Empty Nest
Written by The Descendant
Edited byKalash93
Pre-Reading by LuminoZero
Carrot Cake quickly realized that he had slept in.
Then he remembered that they had gone to sleep with tears in their eyes.
The stallion willed himself awake. The hazy summer mornings had taken on the crisp tones of a young autumn, one where the slightest of yellows and oranges had begun to appear among the canopy of green. Sleeping had become much more comfortable at night, absent the stifling heat of the summer. He looked down at the mare that slumbered in his forelegs, grateful for the cooler nights that had brought her cuddling closer to him.
What he truly missed were the songs of the birds.
A season ago, when spring was sliding into summer, a family of swallows had taken up residency under the eaves of Sugar Cube Corner. The swallows would begin singing before Princess Celestia had raised her sun. At first, it drove him mad, especially when the summer solstice had come around and it seemed that the bloody things had barely shut up before they erupted into their shrill squawks once more.
However, now that the summer had begun to shrink away, Carrot Cake lay in the silence of his bed, sad that the sound of the birds had disappeared and become as much a memory as the picnics, fireworks, and carnivals that had come and gone. The little baby birds had grown up strong and happy under the eaves of Sugar Cube Corner, but they had become fully fledged and had taken to the wing. Only the empty nest had been left behind, slowly drying and rotting—taking its memories with it as it crumbled back into dust.
Carrot lifted his ears and listened. Sugar Cube Corner was quiet, and even the sounds of the street outside seemed unusually subdued, as though all of Ponyville recognized the subtle signs of the seasons’ passing. Inside Sugar Cube Corner the change was markedly pronounced; the house was quieter than it had been in decades.
Yesterday had been a hard day—a very, very hard day.
Today promised to be even harder.
The mare stretched in his forelegs. An easy sigh escaped her and he felt the softness of her body against his. The single thin blanket and aged quilt lifted and fell as the mare awoke, showing the lines of her body beneath them. He marveled at her beauty while she hummed and shifted against him.
She had aged like fine wine. He had aged like milk.
“Carrot?” Cup Cake whispered. “Are you awake?”
He brushed aside a swirl of her light crimson locks with his hoof. Strands of grey meandered through her mane like silver rivers, and he pondered them as he ran his hoof through her hair, helping her come awake. She sighed happily while he placed a kiss behind her ear. The mare rolled over, facing him while they lay upon their marital bed.
“Good morning, Sugar Plum,” he said. “Welcome to our empty nest.”
His words did not bring forth the small chuckle he had hoped they would. Instead, she lay there with her muzzle across his neck while the dawn broke across the nearby rooftops. The two ponies lay there together, listening to the consuming quiet that seemed to dominate their bakery and home.
Yes, today looked like it would be a hard day indeed.
Carrot Cake stared into the bathroom mirror. The middle-aged stallion who stared back at him wasn’t exactly the most inspiring sight he had ever witnessed. Grey hairs, far more white and pronounced than the silver hairs of his wife, wound their way through his mane and amid the long, firm hairs of his beard. He blinked twice, trying to erase the image as he washed his hooves. It remained steadfastly present.
You’re old.
He found Cup Cake still at the top of the stairs, staring into the unoccupied bedroom across the hall from the stairwell. The shafts of light that announced the dawn wrapped around her in shades of pink and orange, highlighting her in relief. It would have been a most beautiful sight, if Carrot hadn’t noticed the expression on her face.
On most mornings she would already be downstairs getting the coffee on. But today was not a normal day.
“They’re alright, Sugar Plum,” he said, approaching her slowly, placing his head to hers and nuzzling gently. Together they stared into the vacant, quiet space that their daughter and son had shared their entire lives. They looked across the beds that had replaced the cribs they had laid their foals in eighteen years earlier. They looked at the trim, neat desk that Pumpkin had left behind and the catastrophic wreckage of a workspace that had been Pound’s desk at one point in time, supposedly.
“They’re alright, Ginger Snap,” Carrot repeated, painting certainty into his words. “We got the telegram. They got there nice and safe. They’re all moved into the dorms and are doing fine. They’re going to do a great job this year, and we’ll just burst with pride when they come home for Hearth’s Warming.”
“Hearth’s Warming?” she whispered. There was something distant in her voice, and he realized how far away the holiday seemed.
He brushed his muzzle against her once again, letting her feel his closeness. “They’re okay, Honey Bun,” he repeated. “They’re going to do just great at the university. They’ve grown up great. Their momma did a super job raising them.”
Carrot was rewarded for his efforts when the perfect sound of Cup Cake’s giggle finally filled the upper floor of Sugar Cube Corner. The mare returned his nuzzle, running her face freely against his before searching out his lips for a slow kiss.
“Oh, I know it. I know that they’ll be just fine,” she answered, leaning against her stallion. "Their daddy did a great job too, don’tcha know?"
They kissed once more, and another giggle escaped her before she began to make her way down the stairs into the bakery and kitchen below. Carrot Cake remained at the top of the stairs for a few moments, watching her go. He let her break the silence that sat around the shop. She had always been the one to go downstairs first, to put the coffee on and begin breakfast for the family. He let the familiar sounds of her soft hooffalls and the first gurgles of the percolator trick him into believing that the new normalcy of their lives could be, in some way, close to the old one.
