Author's Note
In which Limestone starts a fight.
Limestone, Prelude
The Pie sisters were looking for trouble.
They usually were. In the small town of Waeldestone it wasn’t always easy to find, but then, looking was half the fun.
When they met the night they’d squabbled over where they would go. It was Lime’s original idea, so she should have called the shots; the time, the place, the activities, but that never really carried any legitimacy within their group, and especially not that night.
Limestone had a dangerous aura hanging over her—they all did, but Limestone’s was slowly blotting and bleeding out theirs, becoming heavier and more unstable. She had a need for violence ever present, but there was something, just something, about that particular night… a thirst for blood and the satisfying crack of hoof against bone—something—anything—and maybe she could outdistance her foul mood, or perhaps meet it head-on.
If she met it, bloodied it, conquered it, she knew she would just keep punching until she stopped boiling and burning and hurting.
Perhaps because her dangerous mood showed so clearly in her eyes and in the cold set of her mouth, she'd been outvoted.
In the end they settled on pool and beer, though the twins complained, as they were still shy of age and wouldn’t be served.
They were a strange and ragtag group, the Pie mares. Rough around the edges, and always angry at something, they’d come a-barreling into town at least once a week, and when they did, stallions kept their backs to the walls and locked their sons and daughters up tight.
Maud was the eldest in every single meaning of the word. The wisest, the most thoughtful and mature, the core of the group, really. The Rock. When voting, as they did about practically everything, Maud had the final tie breaker, and when out causing trouble, as they did when doing practically everything, Maud had the burden of responsibility.
Limestone was close behind her, some two years her junior; tall and rangy with hooves ready and often too eager to find a target. Her eyes, Igneous Rock Pie’s golden gifts, could carve a pony into pieces at ten paces. When the dark mood was on her, a wise pony stayed back eleven or more.
The twins rounded off the foursome. Pinkamina was the elder of the two, if one could count twelve minutes as holding any significant life experience that could well and truly mark her as deserving of the title of elder. As it was, it didn't, but Pinkie was the type to point out the twelve minute life advantage whenever she could. Marble was cooler, calmer than her counterpart, with a smoky, slowly smoldering way about her. The two of them existed in perfect concordance, in that special way that only twins could, and made up both the Personality and Voice of the group. They both loved to talk, were good at it, and exercised their affinity for language whenever they could.
But even the twins had grim, shut mouths that particular night. Even Pinkie Pie, everypony’s sweetheart, had an irrefutable coolness about her, a distinctive and pervasive quality of meanness that wrinkled the area between her brows and made her light, airy eyes a sharp, stony blue.
They had buried their mother four days ago, and after the tears always came rage.
So it was with rage, fueled by loss and all the hurt that came with it, that they met the night.
The Hung Hoof was the only pub in town. It had the dim, smoke-hazed, dangerous mood that any good dive should. In a town of just under five hundred, with three quarters of the populace in the mining and wielding business, it was packed to the brim every night with the miserable and gruff.
And that night it was no different. The conversation quieted when the four sisters pushed their way through the doors, the air taking on a cautious sizzle as their dark moods entered the space and dared any to cross them. They’d gotten kicked out of this pub at least once every weekend for the past year, and the entire town knew of the passing of the Pie matriarch. Perhaps that was the reason none made eye contact.
Limestone almost groaned in frustration, ready and willing as she was for anypony to look the wrong way at her, but Maud pushed her gently towards one of the two pool tables. Marble took a seat at the bar, started chatting up Night Brew, the owner and bartender. Pinkie changed the song playing from the jukebox to some upbeat poppy thing, and leaned against it.
“You Pies just think you own the place, huh?” At the bar, Gem Dust sneered methodically at the four of them. First Maud and Marble, then Pinkie, before finally setting his gaze on Limestone. His hatred for their father had extended to them, like some sort of twisted birthright.
Lime ignored him, chalking her cue. She lined up her shot. It connected solidly with the seven, making it, and then ricocheted off the cushion, glancing the three and sending it crawling and tipping into the pocket, too.
