Gilded Lily

by Cosmic Cowboy

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Main 6, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Cutie Mark Crusaders
Length: 21243

The Cutie Mark Crusaders have always been told that every pony gets their Cutie Marks eventually. So what happens when they meet the exception to the rule?

“That’s not true, sis! Ah met a pony who never got her Cutie Mark! What if Ah’m like her? What if mine never comes?”

The one thing that keeps the Cutie Mark Crusaders going through failure after failure is the promise that someday, they will succeed. Someday they will find their passions in life. But when the Crusaders discover something that casts doubt on all those promises, what can keep them going?

Only someone who knows what it's like to not know yourself.

Edited by Cherry Frosting. Thanks, Cherry!

Commentary Blog (Spoilers)

Published 2014-11-02 10:50:03 UTC
Last updated 2014-11-27 15:26:12 UTC

Prologue - Bud

It was finally here.

Graduation day at Ponyville Elementary. Six years of sweaty classrooms, tears of boredom, and blood from paper cuts culminating in one ceremony, which also happened to involve a lot of sweat and tears. Luckily, this year there were only two paper cuts in the class.

Ever since its dedication some years after the founding of the town itself, Ponyville’s only schoolhouse had one mission: to help each young student discover his or her calling in life, and to teach them to magnify their talent into something truly special. To gently guide today’s fillies and colts so they could become tomorrow’s master chefs, virtuoso violinists, or whatever it was they were meant to be.

In Miss Honeydew’s experience, the students guided themselves for the most part. Once they found their Cutie Mark, it was all downhill from there. Most didn’t need any academic schooling beyond the elementary level. After all, why would a colt who got a sunflower cutie mark while gardening ever need to learn algebra?

Once the students discovered their special talents, Miss Honeydew’s job was largely over. Her entire curriculum was designed to speed students toward their discovery, and it gave ample time for the late bloomers to catch up. It was a system that had worked flawlessly for almost fifty years.

The graduation program reflected that idea. Since each class was relatively small, there was time before the Mayor’s little commencement address for the teacher to give a short list of accomplishments for each graduating student, detailing some of the most memorable triumphs of their school career, and optimistic predictions of what their lives might have in store. The central piece of the highlight, of course, was the student’s Cutie Mark story.

For the first time in the school’s history, that was going to be a problem.

The doors of the schoolhouse burst open on beaten hinges, releasing dozens of stampeding ponies. The doorway was attended by an aging unicorn mare who raised a hoof and called out to the running foals and the parents who had been waiting to take them home. “Don’t forget the ceremony tonight at the amphitheater! It starts at seven! Be early and try to look your best!”

Miss Honeydew gave a small smile as she lowered her foreleg. This was both the best and worst day of the year, in her opinion. She was proud of her students for everything they had accomplished over their time under her tutelage, of course, and excited to see what they would do with the rest of their lives. But the thought that her time in their lives was over dampened her smile a little. Most of these young ponies would stay in Ponyville, but of those that moved on, only her favorites ever kept in touch.

Miss Honeydew’s smile grew a little wider as she looked out over the crowd of happy families in the schoolyard and recognized more and more faces. She was going on her third generation’s worth of teaching, and so she had once known most of these parents as students themselves.

There was Whisker Biscuit, picking up his daughter Bon Bon. He caught Miss Honeydew’s eye and waved fondly, beaming. Take away that ridiculous mustache and shrink him down a foot or so, and there he was again: a gangly colt trying so hard to become an archer like his father. But Miss Honeydew had picked up a knack over the years for seeing things in her students that hadn’t yet crossed their young minds. His love for baking was as clear as day to her from his second year in her school, but he didn’t recognize it until the end of the sixth. Bon Bon found hers much earlier; her talent followed her father’s, though leaning more toward candy than pastries.

A few yards away from him was Joint Redheart, who had become a marriage counselor of all things. Miss Honeydew was especially proud of her. It was an exceptional experience when she earned her Cutie Mark. She watched as the mare nuzzled her daughter, who also had a rather memorable Cutie Mark discovery a few years earlier. A hollow look briefly crossed her features and she chuckled weakly as she remembered the incident. Not all memories were especially happy ones. Several such recollections came to mind as she met the eyes of the shapely, chocolate-brown mare stalking across the schoolyard toward her.

Her smile grew just a little strained.

“Head Turner, what a pleasure to see you!” Miss Honeydew began, cordial as ever.

Head Turner wasn’t as friendly. “What’s this I hear about the ceremony being changed? Why in Equestria would you skip the Cutie Mark stories?”

Honeydew’s smile soured slightly more into what could only be described as a polite grimace. She had known this was coming. “Miss Turner, this school prides itself on equal treatment and sensitivity toward its students. This–”

“Sensitivity!” Head Turner exploded. “You call denying my son due recognition for his talent ‘sensitivity’? I have family visiting all the way from Gallopfrey just to hear all about his accomplishments, and now you tell us none of it will be mentioned! Sensitivity my plot!”

“Miss Turner, please!” Honeydew looked around at the foals mingling with their parents. “This year we have… special circumstances, that necessitate changing the program. Just this time. Next year we’ll go back to the normal program.”

Head Turner hmphed. “Small comforts. I only have one son, you know.”

“Miss Turner. If we went ahead with the usual program this year, it wouldn’t be fair to all the students involved.” Honeydew’s gaze turned to a mother and her filly walking away in the direction of town, the first to leave. As always.

Head Turner tilted her head, giving a disgusted sneer. “Oh don’t tell me this really is all about that little blank-flank.”

Miss Honeydew slowly turned back to face her old, troublemaking student.

“Yes, Miss Turner. It is. And the unfortunate girl has gone through enough without having to go through this. The ceremony will go on as currently outlined, and all the students will be given fair treatment, as they should. Goodbye, Miss Turner.”

With one last purse of her lips and flash of her eyes, Head Turner turned sharply and trotted over to drag her light-brown son away from a small circle of friends.

Miss Honeydew regarded her exit coolly, then went about the familiar business of seeing off her students at the end of a school day. When they were all gone, she went back into her classroom and sat down at her desk to go over the program for the event one last time. She had been faced with a difficult problem, but Miss Honeydew was rather proud of the solution she had come up with. Over the past week, she had given the students a sheet of awards that they could nominate each other for. These awards would take the place of the usual accomplishment stories. As far as Miss Honeydew could see, there was no other way around it that wouldn’t leave poor Lily out.

Miss Honeydew couldn’t help feeling like she had failed the filly somehow. As usual, the last few Cutie Mark discoveries had come about two years before, and the curriculum had shifted to give the students real-world training and experience that would help them make the most of the talents they had found. But for the first time in Ponyville Elementary’s history, the system, which she had largely perfected over her long career, had failed, and a part of her blamed herself. Miss Honeydew knew the fault didn’t rightly belong with her, or anypony for that matter. Some foals took longer than others, of course, and that depended almost entirely on the talent in question. Some Cutie Marks were flashy and impressive, and came after hard work and diligent practice. Many others were subtle and ambiguous, and seemed to appear on their own time, even if that meant the timing didn’t make sense to anypony. It wasn’t uncommon for these sorts of talents to have little real-world application, and they often ended up as little more than hobbies, though she would never dare to say that to her students.

Lily’s case was entirely different. Though the answers her family had gotten back from experts told them that this wasn’t unprecedented and it was pointless to hope for something that would never come, hope they did. But recently even that hope had faded, and now it was time to face facts.

In reality, a Cutie Mark was nothing more than a pattern of colored fur. There was nothing intrinsically magical about it, nothing special about it after it appeared. It was a symptom of talent, not a cause. Not having a mark didn’t mean there was no special talent. That was something she had told Lily in private over and over, when the filly came back from the playground crying. In fact, you could say having no Cutie Mark gave a pony a unique sort of freedom. You could make anything and everything your special talent. But no matter how much rationalization she might give to console a disappointed foal, Miss Honeydew knew that Lily was missing out on something irreplaceable. It was an incomparable moment in a pony’s life when the epiphany of discovering your passion was gloriously heralded by a flash and a mark to commemorate it forever. Equestrian culture was built around Cutie Marks, and no matter the lack of any real disadvantage, a pony without one would never really fit in.

Miss Honeydew shook her head to clear her thoughts, and got back down to refining the program. For the moment, her only concern was what she could do now to make her students’ lives easier, which right now meant altering the graduation ceremony to include each and every one of them equally.

Because for the first time in its varied history, Ponyville Elementary had an albino student.

1 - Only the Lonely

Lily smiled sadly as she slowly closed the book she had been reading, as if closing a coffin lid over the face of a dear friend. Though the pressure of welling tears threatened her eyes, there was warmth to her smile.

I can’t believe it’s finally over, she thought to herself. That was beautiful. I’m almost crying! Still… I almost feel like I was expecting… more from the ending. She snorted and her smile became one of amusement as she lightly berated herself for being unreasonable with her favorite author.

Without any further ceremony, Lily plopped the book down on the end table next to her couch, beside the lamp and her favorite beaten bookmark. She flopped back against the cushions and let her eyes wander around her living room, beaming in the warm afterglow that comes from finishing the last book in a very good series. Hmm, I should really dust that bookshelf. Her eyes caught on the clock suspended on the clouds that made up her walls.

“Oh, good!”It’s almost time for the mail! I hope I got some good questions. The deadline’s in two days.

In Lily’s experience, the time of Ditzy’s arrival could range anywhere within about an hour and a half of four in the afternoon, but after years of observation, she noticed a pattern that seemed to depend on the day of the month, the weather, whether or not there was something interesting to look at on the way to Lily’s cloud house, and according to the mailmare herself, the previous day’s hours at the local bakery. Today, being the nineteenth of September and mildly cloudy, she could narrow the arrival time to within half an hour. She didn’t really care to investigate the other factors, but she lost nothing from waiting an extra thirty minutes. With no letters to answer, and now out of books to plant her nose in, she wasn’t wanting for free time. She took the opportunity to dust the non-cloud furniture in her living room.

Apparently the bakery had closed earlier than usual yesterday, because a familiar erratic, almost frantic clopping sounded from her front doorway just as she was moving to her second shelf.

Lily paused suddenly as she landed gently on her living room floor, and gave a sigh as she realized what she was in for and braced herself for it. Just like every other day, though the reaction always seemed to catch her off-guard when Ditzy Doo came to the door.

Her pondering on her own distractedness distracted her from what awaited her once again, but when she pulled back the clouds of her door and found those eyes staring (mostly) into her face, it hit her with even more force than before.

“Hey, Miss Lily! I’ve got a whole stack of letters here for you!” Ditzy hadn’t bothered to land on the porch, and was still hovering with a slow, heavy beat of her wings as she twisted around and began rummaging through her threadbare satchel for Lily’s mail.

Lily felt a familiar, weary frustration build as she watched the mailmare struggle. She recovered from her initial shock and began the process of re-bracing herself to speak with Ditzy. Then he thought occurred to her just how convenient it was that Ditzy always delivered her mail directly to her door instead of just dropping it off in a mailbox like her predecessor did, and a rush of gratitude for the klutzy pegasus made her smile, even though talking with her was always a pain. Of course, Lily didn’t own a mailbox anymore, now that she didn’t have a house on the ground to have one.

Stupid parasprites.

She was startled once again from her thoughts as Ditzy suddenly hefted an impressively sized mess of envelopes at her face. “Here you go! You sure do get lots of mail, Miss Lily. Your delivery was so heavy today it slowed me down by at least a minute!”

Lily was forced to hover as well so she could use both front hooves to carry the massive number of letters she had received. She looked up to the mailmare in confusion. “Ditzy, this is the earliest you’ve come all month. How early did the bakery close last night?”

Ditzy had made no move to leave, or seemingly to do anything, as per usual. Her face showed no expression beyond what might be called mild perpetual wonder as she replied: “Oh, Sugarcube Corner was closed all day yesterday.”

“Is that why you didn’t show up yesterday?” Lily waited expectantly as she set down her mail on a bench in her entryway, but Ditzy just hovered there blankly. Deciding the strange pegasus must not have heard her question, Lily gave up and tried another train of thought. “Why was the shop closed?”

“I don’t know.” Ditzy answered right away this time and assumed a pose of deep thought, leaning back with hind legs crossed and propping a hoof to her chin, a bemused look ousting the usual blank stare. “Mister Cake said something about his wife and Pinkie Pie and a giant Cock-a-roach. I think he was talking about a dream he had.”

“A Cock-a-what?” Lily blanched.  “...Do you mean a Cockatrice?”

It was clear the moment had passed. Ditzy returned to her neutral, pedantic hovering. “Hey Miss Lily, did you see all the new statues around town yesterday? It’s great the Mayor’s pretty-ing the place up, but I’m glad they’re gone now. They were kinda creepy.”

“Oh my gosh! Is everypony okay? Is the Cockatrice gone?”

Blank, off-center stare again.

Lily’s eyes blazed and her muscles seized in frustration, then she took a moment to collect herself. If Ditzy Doo was delivering mail like nothing was wrong, then there probably wasn’t anything wrong. That new princess in the big treehouse castle across town must have taken care of things. No need to panic.

Another semi-awkward pause. “Well, goodbye, Ditzy Doo.”

