Roam-Springa

by Pascoite

Rating: everyone
Tags: Drama, Mrs. Cake, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mayor Mare, Other, Romance, Cloudy Quartz, Ms. Harshwhinny
Length: 45063

In the community around the rock farm, it is tradition, upon coming of age, to venture out into the world and see if it holds more interest than home. Cloudy Quartz’s journey took longer than most.

In the community around the rock farm, it is tradition, upon coming of age, to venture out into the world and see if it holds more interest than home. Cloudy Quartz’s journey took longer than most.

Thanks to Themaskedferret and Present Perfect for pre-reading help. Cover art by shilzumi.

Featured on Equestria Daily!

Read the side story Fulcrum by Orbiting Kettle!

Published 2018-05-18 00:30:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-06-26 00:47:28 UTC

Chapter 1: Piece of Cake

“You see, we have this tradition called the ‘roam-springa,’” I said to the young mare sitting on the couch opposite me.

Her black mane jostled as she hurriedly wrote down every word. Nice curls, cascading over her tan shoulders, kind of like how I used to wear mine.

But then she’d come here specifically to talk about the roam-springa, of course. Truth be told, I didn’t remember why. Maybe research for a book she wanted to write, maybe working toward a sociology degree. One of the letters she’d sent me gave the reason—I had them stacked beside me, but even if I knew which one to open, it would seem odd to do so right in front of her. If I wanted to know that badly, I could simply ask. She’d sent so many, all of them exploding with words, but in person, she merely sat there quietly with her eyes glimmering, soaking up any bit of history I cared to give her.

“Before we abide by the Pairing Stone’s verdict, we must spend time in the outside world, experiencing what life has to offer out there, then make our own determination of which life we prefer.” I fiddled with the letter on top, for a moment. “Cloudy Quartz Pie,” it said on the front. Yes, that Pie had remained part of it nigh on thirty years now.

But the pencil scratching had stopped, and the young mare’s ear strained for more.

“Many know from the first day of it that they will never return to their old lives. Some drift away slowly. Some persevere, and folks, many just like you, don’t understand why, but in truth they probably never will.”

One of those words didn’t quite make it to the page as the mare had expected, and she frowned at it.

“You thought I’d say, ‘Many just like thee do not understand,’ right?” I had to chuckle at the little grin she tried to hide behind her page. “I fell out of the habit long ago. I can still put it on for appearances, but that’s not the true me.”

In her eyes, that glimmer returned. The truth resonated with that one. She basked in it. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she came from the Apple clan, our distant cousins. I should have told Pinkie I knew about them, but she never asked.

“So my father took me out to the road one day, gave me a small sum of money, and told me he loved me. A few months, a year—however long I needed. Just please let him know when I’d made my decision. Then I started the long walk into Ponyville. I only looked back once—Father still stood by the mailbox, smiling, and Mother peered out the front window, pulling the curtain aside. I couldn’t see her face. Within an hour and a half, I’d already made it farther from home than I’d ever ventured before.” I guess I’d never really relived that moment in my head. More than home—my whole universe slipping away, one hoofstep at a time.

The young mare caught me staring at the floor.

I flashed her a smile. “Life always moves forward, though. So all day long, I kept walking, until I’d made it to Ponyville, just before supper.”

I heard the voices well before I saw the town. Not unusual to encounter the occasional woodcutter in the forest, of course, but it soon became apparent that they were varied and numerous. More than a dozen! Ponies congregated in such groups in public places?

Talking, shouting, laughing, even a little singing! Then when I emerged from the trees—

Color! So much color! On the buildings, the clothing, everything! My knees shook, and I gasped at the flower stand nearby with fragrant red—no, across the road, sweet-smelling peaches with spices the likes of which I’d never—a sharp whistle, in the distance, from some great smoking metal contrivance that disgorged a thousand ponies if a single one, onto a wooden platform, and—

I staggered back a few steps, fell hard against the side of a building. I couldn’t see! Voices, echoing strangely now, but one made it through, close, yet soft and warm. “Breathe,” it said, firmly but gently. So I did, slowly. Many of the rabble had quieted down, and as my vision returned, I could see why! All gathered about, staring down at me! Another rapid breath in, but the mare with her arm around my shoulder waved them away. She turned my head toward her until I looked only at her.

“Hello,” she said, running a hoof over my forehead and checking it for bruises. “My name is Chiffon Swirl, but you can call me Cup Cake. All my friends do. Just a nickname one of them came up with.”

“Cup… Cake?” She nodded, so I gave her a weak smile. “Pleased to make thine acquaintance. My name is Cloudy Quartz.”

The grin she returned was the biggest I’d ever seen. “I know this place can be overwhelming to folks like you,” she said, leaning her head toward the main road. I’d fallen behind a wagon full of carrots, which thankfully left me shielded from that cacophony in what had to be the biggest marketplace in all of Equestria. Dozens of ponies!

“Like… me? Thou hast seen others?”

She shrugged, an easy motion, and her smile seemed a permanent fixture, a rather inseparable part of her face. “Sometimes, when I travel. And once every couple of years, one comes wandering out of the woods, just like you did.” Slowly, her eyes ran over my gray dress and my tight hairbun. “I don’t know why they just turn you loose like this,” she muttered. Then she tugged me to my hooves.

“Here. Come with me,” she said, and the tingling started in my head anew. She braced a shoulder against me—I must have started wobbling again. But soon enough, I nodded back at her and followed her through town. Had I not kept my sight trained on her hooves, I might have fainted once more. If only I had thought to bring my pair of blinders, I wouldn’t find everything so distracting! Yet few eyes turned my way, from the one or two glances I stole. They must not have found me as exotic as I found them.

A short time later, I stood in a small upper-floor bedroom. The noise of the market still carried in, but muffled now, and a wonderfully cool breeze wafted through the window. A nicely functional dresser with a mirror, two wooden chairs around a small table, a few photographs on the walls, and an ample bed with a lovely quilt—a log cabin pattern with regularly spaced pinwheel blocks mixed in, and a skillful job of the binding.

“It was my grandmother’s,” she said, beaming at it.

Very well done, indeed. The older things often were. But then I became painfully aware of her watching me. “Um…”

“Sorry,” she answered with a giggle. “I just thought you might need a quiet moment away from the crowd. Most ponies don’t take much notice, but you’re the first I’ve seen in a while. Either you desperately need some supplies, or you’re here on a… what do you call it?” She scrunched up her nose. “Roam-springa?”

“Yes, Miss… Chiffon Swirl?” I had no idea what chiffon was, but “swirl” sure fit her mane.

Quickly, she flicked a hoof at me. “Please. Cup Cake. And you’re welcome to stay here.”

“Stay, Miss Cake?”

She hooked a rear leg around one of the chairs and dragged it out, then sat down and gazed around at the ceiling. “Sure. I have other rooms, but they’re empty. I don’t have any furniture for them yet. You see, I just started my own bakery business a couple years ago, and I’m putting everything I have into that. So if you need somewhere to live…”

I couldn’t help smiling along with that infectious grin. But a place to live? I hadn’t thought about that. Little by little, I drew my coin purse out of my small saddlebag. “Is this enough?” I asked as I hefted it. A few coins jingled around inside, like the tinkling of icicles when they fall off the cupola and skitter down the barn roof.

“Put that away!” she immediately replied, and I jerked my hoof back.

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to offend—”

But she held up a hoof. “No, no, I’m not angry. I just wouldn’t dream of charging you. You’ve got it tough enough without trying to find shelter and work. Tell you what—help me out in the bakery downstairs during the day, and I’ll give you fair pay. I’m having trouble meeting demand as it is, and I could use the assistance. Then at night, a good hot meal and a place to sleep,” she said, pointing at the bed.

One bed.

Did she mean—? Sisters, maybe even cousins, but a stranger? Good ponies shouldn’t mingle too much.

“Plenty big for two. The bed was my grandmother’s as well. I inherited it three years ago, and it sat at my parents’ place until I had space for it.”

“Is… is this normal?” I’d never heard of such a thing, but she idly tapped a hoof on the floor as if it were the most ordinary of conversations.

“Sure. I’ve had roommates before, especially at culinary school. When you can’t afford better, you make do, and as long as the bed isn’t so small that it crams you together—which I’ve also had to do, and you do not want,” she added with a scowl, “then it’s not a big deal. Just like having a slumber party.”

“Party?”

Another round of that giggling, more lyrical this time, like when Father would get out his fiddle on a winter’s evening. “Boy, do you have a lot to learn.”

More than I would have thought.

“If you’re uncomfortable with that,” she continued, swinging her hind legs where they dangled from her seat, “then I can bring up a few sofa cushions from downstairs and sleep on the floor. Not a problem.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of taking thy bed from thee!” The whole point of this was new experiences, after all. “Sharing will work fine. Except—” I must have blushed, as my cheeks felt dreadfully warm “—the morning sunlight maketh me sneeze. Twice. Every morning. I hope it will not wake thee.”

That only caused her to laugh, a full, round one that brought to mind a bouncing ball. “I’ll be up well before the sun so we can have plenty of baked goods ready for the breakfast crowd. You won’t bother me.”

In troth, I didn’t mean I would sneeze in bed. Still asleep at sunrise? Of course not!

I liked her already.

Still a bit dark outside, but Cup Cake scurried around, furiously stirring the mixing bowl held in the crook of her arm. I’d just taken a pan of muffins out of the oven and thrown another log in to heat it up for the pies next in line when the bell on the door tinkled and in strode a thin stallion with a mail carrier’s uniform.

I snapped the oven shut and strode to the counter with a warm smile, just like she had instructed me. “How may I help thee?”

“You,” Cup Cake hissed at me.

For a moment, I squinted and glanced back and forth between them. “You,” she repeated, rolling her eyes toward the stallion. “Like we practiced.”

Ah! I took a breath and stood straighter. “How may I help… you?” Then in a sharp whisper to Cup Cake: “It sounds too familiar.” Good ponies kept up decorum. But she only pointed at him again.

“Coffee and a blueberry danish,” he said without even looking at me.

So I gently put his pastry in a paper bag and poured him a hot cup from the carafe. All the while, he studied his newspaper, and when he took his order, he left four coins on the counter. Before I could respond, he’d left.

“Is this enough?” I asked.

She only giggled at me, and I could do nothing but stand there. Had I made a mistake?

“Coffee and danish is three bits.”

“Then I must return his change!” I scooped up the extra coin and started out the door—

And she laughed, as full as she had yesterday evening. “He doesn’t want it. That’s for you. It’s a tip.”

“A tip?”

“A little extra, for you to keep, because you provided good service.” Then, with a jolt, she returned to her frenzied mixing and poured the batter over a baking sheet.

Why would the customers need to pay me? “But thou saidst—” A scowl flashed at me. Yes, we had practiced. “Y-you said you would pay…” Maybe I just didn’t understand things. She said she would, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel entitled to that. I didn’t even know how the rules worked.

“Of course I’ll pay you! But whatever the customers decide to leave in tips is yours, too.” The empty bowl clanked around in the sink, but then she put an elbow on her hip. “Nopony ever tipped me a whole bit for a coffee and danish.”

Like frost on a windowpane, a chill crept up my shoulders. I’d offended her! “I am sorry! I will not accept it next time!”

But a devilish little grin had wormed its way across her face. “Oh yes you will!” In an instant, she stood right in front of me, and she undid my hairbun, the tresses and curls and ringlets unleashed to tumble down my neck. She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth, poked and prodded my mane here and there, and fluffed it up on the sides. Then she nodded sharply. “There.”

Other ponies could see me like this? “I-I don’t know.” Good ponies didn’t show off.

“Relax. Tomorrow we’ll find you a more colorful dress.”

And the sun chose that moment to make it up to my eyes. “Hi-choo!” I wiped my nose, which of course meant I had to wash my hooves before handling food again. Then another high-pitched sneeze followed.

“My word, you are adorable!” Cup Cake said.

By lunchtime, I’d made over sixty-five bits in tips.

I could barely keep my eyes open that evening. We’d enjoyed a nice salad and a carrot soup for supper. I’d insisted on making the soup myself, since she was easily as tired as I, if not more so. But I couldn’t get over how comfortable it felt, around that little table with its two little chairs, in her—our room.

Not that hard work had ever bothered me—I’d put in plenty a grueling day on the rock farms around home. But dealing with so much noise and so many faces. It was exhausting.

Soon enough, we’d finished our meal and lit a lamp against the encroaching darkness, then Cup Cake retired to the bed with a book. If only I’d brought my sewing supplies with me! I could have started on another quilt, as long as I could find enough scrap cloth. I wouldn’t dream of replacing her grandmother’s, but perhaps she could use one for bundling up in her chair when the weather turned cold. Or for when she furnished more of the house.

So I merely sat there contemplating the swaying trees out the window.

“You can borrow one, if you like,” she said, pointing at the small stack of books on the floor next to her side of the bed.

“What are they?”

“Romance novels,” she replied with a smirk. “A bit of a guilty pleasure.”

Romance? “You… you wish to learn?”

She broke into that very loud laugh again, but her cheeks burned red as a new barn. “No—well, I… Look, I read them for fun. For entertainment.”

Reading for entertainment.

The blush just as quickly gone, she glanced down at the pile of books. “Grab the one on the bottom. It’s the third in the series, but it’s the best one. I don’t think you’ll be lost.”

I got up from my chair and gingerly took a step toward her.

“Go on,” she urged me with a smile.

So I took it. I walked around the bed, settled into my side—far against the edge of the mattress, like last night, after I’d first stumbled out of the forest—and opened the cover. Just some ponies talking. Nothing instructional. I had no interest in them or their conversation. How could Cup Cake find this entertaining? Perhaps I should simply go to sleep, but I ought to give it a fair chance, so I read through a few more pages, and then—

They kissed. Again and again they kissed, and they ran their hooves through each other’s manes.

My head swam, and I snapped the cover closed. Ponies read about such things? If I weren’t already in bed, I might have needed to sit down to avoid fainting. Good ponies didn’t trivialize matters of love as entertainment. Cup Cake looked over and raised her eyebrows. “You okay?”