He turned his head and stared into the bedroom before—
Hey, Pound, time for school, buddy.
Hummphhhurrgghh…
—turning away from a memory and shaking his head. He looked down the hallway towards a suite of rooms that had once held another resident of the bakery. Her departure had been a trial as well, a day marked by tears and hugs, like yesterday had been. The vacant rooms left behind by this other daughter—one not of their blood but as close in every other way that mattered—sat as empty and quiet as a shipwreck on a distant shore. The day after she had left had been a difficult day too, a preview of what he already expected today to hold for his wife and himself.
Yes, this would be a hard day, here in the kingdom of empty nests.
At least Pinkie will be here today, Carrot thought. He ran his hoof across his greying mane and beard before turning back towards the stairs. There’s that, at least, I suppose. He slowly made his way down the stairs, forsaking the second floor and leaving it quiet, still, and alone.
The coffee tasted good.
They sat at the small breakfast table, just the two of them, and attempted some small talk. They listened as the ovens warmed up, watching as the blue flames roared to life and the steel of the racks began to chime out as they heated. Soon the room would fill with heat, and as the day drew on summer—or at least what remained of it—would re-assert itself across Sugar Cube Corner.
“W-we’ll have to open the windows, later,” Carrot said. “It’s supposed to get warm.”
“Oh, is it?” Cup Cake answered, juggling her coffee in her hooves in surprise. Her eyes had been sitting at two empty chairs that sat on either side of the table. When she looked up Carrot saw her blush, and he knew that she saw the worry in his eyes.
“Oh,” she began. “I’m letting it get the better of me, aren’t I?”
Carrot slid his hoof across the table. She grasped it in her own.
“Gooood moorning, everypony!!” Pinkie Pie sang, bounding into the bakery at her prescribed time and wrapping her forelegs around Cup Cake and Carrot Cake in great, vast, warm hugs.
Time seemed unsure what to do with Pinkamena Diane Pie. True, she was no longer the young mare that had once travelled across Equestria battling ancient unspeakable evils in the name of laughter and friendship, but that hardly seemed to matter. Pinkie Pie remained an endless wellspring of energy, and the Cakes had long wondered how she had managed to find a husband who was able to keep up with her. They theorized that there was a reason why Pinkie had always claimed that her foals were good sleepers who never fussed at night; they imagined that their mother had probably exhausted them every day of their lives.
Pinkie Pie’s body was no longer that of a young mare, and was now that of a mother as well, but it betrayed no evidence of such. Carrot had only caught glimpses of her encroaching late thirties in her smallest of hesitations and her newfound willingness to share in their morning coffee. Apart from that, Pinkie remained Pinkie, same as ever. That would prove unfortunate.
“Good morning, good morning!” Pinkie continued, releasing Carrot and Cup Cake from her embrace. The mare pirouetted around one rear hoof, giggled, and then opened her forelegs wide once more.
“And how about some hugs from my…”
But there were no other ponies in the kitchen for her to hug. She blinked twice before sinking into a sitting position while a big sigh escape her. “Oh,” she said in a small voice, “that’s right. They’ve gone off to college. We gave them a great big party yesterday and we were all crying and happy and crying and proud and crying and we put them on the train and hugged and cried and waved and cried…”
“Yes,” Cup Cake said, slowly walking to where the mare sat on the wooden floor. A forced chuckle found its way into Cup Cake’s voice, one that made Carrot’s ears flick up as he sensed her trying to hide her own feelings. “Yes,” Cup Cake continued, “we did. Oh, did you go and forget that already, Pinkie, dear?”
“No, I didn’t forget. It was a big party, and I did my super-duper super-awesome best,” Pinkie answered.
“Oh, yes you did, dear. It was wonderful, as all of your parties are, as they always have been,” Cup Cake said, wrapping her leg around the mare. “They enjoyed it so very, very much.”
“I-I guess that—I kinda feel like, I’m homesick for them. I think that I just realized that I miss them a whole bunch. I mean, I’m proud of them, and I know they’re gonna do really, really awesome! I just… miss them already,” Pinkie said, leaning into Cup Cake’s embrace.
“I know, dear, I’m missing them a whole bunch today, too,” Cup Cake said, stroking the mane of the younger mare. There was a touch of a whimper in their voices, ones that made Carrot’s ears flick again. Having known Pinkie all of her adult life he could tell what was coming next.
He went to fetch the mop.
“Cup Cake?” Pinkie said, her voice soft and low. “We sure cried a lot yesterday, huh?”
“Yes, we did,” Cup Cake answered.
“Cup Cake?” Pinkie said. “I think I’m gonna cry some more.”
The mare burst into tears, and great wet arcs of water streamed from her eyes as she bawled aloud. Carrot sighed to himself as his hope that any theatrics could be avoided today disappeared in the currents of the small streams that now flowed across the bakery floorboards.
