It began with a headache, one would say, but that is inaccurate: an avalanche does not begin with one loose pebble.
It begins with the mountain, with the steady piling of rocks over years, with the mounting pressure rendering the arrangement increasingly unstable, and with the patient pull of gravity, which will always have its way, in time. The pebble is not the start of it—it is the end.
For Carrot Top, then, that end began with a headache.
She was cooking a large pot of soup for dinner, and had been nursing a persistent headache since noon. Having just added a healthy helping of her favourite spice mix to the bubbling broth, she was moving to return the spice jar to the shelf when Ponyville’s most energetic pony popped her head in through the open kitchen window.
“Hiya, Carrot Top!”
Giving a surprised yelp, Carrot Top fumbled the jar, forcing her to juggle it desperately before finally regaining a firm grip.
“Hello, Pinkie,” she answered testily as she placed the jar on the counter, next to the stove. “To what to I owe the pleasure of your visit?” She did not sound like a mare experiencing much pleasure. While Ponyville’s resident party pony was indeed a caring friend, her exuberant demeanour was admittedly not the best company for a pony suffering from a headache.
“Oh, just paying a visit to one of my precious friends,” Pinkie answered cheerily, and very loudly, completely missing Carrot Top’s warning tone. Carrot Top’s temples began to throb even more painfully, as Pinkie glanced around eagerly, ears rotated forward to catch any stray sounds from within the house. “Is Derpy in? How about the girls?”
“Derpy’s off picking up the girls at school,” answered Carrot Top curtly as she turned back to her cookbook.
“Oh, well. Maybe I’ll catch them later!” With a lithe bound Pinkie somehow leapt in through the half-closed window and perched agilely on the counter. “Hey, I could wait for them and keep you company at the same time! Won’t that be just great?!”
Neither Carrot Top nor her headache considered this prospect to be ‘great.’
“That’s really not necessary,” she hastily assured her visitor. “After all, who knows when they’ll be back? You could be waiting a long time....” She knew attempting to dissuade Pinkie was probably futile, but she had to try. Where was I? she asked herself as she distractedly scanned the cookbook page. I was at... oh, right! Spice.
“Awww....” cooed Pinkie. “But that means you’ll be all alone and lonely! All the more reason you should have a friend with you,” she beamed, clearly eager to do Carrot Top what she considered to be an immeasurable service.
“Look, Pinkie,” began Carrot Top as she added a full measure of spice to the soup, “I know you mean well, but that’s really—really—not necessary.” She took up a long-handled wooded spoon with her mouth and stirred the new ingredient in.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Pinkie, utterly oblivious. “Oooh! And you’ll never guess what’s going on!”
“In that case,” grumbled Carrot Top after releasing the spoon, “I’m not even going to try.”
“Spring Song and Autumn Chime are having a baby!” Pinkie squeaked excitedly.
Carrot Top gave a violent start. “Now?!” She reared up, tearing at her apron in her haste to remove it. Sweet Celestia! That’s two months early! “Have you sent word to the hospital?” she barked. “We need to get ‘Chime there right away!”
Pinkie Pie rolled across the floor, laughing uproariously. “Of course not now, silly! She’s not due for another two months! It’d be pretty strange if she were having it now!”
“It’d be a whole lot more than ‘strange’,” huffed Carrot Top, completely put out. “Why’d you bring it up, if it’s not coming now?!”
“Don’t you think it’s exciting?!”
“I’m all aquiver,” answered Carrot Top with the coolness of a glacier, as she settled her apron and turned back to her cookbook. Now where was I? Oh, right—spice. She measured out another helping.
“I wonder if the baby’ll be a colt or a filly? What do you think, Carrot Top? Colt or filly?” Pinkie perched her forelegs on Carrot Top’s back, nearly causing her to spill her spices over the countertop.
“Pinkie, you’re heavy! And four out of five births are female, so it’s probably a filly,” she muttered as she added the spice to the soup.
“Yeah, why is that, anyway?” Pinkie made a face as she pondered aloud. “I mean, most species have about an even number of males and females, right? How come us ponies are mostly mares?”
“No pony knows that, not even the Princesses,” Carrot Top reminded her. “What do you want me to tell you?”
The pony population was overwhelmingly female, and the reason remained a mystery to this day. Statistical analyses had shown hope that the male birthrate was increasing of late, but it was a recent trend, and nothing was definite yet.
“What do you think the foal will be? A unicorn like her birth-mother?” Pinkie was full of questions today.
“ ‘Song and ‘Chime went double-blind, so we don’t know who the father is, do we? Without that piece of information, how can we guess what the foal’ll look like?” She turned back to her cookbook. Right, so I just finished with...
“Oh, but I think going double-blind is so exciting! It’s such a mystery! I mean, your daddy could be anypony, from anywhere! He could be a pegasus spelunker! Or an earth pony sky pirate, or—”
“Not my father,” interjected Carrot Top. “He’s a press agent in Applewood. My mothers didn’t go double-blind.” Spice. I remember I was on spice.
“Oh, yeah!” exclaimed Pinkie as her mind switched tracks again. “That reminds me: for Dinky, did Derpy get Serviced?”
Carrot Top twitched at the question. Her hackles rose, and her mood dropped even lower. “Did your mother get Serviced for you?” she asked rather nastily.
“Nah,” answered Pinkie, nonchalantly waving a forehoof in the air. “I’m from an old earth pony farming family, and they don’t use the ’Service. The stallions get rotated around every few years. That’s why me and two of my sisters are so close together in age, while our other sister Maud is years older: Dad gave Mom a foal, then he moved on to help another mare get a family together! He rotated back a few years later, which is where Limestone Pie, Marble Pie, and—yours truly—Pinkie Pie come in, and again when we were older, which I think is great, ‘cause we got to live with him when we were old enough to appreciate it! ‘Course, he has to rotate back to his other wives, but we always know where he is, so we could visit and meet all our cute little half-sisters! Oh, and do you know Applejack, from Sweet Apple Acres?”