I nodded hurriedly, and with my own cheeks now feeling like a hot coal from the hearth, I opened the book again and found my place.

Two days later, I’d begun to get into the routine of things. A little, at least. The lunch rush had us both racing around to pull bread out of the ovens before it burned, throw another batch in right afterward, and attend to the customers.

More tips. I didn’t even know what to do with the things! Upstairs, I still had the money Father had given me, as Cup Cake wouldn’t let me pay her for anything. In fact, I had even more now, since she paid me for working in the bakery. But those tips—I couldn’t figure out anything more to do with them than stack them behind the counter, and I’d already knocked them over three times today.

Cup Cake shook her head. They weren’t in her way, but they did steal my time whenever I had to pick them up again. “Why don’t you put that in the bank?”

It seemed like every day she sprang something new on me. “The bank?” I asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“Yes.” She scribbled out a receipt and greeted another customer quickly before turning back to me. “They keep your money for you, so you don’t have to. It stays safe that way, and since they get to borrow it while they have it, they even pay you. And you can get it out again whenever.”

More money? I had no idea what to do with this pile. They were her bakery’s customers. It should be her money. “Why would I do that?” Good ponies didn’t hoard money, anyway.

“So you can save up and buy something you want.” Cup Cake grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off her brow.

“But I don’t want anything.” Yet another stallion took a long look at me before stuttering out his order. And once more, Cup Cake shook her head, at both him and me.

Somehow, she’d managed to talk me into letting her apply some makeup to my face this morning. Only a small amount, but I still looked so drastically different when I sat in front of the mirror. I-I didn’t recognize—like a stranger staring back at me, bewitching, compelling, and I couldn’t stop touching my face to see if it was really me. It didn’t feel quite right, but she said that was the whole point of the roam-springa: to try new things. I cried a little, and she had to redo the… eyeliner, she called it.

But I kind of liked it.

The stallion left me a three-bit tip on a ten-bit check.

With a chuckle, Cup Cake strode over. “If you want to treat me so much, then why don’t you take five minutes and go buy us a couple of ciders from the Sweet Apple Acres stand? They’d be awfully good on a hot day.”

Finally! I brightened up and pointed at the half-collapsed tower of tips, a weighty cascade much like a cave-in at one of the rock farm’s mines. “Is this enough?”

Another of her bouncing laughs, and I couldn’t help joining her in it. Then she pulled four coins from the scree and stuffed them in my apron pocket. “There.” And she shooed me out the door.

I presumed the booth I sought was the one in the distance with the large apple sign. Indeed, it drew a large crowd; if the cider tasted as good as Cup Cake said, then surely I had the right place. Then the shouting started.

From the adjacent booth, a stallion ranted about how pears were superior. And a green mare responded with equal vitriol about how much better apples were. The crowd divided, each side egging the other on, and before long, fruit began flying. I should have fainted dead on the spot from the violent display! But all I could think about was that there I stood, ponies yelling and pressing in on me from all directions. Less than a week ago, I would have crumpled to the ground and curled up into a ball, weeping. But I’d gotten used to it.

As deftly as I could, I slipped up to the apple stand, grabbed two bottles, and left my four bits on the counter. The green mare never saw me.

When I returned to the bakery, I found Cup Cake in conversation with a mare: light-toned coat and a wavy orange mane and tail, done up in ties.

“Cloudy Quartz!” Cup Cake called, practically bouncing on her hooves as she beckoned me over. “I want you to meet Pear Butter. She’s my best friend, and she’s the one who got me started baking!”

“Pleased to make thine—” a soft hiss from Cup Cake “—y-your acquaintance.” I briefly bowed my head to her before setting the bottles on the counter.

“Sorry,” Cup Cake said to her as soon as Pear Butter had seen the apple picture on them—of course! Whatever feud had happened out there, and she with “pear” in her name. Except she smiled.

She waved a hoof. “Don’t be. I don’t mind at all.” Then she turned to me. “Please, all my friends call me Buttercup.” Did nopony use their real name around here? “I didn’t know Swirly had hired on help. But you sure got this place hoppin’. Good to see!”

No surprise that I would immediately take to somepony that important to Cup Cake. But they had already moved themselves away from the customers, and I didn’t wish to intrude. “Thank you. I hope we will get a chance to talk later, but I have to keep things ‘hopping.’” With a smile, I took my bottle and retreated into the kitchen, where half a dozen timers were about to go off anyway.

I did peek out through the little window in the door, and they sat there laughing and chatting. Good that the unsightly business outside hadn’t affected Buttercup too badly.

I’d barely gotten the cork out of the bottle when two buzzers and a bell went off. As I’d heard Cup Cake say more than once in the last few days, no rest for the weary.

That night, I sat on my side of the bed, scooted in a little from the edge so I had space to put my bookmark there. I’d finished the one book already and started into my second. Cup Cake lay sprawled across her side, wafting air over herself with a magazine.

“They just opened up that new electric fan store down the street. I think we should invest in one,” she said.

I nodded at first, and when I got to the end of a paragraph, I leaned over to grab my change purse on the floor. “Is this enough?”

She tried to scowl at me, but her broad grin betrayed her. “Tomorrow, we’re going to have a discussion on how much things cost.”

Cup Cake didn’t have a book out; she just lay there doing nothing. The lamp would only heat up the room more, so I stuffed my bookmark in place and got up to shut it off. “Not yet,” she said, waving a hoof. “I’m expecting someone.”

“A visitor? At this hour?” That book was getting put away no matter what now.

“Yeah. Weekly delivery of supplies for the bakery. Sacks of flour and such. It’s easier at this time of day so it doesn’t interrupt the business.” A sigh huffed out her nose, and she rolled onto her belly, propping her chin up on her forehooves, only inches from me. “I ordered a little extra this time. If you wouldn’t mind helping me, I wanted to surprise Buttercup by making a nice cake for her.”

What a friendly gesture! “Of course I’ll help. She seems like a nice mare. I hope she’ll stop by when we’re less busy so I can get to know her.”

Right away, Cup Cake’s eyes lit up like a flint-spark, dancing on the kindling in clear winter air. “She’s wonderful! You’ll never meet a sweeter mare!”

She rolled toward me, her voice primed to say more, but a knock sounded at the door downstairs. And with a jackrabbit’s leap, she vaulted off the bed and to the stairs. “Help me carry?” she called behind her, already halfway down to the showroom.

By the time I’d made my way there, she had two bags of sugar on the counter, and an orange stallion unloaded three large flour sacks onto the shelf beside the kitchen door. “Oh, um,” Cup Cake said as she paused on her way outside to fetch more, “this is Carrot Cake. He works for the bakery supply company.” Then she swung a hoof toward me. “Carrot Cake, Cloudy Quartz.”

He turned to say hello, but my gaze remained fixed on Cup Cake. She looked at him the same way Buttercup had looked at those cider bottles. What did it mean? Anyway, I waved a hoof at him and stared after Cup Cake, sauntering back in with a crate of eggs balanced on her withers. “How much more of the stuff in the wagon is mine?” she asked.

Without missing a beat, he hopped right to her side. “Let me help you with those eggs. One more crate of them, plus three canisters of milk and a package of butter.” I’d never seen a goofier grin on any stallion’s face, except maybe for a few of my customers lately. Good thing I’d put my hair up in a bun for the night, or he might have grinned at me.

For the first time, a jolt ran through my brain. “Wrong! What have you been doing, flaunting yourself in front of others? Shameful!” But I kind of liked it. I liked feeling good about myself. I liked feeling—

Pretty.

But I’d washed the makeup off and put my hair away to get ready for bed. Why had I gone through all that in the first place? To become a spectacle? Good ponies didn’t seek the spotlight. I wiped my cheeks dry, and no eyeliner to leave evidence of it this time. Standing there like a fool, and I hadn’t helped carry in a single thing.

I rushed upstairs, returning to my side of the bed, the one place I could even pretend to call my own. “Is she okay?” I heard Carrot Cake say.

Cup Cake never asked. I don’t know why she didn’t, and I don’t know why that bothered me. Good ponies mind their own business, after all.

I had let her put some makeup on me again before we started work, and I wore my mane down—less humid now, so it hung straighter—but I couldn’t enjoy it today. It didn’t even get me any more tips, since I’d spent the morning in the kitchen, but I didn’t want them anyway. I wished Cup Cake would just let me give them to her.

We’d started on the cake she’d decided to make for Buttercup, and true to her word, Cup Cake let me help! Even with the clouds hanging over my head today, I found myself smiling. I’d learned enough about baking that she could let me handle some of the simpler steps unsupervised, so I’d cooked the bottom layer and put the basic coat of icing on it. All by myself! She’d mixed the batter with a special blend of flavorings, and she would come in later to decorate it, but the show of trust had me humming along.

Of course, we couldn’t let Buttercup see it, which is why we kept it here in the back room, but that also meant I wouldn’t get to see her if she stopped by to visit again. She seemed very friendly, and I hadn’t really gotten an opportunity to meet her yet.

Cup Cake pushed her way through the swinging door, and not much conversation carried in—the lunch rush wouldn’t hit for another half hour. “Ooh, looks like things are coming along nicely!” she said. She did glance at my plain black and white collar—since day one, she’d kept declaring that we’d have to go shopping for some more colorful clothes, but she’d never followed through, thank goodness.

“Yes, the top layer will come out of the oven in twelve minutes. I’ve got a piping bag ready with the icing recipe you gave me, and I cleared space in the refrigerator to store it overnight. Were you talking to her out there?” I would have put my hair up in a bun today if I’d known I’d be working in the kitchen all day. I had to wear a hairnet anyway, and it kept making my neck itch.

“I did,” she replied with a nod and a roll of her eyes. “And I desperately needed to restock the muffins, but I couldn’t risk Buttercup following me in here. So I had to chat and chat.” A knowing giggle fluttered up from her throat, and then she grabbed one of the pans of cooling muffins.

By the time we added the upper tier, this cake would get pretty heavy. “Will you need help carrying it to her house?”

Cup Cake shook her head. “No, I can handle it. We’d have to close up shop if both of us went, but I’m not going to her house anyway. She heads off into the woods somewhere most afternoons. I’ll just try to catch her on her way out or follow her if I can’t keep up.”

She whisked the muffins out to the display case, but still quiet in the salesroom, so she soon returned. “Last thing I need is a few pears to garnish it. I’ll take over on the cake—could you step out to the market and buy a half dozen?”

With a nod, I set down my spatula and undid my apron, then held the swinging door open and grabbed a hoofful of bits off my—off the tip pile. “Is this enough?”

“Yes, it’s enough. We still need to have that talk,” she said with a pointed stare.

The one about money, or the one about clothes? She never seemed to get around to either.

The lull inside the shop was precisely mirrored outside, as I returned in less than five minutes with the needed pears. Cup Cake had just added the upper tier to the cake and slathered icing all over it. “Come here, come here!” she said, gesturing me toward her. “Would you like to learn?” She held up the piping bag as if it were a trophy.

I-I couldn’t possibly try something that important and decadent. Cakes were enough of a sweet indulgence, but adding all that ostentatious decoration? Just like wearing makeup. Good ponies didn’t fiddle with what nature had given them. “N-no, I couldn’t afford to mess up your gift.”

“C’mon. It’d mean a lot to Buttercup that you helped. She thinks you’re nice.” Her lopsided grin, her easy posture. My face burned.

“Okay,” I mumbled. Try new things, then decide which ones good ponies would do.

So she stood me next to the cake, reached her hooves around me to help me guide a nice crinkled bead along the side of the bottom layer, dipping down and back up like bunting. Then she gently talked me through adding shaped dollops, regularly spaced, with careful control of pressure on the bag. It looked… it looked wonderful! The arm around me gave me a squeeze.

“See? You can do it.” That wonderful warm hug, but then she backed off. “Now try the top layer yourself, okay?”

My knees shook. “N-no, I can’t!”

“Sure you can. Just try.” Her smile radiated almost as much warmth as the hug. “If you mess it up, I can fix it. No problem.”

I swallowed. Hard. Then I leaned forward, tracing out the same delicate white ribbons, but it started to get bunched up, and I moved the bag, too fast! The icing began to drip, I reached out to catch it and—

And knocked the upper tier off. It landed on the floor and broke apart.

I stood there shaking, as quiet as I could, but the tears ran down my face, and that stupid eyeliner with them. I set the piping bag on the table and crouched to the ground, hiding my face with my icing-smeared hooves. Good ponies didn’t step outside their limitations.

“Hey. Hey, now.” Another warm hug, but one I most definitely didn’t deserve. “It’s okay. See, we’ll fix it up. I told you I could.” She rummaged around in the cabinet and pulled out some silk leaves, arranged them over the bare spot in the middle of the cake, and put one of the whole pears amid the greenery. “See, it’s fine. No harm done.”

Slowly, I started picking up the crumbled pieces, but she stopped me. “I’ve got it,” she said. “It’s okay. You go out and wait on customers, and I’ll finish up in here. Alright?” I nodded and let the pieces fall, but I kept staring at my hooves. “Really. It’s okay.”

Then she lifted my chin and took a napkin, dabbing off the eyeliner. Not just the smudges, but all of it. The lipstick, the rouge, the eye shadow. And the icing. All gone. It felt better that way.

She looked me in the eye and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s alright.”

What else could I do? I wiped my hooves on a towel, went out to the counter, and worked the showroom alone for the next hour. I didn’t make very much in tips, either.

Good.

Cup Cake had managed to repair the damage, and she decided to keep her gift at a single tier. Easier to carry and more likely Buttercup could eat it all before it went stale. As she’d planned, she went out the next day, in the afternoon, once Buttercup had left for whatever she did in the woods.

Alone now. Well, not alone. I had plenty of customers. And plenty of tips. I didn’t dare try putting on makeup by myself, not after that disaster with the cake. Cup Cake had sensed it somehow, and she’d gently asked if I’d like her to, just a little. “Please,” I’d said.

My mane, tumbling down my neck, just like those tips, tumbling down the pile. I’d finally salvaged an old flour sack from the trash to keep them in, so they wouldn’t spill all over. I should have put them in the bank, even if it meant I’d never see them again.

