Sundowner Season

Chapters

Masked Players
A Hole in the Shape of You
Carry That Weight

Masked Players

29/11
Well, since the countryside isn't doing anything for me, I shall have to find some other way to entertain myself. I dare say this diary should keep me more preoccupied than staring out the window at an endless procession of identical green hills. Perhaps not its intended use, but desperate times call for desperate measures. It is in a sense remarkable exactly how unremarkable this landscape is. Or am I just used to it? No, I think not. I think this level of drudgery is just as repugnant each and every time I see it. I wish I'd remembered my confounded book.

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure what I should write here - we've only been travelling for about an hour, and it's not as if anything has happened in that time that I feel a need to chronicle for future reference. The snack trolley came through ten minutes ago. I hope that you find this journal many, many years from now, and these mere words conjure such vivid recollections, the sights and smells of its baked goods on offer, that it is as if you are transported back to this very moment in time! Ho hum.

I thought I was rather stoic in taking this trip alone, but I am perhaps beginning to regret this decision...

Tried pony-watching for a little while, but it seems everyone in this carriage is either boring or disgusting. That buffoon of a stallion three seats ahead of me can't keep his repulsive little spawn under control - is it possible he's relishing the chaos they're wreaking? I may have just imagined it, but when they pulled down their suitcase from the overhead rack and it exploded all over their sleeping mother, I swear I saw him smile. Smile! The poor lady is still re-packing their clothes. The buffoon is eating corn chips with audible gusto.

I suppose if I keep this up over the course of the trip, these pages will serve as the introduction to it all, and will provide valuable context for future entries. Very well. Here is all the relevant information you'll need, dear future reader:

- I am presently on a train from Ponyville, bound for Vanhoover via Central
- It is early afternoon (we are set to arrive tomorrow morning)
- I am bringing a modest suitcase. Contents: boots, scarf and parka (with gorgeous matching paisley print), toothpaste, toothbrush, photo album, this journal, not my book
- I forgot my book
- I really wish I hadn't forgotten my book
- I know exactly where I left it too

Blessed heavens! We've entered into the mountain now. Those hills have been rather mercifully replaced by darkness, peppered with little lanterns zooming past the windows. As grateful as I am for the change in scenery (or lack thereof), I must say it's a miracle that anyone survives the passage through such dimly lit tunnels. A big enough rock dislodged onto the tracks would bring this train to a rather brutal stop… Perhaps there's a unicorn at the helm illuminating the path ahead. From what I can make out, these tunnels are really quite small. The engine noise is reverberating all around the carriage, engulfing us like a miasma of terrible wheezing…

Still, it’s better than those bloody hills.

After some time the tunnel began to widen and the train began to slow in tandem, emerging into the great cavern of Royal Central Station. Head flattened eagerly against the window, Rarity gazed upwards in awe at one of her favourite views. The incoming trains pulled into a bank of platforms on the floor of the artificial cave, deep into the hollowed-out heart of Equestria's centrepiece, Mount Royal. On the level above them, spiralling away on a track etched into the mountain's wall, was the Canterlot shuttle line, obscured in part by clouds of steam that rose from the myriad trains below towards the impossibly distant ceiling. When it was in use, one could watch its charge crawling up the spinning path towards the apex, like a ball rolling around and into an upside-down sink. The capital itself was perched on a plateau only halfway up the mountain, but the towering emptiness reached past it, unimpeded, right up to the apex. Concentric rings of magical lamps that lined the lower floors transitioned into skylights about thirty metres up, drilled into the rock face at regular intervals, forming a gradient of natural to unnatural light. The sun was nearing the horizon now, and at the summit the cave was swallowed by darkness.

Rarity decided to exit the carriage last, putting as much space between her and her newfound nemeses, the holidaying family, as possible. Suitcase in magical tow, she trotted down the length of the platform, snaking her way through the crowd of ponies waiting to board what was now the outgoing Manehattan service, and up a steep flight of steps to the elevated concourse. Here, ponies milled around with varying degrees of patience - they lined up at the refreshment carts, breathed in the thick cave air with ever-increasing effort, and waited to be taken anywhere else. Walkways jutted out from the sides of the hall, linking the plaza to the Canterlot platform on the opposite side.

She consulted the timetable board by the stairs to the Vanhoover platform - forty minutes until her connection departed. Harrumphing with resignation, the mare took her place in the shifting tableau of commuters, joining the interminable line for Double Roasted's coffee cart. She wasn't particularly thirsty, but the wait alone would fill up a good deal of the interim.

"Miss Rarity! A pleasure as always," the barista greeted her emphatically when she finally reached the front. His eyes shone from beneath his visor and coffee-brown mane. "Just can't stay away, eh?"

His enthusiasm, however put-on it may have been, was enough to bring a smile to her lips. "No-one back home knows how to make a good cocoa, Double. I've no other choice, really."

He laughed, grabbing a takeaway cup from a stack. "Feels like you practically live here at Central these days. Usual?"

"Mmhmm," she nodded, then - "Am I really here so often? I suppose having a 'usual’ speaks for itself, in a way.”

"I would venture to call you a regular, Miss Rarity. I hope that's not rushing things." The coffee machine glowed faintly and began to sputter while its operator chuckled to himself. "Another Manehattan trip?"

Her smile faltered. "Vanhoover, would you believe it."

Double Roasted only beamed brighter. "Ah, the Northwest! Gorgeous, just gorgeous. A mare like yourself will blend right in," he winked. The coffee machine issued a final, effortful gasp. "Business as usual?"

"Not as such." She hesitated. "It's, well, I suppose it's a personal matter. I'm looking—"

She was cut off by an exaggerated clearing of the throat from the customer behind her. Double Roasted gave a small shrug. Rarity pursed her lips. "Tell you next time," she muttered, magicking her bits on to the counter.

"I'll hold you to that," Double Roasted replied warmly. As Rarity walked past the impatient queuers towards the westbound platforms, she could hear him greeting the next customer with just the same affability, and she sighed. Still twenty minutes until departure. She found a vacant seat that afforded a wide view of the plaza, framed by ethereal columns of steam wafting upwards through the still air from the level below. The surrounding crowd could not hold her attention, and her eyes traced the Canterlot line's tortuous route as she sipped at her cocoa, contemplating Double Roasted's choice of nomenclature. This was a familiar view indeed. Trips abroad used to be special occasions to be treasured, in times gone by; lately she'd been passing through Royal Central two or three times a week. She had poured as much of herself into her work as she could afford to give, and was finally tasting the fruits of her labour. Her name was spreading up and down the Eastern cities, and now she was bouncing from client to client, outlet to outlet. There was a soirée just about every weekend where Fancy Pants would introduce her to someone important for something or other… And here was the nexus between all of her dreams, and her home and friends.

Nights in Ponyville were becoming rarities themselves.

A tendril of doubt stroked at the corners of her conscious mind. Should you really be here?, it probed softly. You don’t owe them anything. Why act like it’s your duty to…

“You know I won’t beg, but I’m askin’ mighty nicely here, Rarity. Don’t go.”

But a shrill whistle smothered her worried thoughts, and she realised her train was now boarding.

She barely paid attention as she produced her ticket from her suitcase and held it in front of the attendant. Her mind was many miles away, in a place that grew more distant with every passing day.

"Travelling alone, ma'am?" the attendant said mechanically.

"Regrettably so," Rarity mumbled, and a hoof reached up unconsciously, unnoticed, to touch the base of her neck.

Oh, I do like this train. I like this train a great deal more than the last. These seats are plush beyond imagining. Managed to shake that rowdy pack of holidaying morons - I caught a glimpse of them on the Neighagara-bound platform as we were departing, children scampering about, knocking over other ponies' suitcases… Not my concern at all. Ha! At any rate, this carriage is markedly devoid of unkempt bumpkins, and the noise level rarely peaks above a gentle murmur. It's rather serene.

Ah!, and we emerge into dazzling sunlight... beating down upon yet more infernal bloody hills. Incredibly uninspiring. How I miss the scenic vistas of the Canterlot line, climbing ever upwards towards the heavens as all of Equestria unfolds in snatches through the zoetropic windows…!

I'm going to try to take a nap, out of boredom more than fatigue.

The sounds of the train permeated her dream. Her head lay resting on a warm chest, dappled light shining through the canopy above them, and she heard and felt the rhythm of the wheels as a steady heartbeat that matched her own, and the muted chatter of the passengers became the wind in the leaves and the cicadas' hum. It was perfect, and the perfection of it jolted her awake. There was a terrifying pause as the boundary between real and imagined was redrawn, then she sighed and sat up, returning to the world again.

It was approaching sunset, and her fellow commuters were all looking intently out the north-facing windows, murmuring slightly louder than before. From her own window on the opposite side, she could see the slow rises and falls of the Unicorn Range painting the horizon, occluding her view of Ponyville; and in front of them, a staggering number of identical green hills. She glared at them each in turn, then got up in search of a vacant window on the opposite side. She could glimpse bursts of multicolour through the gaps between ponies, but it seemed that all the seats with views had been taken already, and she begrudgingly made her way to the adjacent dining carriage.

Barring a single earth pony mare reading at a table near the back, she found it empty, with a plethora of north-facing windows on offer. The view they afforded, she quickly decided, made up for the trip's preceding drudgery. The train was passing Cloudsdale Flats: above them, the great clouds of the city hovered and spilled water and rainbow run-off from the city's massive weather factory down to the earth in eternal slow motion. The excess caught the light of the setting sun quite dramatically, and its rays twinkled off thecascades of colour and the rivers they'd formed on the ground below. It was picture perfect, and Rarity couldn't help but smile.

She also couldn't help but wonder what on earth that other pony in the carriage was doing missing out on such a view. She casually glanced sideways at the mare, trying not to move her head and attract attention, only to find her gaze met by the other pony's own. Rarity started inwardly, and quickly turned to the nearby drinks table, busying herself by nonchalantly (she hoped) making a cup of instant coffee.

"Nice view?" The stranger's voice was soft, with a quiet air of irony.

"Oh, um, yes. It's quite something." She spooned out the sugar deliberately. Basic etiquette told her not to pry into other ponies' affairs, much less in public; but they were alone in the carriage anyway, and curiosity got the better of her. "You… don't seem too taken by it."

"No, it's cool," she said calmly, closing her book. Her powder blue coat caught the light with an almost metallic sheen. "It's very cool. I'm just used to it. I’ve taken this train before, so."

"Surely such a view does not lose its beauty so easily…!"

The mare raised her eyebrows. "You'd be surprised. You know that rainbow is basically toxic? There's a reason they're throwing it all out. It's like, super high-concentration magic. Any wild animals around here drink it - and it's right next to the rain basins, so you know they do - it's like a system overload for them. They pretty much just stop working, just like that. You go down to the bottom of those falls, you'll find all these petrified little animal bodies all along the stretch of the river. Crazy stuff." She glanced out the window at the flats. "That's the beauty of nature for you."

"Tell me you're joking!" Rarity exclaimed.

"Wish I was. Ponies keep complaining to the Cloudsdale Council, of course - myself included, y'know, I try to do my bit - but the powers that be have decided the Flats are too good an advertisement for the city, and they won't do a damn thing for fear of losing tourists." She gave a short, low laugh. "I hear they're even thinking about making it an attraction, doing these riverside tours. Like, 'come to Cloudsdale, see our amazing one-of-a-kind frozen animal collection!' What a selling point, eh?"