“Bye, Miss Lily!” As always, Ditzy about-faced as if she had been waiting for a dismissal and flapped back over the hill in the direction of town.

When she was out of sight, Lily relaxed and turned back inside, pulling the cloudy door closed behind her.

After finishing the dusting (and a number of other small chores she suddenly found need for, and then dinner), Lily decided she couldn’t afford to put off her work any longer, and took her mail up to her bedroom, where she sat down with a cup of tea and began to read the first letter:

Dear Aurea Lillium,

I guess there’s no way around it so I’ll just say it: I think my husband may have been replaced by a changeling.

Lily sighed and rubbed her face, rolling her eyes. This would be a fun evening, she could tell.

As she blew out the lamp and got into bed that night, just like every other night before for the past decade or so, Lily found her thoughts dwelling on the problems that dozens of strangers had sent for her to solve. She had followed her own advice that she gave to one of last week’s readers who had asked about insomnia, and made a list out of all the thoughts that were keeping her awake, so she could put her mind at ease and get some sleep.

It hadn’t helped.

She tossed under her covers and snorted, wondering if her advice was really worth anything, or if it just kept people reading her column. She supposed it didn’t really matter. She hardly ever got letters from the same reader twice, and only a couple of those had ever had anything negative to say about her advice, but positive responses were equally rare. The fact was she didn’t get much feedback at all, so she couldn’t be sure how her readers really felt about her column. For all she knew, ponies who liked the answers they got were the rare ones, and no one else bothered to spread the word about her terrible advice. But that was fine with her, as long as it didn’t threaten her job with the Express.

Lily giggled to herself as a funny thought struck her. What if the only ones who read my column are old mares who like to gossip about which one of them sent in which problem? Everypony knows everypony in this town. Heh, it’s probably what I would do if someone else was writing this blasted advice column instead of me.

She blinked, wondering. Indulging her curiosity a bit, she sat up in bed and looked across the darkened room toward the desk where the letters sat. Maybe I should check. How many little old mares can there be in Ponyville?

Figuring that she probably wasn’t going to fall asleep anytime soon, Lily gave in and tossed the comforter aside, then walked over to the still-considerable stack of letters she hadn’t read yet. She flipped through them, looking at the return addresses. Most were marked with passably witty pen names, but occasionally one would bear a name that was likely real. It was hard to tell, with some of these ponies’ names. She found it funny that these readers casually trusting her with their identities (not that she had reason to betray that trust, of course) were more amusing to her than the ones that were clearly meant to be jokes.

Lily scrunched her face in the darkness. Thinking about that was hard this late at night. She wanted to go back to bed, but she was almost through checking the return addresses, and she was too tired to bother doing anything but what she was already doing. She was busy marveling at how only a moment ago she could feel like sleep was miles away and suddenly be so very sleepy now, when she realized she had been staring at one envelope for a full minute. She blinked slowly at the envelope for a moment, wondering what was different about it that had caught her subconscious attention. Nearly-Desperate Mother, 53 Pastern, Whitetail, Canterlot Val… Whitetail? Someone wrote a letter to her from somewhere other than Ponyville?

Thoughts of sleep were banished by sudden curiosity, so Lily sat down at her desk, lit a candle, and opened the letter.

Dear Aurea Lillium:

My cousin in Ponyville showed me your column, and I would like your advice on a problem of mine. For almost two years now, my son has been the only “blank flank” in his class, and I’m afraid that I’m starting to see signs of major depression in him. He used to spend all of his time obsessing over finding his special talent, but recently his efforts seem half-hearted. I’ve always assured him he was going about it the wrong way and that it would eventually find itself, but his new attitude worries me greatly. I never thought I would say this, but I wish he would go back to his pointless experimenting, just so he would be hopeful and happy again.

I’m not sure what to do. I’ve always held back from helping him directly with his problem, believing and being told that it’s for the best that he makes his own way without interference. It’s been hard sometimes, since I (as well as everypony else who knows him well) think I have a pretty good idea what his talent is going to be. But he counts it out because he feels like he’s already “tried” it, and I’ve never been able to convince him that it takes more than one experience with an activity to know something like that for sure. I think, deep down, he’s known for a long time that his efforts were effectively pointless, but told himself they were helping so he wouldn’t have to face his frustration head-on. But now it looks like that’s worn out. My biggest worry is that this is my fault, that he’s lost hope because he finally heeded my nagging.

I can’t be sure what’s going on with him, being one of the first in my class to find my Cutie Mark, so I don’t know how to help him. What should I do? Should I encourage him to keep trying? Deny or somehow discredit what I said before? Should I just tell him what his talent is, or try to force him into a situation so he finds it? I’m lost.

--Nearly-Desperate Mother

Lily frowned at the open letter on her desk for a moment, then pulled over her typewriter. She only had one more day to work before her deadline for the week, so she had only replied to the two best letters she had read thus far and saved the rest for tomorrow. This one was the most promising of all so far, and she just knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep leaving it unanswered.

As Lily finally went back to bed after writing her response to “Nearly-Desperate Mother”, to her immense frustration she found that sleep still eluded her. She tried following another piece of insomnia advice she had once given, and ran through what was bothering her in her mind, from top to bottom. She had never gotten a letter quite like this one before. She had felt very qualified to answer this one in particular, what with her own experience with Cutie-Mark hunting. But on further reflection, she realized that the advice she had decided on couldn’t be qualified from her own experience. It never did, now that she thought more about it.

From years of writing her column, Lily had learned to detach herself from the problems she worked with. If she tried to answer them honestly, from her own experience and serious judgment, she would be at a loss to even say anything. After all, what special qualifications did middle-aged recluse Lily have to solve these people’s problems? So she had developed a habit of coming up with an answer to a problem from her imagination alone, and she became almost a different mare when she wrote. If she really was “Aurea Lillium” instead of plain old Lily, she wouldn’t have assumed that everypony was safe when Ditzy delivered the news about the Cockatrice; she would have talked Ditzy into giving a more complete answer, then gone into town to make sure everything was alright. And if the mare from Whitetail with the troubled son had come to her door to ask Lily for advice, she would likely not have had an answer for her at all.

She had no reason to think there was anything wrong with the answer she had written for the mare, but this problem and her answer in particular still didn’t sit well with her. She chalked it up to being too close to home, and gave up trying to figure it out. Sleep still didn’t come.

She hoped that stallion with the insomnia problem was getting better results from her advice than she was.

2 - White Violet

“Here you go, girls!” Twilight Sparkle waved a hoof as she showed her favorite trio of fillies into the library of her new castle. “Though I still don’t know why you want to learn about Wereponies of all things.”

“They’re called ‘Equiwolves,’ Twilight! Everyone knows that,” Sweetie Belle said with a scoff as she and her friends walked through the large decorative doors into the spacious library.

“Who told you that?” asked Twilight, an eyebrow raised.

Applebloom answered the question. “Zecora, of course! She knows everything about all the monsters in the Everfree Forest!”

“There are Wereponies in the Everfree Forest?” Twilight asked, but the Crusaders had already taken off to search the bookshelves for monster lore.

After a few seconds of chaotic rifling through her beloved books, three fillies’ heads poked around a shelf, and Scootaloo voiced a question. “Uh, Twilight? Where are your books on Equiwolves?”

Twilight smiled before opening her mouth to answer, but before she could speak, Spike kicked open the doors to the library, a stack of letters and a newspaper in his claws, and answered the question for her.

“Try Amazing Animals and Where They Live by Pith Helmet. It’s three bookcases from the back wall, top shelf.”

“Thanks, Spike!” the fillies sang in unison, then ducked back around the shelf to find the book they wanted.

Twilight turned away from the sight to smile at her faithful assistant. “Sounds like you’ve been working hard to get to know the new library.”

Spike smiled and blushed as he shifted the load he was carrying to one arm so he could buff his claws against his chest. “Heh heh, yeah, well. I figured that now you’re not just a librarian anymore, I could take some of the work off of your hooves and help out a little more than I did before. After all, you’ve got more important things to worry about now!”

Twilight humbled him a bit by rubbing his head with a hoof. “Thanks for the concern, Spike, but I can still make time to manage my own personal library. Is that the Sunday paper?”

“It sure is! And don’t you worry about all this other stuff. I can handle it for you!” Spike said with wide, hopeful eyes.

Twilight cast a suspicious glance at the mail in the young dragon’s arms and thought she saw the ribbon of a Royal Seal poking out of the stack.

“That’s okay, Spike. I’ll take care of it myself. Thanks for offering, though. Why don’t you go help the girls with their research?” Twilight suggested as she floated the paper and the mail away from her over-eager assistant with her magic. “It sounds like they still haven’t found Amazing Animals and Where They Live.”

Spike looked over his shoulder in the direction of the Crusaders, and hoped that whatever they were up to wasn't as bad as it sounded. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Do you want anything else? Tea? Daffodil sandwiches?”

Twilight smiled wider at him and held up her newspaper. “I’ll be okay, Spike. I’ve got my crossword. You go have fun with the girls.”

With a final salute, Spike turned and jogged down the aisles toward the commotion in the back of the library. Twilight giggled a bit, then took her copy of this morning’s Ponyville Express over to a reading table and opened it up to the puzzles and games section.

“Let’s see... one across, ‘Brown-nosing.’ Nine letters. Hmm… maybe, ‘pandering’?”

Twilight thought about that for a moment, then inked it in with a grin.

“Ah found it!” Apple Bloom declared in excitement. Two other fillies and a small dragon zoomed to her side to look at the page she had open in Amazing Animals and Where They Live, as she began to read out loud:

“'The Werepony, Equinewolf, Equiwolf, or as it is sometimes known collo… colloq…’”

“Colloquially!” Sweetie Belle chimed in helpfully.

“Do y’ever not do that?” asked Applebloom, with a little scowl at the interruption. Sweetie Belle returned the look with a sullen frown.

“...Anyway,” Scootaloo spoke upafter an awkward pause. “What else does it say?”

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle glanced at each other before Applebloom cleared her throat and picked up where she left off:

“‘...Colloqua’lly as “Echowolf,” is a lu-peen-’”

“Lu-pine!”

Applebloom shot the equine dictionary another warning look, and Sweetie Belle gave her a little apologetic smile. Applebloom continued:

“‘...Lu-pine magical... car-ni-vore which inhabits the deepest magical forests of Equestria, most not-a-bly the infamous Everfree. Its name is derived from the ancient Equestrian superstition that all Wereponies are in fact normal ponies that have gone through a magical or puh-seudo-’” –Sweetie Belle winced– “'magical transformation and lost all memories of their past selves.’”

“Whoa!” Scootaloo exclaimed, causing Applebloom to look up. “Equiwolves are ponies? How cool is that!”

“Do you think Zecora could take us to meet one?” Sweetie Belle asked with a wide-eyed grin. Spike was quickly becoming concerned with this line of thought.

“What d’we need Zecora for, anyhow?” Applebloom said. “We know our way around the Everfree. We can find one ourselves!”

Spike decided now was the time to speak up, but before he could say anything, Twilight rounded a bookcase and called out to them. “Hey, girls! Look what I found in today’s paper! I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Twilight!” Sweetie Belle squeaked. “Did you know that Equiwolves are ponies?”

Twilight stared at her blankly for a second before she remembered what the three had come here to study. “Oh, you mean Wereponies. No, that’s just a myth. It’s never been proven, and the only ponies who still believe it are backcountry old mares who like to tell stories to scare young foals. And the foals they scare, I guess.” Twilight considered that for a moment for a moment before shaking her head. “But enough about random monsters, take a look at this.”

Twilight dropped her morning paper on the floor in front of them, still open to the games and puzzles page, and the three girls looked down at it in mild curiosity. They searched the page for a while, but found nothing but some finished puzzles and a lot of boring news articles. “Uh, Twilight?” Applebloom asked with a raised brow. “What are we supposed to be looking at?”

Twilight’s face drooped a little in disappointment, and she pointed with a hoof. “Look at the article  in the top right, with the picture of the flower.”

“Aurea Lillium?” Sweetie Belle asked curiously.

“That’s the one!” Twilight said, with the air of a magician waiting for the best moment to reveal a card trick, “Read the part under ‘Cutie Mark Conundrum’!”

The trio of fillies and Spike read silently for a minute, and seemingly at once their eyes lit up. “This colt sounds just like us!” exclaimed Scootaloo. “Maybe we should find him and tell him about the Crusaders!”

“Twilight?” Sweetie Belle asked curiously. “What kind of article is this?”

Twilight smiled, always happy to answer a question. “It’s an advice column. Ponies from all over write in to the author with their problems, and he or she prints advice in this column every Sunday. Read the answer to that letter.”

Sweetie Belle read it out loud:

“Dear Nearly-Desperate, I’m sorry to hear about the change in your son’s attitude. I remember well my own time as a blank-flank. I too spent years searching for my Cutie Mark, and nothing ever seemed to work. But looking back now, I’m grateful for those years, because I learned more about myself by searching for my special talent than I ever could just by finding it. But in the case of your son, I think the clock is ticking. As things are now, his condition won’t improve until he finally succeeds in his search. A helping hoof from somepony he trusts could be just what he needs to give him the boost of hope he needs to finally look at himself in a different way, hopefully the way he needs. I say go ahead and encourage him, and help him however you can. But you’re right to avoid guiding him too closely. It won’t work if he is simply told what he should be doing; he has to discover it for himself. But that doesn’t mean you can’t nudge him in the right direction when it’s needed. It’s needed now.’”