While Carrot retrieved the mop from the closet he listened to his wife rock and shush Pinkie Pie. Her voice competed with Pinkie’s sobs, filling the bakery with their sounds. The mop handle fell right into his mouth, and he reached forward with his right forehoof to collect the old, rusty bucket that—
Bye dad! Love you! See you after school!
Goodbye, sweetheart! Love you, too. Have a good day, okay?
—went clanging along the inside of the closet as the mop handle fell from his mouth.
Carrot had nearly answered his daughter’s voice with his own words rather than in his memory. He quickly turned back to see if the mares had heard him drop the mop, or had witnessed him clumsily kicking the bucket around. They, however, were still dealing with their own concerns.
The stallion looked at the stairs, remembering his beautiful daughter saying those words each morning from the time she was in kindergarten to the day she had graduated from the academy a few months ago. He recalled answering her in pretty much exactly the same words that had nearly passed his lips as she trotted down the stairs and out the door.
He wiped his hooves across his face. He had known that today would be difficult, but he had never guessed that it would be this bad. He sighed once more, grabbed up the bucket and mop, and then splashed through the rolling rivers that Pinkie’s tears had sent cascading across the kitchen, bakery, and shop.
“It’s alright, Pinkie. They’re okay,” he said, placing his forehead to hers, sharing the embrace that Cup Cake was still offering. “C’mon, girls, we have a bakery to open in an hour or so…”
“… let’s all try to keep it together, okay?”
“Thank you for coming. Have a really, really great day!”
Now that customers were finding their way into the shop, life seemed to return to normal around Sugar Cube Corner. The chime of Pinkie Pie’s voice drifted around the Cakes, and a certain brightness seemed to fill the bakery.
Treats came out of the ovens, and Carrot watched as his wife drizzled chocolate or dusted confectionaries with powdered sugar that rose in little white clouds from the baking sheets. Life, it seemed, was finding a way to restore the daily routine at Sugar Cube Corner, even if it had to carry on without two of its principal actors.
Carrot wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hoof. He carefully lifted the next tray out of one of the ovens and let it rest on the table. He took a spatula in his mouth, just as he had countless times before, and then carefully placed each of the treats on a cooling rack. This was as it should be, as it always had been…
… so why did it feel so off?
The whole house felt lopsided, lighter.
He caught himself pondering this while he stood next to the stove, his apron politely burning away as he stood over the blue flames flickering on the burners. He demurely extinguished himself and looked to Cup Cake with a blush across his face. It was then that he noticed that she was lost in her own thoughts.
This he quickly noted because of her small sighs, her gaze out the windows, and the way she was glazing the dirty pots with chocolate and washing the pastries in the sink.
“Honey Bun?” he whispered.
Cup Cake looked up to him, saw the concern painted on his face. The mare opened her mouth, but just at the very moment she did, a knock sounded out at the kitchen door.
“Telegram!” came a cheerful voice. Cup Cake was immediately at the door. Carrot noticed that she flew to the door, that she seemed to be there before the voice of the messenger had even finished the final syllable. He noticed this, of course, because he had been right beside her as they both leapt to the door.
They opened the door so quickly that Morse, the telegraph pony, actually startled in surprise, his eyes going wide as the two older ponies stared at him with a mix of worry and excitement.
“Is it from the university?!” Carrot brayed.
“What’s wrong?!” Cup Cake cried.
“Wah!” Morse answered. “N-no! No, it’s from Ponyville city hall… they’d, they’d like you to supply some desserts for the council meeting at 2 p.m.” He pressed the telegram forward in his shaky hoof, looking back and forth between the two seemingly manic ponies that stood jammed in the kitchen doorway.
Cup Cake and Carrot Cake looked the message over and over. It was true—it was simply a note requesting their services as bakers and offering a fair price for such. It was not the grim herald of any number of imagined emergencies, or of any sudden revelations surrounding the health, welfare, or personal struggles of the two foals—no, two young adults—that they had shipped out not even a full day before.
The Cakes looked to one another, each one knowing what the other was thinking in that way that all long-married couples seem to know. They pressed a tray of yesterday’s cookies into Morse’s hooves and mouthed their apologies, and he left the stoop of Sugar Cube Corner in a much better mood than when he arrived.
The same could not be said for the two ponies that remained behind.
“I had been so sure,” Cup Cake said. “Oh, I had been so sure that something… I had hoped that they might send…”
“I know, Sugar Plum,” Carrot said. “Believe me, I know.” He stepped towards her again, helping her stifle the sighs that left her lips, giving her his reassurance that everything would be fine. “We just have to get through today is all, Honey Bun. We just have to get through today.”
Cup Cake gave another sigh, and for a moment she began to speak. It seemed for all the world as though there was something she wished to say. Instead, she answered another of his hugs and turned back towards her work.
He watched her for a few moments before returning to the hot trays and the ovens. Overhead he heard the sound of an art easel that he knew was not moving being scooted across the floor by a daughter that he knew was not in the bakery.
He closed his eyes, letting the phantoms of domestic memories drift away before opening the oven door.