“My field’s right behind Sweet Apple Acres, Pinkie. It’s a pretty safe bet that I’d know the family. And every pony in Ponyville knows who Applejack is.”
“Well, she and her brother Big Macintosh are pretty close in age too, right? And then they have their little sister Apple Bloom, and she’s a bunch of years younger, right? That’s ‘cause the Apples are on the same system! It makes for nice big families!”
“Sounds like a nice, big pain in the flank to me,” Carrot Top replied bluntly—her headache was bothering her so. “I’m glad my mothers found each other, and Noi and I don’t have to time-share anypony.”
“So?” asked Pinkie expectantly.
“ ‘So?’ So what?”
“Did Derpy get Serviced? She’s not an earth pony, after all.”
Carrot Top ground her teeth in irritation. “Think, Pinkie. Do you really believe Derpy would meet the ‘Service’s approval?”
“Sure! I mean, why not? She’s so sweet, and she cares about everypony, and she really loves foals, and she’s just such a laugh!”
Carrot Top looked up sharply at that, eyes narrowing. “Oh, she makes you laugh, does she?” she demanded accusingly.
“Of course! She’s sooo much fun to spend time with!” Pinkie assured her, broadcasting complete sincerity.
Carrot Top stared at her for a moment. Does she actually mean...? “Well, anyway,” she huffed, turning back to her soup, “it takes more than love to make a mother.”
“Yeah, you need a stallion too,” chortled Pinkie. Carrot Top merely groaned.
“So did Derpy get Serviced, then?”
Carrot Top brought a hoof down hard on the countertop with a loud bang. “NO, Pinkie! She did not get Serviced, alright?!”
Pinkie stood frozen for a moment, blinking in confusion, as Carrot Top’s mood finally became apparent to her. She shrank back onto her hind legs, ears flattening against her head as she nervously fiddled with a fetlock.
“Um,” she began, suddenly unsure of what to say—an unaccustomed condition for Pinkie if ever there was one—“but... that’s good, right? I mean, she snagged a stallion all by herself! Not every mare can say that....”
“Yeah, she got lucky alright,” sneered Carrot Top, her voice dripping icicles.
Pinkie glanced nervously around the room before returning her gaze to Carrot Top. “Um,” she began again, with a uneasy, brittle smile, “do you ever get that feeling, sometimes, that maybe you said something wrong, only you don’t know what it was...?”
“Oh, just get out, Pinkie!” snapped Carrot Top, no longer bothering to keep her anger in check. She pointedly turned away from her visitor to add an additional measure of spice to the soup.
“Oh, but I don’t feel right leaving like this! Oooh, I know! I should apolo—”
“OUT!” Carrot Top turned around angrily—to find Pinkie gone. She glanced around, nonplussed, when a sudden bang sounded from the door leading out into the back garden. Pinkie’s face had plastered itself against the small round window in the door. Carrot Top stared for a moment: the door had been, and remained, closed. How had Pinkie gotten through it?
Pinkie waved excitedly on the far side of the door. “Don’t worry, Carrot Top! I know just how to make it up to you! Be back soon!” And with that she took off like a shot, leaving a pink streak hanging momentarily in the air behind her.
Carrot Top gave an exasperated snort—and choked on the inhale. Her nostrils were burning! The air was thick with the smell of spices. She quickly glanced into the spice jar and found it nearly empty. But it was three-quarters full at least, she thought to herself. Where did—she glanced at the bubbling soup and the answer dawned on her.
Oh, no!
She took up the stirring spoon, dipped it into the mixture, and gave it a quick lick. Her face flushed red and she breathed out a long tongue of flame before sticking her head under the water faucet and hastily filling her mouth with cool water. She leaned against the kitchen counter, sputtering and silently cursing Pinkie Pie. Derpy and the girls were due soon! Now what was she going to do?
“We’re home!” Two young voices bellowed boisterously and in unison from the front of the house, as the bell mounted on the door jangled wildly. Carrot Top winced as new overtones of unpleasantness layered themselves into an already complex headache.
“I’m here, girls, in the kitchen,” she called out as softly as she could manage while still being heard. She was rewarded by the immediate confused clattering of Dinky’s small hooves dashing down the hallway.
“Carrot Top, Carrot Top,” she called excitedly, “I’ve got something to show you!”
“Yeah, she’s real eager about it, too,” added Sparkler as she came down the hallway at a more stately pace. “She was practically climbing the walls all the way back from—ack!” She began coughing. “My muzzle’s on fire! What happened in here?”
“Just a little accident with some spices,” mumbled Carrot Top, blushing.
“ ‘Little’? It’s like the fiery fumes of Tartarus,” Sparkler declared with melodramatic flair.
“Thank you, Sparkler,” hissed Carrot Top under her breath. “How kind of you to rub it in.”
“It’s not that bad,” Dinky claimed, although she was holding a hoof to her muzzle as well.
“Well, that’s just ‘cause you’re so dinky, Dinky! Everypony know hot air rises!”
“Oh, yeah? Is that why your head’s always up in the clouds? It’s fat like a balloon, too!”
“Why you little squirt!”
“Fatty fat-head!”
“Girls, do you mind?” snapped Carrot Top. Both girls froze mid-wrestle. She continued irritatedly. “It’s just a strong odour, that’s all! I opened all the windows, and there’s a decent breeze, so it’ll disperse soon enough; and I watered the soup down as much as I could and added all the cream we had so it won’t be too spicy, alright? Go fight in somepony else’s legs if it bothers you!”
The two girls separated meekly. “Sorry.” “Sorry.”
“And where’s Derpy?” she added, looking down the hall and finding it empty.
“She was with us most of the way,” Sparkler began, “but Pinkie Pie ran into her—as in, actually ran smack into her—and was saying some stuff about how there was an emergency and Derpy had to come with her right away. She dragged her off to Sugar Cube Corner, I think.”