“Going to take more than hustling pool to keep that farm going, now that your mama’s gone.” Putting his beer back down, Gem Dust grinned meanly. “Heard you’re going to have to start selling off for back taxes.”
“Heard wrong.” Coolly, Lime circled the table to calculate her next shot.
“Oh, I heard right. You Pies’ve always been fools, and liars.” He showed his teeth in a gesture that was not a smile.
Before Marble could leap forward, Lime shot out her cue to block the way. “He’s talking to me,” she said quietly. She held her sister’s gaze another moment before she turned. “Isn’t that right, Gem? You’re talking to me?”
“I’m talking to any of you.” As he lifted his beer again, Gem’s gaze skimmed over the four of them, all tough and lean, hard from farm work, but still more fillies than mares. His eyes sized up Maud, whose cool, thoughtful gaze revealed little but took in every last detail; over to Pinkie, who was leaning negligently on the jukebox, almost sprawling against it like a cat, waiting for the next move with a smile like a knife: mean and sharp, glinting; and then towards Marble, who’s eyes were watching him, daring him to do something with an almost foal-like eagerness.
He looked back to Limestone. Now there was temper, hot and ready. Recklessness worn like a second skin. “But you’ll do. Always figured you for the biggest loser of the lot, Lime.”
“That so?” She crushed out her cigarette, lifted her own beer.
“He’s drunk, Lime,” Maud murmured. She’d inched closer, feeling the temper brewing.
Limestone’s lethal gold eyes sliced toward her sister. “So?”
“So there isn’t much point in breaking his face when he’s drunk.” Maud moved a shoulder, the only indication of mood she allowed herself. “He’s not worth it.”
But Limestone didn’t need a point. She just needed action. She lifted her cue, studied it as if debating what Maud said, and then laid it across the table. Maud would have her back, regardless of disapproval, just like the twins would, regardless of not liking to fight. The four of them had always figured that whatever one of them did, all of them did. So if one of them fought, all of them had to.
“You want to take me on, Gem?” she said in a low voice. “Is that what this is?”
“Don’t you start in here.” Though he knew it was already halfway too late, Night Brew jerked a hoof to the door. “You make any trouble in here, I’m getting the sheriff, and the lot of you can cool off behind bars. Take it outside.”
Limestone looked at the owner in consideration, and then jerked her chin at Marble, who was still sitting at the bar. In a fluid motion, Marble broke her bar neighbor’s glass bottle over Night Brew’s head. His chin slammed on the surface of the bar on the way down and into unconsciousness.
There was a careful, unanimous silence. And then—
Well, damn, Marble thought philosophically as pandemonium broke out. There was going to be hell to pay, and the cots at the jail were really uncomfortable.
She turned, and, with a casual air about her, slammed her hoof into the face of the stallion who’s beer bottle she’d used to knock out Night Brew. Out of her peripherals she saw Maud throw somepony into a table, and Limestone leap over the pool table to put her hooves on Gem Dust.
Marble quirked an eyebrow, shaking her head. It couldn't be helped.
Fifteen. Fifteen? Yeah, yeah, fifteen, give or take a few. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty were in the bar. Granted, not all were attacking them; unspoken rivalries and grudges were making themselves known. Maud sidestepped a blind charge in her direction with the grace of an ice skater. She couldn't have even said why it was that she was fighting, except that her sisters were, and that it felt good, a little.
She was tired of feeling bad, and worse than bad.
Tomorrow would come and she would have to heave up the responsibilities that had apathetically been slammed into her. She was all there was for the future of the farm that had been proudly passed through the generations.
And here she was, in a bar brawl, like an irresponsible adolescent. She sighed.
Pinkie fought with the same carefully crafted, flawlessly executed carefree joy that she did everything else; spinning and dodging and skipping around like a ballerina. She never took the offensive—hitting and hurting ponies didn't feel good—but she wasn't innocent either. She didn't want to be innocent. Why would she, if her sisters obviously didn't? Being different was something that terrified her.
But she didn't belong in Waeldestone, either. Never had. Never would. She’d tried. Tried too hard, sometimes, and not enough at others. She was tired of her own excuses. She hated the stupid colorless town, the stupid colorless farm, the stupid colorless trap she could feel herself sinking into every passing day. She was going nowhere, doing nothing, being nothing. The only difference between her and Gem Dust, or her and Hot Coal, or her and any of the other dozen lowlifes in this bar was that they were drunks on top of being nothing.
