Leaving Their Mark in Time
Title: Leaving Their Mark in Time
Game/Cartoon: Story of the Blanks/My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
She had always remembered the town as being bright, sunny, and beautiful. It was a year since Ruby had arrived in Sunny Town, and she had made friends with all of the townsponies. She and her best friend Mitta left Roneo’s house with Starlet. Ruby’s eyes were covered with a blindfold, and she had an excited smile on her face. Obviously, something good was going to happen. All three ponies helped lead Ruby so that she wouldn’t trip or find out what was going on.
“You have everything ready, right?” Roneo asked somepony, who a moment later was heard to be Three Leaf, another of Ruby’s friends.
“Yes, of course! I thought Starlet told you that the p—” Starlet stuffed her hoof in Three Leaf’s mouth. She had nearly spoiled the surprise!
“Shh! Honestly, Three Leaf… you’ll spoil it!” Starlet said in hushed tones. The very green pony giggled in response.
“Oops…” she said in reply. “Want me to help lead her?”
“I don’t see why not.” Roneo said. All five ponies walked in a line on the dusty path. They passed by Gladstone, who was in that part of town for once. He waved at Ruby even though he knew she couldn’t see him.
“Hello, Ruby!” he greeted.
“Hi!” she greeted back. “Mitta, can I take the blindfold off?” Mitta shook her head.
“No, you may not! We’re nearly there, silly, and it would ruin your surprise.” Mitta said. Ruby said nothing and smiled as they wall kept walking. She knew her friends very well. She could already tell what was going to come from this. Her friends walked her to a few feet away from the entrance of Sunny Town, and removed her blind fold so that she could see Grey Hoof, the oldest pony in town. Ruby approached him and gave him a hug and turned around. She wasn’t surprised to see the whole town decorated in streamers and balloons. Lanterns were lit, and swayed slightly when any wind seeped in from between the trees of the surrounding Ever Free Forest. The vegetables planted in the ground looked slightly edible for a change, and the food on the party tables looked tasty on the outside, but would taste sickening when one took a bite. Nevertheless, Ruby always appreciated her friends, no matter how terrible they were at everything that they did.
“Happy birthday!” everypony shouted happily.
“Thank you, everypony! It means so much to me!” Ruby said back. She glanced over her shoulder a bit, looking out into the darkness behind her. It is a year today that she first came here. She was nine years old at the time, and the town was filled with ponies. Now, the town was made up of only a few ponies that were left. She knew the reason, and would always weep with her best friend Mitta in the packing facility that Roneo would refer to as a home every time something happened to anypony.
“Mitta?” Ruby asked. It was the third month since she had found Sunny Town. She found her friend crying in Roneo’s house for the first time. “What’s wrong?” she couldn’t see her yet, but she could hear her crying. Mitta gasped at the sound of her friend’s voice.
“R-Ruby! Don’t come any closer to me! I-I’m a…” she trailed off, not wanting to say it. Despite her friend’s pleading and begging, Ruby pushed her way through all of the messily placed boxes. Before Ruby found Mitta, Mitta had managed to push herself into a corner and fan out her tail so that it covered her both sides of her flank. “Stay away! I don’t want you to catch the disease from me!” Mitta beseeched her.
“Disease? What kind of a disease?” Ruby looked at her in an accusing way. “What are you trying to hide from me?” she approached her.
“No! No, stay back!” Mitta said. She squeaked as she was tackled to the ground, trying to keep herself from yelling loudly enough so that Roneo or Starlet wouldn’t come running. Ruby looked at Mitta’s flanks, as they seemed to be what she was trying to hide. She moved her tail aside and saw a vanilla cake with three candles on it, a balloon attached to it, and a pink ribbon wrapped around the whole cake so that it was tied in a big, stylish bow on the front. It was the most beautiful cutie mark that Ruby had ever seen!
“Oh, Mitta! What a beautiful cutie mark! I knew it! You were meant to be a party planner! Ha! I guess that’s why poor Grey Hoof doesn’t have a cutie mark for it. No offense, but his parties are pretty terrible… Huh? Mitta, why are you still crying?”
“You… you touched me…” Mitta said, whimpering. She weakly crawled out from underneath her friend of three months. “N-now you’ll get the curse!”
“Curse? What do you mean curse? And why haven’t you shown everypony your amazing cutie mark?”
