Diamond Song's Diary

August 11th 4LT

A few of the fillies and colts from the village came to the estate to invite me out to play with them today. Don’t they know I have studying to do? I think the worse thing about it was that Mother was out of the house if she’d been here instead of Celestia knows where Nanny would never have made me go with them. Sometimes I don’t think she likes my mother very much. You know how sometimes when adults are being nice to one another but the air is so heavy it feels like they’re having an argument instead?

Sometimes it works to my advantage, like Nanny letting me study outside on the veranda, or letting me have an extra seed cake after dinner. But then there are times like this where she sends me out of the house to play like a  normal filly.

We took the country road through the cherry groves. It was a lovely day with the sun shining through boughs and a pleasant coolness to the air. We waved hello to some of the earth ponies working the orchards and one of them even gave us some cherries to snack on while we walked.

I blushed bright red when he called me Little Madame. I suppose that’s in reference to what they tend to call my Mother, Madame Red Wine. The name really fits her I think, her mane is a lovely red over her dove white coat. I’ve got a mix of both my father and my mother, his curly mint coloured mane with her coat colour.

Lazuli’s brother works in the orchards and I could tell she was keeping her eyes open for him in case we saw him along the road. Watching those two makes me wish I had a brother or sister. I asked Nanny if she thought Mother would ever have another foal and she said that it wasn’t likely since Mother’s ‘cherry tree had gone and wilted’. This confused me terribly.

I tried asking Father what this meant and he started laughing! I might have asked Mother what it meant if he hadn’t told me not to.

We spent some time playing tag near the edge of the orchard where we didn’t see anypony working. After a time we grew bored of the game and decided to split into teams of two for a game of hide and seek. It wasn’t normally played in teams but we decided it would be fun to change things up a little bit.

After all the fuss about not wanting to go I’m surprised how quickly I started to enjoy myself. Niffle and I decided to partner up and when the others were ready we gathered around to decide which team would be seeking first.

There were six of us in all and none of us wanted to be on the seeking team. We were all sort of just standing there silently for a good few minutes trying to think of a way to decide when out of nowhere that weird little colt, Hollow Row, shouted: “Seeker says what!”

In the span of a single second my mind sprang to the ‘not it’ gag one often sees in these sorts of situations and gut reaction occurring faster than logic forced a loud “What!” from my lips. It was only after I said it had his words finally registered in my mind, I felt like such an imbecile for confusing the two. The other started laughing and I looked over at Niffle to say I was sorry.

Niffle said it was alright, and I suppose it was. At least she didn’t seem upset over it. She was too busy trying to hold back her laughter for that. The face she made while she held it back, though, lips contorted into a half frown half grin as she made little-coughing noises. It was so ridiculous that I found myself laughing with the others. Then with me laughing she finally let loose and laughed harder than us all.

The other ran off into the trees as Niffle and I stood together, our eyes closed and counting slowing to a hundred. At first, our counting was slow. "One Appleloosa, two Appleloosa, three Appleloosa..." but the higher we got the faster we counted until we found ourselves stumbling over the words and having to stop and figure out our place. Soon we weren't bothering with the 'Appleloosa' part at all. We weren’t perfect but we were at least honest.

We were laughing again by the time we reached a hundred and I felt energised and ready to seek the others out.

I couldn’t see them anywhere.

Now that we were finally looking for them I realised we hadn’t set any ground rules on where we could and couldn’t hide and the orchards were a big place. Niffle seemed to be thinking the same thing as we started out into the trees.

We started by looking behind trees and eventually looking up into the branches as we circled the area.

I nosed my way into a poofy looking bush, pushing aside branches with my magic. No luck. From behind, I heard Niffle cough.

“Soooo, I heard Shady Vale burned down one of your trees the other day.”

I pulled myself out and turned to face her. “You heard about that?” Niffle scratched at the ground with her hoof.

“Well yeah, everypony’s talking about it.”

I felt a sinking in my stomach. “...What exactly are they saying?”

Niffle looked down at her hooves, “Mostly stuff about Shady getting fired from the weather team.”

“Did my mother…?”