“Whatever.” Carrot Top’s interest in Sparkler’s explanation had vanished at the mention of Pinkie Pie. She gave the oven a quick check before turning back to the soup.
“So, um, Dinky,” Sparkler said awkwardly, clearing her throat, “didn’t you have something you wanted to show her?” She gave her adoptive sister a gentle nudge.
“That’s right,” squeaked Dinky, perking up immediately. She rummaged frantically through her right saddlebag and pulled out a broad piece of drawing paper clenched between her teeth. She dashed up to Carrot Top. “ ‘ook at ‘is!” she said, waving the paper like a banner.
“Careful, Dinky,” warned Carrot Top, “the soup’s nearly overflowing now.” She led the little unicorn a few strides back from the stove before taking the flapping paper in her forehooves.
She found a colourful drawing in crayon of two mares sitting on their rumps, each with one foreleg over the other’s shoulders and cheerfully waving at the viewer. One was grey with a spiky blonde mane and tail, a pair of wings, and golden eyes pointing in opposite directions; the other had an orange mane and tail sporting quite a few swirls, green eyes, and a cream coat—the closest Dinky’s colouring set could come to Carrot Top’s true colour.
Their pose would realistically require spinal dislocation, but was clearly designed to show off their Cutie Marks, which were as lovingly rendered as the rest, in Dinky’s usual style, which was to say commendable line work but somewhat haphazard colouring... they truly did need to get her a crayon holder.
It was Derpy and Carrot Top, of course, surrounded by a veritable explosion of flying crayon hearts and glued-on glitter. It was adorable, really, and Dinky’s drawing skills had made some clear improvements, but Carrot Top’s attention was entirely taken up by the equally glitter-saturated large print lettering that floated above the piece:
I LUV MY MUMMYES, it read. Carrot Top looked at it a long moment, biting her cheeks.
“Don’t you like it?” asked Dinky worriedly. “Miss Cheerilee thought I might’ve used too much glitter, only I really hate it when you can still see glue showing, and we got the rest of it back into the bottle OK....”
“It’s lovely, Dinky,” Carrot Top assured her, with a smile she hoped didn’t seem too forced. “It was very sweet of you to draw us, and I rather like the glitter myself,” she added, knowing that bitter was best served right after sweet.
“Really? You like it?” Dinky’s smile nearly reached her ears.
“But?” prompted Sparkler with a puzzled frown.
Carrot Top shot Sparkler an irritated glance. “But,” she continued, “Derpy is your mother, not I. I just help out a little.”
“You help out a lot,” said Dinky dubiously. “And when we go on a school trip, Miss Cheerilee gives out forms for our parents to hoof-stamp, and she always tells me to give it to you and not—”
“That’s just one of the ways I help,” Carrot Top answered brusquely. “Tell me, Dinky, has Derpy seen this yet?”
“Huh? Oh, no! I was going to show you together, but then I forgot! Spaaaarrrk-lerrrr,” she whined plaintively, drawing her sister’s name out into a warble, “you made me forget!”
“Hey, you were the pony who was going on and on about how desperate you were to finally show off that surprise! How was I supposed to know you had some grand plan for it when you never told me?”
Carrot Top interrupted the developing argument with counterfeit cheer. “Think of it as an opportunity! You’ve got a little while before Derpy returns, so you’ve got time to plan out the perfect way to spring it on her!”
“Oooh! You’re right, Carrot Top! I think I really will spring it on her. Really spring,” she giggled, miming the act of pouncing on her mother. “I’d better get ready!” She snatched the drawing away from Carrot Top and dashed off to her room with her usual clatter of little hooves.
“Nicely deflected,” said Sparkler, touching a hooftip to her forelock.
“Sparkler, I am so utterly not in the mood for this, I can’t even begin to tell you.”
“Alright, sorry,” Sparkler answered, sobering. “Can I have a glass of milk, though?”
“Help yourself,” grunted Carrot Top as she turned back to her cooking. A soft hum filled the room as various objects glowed purple and came to life at Sparkler’s whim, serving up a glass of milk while the young mare seated herself at the kitchen’s island countertop.
A quiet moment passed. Carrot Top savoured it, but it was ended all too quickly as Sparkler spoke up again.
“Dinky does have a point, though, doesn’t she? You are the pony who hoof-stamps all her parental consent forms. That implies guardianship.”
“Like I said, I just help out.”
“But those are official forms; they can’t just be given to any po—”
“A technicality, that’s all. A bit of red tape.”
“You call legal custody of a foal a ‘technicality’?” asked Sparkler incredulously. “It’s not power of attorney you’ve got: the whole reason I’m here is ‘cause Mom can make her own legal agreements.”
“Now look,” growled Carrot Top, “Derpy carried that girl inside her for the full twelve months and then some, brought her into this world through more pain than you or I can understand at this point in our lives, and suckled her with milk drawn from her own flesh, and she without question deserves to be called her mother!”
“I’m not denying any of that,” declaimed Sparkler, waving her forehooves in the air before her. “But there’s such a thing as a care-mother too! Just because you didn’t give birth to her—”
“I make sure Derpy keeps an even furrow, and that’s it! Why are you making such an issue of this, Sparkler?”
“I—well, I was just....” Sparkler looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. “I was just wondering if I’d ever get to call you the dreaded M-word once in a while,” she mumbled.
“You are unequivocally Derpy’s daughter, Sparkler. It’s her hoof on your forms.”
“I know that,” Sparkler exclaimed, defensive now. “And I’m grateful! And I love Derpy to bits!”
“But...?” Carrot Top added with heavy sarcasm.
“I just... look, you live in this house, too! You cook meals for us, teach us stuff.... We do lots of things together—you can say you’re ‘just helping’ all you want, but you’re a part of this family, too! And we just can’t call you ‘Auntie’! That makes you sound like an old fogey, and you’re not! You’re young, and smart, and cool, and….”
Here Sparkler’s nerve faltered and she dropped her gaze.