“A-amazing? How can you say such a thing!?” Mitta was now a bit angry. She got up in Ruby’s face with and angered expression as tears still continued to streak her cheeks. “It’s a curse here! T-they appear all over your body… and then it spreads to other ponies! Everypony is forced to do things pertaining to the marks! They’re evil! And the town…” she felt like she lost feeling in her legs and melted down to the floor, hiding her face with her arms. “T-the town that I was born and raised in will be burned once again! Burned to the ground again, and again… and this time, I’ll go with it!” now all Ruby could see was Mitta’s tear-filled eyes.
“B-burned? And all over your body? I don’t understand…” Ruby said, feeling worried and slightly creeped out.
“Well…” Mitta sniffled, trying to calm down. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had… and I shouldn’t show you the secret of this town, but more than anything, I would want somepony else to know. I can trust you, right?” she took her face out from behind her arms, looking up at Ruby hopefully.
“Of course you can!”
“Then help me get to the other side of town without the marks being seen. It’s important. Check and see if Roneo and Starlet are gone. If they’re gone, they’re either at Starlet’s house or on the other side of town. The less ponies that stand in our way, the better.” Mitta sounded a little bit more confident than before. She stood up. Obediently, Ruby went and looked out the door of Roneo’s house. He and Starlet were both gone. She hoped that everypony wouldn’t be outside at this time of day.
“Come on, Mitta! Nopony’s there!” Ruby said in a loud whisper. She and Mitta made a run for it. They ran throughout town. Where did everypony go, anyway? Sunny Town seemed so very empty for a change. Mitta, feeling less worried, ran ahead. Ruby ran faster to catch up, and saw a new clearing that she had never gone into before. They walked into it together.
“I’ve never been in this part of the Ever Free Forest before. Are you sure it’s safe?” Ruby asked nervously.
“Yes. Regrettably, I have to say that I’ve been to this place enough to know that it’s quite safe. Everypony’s safe until they get their mark…” Mitta said sadly. They wandered around in the darkness of the woods until they came across a lonely cabin. Sitting beside it was a well with a rusty old crank. Mitta pulled the dry bucket from the bottom of the well, producing a formerly golden, currently rusting key. She took it with her teeth, and opened the door with it. The inside of the cabin was dark and smelled of dust. Ruby sneezed loudly as Mitta flipped the light switch. The only thing in there was a wooden table with an old, brown book laying on the right side of it, and a fireplace was on the other side of the room across from the door. “Please do not be too shocked at the sight.” Mitta said, fearlessly going over to the unlit fireplace. Ruby gulped and followed her, as it was an unspoken command that she do so. Her legs moved robotically, as her mind had detached from the situation. She peered into the fireplace and saw bones from previously burned ponies in it. She recognized a piece of a black and white cutie mark from a pony named Mystic Night that had disappeared from Sunny Town the day that she had arrived. She was shocked.
“M-Mitta, what is this!?” Ruby said, feeling horrified.
“This, my dear Ruby, is how I will die. It’s been a pleasure knowing you, and I will miss you very much.” Mitta replied sadly, looking at Ruby and then down at her own hooves. “I don’t understand it…” her eyes teared up a little bit. Before I was born, this town truly was a sunny place. Then, one day, somepony left the town and came back with marks all over his body. That pony was my father. He was speaking in foreign languages and tap dancing while doing a handstand. He was unable to stop. The curse had befallen him that very night. He had the marks. He had to go! And so did everypony else. They tried to help him, but slowly, everypony was cursed with the same fate. The few ponies that were unaffected set the town on fire, and brought the bones of the dead ponies here. I was found in a pile of ashes. My mother had given birth to me as she died, and I was covered in her, born in front of her bones. Grey Hoof took me in and raised me as his own. When I was six, I found him killing a little pony my age that had just gotten her own mark. I thought it was pretty, but they thought it was bad. Her screams echo in my mind until this very day. I forced the answers out of Grey Hoof, and he told me everything. He told me why he keeps on pursuing party-creation despite the fact that he’s terrible at it. He fears gaining one of those, so he and everyone else avoids pursuing something that they’re good at. Starlet is great at decorating, Roneo could be great at arranging things or something like that, which is why all of his things are still in boxes. He worries that if he arranges them, he’ll get a mark. I’m not sure what Gladstone is good at. He always brings ponies a sense of security and overall gladness, so I’m surprised that his mark isn’t a smiling face. Three Leaf is good with plants, which kind of explains why she was born so very green. Someponies from outside the Ever Free Forest referred to that as foreshadowing, I think. I’m not sure what that is… and me? I realized what I was good at creating the perfect party. I was helping Grey Hoof make a party, and I realized how well I was doing. Suddenly, I felt a tingling on my flank and immediately worried that I had just gotten my mark. I ran to Roneo’s house instinctively, and by the time I was hidden inside, the mark had appeared. I started crying because I didn’t know what to do. When a pony gets his or her mark, it’s everypony for themselves. Nopony is your friend after you get cursed in this way. You become a walking disease.” Mitta’s ears turned downward, sadly.