Hey, ummm… dad? I… I uh, kinda got into a fight at school today…
“What do you mean you got into a fight?!” Carrot Cake cried.
He immediately threw his hoof across his lips. He nearly toppled down the stairs, gravity and inertia unimpressed by his sudden need to stifle his own words. He just barely caught himself, and a fresh spate of new aches rocketed across his frame where old muscles had not taken very kindly to his sudden movements.
The mid-morning naps that he and Cup Cake had long enjoyed had taken on a new importance as they had aged. Today’s nap had been fitful and filled with images and sounds that flitted through his dreams in incomplete sentences and flashes of insight.
He had awoken from his nap to find Cup Cake whimpering in her sleep. He pressed his lips to the space behind her ear until she went silent. “We just have to get through today, Cuppy,” he had whispered before lifting himself from the bed. “We just have to keep it together today.”
Then, just as he was making his way down the stairwell, his son’s voice had leapt out at him in a guilty admission. The end result was that Carrot Cake now sat at the bottom of the stairs, running his hoof through his greying beard and mane as a world of little hurts made their way through his forelegs, shoulders, withers, back, and hips.
“Ow,” he mumbled to himself.
He opened his eyes to find himself staring into two deep pools of blue. After a moment, he realized that they were in fact another set of eyes. Years ago, discovering such a thing would have made him cry out in alarm. However, years, decades even, of living with Pinkie Pie had made such things, if not expected, at the very least another part of his life.
“Heya, Mr. Cake!” she said. “I heard you say something and then fall down the stairs. It sounded like you said ‘What do you mean you got into a fight?’ but I was pretty sure that I hadn’t gotten into a fight and I thought maybe you thought I said ‘It’s lemon meringue, right?’ which still wouldn’t have made any sense so I came over here to see what you said but then I remembered that you also fell down the stairs and that—”
Carrot waited as she took a breath.
“—and that seemed a lot more important. Like a really, really lot more important, so I got the first aid kit and wrapped you up. Feel better?”
Carrot Cake took a moment to process her words, and then looked down to discover that he was, in point of fact, wrapped in medical gauze. Once more, life with Pinkie Pie—not expected, merely accepted.
“Well, yes, Pinkie, I did say that. Sorry if it alarmed you,” Carrot answered, fighting to his hooves. He struggled a bit against the intricate webbing of medical bandages that now surrounded him. He took one step and then teetered over again, his legs tangling in the lengths of fine fabric that enshrouded him, making him look like the inhabitant of some forgotten tomb.
“Ooopsie!” Pinkie said with a giggle. “Guess I overdid it, huh? Here, lemmee help with that!”
“It’s not all your fault, Pinkie,” Carrot said, watching as Pinkie looked him up and down. She began to tug on the loose end of the cloth with her teeth. He tried his best to speak with her as the bandages began to come undone, circling around one another and over various trays of snacks and display cases.
“No, it’s not all your fault, I’ve been a little… well, I guess you’d say I’ve been a little absent-minded today. I keep—”
“Having little memories of Pumpkin and Pound run around in your head, hear their voices, and keep thinking that you hear their hoofsteps and stuff of theirs moving around?” Pinkie said.
“—having little mem… ories, yeah, like that,” Carrot concluded. The mare was now half-wrapped in the medical gauze with him—like the sequel to some inhabitant of a forgotten tomb. He was only a little surprised that she had finished his sentence… but then again, life with Pinkie Pie...
“I’m missing them a whole bunch, too. That’s why I’m surprised that you and Mrs. Cake didn’t join in with me for a great big cry this morning,” she said, following the loose end of the gauze.
Carrot felt like she’d kicked him. “Pinkie, what do you mean by that? We spent all yesterday afternoon crying when we put them on the train. We cried so much that our eyes hurt. Cuppy and I went to bed with tears in our eyes!”
He gave the display stand where she had last been seen a disapproving glare. It proved useless when she emerged from a cupboard on the other side of the shop. “Well, yeah! I know! I was there and cried too and stuff!” she said, following the end of the gauze to where it sat wrapped around his rear hooves. “But there’s a great big difference!”
There is? he thought.
“Yeah there is!” Pinkie replied, answering his internal quandary in a way that he didn’t really care to ponder at the moment. “There’s a difference in who you’re supposed to be crying for,” she continued, circling around the stallion, making him spin in place. “Yesterday we cried for Pumpkin and Pound because we were so proud of them and we’re going to miss them and we watched them grow up and happy stuff like that. That’s what we were crying about yesterday.”
Carrot waited for the world to stop spinning and the dizziness to fade away before meeting Pinkie Pies eyes again. “So… well, Pinkie, what was I supposed to be crying about today?”
“Well, duh!” Pinkie said, leaning in close. “Today you were supposed to cry for you and Cup Cake. Today you were supposed to cry for yourselves!”
Carrot blinked a few times.