“And I think, well... I just thought I might have... a little more in common with you than Derpy, that’s all,” she trailed off uncomfortably.
“Oh, do tell,” snorted Carrot Top.
Sparkler hunched over her glass of milk, starring sullenly into its depths. “Never mind,” she said in a small voice.
“No, no; I insist,” the older mare continued, mercilessly. “By all means, enlighten me as to all the things we have in common. Let us count the ways!”
“W—well,” Sparkler stuttered, shrivelling under Carrot Top’s gaze, “we’re both kinda down to earth, w-with a dry sense of humour; we don’t, um, suffer fools gladly, a-and we’re... we’re fairly hard-working and... and responsible—”
“ ‘Responsible’? Really?” interrupted Carrot Top with a poisonous sweetness to her voice. She propped her forelegs up on the kitchen’s island, directly across from Sparkler, regarding her over steepled hooves. “So tell me, as you’re so responsible, did you wash the carrots we pulled on the weekend and layer them into storage?” she asked, having been in the root cellar not two hours previously and knowing full well that she had not.
“Um!” Sparkler started as she remembered the oversight. “Uh, well I was going to, only Emerald Gem dropped by to, um, study—”
“Study what, exactly?” demanded Carrot Top, all pretence of sweetness dropping away. “Anatomy?”
Sparkler instantly flushed beet red. “C—Carrot Top!”
“Look, Sparkler,” Carrot Top continued coldly, “I don’t have a problem with your special somepony dropping by at all hours, but you’re old enough to realise that this household doesn’t run itself, and Celestia knows there’s only so much I can do on my own. Your chores aren’t arbitrary make-work; we need you to—”
“Alright, I’m going already!” cried Sparkler, sliding out of her chair. “You are such a nag!” she spat angrily over her shoulder as she cantered out of the kitchen and down the hall.
Carrot Top stood alone at the counter, that last remark of Sparkler’s ringing in her ears, and seeing now more clearly everything she had just put the poor girl through, Carrot Top could not blame her for saying it, either. Moved by sudden contrition, she leaned leaned her body across the counter to call after her.
“Sparkler? Wait, I—”
She was cut off by the loud slam of the cellar door, which sent a new burst of pain flaring through her migraine. She could hear the young mare’s hooves rattling angrily down the wooden stairs into the cellar, presumably to repair her oversight.
Probably best to leave her awhile, she thought to herself. All of a sudden, she was weary. She walked around the island and passed into the hallway herself, pushing down on the handle of the first door on the left and leaning in to open it.
Inside was a small room, with spare furnishings: just a bed, a small bookshelf adjoining a cramped writing desk under the single window, a dresser and a tall wardrobe. There were few decorations on the wall, mostly pressed flowers, and a thin, faded rug on the floor. It was not much, but it was her space, and it was hers alone.
She closed the door behind her and crossed the little room to open a shallow drawer underneath the writing desk. From this she drew out a battered old envelope. It was a little stained and growing threadbare in the corners. She transferred it to the floor, flipped over the flap, and gently teased out its contents: an equally worn pamphlet, entitled Your Map of Equestria. This she carefully unfolded into its full size.
The map was dog-eared and faded, the crests of the folds across its surface gradually fraying. A segment of a dark ring encroached into Equestrian waters at the south east corner, an old cocoa stain Carrot Top had inadvertently made at the age of twelve years and for which she still felt a twinge of guilt. She had done her utmost to keep it up to date, and the map’s surface had accumulated a complex collection of notations and amendments: new roads; the nation’s entire railway network, drawn on piecemeal as each new line was laid; the Crystal Empire—she had needed to pore over ancient atlases just to place it properly....
Carrot Top gently traced one of the rail lines with a hooftip. Following the rails, her hoof brushed other marks, representing points of interest: historic sites, places of great natural beauty... she had mementoes from each of those places, carefully packed away in a box perched on top of the wardrobe, but she had never seen any of them, not a single one: those souvenirs were all gifts from Derpy, trinkets and tokens that she had picked up on her wanderings. To Carrot Top, they were mementoes of stories of faraway places, of anecdotes relayed by an easily distracted, visually impaired pony who missed much of what was happening around her: an Impressionist painting in broad strokes.
But someday—and yes, she told this to herself every year, but someday she would fill in those strokes and—
Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat!
Carrot Top jumped half out of her skin at the sudden frantic hammering at her door. “What?!” she bellowed, clutching the map to her chest as her heart beat madly against her ribcage and her skull throbbed worse than ever it had.
“Um, Carrot Top?” Dinky’s voice. “The, um, the soup pot in the kitchen is boiling over? It’s not supposed to be doing that, right?”
Carrot Top’s heart all but stopped for a moment. I left the fool thing on the stove!
“Don’t touch it!” She scrabbled at the map, trying to fold it up, but it flopped about almost like tissue paper. “Sparkler!” she called.
But Sparkler was in the root cellar, one level down and on the other side of the foundations—where Carrot Top herself had sent her—and surely would not hear her.
“Go get your sister,” she commanded, and the filly dashed off in another clatter of tiny hooves. Meanwhile Carrot Top continued to wrestle frantically with the map. The paper had grown so flimsy that it bent back and forth, folding over her hooves rather than back into its intended shape. Visions of the bubbling burn hazard sitting unattended on the stove danced through Carrot Top’s mind, and her efforts grew more desperate and frenzied with each passing second.
“Oh come on, you stupid, worthless—”
Rip!
Carrot Top froze, open-mouthed, in the middle of her curse. The worn paper had finally given way to time and stress, and a great tear had opened, running right through the centre. She stared, panting, at the ruined map for a few seconds, forehooves trembling. Then she threw the thing to floor with a shriek of anguish and ran for the door.
“Back up, Dinky! No, really back—I mean it! This stuff is super hot!” Sparkler was already at the stove, banking the fire while she lifted the frothing pot off to one side with her levitation, when Carrot Top dashed in. Dinky, hugging the kitchen counter on Sparkler’s far side, dutifully took a few steps back. Carrot Top, still shaking, stood panting for a moment. Sparkler gave her a bristling look.