Limestone had her music, her instruments and novels of lyrics and stage presence; Marble? Her odd and ponderous thoughts and the silvery tongue that was the bane of mares and stallions town-wide; Maud, the land that seemed to delight her and the pride of the family name as firstborn.
She had nothing. She had parties, festivities, in a town that bristled at those very things.
And unlike her sisters, she couldn't simply shrug away feelings and insecurities and unhappiness: another way that she felt herself drifting away from them. Their mother’s bedridden state of the last year was the only thing that had kept her around. The death felt like the worst possible releasing of chains, but it was a sigh of freedom, regardless.
It felt good.
With a dark grin, Limestone pivoted to avoid Gem Dust’s swing, rammed her hoof into his face and felt, at last, the satisfying spill of blood. Already her brain was heating, already her pulse was pounding, adrenaline on the tongue. The sounds of grunting and solid smacking noises made her blood stir into a warrior’s song.
It was a lot like sex, really. She tackled Gem Dust to the ground, the two of them wrestling and grappling for control.
She couldn’t even have said why she was fighting. She just, always was, like some sort of habit. Gem meant less to her than the dust in the street. But it felt good. Even when he got a hoof free and landed an uppercut on her jaw, it felt good.
Fighting was her preferred solution to everything. Maud could solemnly solder through her problems, going to bed every night with a vow to do twice as much in half as much time the next day, and uphold the entire world on her shoulders like she thought was expected of her. Pinkie could hide everything behind that birthmark of a smile of hers, and a nice shindig to keep up her own mood as much as anypony’s. Marble could compartmentalize like nopony’s business, and distracted herself with the pleasures of the flesh.
Limestone fought. Limestone spilled blood, and tasted thrill and hatred and adrenaline. Sure, there was music, and yeah, she loved music, and she was sure that if she started performing in front of thousands she would stop fighting altogether because it would soothe her need for adrenaline. But until she got out of this damn town and the damn hole of worthlessness she’d sunk into by being born there, she would fight.
She wanted out. Her blood screamed to know what was beyond this place. She felt trapped, overcrowded, claustrophobic by the monotony of Waeldestone, the average of it. The same scowling faces and weary eyes that followed her any time she stepped into town. The same bar, the same bar fights. The same food at the same restaurant.
She should really get out. She should just leave, tonight. There was no time like the present.
Since Gem Dust’s eyes had rolled up white and his hooves were limp, Maud stepped forward to drag her sister away.
The bar fight was done. Blood, broken furniture, shattered bottles, and moaning ponies was all that was left. It looked as if a tornado had casually strolled through the inside of the Hung Hoof.
“He’s finished.” To decide the matter, Maud rammed Limestone up against the brick wall of the bar. “He’s finished,” she repeated in the same quiet, even tone that she used for any and everything. “Let it go.”
The vicious rage drained slowly, fading from Limestone’s eyes. Emptying her, pushing her into the present. “Let go, M. I’m not going to hit him again.”
She looked to where Gem lay moaning, half-unconscious, and chewed on her lip. She was so caught up in her thoughts she hadn't even realized what she was doing, or how much punishment she’d laid out. Her jaw felt tender, and pain cracked its whip when she tried to rotate it. She looked at her sisters. Maud had a bloody nose that she was casually swiping at, Pinkie had a knot on the side of her forehead the size of a golf ball, and Marble was sucking on her split lip and nursing a black eye.
Limestone grinned and slung a foreleg companionably around Maud’s withers. It meant more than she wanted to say, that they would fight for and with her. That they always had. “Let's get out of here.”
They stepped outside, where summer boiled around them like a simmering temper. As they walked down the road, the bruises and aches were beginning to make themselves known. With half an ear Limestone listened to Marble’s enthusiastic play-by-play of the fight, occasionally spitting gathered blood from her mouth. It felt like she’d damn near bit through her tongue.