When Sweetie Belle had finished, she shared a wide-eyed look with Applebloom. Scootaloo wasn't as impressed. “That’s really cool, but it doesn’t help us much.”

Applebloom looked at her curiously. “What d’ya mean?”

“We already tried getting somepony to help us. All anyone keeps saying is ‘Be patient, it’ll happen on its own!’” Scootaloo answered, rolling her eyes and frowning.

“That’s the way it works,” Twilight cut in.

“See?” Scootaloo observed without looking up, waving a hoof in the direction of Twilight, who flinched as if Scootaloo had given her a rude gesture.

“Well, what about this Aurea pony?” Applebloom suggested.

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle asked, confused.

“It sounds to me like this pony understands the Crusader quest better than anyone else we’ve talked to. And her special talent is helping ponies with their problems! She’s perfect!”

“How do you know it’s a ‘she’?” Spike asked.

“Ah can just tell.”

“But we don’t know where to find her,” Sweetie Belle pointed out. “I’ve never heard of anypony named ‘Aurea Lillium’ before. She could live in Fillydelphia for all we know!”

“Actually, the author probably lives somewhere here in Ponyville,” Twilight offered. “The column is only printed in the Ponyville Express, so it would be a hassle for the author to live too far away.” She closed her eyes as she continued, slipping into lecture mode. “But there’s an easy way to contact her; just send-” Her suggestion died in her mouth as she opened her eyes to see the Cutie Mark Crusaders hurriedly leaving her library.

“Hmph! How do you like that, huh?” Spike complained, folding his arms and looking up to Twilight for agreement.

Twilight recovered from her surprise at seeing her guests walk out on her just as she was offering advice. “That’s okay, Spike. I hope they do find this pony. Maybe they really can help.” With one last smile at her favorite dragon, who looked like somepony had just shot down his paper airplane, Twilight trotted out of the library.

She made a mental note to herself to ask Zecora about Wereponies the next time she saw her.

3 - Cowslip

The obvious first step in the search for Aurea Lillium was to find out where to look first. It wasn’t long before the Crusaders' search for the start of their search led them to Pinkie Pie. Pinkie was known for knowing almost everything about every pony in Ponyville, and since Twilight seemed certain that the mysterious author of Aurea Lillium was a local resident, it seemed natural that Pinkie Pie would know who she was.

When the Cutie Mark Crusaders arrived at Sugar Cube Corner looking for Pinkie Pie, they found her in her room practicing dentistry on her alligator… or attempting to, at least.

“I told you last time, Gummy. If you brushed every day like I told you to, your gums wouldn’t be nearly so sensitive!” Gummy was squirming like a landed fish with a hook set in his mouth. Pinkie had to use all of her limited concentration to keep her hook from actually setting.

“Hold still, Gummy! It’s your own fault you need this check-up in the first place! The first rule of snack-eating is taking good care of your chompers so you can keep chomp-chomp-chomping!”

Pinkie accidentally poked his molar bed with the sharp end of her No. 23 Sickle Probe, and the resulting jolt from her patient knocked her back and almost rolled him off the pet-sized dental chair.

She was so busy wrestling her crownless crocodilian back into position that she could only spare a strained glance for her guests. It seemed a quick look was enough for Pinkie to recognize them, however.

“Applebloom! Perfect timing! Help me restrain the patient! Sweetie Belle, bring me a Cone Burnisher, stat! And Scootaloo?” Scootaloo waited nervously for her instructions to come, while the other two warily approached the apparent dentist. “Turn on the AC! It’s downright sweltering in here! Or is it just me?”

As Scootaloo relievedly went about her menial task and Sweetie Belle picked through the assortment of dental instruments on a nearby tray for something cone-shaped, Applebloom did her best to ask the question they had come to ask, while simultaneously fighting to keep a small alligator in place for Pinkie to do whatever she was doing in his mouth. “Stay down, Gummy… So, uh, Pinkie?”

“Hold on, Applebloom… almost… done! Whew!” Gummy went oddly still and Pinkie Pie stepped back and wiped her forehead with a hoof. “You can put that back now, Sweetie Belle. Turns out I only needed my Curette.” Her three impromptu assistants took a moment to blink at each other. “Now, what can I do for you girls?”

Sweetie Belle flashed a scolding look. “What in the hay-”

Scootaloo quickly put a hoof to her friend’s mouth, cutting her off. Applebloom gave a worried look to the lifeless-looking form of Gummy on the chair. Calm, focused head prevailing, Scootaloo voiced their question: “Do you know who writes the Aurea Lillium column in the Ponyville Express?”

Pinkie’s eyes widened and went to her hoof, which was steadily moving toward her face. She and her three spectators watched in silent fascination as it zipped across her mouth, then she broke her trance and looked up again with a smile.

“Mh-Hmmh! Hm mmh hmhm! Mmm hmm mhm mh mhmm hmm hmhmm hm-mm-mmm.”

The three fillies looked at her in concern. Pinkie rolled her eyes and pantomimed crossing her heart and poking herself in the eye. “Hm hm hmhm!”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. “Uh, Pinkie? Are you gonna tell us or are you just gonna keep being weird?”

Pinkie looked at her pleadingly. “Hm hmmm!”

Applebloom gave an “Uggh!” of frustration and marched right up to the reticent pink mare. “Come on, Pinkie. You know everypony in Ponyville! You’ve gotta know who it is!”

Pinkie Pie looked mildly hurt. “Hm hm hmm hm!”

“Oh!” Scootaloo was distracted from the scene by Sweetie Belle’s exclamation. “I have an idea! Be right back!” With that, she trotted back downstairs to the bakery.

When she came back, it was to the sight of Applebloom shouting “Tell us!” repeatedly into Pinkie Pie’s face, and Pinkie responding with “Hm hmm!”, on the verge of tears.

“Oh, Pinkie Pie…” Sweetie Belle said to break up the monotony. Pinkie and Applebloom both looked her way to see her reveal the sugar-coated candy rope she had brought with her. They watched as, with a flat expression on her face, she trotted over to where Gummy still lay immobile on the dental chair. “If you keep mumbling at us instead of telling us what we want to hear, we may get so bored we have to start flossing Gummy’s gums with this!”

Sweetie Belle looked up to her friends, who were giving her very strange looks. “What? Come on, I’ve always wanted to try getting a Cutie Mark in interrogation!”

Scootaloo and Applebloom exchanged skeptical looks that soon morphed into slightly evil grins.

“Cutie Mark Crusader Coercers! Yay!”

“MHHHMMM!!!”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders didn’t get their Cutie Marks in coercion, torture, or Good Cop/Bad Cop routines that day. This was mainly because before they succeeded in cracking Pinkie Pie they were interrupted by a very confused and concerned Rarity, who had come looking for Sweetie Belle. Needless to say, Rarity doubted she would ever forget the experience of walking into Pinkie’s room and seeing her strapped to a miniature dentist’s chair, jaws clamped shut and crying her eyes out, with her sister and her friends running candy rope back and forth between Gummy’s jaws, yelling “Gingivitis!” over and over again from across the room. She had stormed in with harsh words, as was befitting a responsible older sister. She released Pinkie Pie and made the girls apologize. Surprisingly, Pinkie wiped away her tears and was suddenly all smiles again, laughing off the apologies and assuring her that it had all been in good fun. When Rarity had ushered the three troublemakers out, however, she was almost certain she heard Pinkie muttering to Gummy about dental insurance.

After obtaining a full explanation for what she had witnessed and explaining the concept of a Pinkie Pie Promise to the girls, it was easy to hand Scootaloo and Applebloom off to their respective guardians and relay the story, but when Rarity was alone with her sister she found she had no clue what the proper punishment was, or even if any punishment was needed. In the end she sent Sweetie Belle up to bed without dinner and told her to think about what she did. Then she did her best to lose herself in her work.

She couldn't help giggling to herself from time to time.

The next morning, there was a general meeting of the Ponyville chapter of the Cutie Mark Crusaders in their secondary headquarters (which was more commonly known as a picnic table in the Ponyville Elementary playground). The fruits of yesterday’s labors were related, reviewed, and analyzed, and further plans were outlined.

Co-Chair Scootaloo opened discussion. “We’ve been going about this all wrong. Aurea Lillium must be hiding who she is, or else she wouldn’t have shut Pinkie Pie up with that crazy promise.”

Applebloom furthered the notion. “She must have some deep, dark secret to hide! Maybe she’s on the run from the law!”

Scootaloo concurred. “Maybe she’s a secret agent! Oh, I can’t wait to meet her!”

Spike, who happened to be walking by the playground on his way to Sweet Apple Acres, raised an argument. “Maybe she’s a ‘he’.” His argument went unanswered and largely ignored.

Sweetie Belle was unsupportive of the speculation currently underway. “But why wouldn’t she want anypony to know she writes the article?” Her objection put a halt to the proceedings, as the three co-chairs took a minute or two to ponder the question.

Applebloom moved that the question was unanswerable with the current available information, and further, was irrelevant to the matter at hoof. “Ah guess we just gotta ask her.”

The motion was seconded and then passed by a round of nodding, then the primary topic of the meeting was brought to the table by Sweetie Belle. “So how are we gonna find her?”

Scootaloo proposed a solution. “Ooh! Ooh! I know!” Her colleagues looked at her expectantly. “She writes that column in the paper every week, right? Maybe she works there!

Applebloom seconded the proposal. “Yeah! Let’s go ask them! But, uh, where are they?”

The question was eventually brought to Miss Cheerilee, who told them that the Ponyville Express was headquartered and printed at its offices, located toward the hills southwest of Ponyville and near the Rich residence. This threw a small hitch in their plans, forcing them to wait an extra half hour after school to avoid walking with Diamond Tiara as she went home.

The Express Building, which housed the printing press and offices for all the journalists and editors of the paper, turned out to be a three-story brick building, which had probably been built on the outskirts of town because it clashed so horribly with the thatched buildings in the town proper. At least, that was Applebloom’s guess.

The receptionist at the office put on a sweet smile that didn’t reach her eyes when three little fillies walked up to her desk.

“And what can I do for you today, sweeties?”

Applebloom spoke up for the group. “We’re here to talk to Aurea Lillium. Or whoever writes it, ah guess.”

The receptionist leaned on her desk as she looked down at them for a long moment, chewing her gum loudly.

“Aurea Lillium? That’s a freelance column mailed in by a private writer. It’s not written by anyone on staff here.”

The unexpected visitors showed various signs of disappointment, and the receptionist smiled gained a bit more sincerity.

“Well do you know where she lives so we can find her?” Scootaloo asked with a little irritation.

The receptionist ditched the smile for a flat look. Time to get these little annoyances out of her lobby. “No. Like I said, the material for the column is mailed in every week under the pen name ‘Aurea Lillium.’ As far as I know, the author has never visited the offices personally.” Her face scrunched a bit as she looked upward in thought. “Though I guess if they did, they would just ask to be sent up to the Lifestyle offices without bothering to tell me who they were. Hm.”

“Can we talk to the Lifestyle editor please?”

The receptionist was startled out of her thoughts, and looked down at the white and purple unicorn filly who had spoken.

“What for?”

“The Lifestyle editor would be the one who handles Aurea Lillium’s column, right?” The receptionist nodded. “Then if anyone knows more about the author, it would be them. So can we go talk to them?”

The receptionist sneered, but reached a hoof to a button on her desk. Luckily for them, she never turned down an opportunity to bother her coworkers. Buzzz. “Ink?”

A tinny voice sounded from a small machine on the desk. “Yeah, Peg?”

“There are some visitors here to talk to you about Lillium.”

There was a pause before Ink Press responded. “Send ‘em up.”

Peg, or whatever her name was, turned back to the visitors and smiled again. “Looks like you girls lucked out today. Ink Blot’s office is on the third floor, behind the door marked ‘Lifestyle.’ Good luck!” she said with obvious sarcasm. The three fillies ignored it and trotted off to the stairs.

Two floors up, Scootaloo knocked on Ink Blot’s door and a voice from within called, “Come on in.”

Inside, a cream-colored stallion with a dark purplish-blue mane seated behind a desk stared in surprise as three fillies stepped into his office. “Are you the ones asking about Aurea?”

“Yep!” Applebloom answered cheerfully, immediately taking a seat on a simple chair in front of the desk. “We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and we wanna meet her!”

Ink Blot mouthed “Cutie Mark Crusaders” in bemusement for a moment, before he narrowed his eyes in recognition. “Hang on, you look familiar. Weren’t you Gabby Gums?”

All three fillies looked away sheepishly at that. Ink Blot smirked. “Thought so. I was a big fan. Come back when you’re older and we might have jobs for you three.” He chuckled a bit before collecting himself and giving them a serious look. “But I can’t let you find Aurea.”

The self-proclaimed Crusaders looked up indignantly. “Why not?” asked Scootaloo. “You know where she lives, don’t you?”

