“Thank you, come back soon!”
Sweetie Drops kept her cheerful smile until the filly left her store. The door swung back closed, making the bell jingle on its way.
The cream-colored mare sighed and let her rump fall to the ground. In front of her, one lonely bit was lying on the counter, the whole day’s income. Sweetie checked the clock in the corner of the room, reading almost six o’clock.
Lifting a hoof above her register, she let it fall heavily and with a “ding”, the drawer opened.
Sweetie grabbed the single coin in her teeth and threw it with the others. She gave her fortune a flat look. Four bits and twenty-five cents… With another sigh, she closed the cash register.
The candy shop was small, containing mostly the counter behind which Sweetie Drops was currently waiting and a few tables for the customers to sit at. In the back room, lots of candy were stockpiled. Sweetie had no reason to take them out and even less reason to prepare more in her workshop.
“Three months and all I’ve sold are a box of toffee and a dozen lollipops.” Sweetie Drops rested her chin on the counter, muttering to herself. “It looked so easy when I was a filly. Make candy, sell candy… Nothing to it.”
Nothing but silence answered the lonely mare. Not even a distant conversation or a fly buzzing in the room. Nothing but quietness. The store felt as dead as its previous owner.
Sweetie turned her head to a picture hanging on the wall. “How did you do it, auntie?”
The mare in the photo did not say a word, unsurprisingly. She simply stayed frozen with her eternal smile and kind eyes, giving her favorite niece a gentle look.
Sweetie Drops breathed slowly and heavily, feeling a weight growing in her chest with every passing second. Grunting, she forced herself to stand up and walked to the front window. Standing behind the display which had brilliantly failed to attract any customers until now, the shopkeeper watched the street outside.
Ponies trotted around. Mares and stallions, young and old, all different but with one thing in common: the happy grin on their faces. It seemed that every single pony in Ponyville was cheerful… This only made Sweetie Drops’ mood even darker.
Outside, a young and very pink mare turned her eyes towards her and smiled. Her huge grin was so bright that it could have lit up a moonless night. A bit of a smile appeared on Sweetie’s own lips as she waved at the hyper happy pony until she turned around and went to take care of whatever business she had to take care of. Probably planning another party.
“Why did you have to be so nice, Pinkie?” Sweetie Drops asked the empty store. “You’re the reason I don’t have any business and I can’t even hate you properly…”
The candy maker started to pace around her store like a lion in his cage. The Bonbon Bazaar and Sugarcube Corner had always been a sort of competition to each other, since ponies could only eat so much sweets in a day, but the pastry store seemed to attract everypony in Ponyville these days.
Sweetie recalled the time when she was a filly and visiting her aunt. Back then, the store had ponies coming in and out all the time. So much that the little filly had to help out with making the candy and eventually earned her cutie mark that way.
Nowadays, everypony was friends with Pinkie and Pinkie worked at Sugarcube Corner…
With a groan, Sweetie Drops headed for the door and flipped the sign to “closed”, headed back to her bedroom and collapsed on her bed.
The small clock on her nightstand ticked and tocked the seconds away while the mare stayed completely motionless.
“Another day down the drain… Why do I even bother?” She groaned loudly. “And why do I talk to myself so much?”
“Oh, right,” she answered herself. “It’s because I’m all alone in here…”
A long moment passed, with still nothing but the clock to keep her company.
“Dad was right. It was stupid to take over this shop… I bet he’ll never stop reminding me of it when I come home.”
So far, this had been the only thing that kept her in Ponyville, despite the total lack of business and her rapidly shrinking savings. Sweetie Drops had been eating nothing but hay for weeks by then, only so she could stay a little longer and not give her father the satisfaction of proving him right…
The lone pony tossed and turned on her bed, unable to sleep at such an early hour. After what felt like ages of lying around, she grunted and got up. A glance at the clock let her know that barely five minutes had actually passed…
“I’m gonna go crazy in here,” she muttered.
“What if you’re already crazy?” she answered herself with a silly voice.
“Oh, shush you!” she said, back to her ordinary tone.
An empty chuckle escaped her lips as she decided to go for a walk before losing what was left of her mind.
When Sweetie Drops wanted to get out of her store and let her mind rest a while, she always went to the same place. A bench at the edge of Ponyville’s park, with a nice view on the rolling hills to the west. When the sun went down, the sky took on the most beautiful colors, creating the perfect romantic setting. It always reminded her that she had no one to share it with, but she still felt that it was worth seeing anyway…
Slowly trotting to the bench, she almost cursed out loud when she spotted a pony already sitting on it. Sweetie first instinct was to turn tail and just go back home, but something intrigued her about the green pony. A mint-colored horn poked out of a pale green mane with white streaks. The hair was cut short but kind of messy looking, making Sweetie wonder if that pony had cut it by himself.