“How may I help thee?” I said to the next pony in line. I didn’t even feel like fighting it right now.

“Sesame seed bagel and jasmine tea,” she answered, giggling at my choice of words.

“Wouldst thou prefer a small or large tea?” Somewhere in my mind, her response registered, and I got the correct size. Four bits, but of course she left me six. The cute oddity at Sugarcube Corner, as Cup Cake had decided to call her shop.

With the lunch crowd waning to a trickle, I took advantage of the lull to wipe down the unused tables, refill the napkin dispensers, and sweep the area by the door. New things, all.

The Pairing Stone had made my betrothal to Igneous Rock Pie. A respectable stallion, one whom I’d known since foalhood. We got along well, and I did like him. But did I love him?

I hadn’t really considered that. The roam-springa tests us. It tests us in everything. I needed to see whether life in our rock farming community suited me. Would I find that I couldn’t live without the indulgence of wearing makeup? Had I gotten so used to having lots of ponies around me that the village would leave me feeling lonely in comparison? I hadn’t even begun to sample things like clothes or material wealth. They rubbed me the wrong way, but should I push myself to try them, just in case? Good ponies follow the rules. Even the rules that say to break the rules.

Did I love him?

Without me noticing, Cup Cake had galloped up to the door, and presently she came bursting through. She grabbed me by the withers and tugged me back into the kitchen, leaving me no option. Patiently, I waited until her panting abated, and then in a harsh whisper: “She’s been meeting Bright Mac in the woods. An Apple! Can you imagine?”

I’d only witnessed the rancor in the marketplace one day, but yes, I could imagine how that might go over with their parents. But if there was any more to it—

“They’re in love!” Cup Cake squealed with a most infectious grin. “They’re in love, they’re in love,” she sang as she twirled over the cold tile floor, spinning through her orbit until she’d returned to me. She held my face in her hooves and locked dreamy eyes on mine. Finally a soft whisper as she leaned close: “They’re in love.”

She was so kind, and we got along wonderfully. My face, warm, and I started to wobble. Before the feeling passed, I-I—

Try new things.

I closed the last few inches between us and kissed her, on the mouth.

I could have floated up to the ceiling, and my eyelids drooped, but I never lost sight of her. Wide-eyed at first, understandably, but then she relaxed—no, deflated. Her ears sagged, and she neither pressed in nor pulled away. She merely let me have my fill of it.

When I finally broke off, I licked my lips, and my breath came in spurts. “I’m sorry,” I wheezed. How could I be so naive? Just because she’d befriended me didn’t mean there had to be more, or even that there could. I saw that very starkly now, after I’d blindly stumbled into the trap. It had never meant that around the rock farms, so why would it here? Some things so different, some things painfully the same, and me caught in the middle of it all, trying to force things to happen just for the sake of it.

Like she could ever fall in love with me.

“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t you apologize.”

“I’m sorry.” They were in love. Of course. Buttercup had gazed so longingly at the apple on that bottle. The same way Cup Cake had gazed at Carrot.

“No, no, no. You have nothing to be sorry for.” She pulled me into a hug, with my muzzle close to her ear, and I could detect the ever-present smell of vanilla on her. The customer bell rang, but she didn’t budge a muscle.

“I’ll leave,” I said through my tears. “I’ll find somewhere else to live.”

She only hugged me tighter. “No. This changes nothing between us. We’ve become good friends, and I won’t give that up over an innocent mistake. You were only doing what you thought you were supposed to, new experiences—I-I’d pushed you into some, too, a-and I’m sorry. Don’t you apologize for anything.”

“Hello?” called a voice from the salesroom. “Anypony here?”

Over and over again, her hoof ran up and down my back. “You poor dear.”

And she held me. She held me as long as I needed.

Author's Note

The story is already completely written, so I'll be updating on a regular schedule. Coming up next on May 24, Chapter 2: Vote of Confidence.

Chapter 2: Vote of Confidence

I removed my glasses and wiped a smudge off them while the young mare continued scribbling her notes. “Thankfully, that little stunt didn’t ruin our friendship,” I said. “I had no idea what I was doing, and I’d made a very foolhardy move, considering Cup Cake served not only as my boss, but also my landlady and only friend.”

Even the young mare—it felt so impersonal to keep thinking of her that way. That same envelope I’d fidgeted with through the whole tale still danced over my hooves, so I glanced at the return address. No name, just the street number. She must have signed the letter, but I couldn’t recall what it said.

Even she’d blushed at my antics. One of the graces of growing up is that we can laugh at our ill-advised exploits, though.

“Cup Cake had of course assisted Buttercup in sneaking around to meet Bright Mac as much as possible.” With a sly grin, I added, “And I played no small part myself. It finally gave me the chance to befriend Buttercup and learn why Cup Cake held her in such high esteem. We quickly became as thick as thieves, as the expression goes.”

The mare silently chuckled as she paused to file her pencil to a sharper point.

“You can see the problem already, I presume?” I asked.

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t lose her smile either.

“‘Try new things’ had become my mantra, and I did explore what life had to offer, quite faithfully, but I’d gotten oddly fixated on the romance side of things. That would come and go, but—”

I let out a sigh. “Ah, I’m getting ahead of myself. Oh—can I offer you something to drink?”

She shook her head. But I caught myself looking toward the door anyway. Noise echoing in from all the customers. This had been a storage room back then, but now a lounge for the family. Directly above me, the bedroom Cup Cake and I used to share, now my daughter Pinkie’s. Sugarcube Corner would never fail to make me smile, and if I could wedge in a visit with Pinkie in order to meet this young mare and indulge her request for an interview, so much the better. This place would never change.

“Given time,” I continued, “my embarrassment faded, and Cup Cake and I resumed our friendship as if I had never made that blunder. With her naturally affable personality—” over the rest of the noise, that same round laugh rang out, and I couldn’t suppress a giggle of my own “—it took a grand total of two days for the awkwardness to pass.”

With the mare’s pencil tip hovering above her page, her eyes glinted at my growing smile.

“Then we only got into more mischief than ever.”

Buttercup gave my shoulder a rough shove as the three of us ducked down behind a low brick wall near the bridge over the river. A fairly white brick at that, but I didn’t dwell on it too long. As the saying went, classification of clay minerals is best left to those with too much time on their hooves. “Why didn’t you tell me you helped bake that cake for me?” she said. “That was so sweet of you! And delicious, by the way.”

“I have to credit Cup Cake for delicious. I had nothing to do with the recipe,” I replied. Cup Cake popped her head up to catch another glimpse of our quarry.

Well, their quarry. I still had little stomach for trickery and subterfuge, but their exhortations of “It’s for a good cause!” eventually won me over. But surely they’d gone too far! Good ponies didn’t instigate needless hardship.

Grand Pear shortly came trundling over the bridge with his wagon, and just past our hiding place, had to stop to wait for the cross-traffic to clear. Cup Cake darted around the end of the wall and to the back of his wagon. She tied a rope to the rear gate and the other end to the wagon beside his, then ducked down behind cover with us once more.

Buying time was one thing, but taking pleasure in others’ misfortune? As planned, Grand Pear’s wagon and the other turned opposite ways at the intersection, and once the rope went taut: bam! Both rear gates swung open, leaving his cargo of pears to tumble into the roadway behind him and mix with the other’s load of—

Apples.

Only now did I see the green mare stalking over to inspect the carnage. Then she glanced at Grand Pear as if just noticing him. “You!” she spat.

Oh dear. “Did you know she’d be the other one you got?” I hissed. Cup Cake vigorously shook her head, but a huge smile had sprouted across her face. Buttercup, too, giggling uncontrollably as the two ponies argued ever more loudly in the road. “Is it really wise to antagonize them? It’s only going to make your situation worse.”

Cup Cake’s and Buttercup’s grins did diminish somewhat, like a wilting flower, but only until Cup Cake spoke up. “That should keep them busy for a while. Go on, now!”

“Eeyup!” Buttercup answered with a salute, then she slipped under the bridge and dashed down the riverbank, out of sight of the road. And on into the Whitetail Woods, where Bright Mac no doubt awaited her.

Still, it was kind of funny, I guessed. A “prank,” Buttercup had called it. Celestia forgive me for partaking in one, and if I ever had children, I’d make sure they knew not to engage in such a disrespectful endeavor. Funny, I’d never much considered having children, but now that the thought had bubbled up like a mineral spring, Igneous Rock came to mind.

Then my face flashed cold as a giggle sounded behind me. And not from Cup Cake.

“Who’d you get this time?” the newcomer said.

Cup Cake turned around and cocked her head toward the road. “Pear ’n’ Apple.”

“Too easy.” Then the two flung their arms around each other and laughed, leaving me to gape at them.

“We had a reason. Now Buttercup will have a good half hour to see Bright Mac while their parents are tied up.” Cup Cake jabbed her with an elbow, but curiously, this other mare paled a bit. She knew something, but Cup Cake hadn’t noticed. Not that I dared to bring it up.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cup Cake said. “This is Mayor Mare, only last year empowered to lead our fine town. Mayor, this is my friend and assistant, Cloudy Quartz.”

The ice in my brain only intensified. “Mayor?” I said to Cup Cake. “And you’re just going to tell her what we’ve done?” Here barely a month, and now I’d already run afoul of law enforcement.

“Relax,” Cup Cake said with a chuckle. “Mayor Mare’s done plenty of pranks with us before.”

“You have?” I asked, and Mayor Mare replied with a nod and smile. “Do the other ponies in town know?”

Instantly, both of them shook their heads. “No,” Mayor Mare said. “And that’s half the thrill. By the way, I’m glad to finally meet ‘the cute mare at the bakery’ everypony’s been talking about.”

Ponies said that? I ducked my head. Good ponies should only have reputations for being good ponies.

“You could have come over to buy something and see for yourself,” Cup Cake muttered.

Mayor Mare only laughed. “Please. My hours are worse than yours.”

“But you have time for pranks.”

“A permanent entry in my schedule. If you want one of those played on you, I can pencil you in for next Thursday.”

Cup Cake rolled her eyes, and they exchanged another hug. I couldn’t help staring—had I ever found myself in a weirder situation? Still, I had to admit, the thrill of it, doing something I really shouldn’t, had a bit of a compelling feeling to it, as long as I didn’t cross any lines, like when I’d kissed—

Ugh. If Cup Cake really wanted to embarrass me, she only had to tell Mayor Mare of that incident.

“Either way,” Mayor Mare continued, “it’s nice to meet you at long last, Cloudy Quartz. And you’re just as adorable as everypony says.”

My face warmed terribly, and I diverted my gaze up to the road.

A traffic jam had built up behind the blocked intersection, and only those wagons with two ponies pulling them could make it across the mud to cut the corner. And one of those single-pony wagons still waiting—

I vaulted the wall and dashed up the embankment. “Carrot Cake!” I called.

“Y-yes?” He blinked at me. “Oh, you’re the mare who works for Chiffon Swirl. I hope we didn’t upset you that one night.”

“No, don’t worry yourself with it. Really.” Cup Cake had never asked, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t, unfortunately, though it had taken quite a while. I did help carry in some of the deliveries after that, but we never struck up a conversation. Mostly because he never took his eyes off Cup Cake. “I wondered if you needed help moving your wagon, though.”

“Um… sure. Thank you for the offer,” he said, bowing slightly.

Under his confused gaze, I clambered into his wagon so I could see all the way back down the slope. “Cup Cake!” I shouted, over the din of Grand Pear and the green mare’s argument. “Up here!” She glared back, presumably since I’d revealed her hiding place, but with Buttercup gone, I didn’t see how anypony would think her culpable. When she saw whose wagon I’d commandeered, she blushed a deep red. She did start on the way up, albeit very slowly.

“Sh-she’d really help me?” And Carrot flashed what was now the goofiest grin I’d ever seen. “She was one year older than me, in the next class, but I was always so tall and gangly, yet… she’d say hello to me every day. The only one who would.”

Rather like Igneous Rock, always kind and helpful to the children in the younger class.

Anyway, I had a hunch. “And late-night baking deliveries aren’t very common for you, I would guess.”

Like Father puffing on his pipe, Carrot Cake let out a gentle sigh. “For her. Only for her. She’s the sweetest mare you could ever hope to meet.”

Cup Cake must have heard the last few words of that. Her glare melted into a playful smirk at me. “I hear you need a push,” she said quietly.

For a moment, he merely stared through half-lidded eyes. Then he jolted up straight. “Y-yes! And s-since I’m heading into town anyway, w-would you mind if I walked you back to… to your… um…” I hopped down from his wagon, and his eyes snapped fully open again. “Bakery.”

“Oh! Um, yes!” While Carrot wasn’t looking, Cup Cake flashed me a very toothy grin. “Thank you, that’s very considerate, Carrot. I’d like that.” I hadn’t known Cup Cake to leave her shop closed during normal business hours, but she’d hung a “back in 30 minutes” sign in the window to attend to our prank, and no doubt she’d stand about talking to Carrot even after she’d returned.

I could have accompanied them, of course—I still had the rest of the workday—but something told me Cup Cake wouldn’t mind the delay. So off they strolled, and my good-bye wave went unnoticed.

“You learn quickly,” Mayor Mare said as she walked up behind me.

At first, I nodded, but then I turned on her, like the weathervane on our barn when the wind shifted. “How did you even know to come out here if you have so little spare time?”

She tilted her nose skyward. “Traffic pegasus warned me we might have a back-up. Though I never thought Cup Cake would be behind it.” She added a smirk as she gave me a once-over. “Or you.”

And that sinking feeling started anew. “A-am I in trouble?”

Another full laugh, not as round as Cup Cake’s—more angular, like chiseled stone.

“No.” She patted me on the shoulder, and I allowed my held breath to deflate. “Though it does mean you’re stuck walking back to town with me, since your co-conspirators seem to have other business. Shall we?” she said, extending a hoof along the road.