Ink Blot gave her a mischievous smile. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But part of our contract with her is a strict secrecy agreement. As long as we keep printing her column, I’m not allowed to reveal her identity or her whereabouts. She’s a little paranoid, if you ask me. So I’m definitely not sending Gabby Gums to her door. Sorry, kids. Can’t help you.”

“But we quit being Gabby Gums ages ago!” Sweetie Belle objected. “We hated how much we were hurting ponies. We just want her help so we can find our Cutie Marks!”

Ink Blot shrugged. “Sorry, still can’t help you. If I remember right, though, she just answered a question about Cutie Marks. I think it was this last week. Why don’t you check that out? Maybe it’ll help you.”

Scootaloo looked dejected as she got up from her chair and walked slowly to the door, followed by her friends. “We already did. That’s why we want to meet her. Thanks for nothing.”

Ink Blot didn’t know what to say to that, so he just watched them go with a frown. He ended up going home early that day, finding it hard to focus on his work after meeting the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

4 - Amaryllis

The better part of a week later, three fillies seated at a Hayburger table sighed in unison. Twilight Sparkle, sitting across from them, smiled adoringly as she methodically picked at her hayfries. “So… I take it the search isn’t going very well?”

“You can say that again,” Sweetie Belle said morosely, sipping at her milkshake.

Scootaloo hadn’t touched hers since it arrived at the table. “We must have talked to every mare in Ponyville, and none of them have any clue who writes the stupid column,” she said, tapping the table absently.

Applebloom looked up at Twilight with a small pout. “Are you sure she lives in Ponyville?”

Twilight grimaced and looked back at her apologetically before responding. “No, Applebloom, I guess I’m not. I could have been wrong. But don’t forget Pinkie Pie; you said she couldn’t tell you because of a Pinkie Pie Promise. That should tell you something, at least. Pinkie knows who she is, even if she can’t tell you.”

“That still doesn’t help us find her,” said Scootaloo, still glaring at the table over crossed hooves.

“No, but there’s still something you haven’t tried,” Twilight consoled. “I tried telling you back when I first showed you the article. Why don’t you right Aurea Lillium a letter?”

That caused the fillies to rub their chins in thought; somehow, the idea hadn’t crossed their minds, but now that it had, it was quickly overtaking all their other thoughts.

“Hmm…” Applebloom wondered out loud, “She must get a lot of mail… that’s kinda her thing.”

Sweetie Belle seemed to be riding the same train of thought. “And all those letters have to get to her somehow… but we already asked all the mailponies. Ditzy Doo thought Aurea Lillium was a fancy name for the ‘Eastern Lights.’”

“It doesn’t matter if they know what the letters are for or not,” Scootaloo pointed out. “If Aurea really lives in Ponyville, then someone has to deliver her mail!”

Sweetie Belle had another rejoinder; “But no one knows what her address is to send her letters. So where do they go?”

“It’s obvious, ain’t it?” Applebloom replied. “All the letters must go to the newspaper! Ah bet that Ink Blot guy we talked to sends them all to her place. Don’tcha remember? He said he couldn’t send us to talk with her, but he didn’t say he didn’t know where she lived!”

“That’s it!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed. “If we send a letter for Aurea to the newspaper, we can follow it to find out where it goes!”

Twilight looked back and forth between the Crusaders in surprise; that wasn’t what she meant when she gave her suggestion.

Scootaloo groaned and rolled her eyes. “Ugh! Do you guys have any idea how long it takes to deliver a letter? Sometimes I have to wait two weeks to hear from my pen-pony, and he only lives in Cloudsdale. And you want to follow Ditzy Doo as she delivers this letter twice?”

Twilight had no words. She decided to just sat back and see where this led.

Applebloom hmmed. “Well, we already know it’s going to the paper. Why don’t we wait there for someone to deliver it?”

She jumped back as Scootaloo suddenly leaned in close to her face. “Two. Weeks!”

Sweetie Belle had an idea. “Well, what if we skip that part and take the letter to the paper ourselves? I bet they get letters for Aurea Lillium every day. We can drop off the letter there, then wait for it to be picked up. Then we can just follow it from there.”

Scootaloo and Applebloom looked at each other. “Well,” Scootaloo began, “I guess it’s not so much waiting. We can find out when the mailpony is headed that way and get there right before they do.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Applebloom declared. “Now let’s go write that letter!”

With that, all three Crusaders hopped down from their bench, and before Twilight could so much as blink, they were gone. She sat in silence for a moment, then burst into giggles when she realized she was trying to measure the reaction time of her blinks. After she calmed back down she paused, then made a mental note to continue the measurements at home with the proper equipment. “Now I have to know…”

A little less than two hours later, the Cutie Mark Crusaders were back outside the print office of the Ponyville Express with a letter in a bright orange envelope (to make it easy to keep track of).

“Alright,” Scootaloo whispered dramatically, “Let’s go over the plan.”

“What plan?” Applebloom asked, confused. “We just walk in, give somepony the letter, and wait out here. And why are you whispering?”

Scootaloo shushed her. “We don’t want them catching on to us!”

“Oh, for pony’s sake!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed, snatching away the envelope from Applebloom and marching between them to the door. Scootaloo and Applebloom hurried to follow her inside.

Peg the Receptionist was at the front desk again. “Welcome to the Ponyville Express,” she began without looking up. “What can I… oh, it’s you three again. What do you want this time?”

“We want to send this letter in for Aurea Lillium,” said Sweetie Belle, setting the letter up on the desk.

“Huh?” Peg asked in confusion, blinking at the painfully orange envelope. “You want us to send a letter for you? I got news for you, kid, 'cause we’re a newspaper, not a post office. Get it? I've got news, because... Oh, hello, sir. What can I do for you today?”

The Crusaders followed Peg’s eyes to an Earth Pony stallion in a snappy business suit, who was suddenly standing behind them.

“Yes, hey, hello!” he said animatedly. His distinctive, rapid speaking style earned him strange looks from the three fillies below him. “M’name’s Pin Stripe, from Glow News Syndicate in Manehatten, that’s right. I simply must, y’hear me, must talk to the brilliant quill behind Aurea Lillium! We have ay once-in-a-lifetime offer for this little strip, and we will see it printed across Equestria, mark my words!” The Crusaders exchanged looks of happy surprise.

Peg blinked, giving Pin Stripe an odd look of her own. “I’m sorry sir, but Lillium is an independent freelance article.” She spared a sidelong glance for the fillies still in front of her desk. “I don’t have any contact information for the author. If you want, I can set up an appointment with Ink Blot, who’s in charge of our Lifestyle section and handles the column.”

“Y’know, I completely understand, don’t you worry. But I really must talk to this pony in person.”

Peg nodded and pressed her button again. Buzzz. “Mr. Ink Blot?”

There was a definite pause before his answer came, and when it did, Ink Blot sounded amused. “Yes, Ms. Percolator Peggy?”

The fillies snorted. Percolator Peggy shot them a murderous glare. “There’s a Mr. Pin Stripe here from Glow News to talk to you about Aurea Lillium.”

This time the pause didn’t last long at all. “Well send him right up!”

“Will do, sir.” Peggy turned back to Pin Stripe. “Mr. Blot will see you now.”

“Thank you, and salutations to you, good madame.” Pin Stripe said, striding smoothly past the desk toward the stairs. All three of the Crusaders had the same thought as he left, that he sounded like an old radio host.

“Do you girls still need something?” Peg’s voice interrupted their thoughts.

They engaged in a staring contest with her for a moment, until Sweetie Belle broke the silence, with a smile fit for tallying a bountiful candy harvest after Nightmare Night. “Percolator Peggy?”

“It’s Perky Peg, or you can turn around and get outta my lobby right now,” Perky Peg responded with a deadpan look that promised no patience as far as her name was involved.

“Nah, that’s okay,” said Scootaloo, sweeping the orange envelope off the desk and putting it into her saddlebag. “We’re leaving.”

Peggy glared at them as they left, giggling the whole way. She narrowed her eyes as she distinctly heard one of them say, “Perky Peg? That’s even worse!”

“Whoah!” three fillies said in unison as their scooter-wagon caravan crested a large hill west of Ponyville, revealing a low-altitude cloud cottage in a small, isolated valley.

“I had no idea this was here!” Scootaloo said. “I thought Rainbow Dash had the only cloud house in Ponyville! I want one!”

She shared an excited look with Applebloom. “Mah sister and I take Winona for walks around here sometimes, but ah never knew there was anything behind this hill!”

“Get down!” Sweetie Belle hissed at them, hopping out of the wagon and crouching low to the ground. “I see him!”

Applebloom and Scootaloo quickly dropped down next to her. “I almost forgot we were following this guy,” Scootaloo remarked. Though she would later relate the incident as an awesome high-speed chase through Ponyville and the surrounding countryside, getting here had actually been more a matter of following Pin Stripe’s taxi at a safe distance and trying to look casual. When they left the town, Scootaloo was forced to rely on Applebloom’s knowledge of the area, and take alternate routes around the hills to avoid being spotted. At one of the larger hills that met the main road Pin Stripe was taking, they had watched him leave the taxi behind and start climbing the hill on foot. They decided to take a guess, and picked another hill, the one they were now on top of, to get to wherever he was going. It looked like they picked right.

Pin Stripe was standing next to a small pond, amidst what looked like a simple garden, nearly underneath the front porch of the cottage. He looked up and tilted his head at the house for a moment. Must be wondering how to get up there, Scootaloo thought.

Then he started yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Hello! Aurea Lillium! I’m here to talk to you!”

He kept up his shouting until a very white pegasus mare in a cozy-looking dusky blue robe and matching slippers appeared suddenly on the edge of the porch, looking down at Pin Stripe with eyes of fury.

“That’s her! That must be her!” Applebloom exclaimed in excitement. Two hooves immediately met her mouth to silence her.

“Quiet! We’re hiding, remember?” Sweetie Belle reminded her.

“She doesn’t look very happy to see him,” Scootaloo remarked.

They were too far away to hear what was being said, but the mare held an aggressive stance and appeared to be shouting down at Pin Stripe, who was slowly backing up with his ears pinned back. There was a pause, as the white mare seemingly waited for his response, then she tilted her head and listened with growing interest. Much more calm now than she was a moment ago, she glided down to meet Pin Stripe on the ground, where a rather one-sided conversation commenced. Pin Stripe repeated his eccentric mannerisms from the lobby of the Express, and the mystery mare leaned in with rapt attention.

Now that she was closer and holding still, the Crusaders finally got a good look at their quarry. Her mane and tail were as white as her coat and were long and wavy, without any apparent attempt at styling. Her eyes were a kind of weak pink. Rose pink, Sweetie Belle decided.

Pin Stripe’s oration went on for a few more minutes, then he swept a leg and bowed to his new associate, to which she nodded dumbly in return, mouth slightly agape. Pin Stripe turned and climbed back up the hill, and the white mare watched him go in silence. When he was gone, she pranced in place and squee’d in excitement, before zooming back up to her house.

“Nope,” Scootaloo concluded, “guess she wasn’t angry after all.”

Up in the cloud cottage, Lily flopped herself down on the living room couch, then gripped a pillow against her face and screamed into it.

“AAAAAAAAHHHH! Ohhh, my gosh. Ohhhhh my gosh. I can’t believe it!” she said, sitting up and grinning like an idiot, staring at nothing in particular. “Glow News Syndicate? They like my column! AAAAAAHHH!” She cheered and punched the air, then began flying circles around the ceiling.

Eventually she settled down in a high-backed chair she kept in a corner for guests (it hadn’t been used in years), and took a deep breath.

“Okay, Lily. They need an answer in person at their headquarters in Manehatten, by the end of the month. Oh, I guess I need to go into town get a train ticket, and start packing. And look into hotels. And I guess I should let Ditzy know to hold my mail. And then there’s my garden…” Lily scowled at nothing. “Horsefeathers, I hate traveling.”

Sudden shouting of the words Lily feared more than death itself made her head snap up in alarm.

“AUREA LILLIUM! AUREA LILLIUM!”

That idiot Pin Stripe! I told him this would happen!

Lily zoomed straight through her front door in a poof of cloud, not even bothering to open it, as she soared straight to the source of the commotion on the ground faster than she had flown in a very long time. There she found three small fillies looking worriedly up at her fearsome expression. The furious tirade she had been prepared to unleash died on her tongue as she faced three pairs of wide, startled eyes.

“You… can’t… I… just…”

Lily was the first to admit that she was absolute garbage when it came to dealing with foals. She wasn’t very good at dealing with other ponies in general, but talking to foals completely baffled her. She didn’t understand how it could be done.

Lily sighed. Whatever.

“Just… don’t do that again. I live out here for a reason, and I don’t want anypony bothering me.”

She turned to leave, but the yellow one in the ridiculous bow reached out a hoof. “Wait!”

Lily paused to regard the Earth Pony foal with the trembling lips and shimmery eyes.

“Mah name’s Apple Bloom, and this is Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. We’ve been lookin’ for you for ages!”

Lily raised her eyebrows with disdain. “That’s the idea. I don’t want fans of the column bothering me at home.” She turned to go again, but this time found a small orange pegasus in her way.