Walking a little closer, she finally understood what looked strange about the pony. It wasn’t her face, she looked like an ordinary mare, maybe a little prettier than average, but nothing you’d see on a magazine’s cover. She wasn’t wearing anything, she wasn’t even really doing anything… The only strange thing was the way she was sitting on that bench, the lower part of her back lying on the base, her legs dangling above the edge and her back straight up... Sweetie could feel her spine hurting just from looking at the green mare bending that way.
She could not tell how much time she had spent staring at the strange pony, but Sweetie only snapped out of it when the unicorn looked her way. A pair of golden eyes stared back for a moment.
“Can I help you?” Sweetie was so stunned by the clarity of the mare’s voice that it took her a while to realize that she had been asked a question.
“Oh! Uuuuh, I– I mean. No, I just…” Sweetie Drops shook her head and cleared her throat. “Let’s try again… I just wanted to have a seat. Is that alright with you?”
“Sure,” the green mare answered with a shrug.
Sweetie climbed up on the bench and lied down on her belly next to the green mare. The latter turned her eyes forward, watching the horizon without saying a word and Sweetie did the same. As the surprise of meeting the unicorn wore off, her depressing day soon came back to haunt her, sapping all the strength from her muscles and forcing her to rest her head on her forelegs like a dog.
The two ponies stayed silent and immobile for what could have been hours, until a drop of water fell on Sweetie’s muzzle, making her raise her head and look up at the sky.
Thick gray clouds were completely blocking the sky above her. More and more rain fell, building up into a drizzle of thin drops that seemed to pierce her skin and soak her fur in no time at all. “Great,” Sweetie said with a groan. “I completely forgot the weather team had rain planned for this evening.”
Next to her the unicorn didn’t move, except to blink the rain when it fell near her eyes. “You’re gonna stay here?” the strange mare asked all of a sudden. “In the rain?”
Sweetie Drops mulled this over for a moment, until she finally answered “I don’t care.”
“I see,” the unicorn said quietly. “Me neither.” A minute or two passed, with nothing but the rain’s soft pattering to keep the two mares company.
“Lyra Heartstrings,” the green unicorn said without warning.
Sweetie Drops blinked a few times. “Pardon?”
“That’s my name. Lyra Heartstrings…”
It took the candy maker a bit of time to realize that she should probably answer. “I’m Sweetie Drops,” she finally said. “Do you live in Ponyville? I don’t remember meeting you.”
“No. I arrived today.” Lyra turned her head over her shoulder, giving a look at the peaceful country town. “Looks like a nice place,” she finally said, taking her eyes back to the darkening horizon in front of her.
“Yeah,” Sweetie said with a sigh. “Sure is.”
“You look like you’ve had a hard time,” Lyra said, a curious look in her golden eyes.
“I guess… You don’t look so good either.”
Lyra hummed in reply. “What’s your cutie mark for? Candy?”
By reflex, Sweetie gave a glance at her flank. “Yes,” she answered. “I have a candy store in town.”
“Business is no good?”
“You can say that again…” The candy maker gave a quick look at the unicorn’s own flank, seeing a golden lyre shining in the fur. “You’re a musician?”
“Yeah… Business is no good either.”
“Oh…”
Lyra sighed. “Everypony wants to hear happy, cheerful songs. Stuff you can dance to… I don’t have anything against dance music. I even like to dance sometimes… But it’s not what I play.”
“Why don’t you play something else, then?”
“Why don’t you stop making candy?”
Sweetie winced a little at the harsh reply, but had to admit that it was a stupid question. She wouldn’t want to do something else than preparing and selling her sweets, it had to be the same for the musician.
“So,” Sweetie Drops asked softly, “What do you play exactly?”
“The blues, mostly.”
“Blues?”
“Hmm hmm. Not the kind of music pones can dance to.”
Sweetie stared at Lyra for a moment. Truth be told, she barely knew what the blues sounded like and she wasn’t even sure if it was actually pony music or a style that came from gryphons or zebras or some other faraway country. There was one thing she knew, though…
“I don’t feel like dancing,” Sweetie said. “So it should be fine, right?”
Lyra stared at her, blinking a few times. “You want me to play?”
“Sure, why not?”
The unicorn stared a little longer, until a little chuckle escaped her lips. “Yeah… Why not?”