Waeldestone was a dump. She eyed the sagging buildings along the Main Street. In the darkness the place looked like a ghost town. She’d never realized just how rundown the town was. She was right in wanting more, in resenting the thought of spending the rest of her life here.
On the edge of town, where the land began to climb and the trees to thicken, she saw a house. The old Rush place. Dark, deserted and haunted, so it was said. It stood alone, unwanted, with a reputation that caused most of the townsponies to ignore it or eye it warily.
Just as they did Limestone Pie.
Wordlessly, she turned up the hill and started climbing the rocky slope. Brambles thick with thorns and summer growth tore at her skin. She didn’t need to look behind or hear the curses and mutters to know that her sisters were following her.
She stood, looking up at three stories of local stone. Mined from one of the only two quarries in town, she supposed, either the Pies’ own or Gem Dust’s. Some of the windows were broken and boarded, and the double porches sagged like an old mare’s back. What had once been a lawn was overgrown with wild blackberries, thistles and witchgrass. A dead oak rose from it, gnarled and leafless.
But as the moon wheeled overhead and the breeze sang chants through the trees and tall grass, there was something compelling about the place. The way it stood two hundred years after its foundation had been laid. The way it continued to stand against time, weather and neglect. And most of all, she thought, the way it stood against the distrust and gossip of the town it overlooked.
“Going to look for ghosts, Lime?” Marble stood beside her, eyes and smile gleaming against the dark.
“Maybe.”
“Remember when we spent the night here, on a dare?” Pinkie slung a leg around her twin, the other around Limestone. “And you snuck upstairs and started creaking doors, Lime? And then Marble wet herself?”
“Hell I didn't!”
“Did too.”
This incited the predictable shoving match, which the older sisters ignored.
“When are you leaving?” Maud asked quietly. She’d known it for years, saw it now in the way Limestone looked at the house, into it, beyond it, elsewhere. Her sister was not for this place.
“Tonight,” Lime sighed. She shook her head, taking in a breath. “I’ve got to get away from here, M. Do something away from here. If I don’t, I’m going to be like Gem Dust. Maybe worse. Mom’s gone, Pops too. They don't need me anymore. I've got to strike out on my own. Figure out who I am.”
“Got any idea where you’re going?”
“No. North, maybe. To start.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the house. She would have sworn it was watching her, judging her. “I’ll send money when I can.”
Though she felt as if somepony was wrenching off one of her limbs, Maud merely shrugged. “We’ll get by.”
Limestone smiled gently. “You have to finish your Rockterate. Mom wanted that. Sell off some of the land, if you’ve gotta, but don’t let them take it. We have to keep what’s ours. Before it’s over, this place is going to know the Pies meant something. Did something.” She glanced behind her, to where the shoving match had progressed into a wrestling one, Pinkie’s giggle-snorts punctuating the night air. “They’ll handle themselves fine once they figure out what they want.”
Maud nodded in her slow, thoughtful way. “‘Mina knows what she wants.”
Limestone said nothing. They were both thinking it. From somewhere behind, Marble let out a muffled whoop.
“I can talk to her.”
“You’re leaving tonight,” Maud reminded her with a rare smirk. It disappeared just as soon and she shook her head. “She doesn't belong here. Hasn’t, since the day she was born. You either. It’s like you said,” she continued when Lime opened her mouth to protest. “Mom and Dad don’t need her any longer.”
“You don't need to loose the both of us in the same night,” Limestone argued.
“I doubt Marble will let her go just yet. You know how they are. We’ll be alright.”
Limestone’s smile widened. For the first time in weeks, the gnawing ache inside her eased. Her sisters were sprawled on the ground, covered with dirt and scratches and laughing like loons.
She was going to remember them that way, she promised herself, just that way. The Pies, holding together on rocky ground nopony wanted.
Author's Note
In which Limestone gets into another fight, and our story begins.
Limestone, One
Limestone Pie was back in town.
That had been the talk over the steam of coffee that morning. And what a talk it was: the whispers spread like nothing else, a soup concoction of fact, rumor, and innuendo that passed from one to another, each adding their own choice spices to make it more succulent.
