Lily lifted her hoof and scowled at the wrinkled flower pressed into the mud.
It was a lily.
It didn’t matter. There were thousands more. More than she could pick in an entire week. Her basket was almost full, and the field was still absolutely covered. She looked up and blew the blond locks out of her eyes. Except for a single cottage with cobwebs in the windows, it was lilies as far as she could see. None of the flowers belonged to her―each lily was destined to be a moment of happiness in some pony’s life, and Lily was in control of that destiny. Nopony would see them, nopony would experience that happiness unless she brought them to the market.
She scooped up the flower, lifting it to her face. It was mostly salvageable. The bright yellow stamens popped up and waved at her, bouncing with her every heartbeat. A couple of bruises, dark and translucent, wandered across the white petals. Nothing that anypony would notice in the overlapping shadows of the lowest layer of a bouquet.
With a sigh, Lily rotated her hoof, letting the flower fall back to the ground. She placed her hoof squarely on top of it and shifted her weight, then twisted her hoof back and forth to grind the flower into the dirt.
Nopony wants a damaged lily.
~~~
“There are soooooo many flowers!” The mare’s eyes sparkled like dew on an endless field.
The cottage was full of flowers. Every dish in Lily’s house had been pressed into service as makeshift vases; even the dinner plates were covered in carefully arranged spirals of blue columbine. Bookcases, end tables, and lamps were in bloom, with fresh greenery poking out of their nooks and crannies. Shafts of sunlight cut through the room, splashing across daisies as they twisted on threads tacked to the rough-hewn beams above. Crystal crocuses strewn about the floor shattered the sunlight into brilliant multi-colored rays that painted every surface.
Lily bit her lip. “Goldfish?”
The other mare blinked out of her stupor and dropped her saddlebag to the floor. “Even the air is full of flowers!”
It was true. Lily knew the evening breeze would be blowing across her fields right about now. It had picked up a hint of chill from the river as it emerged from the shady Everfree – just enough to bring a freshness to the summer air. It smelled like sunshine, picnics, and the greenest shoots of grass.
Goldfish tapped her chin with a hoof. “Smells like… It reminds me of…” A grin grew across her face as she hunched down and wiggled her hindquarters, then pounced on Lily, wrapping her in a crushing hug. She closed her eyes, buried her muzzle in Lily’s mane, and puffed out her ribs to take a deep sniff before letting out a quiet sigh. She opened her eyes with a smile and leaned back. One of her ears twitched and jerked when a hanging daisy tickled her white fur.
Lily shuffled her hooves. “Were you, um, going to finish that sentence?”
Goldfish chuckled. “I had a joke about the fragrance, but…” She waved her hoof in circles in the air.
“Let me guess,” Lily said with a roll of her eyes, “something about lilies?”
“Probably.” Goldfish sighed and rested her forehead against Lily’s neck. “Thanks.”
Lily watched the sunlight grow orange as it crept across the floor and painted long shadows of scattered loose petals. “Goldfish?”
“Yeah?”
Lily pushed Goldfish to a comfortable conversational distance. “Just, you know, as a matter of practicality, I thought you might want to room with me?”
Goldfish raised an eyebrow. “Practicality?”
“Well, you’re trying to get your aquarium business started, and I know that apartment can’t be cheap, even as tiny as it is. Plus, my house is closer to your shop, anyway.”
Goldfish tapped Lily on the nose with a hoof. “That does seem awfully practical.”
“Sooooo… What do you think?”
“MY couch!” Goldfish screamed as she jumped onto the couch, bouncing flowers into the air. She came to rest on her back, all four hooves pointing straight up while petals rained down around her. She rolled over and sat up with a gasp. “I can move in tonight!”
Lily trotted over to the couch and sat down just as Goldfish jumped up and galloped the three steps to her saddlebag. “Tonight? I thought we’d go to the big Summer Sun Celebration and then I could help you move tomor—”
Goldfish was suddenly at the couch, pressing a hoof against Lily’s muzzle. “Shhh shhh shhh.”
“But I thin—”
“Shhh shhh shhh.” Goldfish shook her head gently, her ocean-blue curls bouncing against her rosy cheeks.
“It’s—”
“Shhhhhhhhhh…”
Lily knew better than to argue. As the sun’s last illumination faded, Goldfish became the brightest thing in the entire cottage. At last, her hoof slipped from Lily’s muzzle, and she leaned in close, whispering, “Watch this.”