So I started on our way. In silence at first, as Mayor Mare apparently had a week’s worth of agendas dancing around in her thoughts. I hated to interrupt her, but Cup Cake had encouraged me to be more social. Try new things, after all. It wouldn’t always fail. Good ponies believed in themselves.

“Cup Cake said you just got into office last year. What did you do before that?” Curiously, her eyes went unfocused for a moment before she shook her head and gave me a wan smile.

“Oh, this and that.” Then a wistful gaze at… her cutie mark?

A scroll, not unusual for an administrator, or so I’d heard—she brought the total of mayors I’d met to one. But unrolled a trifle? I hadn’t heard of that. A little flowing script exposed as well, just a partial line: “rocky with promise, overgrown with heart.” What did that mean?

But she noticed me reading, averted her gaze from me, and quickened her pace. I’d have to ask Cup Cake later.

“So, um, I haven’t met many ponies from around the rock farms before. What brings you out here?” she asked.

“Cup Cake hasn’t told you?” I trotted a little faster to catch up.

Her mane bobbing with each step, she shook her head, and the slight frown faded. “I don’t see her that often. Maybe only once since you arrived, though I certainly wish we could get together more.”

“Ah. Have you heard of the roam-springa?”

Again, she shook her head. But as she turned her attention to me once more, I caught sight of the exquisite blue tone of her eyes.

“We are to see what the world has to offer and decide whether we desire it more than returning home,” I said.

“Interesting,” she answered, pursing her lips. “So how’s that working out for you?”

“I-I don’t know.” Odd how she was barely older than I, yet she carried such an authoritative air. I could see how she’d easily command respect. Not intimidating, though. Igneous Rock was like that, too. He instilled confidence. “Not so well, I guess.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” she replied.

I didn’t even know what I was doing. How could I answer that? “Just… I have to try new things. It gets a little overwhelming at times, though. Cup Cake helps.”

More of that angular giggling followed. “Yes, she would. You’re in good hooves.”

A gentle smile, and those captivating blue eyes. But she’d kept up the more rigorous pace, and now we’d drawn near to town hall. A shame—I’d only really gotten to know Cup Cake so far, and Buttercup somewhat. I seemed to get along with Mayor Mare, too.

“Now, I know you’ve been working hard at it,” she started, “but sometimes ponies need a rest, too.” She squinted one eye at me and gathered my mane up in a ball. “You can let down the facade with me, if you need to.” Really? But Cup Cake—“It won’t make her mad,” she said as if reading my mind.

“Then I thank thee for accompanying me back to town.” I gave her a small bow. Her smile grew even bigger, and she closed her eyes. If she had the time to spare, then why not? It’d give Cup Cake and Carrot longer to talk as well. “If thou shouldst wish to make thy way to yon Sugarcube Corner at any time, we would both be happy to see thee.”

Quietly, she chuckled to herself. “Oh, everypony was right. You are adorable.”

It was refreshing. She really enjoyed me as myself, at my most relaxed. Cup Cake did, too, I know, but she wanted to help me accomplish my goals so badly that she didn’t often let up.

Strange as well that Igneous Rock saw things from quite the opposite direction. Here, Mayor Mare delighting in me at my most… formal? I didn’t see it that way, as it was my natural state, but Igneous Rock liked seeing the threads come undone, just a bit.

My first day in grade school, Mother had taught me how to do my mane up in a bun, but I hadn’t mastered the skill yet, and before lunch, a few tresses had come unleashed. He’d eyed them with a smile.

For years afterward, we’d play together when our chores permitted, and I’d undo my bun a little, for him. Only for him. And I told Mayor Mare all this. I’d never revealed it to anypony else, but those deep blue eyes, so disarming. Another mistake? Good ponies shouldn’t bare their innermost selves to strangers.

Then I talked about trifles and nonsense and nothing at all for the next half an hour, if not more. I got what Cup Cake encouraged me to do, but for once, to feel like somepony appreciated me for me.

No, that wasn’t fair to Cup Cake. She did appreciate me, but to let loose all the barriers to where I didn’t have to tend them like a garden—

I could have talked for many more hours.

Two things Mayor Mare had said yesterday stuck in my mind: that she didn’t get to visit her friends much, and that I needed a place of rest from all the newness. She’d already shown me that the latter could exist wherever she was, even in a bustling street in the middle of town. And to the former, I could bring friends to her. Me, in person, if I could call myself a friend yet, and a nice token from Cup Cake.

Lunchtime, with most of the municipal staff on break. I’d strolled through deserted hallways with some pastries balanced on my back—I guess that made them desserted hallways? Th-the absurdity!

Cup Cake was rubbing off on me far too much, but was it ever fun!

In any case, I soon located the mayor’s office. The receptionist at the beginning of the maze of corridors assured me that she hadn’t left, so I knocked on the door.

“Come in!” came a voice, muffled by the thick oak barrier.

It was a little dim when I poked my head inside, but her face immediately lit up. “I thought that since you—” Ah, yes. I gave her a knowing grin. “That since thou canst not get to the bakery very often, I would surprise thee by bringing thee a treat.”

Her soft chuckling echoed throughout the room, but she soon blushed. “I’m afraid I have to be very honest with you. I did want to give you the opportunity to relax from working on your speech and… whatever, but really. Do what you’re comfortable with at the moment. That’s all I want: for you to be comfortable. But I must confess—I find your accent and speech very charming. I might have had a teensy-weensy ulterior motive,” she said with an exaggerated grimace.

Nothing new there. “I do not mind,” I responded, “but in truth, I find my own thoughts a bit jumbled lately. I can speak either way if I put my mind to it, but if I ‘let my hair down,’ as it were, things are a bit… mixed.”

“Then mixed it is,” she said, beaming at me. She waved a hoof around the room. “This office is now a safe space, okay? Whatever slips out slips out, and we don’t worry about it.”

“Agreed.”

“Perfect!” Her eyes sparkling, she licked her lips. “Now, let’s see what goodies you’ve brought.”

Over the age-worn floorboards I trod, each one emitting a pleasant creak. A taste of old amid the new, and one that very much put me in the mind of the farmhouse where I grew up. Each day coming home from school, waving back outside to Igneous Rock if he’d walked me home, then joining Mother in the kitchen to help her split rocks for soup.

I caught myself staring out the window, and Mayor Mare raised an eyebrow at me, but I merely shook my head and sidled up to her desk to slide the tray off my back. “Blueberry tarts today. Three for each of us, but I found the tray difficult to balance, so I ate two before leaving the bakery. That leaves four—two for me and two for thee.”

Her face fell, just a bit. “But that doesn’t—”

Now unencumbered, I rapidly gathered my mane up in a bun. The look on her face! “Twas in jest! Cup Cake only gave me four! Doth that constitute a prank?”

She leaned back in her chair and tapped her hooves together as I burst into laughter, appraising me as if seeing me for the first time again. But she soon joined me in my laughter. “There’s hope for you yet.”

So she bit into her first tart, and I merely sat across the desk from her, watching. “Mmmm. These are good,” she said. “Go ahead, take one.”

It still seemed awfully decadent to eat something so sweet. “No, thank you. You—thou canst—”

She finished chewing and leaned forward. “Please. Relax. Whatever words feel like coming out, let them.”

A long, deep breath. “Okay. You can have them.”

“Seriously, I won’t be able to maintain my girlish figure if Cup Cake keeps sending over dessert for two and you keep making me eat it all,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

Grudgingly, I took one. Very sweet. So I just nibbled on it, little by little.

She’d already finished her second, and then she glanced at the clock. “Don’t let me keep you. If you need to get back—”

“I’m on my lunch break. Carrot Cake just happened to wander by, and I just happened to ask him if he could stand in for me until I returned, so I’m in no hurry,” I said with an oh-so-innocent shrug.

She merely shook her head at me. “Ever more deviant. I like it.”

Her last pastry was long gone, and she’d flicked her eyes toward the remaining one several times. And I hadn’t even made it halfway through my first yet. “Please,” I said. She scooped it up, thank goodness. I would have hated to have to take it back to Sugarcube Corner with me. It might have made Cup Cake feel bad.

One thing still bothered me, though. “The other day,” I started. She perked her ears toward me. “You knew something. When Cup Cake mentioned Buttercup meeting Bright Mac in the woods. You knew something she didn’t.”

She glanced out the window as if somepony might be eavesdropping there. Then she leaned forward. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. But we don’t know each other that well yet. If it were just me, maybe, but this is someone else’s secret.”

I nodded. Good ponies didn’t pry. “I don’t wish to bother y—thee in the middle of thy job.” Quickly, I gulped down the rest of my tart, swept the crumbs into the trash can, and stood to pick up the tray.

She looked stricken. “You don’t have to leave!”

“No, no, I’m not—” I held a hoof to my chest. “I’m not trying to punish you. I simply know you’re busy. You did say yesterday that you barely got to see your friends.”

As she sank into her chair, she absolutely shrank. “Something I’m trying to change. You have to make time for friends. I’ll visit with Cup Cake. Soon.” She cocked her head toward my vacated chair. “And I’d very much like to keep talking to you.”

I sat back down.

Like that immense train engine that had astonished me on my first day here, she let out a hiss of a sigh. “Okay, look. I could actually use the help. Buttercup cannot hear about this, and that means Cup Cake can’t either. But—” she craned her neck to peer into the hallway “—Bright Mac is going to propose to her, sometime this month. He’ll have the ceremony ready to go, and he wants me to officiate. But I can’t carry everything out there myself.”

I didn’t hear a question in there, but I answered anyway. “You can count on me.”

“Excellent.” She rubbed her hooves together. “I figure a rock farmer keeps in good shape”—her eyes wandered down to the three rocks on my flank, and the corners of her mouth turned up again—“so between us, we should be able to handle it all.”

Whatever about my cutie mark had her so interested, I had no idea, but yet another conspiracy? This was getting exciting!

Bright Mac had set a date of almost three weeks later. Meanwhile, I brought a nice lunch treat to Mayor Mare every weekday. I did find it a rather relaxing escape there: not preoccupied with how I sounded, how I looked. The whole time, just comfortable, exactly like she wanted.

If Cup Cake had known, she would have called it a relapse. Not having to concentrate on my speech while in the mayor’s office, not worrying about seeming to flaunt my mane, just wearing it up—it made for a wonderful refuge. I did see the value in Cup Cake’s prodding, but Mayor Mare was right: a pony needed a rest sometimes. I caught her staring more than once, though, in a way that didn’t quite make sense.

Until maybe three days ago, when I’d gotten lost in admiring her eyes again. It turned out we had a lot in common. My love of quilting, and her hobby of cross-stitch, in what little time she had. But I’d bought some fabric and supplies with the tip money, and for the last couple of weeks, I’d worked on a quilt to give Buttercup as a gift. One of the wedding ring patterns, appropriately enough, which ponies shy away from trying, because they look so difficult. But Mayor Mare had helped me pick the colors, and we’d chatted endlessly during those lunch breaks. She might get through a bit of paperwork, or she might simply watch the quilt take shape under the direction of my flashing needle.

She really understood me, independent of the roam-springa. Yes, I had a purpose in trying new things, but she kept me anchored in the familiar. A good politician spanned both worlds, and a good pony knew herself. About the time I realized that, I’d caught myself staring back at her.

Today, another “closed” sign hung in Sugarcube Corner. Carrot Cake could have run it if needed, but Cup Cake hated to leave it entirely in his hooves. So there we both crouched, hiding behind some shrubs while listening to Mayor Mare pronounce Bright Mac and Buttercup married. Cup Cake had eyed me suspiciously the whole morning and insisted on following me here. Nothing I did would dissuade her, but at least she hadn’t divined my secret before now, and really, she had a right to see this. A good pony didn’t stand between friends.

We could barely suppress squeals, but of course the fireworks and bombast had to come. Nothing ever works out perfectly. Grand Pear had stormed away, Granny Smith had leveled some harsh accusations at Mayor Mare, and the new couple had run off to be alone.

As Granny Smith made a hasty exit of her own, I turned to Cup Cake. “Do you mind? I should make sure Mayor Mare is okay. If you could take some of her things back to town, I’ll get the rest when I go.”

A frown still on her face, Cup Cake nodded. It should have been a happy occasion. “Sure. They’re married, though. That’s the important thing. I hope it didn’t cost Mayor Mare a friend in Granny Smith, but make sure she knows she still has you and me.”

With everypony gone, we didn’t exactly have to stay hidden. So Cup Cake picked up what flowers and decorations she could, and I found Mayor Mare a short distance away, wearing a deeper frown than even Cup Cake’s.

“Are you okay?” I asked. When she didn’t answer, I put an arm over her withers. “Granny Smith will come around. Don’t you worry about that. But Cup Cake, Buttercup, and I are your friends, too. No chance of losing us.”

She hugged me back, and the frown disappeared almost instantly. She broke into a huge grin, and her beautiful blue eyes sparkled. “They did it! They actually did it!”

One quick pirouette later, she grabbed me by the shoulders, laughing all the while, and keeled over sideways onto the ground, toppling me with her. “They actually got married!”

That deep blue—I blinked and averted my eyes. No! I’d nearly ruined one friendship that way. I daren’t risk another! Good ponies didn’t put their friends on the spot. Then she propped up on her elbows, her face hovering just above mine.

She kissed me. Very softly, like it was the most natural thing she could have done at that moment. I closed my eyes to savor her light touch, but she soon pulled back. So I opened them again to find her smiling down at me.

I readily took up the invitation, reaching a hoof around her neck to bring her lips back to me. My eyes shut once more, I felt a hoof caressing my… cutie mark? A little odd, but it didn’t bother me. “Mm, you are toned,” she mumbled against my mouth.

Never before would I have considered that a kiss might last longer than the brief, chaste peck on the cheek that I might give one of my parents. Until the incident with Cup Cake, and—

But nearly an hour later, I wandered back into town in a daze, much like my first day here, but laden with the rest of Mayor Mare’s things, along with a rumpled mane and smudged lipstick.

Cup Cake greeted me at the front door to Sugarcube Corner with raised eyebrows and a substantial grin. “Um… do you need help with that stuff?”