"But that's insane!" Rarity laughed, equally horrified and amused. "Just what kind of perverse clientele are they trying to bring in, anyhow! Eugh, I can't even imagine…"

"Rich ponies— I'll tell you this much for free: rich ponies are weird." The mare leaned forward conspiratorially in her seat, brushing her cobalt bangs from her eyes. "Maybe not Canterlot high society types, but like, Eastern nouveau riche, you know? Their little businesses take off, and they find themselves with buckets of money to spend in an urban town with all the arts and culture of a cow's ass. They hear about some crazy dead animal rafting tour, they'd jump all over that, 'cause if it's interesting, and they go see it, then they have to be interesting too, right?" She rolled her eyes, chuckling - then started and looked sharply at Rarity. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, you're not from the East, are you? You don't seem the type, but… I don't mean to just insult you to your face right off the bat if you are…"

Rarity smiled, absently twirling a teaspoon in her cup. "You're in luck, dear. I am but a simple mare, of modest means, from Ponyville. A good deal of my customers are exactly the type you've described, though."

"Oh." She looked down sheepishly, though a glimpse of a smile was visible on her face.

"And if you asked me, in the privacy of this empty dining carriage, I would have to say you hit the nail precisely on the head there." The other mare raised her head, grin definitely showing now. "Oh yes, I know the type. I run a fashion boutique, you see… One time I was commissioned by the most— shall we say, eccentric lumber mill owner from the Manechester region, to make this utterly bizarre headwear…" Levitating her teacup, she nodded at the mare's table and the empty seat across from her. "May I…?"

"Of course," the stranger enthused, gesturing at the vacancy.

"I mean, I think ultimately the problem is that most ponies are just stupid." Soul Searcher tilted her head and mock-frowned. "Is that too elitist of me?"

Rarity chuckled into her glass of water, adding her small part to the warm blanket of susurrus that enveloped the dining carriage. "Astoundingly so. Not to say that you're wrong, but…"

"I know, I know, it's horrible of me to say, and I honestly wouldn't go around blurting that out to just anyone. But— look," she leaned forward and rested her head on her foreleg, "we're artists, right? You and I, we're— it's a simple statistical fact, we're not like most other ponies. They're the consumers, we're the creators; this shit is our life, so of course we care about what's actually being created far more than the average pony. We don't waste our time wearing tripe from Equestrian Apparel, or listening to lowest common denominator pop like Sapphire Shores, or…" She stopped, noticing Rarity's glance shift conspicuously downwards. "Oh gods, you don't."

"She's... a client of mine, as it were. A client that just so happens to have the voice of an angel."

Soul Searcher snorted. "Strike one, Rarity. Watch yourself."

Rarity pointed an accusatory hoof, smirking. "And who are you to decide what is a waste of time and what isn't, hmm? Who crowned you the Princess of Good Taste?" She squinted. "You don't look like an alicorn to me…"

Her companion sighed, reclining in retreat. "Eugh, that's the whole kicker, isn't it though? Everything's subjective and there's no such thing as good or bad and blah blah fucking blah. I'm not claiming to be some divine authority, but I can give you some damn good reasons, I can actually explain to you why, critically speaking, the compositions of one Sapphire Shores are less innovative, less impressive and less historically important than the symphonies of Ivory Keys, or the pop ballads of Maressey, or any single thing produced by her current artistic competition that's languishing in obscurity. And you'll nod and say, sure, critically speaking, and then the conversation is over and you haven't changed your mind, because I can't convince you not to like what you like, and I can't convince you to actually give a shit about art if you don't."

"And most ponies don't," Rarity ventured.

"Most ponies take pride in not caring. If I had a bit for every time someone scoffed when I told them about my latest exhibition…! I'm sure you've gotten that too, right? Ponies are always denigrating fashion. Like it's conceited to care about aesthetics. Like it's uncool to know what you're talking about." She rolled her eyes for emphasis.

Rarity pursed her lips in contemplation. "Not so much of late - I believe I've finally infiltrated the social circles of ponies who actually care. Or ponies who give the pretence of caring, so that they seem cultured… But back in Ponyville, absolutely. I don't think many locals ever caught on to what I'm actually capable of. They always come in looking for something utterly beneath me. I remember one lady was looking for a new hat - I asked if she were after any particular kind, and she shot me a look of complete incomprehension and said, 'you know, for your head.'"

Soul Searcher slammed her foreleg on the table as she cackled, almost upending her empty plate. "My point exactly!" she exclaimed. "Stupid! Just stupid." Rarity could feel the glances from their neighbouring patrons, but the knowledge that she was hurtling ever further away from anypony she actually knew, combined with the two glasses of wine in her belly, quelled any embarrassment she may have otherwise felt.

"Oh, come now, not stupid, just… A lot of ponies simply don't have time for fashion, or art in general. They're busy with their own professions, doing all those menial tasks that society actually needs to exist and to thrive."

Wide magenta eyes met her gaze from across the table. "And society doesn't need art? Strike two…"

Raising an eyebrow - "What cruel fate awaits me at the third strike?”

Bouncing hers - "I think you'll find out soon enough."

Rarity found herself blushing, and pushed on. "What I really mean is, I don't think these average ponies of yours are deliberately trying to ignore our efforts. I think their lives are rather full as it is with their own emotions and characters and narratives, and when they find the time to unwind, they're too exhausted to invest themselves in works that require concerted effort. By contrast, we spend our days and nights, our professional and our free time, submerged in such high-maintenance art. We don't know how not to invest ourselves in it. So it's not that we're smart, or they're stupid. Rather, we're just… different. And it seems our two camps are, regrettably, incompatible."

"Incompatible," Soul Searcher echoed, sipping at her wine. "So who are we even making all this wonderfully obscure art for?” She gestured at her cutie mark with her free hoof, a thin paintbrush resting on a heart-shaped palette. “What’s the point of this damn thing? Why are we still doing this?"

"Because sometimes, dear, you'll happen upon an eccentric young mare on an intercity train who, well— who does give a shit, as you so eloquently expressed." She giggled, satisfied, at her own crassness. "And we're not more important than the rest of society at large, but us like minds are the most important things to each other."

Soul Searcher raised her glass. "Cheers to that."

The train rolled on through the valley, the distant northern trees softly aglow with the dying light of the sun as its sister rose somewhere far behind them. As her companion polished off her third glass of the evening, Rarity asked, "pray tell, Ms. Soul Searcher - what wonderfully obscure art are you working on at the moment?"

"Nothing. Sweet nothing. Free as a seapony. I spent the last year doing this one exhibition in Vanhoover, then Whinniepeg, then Fillydelphia, and now it's all over and I'm slouching back to where it all began."

"Ah. Hoping to find inspiration at home?"

She snorted. "Fuck home. Only coming back to pack my shit up and figure out where I'm escaping to."

“Escape?” Rarity shifted in her seat. “Is Vanhoover really so awful?"

"Yes. No. No, look, it's not Vanhoover's fault, I've just… I grew up there, and I got bigger, and it didn't." She sighed, ran a hoof through her mane, pulling up her bangs only for them to fall immediately back into place. "I didn't tell you about my last exhibition? The one I just finished up?”

"By all means, fill me in."

"It's like, an encapsulation of exactly what I mean. So it’s— eugh, it’s so weird trying to describe it, I wish I could just show you… It’s a series of paintings of really important places in Vanhoover. The places that everyone who grew up there or lives there knows and loves. Not the shitty tourist attractions - that’s not the real heart of the city, right? That’s looking in from the outside. I mean places like, the Sea Spray Café by the marina. Best espresso in town, ask anypony, and with the best view of the northern forests. And right across from the carriage stop on West Haystings, there’s this flower cart run by this adorable old mare, Late Bloomer, and I swear to the skies above, nopony has ever seen her leave that cart. No-one’s ever seen it closed, or if they have, they don’t tell anyone, because why ruin it for everypony else?” She chuckled, then caught herself and continued - “places like that. These integral little parts of the city that we all know about and cherish like they’re secrets from the rest of the world. I painted those, except - please bear with me here - I painted everything, realistically as possible, as its skeleton. The café, stripped of all its walls and decorations, down to the wooden framework that barely looks stable; chairs and tables as their most basic, unpolished forms; all the baristas and regulars, too, just bones, somehow holding themselves together.”

“How delightfully bleak.”

Soul Searcher smiled ruefully. “Just like life, right? Just like reality. I’m only trying to point out something that’s already there, right under our muzzles, every single day. We pile all these layers on top of it to disguise it, but… What is this place, without memory? Without years of recognition and meaning being accrued? You have to ask yourself - why is this place home? What separates form from function? What separates your favourite café from just an architect’s blueprints and wood and sawdust? I think— honestly, I’m sure some ponies walked away feeling more attached to the place, like, out of fear, and ignorance…” She shrugged. “But what I was trying to show ponies is: it’s only home because you keep subjecting yourself to it, day in and day out. It’s home because it’s static. Stagnant. It’s always there, and it’s warm and safe and it will always try to keep you there until you sip your last latte and breathe your final breath.”

There was a long, thoughtful pause. Rarity stared at the artist before her, this young and inscrutable thing, so full of life and somehow so tired of it. At last she imparted - “yikes.”

“Sorry, I get pretty dramatic when I drink.” With a look of sudden remembrance, Soul Searcher reached for the wine bottle by the window.

“Consider yourself lucky. I just get sad.”

“Are you sad now?” She frowned as she upturned the bottle and yielded only drops.

A wry smile - “You’re certainly pushing me down that path, Ms. Soul Destroyer.”

“Oh, pshaw. You seem to be dealing with the harsh truths of existence just fine.”

“Looks can be deceiving.” It was said with humour, but something stung inside Rarity as the words left her lips, some dull residual ache echoing out from her centre. She felt a heaviness in her next breath, and quickly moved on - “How did it fare? The exhibition, I mean.”

“It was awesome. For me, at least. I don’t think I made any dents in the collective conscience of the Vanhoover populace, but… That exhibit ran back at the start of the year, and a week or so after it finished up, I get this letter from Whinniepeg. Someone from the arts council there caught it and loved it, just loved it, and they want to host it for a few weeks. I tell them, I'm real glad you liked it, happy to send it over, but nopony in Whinniepeg is gonna go see it, and if they do, they're not gonna understand it, because it's all about Vanhoover - the phenomenology of living there and calling that particular city 'home.' It's meaningless to anyone else. And they write back and say, 'okay, come stay here for a while, make Whinniepeg your home, and make us a localised version.'"

"Now there’s a concept."

"Fuckin' right! I thought they were insane at first, but no, they had a modest little box in the middle of the city I could crash at, happy to subsidise my living expenses in exchange for the commission, plus another one next summer. I still thought the whole idea was loony and I was sure my commissioned work would be awful, but I finally had my way out of Vanhoover, y'know? So I said yes, and two weeks later, there I am, living on my own at the south end of the Whinniepeg arts district, in a whole new city, half the country away from everyone and everywhere I knew.” She swept a hoof through the air, as if trying to encompass something too large to be grasped. “Sweet princess breath, you think moving out of home is such a big deal when it's happening - but really, when it's all over, you're still living in the same world as your friends and colleagues, your family's only a few suburbs over… There’s a safety net there. Not with this, though.” A grin spread across her face. “This was such a new sensation, and it was so profoundly alienating, and so liberating. And it was like, vindication, y’know? I talked a damn lot of talk about leaving Vanhoover behind, and now I was finally walking the walk, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. Whinniepeg isn’t even a great city! But it was new. Everything felt so refreshing, looked brighter, tasted better…”

“But surely—” Rarity stopped herself, glanced down at her hooves before continuing in a smaller voice - “surely you felt lonely?”

“Alone, sometimes. But not lonely. I made friends, of course, met some colleagues, had some flings. And I had myself. At the end of the day, I’ll always have myself, and I think… yeah. I think that will always be enough. Not that I’m not enjoying your company,” she winked.

“What a charmer you are.” Gravity shifted minutely as the train veered around a bend in the track. “How long did you stay there?”