In a sudden explosion of energy, Goldfish leapt away from the couch, did a ninja roll across the floor to her saddlebags, and dumped their contents into a pile on the floor. She froze with the empty saddlebag dangling from her hooves and pretended to breathe heavily from the exertion. Several of the dangling flowers had been in her trajectory and now spun wildly as they swung back and forth on their strings, tracing arcs through the air like huge smiles. “See? I’m already halfway moved in!”
“I…” Lily pinched her lips together and took a breath through her nose. “I’m sure you have more stuff than that.”
Goldfish tossed the bags over her back and began digging through the pile. “Come on, Lily. You’ve seen my apartment. There’s not much there. Ah! Here it is.” She pulled a wad of newspapers out of the mess and took slow, deliberate steps back to the couch.
Lily squinted in the half-light as she took the object in her hooves and began unwrapping it. “What is this?”
“I made that for you, at Skylight’s glass-blowing class.” She trotted into the kitchen and pulled open a drawer.
“It’s a… vase?” Lily looked up and watched Goldfish drop a box of matches on the end table, next to a tall candle painted with the Solar crest.
“Are you ready?” Goldfish asked. She slid the box open, then fished out a single match.
Lily smiled. “Yeah. It’s time.”
Goldfish flicked the match against its box and held the tiny flame against the wick. “Hoof in hoof we strike this light, to banish fear of endless night.”
Lily nodded with her eyes closed. “Sunlight’s hope burns all night through, till dawn’s light shines on me and you.”
When Lily opened her eyes, the cottage was filled with a warm light, brighter than a single candle could possibly illumine. White daisies and lilies glittered at the farthest fringes while darker flowers sank into the background, leaving only their fragrance. The smile on Goldfish was bright enough that Lily wasn’t sure the candle was necessary at all.
“Go on, take a look!”
Lily blinked. “Hmmm?”
Goldfish was biting her lip as she gestured toward the vase. Lily lifted it in her hooves and examined it under the candlelight. It was blown glass, but the bottom half was bulged out like a fishbowl, and colored blue―except for a golden swirl that resembled a fish. Every square inch of glass was full of tiny bubbles that sparkled with their own flame.
Lily took a deep breath and hugged it to her chest. “It’s beautiful.”
“Now,” Goldfish said, bopping Lily on the nose, “I’m going to run across town and pack. I can carry everything in one trip, and then we’ll go to the Summer Sun Celebration together. In the morning, we’ll take a nap, and then we can have Rose, Daisy, and Derpy over to play some games. I know you’ve been eager to try out that five-to-six-player expansion for Hearth’s Warming Homesteaders, and I think it’ll be nice to have game night somewhere else for a change.”
Lily giggled. “That sounds like a good plan, but how will we ever have ‘truly epic nachos’ without Derpy moving her entire kitchen in here?”
Goldfish snorted. “Maybe Daisy can try out another one of her daisy recipes?”
“As long as it isn’t daisy chili, or anything remotely chili-related.”
“True,” Goldfish said with a grimace. “But why don’t we worry about that tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Lily said. “You go get your stuff. I’ll wait here.”
“You’d better! Don’t you move from that spot!” Goldfish said, wagging a hoof at Lily. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Goldfish darted to the door and flung it open, then turned around and spent several seconds gazing at the home’s interior. Her eyes touched on every flower before she said, “This is exactly what I imagine the inside of your heart looks like.” She made eye contact with Lily and smiled. “Perfect.” She backed out and closed the door without looking away.
Lily listened to the sound of galloping hoofsteps and wild laughter fade into the darkness. She shifted on the couch, leaning back against the cushion and holding the vase up to her line of vision. A lily. It was the perfect size for a single lily. But there were no lilies within hoof’s reach, and she’d promised not to move. It could wait. Lily set the vase on the table next to the Summer Sun candle. She could wait, too.
Lily woke with a start. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. Nothing wrong with a little nap, and Goldfish wasn’t back yet. Lily frowned. Her home felt different. Colder. Dark. She turned to look at the end table.
The Summer Sun candle had burned out. Nothing was left but a shallow puddle of wax. A gentle prod from her hoof confirmed what she suspected – the wax was cold and hard. No hint of dawn was showing through the kitchen window in the east. It must have been a defective candle.