“…Took you long enough,” Carrot Top muttered, immediately regretting it.
“Ex-CUSE me?!” exploded Sparkler. “I was down in the cellar—where you sent me, remember?! And it’s your soup; where were you?!” She glanced over Carrot Top’s shoulder, catching a glimpse of the open door at the head of the hallway. “In your room again? What are you always doing in there, anyway?! Clopping?”
Carrot Top gaped at her, opened-mouthed in shock.
“At least I have a special somepony,” sneered Sparkler, her muzzle in the air.
Carrot Top rallied at that, striding angrily forward and stamping her hoof down with enough force to crack one of the kitchen tiles. “Amethyst Star,” she cried, using Sparkler’s full name, “how dare you use that sort of language around your sister!”
“Are you sure you’re not my mom? ‘Cause you nag like one!”
“I won’t take backtalk from you, young lady!”
“Stop, stop,” pleaded Dinky, dashing forward. “Why are you two fighting?”
“Because it seems hypocrisy requires seniority in this house,” sniffed Sparkler with a contemptuous toss of her head—inadvertently transferring the motion of her horn to the object she was levitating.
The pot tossed in sympathy, causing a great wave of soup to cascade over the rim—and out over Dinky. Time itself seemed to slow as the boiling broth arced down towards the young filly, who, surprised, turned her face into it as her eyes caught the motion.
Sparkler stared, frozen in horror—but Carrot Top did not freeze.
Lunging forward, she planted her forehooves next to Sparkler and bounced her hips upwards, tucking her back legs in close as she went into a spin, swinging her hindquarters up over the countertop and then down between Sparkler and the kitchen’s island. She kicked out desperately, and caught Dinky hard in the shoulder with one hoof.
The blow lifted the little filly off the floor and sent her rolling backwards, head over hooves, to crash into a set of cupboard doors a few body lengths behind her. Carrot Top’s forelegs lost purchase on the tiles, sliding out from under her, and she fell heavily on her left flank, her momentum sliding her forward across the floor.
The arc of frothing soup completed its motion, scything through the space Dinky had just vacated to cascade down onto Carrot Top’s right hind leg.
Carrot Top howled in agony as the boiling soup poured over her thigh.
“Mom!” shrieked Sparkler, and with a flare of magic, she hurled the soup pot out a window and into the garden patch. She jumped forward, holding down the thrashing Carrot Top with her forelegs. “Don’t move, Mom, I’ve got you! I’ve got you!”
The kitchen sink was swathed in purple light and sprang to life, the cold water tap opening full throttle and the salad rinsing hose snaking out and hosing down Carrot Top’s leg.
“Dinky, can you run? Mom’s hurt! Ground floor bathroom, under the sink, a white box with a red cross and four hearts—get it quick! Go, go, go!” Dinky was levitated into the air and dropped onto her hooves, and she promptly broke into a gallop and dashed down the hallway.
“I’ll make you a compress,” Sparkler told Carrot Top, and the linen closet opened as two fresh dishcloths zoomed out of it to soak themselves in the sink where she was carefully adjusting the water to a more temperate coolness. A third dishcloth pulled taught while two knives floated up to cut it into strips.
Carrot Top grit her teeth and heaved her weight onto her unscalded rear leg, rising painfully and rearing up so she could prop her forelegs up on the countertop, to keep as much weight as possible off her injured leg.
“Don’t get up,” begged Sparkler as she minced around her, orbited by dripping towelling. “You really shouldn’t—”
Lunging, Carrot Top snatched the self-assembling compress out of the halo of Sparkler’s levitation and slammed it down onto the countertop, regaining her balance just before she could topple over. “I know what to do,” she snarled as she deftly wrapped one cloth in another and tied it off. “I learned this stuff when you were still in magic kindergarten!”
“I know, but you’re hurt! Just let me help—”
“Haven’t you done enough already?!” Carrot Top contorted herself as only an earth pony ever learned to do, to wrap the compress around her leg and weave a slip-knot using only a hoof-tip and her mouth. Sparkler flinched back as Carrot Top abruptly pulled the knot tight, biting off another scream of pain.
With a grunt, Carrot Top let her head fall heavily down onto the counter, where she lay panting. The countertop felt blessedly cool. “Serves... serves me right for leaving the blasted thing on the stove,” she groaned.
“Mom,” breathed Sparkler in a shocked voice, “that doesn’t serve anypony right!”
“For the very last time, Amethyst Star,” Carrot Top growled, head rising off the countertop like a rearing serpent, “I. Am. Not. Your. MOTHER!! Get it through your head!”
Cowed, Sparkler obediently bowed her head. “Yes, Carrot Top,” she said meekly.
Carrot Top shoved off the counter, dropped onto four hooves, and lurched past Sparkler with an angry snort, heavily favouring her injured leg. She stumbled around the island and nearly bumped into a frightened-looking Dinky, who was balancing the first-aid kit on her rump.
“I, um, I got the box....”
Dinky’s right shoulder was changing colour; Carrot Top could already see the darkening bruise through her coat. It was also clearly swelling. Her clavicle could be broken, she thought. The young filly likely did not feel half of it at present, but the adrenaline would subside soon and then it would really begin to hurt. She swayed, feeling a sudden wave of nausea. Her vision greyed at the edges. I can’t deal with this; I can’t. Not now.
“Give... give it to your sister,” she said dizzily as she weaved on past Dinky. “Your shoulder needs ice. She can, can put some... sh-she knows what to do.”
“Carrot Top,” Sparkler called after her. “Wait!”
Carrot Top stopped, but did not look back.
“That soup was boiling! Please… You need a hospital!”
Carrot Top’s head jerked around violently. “What I need,” she spat, “is five minutes to myself, without another needy pony or new catastrophe breaking down my door, and Tartarus take your hospital! And you!