“We read your answer to Almost-Desperate Mom about foals who can’t get Cutie Marks!”

The third filly, a white unicorn, spoke up. “See, we’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and we’ve tried everything to try and find our special talents, and nothing’s worked. We were hoping you could help us.”

Lily looked around at the three fillies that now had her surrounded. She examined them more closely. “Say, weren’t you guys Gabby Gums?”

The fillies groaned in unison and threw their heads back. “Why is that the only thing everypony remembers about us?” the pegasus -Scootaloo- asked the world in general.

Sweetie Belle, the unicorn, looked up at her with pleading eyes. “Please don’t be mad at us. We aren’t here to write about you for Gabby Gums. We’re done with that stuff. We just want your help.”

Lily smiled in spite of herself. “I’m glad to hear that. I was afraid I was going to have to move again. Now, can you girls promise me you won’t tell anypony about me being the one behind Lillium?”

“M-hm!” the three nodded together, beaming.

Lily opened her wings in preparation to leave. “Good. It was nice to meet you, um, Cutie Mark Counselors, was it?”

Applebloom’s eyes hollowed in a look of betrayal. “But wait, what about helpin’ us?”

Lily stopped, hovering a few feet off the ground, to look back at Applebloom coolly. “Aurea Lillium helps ponies. Lily doesn’t. Sorry, kid. Read that article again, it’ll help you more than I could.”

“We have!” Scootaloo spoke up. “We’re doing what you said! You said a helping hoof is just what we need, and you sounded like you were just like us when you were our age, so we decided to find you!”

“Trust me, guys, I’m not the one to help you.”

“But you said you tried everything before you found your Cutie Mark, just like we’re doing!” Sweetie Belle objected. “You must know what we need to do!”

Lily looked back and forth between them, starting to feel very stressed.

Applebloom dropped the last straw. “Come on, Miss Lily! Couldn’t you just tell us how you found your Mark?”

“I can’t!” Lily shouted. “I can’t help you find your talents, because I never found mine!”

Scootaloo paused. “Come on, Lily! Don’t try to fool us! Every pony gets a Cutie Mark, that’s what everyone keeps telling...”

Her objection faded away as Lily swept aside her cloak, revealing her pure white, smooth-coated, very blank flank.

“Happy?”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders said nothing as Lily flapped her way back up to her house.

It was a long time before they made their way slowly home.

5 - Rose

Three Months Later

Applejack sported an unusually worried frown as she trotted through Ponyville on her way to Twilight’s castle. After losing a night’s sleep, she had decided that her time today was best used looking for answers.

Ponies gave her concerned looks as she passed, but if she noticed it she didn’t show it; she was too busy replaying yesterday’s incident in her mind.

Applebloom had come home right after school, just like she had been doing for the past couple months. Applejack was worried that her sister wasn’t spending as much time with her friends as she used to, and she decided it was high time to find out why.

Things had taken an unexpected turn.

“Come on, Applebloom! You can’t give up on yer Cutie Mark huntin’!”

“What’s the point? Nothin’ works. It’s not comin’! Ah might as well start getting used t’livin’ life as a blank flank.”

“Shucks, Applebloom! You know better than that! You’ll get your Cutie Mark eventually, just like everypony else! That’s the way it is! Ah promise!”

“No! That’s not true, sis! Ah met a pony who never got her Cutie Mark! What if Ah’m like her? What if mine never comes?”

Applejack had to admit, she hadn’t been expecting that, and she also had to admit she didn’t really believe her sister. But when she pressed her for an explanation, Applebloom looked spooked for some reason, and ran straight up to her room, a guilty look on her face. She hadn’t spoken a word to her sister since.

Applebloom’s claim kept Applejack up all night. Could there really be a pony out there who never received a Cutie Mark, like she said? Wasn’t it more likely that there had been some sort of mix-up? But even the thought that such a thing was possible was quickly poisoning Applebloom’s hope of ever finding her own. So, for her sister’s sake more than anything else, Applejack had to know for sure.

So, she was headed to Twilight’s.

“You’re sure that’s what she said? A pony who never got her Cutie Mark?”

“Yep. Those were her exact words, near as ah can remember. So what d’ya think? Could she be right?”

Twilight scrunched her face in thought. “Hmm. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but who knows? I wonder where they would keep records of something like that.”

Applejack looked incredibly anxious. “So, you think she’s right? You think she really did meet a pony like that?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Twilight said, stepping over to a bookshelf and scanning the titles. “It’s far more likely there was some misunderstanding. Maybe she met an actor in makeup or something. The troupe that staged Blueblood VIII here a while ago does that, to paint on new Cutie Marks as part of their costumes. It might have even been a prank.” She took down a sharp-looking arcane medical journal, then paused in thought. “That’d be a pretty mean-spirited prank to pull, though. I hope no one we know was behind it.”

“Ah don’t know if that’s a comfortin’ thought or not. Please, Twilight. Could you find out fer me if this is really possible or not? Applebloom needs some help, and ah can’t give it to her ‘til ah know fer sure.”

Twilight smiled and began flipping through the book. “I understand completely. Of course I’ll help. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything. But don’t worry too much. I’ve done a bit of reading about this sort of thing before,” she said with a smirk, “and I’ve never found anything that suggests a pony can reach adulthood without ever receiving a Cutie Mark.”

Applejack sighed and turned to go. “Ah trust you, Twilight. But ah also wanna trust mah sister.”

Twilight smiled more warmly as she watched her friend leave the library, then focused all her attention on her research. “That’s my Applejack.”

Over the course of the next month, Twilight’s research didn’t turn up any results aside from a lot of respectable scholars testifying that Cutie Marks are a magic inherent in the species, without exception, and neither Applebloom nor her friends would say anything more on the matter. Sweetie Belle mimed zipping her lips when she was asked about it, and answered in unintelligible mumbles. Applejack stopped asking about it three weeks in, and gave the former Crusaders a stern lecture about not letting this get in the way of their friendship, Mark-less pony or not. The trio began to be seen together again, and even though there was less method to their madness, they continued to get into considerably more trouble than the average young pony.

It was a remarkably sunny Wednesday, but it was an unusually slow one for Applejack's market stand.

“Horsefeathers.”

Applejack looked up from counting her stock to see Twilight Sparkle scowling in the direction of the Everfree Forest. “What’s wrong, sugarcube?”

“Zecora got away again. I’ve been meaning to ask her something for months, but she’s always too busy for some reason or another. This time she has to run back to add an ingredient she bought to a brew, before it burns down her hut.”

“Yeah, ah can imagine how that might be kinda important. What’d you wanna ask her about?”

Twilight suddenly looked sheepish. “Oh, just something silly. I hope.”

“What’s that?”

“Apparently she knows of some Wereponies in the Everfree Forest. I want to make sure they aren’t going to be a problem. I’ve read that they can be very unpredictable.”

“Are you guys talkin’ about Equiwolves?” Applebloom asked, rounding the corner of a building with her two best friends.

“Echo-what now?” Applejack asked, confused.

“Don’t ask,” Twilight said with a flat look. “The girls were actually the ones who brought it to my attention in the first place.”

“Yep! Twilight and Spike helped us find books about them! We still haven’t met one yet, though.” Scootaloo added.

“Ah should hope not! Ah don’t want any’a y’all going near a Werepony!” Applejack scolded. “You stay away from the Forest, and quit gettin’ these ideas in yer heads about looking for ways to get yourselves eaten by monsters!”

“Okay,” the fillies sighed in unison.

Twilight brightened as she remembered something. “Hey, did you girls ever find the author of Aurea Lillium? I never asked how that turned out.”

“Aurea Lillium?” Applejack asked. “Ain’t that that advice column in the paper? Granny’s always askin’ for it as soon as the paper gets delivered. Ah didn’t know you three were lookin’ fer the author.”

“Yeah, we found her”, Sweetie Belle began, “But she-”

She was cut off as her comrades smacked her hard in the back of the head and gave her warning looks.

Twilight and Applejack looked on with raised eyebrows.

“Uh, girls? Y’mind tellin’ us what’s goin’ on?”

Scootaloo hurriedly spoke up. “It’s nothing. Sweetie Belle must be confused. We gave up looking for her ages ago.”

Twilight and Applejack looked at each other, then back at the fillies. “Are you sure that-”

“Well, bigplans, gottago, bye!” Sweetie Belle interrupted, and the trio ran off in a small stampede.

The older mares watched them go, then looked at each other again. Applejack chuckled. “A big part of me hopes they never grow up.”

Twilight still looked concerned. “What was that about? For a whole week, Aurea Lillium was all they could talk about. Now it sounds like they met her, but really don’t want to talk it. I wonder what happened?”

Applejack snorted. “Shoot, Twilight. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with fillyhood secrets. It ain’t hurtin’ nopony.”

“I guess…” Twilight said, still looking skeptical. “But still, I have a strange feeling about this. I think I might look into Aurea Lillium myself.”

Twilight was getting very frustrated. Remembering the steps of the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ search for Lillium, she had started with Pinkie Pie, to see if she could anything useful out of her. It had gone about as well as she expected. She should have known that Pinkie would never go even slightly against the promise she had named after herself.

Then she had gone to the Post Office, hoping to find clues as to where the Ponyville Express sent Lillium's mail. The staff there were downright uncooperative, and Twilight was very tempted to exercise her new authority and order them to help her. In the end, her rational self prevailed, and she did what she could with what she had to work with. She found nothing helpful at the Post Office, and so decided to ask at the Express itself.

The receptionist at the Express had turned out to be one of those ponies - the ones that got all grovel-ey when they saw her wings and horn. She had been happy to do whatever she could to help, but it turned out she didn’t have any information on the author of Lillium. She quickly sent Twilight up to meet the Lifestyle Editor, Ink Blot. He had been sympathetic to her search, but steadfastly refused to reveal anything about the columnist.

Princess Twilight Sparkle was starting to get really annoyed.

Princess Celestia, at this point, probably would have gotten an investigator of some sort to continue the search for her. The thought never crossed Twilight’s mind. Her thoughts weren’t on the Crusaders anymore, they were entirely focused on this mystery mare. It was starting to become personal, and Spike was getting worried. Twilight spent most of her time shut up in her study, poring over old articles, a map of Ponyville and the surrounding area, spellbooks for tracking and location, and especially over drafts and drafts of a very special letter. After days of revision, she was finally satisfied with it, and had enchanted it to lead her right to that slippery columnist as soon as it reached its destination.

“Foolproof!” she declared to herself as she dropped the purple envelope into the mailbox. Spike looked over her disheveled, manic appearance and privately disagreed with her conclusion.

A prod to the nose woke Rainbow Dash from one of the best afternoon naps she had had in weeks. She sputtered and brushed away the offending hoof, and looked up to identify the target of her wrath as Cloudchaser, hovering next to her napping cloud.

“What do you want, Cloudchaser?”

“Sorry, Miss Dash. But wasn’t somepony supposed to put those Froggy Bottom Bog rainclouds by the dam for the shower yesterday?”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “Aw jeez, I forgot we missed that one. That was… Ditzy’s job.” Neither of the pegasi looked surprised. Rainbow jumped up from her napping cloud, outraged. “What is up with that mare lately? Those clouds were supposed to be there last week! They were supposed to get loaded up from the spray of the dam! Now there’s no way we’ll make rain quota this month.”

“Well, um, actually,” Cloudchaser began meekly, “we could still make it with one big storm. There are a bunch of wild clouds over the Everfree we could use. We could have it ready by tomorrow night.”

“Ah, I hate makeup storms,” Rainbow complained. “But I guess that’s our only way out of this, or else the Earth Ponies won’t give me any peace for the next month. I’ll get the weather team together and start wrangling those wild clouds, you round up all the reserve members and spread the word around town to get ready, we’ll spring this thing tomorrow night at seven. I don’t want any disasters this time.”

Lily worked her jaw after setting down her groceries. She wondered briefly if it was worth being a minotaur, just to have hands. It wasn’t the first time she had that thought.

The delivery this morning was made by a different colt than she usually got. She was surprised he knew the way to her house. This one actually stayed to chat after dropping off the groceries on her porch, about how his dad got called away from work to do something for the weather team today. Then he went on gushing about Blueblood VIII of all things. Poor kid had seen the show three months ago and was still going on about it. Lily had forgotten that was in town, and felt a pang of disappointment that she had missed it. She didn’t let it show to the fanboy, though. It had been a long time since she had gone into town for anything like a play, and she kind of missed it. She really hadn’t been in the mood for social interaction or, Celestia forbid, effort in recent weeks. She was busier than ever now that her column was being printed across the country. But strangely, she felt more and more reluctant to do much of anything. Just getting out of bed in the morning was getting to be an uphill battle.

She put everything away, then sat around and did pretty much nothing for most of the day. She tried rereading one of her old favorite stories, but put it down half an hour later to sprawl on the couch and wallow in her boredom. She looked up at the clock; six fifteen. Where in Equestria was Ditzy Doo?

Lily got up and began pacing. Ditzy had never been this late before. She peeked out a window; it looked like there was going to be a storm tonight. Lily shivered. This would be the first big storm since she had moved into this cloud cottage. She wasn’t looking forward to the experience.