~~~
She had reached the end. Turning around, Lily studied the swath she had cut through the meadow. A straight, unerring line, stretching all the way to the cottage and back, of grass and shrubs devoid of flowers. Compared to the rest of the field, it looked barren. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t really living either, just sort of existing while the untouched remainder was arrayed in splendor. Like a tiny funeral in the middle of a party.
Lily dropped the last flower into one of the baskets across her back, then bounced up and down a few times to feel the weight of them. It should be enough to last all day. She turned back around and looked at the giant thicket of rue growing along the river in the shade of the meadow’s lone oak tree. The tiny yellow blossoms looked so warm, and the almost velvety white fuzz on the blue-green leaves made it look soft and inviting. Lily reached out a hoof and fluffed the branches a bit to make sure they concealed the makeshift tent and bedroll beneath.
The road lingered a dozen paces away, meandering by her cottage and her meadow. Lily struck off through the grass and headed toward town. She kept her eyes on the hard-packed dirt road beneath her hooves as she passed the darkened cottage and tried to ignore the tightness in her chest.
She had waited. Waited and cried. At some point, she had realized that the sun just wasn’t going to rise. By the time she got to town, the stampede was over. There was no panic in the streets. Everypony had already barricaded themselves indoors or resigned themselves to going about their business in the light of the empty moon, helping the injured or cleaning up the Summer Sun decorations that had been torn down and trampled.
Hours of wandering around Ponyville had been as unproductive as she’d known they would be. The truth had settled in her bones before she saw the collapsed balcony, the charred City Hall, or the occasional pony wailing in the streets. Lily had lied to herself, trying to delay the inevitable.
Just like she had lied to herself about Goldfish in the first place. She’d been so afraid, so scared to let someone in. She kept telling herself that she could handle it, that she would be okay, that she would be happy. That she could make Goldfish happy. She pretended not to be afraid. But she did it. She took the risk.
And Goldfish was happy. She was so dizzyingly happy.
But for how long? It wasn’t so much that Goldfish might have turned her down―it had been a possibility―but what if Goldfish had said ‘yes’ and then Lily was unable to make her happy? Instead of a winding garden path surrounded by flowers, it would be a road that ended in tears. Part of her had been secretly hoping that Goldfish would say no, or that something would happen, some disaster that would crop up and prevent them from being together. Something to save Lily from the risk of failure.
Well, a disaster had happened. It was a stampede. Mindless, blameless. Nothing but terror and momentum―and the candle or torch that must have been knocked over in the confusion. The event had nothing to do with Lily’s fleeting wish made in a moment of panic, but the memory of that desire clung firmly to the underside of her brain like an insect, burrowing its way into every thought and every conversation. Waiting for the quiet moments to whisper, “You got your wish.”
Lily winced, then turned and retched in the grass by the side of the road.
When Lily opened her eyes, she saw a discarded lily, shriveled and turning brown, lying among the weeds. Yesterday, that flower had made a pony happy. Lily spat one last time, then wiped her mouth with a fetlock and turned back to the road.
That flower would look the same if it had been left in the field. It would have turned brown, shriveled, and fallen to the ground, as all flowers do. Abandoned, as all lilies are when they’ve provided their day’s worth of happiness. Only, without Lily, nopony would have seen it. Some pony’s life would be a bit duller and a bit sadder without that spark, that symbol of renewal.
And where yesterday’s happiness lay crushed in the gutters or mixed in with discarded food wrappers in the park’s trash cans, today’s happiness would take their place, and again tomorrow. It reminded Lily of one thing.
Hope.
~~~
“You don’t think it’s weird, do you?” Lily asked as she slid the vase onto the windowsill and glanced nervously up at the sky before gently adjusting the lily to face the morning sun. She held her breath and carefully withdrew her hooves, as if the lily were as fragile as the vase.
“Not at all,” said the mare on the couch while she looked over the top of the notebook levitating in front of her. “I think it’s healthy. Goldfish was very important to you. She still is.”
Lily smiled. The sunlight falling through the vase painted a picture on the windowsill, wherein a goldfish lingered in a puddle of blue light, surrounded by sparkling bubbles. “No,” she said, turning around and shuffling toward the couch. With the vase behind her, she couldn’t see a single flower in the entire cottage. She glanced through a window to her left and spent a few seconds watching the morning breeze ripple over the blossoms in her field. “I mean, is it weird for you?”
The mare traded her notebook for a coffee mug from the end table, then squirmed into a more attentive posture. “Of course not. I’m happy to share your heart with the memory of such a wonderful pony.”