“Now, if anypony should need me, tough! I’ll be in my room! Clopping,” she added venomously, “as I have oh-so-kindly been told.” Sparkler blushed and looked away.
Carrot Top stomped off as quickly as she could manage and shouldered herself through the door to her room. She heard Dinky ask Sparkler “Is Mommy going to be O—” before she slammed the door shut with an angry whip of her tail.
She limped quickly over to the torn map she had cast to the floor, gingerly picking it up before placing it on her writing desk, where she would have the best light. She dragged out the desk chair and slid her undamaged thigh onto it to take her weight off her legs and free up her fore hooves.
The map was still in one piece, but only barely: the tear had begun along a fold line towards the top right corner, and had then run diagonally across the map’s surface, splitting into two as it followed weaknesses in the well-worn paper, leaving a jagged rent in the shape of a forked lightning bolt spread across the width of the map. The poor old thing was in tatters.
She carefully smoothed the pieces back together. Could she glue it back together? No, the tear edges were ragged, fuzzy with frayed paper fibres. It would be look a frightful mess. Worse, many of her annotations were cut clean through: they’d be illegible. They were illegible right now! She yanked open the top drawer and rummaged quickly through its contents. Rubber cement? Cellophane tape? Oh, sweet Celestia, no. That would ruin it! She fumbled around a little more out of sheer desperation, but there was nothing. It was hopeless.
Carrot Top sagged in defeat, staring mournfully at the rent map and wanting very much to cry. Then, a sudden spasm of anger gripped her and she brought her fore hooves together in a violent motion, crushing the folds of the ruined map together. In a rage, she balled up the map between her hooves—what was the point of the blasted thing, anyway? It was worthless! She was never going to use it! It was a stupid filly’s dream, and she had been stupid to cling to it for so long!
Rising from the chair, she leaned her rump against the desk for support and raised the crumpled map up high over head with both hooves. She hesitated for only a moment before hurling the thing across the room with a cry of rage and loss. The paper ball arced across the small room, glanced off the door, and fell to the ground almost soundlessly, bouncing twice. Carrot Top swayed awkwardly as she stared at it. In mocking irony, it had landed just sort of the wastebasket.
“Well, that’s fitting,” she croaked with a sob. Then she snorted as hot anger and bile boiled up inside her once more: it might be fitting, but it wasn’t enough. Not by a long shot. This mattered, curse it! It mattered to her, even if nopony else cared! With a frenzied shriek, she twisted ‘round and swept the surface of her desk clear with a foreleg, sending inkwells, quills, papers flying across the room. The movement spun her off-balance, however, and she stumbled back into the side of her wardrobe.
Suddenly she felt trapped: there was so little space between her wardrobe and her desk. She was sick of squeezing herself into moulds; she wanted breathing room, and lots of it. She kicked up her uninjured hind leg and pushed hard against the desk with her hoof, shoving her entire weight into the wardrobe. It screeched as it tilted, leaning away from the wall as it pivoted around the dresser, the side nearest to Carrot Top rotating away from the wall. She rolled across its shifting surface, scraping at the floor with the back hooves, still frenetically shoving the wardrobe further out and around until it cleared the dresser and fell over, gouging the room’s door as it crashed down into it.
Carrot Top, still rearing on her hind legs, careened onto the dresser and, grabbing the mirror’s backboard, yanked it away from the wall, tipping the piece of furniture onto the fallen dresser. She stumbled back to her desk, wrenching its drawers out one by one and casting them about the room, letting their contents explode outwards as they smashed into the walls.
She lost her balance then and crashed heavily to the floor. She lay, panting, in the midst of her ravaged room, surrounded by the scattered debris.
A sudden rapid tapping at her window startled her, causing her to raise her head, and she saw the face of her friend Derpy plastered against the panes. The grey mare was grinning at her and waving cheerfully with one fore leg as she held up a brightly coloured box with her other hoof.
Carrot Top’s eyes lit on an inkwell strewn upon the floor next to her. She scooped it up and hurled it at the window with a savage snarl. The inkwell shattered across the pane, spattering the glass with its contents.
“Buzz off, Derpy!” she shrieked. “Better yet, fly off to the kitchen and make yourself useful: you can clean up one of my messes for a change!”
Derpy stared at her in shock. She had a special smile that made her golden eyes shine like the sunrise, and Carrot Top watched the dawn sputter and fade out as that smile slid off her features and was lost. The spattered ink running in little rivulets down the window pane, in overlay across Derpy’s face, gave it the appearance of being streaked with black tears. She drew away from the window and was lost to sight.
“Derpy,” rasped Carrot Top, stretching out one hoof after her, “I didn’t—”
A sudden, brutal spasm of pain took her breath away. Carrot Top doubled over, grasping her injured leg as she whimpered and the world spun around her. Her leg throbbed horribly and her vision was greying out again: the adrenaline had worn off, and it was truly beginning to hurt. She could see through her narrowing field of vision that she had even managed to wrench the compress free.
Her scalded leg burned as though the boiling soup had been poured on it anew, but it was not the pain that made Carrot Top weep. With a shaking hoof, she reached out to her bed—the only piece of furniture in her room that had not been overturned—drew off the comforter and wrapped herself in it to hide her shame.
“A broken-down old nag,” she sobbed into her coverlet as she lay prone on the floor. “It didn’t take ten years after all.”
Author's Note
This story was heavily inspired by "The Last Roundup," though it took a very long time indeed to write up. As such, it presents an Equestria that, as it appears in the first couple of seasons, has a very small stallion-to-mare population ratio, and explores how society might have adapted to this reproductive challenge.
“Not yet, Derpy,” whispered Carrot Top to her restless friend, for the fourth time since the mayor had begun her speech. Derpy folded her wings up against her barrel once more, though in her excitement she would likely re-open them soon. “I’ll tell you when,” Carrot Top promised.