My head jerked up to meet her gaze. “I-I kiss—she k-kissed—” In truth, I didn’t know who had initiated it. The words tumbled from my mouth. “We kissed.”

Somehow, her eyebrows jolted even higher. “Not like—” She held a hoof to her mouth. “She kissed you? I take it that she’s in better spirits—”

“We kissed.” In fits and starts, I glanced around the room for somewhere to drop everything and sit down.

“Yes, you said that.”

“A lot.”

Her smile only broadened.

Buttercup loved the quilt. But I couldn’t abide idle time, and I’d somewhat lost interest in Cup Cake’s romance novels, so I’d started on another quilt. Every day, I still brought some sort of treat with me to visit Mayor Mare at lunch, but I’d had to shift it to later in the afternoon. It wasn’t fair to Cup Cake to abandon her in the middle of one of the busiest times of day, so I didn’t wander over to city hall until two o’clock or sometimes later.

Naturally, that meant that I didn’t find the building near as empty as on my first visit, and more and more of the civil servants greeted me by name now, with a smile. Then, bearing whatever Cup Cake had chosen to send over, I’d flip the sign on Mayor Mare’s door to “Out To Lunch” and go in. And inevitably we’d end up side by side in her chair, snuggled up and kissing.

I strode in and pushed the tray toward her, and she picked up one of the rich pecan twirls. Then I got out a tissue and wiped the makeup off my face—I’d become reasonably good at it to the point I could apply it myself now, though Cup Cake still helped me in the mornings. And I did up my mane in a nice, tight bun. Mayor Mare rather liked it that way.

But things ran deeper than that. I wouldn’t kiss her just to kiss her. I liked her. Good ponies never showed affection when they didn’t mean it.

The summer months had turned to fall, and with a chill setting in, I needed to finish the quilt for Cup Cake. So I made my way over to the sofa Mayor Mare kept along the far wall, away from the window, and unfolded the bundle of cloth in my lap.

She quickly finished her dessert and joined me. “Oh, you got more done last night? It looks good!”

I smiled back at her. “Yes, I assembled two more blocks.” She’d only cross-stitched before, but at least she had some sewing experience, so I’d enlisted her help. “See that one?” I asked, pointing out an eccentric star along the unfinished edge. She nodded, a glimmer of recognition in her eye. “That’s the one you cut out for me last Thursday.”

She wouldn’t say it, but it meant a lot to her to contribute. She really did treasure her friendship with Cup Cake, even if she couldn’t devote as much time to it as she liked. But little by little here, she’d made the effort, and I’d definitely tell Cup Cake that it was from both of us. Mayor Mare had spent plenty of time folding and cutting cloth for me, or just watching me sew, a huge grin on her face the whole time.

As we’d done for the past two weeks, we draped the quilt over our laps to keep warm. I got out my pouch of scraps, including the pieces to another eccentric star block she’d cut out for me. “Do you want to try sewing it yourself?”

“Oh, I couldn’t! I’d mess it up,” she said with a flick of her hoof.

“You’ll do fine. And if it needs fixing, I can do that. As my father says, ‘You won’t learn any younger.’”

I held out a needle and thread to her, and she gingerly took it, then laid out the block shapes in front of her. Her eyes swiveled back and forth between the one in her hooves and the finished one in the quilt, and she copied each stitch as best she could. She had to undo a couple, but in the end, it would have taken a fairly trained eye to discern it from the one I’d done. It only took her twenty minutes or so, but—

Like when my own mother showed me years ago, I’d concentrated so hard on it that I’d mentally drained myself only minutes in. It had to be perfect, worthy of her.

I set the block into place beside the adjoining ones, and the edges lined up nicely. “See? Thou didst great. Cup Cake will love it.” She beamed and slumped against me, then wriggled an arm around my back to give me a squeeze. With a smile of my own, I turned my head and gave her a light kiss.

More than anything else, that struck me about her: always so soft and gentle.

She noticed me squinting at the fabric. “Here,” she said, reaching for the tiny drawer in the end table beside her. “Try these.”

An antique pair of glasses. With a chain attached. She draped the chain over my neck and set the glasses on my face.

“My old reading pair. I need a stronger prescription nowadays,” she said, tapping a hoof at the ones on her own nose. “You’re welcome to them, and—” she crinkled her muzzle “—they make you look even cuter.” I could see a little more clearly with them.

She scooted back against me, and the arm around me brushed up and down over my cutie mark, as she had in the woods that one day. And many times since. I’d finally asked her about that last week. Apparently, she liked the shape and firmness of my rump.

I didn’t quite understand the appeal, but then I didn’t need to. Yet as my mind wandered to the matter of cutie marks—

“I was wondering if thou couldst tell me what something meaneth,” I said. A little forced, but she might feel more amenable to talking about it if I leaned toward those mannerisms.

“Sure,” she replied, her hoof still moving in vague circles on my flank.

Not long ago, I’d asked Cup Cake about it: what Mayor Mare did before taking office. What the words meant. To the former, she said Mayor Mare mostly used to stay to herself in the evenings, but would help out her friends or around the school during the day. And to the latter, Cup Cake didn’t know. “‘Rocky with promise, overgrown with heart.’”

Immediately, Mayor Mare’s hoof stopped, and she scowled. “Where did you read that?” Her eyes snapped over to a cracked-open drawer on her desk, one I’d noticed in the past but never paid any mind. “Did you look through my things?”

“No! Of course not!” I froze, and my heart began racing. “I-I read it from your cutie mark!”

She stared at me for a moment, but then her frown melted, and she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, letting out a sigh. “That wasn’t fair to you.” She pushed the quilt off herself and leaned sideways, her cutie mark exposed. And those words blazed up at me, or partly—cursive script, but with the tops of the letters clipped off as they disappeared into the scroll.

“There used to be more,” she continued, “but it changed, once I became mayor, and… I can’t risk it going back.”

How could such a thing happen? “Your cutie mark changed?”

She nodded, then strode over to her desk, opened the drawer the rest of the way, and tossed a book on the desktop with a thump. “Just… I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay? Read this. You’ll get it.” Then she raised the most pitiable eyes to me that I’d ever seen: tears dancing in them, trembling, overflowing from the beautiful blue. “But you can’t tell anypony about this. Please.”

I folded up the quilt and packed everything away while she sat in her chair, hooves over her face. Quietly I walked over to her, beside the chair, hugged her, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Only then did I glance at the book: The Collected Poems of Will o’ Wisp.

“Thank you,” I said. I kissed her again, laid the book gently on top of the quilt in my saddlebag, took Cup Cake’s tray under my arm, and left her alone.

I read the book slowly. Poetry just didn’t make sense to me, and I wanted to understand, I really did. I wanted to understand her. But weeks later, I’d only gotten halfway through, and I hadn’t figured out what made it important yet.

She hadn’t asked for it back. So we returned to normal, working on that quilt together, and she’d hoof-sewn over half of the blocks lately, much to her delight. We’d finish it before Winter Wrap Up.

Of course, we’d also talk and enjoy each other’s company, and then I’d soon be in her chair next to her, tasting on her lips whatever confection Cup Cake had whipped up that day.

I’d finally put the tip money in the bank, as I didn’t mind using it to buy quilting supplies. After Cup Cake’s, I would start on a nice one for Mayor Mare to use in her office on cold days. So if I actually had a need for the money, then why not follow Cup Cake’s advice?

She had never really taken me shopping for clothes, but she made clear that color was the answer. The gray dresses and simple collars I had just wouldn’t do. I’d never get rid of them, for Mayor Mare’s sake, but some of them had gotten a bit threadbare.

And so I stood in Barnyard Bargains, rummaging through the clothing racks.

Plenty of color, but what about style? So many different kinds, and I had no idea what might work or why. I rifled through rack after rack, the pile on the clearance table, the bin by the fitting rooms. It reminded me of that first day emerging from the woods, completely lost in an alien world, and my breathing quickened. How did ponies make sense of this?

A gray mare with a pink mane popped in the front door, grabbed a chilled water from the refrigerator case, and made a beeline for the cashier, but something caused her to stop. “You’re not buying that, are you?” she said, pointing at the beige jumper I clutched in my hooves for lack of anything better to do with it.

“I-I… I don’t know.”

She glanced at my dark gray dress as well, a sheet of slate that kept the world a comfortable distance away. “That’s rather grim. But—” her eyes roved to a worn place on the shoulder “—I suppose you already own that one.”

She strode over and set her water bottle down, then frowned at all the other choices scattered around me on the floor. “Look, it’s not that you can’t find something complementary here, but it won’t exactly sing, either. You need to pick something that works with your body shape and natural color.”

I could only gape back at her.

“…And you clearly need adult supervision. Here.” Water bottle forgotten, she dug through the racks and tossed a few things my way. An orange top she paired with a dark blue skirt, a formal-looking jacket, a flowing red dress that hung off one shoulder. “These should do you for starters.”

I stood there motionless, just holding them. I had my coin purse with me, stuffed as full of bits as I could get it. “Is this enough?” She squinted at me. No, I shouldn’t have bothered her with that. My money wasn’t her problem. So I curtsied. “I-I thank thee.”

In an instant, she turned her full attention on me. “So you’re the one.” She let my bun down, and I set my jaw—only Cup Cake could do that! But I allowed her. She stood back and scanned me over. “Good bone structure, great face, neutral color, in shape. Yes, I heard the gossip about you over at the bakery, but I was disappointed to have missed you. Still, fate has a way of working things out.”

She snapped a sharp nod. “Prim Hemline,” she added, pushing a business card into my saddlebag. “Premier fashion designer in Manehattan. I want you as one of my models.”

“Model?” I’d never heard of such a thing. Model what?

“Yes. Think of it!” She spread her forehooves out in a broad wave. “Rubbing elbows with the stars, wearing the finest clothes on stage with every eye following you, traveling to all the hottest locales around Equestria.”

“Just leave?” Good ponies established roots.

I knew the type. They liked to scorn the smaller towns. Except she didn’t. She spoke very gently. “If you’re satisfied with this, then fine. I can’t blame you. But if you really want something new and exciting, what can a small country town offer you?”

She was right. She was completely right, and she had no idea why. Try new things. “Can I think about it?”

“Fashion waits for nopony. I’m only here because my train to Manehattan had a brief layover, so I ran out for a snack and a drink. It leaves again in fifteen minutes. If you want to experience the best that life has to offer, be on it. I’ll have a ticket for you.” Then she scooped up her water bottle, turned smartly, and walked away.

“What’s wrong, dear?” Cup Cake asked as I frantically shoved my few possessions into my pair of saddlebags.

“I-I have to go. I don’t have time, and I might be gone a little while,” I said through my sniffling.

She gaped back, a little fire rising in her eyes. “Why? What happened?”

“New things, new places—Prim Hemline wants me to model—”

“The Prim Hemline?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but it’s my only chance to try it, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She’d broken into a huge grin. “How’d you even meet her!? This is a great opportunity for you! I heard of her when I was in Manehattan for culinary school. If you’re sure, then go, go! Don’t worry about me.”

“You mean it?” My dresses, my hair ties, in the bag.

“Yes, you go, and then you come back and tell me all about it when you can.”

The quilt, stuff it down, w-with the book—the book on top. Her book. “And Mayor Mare?” Three minutes, no, only two left! I rushed down the stairs like a dislodged boulder and out the door, trailing tears the whole way. I tried to brush them off, but I only hit the glasses, knocked them off, dangling by their chain.

Not only leaving her behind, but she’d have to find out about it from somepony else. She’d hate me forever.

“Write her a letter!” Cup Cake shouted after me. “Explain it all, and come back to her as soon as you can! She’ll understand!”

I made the train with about ten seconds to spare.

Author's Note

There’s a reference to another story in here, but I’m going to hold off saying which one until the final chapter is published so that people won’t get spoiled by reading it.

Coming May 31, Chapter 3: Model Citizen.

Chapter 3: Model Citizen

“Leaving Ponyville so abruptly had to be the worst mistake I ever made.” Talking so much had made my mouth run dry, but if the young mare didn’t want to be interrupted with a drink, I could press on. Knowing Cup Cake, she’d probably slip in momentarily with some tea anyway, without my having to ask.

“It wasn’t fair to anypony involved—not Cup Cake, not me, and certainly not Mayor Mare. I had to jump at the chance, though. When else would I get an opportunity to live the high life?” As if I’d even known what the high life was. “Most mares on their roam-springa would dream of standing in the front row, within reach of the stars on stage. I got to be one of those stars, however briefly.”

This wouldn’t work. I croaked out a “pardon me” and walked to the door, but as soon as I’d opened it, Cup Cake hustled over to me with a tray.

“I had some refreshment ready for you, but I didn’t want to interrupt. Would you like some tea?” she said.

Reliable Mrs. Cake. “Thank you,” I said, reaching for the tray, but she maneuvered it away from me and clicked her tongue.

“You’re my guest. I’ll serve you.” Then she turned to the young mare. “Would you like some, too?” Pursed lips, then a quick nod. Cup Cake set out two cups and poured.

“This was my home, too, for a while,” I reminded her.

She merely grinned. “And some of the most fun this house has ever seen.”

So I picked up my cup. Just from the feel of it, it was too hot to drink quite yet, but I did take one of the pecan twirls on the plate Cup Cake left. “One of Mayor Mare’s favorites,” I murmured. And another soft grin from Cup Cake as she quietly shut the door behind her.

I kept watching the wood surface even after it had closed. A little line on it—no, on my pair of glasses. I should get the cracked lens replaced. I didn’t have the heart, though—it’d remained my faithful companion for decades.

“Ah, where were we?” A little too hot, still, but I took a swallow of tea anyway, just to wet my throat. The young mare didn’t reply, only watching me with her bright eyes. “Yes, my first trip to Manehattan.”

I blew across my tea, just to cool it off enough to get a little more down, and quickly ate the pecan twirl. Then I cleared my throat. “Yes, if I’d found Ponyville overwhelming, then I hadn’t even begun to conceive of what a city like Manehattan could do to me. But I began to get the picture well before I actually arrived there.”