“Think of it this way,” she said, seating herself in front of him and playing with the last bits of the gauze. “Yesterday we got to cry for how happy we are. Today we get to cry for how sad we are. Today I cried because I miss Pound and Pumpkin, because I didn’t have them to hug this morning. For how I’m not going to have them to hug any morning anymore…”
“Pinkie, that’s… that’s a nice sentiment,” he began. He was silenced as Pinkie leaned forward, wrapping him in a hug. He returned her embrace.
“Look, it helped me,” she said, raising her head and waving her forelegs emphatically. “I know it really even sounds kinda selfish, but you need to cry for you, too. You guys have a big empty nest here now, and you put a big part of who the Cakes are on that train yesterday… all of the Cakes, Pumpkin, Pound, Carrot, and Cup Cake. You have to say goodbye to the part of you who were a mommy and a daddy to two wonderful little foals. If you don’t do that… you’re going to have a very hard day!”
Carrot’s eyes went wide.
“If you don’t cry for them today,” Pinkie said, offering him another hug, “then you’re gonna go to sleep with tears in your eyes again tonight.”
She placed her muzzle to his cheek in a soft, affectionate kiss.
“I love you guys too much to even think about you two crying and being all sad like that, okay?”
With that she pulled on the last of the gauze, and Carrot Cake went spinning out of the bakery and into the kitchen.
Carrot Cake spent the better part of the next hour preparing the pies for the council meeting in a solitary silence. He let his wife sleep, knowing full well that her dreams were most likely offering her little rest.
Today you were supposed to cry for you and Cup Cake…
Pinkie’s words went buzzing around in his head; they had been since she had sat him down and unwrapped him. He fought his way through more of the preparations. The pies were coming along well enough—not the best he’d ever done but more than satisfactory for something as banal as a council meeting. His head was in too many places to do better, and he cursed under his breath.
Cry for himself and Cup Cake? It seemed so… selfish. Unreasonable. What did they have a right to cry about? His foals had grown up right, they were smart and strong and he was proud of them. Their mother was proud of them. They were going to do great. That was that.
He shook his head a little and laughed. He’d have to sneak it around Pinkie, but yesterday had been for the tears. Today was getting through, for keeping it together, he reminded himself while he pulled open the drawer. He looked through it, searching out the nice set of pie servers that he had last seen somewhere inside…
… and suddenly a few loose crayons came rolling forward, thudding against the front of the drawer.
Crayons.
Daddy! Daddy!
Oh, Carrot, come see!
I’m here, I’m here! What’s going on you two?
Daddy! Look! I was drawing a picture, and then I was thinking about drawing with my magic, and I drew a pumpkin pie and my magic started to go around the kitchen and suddenly my sides felt cold, and then… look!
Carrot! She got her mark! Pumpkin got her mark!
Daddy, I got my cutie mark! I did! Look!
That’s my girl! That’s my big girl!
Carrot staggered across the room. The memory had flown at him. It had hit him in the face. One of the most beautiful moments in the life of his talented, wonderful little filly had played out in full in this room, and now it had hit across the softest, most familiar chords of his memory.
He teetered on his hooves for a moment before running his hooves through the drawer. Where are the Celestia-scorched pie servers?! he thought. Oh, forget it! The council members can just go on ahead and use their forks! I-I just can’t be here right now.
He could not stay there right now. No, there was no way. Not there in the kitchen, in the shop, in the house where his daughter and son had grown up. He could not stay there, not if he wanted to keep it together, not if he wanted to try to get through this hard day and be strong for her.
He placed the pies in the carrying case as quickly as he dared. To his amazement, the servers were in the side pocket. He didn’t bother to wipe the container down first… all he did was throw the pies into the metal trays and grasp the wire handle in his mouth.
Carrot trotted toward the store, his eyes focused on the door beyond… the door to the outside world where there were noises and colors and other ponies that he could talk to and get some distractions from his thoughts. He went through the saloon doors to discover Pinkie Pie talking with Davenport. The owner of the quill and sofa shop was aging even more poorly than he was.
“Well hey there, Carrot!” the stallion began. “Congratulations on your emp—”
“Pinkie!” Carrot blurted. “I’m bringing these pies to the council meeting.”
“Wow, already, Mr. Cake?” she said, looking at the drawing of a watch on her foreleg. “It’s more than an hour until they need them there. I mean, it’s better to be early than to be late, but if it’s too early they might forget that they are there, and then they’d think they’re late and if they think they’re late then that’s just as bad as—”
Carrot had stopped at the door; he couldn’t take much more of this.
“Please, just tell Cuppy that I’m out!” he said, loudly. “Please don’t wake her either, she—”
Carrot’s rear hoof brushed the basement door, causing it to creak loudly on hinges that he had been meaning to grease for a decade. The very moment the sound hit his ears, it happened again.
Mom? Dad? Daad!? Mooom!? DAAAAD!
What’s wrong, Pound? What’s wrong?
Can-can you come here for a second, please? Please? Something-something’s wrong…
The squeaky door… Carrot had opened the squeaky basement door to descend down into the basement where his son seemed to have spent most of his free time. There he had found his tall, gangly colt shaking, his guitar cast aside on the cold stone floor.
What’s wrong, Buddy?