“I’m your friend, Mitta.” Ruby touched her shoulder reassuringly. “And a cutie mark isn’t a bad thing. Where I come from, ponies get their cutie mark when they find their talent.”
“I… I suppose you’re my friend because you weren’t born here… and I know that you get one when you have your talent. A lot of the ponies were a lot younger then, so they didn’t have their so-called ‘cutie marks’ when they died, except for those marks that appeared all over them. Do those count?” Mitta asked.
“I’m not sure…” Ruby said. She looked over at the table and walked towards it. She looked at the book. “Supernaturals…” she said, reading the cover.
“Super-what?” Mitta walked over to the table and looked at it. “How long has this thing been here?”
“Don’t you figure that this book means something? Maybe it’s the cure for that disease!” Ruby said excitedly.
“…Book? I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of one of those.” Ruby looked at her friend as though she were an alien.
“You don’t know how to read? Somepony must be keeping everypony else from being able to read so that everypony will keep killing the marked ponies! Don’t you think?”
“So, you learn from these?”
“Yes. And don’t you agree?”
“I probably would if I understood what you meant… open it and see what’s inside.” With that, Ruby opened the dusty old book, sending a dust cloud from the table into the air. The fillies coughed in unison for a few seconds, and then waved the dust away from them.
“The table of contents shows where we need to look for certain information. Let’s see… I’ll check under the ‘C’ section and look up things about cutie marks.” Ruby said matter-of-factly.
“Is that what everypony calls those marks? Cutie marks? I don’t see why… seems more like a curse, to me.” Mitta watched Ruby look through the book. All of the words were just symbols to her. She had never been exposed to such a thing in her life. In Sunny Town, ponies were quite uneducated. Grey Hoof probably understood the book because he was the oldest and wisest in Sunny Town. It made her wonder about her surrogate father more than she had before.
“Aha! I think I found something! Cutie Pox…” Ruby said.
“Cutie… Pox?”
“Cutie Pox… apparently, it causes the marks to appear all over your body. It starts with just one mark that appears on your flank, the normal place for it to appear. Then, some hours later, more and more marks quickly appear all over your body, and you are forced to act upon every single talent you now possess with the marks. At this time, there are no known cures for it, but Cutie Pox disappears as mysteriously as it came. That’s got to be it, Mitta! There’s nothing else that matches that description! But wait… that makes no sense. It says nothing about it being contagious…” Ruby looked excited and then confused. Then, she wondered, “Hmm…” and thought of something more, and looked up ‘water’ in the book.
“What are you looking for, now?” Mitta asked. Ruby ignored her question.
“Okay, I found water… ‘see Pure Water’? Okay…” she looked up Pure Water, and read aloud, “Pure Water is water that cleans a pony’s body and soul. It can be used to ward off evil spirits that can inhabit your body after eating the Heart’s Desire plant, or walking into a field of Poison Joak, or from just being possessed… hmm…” Ruby looked up ‘Heart’s Desire’ and read aloud, “The Heart’s Desire plant causes anypony to gain what they desire for a short period of time, whether it’s fertility, financial help, crop growth, etc. This plant can help you achieve anything you want, no matter how brash it seems. Warning: you may make bad decisions after plant consumption…” she then flipped the pages again, and looked up ‘Poison Joak’. “Poison Joak is a blue flower that, when touched even slightly, can cause you to experience a horrible magical prank that can be cured with a simple bubble bath. Until you bathe, the joke does not go away. Sometimes, when paired with, for example, dark magic, the jokes can be even harsher than usual, causing terrible delusions that can get you into huge trouble. Warning: when paired with the Heart’s Desire plant, it can become highly contagious. That makes sense! What was the whole story with your father?”