Ditzy’s characteristic pattern of clops sounding from the front door startled her out of her thoughts. She flew to the door and swept it aside, relieved that Ditzy had shown up and angry with her for being late.

“Hey there, Miss Lily! Got your mail!”

“Where have you been, Ditzy? Should you be flying around this late with that storm brewing?”

“Rain or shine, Miss Lily!”

“Wait, aren’t you in the weather team reserves, Ditzy? Shouldn’t you be helping with the storm instead of delivering mail? You’re not the only pegasus at the Post Office, you know.”

Ditzy didn’t respond, unsurprisingly. She just rummaged through her bag to hand Lily her usual hefty wad of envelopes.

Lily flipped through them. Mostly letters for the column, from as far away as Las Pegasus today. One purple envelope caught her eye especially, from “Your Closest Follower”. Creepy. Lily sighed. Another party invitation from Pinkie Pie. That one she tossed off the porch without a second glance. Pausing, she looked up to regard Ditzy Doo. “Say Ditzy, does anyone on the weather team know I live here, aside from you?” she asked, tentatively.

Ditzy just stared at her, swaying slightly in the growing breeze. Something about her expression seemed a little out of focus. Dreamy, almost.

“Are you okay, Ditzy? You seem more distracted than usual.” No response.

Lily bit her lip. “I’m the last stop on your route, right?”

Ditzy nodded animatedly.

“Why don’t you stay here for a while? I’ve got some muffins I wasn’t planning to eat all myself.”

“Okay!”

Lily stepped aside for her mailmare to come inside, then looked up at the rumbling stormclouds overhead. A stray raindrop hit her on the nose, and she ducked back inside and began closing windows wherever she could, while Ditzy went on and on breathily about some doctor she had been seeing for the past two weeks.

Rainbow Dash sat at the head of a table in Twilight’s castle, surrounded by her storm team, looking over a large map of Ponyville. “Cloudchaser, you’re sure the whole town’s ready?”

Cloudchaser nodded. “Trees are ready, everypony’s inside. We’re good to go.”

“Animals?”

“Ready,” Fluttershy said meekly.

“Lightning rods?”

“Check!” Twilight said happily, ecstatic to be part of the storm team.

“Cloud houses?”

Cloudchaser rolled her eyes. “There’s just yours, ma’am. Like always. We moved it out of the storm’s range.”

“Thank goodness. I’m not taking any chances with a storm this big, so we’re going through the whole checklist just to be sure.”

“Ma’am, I already did. Twice. With help from Princess Twilight. We’re ready to go.”

Rainbow held her breath and stared hard at the map.

“What’s wrong, Dash?” Thunderlane asked nervously. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No! Of course not! It’s just… we’ve never pulled off a storm this big before, and I’ve got a weird feeling about it.”

Cloudchaser draped a wing comfortingly over her captain’s back. “That’s only because we’ve never tried.”

Rainbow Dash sighed, then looked around the table again. “Okay, send Stormwalker the signal. Let’s rock.”

6 - Holywood

Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight Sparkle saw something move on her map of Ponyville. She checked the map carefully for its source, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. She was about to turn away again when she saw it once more: a large blot in the hills west of town was shifting slightly. She smiled in slight relief when she realized what it was: her spell tracking the enchanted letter to Aurea Lillium. She had forgotten all about that project in the excitement of preparing for the storm. Her smile turned into a frown when she considered the mark’s location. It was well inside the storm’s radius, but there was nothing else marked there. There isn’t supposed to be anypony living there...

“Hey Rainbow Dash?” Twilight asked without looking up from the map.

Rainbow trotted over to see what she was looking at. “What’s up?”

“Are there any mailponies on the storm team?”

Rainbow put a hoof to her mouth in thought. “There’s Ditzy Doo, of course, but she still hasn’t showed up yet. Ummm… there’s Special Delivery, I think. He’s the stallion over there with the red mane. That should be it. Why?”

Twilight raised her head to look around the room for Special Delivery. When she saw him, she quickly called him over. “This spot here marks a letter I sent two days ago through Manehatten. Do you know who might have carried it out this far?”

The stallion studied area around the spot for a moment. “Uhh… that looks like Ditzy Doo’s delivery area.”

Twilight blanched. Rainbow Dash looked at her, still confused. “I don’t get it. What’s wrong?”

Twilight looked to her with concern written all over her face. “I think we just found Ditzy Doo.”

Special Delivery gave a worried grimace. “Making her route in a storm like this? Sounds like Ditzy to me.”

Twilight nodded gravely. “The map-marking enchantment was only supposed to start when the envelope was open. So unless there’s a nationally-syndicated advice columnist squatting out in the hills… something else might have opened it.”

Rainbow looked back and forth between their worried faces, and down at the jiggling dot on the map.”Wait, you mean Ditzy’s out there in this? We have to go get her!”

Twilight didn’t answer her; she was too busy watching the map. The dot had jerked about an inch, and was now shaking erratically.

All three ponies’ eyes widened in shock and an icy pit formed in their stomachs as the dot disappeared entirely.

Lily braced her hooves against the trunk of the tree she had rolled into, and clamped her wings to her sides, hard. Squinting against the harsh, pelting rain, she frantically scanned the wreckage of her furniture amidst the ruined garden for signs of her errant mailmare.

“Ditzy!” Lily yelled into the wind.

She waited, but heard no response. Absurdly, she thought of all the times she had asked Ditzy Doo a question and had been ignored. She laughed to herself apprehensively. Now is not the time, Ditzy! Still, she fervently prayed that that was all that was keeping her only friend from answering her.

Looking to her left, she saw something shift: her dining table. It was mostly intact and leaning against what looked like part of her coffee table. Looking closer, she could see movement in the space underneath the tabletop.

Gritting her teeth, Lily began fighting her way over to it, leaning sideways into the wind. “Ditzy?” she asked again, lifting the table enough to crawl underneath.

The gray mare looked up to her, blinking slowly. “Hey, Miss Lily,” she said weakly. “I hit my head.”

Lily grimaced and hugged her clumsy friend tight to her chest. “You’ll be alright, Ditzy. Just hang on.”

Looking back out at the raging storm and the pathetic remains of her home, Lily’s eyes started to moisten. “It’s all there is left to do.”

After another hour of shivering under her broken table, Lily’s ears perked up at the sound of voices.

“Ditzy Doo! Ditzy Doo!”

Poking her head out from her shelter, Lily looked up into the rainy sky and saw the blurry forms of a team of pegasi pulling a solid-looking wagon through the rain, circling over the hills. Wincing at her stiff joints, she crawled out and shouted back.

“Down here! Help!”

More excited shouting came from the wagon team, and they angled down to land in Lily’s little valley.

Lily wiped her tears away along with the rain in her face, as two paramedics ran from the wagon towards her.

Sitting on a crystal bench and wrapped in a blanket, Lily shivered and looked around at the large crowd of concerned ponies in one of the castle’s large halls. Apparently, Pinkie Pie had come up with the idea to have a “Wait-Out-The-Storm-In-Twilight’s-New-Castle” housewarming/slumber party, and most of the town had shown up. A team of paramedics rushing the infamous Ditzy Doo and an unfamiliar blank-flanked mare out of the weather had caused quite a stir, and Lily was very tempted to hide her face under the blanket like a scared foal. She didn’t handle attention very well.

The three fillies staring worriedly at her from a safe distance wasn’t helping, either.

Lily looked up to see the new princess, Twilight Sparkle, approaching her. She wondered briefly if she was supposed to bow or not.

Strangely, the princess looked even more shy than she was. “Um, hello!” she said, nervously chuckling. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. Um, Princess Twilight Sparkle, I guess.”

Lily raised an eyebrow and gave a spiritless chuckle of her own. “Yeah,” she said simply.

Twilight seemed very wrong-footed. “Yes, well… You see, we found you with a letter I wrote…”

Lily waited dispassionately for her to get to the point.

“Actually, you see, I enchanted it to tell us where you… that is, where it was when it was opened, and…” Twilight paused to look at Lily’s expression, and frowned. “Umm, are you the author of Aurea Lillium?”

Lily sighed. She had a feeling something like that was coming. “Yep, that’s me.”

The awkward purple princess displayed a strange mix of emotions. Triumph seemed preeminent, closely followed by uncontrolled excitement and a large amount of guilt.

Lily wondered about the combination.

“Oh, well, um… it’s great to finally meet you. What’s your name?”

Lily regarded her for a moment, then said, “Lily.”

Twilight smiled genuinely. “Well, then, it’s great to meet you, Lily!”

Lily hummed inconsequentially and looked down at her hooves.

“I- I’m really sorry to hear about your home,” Twilight said with a sympathetic frown.

Lily blinked as she was reminded of recent events. “Is Ditzy alright?”

Twilight smiled softly. “She’s going to be fine. Just a small concussion.”

“That’s good,” Lily said, relieved, as she looked back down at her hooves.

Twilight’s eyes shifted a bit, then she asked, “Hey, Lily?”

Lily hummed affirmatively again as she looked up at her.

“Did you… happen to read the letter I sent?” Twilight asked, looking guilty again.

“Which one was it?”

“Um…” Twilight blushed. “The one from ‘Your Closest Follower’.”

Lily raised her eyebrows as she remembered the large purple envelope. It had been one of the most insulting and accusatory letters she had ever received, and knowing that Twilight had been its author made her look at the princess in a new light.

“...No.”

Twilight looked greatly relieved, but still quite guilty. “It’s probably for the best. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote it.” She chuckled again, weakly.

There was a long, awkward silence. Lily shifted uncomfortably on the hard bench, and Twilight’s eyes widened. Lily looked at her curiously, then down to what she was staring at. The blanket had moved, revealing her blank flank. Lily hurriedly covered it back up.

Twilight looked at her in revelation. “You’re the one Applebloom was talking about,” she said, mostly to herself.

Lily rolled her eyes. “I knew those fillies couldn’t keep a secret.” She looked back up to see Twilight still staring at her in wonder. “I’m an albino,” Lily explained.

Twilight’s eyes lit up in realization. “Oh! Of course! If your coat has no pigment, no one could see your Cutie Mark, whether you got one or not!”

Lily looked around for the most uninteresting thing she could devote all her attention to, looking utterly bored. “Yep.”

Twilight seemed to suddenly realize how uncomfortable she must be making her guest eel. “I’m sorry, Lily. I didn’t mean to bother you so much. With the letter and now this. Look, I wanted to let you know that you can stay here in the castle, if you want. I’ve definitely got enough room here for you.”

Lily actually smiled a bit. “Thanks, your highness.”

Twilight snorted. “You don’t have to call me that. Just ‘Twilight’ is fine.”

“Okay. I will.”

Twilight smiled warmly and started walking away, but paused as Lily spoke again.

“And for the record, I’m not a foal molester.”

Twilight hurried off, blushing. Lily smiled smugly to herself.

The next day, long after the storm had run its course, Twilight and her friends were seated around a table at Sugar Cube Corner, reflecting on recent events and enjoying each other’s company.

“So Lily was Aurea Lillium and the blank-flank pony Applebloom met?” Applejack asked Twilight.

“That’s right. And it’s not that she never got her Cutie Mark, it’s just that it’s the same color as the rest of her coat, so you can’t see it. I’m sure she has one, but even she probably doesn’t know what it is.” Twilight answered thoughtfully.

“Whew-ee! Twi, you wanna explain all this to Applebloom? Ah think the poor filly still thinks she’s gonna end up the same as Lily. She just hasn’t been the same since this all started.”

“It’s been the same thing with Sweetie Belle, though until now I could never figure out just what was wrong,” Rarity added. “But even so, can you imagine living your whole life without knowing what it is that makes you truly special? It sounds absolutely horrid!”

“Well I know I don’t need my Cutie Mark to tell me how much I love animals,” Fluttershy put in. “I think even if I never saw what my mark looked like, I would still be doing what I love today.” This was met by a chorus of affirmations.

“So then what is her talent, anyway?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Telling random ponies how to fix their problems?”

“Who knows?” Twilight replied with a smile. “Not every pony ends up making a living out of their special talent.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie interjected. “Look at you! Your Cutie Mark is about flying super duper fast, not weather management! And Rarity’s is three gems! What does that hafta do with dressmaking?”

Rarity scowled at her. “Thank you for that, Pinkie Pie,” she said with a sniff. She paused and looked back at Pinkie curiously. “Wait, you knew all along, didn’t you? You made her a Pinkie Pie Promise, and that’s why you couldn’t tell the girls where she lived. Isn’t that right?”

“Yep!” Pinkie Pie answered happily. “I’ve known Lily ever since I first moved to Ponyville. She didn’t get all hermit-y until a few years ago! She was always pretty cool to talk to, but she didn’t come to many of my parties. When she started writing her column, I wanted to tell everypony I knew about it, but she made me promise not to tell anyone it was her! I don’t know why anyone would want to keep everything a secret like that, though.”

“Um, Pinkie?” Fluttershy spoke up. “Lily hasn’t released you from your promise, has she?”

“Not yet!”

“Then should you really be talking with us about it?”

