Tilled Earth said with a shake of his head. "Ms. Cheerilee told me to go to Sweet Apple Acres and harvest their entire orchard in under an hour, then in the next hour I had to find a potion to make all of the apples grow back. It's a science project."
"For history Ms. Cheerilee told me that I had to master time travel," Shimmering Arrow said. "I have to bring her back an ancient relic from the Pre-Discordian Era to prove that I did it, too."
"Well, that sure sounds tough, children!" Silver Shine turned back to her cake and scooped out a large chunk of icing which she began spreading across the top of the cake. "I sure hope you get all of that done before dinnertime. I'd hate to have you miss out on dessert today." Silver Shine finished icing the cake and wrapped the pan in tin foil. "I expect to see your newly discovered species, Rainboom, ancient relic and potions before dinner."
With that, Silver Shine put the cake on top of the fridge and walked out of the kitchen, once again humming her happy tune to herself and leaving her three children behind, their ears flat and their eyes twitching.
Author's Note
Written for fun.