Dad! Dad, I was playing this awesome new lick that I came up with. I was killing it, you know when… when, like, all the sudden I got this feeling like. It’s… it’s, like, there’s something under my skin! It’s all tingly! Dad, I can’t… make it stop!
You’re okay! You’re okay, son, this happens sometimes to colts your age. It’s okay. Just pick up your guitar.
Dad?
Pick up your guitar, Poud, it’s okay. Play the ‘awesome lick’ you were working on.
Carrot remembered how frightened he had been for his son, how he had tried to stay calm as his shaking son had reached for the guitar. Soon his boy’s “music” had filled the space again. In a moment it had been joined by the sound of falling stars sliding across fields of ice.
Dad? Dad is that… Dad! Dad! It’s my cutie mark! Ah, oh… my mark!
Yes, it just took a little extra. It happens with colts sometimes, that’s all. You’re okay.
I can’t believe it! It’s awesome! It’s a guitar and… stuff! Look at it!
It’s great son. It’s a wonderful cu… mark. Let’s go show your moth—
And then his son had hugged him. The colt that stood at the first brush of becoming a stallion had wrapped his old dad in a hug.
The memory ripped at Carrot, and his color dripped out of him.
“—needs her sleep.” Carrot finally concluded. With his eyes on nothing he backed out of his shop and into the street. Once there he sat down, shaking like his boy had shook, fighting to keep the memories at bay.
Back in the shop, Davenport heard Pinkie Pie give a great, vast sigh.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, placing his order in the bag. “He’s having… well, they are both having a hard day.”
Davenport nodded in silence, waiting patiently for her to finish up.
Outside an older stallion fought his way back to his hooves. Taking the pie carrier in his mouth, he turned to look at the eaves of his home.
There, just above the window of his bedroom, sat a mass of brown mud and grass. The nest that the baby swallows had left behind sat there in the sun of the fading summer… bereft of purpose, empty, dark, and alone.
Today you were supposed to cry for you and Cup Cake…
Carrot shook his head, stopping only when he remembered the fragile contents of the pie carrier that hung from his mouth. He stood up and walked on, focusing on the distant spire of city hall that sat hidden among the rooftops of Ponyville.
Overhead pegasi wheeled through the sky, shepherding black, angry clouds that promised rain.
Ivory Script, known to most by her sobriquet Mayor Mare, was Cup Cake and Carrot Cake’s oldest friend. The mare had long ago stopped needing to hide her natural hair color. The pink had turned to the snowiest of whites and most silver of greys long ago. Now deep into the longest run of mayor in the history of Ponyville, she had greeted Carrot with the same enthusiasm she always had.
And, in the same token, she had been filled with the same sadness that she saw in Carrot. She too had been at the party yesterday, had seen her “niece” and “nephew” off on the train. She guessed quickly where his hurt flowed from, but with council members already demanding her attention, she could do nothing but watch him head back out into the streets.
Carrot walked along the cobblestones, listening to his own hooves as he made his way into the market. He was lost in his thoughts as the sounds of the stalls drifted around him. He pondered Pinkie’s words… wondered if…
That was when he ran straight into Cheerilee.
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!” he said, helping the mare back to her hooves. “Oh, that was so clumsy of me!”
“That’s quite alright. No real harm done,” she answered.
The two chatted politely, repeating apologies and affirmations as the sky overhead filled with black clouds. The shouts and orders of pegasi drifted around them, but Carrot hardly minded. This is what he had been hoping for. He had been hoping for conversation, interaction… distraction.
He had hoped for something to take his mind off his empty home.
“Sorry that I didn’t get over to see you and Cup Cake at the party yesterday, but it was so crowded,” Cheerilee continued. “You must be so proud of them!”
“Absolutely! Their mother and I couldn’t be any prouder,” he said, puffing up his chest. “I know that they’re going to do a super job!”
“Then, Mr. Cake, may I ask, why do you look so miserable?” Cheerilee said in a firm whisper.
The air fell out of him in a deep huff, and he looked at her like she had discovered some forbidden secret. His mind’s eye flashed back to the old stallion that had stared at him in the mirror, and he realized it wasn’t much of a secret at all.
“Is it that obvious?” he asked, avoiding her eyes as she looked back at him with the kind of impassive stare that teachers learn very quickly to give students from whom they are expecting answers.
“It is,” she said while she sat down. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Carrot hesitated before finally sitting with her in the middle of the Ponyville market. Around them the shopkeepers were already folding up their tents in anticipation of the scheduled rainstorm that was gathering overhead. As the skies darkened, Carrot Cake told Cheerilee about how this day, this hard day, had been progressing. He told her of the memories, of the sounds, about how he had been trying to keep it together for Cup Cake. It was a panacea, draping this across the mare, one from outside the small, familiar confines of his home and bakery, but it was one that was working.
When he had finished, Cheerilee stared at the cobblestones for a moment and then the sky. When she spoke it was in the calm, measured tones of a professional educator, one with decades behind the big desk.
“I can understand what Pinkie is saying,” she said. “As painful as it may be, you two have earned the right to feel sad.”
She tilted her head back and forth.