“Hmm,” Pinkie said thoughtfully, “I don’t think it’s much of a secret anymore. When everypony knows a secret about one of your friends, I think the right thing to do is to protect the truth instead of trying to keep a secret everypony already knows.”

Her friends blinked at her. “Wow, Pinkie,” Fluttershy remarked, “that was kind of… profound.”

“But I’m sure there aren’t that many ponies who know the truth about her,” Twilight observed.

“Oh, everypony knows by now!” Pinkie said brightly. “Just listen!”

Everyone at the table tilted their heads and listened curiously to the chatter in the sweet shop.

“I remember Lily. I went to school with her. Strange filly. You know, now that I think about it, I think I remember somepony saying she would never have a Cutie Mark.”

“You know what they’re saying about that Lily? She’s supposed to be the one who writes that advice column, what’s it called? Hang on a sec, I have it here… Aurea Lillium.Heh, with a name like that, it can’t be anyone else, can it?”

“I haven’t seen her in years. She was always wearing something, so none of us ever saw her Cutie Mark. I thought she moved away. I think she used to write up advertisements for the Express.”

“Wait, she’s been living out in the hills all this time? What a strange mare.”

“I heard that they used an enchanted letter to find her in the storm, because she never comes into town. My brother delivers groceries to old mares and the type, and he says he’s been going to her place for years. She never wanted to chat, though, and he had no idea who she was beyond a name and address. Now they say she’s a famous journalist or some such, and that she has no Cutie Mark.”

“My dad says she hasn’t left the new castle since she went in. Doesn’t talk to anypony, just sits in her room and does nothing all day. Weirdo.”

“Land’s sakes,” Applejack said, “Ah reckon you’re right.”

“Oh, the poor dear,” Rarity commented. “I can’t imagine it’s pleasant to have such slanderous talk circulating about oneself.”

“But I don’t understand,” Twilight objected. “How do they all know about her and her column? We were the only ones who figured it out, and I was the only one she told.”

Rainbow Dash grimaced. “Yeah, about that… Special Delivery can be a bit of a blabbermouth. I didn’t know you were gonna talk to him about all this secret stuff.”

“Poor Lily…” Fluttershy said quietly. “Is it true she hasn’t left her room, Twilight?”

Twilight looked sheepish. “Yeah… I gave her some books I thought she might like, so I guess that’s what she’s been doing this whole time. I’ve been meaning to talk to her, but our last talk ended on kind of a… kind of embarrassing note.”

Applejack laid a hoof on her shoulder reassuringly. “That’s alright, sugarcube. You’re not the only one who can be a friend when one’s needed. We’ll all help cheer Lily up, and stop this gossipin’ to boot!”

The six friends cheered their agreement, and then set about making plans.

On the far side of Ponyville, in a clubhouse somewhere in Sweet Apple Acres, a similar problem was being discussed.

“Did you see how miserable Lily looked?” Applebloom asked.

“Miserable?” Sweetie Belle questioned. “I don’t know about that. Grumpy, sure, but ‘miserable’ is a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“Come on, Sweetie Belle, her house was just destroyed in the storm and now everypony in town is talking about her,” Scootaloo said. “Of course she’s miserable!”

“She looked like ah felt at Diamond Tiara’s Cuteceanera, when everypony was laughin’ at me!” Applebloom observed.

“But then we showed up!” Sweetie Belle cut in.

“Yeah! What Lily needs the most right now is some friends who know what she’s going through!” Scootaloo declared.

Applebloom turned her head up to the ceiling of the clubhouse and ran a hoof absently along the wood slats of the wall. “Hmm… most? Maybe not.” Suddenly she jumped to her hooves with a determined expression, and dashed out the front door. Her friends scrambled to follow her.

“Applebloom! Where are you going?” Scootaloo yelled in confusion.

“Ah have an idea! Ah need to talk to some ponies!”

7 - Dandelion

Lily turned away from looking out the window as a knock came from her door. Oh please be the mail, she pleaded silently. The first thing she had done, after settling in to her new accommodations, was send a letter to Glow News informing them of her change in address. Then she had sent instructions to the Post Office to forward any mail that was already headed for her old home to her new, temporary one.

Her first deadline since the big storm was coming up in two days. Since all of her mail had been lost along with the house, she had no questions to answer in her column this week and she was starting to feel some pressure about getting it in on time. Thus, she was getting pretty near desperate for something to answer.

She made it to the door a bit faster than she normally might have, and opened it eagerly... only to be disappointed by finding a Princess of Equestria on the other side.

“Did you bring me any mail?” Lily asked before Twilight could so much as open her mouth. Twilight blinked at her, then shook her head apologetically.

Lily groaned and made as if to close the door.

“Hold on,” Twilight said, sticking a hoof in the door’s path, “I wanted to talk to you, Lily. I’m worried about you!”

Lily gave her a long-suffering look and said nothing.

“Are you doing okay? You’ve barely left your room since the storm.”

“I’m fine,” Lily said, looking to finish the conversation quickly.

“Are you sure? That was quite the ordeal you and Ditzy Doo went through... I can only imagine how you must be feeling right now.”

Lily gave Twilight a look that said her time was being wasted. “Is that all you wanted? To ask me how I’m feeling?”

Twilight looked unsure. “Well, I was kinda hoping we could just… you know, talk.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Talk?”

“Yeah.”

“About what?”

“Well,” Twilight said, looking around the guestroom, “did you get a chance to read any of the books I sent you?”

Lily looked over to her bookshelf, packed tight with novels of all sizes. “Yeah, I read that I Am Demon one, about Clover the Clever. That was pretty good. Though, I’ve never read much historical fiction before.”

“Ooh, that’s one of my favorites! Didn’t you love the way the author talks about emotions and colors?”

To Lily’s surprise, and Twilight’s relief, they actually shared a pleasant conversation about their favorite works of fiction. Lily was actually smiling. Twilight was delighted to discover that Lily was an avid reader, though she hadn’t read nearly as much material as Twilight had. It  made sense considering that one of them had had unrestricted access to the Royal Library for most of her life while the other was a decided homebody.

That thought led Twilight to a realization. “Wait, you’re the one that always requested books by mail!”

Lily looked puzzled. “How would you know that?”

Twilight smiled. “I was the Golden Oaks librarian for a few years, before it was destroyed and I got this castle instead. Spike or Owloysius always handled the library mail, but I remember Spike mentioning a pony who had a weird address and wrote in for certain books and recommendations every week or so. He used to ask me what books you might like.”

Lily smirked. “Yeah, that was probably me. I… kinda stopped coming into town for anything after I moved into my cloud cottage. After the parasprite thing, I figured the trip wasn’t worth it.”

“Parasprites?”

“Yeah, they completely demolished my old house on the ground. I... didn’t have a lot of money then, so I built my own house out of clouds instead. I’ve never seen them act like they did that day. I wonder what got into them?”

Twilight chuckled nervously. “Yeah, who knows?”

“You know, you’d be surprised at all the stuff you can do through the mail. The only time I had to come to Ponyville in the last year was to take the train to Manehatten to figure out my syndication.”

Twilight pursed her lips, debating with herself for a second before she spoke. “Hey Lily, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Lily looked up expectantly. “Yeah?”

“If you don’t mind me asking… ‘cause I know this must be kinda sensitive for you…”

Lily’s face fell a little with every word Twilight uttered.

“Do you… you know… know what your special talent is?”

There it was. Lily looked down as she thought of her answer, then she snorted. “Well, it’s definitely not column-writing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No?”

Lily shook her head. “No, anypony could do it. All you have to do is answer questions. I’m not an expert or anything. There are no qualifications, you just think about things objectively and write whatever makes the most sense. I just got to thinking about it one day, so I submitted the idea to the Express, and they put it in, set it all up for me. I’ve just been sort of doing it ever since. No epiphany, no passion, nothing like you’d get from a special talent. It’s a job.” By the end of her speech she looked, if not glum, at least resigned to her life.

Twilight was disappointed that there wasn’t anything more interesting to Lily’s story, but she felt sorry for the mare all the same. “It hurts a lot, doesn’t it?”

Lily sucked in a deep breath. Their eyes met, and suddenly Twilight had an inexplicable feeling that whatever they had just gained, she had just lost a little, somehow. “Really, I’m okay. You don’t need to worry about me. The house is gone, but I have a place to stay until I get around to building a new one. I got over the Cutie Mark thing a long time ago. Honestly, my biggest worry right now is my deadline. If I don’t get some mail to answer soon, I’ll have to write the syndicate and tell them to reprint some older letters for this week.” She sighed and turned back to the window. “Along with an apology to everyone who already wrote in this week.” Huh, another lumber delivery. Lily thought to herself as she looked down at the streets of Ponyville below.I wonder where it’s all going?

Something was telling Twilight that the friendly conversation was over, and her welcome had worn out. With a pained grimace, she decided that ‘something’ was right. “Well, Lily, it was nice to talk to you. Do you want to come down to join us for dinner tonight? I’m sure Spike would love to finally meet his pen pal.”

“We’ll see,” Lily answered without looking back at her. “Depends on whether or not I get any mail today or not.”

“Alright. Would you like me to get you some more books to read?”

“That would be great, thanks.”

“Alright. Goodbye, Lily.”

“Goodbye, Twilight.”

Twilight closed the door and turned to walk away, feeling worse now than she had before trying to cheer Lily up.

Lily received some letters the next day, but didn’t have time to write up a column for that week, so she saved them for later and had Glow News reprint an older one with her apology. Most of Twilight’s friends stopped by throughout the next week, except for Applejack, who was too busy helping to coordinating things at the farm. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy both tried twice. None of them made as much progress with Lily as Twilight had, and with each attempt she seemed more and more closed off to them. Rarity reflected that perhaps they weren’t as subtle about it as maybe they should have been. Pinkie Pie had never applied the word ‘subtle’ to herself in her life or allowed anyone to in her hearing (“Subtle parties are boring! Remember the Gala? So much fun when it got un-subtle!”), and she hadn’t given up yet. She assured her friends that she and Applejack had been working on an ace in the hole, and when the plan was laid out, everyone immediately regained all their lost confidence in Operation: Wilted Lily.

For a Pinkie Pie plan, it was actually remarkably subtle (not that she would admit that, of course). The only thing that Lily noticed was the confetti the invitation shot in her face, and, suddenly, Pinkie Pie!

“HEY, Lily!” Pinkie Pie shouted from an unacceptable lack of distance. “You always seem to misplace my invitations, so I came by personally to invite you!”

Lily sighed and braced herself, much like she was used to doing when interacting with Ditzy Doo. “What is it this time, Pinkie?”

“A PARTY!” Pinkie Pie shouted predictably, producing party hats for the two of them.

“You’ve already invited me personally to two parties this week, Pinkie. My answer’s still the same as it was then.”

“Oh, but this one’s different!” Pinkie protested enthusiastically.

“More different than the last one was supposed to be?”

“Yeah! The first one was Blossomforth’s birthday party, and the second one was Rainbow Dash’s Wonderbolt-Academy-Acceptance-Anniversary Party! Completely different!”

Lily had to concede that point. “So what’s different about this one?”

“This one’s all for you!”

“Me?” That caught Lily off guard. She got an invitation from Pinkie for her own birthday party every year, but her next birthday was still four months away. The thought that Pinkie Pie might have gotten the date of her birthday wrong almost made Lily laugh aloud. “What for?”

“It’s a Welcome-Back-To-Ponyville party, since you’re living in town again!”

Lily looked at her doubtfully. “Really?”

“Yepperooni! It’s going to be great! We’re having it down at Sweet Apple Acres, because there are gonna be tons and tons of ponies there! And we can’t have it without you!”

Lily narrowed her eyes. Well played, Miss Pie. But I won’t give in that easily. “And when is this party taking place?”

“Friday night at six!”

Lily almost grinned smugly, but managed to make it look disappointed and apologetic instead. “Oh, shoot, that’s my busiest night of the week! My deadline is Saturday, so Friday is the night I do the most writing for the column! Looks like I can’t come.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I brought help!” Pinkie assured her, reaching back out into the hallway and swiftly pulling a dazed-looking Applebloom into the guestroom.

“What.”

“Applebloom here will help you finish answering all those letters in time for the party! See you Friday!” And with that, Pinkie Pie left without waiting for a response.

“Wait, Pinkie!” Lily sighed. Pinkie was long gone. Lily looked down at Applebloom and asked, “So, how did you get roped into this?”

“Oh, it was mah idea,” the Earth Pony filly said, walking over to the humongous stack of letters on Lily’s writing desk. “Ah wanted to see what your job is like, and ah figured you could use some help.”

Lily watched her, then sighed and followed her with a smile. If she wanted to help... “Well, let’s get started, then. Grab some letters and start skimming.”

Applebloom looked at a return address, then tore open the envelope with her teeth and a hoof. “So what sorta letters are we looking for?”

Lily was sitting on her stool and comparing two open letters side by side. “Well… two things, I guess. First, we’re looking for problems that are interesting, things that will catch the reader’s eye or that we can make into a cool headline. But just as importantly, it has to be a problem that a lot of readers can relate to. No one cares about your problem if it has nothing to do with anyone else’s life but yours. I guess we want well-written letters, too.”