“Four months. Spent the first three doing everything I could to make Whinniepeg my new home, trying to become a working part of the city; trying to connect to it, so I knew how best to destroy that connection.” That mischievous grin spread across her face once more. There was something in it, some subtle intelligence behind those magenta eyes, that ensnared the beholder. “Then I painted my commission and it ran for just under a month. If you ask me, it was a pile of crap; but ponies are stupid, and someone from Filly caught wind of it and asked me to head east and do the same damn thing. Things began again, and finished again, and now I’m heading back to Vanhoover for a pit-stop while I plan my next move.” Soul Searcher trailed off, paused, then exhaled as she sunk bank into her seat. “Whew. You gotta stop me when I’m rambling. I’m boring you to death.”

“Not at all,” Rarity said without hesitation. “You are a riveting pony, Ms. Soul Searcher.”

The mare in question waved a hoof dismissively. “Naw, forget me… But, do you get what I’m saying? Not like, ‘do you understand,’ I mean, do you feel the same way about yourself? About Ponyville? Do other ponies feel these things? Am I just totally batshit?”

In the moment Rarity took to collect her thoughts, she became aware of their solitude. The sun had well and truly set; the other patrons had finished their meals and bid a quick retreat to their seats. The dining car was saved from the chill of silence by the background rumble of the train’s motion, and the lofty conversation of the two mares. She drew in a deep breath. “If I’m honest - with you and with myself - I’ve been visiting home less and less for that exact reason. I’ve lived in Ponyville all my life, but even from a young age, I knew how much bigger the world must’ve been. There was Ponyville, and there was Everywhere Else. It used to be this shapeless place, just a feeling I harboured in my gut, an idea of something greater than my humble little home. I remember the first time I travelled to Canterlot, and I finally had a real, physical location to embody my dreams… Nowadays my work has me travelling all over, to Canterlot, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and I’ve seen such amazing things and truly felt a resonance I can't quite explain at times, like I’d found something that had been missing for so long I had simply grown numb to its absence…” She sighed. “And I always come back to sweet home Ponyville. I have to. That's where my friends are, and my family, and I love them all so dearly, but…”

She rolled her empty glass between her hooves, staring intently at its shifting surface as it caught the carriage lamplight. “It's a trap, isn't it? If you stay in any place for long enough, you make connections, and those connections wrap you up and weigh you down so that you can’t leave. You couldn't possibly leave now - who would look after your sister when your parents are out of town? Who would go on spa dates with Fluttershy, have sleepovers at Twilight’s? Who would… it's all so…” She fumbled for words.

Her companion nodded. “I get it, I totally get it. You need those connections to other ponies, to make your life worthwhile - to complete yourself. But then, you're not really you in your entirety, are you? You're made up of some central pony plus all your friends and your relatives and neighbours and colleagues. And if you want to get out and see the world, you tear all that apart. Whoever it is that leaves, all shredded and limbless, the world gets to find out - who is that, really?”

Rarity’s voice came softly, when it came. “I… tore one of those connections. The biggest one, really, not long ago. It feels as if our relationship was as much a part of me as my cutie mark, my accent, my mannerisms - and now it's gone. But I can still feel it, like a phantom limb. There are these moments where I realise I’m thinking of myself as hers, defining us by our relation to each other…” She looked up, locking her shining eyes with her companion’s. ”I don’t know who I presently am, Soul Searcher. I’m trying my hardest to be like you, to have myself, to only need myself, and I don’t even know who that is… But it's gotten me to thinking. That's one connection, the strongest one in my life, gone. And I’m still alive, aren’t I? At a cost, but it can be done. The process has begun - perhaps I should keep it going? Perhaps it's time I just snapped all these ties,” she continued breathlessly. “Who's to say I’ll even come back from Vanhoover?”

Soul Searcher cocked her head. “You mean that?”

The moon was still low on the horizon, its ghostly light teasing the outlines of the boulders that lined the tracks around them. Rarity gazed, unfocused, at the rocky outcroppings of the Unicorn Range that towered in the distance. “It feels like… the only things keeping me there are my obligations to everypony else. Isn’t that absurd? Isn’t that just the most absurd—”

There was a jarring transition as the train entered into a tunnel with a gusty crescendo, and in the window there appeared the reflection of the dining carriage, and she caught a mirrored glimpse of her own furrowed brow and the sorrow in her eyes before the train burst out of the cave, and the view returned to the earth and motion and darkness. She turned to her silent friend.

“What the hell gives them the right to do that to me?”

She slept dreamlessly.

A Hole in the Shape of You

30/11
I want to write something about missing you. But this is a journal. This isn't you. So what's the point?

Vanhoover is freezing. Winter starts north and works its way down across Equestria - and what a start we’re seeing this year. Even here indoors, I’m wrapped up in my parka out of necessity. The sunlight streaming in through the high windows is purely decorative, drained of all warmth. I’m afraid I am headed to even colder reaches from here…

I am seated on a wooden bench in a transit terminal, next to an old stallion whose sleep is so still and consummate that he may in fact be dead. I rather hope not. It’s just past 9 o’clock; our train arrived about an hour ago. Most of us had to be woken up by a sharp toot of its ghastly horn. Forgive my penmanship if it’s sloppier than usual - Soul Searcher and I overdid things the night before, staying up late to watch the moonlit view of the Unicorn Range passing by. Her idea, not mine. The darkness left a lot to the imagination, but apparently that was the point… A little past midnight, we caught a glimpse of motion on a distant plateau, a swift and violent movement. SS insisted that it was a crazed mountain mare doing reconnaissance, following the train and waiting for her opportune moment to strike in the night. I rather think it was a wildcat of some sort, but didn’t want to spoil her fun.

We had a little breakfast at the station café. We were both quite tired and didn't talk much, but it was a companionable silence when it came. Good coffee there. I should stop by on the way back. SS seemed to be taking her homecoming in stride. At one point, I asked her if she thought that there could exist the perfect city for her, some place wherein she would voluntarily stay put, out of love. She shrugged and said it might happen eventually, when her wanderlustful youth has fled and newer, stronger needs set in. Or that it might happen if she found somepony attractive enough to fill her days some other way, then raised her eyebrows at me. That mare certainly knows the strangest ways to flirt. I wish her the best of luck.

She said I should come find her on my return, and offered me a couch to sleep on should I want to stay and see a bit more of Vanhoover. In all honesty, I hadn’t planned that far ahead. I have half a mind to take her up on it. I have half a mind to go there right now rather than catch this coach. I have half a mind to just turn back around, board the next train to Canterlot at whatever exorbitant last-minute cost they charge and forget this whole pathetic self-imposed

One cannot have three halves of a mind, Rarity.

I honestly think, if the coach had arrived but a minute later, I might not have been around to board it. It is all I can do to keep myself occupied writing these very words, putting more distance between myself and the terminal, making it more unfeasible to jump through the rear window and dash on back, tail between legs. Come on, Rarity. You've come this far. Would she want you to

Let's not stoop so low.

It was to be a long ride, and a flurry of caffeine and worry was keeping her from sleeping through it. There would be this dull transit for many hours, stopping at Freezing Breeze Bay and Gran Chivalo before terminating at Lonely Prairie, then a short ferry ride to the end of the line. She had stocked up on supplies at the train station, purchasing an assortment of overpriced snacks for the coach ride, a new pencil (just in case), and a novel from the best-sellers display, as cheap in price as in quality.

Looking up from her journal, pencil hovering close to her muzzle, Rarity surveyed her travelling companions. It was an eight-seater coach, the main body enclosed by a caravan covering, with two muscular stallions visible through the front window, heaving the passengers through Vanhoover laneways. In the first row was the old stallion, still cadaverous in sleep, and an empty seat; behind him was a middle-aged couple, passive-aggressively staring out their respective windows; then a bored-looking stallion who smelled faintly of fish; and Rarity herself up the back and on the left, across the aisle from a pile of fluffy winter clothes that may or may not have housed a pony somewhere within their deep crevasses. It would be difficult to tell, she thought, without a flashlight and appropriate spelunking equipment.

She was surprised by how successfully she had tuned out Vanhoover. There was no singing in its white winter streets, no time for its majesty or novelty. She’d gone straight from the trains to the coaches and waited with barely a thought to seeing more of the city itself. It wasn’t intentional, but Rarity was gripped by a surge of guilt, and she pushed her head up close to the window to take in as much of her foreign surroundings as she could before they were all left behind. The coach was travelling over a long bridge, extending out from the city centre over the harbour, reaching for the wooded shores opposite. The bright sunlight made the waterside buildings look monolithic, dramatically framing each against the others, and it danced atop the gentle waves of the harbour that girt the city’s heart. Her eyes scanned the scene, top to bottom, east to west, and she found her gaze drawn to a small wooden café on the water's edge - but it slipped away, and the coach at last reached land again, and a large hoof-painted sign thanked her for visiting Vanhoover, the Best of the Northwest.

Here we go again.

You know, there’s a very good chance this trip might all be for naught. The last letter was nearly a year old; it’s possible that he moved elsewhere in the interim. Perhaps he even passed on. Oh, stop. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on such pessimistic thoughts. Besides, there’s no going back now. It would require some kind of mutiny to turn this coach around, and I’m certain whose side the other passengers would take.

Just thought, for the briefest of moments - what if he doesn’t care? He does, he has to, he sent those letters, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. He deserves to know.

The book was bottom-of-the-barrel crime fiction, 300-odd pages of trope-ridden tripe; precisely what she needed. It was compelling in that peculiar way that inane things are, requiring so little effort to continue that it becomes hard to stop reading. The characters were just barely likeable, the mystery just barely complex enough to keep her occupied.

There was the rustle of paper as the travellers turned the pages of their distractions; there was the gentle rumble of the wheels, and the sounds of birds and the quiet wind filtered through the thick tarp and window flaps.

There were thoughts, half-formed, that haunted her pauses.

"Whoever it is that leaves, all shredded and limbless…"

There were answers that she tried her best to shut out.

"Yours and yours alone, my love."

She had been dimly aware of the snow. About an hour out of Vanhoover it became just noticeable, sprinkled throughout the trees, nestled in clumps on leaves and branches. Over time, the green and brown in her periphery had been swallowed up by the pale white; now, as she occasioned to glance at the view outside, she was afforded nothing but snow, coating the bank of a steep hill that obstructed the rest of the world. A cloudy sky peeked shyly over the top, giving her the impression of a ruffled curtain of white that stretched all the way up from the ground to the sky. She found the consistency of its drabness almost impressive, in a way—

And then the curtain was pulled back, and the spectacle began as the hill dipped to reveal the rolling sea before her. There were two metres of leeway, a drop of about the same height, and then brilliant violent water, clamouring for the top of the hill, jumping and reaching and missing and falling back down and retreating all the way to a murky, infinitely distant horizon before trying again. The coach was traversing the base of a massive horseshoe-shaped bay, wooded land curving away behind them, the snowy path forging on ahead. Way out on the dark surface of the water, small boats sailed along lazy parabolas that arced back to the tip of the peninsula, their first destination, Freezing Breeze Bay.

It was picturesque, one of those rare moments where the natural world assembles a moving work of art before one’s eyes. Her gaze followed the slow crawl of the vessels, and she grasped the enormity of the seascape, and all at once she was hit like lightning by just how small she was, how little chance she stood against it. It sent a shiver right through her, a strange mix of grandeur, passion and perspective. Rarity glanced hopefully at her companions, expecting them to be just as enraptured by the view: on her side of the aisle, the old stallion remained still as the grave, and the passive-aggressive mare had her muzzle buried in a magazine, occasionally casting furtive sideways glances at her partner, who was doing exactly the same. The odorous stallion bore a look of purposeful solitude, and the winter clothes across from her were intently attempting to organise some manuscripts with their clumsy over-wrapped hooves. What reverence she felt was born, and shortly withered, solely in her heart.

More hills soon rose up to obstruct her view, and she was left alone again with her thoughts.