“Grey Hoof said that he was seen coming back into Sunny Town with the marks all over his body, and I told you what he was doing at the time. If there was more information, he didn’t tell me about it.”
“Hmm… it’s only an assumption, but maybe your father was hungry after leaving Sunny Town, ate a Heart’s Desire plant, happened to be wishing for a cutie mark, and wandered into some Poison Joak? Or maybe he didn’t wish for a mark at all and just ate that plant and wandered into the Joak… hey, wait! How old was your father? Shouldn’t he have already had a cutie mark?” Mitta opened her mouth to say something in reply to Ruby’s rambling, but Ruby started talking again. “Perhaps he was a late bloomer… I bet you anything that it was possible.”
“I wouldn’t know about this sort of thing, but the way you say all of this makes it sound right, so I’ll take your word for it.” Mitta said. “Most of the ponies that didn’t get cutie marks are the few that are left today. The others were killed eleven years ago. Any new pony that doesn’t understand about our curse… or, misunderstanding, if I’m understanding what you’ve been saying, ends up achieving their marks and are burned in this fireplace. Once the bones are completely turned to ashes, they are buried out in the path. There are dead ponies everywhere. We are just unable to see them.” Mitta said grimly. Ruby shivered at the thought. She had walked along that path all the way to Sunny Town for the first time three months ago… how many ponies had already died? Hundreds? Thousands, maybe? Thousands didn’t seem possible, but at this moment, plenty of things sounded possible, so it was open for speculation. “Wanna know another secret?” Mitta asked, looking at Ruby instead of the book.
“Depends… how creepy is this secret?” Ruby asked, not particularly sure that she was ready to digest anymore sickening information.
“Only mild compared to what I’ve already told you.”
“That’s good to know… lay it on me.” Mitta walked over to the fireplace and picked through the bones.
“Ew, Mitta, that’s gross!” Ruby wrinkled her nose. Mitta ignored her and kept looking for it until she found the thing she was looking for.
“It’s still here… good.” She took it out with her mouth, further disgusting her friend behind her, and laid it on the floor. It was a sharp-looking bone with blood and hair on the end of it. Bits of colors were on the bloody end, and the rest was dotted with ashes and cracks from the heat of previous fires. How it had survived this long was beyond the two fillies. “Grey Hoof once got his cutie mark, and told nopony about it.” Ruby gasped. She hadn’t expected that. Mitta continued, “It looked like what outsiders called a ‘list’. That meant he was good at organization. He was good at organizing those parties, but terrible at the things involved in them.”
“That makes a lot of sense! Organizing’s the only thing he’s good at! No offense…” Ruby said, hoping to not offend Mitta since Grey Hoof was the one who had raised her.
“No, it’s alright. You’re my friend, so I won’t hut you for saying something like that about him. But that’s basically it. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Um… no? Wait, if he got his, where’d it go?” Ruby asked innocently. Mitta pushed the sharp bone slightly towards the other filly. Ruby looked down at it for a moment as if she were waiting for it to speak to her and give her the answer she was searching for. Suddenly, her eyes widened and she said, “You’re kidding, right? You don’t expected me to… cut off your cutie marks… right? Please tell me you’re joking!” Ruby stood on her hind legs and roughly placed her front hooves on Mitta’s shoulders, looking into her eyes with a beseeching look. “I can’t hurt you like that! I just can’t!” she sounded panicked. Mitta wasn’t phased by such fear, though, as this is what she had grown up with.
“I’m serious.” She said. Ruby looked down at the ground, not taking her hooves off of her shoulders and slumping. “We need to make quick work of this, though.” Ruby whimpered as though she were about to cry. “Look, it must be done! Unless you want to be alone in Sunny Town, you must do this for me! Do you want me to die!?” she roughly tilted Ruby’s chin up so that she could fiercely look into her tearful eyes. “I’ll do it for you when your time comes as well. I may know what your mark may be. My hair will grow back over it just like Grey Hoof’s did on his. Just please HELP me!” after that last sentence, the silence between them in that eerie place was chilling. Ruby looked away from her, all around the room. She was scared. The silence made it harder to bare, especially when her eyes locked onto the bone-filled fireplace again. She pictured Mitta screaming and burning there, and made a frightened face.