“I… I mean…” Lily bit her lip and climbed onto the couch. “You’ve given me so much of yourself, and here I am tending a… a shrine, instead of giving anything back. Instead of making a place for you.”
She smiled, a blush showing through her sunshine-yellow coat. “But I do have a place here, Lily. And you do give back. You touch the lives of so many ponies, every day. Just look at how many ponies wear your flowers like a smile.”
Lily shook her head, then realized that she’d reached up to straighten a lily that wasn’t behind her ear. “That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t last. Nopony remembers yesterday’s flowers.”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because something isn’t permanent that it doesn’t matter.” She took a sip of coffee, then held the cup between her hooves and stared into the black surface inside. “Nothing lasts forever. You know this better than most ponies. But those moments of happiness, they add up to a lifetime filled with love and friendship.”
“I suppose.” Lily’s ears begin to droop, then she felt a hoof on her chin. She looked up.
“And you’ve made me happy. You give me a flower every day. We both know it won’t last until the end of time. There will be difficult times, but you know what? Those beautiful flowers on your beautiful flank mean that you fill each moment with a little bit of beauty. Happy moments spring up around you like, well, wildflowers. We’ve got all of life in front of us. And I think that matters.”
Lily sniffled, but couldn’t help smiling when she looked into those big blue eyes. After a deep breath, she buried her muzzle in the mare’s neck and sighed. “You fix everything.”
“Now that isn’t healthy,” she said with a giggle. “When I get home from work, we’re going to have a conversation about dependency.”
Lily shivered as the other mare’s warmth left her. She heard a slurp of coffee and the sound of a notebook being slid into a saddlebag. “Hope?”
“What is it, sweetie?” Hope said, turning around with her hoof still on the open door.
Lily looked up and tried to keep her lip from quivering. “Don’t,” she croaked, then cleared her throat. “Don’t go to work today.”
Hope took a couple of steps into the room, leaving the open door behind her. “Why not? Is something wrong?”
“The sun didn’t rise on time today. And when it did, it was” —Lily waved her hoof in the air— “weird.”
Hope took a deep breath and smiled. “We talked about this. This is why we got rid of all the clocks in the house. You can’t sit up every morning just to make sure the sun rises on time. Major life changes can trigger flashbacks to traumatic events. This is the first time you’ve let anyone in since Goldfish, and you’re scared. That’s all this is.”
“But I’m not imagining things!” Lily said. She wanted to run to Hope, to slam the door and hold onto her, but she felt glued to the couch. She leaned forward, reaching toward Hope as tears collected in the corners of her eyes. “The sun rose twice, I swear! I had lunch with Roseluck yesterday and she said the Appleoosa train never came in! A-and Derpy said it’s been two days since anypony heard from Cloudsdale or Canter—”
“Shhhhh,” Hope said as she pulled Lily into a hug and began stroking her mane. “You’re so scared. But you’re going to be okay. Because you can find a pathway to achieve your goals. And because you have agency to instigate change to help reach your goals. You only have to be in control of one thing: what happens to Lily.”
Lily shook her head and spoke between trembling breaths. “Don’t… Don’t go. P-please, don’t go.”
Hope gently pried Lily’s hooves from around her neck. “When I get home, I’m going to make you tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I’ll even bring you some flowers. Everything is going to be fine. I promise.”
Lily squeezed her eyes shut and listened to Hope’s hooves shuffle across the floor. Just before the door closed, she thought she heard Hope sniffle.
~~~
Hope lied.
She had never come home. It hadn’t been half an hour later that Fluttershy had knocked on the door, spreading word about Tirek and warning everypony to stay indoors. Lily had known, then, exactly what had happened. Not the how, obviously, but the what. She hadn’t been surprised to hear bursts of magic, the sharp crack of old-growth timber, and the roar of crumbling masonry roll across the landscape.
It wasn’t a long trip home. Hope could have made it if she hadn’t stopped to help a group of ponies pull a family out of a collapsing apartment building. Lily had walked this path so many times that she recognized the dirt in front of her house, and didn’t bother looking up. She shrugged the empty basket off her shoulders, letting it bounce unseen into the grass by the road as she opened her mailbox. Without even looking at the mail, she grabbed the stack of envelopes in her teeth and spit them directly into the trash can by her front step.