“Hmm…” Applebloom began, rubbing her chin. “What about this pony? He says he has a pet cockatrice that won’t leave his cats alone.”

Lily snorted. “Set it in a pile aside there. I won’t answer it in the column, but I’ll write him back to tell him he’s an idiot.”

Applebloom looked up at her with wide eyes. “Really?”

Lily smiled at her. “No, not really. He is an idiot, but I won’t call him one. I’ll tell him to consider getting rid of the cockatrice, or maybe the cats. I don’t know. Oh, here’s a good one. This mare lives next to a noblestallion in Canterlot, and she wants to know what she should do with such lousy neighbor. That’ll be a fun one for them to read. Let’s put this in the ‘column’ pile.”

“How about this? ‘Ah’m worried about mah husband. He-’” She was interrupted by Lily taking the letter from her hooves and flinging it vaguely in the direction of a trash bin.

“I get way too many ‘worried wife’ letters.” She explained. “When I first started doing this, I actually got complaints from readers that I was answering too many of them and not enough of anything else, but that was only because I got so many of them. Some weeks that’s all I would get. But now that I’m national, I have to be a lot more picky about what makes it into the column. Unless something in a ‘worried wife’ letter really stands out, just toss it. I usually answer one every week or so, but you can let me worry about those ones. You’re not missing much.”

They worked in silence for a while, sorting letters. Lily waited expectantly for the question she knew would come, but Applebloom just sat there patiently, reading through letter after letter. After half an hour of waiting, Lily decided to do some fishing.

“So Applebloom, how’s your Crusader club going? I’ve heard a lot about you three since I’ve been here.”

“Hm? Oh, it’s okay. We haven’t done any actual Crusadin’ for a while now.”

“How come?”

Applebloom pondered that for a moment, then answered, “Ah guess we sorta gave up after we met you. We got over it later, but we never really started Crusadin’ again.”

Lily was shocked. “Oh, Applebloom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to discourage you and your friends. I don’t know what I was thinking that day.”

Applebloom shrugged. “Weren’t nothin’ you did. Just seein’ a grown-up pony without a Cutie Mark scared us real good, I think. But Twilight told us about you bein’... well, what you are an’ all, and how we can’t end up like you. No offense!” she added quickly.

Lily smiled. “Don’t worry. I knew what I was in for since I first understood what a Cutie Mark was. Believe me, if you were like me, you would know. You’ll get your Cutie Mark someday. Someday soon, I bet.”

“Y’really think so?”

Lily nodded. “I sure do. Every pony gets one eventually. Even me, probably,” she said, looking back at her rump.

“What d’ya think your Cutie Mark would look like if you could see it?”

Lily chuckled. She had often asked herself that question, when she was younger. “I don’t know. But that’s the great thing about being someone like me. I can make it whatever I want. I used to joke with my friends that I had a special talent in hiding.”

Applebloom giggled. When she caught her breath, she asked a more serious question. “So did you and your friends Crusade for Cutie Marks like we do?”

“We did, for a while. I tried everything, even though the doctors told me that I would never be able to see the result. If I ever did get it, I don’t remember what I was doing, since we tried so many things. Eventually they all started moving on, getting their own Cutie Marks. We didn’t hang out much after that, even the ones that still hadn’t gotten theirs. I miss them sometimes, they were my best friends. Don’t let that happen to you and your friends!”

“Ah won’t, ah promise. But if it happened to your best friends, how do we know it won’t happen to us?”

Lily sighed. “Well, I’ve only talked to your friends once, but I think you have something special that me and my friends didn’t, I’m sad to say. Plus, you have another bonus. After my classmates found out what it meant to be someone like me, they all started to leave me out of things. I’m still not sure why they did it, but it… hurt, a lot.” There was half a minute of silence as Lily watched more delivery carts go by, heading out of town. Maybe Pinkie Pie was prepping early for the party.

Applebloom decided it was time for a change of subject. “Lily, what does Aurea Lillium mean?”

Lily smiled at her. “It’s fancy talk for ‘gilded lily’.”

“What does that mean?”

“It comes from a saying, ‘to gild a lily’. It means if something’s already beautiful, you don’t need to add anything to it. A lily is pretty enough already without being covered in gold, don’t you think?”

“Why did you pick that name?”

Lily laughed. “Mostly as a joke, since my name is Lily. But you know, I think now that it was something else, too. When I was in school and I was sad, my teacher would tell me not to worry about gilding my lily. She said I didn’t need a Cutie Mark to be special, that I was already as beautiful and unique as any flower. That helped me a lot.” She smiled fondly and looked off through the window toward Ponyville Elementary. “I think I named my column Gilded Lily because it made me feel special, helping ponies all over town with their problems. No one else was doing anything like it, so it was almost like I was following my passion, just like everypony else.”

Applebloom listened raptly, waiting for her to go on. Lily turned back to her and smiled again. “But at the same time, I didn’t really want to see other ponies, because I knew that was I was doing wasn’t all that special, really. I still felt like an outsider whenever I was around others, so I started living far away from everypony else, and I wrote anonymously. But maybe I shouldn’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Both. I think I’ll make my new house here in town, or at least at the edge. Peace and quiet is something I don’t want to give up. And I think I’ll start writing Lillium under my own name.” She paused and studied Applebloom thoughtfully for a moment. “You know, while I’m at it, I might take you guys up on your request.”

Applebloom looked confused. “What request?”

“The one from that first day we met. If you’re still interested, I would love to help you three find your talents.”

Applebloom’s eyes widened. “You mean it?”

Lily nodded. “I sure do.”

Applebloom squee’d. “You can be our Cutie Mark Crusader Counselor! Yay!”

Lily laughed, and set down the last letter in the “column” pile. “Well, Applebloom, it was wonderful talking to you. Thank you for your help. I don’t think I could have done this without you,” she said, only half referring to sorting her mail.

“Are y’comin’ to the Party at our place on Friday? You could tell Scoots and Sweetie the good news there,” Applebloom pleaded.

Lily considered it. “You know, I think I will. I’ll see you there!”

“Bye, Miss Lily!”

“Bye, Applebloom!”

After she left, Lily walked over to her window and leaned on the sill, watching the street until she saw little Applebloom galloping away, taking the same road the deliveries had taken. Lily smiled wide and turned back to her work. Her eyes caught on the first “worried wife” letter she had thrown away, and she picked it up with a shrug. She felt like being extra helpful today.

Finale - Bloom

“Welcome, everypony, to Lily’s Homecoming Party!”

The crowd of ponies stomped and cheered as Mayor Mare posed at the podium.

Lily, standing near the temporary stage, raised an eyebrow. I don’t remember Pinkie Pie’s parties being this... formal.

“We have come here to give one of our beloved citizens a warm welcome, in the wake of her recent tragedy. Please welcome our guest of honor… Lily!”

Lily balked at the thundering crowd. She hadn’t counted on this. That does it. No more Pinkie Pie parties, ever, she thought to herself as she sheepishly made her way up to the stage to stand next to the mayor.

She waited for the mayor to say something, but to her horror the old mare was gesturing invitingly to the podium. Lily gulped, and reared up to place her forehooves on the piece.

“Um… Hello, everypony! I, uh, wanted to thank you all for coming to this- to my party. It means a lot to me, and… I hope you all have a great time!”

She hurried off the stage, cheeks burning, as the crowd cheered again. She retook her position at the front of the press, doing her best to be unnoticeable, as Mayor Mare spoke again.

“Thank you, Lily! Now I’ll turn the stage over to Pinkie Pie, who will be announcing the evening’s activities. But stick around, because in an hour I will have another announcement you won’t want to miss!”

After Pinkie Pie gave her musical presentation about the party, the crowd dispersed into small groups of friends. Lily stayed close to the stage. She wanted a word with Pinkie about public speaking.

Before Pinkie got off the stage, however, Lily was approached by Twilight and her other friends. “Hey, Lily! You made it!” Twilight said.

“Yeah, I guess I did,” Lily responded, rolling her eyes back.

“It’s great to see you out of the castle for a change. You’ve met all my friends, haven’t you?”

“All except her,” Lily said, pointing to Applejack.

“Yeah, sorry about that, sugarcube,” Applejack said, rubbing her head. “Ah meant to come meet ya like the others did, but I was too busy out here helpin’ to set all this up. Name’s Applejack. Ah’m Applebloom’s big sister.” She reached out for a hoofshake, which Lily accepted.

“Pleasure to meet you, Applejack. You have a wonderful sister.”

Applejack chuckled and winked as she turned and led the group to where the party activities were set up. “Oh, you have no idea. Just wait until y’see her present for ya.” Lily missed the warning look Twilight gave Applejack, who just shrugged in return.

“Where are those girls, anyway? They wanted me to meet them here.”

“Oh, they have special party duties they’re taking care of right now,” Pinkie Pie said, catching up to them. “You’ll definitely see them later.”

Lily sighed. “So until then I have to do this party thing with you guys?” she guessed, sounding decidedly unenthusiastic.

Twilight and her friends all nodded in affirmation. “Come on, Lily, you’ll love it!” Rainbow Dash assured her, hovering ahead a little. “Pinkie’s really pulled out all the stops for this one! Ooh! Check this game out! It’s awesome!”

And so Lily was wrangled (almost literally, Applejack came prepared) into enjoying the party. And, she had to admit, she actually did have fun. She had been to Pinkie Pie parties before, but never like this. It wasn’t the scope of this particular party that made the difference, though. Before, she had kept to herself and stayed near the refreshments, never dancing and only playing games when she was invited. She stopped enjoying them after the novelty wore off, and eventually she stopped going. But this party… it was like Twilight and her friends were inviting her to every little activity, like they wanted her around for some other reason than her old friends did. Lily didn’t like to think about what that said about her old friends, but it was definitely a refreshing change, whatever it meant.

The only thing that bothered her was that these ponies were almost dragging her into having fun with them. She didn’t mind it, really, but it did make her feel uncomfortable. All her life she had had to make the first step with making friends, so it was jarring when someone wanted to be her friend more than she wanted to be theirs. As the party progressed, however, and Lily became less reluctant to participate and just have fun, she found she liked the change.

When the mayor called everypony back together for her surprise, she surprised Lily by leading everyone off into the orchard, calling Lily and Twilight up to the front to walk beside her. Lily was very confused and asked her what was in store, but the mayor was carrying a lantern in her mouth and couldn’t answer, instead giving a look that clearly said “wait and see”. Lily looked to Twilight, but she just smiled and winked.

They were following what looked like a freshly-made road, lined by a new fence hung with lanterns. I guess this explains all the building materials I saw being delivered, Lily thought as she studied the construction.

Before long Lily began to make out a dark mass ahead, among the trees. She squinted to get a better look, and was startled by a hoof blocking her way. She looked to the mayor, and saw her step a few feet away, where she began waving her lantern over her head.

“SURPRISE!” came a shout from ahead, and numerous little lights suddenly illuminated the dark shape.

Built around a large apple tree, with three familiar grinning fillies standing on the front porch, was a beautiful two-story house.

Lily stepped towards it, her jaw hanging slack. The lanternlight gave it an unearthly, magical feel, and Lily almost didn’t believe what she was seeing.

“You… you built me a house?” Lily asked, turning to the mayor.

The mayor chuckled. “Me? Oh no, dear. I only helped. Applebloom built you a house.”

Lily’s head whipped back to her incredible gift, and Applebloom waved at her. “What?”

Twilight stepped forward and explained. “After the storm, Applebloom came to us with an idea to rebuild the Crusaders’ clubhouse into a house for you to live in. We thought it was an excellent idea, and we gave her all the support she needed, which didn’t turn out to be much. She came up with the blueprints herself, with some help from an architect, and she went around town recruiting volunteers and soliciting donations for materials.” She smirked humorously. “Sometimes it felt like half the town was out here working on it.”

Lily looked behind Twilight to see the crowd of ponies all grinning at her.

“There was something else we wanted to give you,” Twilight's voice brought her attention back to her, “as a token of our friendship and our appreciation for who you are.”

Twilight’s horn lit up, and so did the latch of her saddlebag. A small, ornate wooden box floated out and onto the ground in front of Lily.

Lily opened it with a hoof to reveal a golden flower resting on a bed of soft red velvet.

She took it out of its case and held it up to a hoof to examine it more closely.

A lily.

She looked to Twilight with moist eyes, and saw that she had been joined by her five friends, who were all smiling sweetly at her. “We want you to know that it’s not what you can do or who you are that make you special, It’s having friends who think you are. Will you please be our friend?” Twilight asked hopefully.

Blinking back tears, Lily nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course I will! Thank you all so much!”

“Go thank the one who deserve it most, sugarcube,” Applejack prompted, gesturing with a hoof.

Lily turned and galloped to her new home, stopping in front of the porch. “Did you really do all this for me?” Lily asked in wonder.

“We sure did!” Applebloom answered excitedly. “What d’ya think?”

“This is amazing!” Lily said, eyeing the construction. “You must be really good at this!”

A sudden curiosity made Lily lean to one side to get a better look. A wide grin opened up on her face.

“Better than you ever thought you were, I would say,” she said, pointing at Applebloom’s flank.

“Looks like we might have an opening for a second Cutie Mark Crusader Counselor.”

THE END