“Okay, alright!” she forced her eyes away from the fireplace. She could still hear the screaming. She didn’t want to lose her friends. She would save her if it killed her! “I’ll do it… for you…” she felt a tear fall straight from the corner of her eyes to the ground below, causing a dark brown spot to appear on the grayish-white floor, showing that underneath their hooves was supposed to be wood instead of a thick layer of cough-ensuing dust. Mitta stood on her hind legs like Ruby was and gave her a hug with her front legs. They nearly toppled over, but the embrace was worth it.
“Thank you.” She said sincerely. After a minute, they carefully got back on all four legs and tried to begin the painful process.
“Um…” Ruby carefully picked the bone up. “How am I supposed to go about this?” she asked.
“Believe it or not, while I watched Grey Hoof do this to himself for two hours, I was too horrified to look away.”
“Oh wow…” Ruby was disturbed.
“Cut around the marks carefully, and then rip them off with your teeth.”
“Wait, we’ll be here for two hours!? And how did he get them off with his teeth if his head can’t even reach back there!?” Mitta shrugged in reply.
“I assume that’s how we’ll do it. I believe that doing this is better than death. The pain is temporary rather than permanent.”
“Um… in reality, isn’t getting rid of your cutie mark permanent, though?”
“You know what I meant. Let’s get this over with.” Mitta sounded irritated, but Ruby could sense her fear. She inched closer to her friend’s flank, shaking in her horseshoes. She slowly took the cleaner end of the bone into her mouth, and moved the sharp, pointy end towards the party-pony cutie mark. It was a beautiful sight, and she knew already that she was going to miss it. Nopony she had ever seen in Ponyville, the town she was born in, ever had something so beautiful as this one. She stuck the bone in so that it was beneath Mitta’s fur, and saw Mitta’s reaction. Her eyes widened. She forced herself to look straight ahead, focusing on the door. She felt like she had been stabbed with a needle.
“I’d be gentle if I could.” Ruby’s words were muffled with the sickening pony bone. She started to slowly saw around the edges of it as best she could, eliciting a pained sound from poor Mitta. She bit her lower lip, trying to take her attention away from the burning in her flanks as the proof of her talent was taken away from her second by second. With two ponies, she knew that they would be able to finish the job twice as fast as one pony alone could. Maybe it would go by even faster. She now believed Grey Hoof to be even stronger than ever before. She had counted the gruesome seconds as she had watched him perform such a terrible act upon himself. That poor, poor stallion.
Ruby was now half way around the cutie mark, and hated how she could only breathe through her nose because her mouth was full. The scent of blood filled her nostrils and disgusted her, making bile come to the back of her throat. She needed to finish quickly for her sake and Mitta’s. She felt selfish for thinking more of herself, though. Her friend was the one in pain, not her. She felt the urge to apologize, but held herself back so that she could continue her work.
‘Only one quarter left to go…’ Mitta thought, taking at peek at her right flank. She saw the blood and felt dizzy and weak. She wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. ‘I brought this upon my self… go to your happy place…’ she tried to talk herself up, to no avail.
Finally, the cutting around the edges was done. Now, she had to rip it off. Ruby put the bone down.
“Mitta, I’m so, so sorry…” she said, apologizing for the terrible thing that she was about to do.
“W-why are you—” her words were suddenly cut of by a gut wrenching scream as Ruby tried to quickly rip the flash from her flank. The quicker the better. If she did it slowly, it would have hurt worse. The sound was what got Ruby, though. It was like duct tape ripping off of something, tearing and tearing… She thought she was going to be sick.
Mitta’s legs were turning to jelly underneath her. She could barely stand from being so wobbly. The pain was much worse than she thought it would be. Warm blood oozed from the patch of fur that had been removed. Then, when she thought that that side had been finished and Ruby spat out the skin and it flopped onto the floor with a messy splat, she heard the terrible words from Ruby’s mouth,
“Mitta… I missed a tiny bit…” she grabbed the piece with her teeth, and tried to tear it off. Why wouldn’t it come off? Mitta couldn’t hold back the wailing. Ruby literally had to chew a little bit to remove the final patch of flesh. She spat it out again, this time rubbing her hooves on her tongue to remove excess fur from her mouth. She spat again and again, not being able to rid herself of the nasty taste. “Mitta… how are you holding up?” she dumbly asked, panting. Mitta felt like screaming at her and yelling curse after curse at her, but held herself back. All she did was give her an angry, tear-filled gaze, and Ruby got the message. “Um… right. Now to the other side.” She picked up the bone and went over to the left side, mentally preparing herself on the way so that she wouldn’t be totally scarred for life from this experience. At the thought of experiencing that again, Mitta’s eyes widened and she made an unexplainable, fearful sound.