The train bumped and jostled over the tracks, countryside flashing past faster than I’d ever seen before. Mostly trees, but the occasional grand bridge, and more small towns than I knew existed. Who could sleep through that?

For the last half hour, lights! Sparkling like stars, but colorful, constant. Well above the trees, and they only rose higher and higher the closer we got! The sun had set hours ago, so I couldn’t make out what shapes existed to loft those intense firefly-points up there. Maybe the city employed pegasi to welcome visitors?

But then we pulled into town, and the streets, flooded with light, buildings towering overhead! What even kept them from falling? They seemingly arched over, threatening to collapse on me, and I sidled away from the window, against the sleeping form of whatever member of Prim Hemline’s staff had taken the seat next to me.

And all the ponies! Dozens of dozens of dozens! Perhaps a million of them.

My heart raced until it hurt, and I ducked my head below the seat to breathe, to keep the lightheadedness from washing over me. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could and strained to keep the tears in. How would I survive here? Did every town have somepony like Cup Cake?

When the train lurched to a halt, I only sat there. The ponies around me all stood, got down bags of equipment from the overhead racks. Several absolutely beautiful mares at the other end of the car towed out huge wheeled suitcases. I had only my small pair of saddlebags. Eventually, the car emptied out, and I sat there a minute longer. Many other tracks and many other trains out there, clanking and pinging and steaming, and outside the tall, ornate windows lining the immense room containing it all, spotlights pierced into the dark sky. A clock on a small pillar next to the track read six minutes until midnight.

Just as I got up, the lights in the car extinguished.

So I hurried out, and—where had everypony gone? Nothing to the left, and to the right, up a wide marble staircase, a stallion that maybe I thought I’d seen on the train. I rushed to catch up, past cafes and newspaper stands chained shut for the night, and into the street.

Not a dirt road, but paved, and slick with rain, though none fell now. It only doubled everything, reflecting lights and bodies and carts, all crowding me in from above and below, and not one familiar face. I sank to my knees, and there was no stopping the tears now. If only I had my pair of blinders!

Then I felt a hoof on my shoulder. I gasped and looked up at—

“There’s my new star,” Prim said with a smile. “Come along. The hotel is this way.” She angled her head up the road, and with a gulp, I followed her. Even at this late hour, more ponies than I thought could live in the entire nation hustled past me. After crossing four intersections, we arrived at a building straight out of fantasy: golden light spilling out, gleaming carved marble, glass, flags, and it kept going up and up and up! It must have been a hundred floors tall! I’d never seen an inn with more than three—who could possibly need such heights?

“Come along,” Prim repeated, tugging my saddlebag strap. I trailed after her again, through some giant spinning door that almost snared my leg, and to the front desk. An eagerly smiling employee immediately approached her, leaving a family in floral print shirts grumbling as they waited.

“Miss Hemline!” she said, her voice all oily. “Good to see you again. We have your usual block of rooms ready.”

Prim nodded and pointed a hoof at me. “Thank you. And please add one more, if you would.”

The clerk gave me a once-over, her eyes pausing on my hairbun, glasses, and faded gray dress, then shrugged. “I have one on the floor below, if that will do.”

“Nicely.”

How much would even a single night here cost? I unbuckled my saddlebag, retrieved my coin purse, and pushed it onto the counter. “Is this enough?”

Prim only chuckled. “I appreciate you not taking things for granted, but it’s a business expense. Your food and lodging are covered.” Then she turned back to the clerk. “Add it to my tab.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Turning her nose up, she slapped a hoof against a small bell. “Room nine thirteen.”

A young earth pony stallion in a red jacket and cap whisked up beside me and—he lifted off my saddlebags!

“Thief!” I shouted, and cocked a hind leg to give him a kick he’d never forget, and right away, he dropped to the floor and covered his head.

“No, no!” Prim yelled, waving her hooves. “He’s a bellhop!”

“Bellhop?” I said through bared teeth.

“He’ll carry your bags for you.”

I put my leg down, but I watched him like a hawk as he led me and Prim into a small, cramped room and shut the door behind us. It didn’t have a bed! Who could possibly want to stay here? It even shook and rattled, but then he opened the door again, and—

The city, laid out before me, going on without end. I stepped out into the hall—a different hall than when I’d gotten in and—of course. We’d gone up. Somehow.

Gaping, I walked up to the window, and in its reflection, I could see Prim and the young stallion wearing enormous smiles. I tapped a hoof against the glass and scanned the eternal sea of lights from one side to the other, then up at the buildings, still looming over even at this height, then down to—

I let out a little shriek and scurried back until I had my rump to the wall. So high up!

By then, the other two had emerged as well, and Prim corralled me along with her, even as I took refuge against the wall. “Your room’s right down here. The rest of us are one floor up, so please ask if you need anything. Other than that, just be down in the lobby by noon. Okay?”

I nodded, and she pressed a couple of coins into the stallion’s hoof before leaving.

Then he opened a door and beckoned me in. “Would you like me to show you around?” he asked, setting a room key on the table by the entryway. I rushed in, just to get away from that dizzying altitude. I much preferred staying on the ground or underneath it, though I suppose gazing down into our family’s quarry wasn’t that different.

A gigantic room, as big as Sugarcube Corner’s salesroom and kitchen combined. A huge bed, washroom, balcony, another steaming tub out there for some reason. “Um… no. Thank you.”

Everything shiny and polished. At least a lot of it was black. He started to leave, and—oh, Prim had given him a tip? Maybe that meant I should, too? Ponies often gave me two or three bits on orders less than ten. I had no idea how much this room cost. I pulled out my coin purse again and dug through it, coming up with… twelve coins. “Here.”

His face lit up like the ostentatious displays outside, and he saluted smartly. “Wow, thank you very much! If you need anything, just ring—” he poked a hoof at a pull rope near the door “—and I’ll get it for you. Please enjoy your stay with us!”

Then he left.

I turned down the lamps and collapsed on the bed, but too many voices in the streets below, the incessant thrumming of that tub outside, thumping from the hallway and rooms above me—none of it would let me slow down and relax!

I curled up and pulled the blanket around me, way over on the edge of the mattress, and imagined Cup Cake on the other side, reading one of her books.

Not a wink of sleep. I stared at my bloodshot eyes in the washroom mirror, then tried to climb back in bed, but the sun had come out. Not gradually, like it used to do at home, peeking through the little gaps between branches and leaves, before finally revealing itself. This one just popped up from behind the jagged outline of buildings, from nothing to everything in an instant.

“Hi-choo!” Number one. “Hi-choo!” And number two. No chance of going to sleep now. And over five hours until… whatever happened at noon. So I walked over and tugged on the soft rope near the door, but nothing happened, and I plopped down on the sofa. I could work on the quilt for Cup Cake, but a foggy head would lead to too many mistakes, and nothing drained my enthusiasm like having to resew the identical block.

Then a knock at the door. “It’s open!” I called, and the same young stallion from last night entered.

“Yes, ma’am? What can I get you?”

“Dost thou have any pecan twirls?” Mayor Mare’s favorite. They must be famous all over Equestria.

He wrinkled his brow. “Pecan… twirls? I don’t know what that is. But we do have praline waffles. I bet you’d like those.”

Had Igneous Rock ever tried pecans? I could barely make my head move, so I just nodded and slumped further into the cushions. At some point, maybe a minute later, maybe an hour, he knocked again and wheeled in a cart with something very sweet-smelling on it. I waved a hoof at my coin purse on the bedside table. “Is this enough?” I mumbled.

“It gets charged to the room, ma’am, and that goes on Miss Hemline’s tab. Don’t you worry about it.”

“Okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut for a few seconds.

“And ma’am? It’s probably not a good idea to leave your money lying around like that. Or showing it in public. Not in this town.”

I would have thanked him, but when I looked again, he’d gone. So I lurched my way over to the cart and cut myself a bite. It tasted nothing like Cup Cake’s pecan twirls. I left the rest uneaten and returned to the sofa.

The coffee that had come with the waffles at least had me feeling a bit more energetic now as I waited for the strange room that would take me back to the lobby. I’d knocked on the door several times, but nopony would answer. Luckily I found a staircase nearby and used it instead. Good exercise that way, and if it kept my flanks how Mayor Mare liked them, then so much the better.

I didn’t want to think about her right now! Ugh! Good thing I hadn’t put on any makeup this morning. Maybe this town would make me grow up past the need to cry. Had I ever cried over Igneous Rock? Well… yes. Yes, I had, when he befriended those twin girls on the school playground, and I felt like he wasn’t paying me enough attention. Over ten years ago, when I’d barely gotten my cutie mark. Not since then, though, and because I never had reason to. When my dog died, when I missed a month of school with a bad illness, when I reached that awkward age of being all knees and elbows and odd proportions worse than most, inviting ridicule. He’d stuck by my side. As much as Mayor Mare had tried to make me feel comfortable, Igneous Rock always had, too.

Business today, though. I needed to look my best, so I’d done up my bun extra tight, face pristine, simple collar, and my glasses. I sniffled hard and wiped my eyes dry, then out into the lobby I trotted, and it looked like most of the group had assembled already. Those very pretty mares I’d noticed on the train lounged on cushy chairs, stifling yawns. Were they also unused to the nighttime noise and bustle of the city?

Prim Hemline came over from behind them, her eyes bright, and much perkier than anypony else around. “Good, good—you made it down. Did you sleep well?” she said. I shook my head and blinked hard. “Well, the girls can help you with an energy drink. Just hang by the other models, and they’ll show you the ropes. Okay?”

Nothing to do but nod. “Still waiting on two of the photographers and one mare from wardrobe,” she continued. “Then we’ll head over to the shoot.”

She wandered off, flitting between various ponies like a hyperactive butterfly, so I walked over to the beautiful mares. I’d already had a coffee, but if Prim wanted me to get an energy drink, whatever that was, I should respect her wishes. Good ponies fulfilled expectations.

“Hey, um,” I said, approaching them. “Prim Hemline said—she said I should get an energy drink?” Most of them didn’t even turn to face me. Maybe they hadn’t heard. But the three closest ones glanced my way, their eyes lingering on my hair.

“Oh, are you one of the gofers? I don’t know why she’d ask you for an energy drink—she doesn’t touch the stuff.” They all had very lovely cutie marks: an ornate mirror, a palm tree on a sandy beach, and a quartet of shiny golden shoes. I had three rocks.

“N-no, for me.”

The one who’d spoken stifled a laugh. “Why would she care if the backstage help was dragging?”

“I’m…” They didn’t wait for my answer, already turning back to their colleagues. “I’m the new model. Hath she not told thee?”

All three heads whipped around toward me so quickly I might have feared they’d broken their necks. “Well, would you look at that?” the one with the mirror cutie mark said. “Looks like she’s after your job, High Heels.”

The shoe one—High Heels, I guessed—rolled her eyes. “Sunny Shore, Powder Puff, just worry about yourselves, okay?”

“Is she joking?” Sunny Shore added. “Just look at her!”

High Heels corralled the other two along, but she did flash me a smile. “Don’t let them get to you,” she hissed, and leaned her head toward a cooler on the ground next to some of the camera equipment.

So I fiddled with the latch, and sure enough, a bunch of cans filled it to the brim. I opened one, took a sip, and, well, kind of funny tasting. But within a couple minutes, I did feel more alert.

“Alright, everypony!” Prim barked above the crowd’s noise. “To the studio, next door. I want to see everypony set up and ready to go in half an hour. We have a tight schedule, and I need you all to make my new winter dress collection look its best!”

Only a small can, so I drank it down quickly and moved with the mass of ponies, vaguely keeping High Heels in sight. Wherever she went, I was presumably supposed to go. Outside, far more ponies than I’d encountered last night filed up and down the sidewalks, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. That equine tide of fashion swept me along, into the next building over, and I managed to break off from the main current to trail High Heels into a room with a long row of lighted mirrors and elevated seats in front of them.

The pretty mares each chose one and sat there, doing nothing. With no better option, I did as well. But I couldn’t help glancing around the room. Some kind of carts lined the far wall, and I recognized a few makeup containers on them. Oughtn’t I go get one? Or did I need to wait my turn?

Then a purple pegasus mare appeared at my side, draping a cloth around my neck before even looking up, and when she finally did, she flinched. “Whoa! Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“I… No, I’m not…”

A hoof touched my shoulder gently, and I heard Prim’s steady voice behind me. “This is my new model—” She swiveled my stool around to face her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to have ever asked your name.”

“Cloudy Quartz.”

“Hm,” Prim said, holding a hoof to her chin. “Not too memorable as a stage name. Something that works with your cutie mark. How about… Crystal Essence?”

I didn’t answer, only gaped back at Prim and the other mare. I got a quick glimpse of her cutie mark: a makeup brush. “I like it!” she said. But I got the feeling she would have said that no matter what.

“Glitter Glow here will do your makeup, and—” She craned her neck up to see over the mass of bodies. “Pixie Cut! I need you over here!”

They carried on a mumbled discussion beside me for a moment until a green unicorn mare with a hair dryer and brush on her flank arrived. “Pixie will do your hair,” Prim continued.

“Hi, there!” Pixie said, waving a hoof furiously. She grinned so big that I couldn’t help joining her.

But Glitter Glow just scowled. “I can only do so much,” she muttered.

“Observe,” Prim replied, reaching for my bun. I gritted my teeth as she undid it, and I soon felt the locks tumbling down my neck like a rockslide. I’d let close friends see me this way, and Cup Cake had convinced me to wear my hair down in front of the customers. But all these ponies? For a picture that might go in a magazine all over Equestria? A tremor shot down my back.

“Ooh, I see what you mean,” Glitter Glow said. “Yeah, she could be front-row material.” Whatever that meant.

Pixie clapped her hooves and reached for a pair of scissors, but Prim shook her head. “No, leave it long. Shape it up, fine, but don’t cut it. Not a single inch.”

And Pixie flicked a salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

Glitter Glow immediately got to work, and I recognized most of the products: foundation, eye shadow, rouge, lipstick. But she absolutely slathered it on. I felt like an iced cake, a painted fence. “Are you sure—?”