Lily stepped into the tall grass and glanced at the sky. Any minute now, the horizon would blossom into a million colors, then settle into evening’s indigo. She hadn’t missed a sunset since the night the guards had come to take her to the morgue. They’d already put her broken body in a coffin. Lily had stared for a long time. So long, in fact, that the guard had turned around and left in respectful silence. He knew the answer.
There were so many evil things running around the world. Escaped from Tartarus, returned from the moon, or just randomly wandering out of the Everfree. And still, Hope remained in the bottom of the box. “One in a million,” everypony had said. As if they’d forgotten that they said the same thing about Goldfish.
“Heya, Lily.”
Lily jumped. She hadn’t heard anypony approach. When she turned around, she saw Derpy hovering just above the ground, with a board game in her hooves. Lily began shuffling back toward the road. “Hi, Derpy. What’s, uh, what’s going on?”
“Oh, well, it’s Friday night, and you haven’t been to game night in… Well, since, you know. We thought we’d bring game night to you.” Derpy pointed back the way she’d come. “They even brought snacks. Just like the good ol’ days, right?”
Lily glanced up the road. Roseluck and Daisy had just crested the last hill and were leaning on each other while they caught their breath. Daisy waved.
Lily twisted her neck and looked over her shoulder at the cottage. The vase still sat in the window, with dried, crusted mold where the water used to be. The lily inside had dried out before the petals had a chance to fall off, leaving it little more than a scaffold for long-abandoned cobwebs. Lily wondered whether any spiders had chosen to remain in such a desolate place.
She turned back to Derpy just as the other girls trotted up, and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear where a lily should have been. All three mares looked at Lily with warm eyes and tense half-smiles. Lily saw them glancing back and forth between her and her dark cottage, and wondered how much dust had accumulated on the latch handle since the last rain. It almost looked like one of them was about to rush forward and give her a hug. “That sounds like fun, but I…”
Rose stepped forward and reached a hoof into her saddlebag. “Lily, we’ve been friends for a long time. I’ve never seen you go so long without picking a flower for yourself, so I chose this one, special for you. I even did my best to trim the thorns.” She pulled her hoof out of the bag and unwrapped a single rose the color of lifeblood. “Why don’t we go inside? I can put this in some water, and I think it’ll really liven up your cottage.”
Lily forced her eyes to the ground. She heard Derpy land while Daisy shuffled her hooves. The rose traced a ghostly afterimage through her peripheral vision as it wavered in the fading evening light.
Rose took a halting breath. “I… I know you didn’t eat lunch or dinner. We can make you something to eat. We can talk all night, just like we used to. Or if you don’t want to talk, we can play games.” Her hoof holding the rose began to tremble. “You need this, Lily. And forgive me for being selfish, b-but I need you. Please, Lily.”
Lily raised her head and let her vision roll over the lines of the rose. Each of the thorns had been shaved off, without bruising the stem or exposing the pale flesh below the skin. The kind of rose that a pony would place on a coffin. Her breaths were measured and slow, even as her ears rang with rushing blood and echoes of Rose’s words. The rose blurred as Lily’s eyes lost focus. She saw Rose, sitting alone on a dusty couch, clutching a withered rose to her chest.
Lily blinked, looked up, and tried to ignore Rose’s quivering lip as she took a step away from the rose. “I…” Lily took another step and mumbled, “I have a lot of work to do.”
She turned and trudged into the meadow, stopping here and there to poke at the dirt or examine a leaf. As she neared the thicket of rue beneath the oak tree, the last light of day caught a single pink-white petal poking out of a deep hoofprint in the soft soil. Lily kicked some more dirt on top of the lily, burying it completely.
Rose’s voice rang out from the road. “They’re wildflowers, Lily. They don’t need tending.”
Lily cringed, then forced her heavy hooves forward. She pushed her way through the thicket without looking back, slipped under the tarp, and lay on the muddy bedroll. The river’s incessant murmuring drowned out any noise from the other ponies so that Lily didn’t know whether they had chosen to stay or to leave.
The scent of rich damp earth filled Lily's nostrils as she watched the image of a moonlit lily dancing in the river's bend. She couldn't tell from the fragmented and blurry reflection whether it remained on the stalk or had fallen to the ground. Perhaps she would take it to town with the rest of tomorrow’s flowers, or leave it to wither and rot in the field. She could decide later.
Author's Note
For the two sets of christmas presents gathering dust, unopened, in the top of my closet.