“The year that I lost my first fo…” she began. Carrot’s ears went up in sympathy. Cheerilee’s life had not gone by easily, and despite being another one of the mares in the small city that had aged gracefully, she too had found hard times and sadness.
“The year I was given a sabbatical from teaching, the older, retired teachers in my support group told me that the worst thing for them was that first week of the school year, the first that they hadn’t been in the classroom since they were young mares,” she said. “They said that they felt the need to be there. Perhaps that’s what you’re feeling, Carrot? Maybe both of you are feeling a need to be there for your foals… a need that no longer exists.”
“What, what did they do about it?” he asked.
“They took vacations. They went away. They got as far away from apples, desks, chalk dust, and arithmetic as they could. That’s what I did, too,” she said. Her eyes opened wider, and a small smile went across her face.
“Did it work?” Carrot asked in an enthusiastic tone.
“Oh, yes,” she answered. “We went off for a couple of months. And, well… when we got back we were able to tell everyone some good news.”
She pointed across the market to where her husband, and her own set of twins, stood emerging from the library that had arisen from the ashes of where the old one had once stood.
“Thank you, Cheerilee. I think that’s going to help out a bunch!” he said, a new energy in his voice. “Best of luck with the new school year, too!”
“Thank you, Mr. Cake,” she said as she turned away. “Give Mrs. Cake a hug for me!”
Carrot sat there, watching her go until she and her family had disappeared amid the sealed tents that dotted the abandoned marketplace. Then, when he was sure that nopony was watching, he ran towards the closest travel agency as fast as his hooves could carry him.
“Hello, sir! Welcome to Over the Rainbow Travel and Adve—”
“Pamphlets! Where do you keep your travel pamphlets?!” Carrot cried, cutting off the travel agent so fiercely that she shrank behind her desk. Her hoof came up and gestured towards an entire wall of brightly colored booklets and brochures, each one promising a paradise in garish tones.
He began grabbing them by the hoofful.
He began with the most exotic. Istanbull, Cowcutta. He moved on to the more common distant retreats, wiping brochures about Germaneigh and Prance into his foreleg and stuffing them into the empty pie container.
They had travelled before. They had travelled during that decade of unknowing, the one where they believed that they would always be childless. Travel had helped then, certainly it would help now. Yes, yes… it would. It must.
He took one from every shelf, unconcerned about the whimpering travel agent who peeked at him from behind the safety of her desk. He took them for places near and far. Anywhere, anyplace that might offer them some solace, some ability to simply go on and move forward away from their empty nest and this hard day. Manehattan, Baltimare, Detrot… yes, he’d even risk going to Detrot!
Any place, just anything… anything so they could avoid this feeling of emptiness. Please, anything that would make her happy again… just anything.
He ran out into the street, pounding his hooves against the cobblestones at a gallop as he turned towards his home. The first raindrops of a late-summer storm began to patter across the ground around him, leaving large wet spots that almost looked like tears.
He approached his home at a full gallop, already breathing heavy. His steps were awkward and he felt all of the little pains that his trip down the stairs had brought his aging frame increase with each fall of a hoof.
The pie container bobbed around in his mouth, but he cared little. All that he could see was the warm, yellow light that fell out of the windows of his bakery, his home. That was all that he was thinking of as he approached. The light seemed so very inviting in the gathering blackness and growing rain of the storm.
He had just reached the door when his hoof skid across something. He nearly tripped once again, and he cried aloud when a new set of pains reached him. He juggled his pamphlets and the pie carrier aside so that he could see what in the world he could have crushed beneath his hooves.
When he saw what it was, he dropped the pie container.
The swallow’s nest sat beneath his hoof.
The winds of the coming storm had knocked it from beneath the eaves where it had sheltered all summer. Now, it was dry and brown and useless, and all of the life that it ushered into the world had come out of it. It was cracked in half, and Carrot’s hoof trembled as he lifted it away.
Now, the nest was destroyed. Now anything resembling a home for young birds was simply so much hard earth and straw. The nest was empty… broken.
He stared at it for a long moment, and then pushed his way inside his home.
Soon the rains began in earnest, and what was once a happy place where the fledglings had found safety and warmth began to wash away and return to nothing.
It was after three, a fact he knew just by looking at the counter. Pinkie Pie had gone home to her own children, and that was just fine. He didn’t particularly care to have her see him like this.
He set the pie container down next to the door and gripped his travel brochures closer to his chest. He waited while the warm, wet raindrops fell away from his coat. When he had caught his breath he lifted his ears to see if he could hear Cup Cake anywhere in the shop, kitchen, or bedrooms.
He thought he heard some soft sounds coming from the living room at the very back of the house, and he took a moment to gather his thoughts. Alright, he pondered as he ran his free hoof through his mane and beard, I’ll just close up shop, just like usual, and then I’ll head right out back to the living room and tell Cuppy all about my grand idea!
It was that simple. Let’s get away. Those little words were all that he needed to put this house back in order, to bring her smile back.
All that he needed to do was keep to the routine. Keep it together.
He opened the basement door.