“NO!” she shouted, cowering and moving away from her, crying full-on.
“M-Mitta, you said that we had to finish this!” Ruby said.
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!” Mitta cried loudly. Ruby, feeling a sense of duty, angrily jumped on her and pinned her as best she could to the dirty floor. All the while, Mitta kept screaming, “NO!” over and over again as Ruby beat her bottom legs, trying to make her stop kicking and thrashing about.
“WE HAVE TO FINISH WHAT WE STARTED!!” Ruby screamed shrilly. Mitta stopped kicking, feeling startled by Ruby’s scream. Ruby was normally quite calm and demure, so that was quite awakening for her. She came back to her senses.
“I… know…” Mitta said softly, sniffling. “Keep going.” She said, allowing her to finish.
Once the nightmare was over, they walked outside, leaving a dripping trail of blood from both sides of Mitta’s now blank flanks. Ruby followed the weakened pony behind the cabin where a thick roll of gauze was. Ruby chose not to question why it was there, and helped wrap her friend up so that nopony would ever have to know. On the way back, Ruby tried to make the situation less awkward and tense by asking with a shy smile,
“What do you figure my talent is?”
“Don’t. Even. Ask.”
Ruby’s birthday party was in full swing now. She was ten years old, and by now, Mitta had also turned twelve some months ago. For a ten and twelve year old, both ponies had grown quite a bit, and by now, Mitta had healed all the way. They both lied when anypony asked what happened and said that Mitta got tangled in a thorny tree that day. It was pretty obvious that everypony knew what had gone down that night but they said nothing and did nothing. As long as there were no marked ponies, it was alright with them. They probably knew that Grey Hoof had gone through the same thing at one point in time, as well.
Adjacent from her, Roneo sat sadly. For whatever reason, he was depressed at her party, and for Ruby, this would not do.
“Hey, Roneo,” she asked, sitting down beside him. “What’s wrong?” he sighed and said,
“I want to give a gift to Starlet. She seems depressed because I missed her birthday a month ago, but I can’t leave town to get her anything nice. I want to give her something that she may not have seen before… something pretty like her.” He said, looking at Starlet who was talking to Three Leaf a good distance away from them. Starlet glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and then blushed and looked back at Three Leaf when she realized that they had made eye contact. Ruby chuckled.
“Aw, Roneo… you’re both so perfect for each other.” She said.
“How would you know that? What if she thinks I’m boring and that guys like Grey Hoof or Gladstone are better? They’re both more interesting than me… everypony is, actually! In fact—” Ruby cut Roneo off with her hoof, smiling at him.
“Don’t be so downbeat. Maybe I can get you something for her.” She said reassuringly.
“Really? You’d do something so kind for me?” he asked, feeling unsure about the situation.
“Sure I would! We’re friends, right? I want to see Starlet smile for you again.” She started to walk away.
“Oh! Thank you so much, Ruby!” he said happily, cheering up right away. Starlet couldn’t hear their conversation, but thought that because he was looking at Ruby that way that he was more interested in her.
“He doesn’t like me anymore, Three Leaf. See?” she pointed at Roneo and then at Ruby. “I’m a hopeless failure.” She pressed her hooves to her eyes. Three Leaf patted her on the head.
“Aw, don’t worry, Starlet. I’m sure it’s not what it seems like.” Three Leaf said. “I bet that she just said something that made him smile.”
“But what about me? Shouldn’t I be the one to make him smile? He could go for anypony else here… you… Ruby… Mitta… What about me?” she said sadly.
Ruby had her nose close to the ground as though she were a dog searching for bones, or on somepony’s trail. She was close to something… she was sure of it.
“Ruby, what’re you looking for?” Grey Hoof asked.