“I’m really sorry, Diamond.” Why was she saying sorry to me? My Mother wasn’t the one fired from her job over a silly mistake. “If it makes you feel any better your mom didn’t mean to get her fired… She’s been going down to the weather hub raising all kinds of hay bales ever since she found out about it. I guess she just wanted to complain, not, well, you know. Not what happened.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, finally, I muttered,“It’s fine, Niffle. I just hope Shady Vale gets her job back.”

We started walking again but this time in silence. It wasn’t much longer until we started finding the others. Lazuli and Hollow Row were up in a tree. They didn’t prove difficult to find when they couldn’t even muffle their laughter long enough to stay hidden. Though they might have managed it if Niffle hadn’t started calling out bad words. Every time she did they’d start laughing again until it felt less like hide and seek and more like Marco Polo with trees.

“Long Schlong silver!” Niffle cried. It wasn’t long before she was hopping around under the trees singing loudly, “Old Mcdonald sitting on a bench! Beating his d*ck with a monkey wrench!”

I hopped from left and to the right as we walked on, nervously eyeing our surroundings for the possible sight of adults and urging her to quiet down before somepony heard her and scolded us.

Needless to say, I was about ready to get down on the ground and thank Celestia by the time we found the right tree they were in.

They followed along after us as we kept searching. Hollow Row kept making silly jokes about having twig flank. I wasn’t really in the mood for joking by this point and I kinda wanted to go home again. But I felt bad about wanting to leave when we were in the middle of a game.

Around the fifth time Hollow Row made a twig flank joke Lazuli shoved him with her shoulder and told him he was a twig flank. It was immature I guess but enough to finally get me to smile again. Maybe things really would work out with Shady Vale and either way it didn’t really have anything to do with me, besides, I wasn’t going to help by moping around about what ponies might think.

Hollow Row side walked over in my direction until he was pressed up against me as we walked. “You don’t think I’m a twig flank, right, Diamond?”

“N-no, of course not,” I replied and quickened my pace to put some distance between us.

"She's just saying that to be nice, you know." Hollow Row blew a loud raspberry in her direction.

It took us at least another hour to find the others and by the time the first round was over we were tired of the game entirely. Thinking back on it I’m kinda glad I hadn’t been on one of the hiding team, it ended up taking so long to find everypony that I imagine it got a bit boring for them. Though I’m still fairly sure one of the other teams had been changing hiding spots mid-game. I was so certain we'd already checked that patch of trees.

The sun was hanging low in the sky when we settled down on a hill towards the edge of the west orchard and took in the view. The clouds flitted across the sky like stretched strands of cotton and I couldn’t help but mutter their scientific name under my breath as I took the scene in. “Cirrus…”

My chest seemed to fill with the most strange sensation as I watched the horizon transform into the radiant pinks and oranges of sunset like heavenly paints smeared across Celestia's canvas.

The others were still walking around. Niffle had flown up to sit in the branches of a cherry tree and was picking some for the others. I wished I had wings like her. I turned back to the sky and imagined myself floating up and up until I was over the clouds and not a care in the world could reach me.

“Hey, Diamond.” It was Hollow Row. I turned to look at him expecting to see a smug grin but instead, I found him frowning.

“Yes..?”

Instead of replying he simply sat down on the grass beside me and looked up into the sky. He was an earth pony and just as ground-bound as myself. I wondered if he was imagining the same thing I was. I was about to ask him when he turned and looked at me.

“Is your mom taking you to Canterlot for the test again this year?” I stared back into his emerald green eyes and a messy crop of hair that looked oh so much like the colour of dying grass. It stuck up at odd angles like grass too. His coat was a splotchy mix of greens with an ever so slight mix in of slightly lighter greens that blended in well enough you’d have to look closely to notice there was a difference in the first place.

“Of course she is,” I replied.

“Think you’re gonna get in this time?”

I snorted. There wasn’t any way I was going to entertain the thought of failing again, especially not out loud in

conversation. “Of course I’ll get in. I’ve been practising all year.”

We were silent for several moments.

“So I guess that means you’ll be off to Canterlot..”

“Yes, it does.”

“Will you ever come back?”

I rolled my eyes, “They'll have to drag me kicking and screaming,” I meant it as a joke but I found my tone more serious than I’d intended.

I felt him press his lips against the side of my face. He was already back onto his hooves before I even realised what he’d done. “I guess that means I’ll have to go to Canterlot too,” he called over his shoulder as he galloped down the hill and disappeared from view beneath the trees.