“Look,” she snapped, “I know my job. Let me do it, okay?” Too much! Like a clown, covered in greasy white, and a cream pie in the face for good measure. This couldn’t be right! But every time I fidgeted in my seat, she glared at me.

I held the tears in. I don’t know how, but I did. And then after bumping my glasses for the fourth time while leaning in with her eye pencil, she forced out a rough sigh and lifted them off my head.

And tossed them in the trash can.

“Look, honey, I’m doing you a favor,” she said, one eyebrow raised as if imparting some secret truth.

My lip quivered, and I began to cry. It took Glitter Glow a moment to notice, but when she did, she uttered a very untoward word. But my glasses! They were a gift from a dear friend, and—“Stop that, or the makeup will run,” she said, dabbing at my cheeks with a cloth.

If only it were that simple. I’d get it under control, only to glance down at the chain still hanging over the wastebasket’s edge, and I would start all over again, imagining her so easily discarding Mayor Mare along with them!

Finally, Glitter Glow took a white towel and wiped off my whole face, smirking as she shoved it against my nose. “Looks like I’m gonna have to use the waterproof stuff. Good luck getting into the front row with that on.”

It lived up to its name. She daubed away at my face, tears and all, then strode off as if she’d rather go feed her cat or something. Next, Pixie Cut stepped up. Still only halfway through this ordeal.

But she smiled meekly and bent down to retrieve my glasses from the trash. “Sorry about her,” she said. “Just tuck those away and keep them out of sight.” I didn’t have my saddlebags with me though! I cast about for somewhere to hide them, and her eyes widened. “Oh, you didn’t know! This is your station. Put them in here.” She opened a drawer in the counter in front of me. “Nopony will take them.”

I reached out, let them dangle. She nodded. And in they went. I put my collar in, too, since the whole point of the day was to dress me up, or so I gathered. They wouldn’t let me keep it on, and might they simply throw that in the trash, too?

Her smile now fully restored, she fussed with my mane a bit. “You have really beautiful hair! You shouldn’t wear it pulled back so tight, though. It’s not good for the pores on your forehead. Might even give you headaches.”

“Oh. Okay.” I’d never seemed to suffer either of those problems, but then I probably wouldn’t know if I did.

She rushed off for a second, then returned with a different one of those carts. A spray bottle, something that looked like a tube of toothpaste, and a small pair of scissors floated in her magical grip, but first, she mussed up the sides and tested a couple of different shapes.

“You really ought to switch shampoos. Whatever you’re using now is leaving your mane dry and kind of brittle.”

“I use soap.”

She blinked at me. “Yeah, that’d do it. So, I think I’ll put in some relaxer to make it hang straighter. Not many mares can pull off really long hair, but you look like a knockout with it. Not too big, though—that hasn’t made the rounds back to fashionable yet, so we’ll thin it out a little, maybe add a highlight or two.” Her grin radiated even bigger than before. “I mean, you’re pretty already.” I’d started to wonder, given Glitter Glow’s reaction, along with those other models. Yet Cup Cake’s customers always seemed to think so. “But you’re going to look stunning.”

High Heels had welcomed me onto the set. I dutifully assumed my place in the back row as all of the models took their poses. In a horribly stiff dress, too. I could scarcely crouch down in it, and it poked and jabbed me no matter which way I moved. Not to mention that without my glasses, the photographers looked a little blurry, and I couldn’t always tell which way they pointed for me to go.

But I did okay, if I could judge by Prim’s reaction. She’d confined herself to watching so far, but then she spoke up. “Cloudy—” she turned to face a stallion holding a notepad “—make sure you refer to her as ‘Crystal Essence’ in the media guide.” And back to facing me again. “I want you front and center, right there between High Heels and Sunny Shore.”

My heart stopped. High Heels, sure, but I’d never live this down with Sunny Shore. She hated me already, from first sight. But the glare High Heels shot me…

Then she directed it toward the cameras, but a little off to the side, to the darkness beyond, at—Glitter Glow’s head snapped up as if she’d just recognized the pony in front of her from a wanted poster, and the words popped out of her throat like a geyser: “Oh, I had to use the waterproof makeup on her,” she said to Prim. “Wouldn’t stop crying,” she added, feigning to shield her voice with the back of a hoof. But she’d spoken plenty loud, enough for the whole room to hear. “It’s a little glossier, and it wouldn’t look right in the photos.”

Hadn’t she just called me “front-row material” in the dressing room? Prim wrinkled her brow and glanced at Glitter as if she’d gone barking mad. “This isn’t a poster shoot. It’s for a magazine article, and the pictures in there are so small that nopony will be able to tell. And we can do her cover shot tomorrow.”

“Cover?” High Heels said, the word baring venomous fangs.

Like coaxing a newborn lamb to a meadow, Prim beckoned to me. “Come on. Front row. I promise it won’t hurt.”

Little by little, I picked my way forward. I kept my eyes on the floor; I didn’t need to look up to feel the barbs and stings from the other models’ sharp looks. I’d barely spent half a day with them, and I’d already figured out how things worked here. Finally, a quick learner.

But I stood there, in the middle.

“Wow, yeah!” said the photographer. “She’s gorgeous. Why was she hiding in the back?”

My cheeks burned, but nopony could have noticed them beneath the thick blanket of cosmetics. Hiding would have been easier, but good ponies lived up to their agreements.

So the rest of the day went. Many changes of backdrop and outfit, half the ponies telling me I looked fantastic and the other half wearing smiles just as painted on as my eye shadow, their stares telling me I didn’t belong here and I should go back home and they’d do whatever it took to make that happen. I couldn’t say they were wrong.

Try new things, though. I’d learned a lot in only a day. Maybe I’d soon learn enough to get by.

I once again kept my distance from the pack of models wandering their way back to the hotel and grumbling about eight-hour workdays and how they had to get out of bed before noon again tomorrow. The only time in my life I’d ever slept past noon was when I had a particularly bad case of the flu.

The hotel lobby had catering ready for us—if not for Cup Cake, I wouldn’t even know what catering was. Most of the food was indecipherable, but one stallion crewed a table where he’d make pancakes by request. Well, he called them crepes, but they sure looked like pancakes. Still, I’d left my coin purse in my room.

So I rushed up, only quick enough to snatch my money off the table by the door without even glancing at the shameful disarray I’d left my room in, and back down, then out of breath, I strolled up to him as if I fit in and plopped down my purse in front of him. “Is this enough?” I panted.

“It’s complimentary, ma’am,” he replied, his brow creased.

“Oh… then I would like one,” I said, very clearly fitting in.

He gestured around at the array of toppings and fillings he had. It reminded me of the ore samples we’d take in to the assay office when we had a load from the quarry to sell. “What kind?” he asked.

“Surprise me.”

But he hesitated over several of the bowls and flicked his eyes toward the other models. “Granite,” I said, and he giggled politely. Yes, no way I could have meant that as anything but a joke. Only backwards country folk ate rocks, of course. “Pecan.” He smiled and very expertly tossed my order around in his pan until it’d toasted a nice bronze. I should have brought my saddlebags down, since I now had to accommodate both my purse and the plate in my mouth, but I managed.

“You’re not actually going to eat, are you?”

I whirled around, nearly launching my pancake at High Heels. Even if I wanted to answer her, I couldn’t have produced anything more than a mumble.

“Free tip from me, and the last one you’ll get: energy drinks are all you need. Especially with a belly like that.” She jabbed her muzzle toward my stomach, and I looked down at it, just long enough to almost lose my crepe again. But when I turned back, she’d left.

I thought farm work had kept me in good shape. Had I lost that while in Ponyville? I’d toiled just as hard and eaten healthy. Maybe. Maybe High Heels was right.

Suddenly I didn’t feel like having other ponies around me. I headed for the stairs, but Pixie Cut intercepted me, wearing that same enthusiastic grin she’d had this morning. “You did great today! And I’m really pleased with how your hair turned out,” she said, batting at the ends of my mane.

“I-I thank thee,” I answered quietly without looking at her. As tactfully as I could manage, I detoured around her and climbed up to my floor. Apparently, I needed the exercise, but I found the stairs strangely comforting. Quiet, echoing, somewhat dim, rather like a mine shaft. Then into my room, set the crepe down, and finally moved to clean up—

The bed was made. And the cart from breakfast gone. Had somepony come in here? Why would they? I checked the washroom, in case they were still here, but nothing. While in there, though… I hadn’t gotten a good look at my mane this morning. So I peered into the immense mirror.

The humid air had the tips curling up, just a bit. I’d retrieved my glasses from the dressing room earlier, so I put them on, along with my collar. I still preferred the bun, but I did look—

I looked pretty. Far too much makeup, so I took off the glasses and bent over the basin to wash my face thoroughly. Then I replaced my glasses and struck one of the poses I’d learned today, blowing a kiss at my reflection.

I looked pretty. I did, and why would that make me cry?

No, no tears, and—I shook my head, hard, and lurched over to my plate, the crepe no longer giving off any warmth as I sniffed at it. Just one bite.

It tasted nothing like Cup Cake’s pecan twirls.

My stomach growled, even though I’d already had two energy drinks today. I didn’t know how those other models managed it.

Who cared anyway? They’d made it plainly obvious I wasn’t welcome in their club, and Glitter Glow didn’t much like me, either. But Pixie Cut did, and Prim, though she was far too busy for me to burden her with anything.

I guessed I could say the same of Pixie Cut. I only spent five or ten minutes in prep with her each day, yet somepony with that level of vitality managed to pack in several hours’ worth of conversation. So kind! Should I kiss her? Wait, no, no, I’d made that mistake already, taking Cup Cake’s friendliness as—but then Mayor Mare had confused the issue, a-and I didn’t know. I didn’t know anymore. I needed to think about it more. Later. I hadn’t proven a very quick learner at that.

But today! Today, a school group had come during our rehearsal, and the fillies all lined up for autographs. Well, not really a line, as they gathered around me. Many dozens, and I signed for every one of them. “Crystal Essence,” which would mean a lot more to them than “Cloudy Quartz.” The other models had all left long ago after greeting only a paltry few students, and that had called an end to any sort of organized queue.

“Ooh, you’re pretty!” one of the fillies said, and the rest all chimed in with a “yeah!”

That should have made me happy. So why did I feel a weight dragging my heart down? “Thank you,” I replied softly.

“We heard you talk cool!” another added from the back somewhere. “Can we hear?” Then another chorus of “yeah”s.

“What are thy names?” I asked the twins holding out a pen and a small ledger-style book, eliciting a bunch of grins.

“Starry Night.”

“Iris.”

Their eyes glimmered. To Starry Night and Iris, I wrote in their autograph book, never give up on your dreams! “What dost thou want to be when thou growest up?” I asked Iris.

“A model!” they said in unison.

By now, I could put on as convincing a fake smile as I needed. “Wonderful! Just work hard, and thou canst be whatever thou wantest! But promise me one thing.” They leaned in closer, nodding, and my jaw relaxed. A real smile now. “Make sure it’s really what thou wantest. Be true to thyself.” Good ponies didn’t pretend at what they weren’t, I might have added.

“Okay!”

It took two and a half hours to get through everypony, but they were the best two and a half hours I’d spent during my entire time here. Not a quick sign and wave to get to the next one. I really talked to them, and they got swept into their own little discussions, popping up here and there like dust devils to entrain one filly and deposit another conversing back with me again, all of them copying my speech. Pixie Cut watched the whole time, a huge smile on her face, and I told the fillies that they should get her autograph as well, that I couldn’t do my job without her. But I don’t think many of them did.

Prim had already told us to take the rest of the day off, so I passed by the catering tables and retreated to my room afterward. Just before collapsing on the sofa, I pulled the rope by the door on a whim. Soon enough, a knock sounded. “It’s open!”

The same young stallion walked in. “Can I get you something, ma’am?”

Not really. I didn’t know what had made me summon him. “I talked to a whole group of fillies today. Each one got individual attention, and I gave them all autographs. I loved every minute of it.”

He didn’t answer.

“It’s hard. It’s really hard. Prim’s responsible for too many ponies to devote any time to me, the rest of the models just want to see me fail, so does my makeup artist, only my hair stylist treats me well, and—” I wanted to say Pixie Cut was my only friend, but how did I presume to call her that? We barely interacted. Just because she didn’t mock me didn’t make her a friend. Not like Cup Cake.

Or Mayor Mare! Oh sweet Celestia, a week and a half had already passed, and I hadn’t even begun a letter to her! How could that slip my mind? But what would I even write? “Sorry that I couldn’t be bothered to contact you until now”?

No, she’d prefer “thee.” I sniffled and let the tears run down my cheeks.

He remained silent for a moment more, then: “Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t keep you from your job.”

He shuffled his hooves on the tile. “I’m going off duty in five minutes. I was about to take my lunch break.”

I cocked my head toward the table and the pecan crepe I’d just brought upstairs, only one bite taken from it, same as every day. Did he know that, or did the maid discard it? I’d only yesterday discovered that was how my bed had gotten made. Wasteful, having somepony clear the room for me when I could do it perfectly well myself. I’d never shirked chores in Ponyville or at home. Good ponies pulled their own weight. “You’re welcome to have that. I don’t want it.”

“Are you sure? I don’t usually get food that nice.”

With a nod, I turned my back to him and faced out the window, over the cityscape sparkling in the early afternoon sun as crystals on our farm. I’d barely slept a few hours since coming here, and the fatigue came crashing over my head, like a wagonload of flour sacks.

I leaned into the cushions and closed my eyes. “Wouldst thou sit with me?”

He didn’t reply at first. “Mmhmm,” he finally mumbled over a mouthful of crepe. And there he sat, at the far end of the sofa, watching the same view, but fidgeting. He might have already used up his lunch break.

“I don’t even know your name,” I said.

“Oddly enough, Bell Hop,” he answered with a chuckle.

That made me smile: somepony with some genuine mirth. I tried opening my eyes, but they would only go halfway. “Bell Hop,” I slurred.

Then he gave me a curious glance. “I didn’t think models got lonely. You’re surrounded by admirers all the time.”