It was a rich broth, with more than enough of its fair share of sex, scandal, and secrets. In a town that had been repeating the same three-month-old rumors over coffee every morning, this was undoubtedly a story that would entertain them for the next year. Maybe it would even be a legend.
The Great Beyond knew that Limestone Pie was already on her way to becoming a legend in their small community.
Some grumbled that there would be trouble. Bound to be. Trouble hung around the mare like a bell around a bull’s neck, they warned. Wasn’t it Limestone Pie who had decked the school principal one spring morning and gotten herself expelled? And wasn’t it Limestone Pie who, in the cover of night, carved her initials three feet deep in Rock Bottom’s fields just because his son had, what, bumped into her at school, or something?
And surely it was Limestone Pie who’d chucked a table—and that fool Gem Dust—through the plate-glass window of the Empty Barrel one hot summer night.
Ah, it had been a quiet three years around town without Igneous’s second daughter. It was even kind of boring without Tartarus’s favorite spawn. At least with her around they always had fresh gossip over coffee, and the entertainment of seeing her beat up on every drunk little snot-nosed brat that swaggered through the doors of their tavern.
Make that, taverns. Ever since Martingale rode into town, they’d seen more and more… prosperity. And with… prosperity… came trouble. And not the type of trouble that followed Limestone Pie.
But that was another matter, another story, for another time.
Nopony doubted that Limestone Pie was looking for trouble. And, in the end, she found it. Perhaps it was for the best that she did. If she hadn't, she would have caused plenty of her own.
She settled on pool and hard liquor that morning, witnesses said. The dim, smoke-choked bar suited her. The slam and crack of pool balls hitting each other was just violent enough, the gaze of the wry and small-shouldered Night Brew was just uneasy enough. The wariness in the eyes of the other customers was just flattering enough.
While a cigarette dangled from her mouth, Lime squinted against the smoke and eyed her shot. Her mouth was set in a grim line and she held the cigarette in clinched teeth. With a solid smack and a follow-through smooth as silk, she banked the cue ball, kissed the seven and made her pocket. And then she scowled all the harder afterwards.
“Good thing you’re lucky at something.” At the bar, Hot Coal tipped back his mug calculatingly. He was, as usual after sundown, mostly drunk, and mean with it. He’d been in the same class with Maud all through school, some two or three grades above Lime, and had once held the hearts of more mares than any of them would care to admit. Now, more past his prime than most his age, his body had begun to bloat and sag and his mane recede.
The black eye he’d given his wife that morning hadn’t really satisfied him.
Lime barely spared Coal a glance. There was comfort in old regularities, and Hot Coal being a bitter, stupid ass was one of them.
Could he not sense the curtain of dark danger than hung around her? Could he not see how wired she was?
Did he not read the paper and know what had happened to her in the past two weeks?
Obviously not, since he decided to pick a fight still.
“That so?” she asked casually, trying to do that thing that Marble always did to rile ponies up. “I’d say I’ve been rather lucky, actually. Don’t see you earning millions.”
“Don’t see me spending those millions on whores and drugs, either, Limestone.”
Ah, so he did posses the ability to read. Who knew?
Lime grinned tightly and spit out her barely finished cigarette, lifted her own cup to her lips. She drank as they completed the ritual before battle and customers shifted in their chairs to watch.
“How are things going at your place? Still able to lift that blacksmith’s hammer, Coal?”
Hot Coal spit on the ground nastily. “Least I got money,” he snarled. “Least I’m not coming back to crawl to my big sister’s doorstep.”
“Mm,” Lime hummed. “And how’s your wife? Still putting in twelve hour shifts to pay the bills?”
It felt good, to find that first tipping edge. She was starting to think she’d lost her touch. But no doubt about it, as soon as Coal jumped out of his seat, her adrenaline started pumping in victory and preparation for the battle ahead.
“Shut your mouth about my wife. I earn the money in my house. I don’t need no mare paying my way, like your mama had to for your daddy. Then he up an’ died on her.”
“Yeah he died on her,” she whispered, old anger and grief and guilt welling up inside. “But at least he never laid a hoof on her. At least she never had to hide behind dark glasses and scarves when she came into town, making excuses about how she had taken a fall.” She laughed loudly and cruely. “The only thing your momma ever fell over was your daddy’s hoof.” She spit the last word, put acid and meaning behind it, and it felt good.
