Silver Spoon hadn’t said anything for a while.
Not since the subject of Diamond Tiara had been brought up a few minutes earlier. It was strange; she usually seemed comfortable talking about her old friend. It was natural. It had been four years since the filly had lost her battle with cancer. Ponies moved on. They had to.
And Silver Spoon, everyone agreed, had moved on. It had been hard on her at first. The discovery that being “popular” didn’t mean having lots of friends had seemed to shock her, but on some level, she must have known that Diamond Tiara was all she had. That’s why she had refused to believe that their story could end there. That’s why she had put up that barrier of optimism, even as Diamond’s state had rapidly deteriorated. That’s why she had flaunted her confidence. Smiling. Cracking jokes. And not visiting once.
Having that barrier broken, finding out she had been wrong all along, being left with nothing. It had taken its toll. And it had done so over a long, long period of time.
But Silver Spoon wasn’t depressed anymore. She had made new friends. She had changed who she was entirely. At this point, she wouldn’t even have gotten along with Diamond Tiara.
So, when her mother had brought up a particularly tragic entry in the obituaries and felt the need to comment on how much it reminded her of what happened to poor Diamond Tiara, why had Silver Spoon gone so silent? Why had she turned her eyes towards the table, expressionless? What was she thinking? No one dared to ask.
Even Filthy Rich, still one of her parents’ closest friends, had gone on as if nothing was amiss. He glanced sympathetically in the young mare’s direction occasionally, but he seemed to be thinking of her, not his own daughter. Anyone could guess that Silver Spoon’s thoughts took a different direction from his.
And so, conversation had moved on to other topics. Whether Silver Spoon was listening or not was anyone’s guess. Until, finally, her voice broke through the lively but unmemorable discussions happening around the table, silencing them all instantly.
“I had a dream.”
In other contexts, coming from other ponies, this would be a cue to listen politely and hope they’ll be quick about it.
“A year or so after she died.”
But this wasn’t a cue for anything. There was no scripted response.
“I’ve had a few like it. In the same vein, I mean.”
So the ponies around the table simply listened.
“But this one’s sort of… special.” She continued to stare at the table as she spoke, her head tilted to one side. Listening to her certainly wasn’t a purely polite gesture, since it obviously made no difference to her what was going on around the table. She was just talking. “In it… Diamond Tiara… she had a wheelchair cart. I don’t know… I guess… she still had been sick. But I guess in the dream, she just got disabled. Or maybe she just had an accident. I don’t know.
“We were at the schoolhouse. And the sunlight… it hit Ponyville just… just so. Just like that day… the day she died. It was beautiful. But that didn’t matter, really. Because Diamond Tiara, I guess I hadn’t seen her in a while.” She frowned slightly. “In a year or so… but it… it didn’t seem like so long. But it kind of did, I guess. Because we, we wanted to catch up. After a year. I was so happy to see her. And she was happy, too.
“And my friends, my real, closest friends now. Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo. They… they sort of… came out of nowhere, I guess. It was a dream. And I knew… she would be… you know, okay… with us being friends. How I knew that… didn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. I was right.
“Well, I guess I knew because… well, I didn’t know… know why she… wouldn’t… be okay with that. In the dream. Because in the dream, I guess… I just didn’t remember. That we ever bullied them. I didn’t remember, well… a lot of things. But she did.
“I didn’t notice… in the dream. I didn’t notice anything… strange. About Diamond. But it’s obvious now. It was obvious… right when I woke up. I knew. That she remembered all of it. Everything, she remembered. And she was so sorry.
“But I guess she just… just didn’t want to… tip me off. Stress me out. The dream, it was for me. A place where I could just… be with her again. And be happy. Not guilty. Not sad. So she didn’t say anything. But it’s obvious now.
“The way she talked to them… There was so much she wanted to say. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to be friends with them.
“She wanted to… come back and… just be friends with all of us. All of us together.
“But they didn’t remember, either. And she didn’t want to… you know… tip them off either. Stress them out either. Because the dream was for them, too.
“And it was also for her. Because as long as we were happy… I guess… she was happy… that we could all be happy… and not worry about anything. For one night. Even though I was still depressed. So depressed and… I still cried myself to sleep sometimes…” She glanced up towards the ceiling for a moment, then back down. “…I don’t think I cried that night, though… sometimes I did. I don’t think I did that time… If I did, though… well, it doesn’t matter. I was happy.
“But when I woke up… I don’t think she… planned for that, really. I wasn’t happy then. Because it wasn’t real. And I wanted it to be real. It was so close to real, too close, closer than ever. I could see it, I saw her that night, and I… I talked to her that night. But I didn’t remember anything. I didn’t… get to say… the things I wanted to say. Because I didn’t remember. And she… she didn’t get to say… what she wanted to say, either. But we were happy. For that night. Maybe it was worth it. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“And I guess… I know what she wanted to say, now. Because… well, she was happy. But… she was also… so, so sorry. To the three of them for… bullying them…
“And to me… for not… being a better… friend…
“I forgive her. I don’t… I don’t know… if they do. If they didn’t… I would understand, I guess. But… well… they… they forgive me. And I’m lucky… that they’re… they’re so nice.