It’s funny how it all keeps going. The world is no less big or beautiful when I'm not there to see it. The seasons never slow for my benefit. As the sun rises, so too does it set - the tide ebbs and flows - every day, all across Equestria, ponies wake up, eat their breakfast and go to work, completely unaware of me, my problems and predilections. They fall asleep and dream of something else entirely. It all just keeps on going, undeterred, without me.

I still see the Apples from time to time, around town. Granny Smith, Big Mac, little Apple Bloom; it feels like they should have just… disappeared, now that my connection to them is gone. Exeunt all. It’s a very queer thing to tear the context away from a pony like that. As Soul Searcher was saying, we construct ourselves as a relation to others, but so too do we distance others as mere relations to ourselves. Without… her as the buffer between us, Granny is nothing to me, not even a grandmother - nothing but her pure self. A living, thinking, feeling being. I see her more clearly now than ever before. It frightens me. Last time I saw her approaching in the street, I ducked into a café and hid until she was gone. As plainly as I see Granny now, I see the gaping hole that she left.

And who am I, now? How do I appear to those who see me, friends or strangers? What did she take away from me when she left?

A philosophical conundrum: I am many Is. Each connection in my life, every passing moment, is another perspective of myself. It’s hard to say just how many there are - but the sister Sweetie Belle knows is surely a different pony to the mare now living in Soul Searcher’s memory. Perhaps not noticeably so from the outside… But there are all kinds of microscopic differences between those two selves. Changes in dialect, mood, mannerisms; how I interact with my surroundings, and how my surroundings affect me; how much I am tempered by familial love, versus how much I am compelled by… well, she was a most interesting mare… So, eventually, the question arises: which one of them is more truly Rarity? If such a concept is even coherent. I would hazard that the existence of those separate selves is proof enough that there is no One True Rarity. Rarity is unstable - kaleidoscopic. This present author is no more or less myself than yesterday’s - we are different, but we are equally different, and so we are equal.

This is… a mildly upsetting conclusion, I will admit. There should be something at the centre, propping it all up. Physicality? A white unicorn with a fabulous purple coiffure: ah, but we desire more than that. We want to believe we are something more, something that can exist beyond the simple boredom of our bodies. Really, we’re little more than each moment as it passes - the thoughts in our head, memories, actions. Mile markers that make up a journey. Still frames that, in quick enough succession, blur together to form a moving picture, an identity.

Pah!, is this the royal we? Perhaps you are projecting your own uncertainties on to the rest of ponykind. I don’t know. Lately I’ve felt more like moments - like I’m merely whatever task I’m performing, whichever place I perform it in. Like things are too slow to give the illusion of movement.

If there really were a One True Rarity, I suppose she would best be observed when completely isolated - perhaps while on a coach in the middle of nowhere with nopony to talk to.

Alright then. Who am I?

I am… cold, and somewhat hungry.

SS rather rubbed off on me. (Don’t ever tell her that.)

Through sheer force of will, she distracted herself with another few chapters of The Silent Saddle, until a sharp jerk of the carriage and a grumbled finally from two seats ahead heralded their arrival at Freezing Breeze Bay.

Despite the name and the portentous weather, it was surprisingly bearable outside the coach, and the ocean-borne wind was chilly but tame. Calm before the storm, Rarity suspected. The fishy stallion had vanished instantly, and as the embittered couple wandered off into the cobbled streets, they resumed whatever argument had been put on hold in the coach's polite company. Over their cries of "completely out of context" and "just like your mother," Rarity was dimly aware of the drivers telling the remaining passengers to be back at the coach in thirty minutes, Or Else.

Yet more time to kill. She returned to the relative warmth of the coach to fish her boots out from her suitcase, then emerged once more into the avenue, purposeless. They had parked downtown, and a handful of ponies passed her by in either direction. Pondering the scandalous source of the couple’s bickering, she gravitated westwards on autopilot, past low buildings and tacky markets, towards the shoreline. By the gateway to the stone beach that bounded the inlet, there stood a lonely refreshment cart from which she bought an overpriced and underwhelming hot cocoa, mostly out of habit. Something pulled her towards the water, closer still. The stones beneath her hooves were small and smooth and dark, merging like a gradient into the slow grey waves.

It was a strange and beautiful phenomenon that even on such a dreary day, the mere sight of the ocean could do such wonders for her mood. That grand perspective she'd felt on the coach hummed in the back of her mind, an after-image. A calm descended over her, and she shut her eyes and savoured the smell of salt in the air, the breeze against her cheeks, the soft pulse of the tide, and the warmth of the cocoa filling her belly.

"Darling…! Are you honestly telling me you’ve never see—"

"I ain’t never seen th’ gods-damn ocean, no! I mean, I seen pictures, sure, but… not properly. Not ’til now -" a mischievous grin - "so if you wouldn’t mind shuttin’ yer jaw for a minute so's I can let this life-changin’ moment sink in…"

"Shutting my— Oh, you will come to regret those words, dearest." It’s a chore to force venom into the word, feigned as it may be.

"Lookin’ forward to it, sweetcheeks."

Her eyes snapped open.

She spent her remaining time looking at garish souvenirs in the markets, trying to trick herself into being interested in them.

A brief disclaimer: earlier, I ridiculed my over-attention to detail vis-à-vis a certain snack cart's movements; but I feel the hypocrisy of repeating this mistake is justifiable in light of how ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING these sugarsnaps are. By all the stars in the sky! Their repulsion is… beyond words. No, hang on, I've thought of a few. This is the most putrid, festering, lousy excuse for a delicacy I've seen since the notorious 'baked bads' incident. I ought to sue the Vanhooverite that sold them to me for assault. He claimed they are organic, by which I can now infer he meant that they are pure dirt and excrement.

I must say that I am beginning to understand the appeal of diary-keeping. It passes the time, for one thing; but there is a catharsis to these inconsequentialities. If I didn't have this private space in which to vent my snack-based disappointment, that negativity (short-lived though it may be) would simmer inside me and follow me around for the day, and make the world even more bitter. And with positivity - it only multiplies when you share it, and here it's like I can share it with my future self.

Oh please, what positives It's nice to enjoy the little things, isn't it? I remember one miserable morning, asking Pinkie how she was always so chipper… She said she just never forgets the little things. Could it really be so simple? Hot cocoa. My book - the good one I left behind, not this… thing… The wonder of the ocean. The manifold shape of the snowflake. Cute mares on trains.

A neat list of pleasant distractions. A bandage over a broken horn. Isn’t everything? There’s something waiting in the silence. There’s a fear that we all acknowledge, we write whole books on it, we philosophise about it from the comfort of the fireside - but even the philosophising is a distraction. We don’t feel it unless we’re still, absolutely still. Why am I writing, if not to distract myself from this mind-numbing trip? Why am I on this mind-numbing trip, if not to distract myself from my mind?

I was only peripherally aware of the snowfall until now. Fairly light, which makes it all the more appreciable. Light snow is graceful, ornamental. Heavy snow is slush, slow going, more time spent in this damnable interlude.

I don't thi

The pencil halted abruptly. What had she been about to say? She'd begun writing instinctually. At the back of her mind, the sentiment echoed dimly. I don't think I'm okay.

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means— It means you've been blockin' me out lately. No, don't give me that look, we both know it's the truth. An' I won't pretend like it don't hurt me, 'cause it does, Rares, it hurts hard, but…" Her gaze faltered for the briefest of moments. "But I respect yer privacy. An' you shouldn't feel guilty for wantin' it."

"It's not about pri—"

"I'd be a plum fool not to know what it's about. I know what you wanna say as much as you know what I wanna say. But if you can't say it to me, maybe…" She nudged the book across the table. "You can say it to this."

Rarity put the pencil and diary aside. What good does it do to dwell on it?

She kept her eyes glued to the landscape for a while, seeking out another moment of profundity; but the coastline was cloaked once again by snow-laden trees, and she returned to her book with an implacable sense of disappointment.

There came a point where she knew she would have to break soon, and she wondered how much longer she could prolong it for. The animate pile of clothing across the aisle from her had spent the last half-hour giggling to itself, with gradually increasing intensity and frequency. It was barely noticeable at first beneath the rumble of the coach and the low moan of the wind; now Rarity found herself reading the same sentences over and over as she waited for each outburst to cut through the winter's calm. She inhaled, coiled.

The shuffling of paper; then a bright heehee! that sent a chill down her spine. She took a moment to appreciate the dead calm of the elder stallion up the front, then sighed, and turned to face the annoyance.

"Ahem," she coughed matter-of-factly.

The clothes turned towards her - looking straight-on she could make out, beneath a hood that had obscured all sign of life, a flat jet-black fringe that obscured all facial features. It was an obvious and poorly-done dye job, with traces of amber roots visible in various places. Rarity wondered how the pony could even make out words on a page through its impractical length. A faint echo from within that identified the pony as a stallion - "Heh. Hello."

From within the deepest and darkest reserves of her heart, Rarity mustered a fake grin and all the passive-aggression she could spare. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear, I don't mean to interrupt whatever it is you're doing over there, but—"

"Letters," the hair blurted out. Rarity blinked. "Haha, I'm uh. I'm reading letters. That's what… yeah." He gestured meekly with his hooves, still clutching the papers. His voice was young and thin, with a constant note of surprise that irritated Rarity to no end.

"Ah. It's just—"

"From my— boyfriend," he continued, apparently not hearing her. He seemed to savour the last word, accentuating the attack, drawing it out just a little longer than natural. He giggled again. "I'm going to, oh my gosh, I’m going to meet him, we're so close to his— I'm sorry, it's just… Love, you know?"

There was an expectant pause. This was not going to plan. Was she supposed to say something? Rarity did not want to say something. Rarity did not want to say a word to this thing, though she could think of several words she’d like to scream at it. She cleared her throat. He kept on - "I don't know if you've uh, I mean are you, do you have a special somepony? It's so hard to describe, it's so…" His hooves made a wide arcing motion. "Just like. Everything is… wow. Wow times a million. Infinity wow. Do you know what I mean?" He cocked his head slightly, as if concerned.

Exhausted, Rarity's simper dropped. In a moment of grim prescience, she realised that she was not even supposed to reply. This boy was filled to the brim with something that needed to get out, and no matter what she said, nor how little interest she displayed in his babbling, he was going to keep on talking at her until he'd said all he wanted to say to the universe. Who knew how long that would take? At best, perhaps she could speed the process along.

"It's grand," she unenthused.

Her assailant nodded vigorously. "Honestly, now it's super weird to think, like, how was I happy before I met him? I thought I was, I mean things were pretty good, I wasn’t, like, sad or anything, but… But this is happiness. Like, this whole other level. So whatever I felt beforehand, what was that? Everything's different now, it's all the same but just better, everything is just…"

"Just grand," she repeated, rubbing her horn.

"It's so hard to describe, isn't it? Haha, or is that just me? I'm not a poet or anything." He looked down bashfully, and Rarity thanked all conceivable deities that he wasn't a poet or anything.

"My boyfriend is, though."

Oh no.

That dreadful giggle again. "He likes to send me, um. Stuff about us." no no no no no no no no

The stallion thrust one of his many papers towards her, scattering several others in the process. "D'you wanna see?" Something glistened deep beneath his fringe.

A small, strangled noise escaped Rarity's lips. The trap was set. There was no foreseeable way out of this. She gingerly took the poem from him as if it were a bomb, and her eyes scanned the sheet with a terror she hoped wasn't noticeable.

It was worse than she'd thought it would be.

"It's good," he assured her, "like, critically. The um, imagery and metaphor and stuff— I won't bore you, but trust me, he's really good." Rarity could feel his expectant gaze on her as she read.

"Interesting use of… words," she offered.

"Right? I still can't believe he found a rhyme for orange…!" He sighed rapturously. "Don't you just love it?"

"No, nooo, I love it, I absolutely love it, I do. Heheh."