A golden glow appeared around her horn and immediately, a lyre, an almost perfect copy of the one depicted on her flank, floated up in front of her. Lyra shook it a few times to get most of the rain out of it. Sweetie Drops expected Lyra to play using her magic, but as soon as her hooves touched the instrument, the golden glow disappeared. With her lyre in her hooves, Lyra no longer looked like a freak for seating in such an unnatural position: it was simply the only way to keep her hooves free to play.
One of her hooves plucked a string and a note, crystal clear, sounded in the air. The other hoof plucked another, then the other… The pure-sounding notes formed a slow, wistful melody, with the pitter-patter of the rain acting as an accompaniment.
That melody alone sounded of sorrow. Sadness... Sweetie Drops watched Lyra’s face as she played. Her eyes were closed and it was impossible to tell if the water flowing around them came from the rain or not, but in either case, the tears echoing through her lyre’s strings were unmistakable as the music played sobs and sighs.
Then, that incredibly clear voice of hers added to the music…
They say the grass is greener
On the other side of the fence.
I’ve grazed in many fields,
Gave every meadow a chance.
I just wanna find a pasture
No matter where it could be
That’s green enough for me.
I’ve travelled for so long
I’m the mare that always moves.
The one thing I’m looking for
Is a place to rest my hooves.
Yeah, I’m looking for my pasture
And I wonder if it can be
Green enough for me.
I’m not looking for a paradise.
No, I don’t want very much.
I don’t want a palace,
A mansion, a castle or such
All I want is a pasture
But it has to be
Green enough for me.
I’ll keep looking if I have to
Oh, until the day I die
No matter what, I have to find
The one place where I can lie
Gotta find this pasture
That’s all I want you see
One green enough for me...
Lyra kept playing wordlessly for a moment, until the music finally slowed down and stopped.
Sweetie Drops simply stared at Lyra. For some strange reason, listening to such a sad song had lifted some of the weight off her heart. Maybe it made her own problems seem not so important, or maybe it was just the reassuring feeling that she was not the only pony to be down on her luck…
A shiver ran through the cream-colored mare’s spine. Without the music to distract her, she couldn’t help but realize how soaked she was. Sweetie Drops climbed off the bench and shook herself, trying to get most of the water out of her coat. Considering the rain hadn’t stopped, she was not very successful…
As her shivers became more consistent, she turned to the green unicorn, who seemed intent on staying right where she was.
“I’m going to go home and get myself dry,” Sweetie simply said. When she got no answer from Lyra, she added: “not to tell you what to do, but you shouldn’t stay in the rain either...”
“I guess…”
Sweetie stared at the motionless mare for a moment. “Are you going to stay here?” she finally asked.
“I don’t have anywhere to go right now.”
“Don’t– Don’t you have a home?”
“Couldn’t pay the rent,” Lyra answered with a sigh.
“What about your family?”
“Haven’t spoken to them in years.”
“No friends to help you out?”
Lyra did not even bother to answer this time. Instead, she began playing a few notes on her lyre.
Sweetie Drops smirked as a simple idea struck her.
“I have an extra room at home,” she told Lyra. “You can stay there if you want.”
The unicorn stared at her, eyes wide in surprise. “You– You want me to stay with you?”
“You’ll catch your death if you stay out there. And I could use the company,” Sweetie said. “I think I’ll go crazy if I stay alone in this big house...”
“That’s nice of you, but I don’t have the money to pay a rent, or food or nothing…”
Sweetie Drops sighed as she was reminded of her own finances.
She shook her head. “You know what?” she said with a confident smile. “We’ll figure something out. Come on, I’m freezing out here!”
Lyra stared at Sweetie for a while longer, until she eventually shrugged and got on her hooves. The two soaked mares walked at a tranquil pace through the streets of Ponyville.
“They said ponies in Ponyville are the nicest in all of Equestria,” Lyra said after a minute of walking. “I guess that’s right.”
“I don’t know,” Sweetie answered. “I moved here not so long ago… But thanks.”
“Hey, you’re letting a penniless mare like me stay at your home for free. If that’s not being nice, I don’t know what is.”
Sweetie chuckled. “I never said you’d stay for free.”
Lyra gave her a curious look, raising an eyebrow. “I told you I don’t have any money.”
“I know,” the candy maker answered with a smile. “I guess you’ll have to play a lot of private concerts for me, then.”
A big grin finally appeared on the unicorn’s lips and she could not help but jump in the air as she heard that. “I guess I will,” she said with a laugh. “I guess I will.”
Author's Note
Was feeling down yesterday. Took a day off work and spent the night listening to some blues. Got the idea for this. Used my day off to write it.
I'm not really happy with how this story turned out, but maybe some of you guys will like it. Thanks for reading anyway.