“And so,” the mayor continued in a grandiose tone, “it is with a palpable pride and a veritable sense of accomplishment that I bring the twenty-seventh celebration of Ponyville’s very own Green Mare festival to its conclusion with, as tradition dictates, the scattering of the Mare. Just as the time has come for all of us who have gathered together here—some from across Ponyville, and others from across the breadth of our fair land of Equestria—in celebration of our love of music to break up our fellowship and return, contented, to our homes, it is also time for the great symbol and namesake of our festival, the Green Mare itself, to be scattered to the winds to carry the spirit of fun and friendship which this festival has come to…”
Carrot Top craned her neck a little, trying to see past the colourful sea of manes and hats and get a glimpse of the festival staff busying itself at the base of the Green Mare, a great hollow frame in the shape of a pony, towering over the crowd, and covered in countless panels of bright green cloth. At the base of each of its legs was a giant bellows, which, once the mayor had finally finished her long-winded speech, would send a blast of air up each leg, tearing all the cloth panels loose and sowing them on the winds. It was considered lucky to find one of the scattered cloths, and Ponyville’s foals, in particular, would be doing much searching for them over the next few weeks.
It seemed that every attendant stood in readiness, so she leaned into her impatient friend and whispered, “It’ll happen soon, once the mayor stops talking. There’ll be a signal—you won’t be able to miss it.”
They did not have to wait long. The mayor shortly wrapped up her speech (a little abruptly, in Carrot Top’s opinion) and finally called out, “I now give you: the scattering of the Green Mare!”
“Wings out, Derpy!” hissed Carrot Top, laying a foreleg over her friends’ withers to prevent an instantaneous take-off. Derpy was practically vibrating. At last, an airhorn gave a short blast, and the four bellows blew their blasts up the legs of the effigy, the green panels catching the rushing air as sails catch the wind, billowing and then tearing off, flying skywards like a vast flock of emerald birds.
“Now, Derpy! Go!” Carrot Top pulled her foreleg off Derpy’s back, and the grey pegasus pony lanced upwards, streaking up and to the right. She was not alone: over two dozen more young pegasi, who had been waiting for her ascent, shot up and out of the crowd amid gasps of surprise, twisting around the cloud of cloth in a counter-clockwise spiral.
Their wings caught the uprising draft, wrapping it into a twister, and the lower part of the unfolding cloth cloud warped into a cone, the upper third billowing out into a vast sphere from the rising air pressure within.
“Mummy, look,” squeaked a delighted foal, perched on the back of said mummy, who was standing close to Carrot Top. “It looks like an ice cream cone!” The child’s was not the only voice raised in approval—but Carrot Top only smiled. They had seen nothing yet.
At a signal from Derpy, the pegasi suddenly spun out of their spiral, arcing out, down, and looping back around to fly into the base of the twister and drag it upwards. The funnel inverted, and what had seemed an ice cream cone collapsed into merely the scoop at the top—which promptly burst open, transmuting into a bush from which grew long stems that blossomed into increasingly complex bunches of flowers. The entire crowd broke out into loud cheers at that.
The four fastest pegasus ponies in the formation slashed their flight across the base of the flower stems, and both bush and blossoms blurred into a flight of butterflies. The butterflies twisted together into a torus, which warped into a more complex structure before breaking into…
Carrot Top watched the formation with a critical eye. She had attended most of the planning and practice meetings—they had been preparing this for almost half a year—and she knew the patterns they had to fly through. It was ambitious: ten ponies circling continuously beneath to preserve lift; four teams of four weaving in and out of the cloud to reshape that lift into pictures painted on the wind; four ponies (the same who had cut the flower stems, the fastest) on intercept, to catch any stray billow of the cloud that got away from the others; and Derpy in the middle, directing the entire operation.
Carrot Top mostly kept an eye out for Derpy, who was not flying so much as riding the currents over and through the ever evolving cloud formation. She could not be sure at this range, but Carrot Top had a feeling Derpy was operating with her eyes closed. Given her double vision, all those separate squares of cloth billowing all about might well have been too much of a distraction—unless they all blurred together into one flowing mass… but whatever; that was not important. All that mattered was whether it worked, and it was working. Oh! It was working perfectly.
The crowd around her whooped and cheered with each new folding of the ever climbing cloud overhead, building to a great gasp as the finale was unveiled, and the Green Mare, this time rearing to the heavens, reformed once more, towering high over the clouds of Ponyville—before being turned inside out and scattered on the high winds. The crowd’s responding roar nearly knocked her over.
Carrot Top gingerly limped her way through the dispersing crowd, frequently forced to pause as gaggles of young fillies and colts rushed by with their muzzles in the air, paying more attention to the drifting green sheets high above than what was directly in front of them. She kept her own eyes trained on her target: a large tree shading a patch of green grass, which formed a natural island in the flow of ponies. Her duty to her friend done, she wanted nothing more than to lie down for a good long while.
No sooner had she let fall her saddlebags and settled down onto the grass, grateful for its coolness in the late afternoon heat, than she heard a most familiar name. Looking out she could see Derpy in—or rather, slightly over—the crowd, wending her way towards her. It was rough going for her, as she was hailed at every wing flap by enthusiastic ponies, eager to congratulate her on the spectacular show.
“Over here, Derpy,” called Carrot Top. Derpy rotated in place to face her call, one foreleg raised up to shade her eyes. Carrot Top waved to draw her gaze, and Derpy soon flitted over.
“Did you see, Carrot Top?” she drawled, in her usual, drawn-out way of speaking. “Was it good?” Derpy’s eyes were shining.
“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that, Derpy,” Carrot Top assured her. “Isn’t every other pony in town lining up to congratulate you?”
“They are, actually. That’s pretty weird, although it feels nice.” She landed softly—she always landed softly; her special talent was a real asset there—next to Carrot Top on the soft grass. She kneeled down so her eyes were level with her reclining friend’s.
“But I want to hear what you thought,” she added. “Did you like it?”
“I did, Derpy,” answered Carrot Top, as cheerfully as she could manage. “Sure, I knew what was coming, but it was a whole different thing to see it unfold, right over everypony’s head. It really was impressive.”