"For gods’ sakes! If you're going to lie to my face, could you at least do it without giggling?" Hot, angry tears welled up behind her eyes.

"Rares! C'mon now, it's— I'm jus' not… You know I don't know a damn thing about fashion." Rarity's glare was unrelenting. "I'm sure it's a masterpiece. And I love that y' thought of me, I do, I really really do."

"But?"

"But how the heck am I s'posed to buck trees in high heels?" she laughed.

"… you know, it's uh, heh, it's true love. Plain and simple. Some ponies don't believe me, but you believe me, right?"

Why was this happening? Why here, why now? Why had the gods put this abominable creature on this coach with her?

"I think that's why his poems are so good. Because they're like, real."

It felt deliberate - like the whole conversation, the entire coach ride leading up this moment, was a shrewdly calculated attack on her psyche. Why was he doing this to her?

"I wonder if, maybe he'll write some while we're together? I can be his, hehe, his muse…"

Was this divine retribution? That must be it. She wondered what it was specifically, which mistake in her life had warranted this karmic torture.

"… this is my first time going this far north, actually. It's kind of a funny story…"

Sweetie Belle’s cuteceañera? No, worse than that. That night with Fancy Pants? I knew I could never make it right. Or the weekend I was in Hoofington and I missed—?

"… while he was in Seaddle for umm, a month? Although it felt like, you know how time just flies by…"

Maybe it wasn't any one thing. Maybe I'm just a bad pony. I had it too easy for too long and now it's all coming back around.

"… and I was, you know, it was hard, but then he said why don't I write you…"

That's it. It's a lump sum. This boy, and the sugarsnaps, and the cold and the book and the phantom pain. It's all accumulated.

"… pen-pals is such a romantic notion, don't you think? 'A dying artform,' he called it…"

I wasn't good enough to her. And only now am I trying to make up for it. And the universe is telling me it's too little too late.

"… enough for the coach, it wasn't easy! But, if it's for him…"

This is the mistake. I knew it. I should have stayed in Canterlot, stayed in the Boutique. Stayed away.

"… he said it would be cold. I guess I um, overdid it a bit. Hehe..."

But this plague, this gods-damned guilt—

"Go home, Rarity." Softly, like doctors with bad news. "Just for tonight."

"No way in hell," she growled.

"Please," Twilight whispered. "You need rest. The girls and I will be here if any—"

"Don't you say another word, Twilight Sparkle." She hardly recognised her voice, strained and distant. "Don't you finish that sentence. I won't— I wasn't there for her once, and look what happened. I won't be absent again. I can't."

"… been so long, and so far away, I don't know—"

And this, this thing! This deluded little excrement, yammering away! Salt in the gaping wound!

"— but I guess you just gotta, uh, trust in love, right?" There was a sheepish grin plastered on his face, fringe brushed away to one side, and there was something in it, a flickering thing that she recognised and knew that she hated—

And there it was. That's enough now, she thought. It was all she could think. Enough.

"Well," she said wryly, voice cracking ever so slightly, "I'm very happy for you two. And I hope you enjoy it while it lasts."

A lingering pause. "I'm sorry?"

"You know… young love, it's, how to put it… It's a wonderful, if fleeting, part of life." She smiled magnanimously.

The lovestruck pony stared at her, eyebrows furrowed in either puzzlement or indignation, she couldn't tell. "This isn't fleeting. This is true love."

"Mmm," she offered through a thin smile.

"What?"

"That's what I thought, when I was your age."

He gave a short, exasperated sigh. "You sound just like— This is the real deal! The, the sonnets of Shakesmare, the operas of, of—" He came up empty. "Love!"

"Oh, yes. Of a kind. But…" She leaned towards him, her gaze steeled - "Would you take it from a wise old mare like myself that there are forces and feelings in this life that your young little mind simply cannot comprehend when you're, oh, sixteen?" ("Seventeen," he protested weakly, but she continued unabated - ) "That the reason you feel so special and on top of the world and weally twuly in wuv is that you've seen and done so staggeringly little that your whole world is the size of a grapefruit - a convenient, easy-to-digest size, something small enough to be conquered with the barest of efforts. And so you get cocky. You think you've figured it all out! And you have to explain to everypony else all these magical sensations that you and only you have felt! You mistake your own ignorance for intensity, you think your love is the purest, truest love known to ponykind because you don't know a thing about compromise or pragmatics or betrayal or—" She paused for breath, refocusing. "And then you and your boyfriend will grow up, and your little grapefruits will slowly get bigger and push against each other and push you away from each other, and you'll disappear somewhere over his horizon - " she traced a hoof lazily through the air, into the imagined distance - "and your purest, truest love will be lost for good. Maybe he'll remember you, sometimes, when he's drunk enough to dive through his embarrassing adolescence and think about all the mistakes he made. Probably not. But you, you'll carry that weight, you'll drag it around like a mutt on a leash into every new relationship and think this one will be the one, this time will be so much better, everything will be perfect from here on out, and it won't be, because nothing is perfect, nothing is pure, nothing is true, least of all love."

Silence rolled through like thunder. The boy had retreated so far into his parka that Rarity could barely see the expression on his face, but his wide eyes glistened in the muted light. She drew in a long breath for effect, smiled again, and calmly finished - "So, as I said. Enjoy every second." And after a moment of unwavering eye contact, she turned back to face her window.

A minute later she heard the familiar rustle of paper again, but no laughter accompanying it.

It didn't feel like a victory. She was waiting for the satisfaction to kick in. Karma had been bested; but the road rolled on unperturbed, the snow kept falling, and the heaviness in her heart remained, immutable. Perhaps, she considered, he was not a divine force after all. Perhaps he was just a kid, on a coach, in love for the first time.

The more she replayed her words in her head, the more she began to despise them. She turned back to the boy, opening her mouth; but she couldn't assemble the appropriate apology.

I hope this isn't the One True Rarity. I hope this Rarity disappears into the white wilds and is never seen again. He must be wondering who this horrible mare is, why the gods would put her on this coach with him, why she would do this to him…

I don't even know if I believe what I said. Isn't that funny? It's just… hard to know, when I feel like this. It's hard to believe anything.

I remember the exact moment that I gave up on true love. I remember every single moment with you when I thought I'd go back on that decision. I remember you saying, "the grandest of oaks don't just spring out of the ground fully formed, they need patience and a helping hand." I said "why does everything come back to agriculture with you," and you gave me this absolutely withering glare, but your lips twitched with a smile and I realised at once how profoundly in love I was, and how much I'd come to depend on that smile. I think if you're in love, really in love, then you'll always feel seventeen. There's nothing else in the world but you and your special somepony.

Now it's just me, and a hole in the shape of you.

Are we still on the road? Are we even still in the north? In Equestria? In this plane of existence...? Still snowing outside. I'm beginning to feel it setting into my bones - the cold, the distance, impossible. How is there so much sky? Was there always so much of it? It is oversized, a caricature!, it looks ill-fitting and unflattering like a cartoonish ball gown, and how it goes on and on and on… A spiteful surplus of cirrus and silence.

— a what??

This whole journal is a bad poem. Just an awful, lonely poem.

Gran Chivalo was not quite a ghost town, for it had never lived in the first place. The self-proclaimed Jewel of the North, it had been architected single-hoofedly by a misguided Eastern millionaire, who had mistaken his vast trust fund for economic know-how. He poured his fortunes into building a first-class resort town nestled in the snow-laden valley below the Malachite Mountains, filled it up with hospitality workers and their families, gave it a flashy-sounding Griffon name for good measure, then sat back and waited for the tourists to flow in. He had forgotten two key factors to the resort’s success: firstly, the infrastructure to actually transport tourists to and from the town; and secondly, the fact that the breathtaking Foal Mountains supplied everypony with all the winter resorts they could need. An initial trickle of trade came in from curious Vanhoovians, but it evaporated quickly. The townsfolk were resilient, though - resilient and well-supplied, and after their mayor had fled into the coat-folds of his disappointed parents, they maintained something of a life for themselves in this place that was far too big for them.

Rarity had half-expected the townsfolk to be waiting to welcome them on arrival, congratulating whatever brave or mad souls had made it so far north - but there was nothing to greet them save for a biting wind and an overwhelming sense of disproportion. She’d been glued to the window with increasing disbelief as they rolled through the wide, empty streets, lined with bizarrely symmetrical inns and storefronts framed by gaslight against the darkening skies. The carriage pulled up in front of the town hall - vaulted ceiling atop gorgeous stonework - and she stifled a laugh with her hoof. “It seems we missed the peak-hour rush,” she slighted, turning to find herself alone in the carriage. With a perfunctory hm, she exited.

Her body shivered as the Northern air hit her afresh, carrying the smell of cold and a distant woodfire. The boy was wandering slowly away from the coach, as if dazed. "Present Perfect?" he called out into the silence. Rarity saw a mare watching them from a second-storey window. "Pres—" His footing gave out where a gaslamp's warmth had melted the snow beneath it, and he tumbled face-first into the slush with a weak yelp.

"My dear!" she cried out, moving towards him, "are you…?" But she stopped in her tracks. His eyes looked up at her from the ground, wide as saucers, locked on to hers. She was paralysed by the stare, and its screaming accusation.

Then - the sound of muted hoofsteps from around a distant corner, and both sets of ears perked at a cry of "Evergreen!" They turned in unison to see a tall figure galloping into the foreground, a puke-green sweater barreling towards them at a breakneck pace. "I'm so insurmountably sorry," it called out, "I meant to be here waiting for you, my mother made me d—"

Whatever sad excuse was forming on his lips was buffeted out of him as Evergreen had leapt, with improbable speed, from the ground straight into a flying tackle, bringing Present Perfect crashing down with his embrace. Their lips were upon each other in a heartbeat, reunion consummated with an impressively deep kiss. Rarity's gaze lingered for a moment, bewildered, on the inexperienced lovers, and she wondered if maybe that kiss wouldn't have meant as much, nor tasted quite as sweet, if not for her—

No, she turned away, you don't get off the hook that easy.

(From behind her, she heard a gasp, and Present Perfect's concerned voice - "what in heaven's name are you wearing?")

As she passed him, one of the workhorses stuck out a hoof to stop her. "You're heading on to the Prairie?"

"Um, yes."

He grunted. "I'm gonna have to check the roads, see if it's still navigable. Snow hasn't been that bad, but we'll see. So. Back here in thirty minutes, like last time."

"Still na— I'm sorry?" She grappled with the words; but he was off already, down the deserted street.

I might be stuck here, it occurred at last. The roads might be too hazardous, too thick with snow. I might be stuck here in this, this… Rarity's eyes darted around, panic rising. "Noooo. No I will not. It's fine. It'll all be fine." Then - "Talking to yourself out loud is not a strong indication of fine, Rarity."

Then - "I need a drink."

There was a tavern a short walk up the boulevard, drawing her in with the promise of a roaring fire visible through the front window. It was done up with an elegant log cabin aesthetic, dark wooden furniture with plush red cushions, walls lined with blurry snapshots of the wilderness. She had expected an evening crowd, but as she hung her parka on the coat rack she became acutely aware that the place was completely devoid of patrons - and, it seemed, staff as well. "Hello?" she called into the empty room, warming herself by the fire.

"Won’t be a moment!" a motherly voice chimed from out of nowhere, audibly unhurried; and shortly after, a middle-aged mare sauntered through a door behind the bar. "What'll it— oh! Well, you're a new face," she smiled.

"Yes, just passing through. Weather permitting," Rarity added dourly as she took a seat at the bar.

"On to the Prairie, eh? Not many folks venture that far this time of year…" She paused expectantly, but at Rarity's downcast gaze and inaudible reply, she quickly moved on. "And what can I get for you today, Miss…?"

"Rarity. One of whatever's on tap, please, and..." her eyes scanned a menu - "a basket of hay fries to go with it."