“Hey Pound? Pinkie’s gone home for the day. How about helping your old dad close up shop?”
The stupidity of what he had just done stayed hovering around Carrot Cake. The sheer, unadulterated banality thudded against him as his hooves shifted back and forth and the brochures fell from beneath his foreleg, fluttering to the wooden floor and drifting under cabinets.
He’s not here.
His boy was not here.
His boy, his colt who he had held mere moments after his birth, was not in the safe, warm confines of this home he had built for his family. The colt who he had stood upon clouds nervously to watch graduate from Summer Flight School was not here… not here where he could give him praise and teach him all of the things that colts should know.
His boy was gone.
She’s not here.
His little girl was not here.
The little filly who had run down the school steps and into his forelegs to give him butterfly kisses was not here. The house was without her art and the wonderful drifting currents of her magic. It was without her giggles and the chime of her voice.
His daughter was not here.
They were not here.
“Carrot!”
Her voice flooded the house, and her cry sent ice drifting through the deepest parts of him. His hooves skidded across the forgotten brochures and knocked over the pie container.
“Carrot!”
He burst through the saloon doors and into the kitchen. He pounded past darkened ovens and dishes in the drying rack that sat enshrouded in dishcloths as though draped in mourning. Carrot exploded into the living room at the back of the house, and there he found his wife seated upon the ancient futon.
“Carrot!” she cried once more. “I’m trying so hard, but I can’t stop thinking of them!”
He looked down into her hooves. There, wrapped around Cup Cake delicately, sat two long, thin cords of white. He recognized them immediately. Any father would. He recognized the lines of tape, each one marked with small, hoofwritten marks.
Pound Cake, Age 3
Pumpkin Cake, Age 5 ½
Pound Cake, Age 9
Pumpkin Cake, Age 11
The record of their children’s lives sat there, in her hooves, and he sank down to her as tears rolled down her face in unceasing waves.
“It’s the quiet, Carrot,” she whimpered as she dropped the lengths of tape. Cup Cake sank her face into his chest, pressing herself into the spot in the world where she felt the safest. “The house is so quiet! Why must it be so quiet? Why must the house be so very quiet, Carrot?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re okay. It’s… it’s okay to cry, Cuppy. Go ahead and cry.”
“We’re all alone in the house!” she cried as the tears streamed down her face. “Oh, Carrot, I tried so hard not to think on it all day, but, oh… ohh!” she said as he rocked her, as she began to wail, “Oh, Carrot… I, I miss them so! They’ve only been gone a day and already I miss them so! I want to… I miss—I want my babies back! I want my babies back!”
Carrot could do nothing for her; he could only rock her and make small sounds. He had no words. Even if he did, his own gathering tears would have muffled them. He sat his head to that of his wife, nuzzling against hers.
It had been a hard day, and now, only as it was ending, did Carrot finally accept the words that Pinkie Pie had told him hours before. Only now did the sage advice of his other daughter hold dominion in his thoughts.
“Go ahead and cry, Cuppy. It’s okay, I’m right here,” he said, his voice breaking. Soon enough he joined her in sobbing, and he held her as close as he could as her tears soaked his coat and his rolled down his face in large, perfect spheres.
Nearly two decades ago they had held each other close on this ancient futon, and by the light of a Hearth’s Warming tree that night their sacred joining had begun the lives of the little unicorn and pegasus that they had long begged to have in their lives.
That story had ended yesterday; the long, happy tale of the Baby Cakes had run out of pages. The story had found its conclusion, its ‘happy ever after.’
Now, as Carrot held his wife close—rocking her back and forth and telling her that it was okay, that he loved her, that everything would be fine—he finally understood what Pinkie had meant.
The “mommy” who was needed to kiss boo-boos and prepare milk bottles, to tell bedtime stories and give goodnight kisses had flown into dust. The “daddy” who had fixed broken toys and given ‘bucking bronco’ rides, who had searched for monsters in closets and under beds had been washed away.
These last two decades, these happy, beautiful years, had reached an end.
Yesterday had been a hard day, but it had been tempered by the promise of the future. Its tears had been forged in the knowledge of a job well done.
Today had been harder, and not until now did he understand why. Now, he knew, they had a right to cry these selfish tears, tears for the passing of a part of their lives that could never return.
The Cakes, as they knew themselves, had ended.
Carrot cradled Cuppy closer and ran his hoof along her back before wrapping her deeper into his embrace. The rain drummed across the windows in vacant rooms, and it seemed to echo in ways it had not before. Only their whimpers broke the silence in the large, quiet house.
Tomorrow would be a new day, a day to talk about what comes next. Tomorrow would be the day to show her the brochures, maybe talk about travel. That was tomorrow, though, not today. Today was for crying. Today was for well-earned tears.
“I love you, Cuppy,” he said, and then he lifted his bleary eyes to the room around him, to the house that was far, far too quiet. It was a house without the light and joy of small voices. It was a house somehow colder, one filled with ghosts and echoes.
It was a house somehow darker and without life.
It was an empty nest.
It was a house with all of the children gone.
The End