Silver Spoon went silent again. After a somber moment, her mother spoke softly. “Diamond Tiara was a very nice filly, too.”
Silver Spoon didn’t look up. She opened her mouth and seemed to stare even more intensely at the surface of the table.
Finally, she said one word, hardly a whisper.
“No…”
Silence seemed to fall again, even though no one had been speaking.
Silver Spoon began to shake her head. Imperceptibly at first, growing into a visible back-and-forth motion with a clear meaning.
“That’s not right.”
She looked up, still not at anypony, but up. She stared into the distance.
“That dream… I don’t know… what it was. I… well, I never believed in… spirits and… all that. You know. I just think… that could’ve been… nopony.” She shook her head. “Maybe… maybe there was no Diamond Tiara. In that dream. Just me. My brain… tricking me…” She shook her head again. “Maybe… there was no… atonement… for her… Maybe… she just… died a… a bully… and that’s that…” She shook her head once more. “And I couldn’t… I couldn’t accept that… and… I invented this… this Diamond Tiara… who was sorry… not like the real one… not like she ever was… not once in her life.” She shook her head yet again. “I don’t want to believe that… but… it’s… probably true…” She frowned, her eyes focused on a point infinitely far away, and shook her head.
“She… she wasn’t nice. But… but she wasn’t… bad, either. She… she deserved… to have a chance… to be nice.
“She wasn’t even… very nice to me. But… she was my best friend… and I never regretted that… and I… I still miss her… why?” She shook her head. “I guess, just… why not? If she wasn’t bad, then why not?”
She sighed and looked back down at the table. She went silent for a moment again, then began to speak once more. “I remember that day… all those years ago… well, four years ago. The day she died. And I… I still went to school… because… what else… what else could I do? Mom told me… She said… they were… pulling the plug, I guess. I got up and… and she told me. And everything was gone, for me, suddenly. But… school wasn’t gone. So I went to school. What else was I going to do?
“And I got there late… and it was almost, it was practically summer. And the sun, when I got there. It was shining down just so. Shining down on Ponyville, shining so yellow, so golden, when I turned around. I don’t… don’t remember why… why I turned around. But I did. And it was beautiful. But it didn’t matter. Life… I felt… Life was beautiful… but… but that didn’t make it good… not… not when… things like that happened.
“And I didn’t go in. I just sat down. And I watched Ponyville. I watched it all day. And no one cared. No one… no one cared about Diamond Tiara. They were all walking by. They had groceries. And it was a stupid time to get groceries. But even the groceries… they caught the sunlight… just so. So golden.
“And I don’t know why… why it took me so long, but… I guess Ponyville… why would I look down from it, when it was so beautiful? But I looked down… and I saw…
“Written on the bench… I was sitting on a bench… and someone had written on it, they’d written… ‘my second chance is you’.
“It was a line from a song… but I didn’t know that… and even if I had… well, how could that song… how could it have been written, except to tell me those words? Why else? It was a dumb song. But… that line, those five words… they were for me, they had to be… for Diamond Tiara. That’s what I thought.
“And I’ve… I’ve thought… a lot about those words. But I didn’t think about them then.
“Because the words… they were on the bench. They were in my shadow. So they couldn’t catch the sunlight, just so. So I didn’t want to look at them. But they touched me. But I couldn’t think about it.
“What I felt that day… I’d never felt it before. And I’ve never… really… felt it since then, either. I wasn’t… sad, not really. I wasn’t mad. I guess it was… sort of like happiness. But… but when your best friend dies… you’re not supposed to be… happy. This feeling, though… it felt right. So it wasn’t happiness. Because… well, that would have felt wrong.
“And I feel it. Every time I see the sunlight coming down… hitting something… hitting it just so, so golden… I feel it. But not really. I can’t feel it again. Never again, not really. But I remember it.”
She was silent for what could have been minutes after that, but she had everyone’s attention. She didn’t even seem to notice. Eventually, she spoke again, even more haltingly than before.
“You know… you know how I… I’ve been trying to teach myself… how to draw? I’ve wanted to learn to draw for… a long time. But there’s one thing… one thing that’s, really, more frustrating to me… more than anything else, about… not being… a good artist. I want to draw… one picture. Just one. One drawing.” She breathed in, then breathed out, staring intently at the table. “It would be… the schoolhouse. With the light. The light from the sun, coming down… hitting it. Just so. Golden. Just like that day.” Her eyes were glistening. “And there would be me… and her…” Her voice began to grow weak. “…and my friends… that we…” She took another breath, and it shook. “…that she never… really… got to know…” She was breathing the words now, and only just. “…and we’d… just be playing. Like… kids.” A small tear ran across her face. She glanced up, then looked back down at the table. “That’s all.”
And that was all.
Author's Note
I just sat down and wrote this all out when I was feeling... inspired, I suppose you could say. All in one go. I don't think I like it, and it certainly doesn't make much sense. But there you have it.