“Are you OK?” asked Derpy, concern edging into her voice. “You don’t sound very impressed.”
Carrot Top winced internally. Not cheerful enough, huh? “Don’t worry about it, Derpy. It’s got nothing to do with your show. The Red Knight is just plowing up my insides again. She always did have lousy timing….”
Derpy cocked her head to one side, a frequent gesture when she was confused. “Night always looked full of blues and greys to me,” she mused. “Sunset’s pretty red, though.”
“No, ‘knight’ with a ‘k’. It’s—” Carrot Top sighed. Derpy had terrible trouble with metaphors. “I’m sorry, Derpy,” she began again. “It’s an expression. It means my period. I’m on my period right now.”
“Ooh,” sighed Derpy with sudden understanding. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Actually, yeah.” Carrot Top pointed a hoof past her, across the flow of the crowd. “See the red-and-white striped tent? In front and to the right is a striped parasol, in pink-and-pale yellow. See that?”
Derpy stood and squinted, then put a hoof over one eye. “A pink-and-yellow parasol. I see it!”
“That belongs to an ice cream cart. Could you get me some ice? I’ve got a towel I can wrap it in, to make an ice pack.”
“Sure, I can do that!” exclaimed Derpy happily. She fluttered off, low over the crowd, one hoof still over her eye.
Derpy barely cleared the tree’s lengthening shadow before—
“Derpy? Derpy! I knew it was you! The Mare, Derpy, my gosh, the Green Mare! Did you do that?”
“Oh, no, Shoeshine. That was the others. I was too busy directing.”
“That’s what I meant! That was amazing! What a show—better than fireworks, any day!”
“Of course,” agreed Derpy. “Fireworks are better at night.”
Shoeshine giggled, declared Derpy to be “a scream,” before indicating a little filly perched on her back, who was clearly star-struck. “This is my little sister Pretty Polish; she loved the show too. See, Polish, I told you I knew her! We used to go to school together.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Pretty Polish, but I have to get to that ice cream cart over there. You’ll have to walk with me if you want to talk.”
“Ice cream,” squeaked the filly. “Can we get some ice cream?”
“Sure,” laughed Derpy. “What flavour do you like?”
“Polish,” her sister cried. “We came to congratulate her; you can’t have her buy you a treat!”
“I don’t mind,” Derpy cheerfully assured her as they drifted away.
Despite her discomfort, Carrot Top looked on with savage satisfaction. Oh, she could kiss that Cheerilee! Or, Miss Cheerilee, technically, though it was hard to think of a pony not four full years older than her as a “Miss.” Beside, Carrot Top had finally finished school in June, almost two months prior. She could dispense with the title, surely.
Cheerilee had begun her practicum as a teacher this past school year, and Carrot Top could tell she was bound to go far. It was she who had suggested the stunt with the Green Mare, employing the pegasus ponies from the finishing school, as well as other graduates who had completed their mandatory elementary education but not enrolled for the optional part-time “finishing off.” Her original flight plan had been elaborated on, but Carrot Top had seen her proposal: its thoroughness was impressive, especially considering Cheerilee was herself an earth pony. She had surely consulted with pegasus ponies in the community to develop her original idea into a practical plan.
Practical, that was, provided one could find exactly the right pony to conduct the exercise. Since the school ponies were young and inexperienced, it was critical to get a pony who could direct them as needed, to keep the chaos of the expanding cloud of scattered cloth under control… and it just happened that this year’s graduating class included one pegasus pony whose special talent was for reading air currents—Derpy Hooves.
She had done it on purpose! For this, precisely for the exchange which Carrot had just witnessed. That pony, Shoeshine? In six years of elementary school and three years of finishing, how many times had that stuck-up fool deigned to speak to (let alone with) the slow-tongued, clumsy, cross-eyed pony in her class? A dozen times, if that—and that was a charitable estimate. Now she was fawning over Derpy as though she were a celebrity. “You’re such a scream?” “Meet my little sister?” “We use to go to school together?” Hah!
The ponies with whom they had gone to school, alongside whom they had grown to maturity, any of them, all of them, when they ran into Derpy around town, or whenever her name came up, would remember this. Not her clumsiness, not her vision, not her wanderings, not her speech, not her confusion, not the accidents she had caused, not that she was always last in class. But this. The Green Mare rearing over Ponyville.
Carrot Top had stood up for Derpy since she was able to stand at all, and yet Cheerilee had outdone all her efforts, simply by letting Derpy shine on her own for one glorious moment. Carrot Top resolved to seek her out, when she felt better, to thank her.
“Here you are, Carrot Top,” exclaimed Derpy, swooping down to interrupt her thoughts, a generously sized ice block held in her fore hooves. It was a most welcome sight.
“Thanks a lot, Derpy,” sighed Carrot Top as she wrapped the ice in the towel she had brought. “You’re a life saver!”
“I don’t think so,” Derpy objected after some consideration, “but I’ll be glad if it helps.”
Carrot Top lay back down fully on the grass with a groan, holding her new ice pack against her abdomen. “One quarter-moon, every moon, of every year, for three-and-a-half years now… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.
“Do you cramp up a lot when your period comes?” she asked suddenly, feeling the need for some conversation to distract her, but unable to think of any other topic.
“Only a little,” came the answer. “But I bleed a lot, and then I get dizzy when I fly.”
“Ugh,” winced Carrot Top. Derpy’s vision made her an erratic flyer in most cases. If she were dizzy on top of that…
“It’s been really good lately, though,” Derpy added happily.
Carrot Top grunted. “Low flow?”
“No flow. I haven’t bled at all in almost two moons now.”
An envious groan escaped Carrot Top’s lips. “Lucky you,” she muttered, throwing a foreleg over her eyes to shut the daylight out.
It took a moment for the words to fully connect. She jerked her foreleg away from her face to stare at her friend.
“Hang on. You haven’t bled in how long?”