"Oh, I'm sorry, sweetie, the kitchen isn't open just yet," the mare apologised with a sympathetic frown, reaching for a clean mug, "but we do have a particularly palatable Oakwoods on tap this month."

Rarity squinted. "Ah, no, I apologise, I only thought— What time is it?"

"About half three." She swept a coaster along the counter and placed the full mug precisely on it, a sweet, spicy aroma wafting up from its amber contents.

Half three? Rarity glanced out at the gloomy gaslit street. "Are you quite sure?" she asked slowly. "I do beg your pardon, but it looks considerably later."

The bartender followed her gaze. "Mmhmm, that's winter for you. The sun has a lot of trouble making it this far north 'round this time of year. Heck," she leaned thoughtfully on her hoof, "by now, I think it would've set completely up at Lonely Prairie. If it even rose at all!," she chuckled to herself.

Rhetorical or not, the question was so pressing now, so insistently repeated by her dazed psyche, that it couldn't help escape her lips. "What," Rarity stared at the mare, "is this place?"

"Come again?"

The stare held for a pregnant second, woodfire crackling quietly away behind them, until Rarity collapsed, resting her head in her hooves and shaking it slowly. "I'm sorry. It's been one of those days."

"Oh, honey," the bartender soothed. "It's a fair ways to travel, you must be exhausted. Tell you what…" The mare disappeared under the counter for a moment, chestnut mane bobbing around like a shark fin, until she resurfaced with a jar of almonds. "It's not much, but help yourself to some mixed nuts. Get some energy in you."

Rarity tilted her head, eyed the jar warily. "They're all almonds."

The bartender chuckled again in her whimsical way. "Ran out of the rest last week. All the almonds you can handle, but not a macadamia for miles!"

It's the abyss, Rarity conjectured, this is the abyss, you stare into it and you break. This place breaks ponies.

"Well, Miss Rarity, I suppose I'll leave you to it. I've got some veggies out back that need re-basting for tonight." She drifted back towards the door she'd entered through. "Have a—"

"Hang on," Rarity sat up, "Miss, you couldn't stay a little longer? I'd, um," she glanced around at her surroundings, "love to hear more about this, this delightful establishment of yours." In truth, she couldn't care less about the tritely decorated bar, but…

"Oh, that's sweet… I'll only be twenty minutes or so, if you could wait."

She sighed, sipping at her cider. "I'll be back on the coach by then."

The mare clicked her tongue. "Shame… Hey now, maybe I'll see you again on your way back down?" She winked at her patron, opening the door. "Have a safe trip, Miss Rarity."

Rarity could feel the silence creeping up on her, and she floundered, "but, but Miss! How much do I owe you?"

"Five bits - just leave it on the counter, dear," she called behind her, then the door swung shut, and the silence sprung out of hiding and was upon her.

It was like all the pressure had been sucked out of the room; she half-expected the glass window to blow out and take her with it. Rarity was acutely aware in that moment of how empty it was in the bar - in the street - the whole city - the whole Northwest. There had always been a background hum, there had been ponies and places, things to do and say and wish for, always something to focus on to keep the silence at bay. She'd been running from city to city inventing new ways to keep it out— But the hum had washed away with the closing of the back door. There were no ponies nor places; only the spaces between, this quiet, momentous, crushing…

It was the sort of feeling, she thought, that made you want to scream but drained you of the energy to, so all that comes out is a pathetic, inarticulate moan. Darkness flashed before her eyes, the remembered darkness of damp pillows clenched over her face - she was no stranger to the silence. Memories lived here. This was a place devoid of the present, where the past and future rush in to equilibrate its absence, snap shut around you like a trapper's snare. The past: well. The past was always with her, the guilt, biting at her heels. That was nothing new. The future: it unfurled with a languorous smirk, revealing itself. You will always feel like this. The snowed-out road ahead stretched on for weeks and months and years, no scenery to distinguish any part from another, the miles marked only by sleepless nights and empty taverns. A future wasted outrunning a past.

And she would run, because it was all she felt she could do. There may be no redemption at the end of the road - the road may never end at all - but she knew what lay at its beginnings, and she could not bear to turn around.

Is it the place that breaks them? Or is this just where all the broken ponies end up? Something guides them here: the quiet, the cold, an old man's letters…

She downed the rest of her cider - she didn't even like cider, why did she order this? - shovelled a miserable hoof-full of almonds into her mouth, threw her bits on the counter, and left.

The setting sun was afforded no elegance, occluded by matte grey skies, and the wind pierced straight through her parka. Her eyes burned with cold. Somewhere across town, a dog barked, pitifully. It seemed one of the workhorses had clocked out for the day; the remaining driver had wrapped a long maroon scarf about himself, and was lighting a lantern that hung above the front of the cart. He gave her a taciturn nod as she hurried inside the coach. Even its shelter provided little relief to her freezing bones. She shivered as she took her seat, unzipping her suitcase and levitating her paisley-print scarf out.

As she unfolded it, something metallic dropped from within it to the floor of the coach, and even before it hit the ground she knew what it was and her heart stopped for a horrified moment. Her whole body froze. She knew, but she would not look down, could not acknowledge it, not yet, never again, not for as long as possible.

It slid around her neck, cool to the touch, and she suppressed a giggle.

Quizzical brows - "What?"

"I'm just so happy. I thought you were supposed to cry at times like these, but— I just want to laugh."

That glorious smile, it shone in the autumn sunlight, the darkening trees danced ever so gently around them. "Think y'could make it through yer vows first?"

The pendant floated in front of her muzzle. Despite its lustre, her eyes found it hard to focus on its golden, apple-shaped surface. They stared past it into nothing,

"you want me to stop? Really?" She didn't stop.

"I'm just sayinnnn' it keeps brushin' against me and it's oh fuck it's so cold an' all I mean is can't you ohhh at least take it off when you…"

"Short answer -" she came up and kissed her like a freight train, holding her down, and the pendant dangled from her neck and lazily tickled her lover's. An orange hoof reached for it, under the pretense of a tender caress - but a canny white hoof stopped it in place. "I don't ever want to take it off. I want you with me, always."

The coach was empty, she realised. Even the dead pony from the front row was nowhere to be found. It was just her, and the silence, and the workhorse shivering in his scarf as he shouldered the reigns and muttered quietly to himself.

It’s too much. It’s the smallest, stupidest thing, and I was doing so well beforeno you were not I mean relatively I was maybe— could've held out just that little bit longer— feels like my guts have all fallen out. I keep remembering everything, all at once, bursts of it like fireworks. How is there so great a power in so small a thing? I can feel it burning through my pocket, feel its absence around my throat, hear it jangle with each bump in the road, I can still see it so vividly in my mind that it may as well be painted over my eyes.

I’m writing this down because she told me writing would help when she gave this to me. She said to put quill to paper and let your mind just fall out onto the waiting pages. Let it all out. Then you can come back to it later, and bring a new perspective to old thoughts. Did she envision this, I wonder? Did she foresee how completely she’d destroy my heart, and think something as simple as this stupid fucking book would help me get it back into working order?

Am I angry now? I don’t know what this feeling is, but it consumes me, and it is hideous.

Oh gods. Where am I? Where the hell am I?? I’m on a long snowy road through the middle of an endless white emptiness, being dragged inch by inexorable inch towards the very thing I'm trying to leave behind. As far away as I could ever be from it all, I can still feel the choke of these tethers. I need to keep writing to keep myself from screaming. I miss home. I miss everypony. I miss Mama and Papa, and Sweetie Belle, oh stars I could cry just writing her name. How long has it been since I’ve been back to our house? When did we last eat dinner as a family? Why can’t I remember?? And I miss Twilight and Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy and

and here I am taking solace in you this diary again. I never expected to get so much use out of it. Any use, really. I remember I said, I can handle this just fine, thank you for the vote of confidence. And now I want to pour my bloody beaten heart out to you but this isn’t you THIS ISN’T HER

but let's just pretend for a minute

What if it were?

What would I say?

I’d say I miss you like crazy and I wish you were here and I'm sorry I ever met you and I’m so sorry for everything and

did you really believe in forever

Godspit! I can’t even write your name. I can barely think it. Looking back through these pages, all these vague notions, distractions, interruptions, half-hearted sentiments, a masked reflection—

I think I’m trying to forget you.

Is that awful? Am I an awful pony? Is this what everypony else does? I don’t know. I don’t know a single damned thing, except I know it hurts when I remember you and I know I don’t want it to hurt any more. I’ve been avoiding you, this, for so long. Keeping busy. Moving on. I’ve… I’ve been moving so much. I’ve been afraid of what would happen if I stood still long enough, and now look. And I knew I’d end up here, of course I knew. That sparkling little truth has always been in the back of my mind, and I’ve spent all this time building up as many walls around it as I could just to delay the inevitable. What staggering clarity! What absolute immaturity!

This has to stop. I’ll tell him, somehow, I'll tell him everything, and then I can come home, and be done with you.

What a sorry sight you must be, Rarity. Hunched over your journal one minute, staring in mute despair at a tiny piece of jewellery the next, then back again... I wonder if the driver has noticed and is too polite to say anything

And when she glanced up to check, she could see the pattern of distant lights through the boundless dark ahead. They were arriving at Lonely Prairie.

Carry That Weight

What was it that drove ponies to live all the way out here? Was there any real draw beyond the challenge? In the wintry shadow of the northern ranges, a stone's throw from the edge of the world - there is nothing here, she thought, beyond the stubborn satisfaction of rising to a meaningless task. Stubbornness, and disappointment, and now me.

The driver had let her off outside the ferryman's office before disappearing into the darkness with a curt goodnight. What little she could make out of the township may have been quaint, even charming, on any other day. She hurried inside the office without a second thought to her surroundings, suitcase dragging behind her, scarf wrapped tight around her tingling muzzle.

Inside was barely any warmer. It was a small, pointless room, populated by a small, pointless stallion seated with closed eyes behind a small and pointless table. There was a back door behind him, a shoddily-written schedule and an overcoat hanging on the wall besides it. The stallion was bare, but seemed unperturbed by the cold.

Rarity swallowed before clearing her throat. “Excuse me, sir?” One eyelid lazily lifted; he nodded a slow acknowledgement, the eyebrow wavering with the effort of staying up. She hated him already. “I um. I'd like to ride to Gael’s Tears, please.”

“The next boat departs in forty minutes,” he informed her in a low, lazy tone, eyelid closing again.

She blinked. “Couldn’t we leave now? It’s just that I’d rather…”

“Oh, I know, I know you'd rather. You city ponies have always got some place to be.” He pointed a hoof at the timetable hanging behind his desk and smiled banally. “But I have a schedule to adhere to, and I take a decent amount of pride in that adherence, y'see. The next boat departs in forty minutes.”

“Yes, but - ” she tapped a hoof on the wooden floor - “it’s not as if we’re waiting on anypony else, is it? We’re just about the only living souls in this flimsy little town.” She couldn’t keep her voice from wavering.

The ferryman’s smile remained static, but his eyes opened at last, narrow and focused, and Rarity wondered if she hadn’t misstepped. “Perhaps the schedule can be changed,” he said evenly. “Perhaps there's inclement weather. Perhaps there won’t be another crossing ’til tomorrow morning.”

A different kind of cold ran through her. What if I die here? She was struck suddenly by the thought - she knew it was outlandish, but— what if I die here, and my body is buried by the snow, and nopony knows where to look for me? Would they even look for me? What if they're all back in Ponyville thinking I'm just on business somewhere, and days just pass by, day after day, and the snow piles up…

Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. “I’m very sorry, sir. I truly am. I didn’t mean to… insult your integrity.” He raised a sceptical eyebrow at her. She continued, quieter. “Please don’t make me stay here.” He grunted. “It's not the town, it's me, I don’t think I could… Please. I can’t stop here. I can’t stop now, not now, not like this, I don’t know what I might do if I stop now, I don't—” She swallowed, catching herself. I don't want to die here.

