Starlight was halfway back to town before she realized her mistake.
Her heart jackhammered as she galloped back to where she'd met that strange-looking mare. She found her, eventually – she was moving away, at a sluggish pace, her hindquarters slowly shifting beneath the folds of her dress.
"Hey! Hey, wait!" Starlight called.
The mare turned her head around to stare, half-lidded and disinterested, at Starlight, as Starlight skidded to a stop. Her hooves scraping in the dirt tossed up a wave of earth that coated the mare's face like three days of unshorn beard stubble.
"Yes?" said the mare, in that queer, flat way of hers.
Her complete lack of any reaction to her sudden dirt-bearding was as surprising as it was off-putting, but Starlight tried to soldier past it. "D'you wanna come and be a part of my village?"
"You mean the village with the ponies whose cutie marks you want to remove and store inside of a magical boulder in a cave?" said the mare, her monotone unyielding and persistent.
"Uh... yeah. That's the one." Starlight grinned. "How about it?"
The mare's eyes twitched, just slightly. Her tongue lashed out and wiped across her own face, gathering up the dirt and pebbles coating her chin and cheeks, and retreating back into her mouth. Starlight watched, with her mouth agape, as the mare crunched and swallowed the whole mouthful in a single gulp.
"No, thank you," she said, when she had finished.
Starlight's jaw snapped shut, and she shook her head rapidly. "What? Why not?!"
"I feel like you've answered your own question already." The mare's last look lingered, her thoughts unfathomable behind her eyes, before she turned to resume her slow march away.
Starlight gamboled after her on tired hooves that felt like jelly. "You know, it'll be dark soon. If you need a place to spend the night, you can always come stay with us. We can put you up in a house, and in the morning, I can show you around. We're very hospitable, I assure you, and we have this baker who makes the best muffins—"
"That sounds like a really transparent attempt at creating a situation where I'd be more receptive to your offer, giving you another chance to sell me on living in your community." She narrowed her eyes at Starlight. "I also find your claim regarding your local baker's proficiency with muffins dubious. No offense, but I'm pretty sure I've had better."
"...None taken," said Starlight through her teeth. Damn, but this mare was tough. Far more of a challenge than Sugar Belle and the others, who Starlight drew in with a saccharine facade of friendliness before slowly indoctrinating them. Clearly, subterfuge wasn't going to work on this one however. Maybe hitting her with the ideological rationale right out of the gate would bring more success.
"Okay, well, you've obviously seen right through me," said Starlight, with a self-deprecating chuckle. "But why don't you just hear me out? I mean, okay, I'll grant that taking away other ponies' cutie marks and hiding them inside a big rock would make anypony a little uneasy. It sounds—"
"Like the crazed ramblings of a megalomaniac?"
"...Absurd, is what I was going to say." Starlight's grin started to strain and twitch at the corners of her mouth. "Like it couldn't possibly be done."
"I didn't think you'd ask in the first place if it couldn't be done," said the mare. "I just assumed that your intentions for doing so would be less than noble. You haven't really said or done anything to change my mind on that point, and I'm honestly starting to regret telling you."
"On the contrary. They are very noble," said Starlight indignantly. "Our cutie marks do nothing but reinforce our differences, driving us apart and giving us reasons to fight and argue! I'm rescuing ponies from their worst natures."
"It's been my experience that most interpersonal differences are only skin-deep," the other mare countered in that infuriatingly dry, unemotional tone of hers. "Most ponies are capable of overcoming them and cooperating. Even ponies with personalities or interests that are like night and day."
"Well, maybe you should introduce me to some of those ponies," Starlight sang sardonically. "Because that sure hasn't been my experience!"
The mare glanced sidelong at Starlight. "Maybe it's not the other ponies that are the problem."
Starlight came to a stop, scowling. "I don't appreciate your insinuations!" she thundered, stomping her hoof into the dirt, the contact sending arcane sparks dancing through the air.
The other mare paused to watch the turquoise lights, unimpressed, as they winked out one by one.
"Uh, I mean..." Starlight ran a hoof through her mane, her face burning, and cleared her throat. "How about that tour?"