“That’s a lie,” Coal whispered. “And I’m going to ram that lie down your throat.”
“Try it. I’ll make you my bitch, just like he used to. I’ll even let you call me daddy.”
It was too much. Even for her, it was too much. She knew it, and she probably should have cared, but she needed the action too bad, needed to bring up someone else’s bad situation to cover her own.
He punched her for it. He got her good, and she was completely expecting it and could have dodged it easily.
But, she let him have one because, well, it really was too much.
She deserved to be hit for that one, and so much more. So much more.
So she didn’t fight back. Even as he kicked her in the ribs, and then straddled her and methodically started pumping a hoof into her face. She’s been knocked out many a-time in her short life, and as soon as her vision started blurring and darkening, she let herself fall into unconsciousness.
Perhaps death would take her. Perhaps it deserved to, for her stupidity.
Limestone Pie was back in town.
As soon as the whispers reached her, Maud knew she had to find her little sister. Just like everypony else, she knew what had… transpired… over the last month. She wanted to make sure Lime was not completely unstable, and she had to reach the mare before she did something stupid or dangerous, or Limestone-like, which was usually both dangerous and stupid and whole other slew of things that Maud knew she shouldn’t be doing right now.
She found her just a moment too late, sprawled out on the floor of the Empty Barrel, being beaten to a bloody pulp by that punk Hot Coal.
Rage settled in her stomach like a block of ice. She hissed her breath out through clenched teeth and made all the patrons in the bar shrink under her cool gaze. She held her gaze on Night Brew the longest, until he coughed and started wiping out some glasses with his filthy rag, and then she stalked over and pried Coal from her unconscious sister.
She eyed Coal darkly, wanting to make him hurt and relieve herself the anger and fear, but he was drunk and it wasn’t worth it. Instead, she tossed him into the tables and chairs, getting a satisfying crunch of either his nose or the furniture breaking for her trouble. She didn’t look to see, instead gathering Lime up on her back.
As soon as she was outside and she could breathe, she felt guilty. She was beyond and above, she thought, of feeling the rage that had taken her so swiftly moments before.
She carried her sister home and put her in bed, started cleaning up her bloody, swollen face. She wondered if Lime would wake up tonight, or if she would have to wait until morning to speak to her about the past year.
Limestone woke up right as she was thinking that.
“Owwww,” she groaned pitifully, and then reached up to touch her face. Maud batted her hoof away easily.
“Don’t touch,” she instructed sternly.
“But it huhuhurts,” Lime whined softly. Regardless of being awake, she didn’t seem to be all the way there. Maud frowned and ran a hoof through her sister’s mane, feeling for any large knots on her skull. “What are you doin’?” Lime muttered, weakly trying to swat her away.
“Making sure you don’t have a serious head injury. Hold still.”
“That you, sis?” Lime suddenly asked, turning her face towards Maud, though both of her eyes were swollen shut.
“Yes, now lay still.”
“Heeyyy,” Limestone breathed, slurring and drawing the word out lovingly, like a song. “I missed you.”
Maud paused, working her jaw in circles as relief sated all the fear in her gut, sitting there for the last two years like a rock. “...Missed you, too.”
Lime nuzzled her foreleg, and Maud pulled her hoof out of the mare’s mane.
“I messed up bad, sissy,” Limestone whispered, and Maud licked her lips, inhaling. She almost didn’t want to hear, didn’t want her sister to relive it.
“Yeah,” she whispered, throat dry as something hot and wet hit her foreleg where Limestone was nuzzling into it. She squared her jaw and shoved away her emotions. "The papers said..."
"The papers love their drama," Limestone muttered. Then she sighed. “I guess I should start at the beginning…”
“Lime…” Maud protested. “You don’t have to…”
“It is, after all, a very good place to start,” Limestone chuckled, completely ignoring Maud’s weak protest. She hugged her older sister and pulled her down onto the bed to lay beside her, using her chest as a pillow. “When I left that summer, I headed to…”