“Miss…” Worry creased his brows as he looked at her from across the room. His gaze fell downwards, shifted and blinked in thought as he chewed his lip. “I suppose…” He looked back up at her with a reluctant smile. “I could push it forward. Just a tad.”

Rarity forced a reciprocal grin. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very kindly.”

“Not at all.” He glanced at the clock on his desk. “Alrighty then. We’ll leave in thirty-five.”

“Tell me, tell me!”

“Naw, forget it, it was just… one of those weird thoughts.”

“Oh, forget it, she says! I know this little dance of yours, darling. Let’s skip it this time, shall we?”

“You… fine, look. I— I realised that there’s gonna be a last time. For everythin’. I mean it really hit me all of a sudden. It might well be a happy endin’ still, but there’ll be a last time that I kiss you. An’ it’s always comin’ closer. Every time we kiss, it comes closer.”

“...”

“Gah, I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have listened to ya. Should’a jus’ forgotten it.”

“That wouldn’t make it any less true.”

There was a narrow road from the back of the ferryman’s office to his dock that branched off about halfway down the slope of the bluff, becoming a rocky path that followed the shoreline north, away from the village. She’d walked it for a little while, briskly, trying in vain to keep herself warm. The ocean blew a chilling breeze across her path, pushing her inland, as if trying to turn her around and halt her journey. Even here at the home stretch, there was still something in her that wanted to give up.

She felt the weight of everything filling her up, constricting her insides - it pressed upon her heart and lungs, and though it yearned to be exerted, all she could muster was a deep sigh and a weak whisper: “fuck.” It was the only word even vaguely commensurate to it all. She barely heard herself, the word snatched away from her by the relentless wind.

Almost there, she thought. She levitated a stone from the side of the path and hurled it into the water. Almost there. Then you can go home. Another stone cut through the winter air, entered the water with a barely audible plop. Go home. See your friends and family. See everypony you love. Everypony you…

The pendant was still in her parka pocket, she remembered, and she dug it out with a trembling forehoof and held it in front of her face, squinting in the harsh wind. Its gold chain rattled meekly. Her eyes closed, and there was soft, pale orange before her, and a sterling silver diamond on a loose-hanging chain, and the hint of a smile just above it…

Eyes shut tight, she hurled the memento towards the horizon with all the force her frigid bones could gather. She could trace its path in her mind, see its steady, graceful trajectory up and arcing outwards and slowly finding its way back down towards the—

“Fuck!” she yelled, eyes shooting open and locking desperately on to the falling memento. A burst of magic from her horn shot out across the water, a thin stream of blue light hitting its mark and cushioning it, not twenty centimetres above the surface of the sea. She floated it over and stuffed it back into her pocket.

Almost there.

She started back to the ferry.

The darkness had a strange and ominous effect on the boat. The vessel and its two lonesome passengers were illuminated by a single lantern hung from the mast, the moon occluded by cloud. Behind them, Rarity could still dimly make out the light of the ferryman's building on the northern shore of Equestria; ahead, the pinpricks of light marking the islands of Gael’s Tears; and in all other directions, a vast and impenetrable oblivion. They slowly, almost imperceptibly, floated from one haven to another across the unknown.

It was, Rarity had to admit, terrifying. In a moment of weakness, as the ocean gusts rose and the lantern’s light sputtered and almost went out, she found herself longing for a row of unmoving, unchanging green hills.

The ferryman hummed tunelessly as he worked the tiller.

It was a small village and it wasn’t hard to find him. The buildings she passed were mostly homes, and a few two-storey shops with living quarters on the second floor. She checked in the tavern first, a bright little cabin eerily similar to Gran Chivalo's own. This one was populated by older stallions who cheered incoherently when she entered, a stark and not entirely welcome contrast. A barmaid let her know where to find him, and she left quickly.

His property was at the end of the main street, which she came to realise was one of only two streets on the island, the smallest and westernmost of the Tears. According to the ferryman, fish was the archipelago’s main export. When she passed the crossroads and looked down the lamp-lit intersection, she could see a small marina at its end. Nopony passed her. The warm clamour of the tavern faded into the static of the wind.

“You know I won’t beg, but I’m askin’ mighty nicely here, Rarity. Don’t go.”

“You can’t even afford him this? You’d be alright with him never knowing—” She slammed the suitcase lid. “Gods, Mac, he has a right to know!”

“No, he don’t. He gave that up a long time ago.”

“Welcome, weary traveller!” His voice resonated with an effortless showmanship. He was small and obviously very old, his dark red coat hanging off him like a baggy sweater - but there was life in that voice, an enthusiasm that betrayed his feeble frame. “I’d like to ask what whimsy carried y'here to the furthest reaches of the world, but I know for a fact there's only one attraction in these quiet li’l isles - ” he leaned conspiratorially towards her - “and it sure ain’t the fishin’. No, ma’am! Yer here for Pappy Apple's Southern-Style Sundowners.” His smile was as wide as the horizon.

She wondered how long he’d been posing there against the entranceway, watching her disembark from the ferry in the distance, waiting for her to reach the property… He was categorically wrong, of course, but a spiel was visibly poised on his lips, and he looked thrilled to be able to deliver it - how many ponies ever ventured this far north?

"Yessiree, the word's sure spread far and wide… May I trouble you for yer name, young miss?"

She pulled down the hood of her parka - her mane was flattened and hung straight against her head, but she couldn’t care less. "Rarity."

"Rarity! And the shoe certainly fits, yes it does. A beautiful name for a most beautiful mare. So now, Miss Rarity, do tell me: d'you know much about my particular breed of apple? Or were y'carried here by whispers and rumours that piqued yer curiosity? Or maybe you were just bitten by that mischievous travel bug?" His body twitched with nervous energy. "I'd do well to ask - from where did you venture forth to join me here on this fine evening?"

She wondered by what metric this evening could be considered fine. "From Ponyville, Mr. Apple."

"Ponyville. D'you…" The briefest of silences hung between them. It was hard to tell for sure in the moonlight, but Pappy's eyes seemed to defocus for a second, before he snapped back into the moment. "That's an awful long way for you to come, miss. I admire yer tenacity in makin' the journey. But yer right on time: the harvest has just begun." He winked eagerly - "Shall we?" And without waiting for a reply, he turned back towards his property and set off, Rarity and her luggage following quietly behind.

"Miss Rarity from Ponyville," he mused to himself. "My, my."

Ahead of them, down the path between the barn and Pappy's cabin, she could see a thicket of trees illuminated by a vivid light. "Yer the first visitor of the season, y'know," he informed her as he led her along the pathway - then over his shoulder, he hurriedly added, "but certainly not the last! No, the sundowners draw in all sorts o' folks. All sorts. The beautiful, the bizarre, every shade in between. You'd be square in the former camp, o'course," he assured her.

Rarity smiled wanly at him, waiting for the right moment to break his heart.

The buildings passed behind them, the trees drew ever closer, and the golden light grew brighter and brighter. "Now then," he cleared his throat. "Some mighty funny things happen around these parts, Miss Rarity. Our pegasi control the weather, and our princesses move the sun and the moon around the skies, but there's plenty of things even they can't understand about this strange little rock we're livin' on. Take the Everfree Forest for example - y'must know it - there's somethin' wild about that place, somethin' uncontrollable. There's powers greater than our comprehension at work in this world. Y'must have noticed, Miss Rarity, how mighty dark it gets in these parts, how early the sun sets this time o' the year."

"It's quite hard to ignore."

He laughed. "And how! Well, it's all to do with the poles, y'see, somebody once explained it to me. They're, uh, somethin' about refraction, or diffraction, or subtraction… or, um. Well, it never really interested me, all that mumbo jumbo… But as y'see it plainly, there's somethin' different about these northern skies. In the height o' summer, the sun is unavoidable! Y' gots to wear shades in the evening hours and it's darn near impossible to catch any sleep… And then winter rolls around, and it's like it never even existed. Shows its face for maybe an hour or two a day and then scurries on off to who-knows-where."

They stopped at the base of the trees. Rarity could see the orchard stretching on into the distance, wooden baskets littering the ground; there were bright globes nestled in the thick foliage above them that made her squint when she looked up. Their warmth had turned the snow underfoot into a muddy slush. "I first arrived here in the dead o' winter, and I spent a long while tryin' to figure out just where the sunlight had disappeared to." Pappy turned around and locked eyes with her, still beaming. "But I found it. I found where it was hidin'. And I found a way to bring it back."

With that, he gave a sudden buck, stronger than his body seemed capable of - it connected with the nearest tree, and the whole thing shook from side to side, and the lights were dislodged from its branches and fell into the waiting baskets. "Like I said, Miss Rarity," Pappy leaned over the basket, "there's things in this world we can't understand. But that don't make ‘em any less real. Nor less beautiful."

Delicately, he lifted a light from the basket and offered it to her. Separated from the tree, it glowed a little less brightly now, and as she took it from him and held it close Rarity realised that it was not a globe at all. It was an apple the size of a dinner plate, pure golden light shining from beneath its smooth translucent skin. Faintly she could see the light moving within as if it were fluid, radiant particles swirling along lines of convection.

Pappy spoke in a reverent hush. "Don't matter what y'heard, does it? Nothin' compares to the bona fide thing." His eyes shone in the reflected light. "Takes a lot o’ hard work to raise 'em right, of course, they're finicky li'l things, and the harvest season is so short - but it's hard to stay angry at 'em, when they turn out like…" He trailed off, his intent gaze softening. "Oh, miss… lemme give you a moment…"

"No, no, I'll be fine, thank you. I'm fi—" she choked halfway through the word. Rarity blinked the tears out of her eyes, still staring at the apple, still not ready, won't ever be ready. "It's just— They're so beautiful, Mr. Apple, they're... I've never seen such beautiful…" Her head felt as heavy as her heart, her gaze dropped to the ground. "She would've loved them. Oh, she would have just loved them. I suppose she never came here, she would never have seen…"

"Hush now. It ain't right for you to cry and me not to," she whispered.

For the first time that night, Pappy shivered. "Miss," he spoke after a pause. "What is it, really, that brings a mare like yerself all the way from Ponyville to the edge of nowhere?"

She stood there for some time, head low, quivering, wordless. Waves lapped at the island's shores somewhere in the distant dark. With a deep breath, she raised her head, levelled her furrowed, tear-filled eyes at him. "Applejack," she managed. His breath caught. "Mr. Apple, she's… Applejack is gone. She's—" Rarity swallowed hard, and her hind legs buckled and she collapsed to the ground. "I'm so sorry," she wailed, "I'm so—" but the dam broke, and the tears and moans she'd been holding in all came out at last, and she cried harder than she'd ever cried before into the unnatural night.

Pappy stood motionless, rooted like another old tree in the orchard. As she tried to regain control of herself, Rarity would glance up at him to read his expression, but it was unfathomable to her. His breathing was slow and his eyes looked past her, at a spectre. When she could finally hold back her sobbing, he croaked - "When?"

She gulped in freezing air, swallowed back the lump in her throat. "September 9th."

"September," he echoed. His voice barely rose above the rustle of the trees. "Same as her ma, wasn't it?" Rarity nodded. He gave a short laugh, almost a cough. "Everythin' repeats, y'know. I guess you'll find that out when y'get to my age." His smile was a broken thing; she could see the tears in his eyes now that they met hers. "I wasn't there for her ma, I wasn't there for her. It ain't right. Everythin' repeats and nothin' ever comes right, you'll see."

"Mr. Apple, they— they told me that you'd passed, long ago." He laughed brusquely, turning away from her. "But I found your letters, after… She kept them, all of them, they were in a little wooden box under the bed, and I, I found them, and I came here as soon as I could. They told me not to," she got to her hooves, "but you deserve to know, Mr. Apple. I don't know what you did to that family to make you good as dead in their books, but gods above, you deserve to know this at least."