"...Listen," said the strange mare slowly, with a glance at the sign painted onto Starlight's flank. "I don't know what's motivating you to do all this. Maybe you don't like your cutie mark, and maybe the ponies who live in your town don't like theirs. I guess that's fine, as long as you're not forcing it on them. I'm still not convinced your motivations are noble, but if everypony consents, then I'm not one to judge. But I happen to like my cutie mark. So, for the last time, I respectfully decline your invitation. Now, excuse me."
Starlight rounded on the strange mare before she could leave, and stopped her with a hoof against her chest. "You need to hear me out. Okay? I'm not letting you leave until you've understood what I have to offer you."
The mare's eyes glinted, like amethysts catching firelight. "You're touching me."
"Yeah? So?" Starlight jabbed her.
The mare looked down at the hoof. "So. Stop. Please."
Starlight wanted to laugh at the absurdity of being told by this mare, this nopony, what to do. Saccharine didn't work, and neither did honest; perhaps good old fashioned fear would finally serve to draw her into Starlight's web.
"You don't seem to understand how this works," she hissed. "So let me fill you in. I do what I want. You also do what I want, if you know what's good for you. And what I want is for you to fall in line, return to my village, and learn what it it means to live in true harmony with your fellow ponies. Do you understand me, you sour-faced, quartz-chewing, dirt-licking rock-guzzler? I am going to drag you into utopia, whether you want me to or not!"
Starlight finished with one last hard tap against her.
The mare took a long, slow breath through her nose. She lifted her forelegs and planted them on either side of Starlight, her hooves digging into the unicorn's shoulders.
"I just want you to know, I'm sorry about this," the mare murmured. "It's nothing personal."
Before Starlight could say anything else, the mare pivoted her hips, and sent Starlight careening through the air. She flailed her limbs and shrieked as she, helplessly, arced downward into the recently finished roof of one of the village houses.
One she recognized, just before she crashed into it, as her own.
If nothing else, she respected the mare's aim.
Sugar Belle's faces – all three of them – swam like oil in Starlight's vision, yet the concern in her voice rang clear as she pulled Starlight free from the rubble. "Thank goodness you're alright. What in Equestria happened to you?"
"Wahbwahfwahvwah?" Starlight mumbled. Her tongue was thick and clumsy in her mouth, and the parts that weren't numb stung like they'd been caught in a wheat thresher. She must've bitten down on it as she hit the ground, if the coppery tang on her lips was any indicator.
Sugar Belle shook her various heads, sending stormclouds of poofy purple mane hither and thither. She let Starlight lean against her flank as she guided her back to her own home. "We can talk about it later, I suppose. Let's just get you lying down and fixed up, and then I'll run and fetch Stitches. Never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness we have a talented doctor in our town, huh?"
She laughed. Starlight didn't – she was still smarting, her ego as bruised as the rest of her contused and broken body. Dispatching her fledgling township to find the mare was probably a lost cause, since she couldn't even speak clearly enough to give instructions, and she probably couldn't give a physical description of the target even if she could talk.
Starlight tried recalling the mare's appearance, but the fall must've done some damage to her short-term memory. The strange mare's looks, her colors, even her outfit, were a blur, and in the time it took to recover her powers of speech and recollection, she'd probably be long gone.
And that, well, that sucked. That sucked a lot.
This'll take a while to scab over, Starlight thought, as Sugar Belle tucked her into her own bed and left to fetch their physician. She rolled over in the bed and pulled the covers up to her neck, grimacing. Having her ideology rejected summarily hurt; having it thrown in her face was just insult on top of injury. Worse yet, in a strange way, she was indebted to the mare for giving her the key to her plan, and that was the most infuriating injury of them all!
Perhaps I'll modify my approach in the future, she thought glumly, nuzzling into Sugar Belle's pillow. Find some other way of suckering in visitors and nabbing recruits. Maybe a song and dance routine.
She laughed harshly at the thought, then winced at how painful laughter was.
...Perhaps I should also learn how to fly, while I'm at it, to prevent something like this from ever happening again.
Author's Note
My new favorite word to describe pony-gait is "gamboling."