“Something for Roneo to give to Starlet… neither of them seem very happy today.” Ruby replied. She looked in the messy garden, pushing through inedible weeds. Nothing was there. She looked at the balloons as if they held a sign. Nothing was there, either. Under tables there was nothing; not even pony legs were there. She decided to stick to the ground. Maybe she could take some grass and make a picture for Roneo that Starlet would like. She’d wet some grass and put it together in the shape of a heart. It would be a nice gift. Then, nearby the entrance, she found something shiny sticking out of the dirt. She dug a little bit at the ground, and saw a red gem sticking out of the ground. She smiled from ear to ear, feeling quite pleased at her discovery. This would be perfect for a pony like Starlet! It was pretty, like her, something that Roneo was looking for in a gift. It was at that moment that she realized how good she was at finding things, and how well she always did at coming through in these kinds of situations. She picked the gem out of the dirt and carried it in her mouth over to Roneo. “Roneo, look!” she dropped it in front of him. He gasped at the sight. “Isn’t it beautiful? Look at what I found!”
“I-it’s amazing, Ruby!” he said, feeling just as amazed as she was.
“Isn’t it!?” Ruby exclaimed. She couldn’t help but bounce around and squeal with delight.
“You’re really awesome, you know that?”
“You really think so? Thanks, but I’m not that special.”
“Sure you are!” he continued to praise. “Is this the… no, it couldn’t be. Something so nice that was found by you couldn’t be the gift!”
“But of course it is! I want you to make her smile big time!” Ruby said cheerfully.
“Really!?” his yell drew everypony’s attention.
“Really, what?” Gladstone asked. Everypony watched them for a moment Roneo’s face felt like it was on fire from the sudden embarrassed blush that lit up his cheeks. He Looked down at the ground, feeling self-conscious.
“I found something awesome!” Ruby said, bouncing up and down, not feeling self-conscious in any way.
“Really?” Mitta asked.
“What did you find?” Grey Hoof asked.
“I found a—” suddenly, as if the world were going in slow motion, before she even got out the last word, her flank tingled, and her cutie mark, a magnifying glass, appeared. Everypony gasped. Roneo stepped away from her a little bit, horrified. Their loud gasp drowned out what she said, and she continued to bounce. “I know! Isn’t it awesome!? Wanna see it!?” she was extremely hyper for whatever reason.
“N-not really… Ruby…” Mitta said, utterly dismayed. Their plan to stay alive until their true time to die had been destroyed in an instant. It was too late for her. Suddenly, Ruby felt Grey Hoof threw a net over Ruby, bringing her back to her senses. She calmed down right away, confused. “Father!” Mitta yelled.
“Do you have anything more to say to your friend, Mitta?” he asked, looking at her authoritatively. It was an obvious threat. He knew what she had done before, removing her own cutie marks. If she stood up for Ruby, she’d be going down with her. Mitta backed away slowly, her pupils the size of pinpricks at the thought of burning alive.
“I…” she looked down at her hooves so lowly that her messy mane covered her eyes. “I don’t know her!” she yelled before running away, her fear overriding her friendship with Ruby. Ruby gasped, gaining the same expression. She realized without even looking that she had just gotten her mark. She looked at her flank, seeing the marks and understanding. It made so much sense. She was very good at finding and figuring things out. Now, she watched as her best friend ran away from her, crying and screaming. It was okay, though. She’d be fine. Mitta would live on, and Ruby’s time had come. She would someday find a pony to bring justice to this place and rescue her true friend. She knew it wasn’t like her, and that she probably would have been just the same.
Mitta didn’t show up to her cremation. Ruby’s ghost watched everypony in the cabin leave as though nothing had happened. Suddenly, she heard screaming from everywhere outside and ran through the door, going straight through it. Everypony… all of them. All of them were dark creatures and unrecognizable. She stared in fear, trembled violently, and then ran away through the exit back into Sunnytown. There were more of these creatures. Raging fires consumed the town, making it become a place of ashen ruin. She ran as fast as her hooves could take her and ran out of the town, only to remember that all of the places she had stepped on before out here were places of burial for the ponies before her who had died the same way. She looked at a fresh dirt mound and saw her own body come up from the new grave. It made a gurgling sound. She knew it was the sound of the blood at the back of her throat from all of her organs being burned from within her, boiling her alive. She sped past all of the creatures, going deeper into the forest. She recognized this place. She was nearly free. She jumped, and crashed through trees onto the dirty ground, matting her fur, coming face to face with a small puddle. Her reflection did not exist. She looked back at the forest that she had once called home one last time, and then ran far away from it, never returning until the day she found a little filly named Applebloom…