Rarity lifted a hoof, hesitated, took a tentative step forward - but before she knew it Pappy's own hooves were wrapped around her, and he held himself to her, shaking. She felt tears wetting her coat, and she closed her eyes and sunk into his embrace.

"Thank you." The two of them swayed in the winter breeze. Through her closed eyes she could still see the light and feel the warmth of the incandescent apples above them. "She must've been very special to you, for you t’ come all this way."

"Hey, c'mon now, I mean… it could be worse. I c—"

"Shut up," Rarity hissed. "You don't know—" She buried her head in Applejack's chest. "You don't get to tell me how bad it is." Her voice shook, barely audible. "You don't get to tell me how much you mean to me."

Her eyes clenched tighter. "She was everything," she whispered.

"The last time I saw her…" Pappy let go, found his footing. "She was sittin’ by the fireplace, clutchin’ that old bear she loved so much - what was it called? With the broken ear. She’d been waitin' up for me, waitin’ to see me off. She was th’ only one. That must've been…" He gazed up at the leaves in thought. "Twenty-one years ago.” He turned back to her - “But you… Who was it, that you knew? Who did my granddaughter grow up to be?”

Rarity would not open her eyes. Everything was flashing before her, moments and motions and thoughts and whispers and shouts, it was all happening at once. She tried to latch on to something, just one thing to calm the tempest. "She was— beautiful. Like her mother. She always seemed to shine, even on cloudy days; she had this vibrancy about her, a radiance…" Pappy closed his own eyes, conjuring her image. "And she was strong, heavens. She had a buck that could stop an avalanche. She took care of herself, almost as much as she took care of everyone else. After her mother— after your daughter passed, and her husband, she stepped up without a moment's hesitation. Granny and Big Mac were still there but she ran the place, we all knew it, and she provided for us all. You couldn't even try to help her sometimes, she wouldn't even let you thank her. Gods, she was stubborn as an oak, and she was honest to a fault, and she didn't know a thing about art, but—" Rarity felt the tears swell behind her eyelids, shut them tighter - "but she was sensible, and stoic, thoughtful, smarter than she ever let on, humble, generous, compassionate, she was perfect, gods she was so perfect I can't stand it," she wept, "I'm so sick of it, I never want to think of her again!" She shook her head, trying to shuck the images from her mind. "Oh gods, I don't want to forget her, but I can't live like this! I can't…"

Pappy had opened his eyes, watching her shaking in her boots. "Forget her…?"

"I had this—" Rarity pulled the pendant out of her parka - "I had this thing, and, and I wanted to get rid of it and I tried, but I couldn't do it. I held on. At the last minute— I keep holding on. I keep doing this to myself. I've had so many chances and I just can't let go. Why did I come out here?!" She looked around her in exasperation, at the trees, the cabin, the obsidian sky. "I thought I could, if I found you, I'd— What was I thinking? That I could pass her on to you and be done with it all? And now here I am and I still can't let go and it's killing me—"

"Why," he stared at her in bewilderment, "would you let her go? All that time y'had with her, all that time that I never… What I'd do, to have made half the memories you did, and yer talkin' about lettin' them go?"

"I know," she sniffled, wiping her eyes with her foreleg. "I'm awful. But it's too much. Every morning I wake up thinking of her. I feel her absence, I see the spaces where she isn't… and I try to stay busy, but she's always waiting for me. And I can't keep on like this. It isn't fair," she moaned. "I want my life back."

She stood shivering in the sundowners' light, pendant hanging aimlessly besides her. Suddenly she felt Pappy's hoof on her shoulder, and he raised her chin with another to look into her eyes. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare forget her. D'you hear me? D'you even hear yerself? Don't you dare take her for granted. Y'don't just…" He wet his cracked lips. "You gotta remember every second, every precious second y'had with her. Yer the only one who has 'em. Y'just can't throw ‘em all away. Y'just can't."

"It hurts. It hurts so much, to remember how happy I was with her. Every second of it just cuts even deeper."

He lowered his hoof but his gaze would not falter, concern creasing his brow. "Y'need to understand when I say this to ya that I've been through this already. I'm an old pony, Rarity. Hell, I know I don't look it, but…" He smiled weakly. "I've lost a lot of ponies. And I— I left my family behind, a long time ago, and I may as well have lost 'em too. Not a day goes by that I don't think of 'em. And it hurts like a million hells, but every day I thank the princesses I can still remember 'em. I can feel some things are startin' to fade, but not them. I remember when they were born, Macintosh and Applejack and little Apple Bloom too, all o' their first words, the games we played when their ma and pa were out workin' the fields together, and the stories I'd tell 'em at night… I remember my wife, and our daughter, our beautiful girl. I make myself remember," he sucked in a deep breath, "'cause I have to. Because I need to know what I lost to know what's left. Losin' them…" He pressed his forehead against hers. "Losin' her is like losin' a part of yerself. But y'still know who you are. Y'know where all the holes are. If you forget that, you forget yerself. There's a tear in yer soul that y’can't explain. Not knowin' why you are the way you are…" She felt his grip loosen. "I can't think of anythin' sadder than that."

The wind had died down; the great trees stood still as monuments around them. "I was hers," she breathed.

"Y'still are."

Things seemed timeless to her. She could see no movement of the skies, could scarcely hear the ocean now, could hardly tell if her own heart was still beating. "Is that it, then? I have to… I'll just be like this for the rest of my life?" It stretched on before her, vast and blank and impenetrable.

Pappy stepped back. "'Course not. There'll be days when you wake up - " he smiled ruefully - "and she'll be the second thing you think about, not the first."

It was all laid in front of her, waiting for her, as it had always been: the black sea, the way ahead; her upon the shore, groping at shadows with her futile bathymetry. And yet— And yet she could see the edge of the lapping water, and the sand beneath her feet that would take her to it.

It's a start.

And time resumed, the night wind picking up, and she retreated back into her scarf. "Mr. Apple…" She couldn't ignore it any longer. "Aren't you cold?"

"Freezin' my ass off. C'mon." He started back towards his cabin, and Rarity, not knowing what to do with it, brought the sundowner with her as she followed.

She took her photo album from her suitcase while he stoked the fire. The hours passed, unnoticed - they huddled close by the flames on worn cushions, swapping pictures and stories, drinking cup after cup of Pappy's own tea blend. She told him about the Elements, how his granddaughter had helped saved the world years ago; where her family were now; how the Acres were doing. He told her stories about Applejack's childhood, from the time before she knew her; about his daughter and son-in-law, their unlikely love; and about the sundowners. Their apple sat between them like a candle, and she was never sure if she was warmed more from the fire or from its healing light.

It was impossible to tell what time it was when they finally headed off to rest. As she settled in on the couch, wrapping herself in musty blankets, Pappy picked up the sundowner. "I'll take this out back. Can't imagine you'd sleep well with it—"

"No," she said softly, "thank you, but I'd um, I'd like to…"

He grinned, putting it back besides the fireplace's embers. "Don't y'think yer a bit old for a night light?"

"Creature comforts," she mumbled, eyelids drooping. "Goodnight, Mr. Apple."

"Goodnight, Rarity." She heard his footsteps recede, then pause somewhere across the room. "Nopony ever comes back here, y'know," he said quietly. "Nopony ever needs to come back, because nopony ever forgets the sundowners. There's really nothin' like 'em."

Outside, the wind whispered, the water rolled on, the clouds sailed across the pale cheek of the moon; the world rose up, up into the night sky, released like paper lanterns.

To my little apple seed,

There ain't nothing quite like the cold to bring us together, is there? Even without Hearth's Warming Eve, there's something about the wintertime that makes everypony a bit more neighbourly in the streets. Feels like everypony's just that little bit quicker to smile. Maybe it's the urge to cuddle up with somepony to keep warm, or maybe we're all keen to grumble about the weather together, or, I dunno, maybe it's some kinda magic. Or maybe I'm just overthinking things - but when I open my door and step out into the first snowfall of the year, I always think of you, and it thaws my frozen bones.

I hope you're cuddling up and keeping warm with somepony - Big Macintosh, little Apple Bloom (I reckon she ain't quite so little by now), or maybe you found yourself a very special somepony…? Heck, your memaw and I had your mother when I was about your age. Not that it matters, I'm just saying… My friend Sea Skipper was in your neck of the woods recently. He told me the town's never looked better, and the Acres are growing about enough fruit for the whole East coast. Told me without me even asking him, that's how impressed he was. It made me so proud of y'all, I couldn't stop grinning ear to ear all day. Got some mighty confused looks for it…

I want you to know that I don't expect anything from you; not a reply, nor forgiveness, not even a return to sender. I ain't been writing these letters for any other reason than I still love you, all of you, and I believe the greatest thing you can do with your life is to share all the love you can spare. I'm sure I don't deserve your love, but I hope you're sharing it with the ponies that need it the most. You always had a big heart, Applejack. You got that from your ma. Don't waste it.

Maybe it's the sundowners that get to me - they start to bloom when the winter blows through, and they always make me think of you. Not to toot my own horn but I think I've really figured them out. They've been getting bigger and brighter every season. I hope you get to see them one day, I truly do. I'll keep at it, I'll make sure they're here, better than ever, ready for you.

Yours, always,
Pappy

She stayed with Soul Searcher upon her return to Vanhoover, and when her friend had offered her bed to share, she'd broken down for what she vowed would be the last time, though she knew it wouldn't be, and cried into a sofa cushion while Soul Searcher stroked her mane, transparently awkward but comforting nonetheless. When the tears stopped at last, her friend had joked, "am I really that bad-looking?," and Rarity laughed longer than she should have. She stayed for another day after that, because she'd always wanted to see Vanhoover, but had never found the time.

4/12
Familiar ground. The plains roll by, and these wheels speed us east towards the grand nexus of Royal Central - its presence looms noticeably on the horizon now. It hardly keeps my attention. My thoughts cannot stray far from the sleepy little town on the other side of these hills. Ah! I feel something stirring in my gut, something brewing on the horizon, but this isn't like before, this is different, somehow… It's hard to say. It could be calamitous or beautiful, I don't yet know. Time will always tell.

Where will I visit first, when I return home? So many choices. I think I owe it to my family to see them first, but I’ll be arriving in the middle of the day. Probably best to wait until they’ll all be home. I need to return the photo album to Sweet Apple Acres, but… I think I can afford myself some respite before such heavy matters are attended to. Sugarcube Corner, then? Perhaps I’ll run into the gang at lunch hour. So many choices - so many other ponies with which to fill up a life. It’s so easy to slip back into it, like the warm embrace of a fillyhood blanket. I can hear Soul Searcher scoffing - ‘you’ll suffocate!’ I am determined to prove her wrong, to wipe that infuriatingly alluring smirk from her face. I’ll show her something worth sitting still for.

Applejack is gone, and Rarity gone with her. When she left me, she took the part of her self that I had brought into my own, everything that made me hers - and whatever mess remained collapsed into its absence. But who is this, with freshly sharpened pencil and thoughtfully furrowed brow, tracing these very words? Rarity. It must be Rarity. It all keeps on going, and I am ushered along with it, into some new form with which to greet each new morning. And you will still be there, I know. I will live, and you will live in me, until the day this world exhales us and inhales the next lot, to tread the paths we carved, and wonder who on earth we ever were.

I never really said - thank you for the diary, dear. I love it.

Author's Note

Immeasurable thanks to tamashii, Littlecolt, Auswahlaxiom, HACKD and Fluttersyke for quality assurance + friendship, and Sharpieboss for the beautiful cover art.
Shiny golden 'you tried' stars to Harry and Sheep.
Much love to Jean-Paul Sartre, Richard Linklater, Le Soldat Pony, Ernest Hemingway and La Dispute for the probably obvious inspiration.
Thank you for persevering.