An unsteady breath out, tremulous, and more tears swelled in the corners of my eyes. “Just sit with me. Please.”

Whatever had flustered him, it had gone; he no longer tapped his hind leg against the sofa, only smiled at me as he might an old acquaintance. “Of course. I’ll sit with you.”

“Thank you.” I kissed him on the cheek and slumped into the cushions again, my eyes drifting closed. Maybe he kept staring out that window, but the view was nothing new to him. I just knew that that terribly big, terribly empty room wasn’t so terrible anymore, not with a friend in it.

I awoke almost ten hours later, the city lights gleaming at me across the black horizon. The cushion where Bell Hop had sat, still with a depression in it, but empty now. How long had he stayed before he had to go back to work? Even so, that he was willing to waste time sitting there at all to indulge a foolish mare calmed my heart. Just like Igneous Rock, after my favorite grandmother passed. Not a word, only sitting beside me as I cried for hours. Good ponies lived in this town, too.

Ten days of this already. Tomorrow, we had a trip to Canterlot scheduled for another publicity event. Train left at noon, I thought I remembered Prim telling me. More photo shoots and runway shows, more Glitter Glow and High Heels. Maybe a new town would earn me a new start. Or maybe I’d become an even bigger star and be able to work alone.

I needed some fresh air, but that balcony spooked me, with only a thin wall between me and a nine-floor drop, plus that tub out there and its incessant hissing and bubbling. It reminded me of the mineral springs back home, but no way they had one of those on the ninth floor of a building. Who kept refilling it with hot water? I hadn’t asked for any.

So I took the stairs to the lobby, intent on walking around the streets for a while. But not far from the front door sat Pixie Cut, on some of the lounge furniture, with a book. She jerked her head up when I sat down beside her.

“Oh! Crystal Ess—I mean Cloudy Quartz!”

“Hi, Pixie.” It was a little odd to see her this calm and quiet. Normally, she operated at a frenetic pace.

She frowned. “You don’t look good. Are you okay?”

Funny, I had my hair down, and I’d just had my best sleep in nearly a week. I could only shrug. In one swift motion, she slid a bookmark in her spot and set her book on the table. One of the romance novels Cup Cake liked. The image alone: Cup Cake with her nose practically stuffed into the pages and our new electric fan ruffling her hair. I had to grin.

“There it is!” she said, patting my shoulder. The longer I said nothing, though, the more her smile decayed. “Didn’t want in on the party?”

“Hm?”

She rolled her eyes. “Big one, right next to my room. I couldn’t find any peace and quiet up there.”

Must have been at the other end of the building. I couldn’t hear anything from my room. “No, I don’t really get parties. I’d prefer something simple and small.”

A quick smile, and she nodded, her dark green mane waving around her horn like grass in a summer breeze. “You’re welcome to sit here and read with me. If you didn’t bring a book, I have several.”

I did bring a book. And I hadn’t read a page of its poetry since leaving Ponyville.

When I began to cry, her face fell. “I want you to know it’s meant a lot to me that you were friendly,” I said as I stood up. “Thank you for that.”

I didn’t mean to upset her, I really didn’t, but her eyes widened. “That sounds like a good-bye!”

It kind of did. I shook my head and gave her a light hug. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see what Canterlot brings.”

Before I walked out the door and into the night, I spotted Bell Hop waiting for customers by the desk. So I strode up to him and gave him a kiss, on the mouth. Just long enough to make him blush. Maybe a few of the paparazzi covering the party would see that and make a big deal out of him. Maybe he’d like that. But at least I meant it. “And thank you, too,” I said.

Then I hurried into the street, casting only one glance behind me at Pixie Cut, propped up on an elbow and craning her neck to watch. All this pavement, rain-soaked again, just like my first night in Manehattan. A whole world down there as well, a whole world that didn’t want me either.

I’d only been to a few buildings, so I quickly found myself in unfamiliar surroundings, but the hotel still blared skyward in all its lavishness, visible from anywhere. I could always find my way back.

Chilly out tonight, a nip of autumn. If only I could sew on Mayor Mare’s couch again, a quilt draped over both of us, and her helping me while wearing an amused grin. I hadn’t come any closer to finishing Cup Cake’s quilt, either. Up in my room, it sat there, useless, like a washtub with a rust-eaten bottom.

I stomped a hoof in a puddle, sending ripples over the beautiful face staring back at me. Long, luxuriant hair, a gentle frown. Good ponies stayed where they belonged.

Loud tittering echoed from the alley beside me, and an iron door clanked open. High Heels. Immediately, a sour taste worked its way up from my stomach. She staggered out with her friends in tow. Some kind of private party, I guessed, since she was clearly too good for the one any of us could attend. I didn’t need her seeing me, not tonight, but too late. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she slurred. “Didn’t we invite you along?” Powder Puff and Sunny Shore had a nice chuckle at that.

I didn’t need this right now! But arguing with her would prove useless, so I just removed myself from the situation. If I remembered the view from my room right, there was a park a couple of blocks from here. Trees, grass. I could lie down and sleep, under the sky, in the one place that might suit me.

“Don’t you turn your back on me!” High Heels shrieked.

With a grimace, I stopped. But I didn’t face her.

“You think you can just come in here from some nowhere town and be the head mare? You know nothing! I’ve paid my dues, I know how everything works. You’d better start learning, too. In this business, it’s not about your—” she stifled a cough and circled a hoof in the air “—stupid country charm. It’s about who wouldn’t dare cross you.”

I started walking again. No way would I let her see me cry.

Then a different voice, lower-pitched. Glitter Glow. “Just make sure you’re at the train station by three, new girl. You miss your ride, and Prim will have your head.”

I’d slept in the park, hidden away from anypony. By the time I awoke, the sun had arced well into the sky. “Hi-choo!” One. “Hi-choo!” And two.

“Why didn’t you wake me at sunrise?” I said to my nose. The clock on the building across the street read one thirty-three. No time for lunch, but I never ate much anyway. Just a bite of crepe.

So I stood up, but too fast. My head sparkled, and I lost my balance momentarily, catching myself against a tree, and… Whew, I didn’t feel too good. My head pounded like Father’s sledge on a fencepost, and my knees wobbled. If only I could eat something! No way I’d give High Heels anything else to taunt me about, though. But unless this lightheadedness passed, she’d get to ridicule me for planting my face firmly on the ground.

After a good yawn and stretch, I walked back to my room, but taking the stairs left me panting. When we all gathered to leave, somepony would have a cooler of energy drinks anyway.

Plenty of time to pack, but then I didn’t have much. I put my hair up, donned my collar and glasses, along with one of my darker gray dresses. Coin purse, saddlebags. I still had over an hour, but I could doze in the lobby until we departed. On the door, the checkout instructions said to leave the key, so there it stayed on the table.

Like no other day, I really could have used that little room to take me downstairs, but as I leaned my forehead against its deliciously cool metal doors and knocked over and over again, nopony answered. Nopony ever answered. The stairs, then.

And I emerged into an empty lobby.

Sure, I was early, but nopony else had gotten down here to wait? I approached the desk. “Has Prim Hemline’s group come down yet?”

The clerk rubbed a file over her hooves and never looked up. Her answer made my heart thud so hard that I coughed. “Hon, you missed them. Took off a couple of hours ago.”

Author's Note

This bit here, where Cloudy Quartz—er, Crystal Essence—poses in the mirror:

I looked pretty. Far too much makeup, so I took off the glasses and bent over the basin to wash my face thoroughly. Then I replaced my glasses and struck one of the poses I’d learned today, blowing a kiss at my reflection.

I wanted to write somewhere in the story that the cover art was actually happening, rather than it just being a detached portrait of her. So this is what I imagine she’s doing in that picture.

Coming June 7, Chapter 4: A Harsh Truth.

Chapter 4: A Harsh Truth

I drained the last of my tea and set the cup back down, the bitter dregs making me wrinkle my nose. More story required more tea, though, so I refilled it and grabbed the tongs to add a wedge of lemon, and perhaps a dusting of sugar this time, to head off that bitter ending. It didn’t fit my tale.

For somepony who’d only reluctantly asked for any tea, the young mare had readily finished hers.

“Can I pour for you?” I said.

She nodded, so I tipped up the pot and breathed in the rich steam that floated in wisps from the cinnamon-brown liquid swirling around her cup. I’d let her manage her own lemon and sugar, since she appeared to prefer going without, judging from her first round.

Then I placed a hoof over the cup and planted a rear hoof firmly on the floor for a moment. An old earth pony tradition called grounding, one which I hadn’t really acquired until after I’d gotten married, and one it seemed only I practiced anymore: making that connection from the earth to what we ate and drank when serving a guest. Or sometimes even ourselves.

She smiled at it. Had she come across such a ritual in her research before?

With another of Cup Cake’s pecan twirls balanced on the edge of my saucer, I leaned back in my chair. Still a little sweet for my taste, but nothing brought back those old days quite like it. “Have you ever travelled to Manehattan?” I asked.

A quick nod, and her smile never faltered. She must have had a good experience then. Well, for all I knew, she’d lived there, though I remembered her letters coming from a small town near Fillydelphia.

“If I’d needed Mrs. Cake’s help just to make it in Ponyville, what chance did I have in Manehattan?” Yes, every town should have a Cup Cake. “What would I do there with nowhere to go? Maybe I could still get to Canterlot on time. Or maybe I could wait for Prim to return—Manehattan was her home base, after all. Eventually, she’d have to, but she might call down Tartarus on me and demand I pay her back for her wasted expenses from a failed attempt to make something out of me.”

I couldn’t resist. Leaning forward for another pecan twirl, I held up the plate toward her. I didn’t bother grounding it. “Would you like to try one?” I recognized the way she wrinkled her nose. A little sweet for her, too, but then I’d always simply found them compelling. “Go on. They’ll surprise you.”

She took a tiny bite, then another. A little sigh, the first sound I’d heard from her, and a faint smile. And Cup Cake had another fan.

I held my tea up to breathe in its scent once more before continuing. “So I had two options available to me, neither one cheap. And I only had the money in my coin purse, which might hold fifty bits if I packed it carefully, but of course I’d already spent some.”

The entire group had left for Canterlot without me? Prim? Pixie? Glitter Glow had told me—“But three o’clock! We were supposed to meet at three o’clock!” I shouted at the hotel desk clerk.

She only shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you.”

I couldn’t stand there wasting time! Maybe I could still catch up. I raced for the train station, splashing through puddles and icy cascades of rain the whole way, then dashed inside, to the ticket counter. The schedule on the board behind the agent—noon train to Canterlot, and not another til six! “Six?” I barked, jabbing a hoof at the offending number. “Why not until six?”

“Saturday schedule,” he answered, backing away as if I might start foaming at the mouth.

Okay. I needed to calm down. I didn’t know what Prim had planned for today. Just getting to the next hotel? Or would I miss a photo shoot? Oh no, oh no, oh no!

“A-a ticket. Is this enough?” I said, shoving my coin purse toward him.

He peered down his nose at it and shook his head.

How could he say that? It wasn’t true! I slumped against the counter, and my throat spasmed—for a moment, I thought I might retch right there on the floor, but I only gagged and let out a strangled gasp.

Could I—could I run to Canterlot from here? Start walking, and eventually I’d get there, prostrating myself at her feet and begging forgiveness. Drenched in cold rain and—and shivering, too. Maybe she’d take pity on me.

“Next!” the agent called.

No, it took the train many hours to get there. By the time I could, she would have returned to Manehattan already. I had to wait. I had to wait and think about what wrath she’d unleash upon me.

So I trudged back to the hotel. My bun half unraveled, the loose tresses dripping on the floor, I crept up to the desk. “I-I need a room.” The clerk, still filing her hoof, chewed on a wad of gum. I opened the flap on one of my saddlebags. Thank goodness they were waterproof. If the rain had gotten in, ruined Mayor Mare’s book, made the ink run all over Cup Cake’s unfinished quilt… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do, but I could never face either of them again. Something trickled down my cheeks, surely rainwater.

My coin purse, rather lighter now—I nudged it at her. “Is this enough?” She barely afforded it half a second’s attention, then gave me the same response and consideration as the railway ticket agent had.

“I thank thee,” I said quietly as I stashed my purse away again. Nowhere to go. Maybe I should simply set out walking for Canterlot. Or Ponyville. Or home.

All three started with heading out the door.

I went vaguely southwest, by my meager knowledge of the city’s layout; the sun had taken its own refuge from the newness of autumn’s first cold drizzle, and it refused to give me any guidance, lurking behind endless monoliths of basalt-gray clouds. My stomach groaning, I thought about using my last few bits on some lunch, yet if Prim returned to find me not only absentee but overweight as well, it would only further incite her ire. Maybe I could purchase an energy drink somewhere.

My sodden dress clung to every curve, and more and more of my mane escaped its bindings, and as I passed a building with a scaffold running up the facade, at least providing a brief respite from the rain, two of the construction workers whistled at me. The raindrops could have boiled off my forehead! I gritted my teeth and glared up at them. “Just leave me alone!” I screeched, then bolted down the sidewalk.

One intersection, then another—a heavy wagon had to swerve to avoid running me down, but if it did, what would it even matter?

Finally, up ahead, a cheery storefront of light-toned oak and frosted windows stood with its shingle teetering in the breeze—a shingle with a full mug emblazoned on it. It seemed as good a place as any to waste time fretting about where to go next, so I squeezed in through the doorway and shook myself off.

Much darker on the inside, but dancing firelight in the hearth promised a warm place to dry off. Enough empty tables sat around, but none for a single occupant. I’d only take up needless space at one of them. The last stool along the high counter stood right next to the hearth, though. So I clambered onto its worn surface and set my saddlebags on the floor, between my dangling legs.

A stallion ambled along the counter, wearing a button-up shirt rather reminiscent of the fashion from last year—how in Tartarus had I learned that? My poor beleaguered brain, all clogged up with knowledge I’d never require. “What can I get ya?” he said.

He had soft features and seemed friendly enough. Though he’d only halfway committed to that beard. “Do you have energy drinks?”

“Sure! What kind?”

Then I noticed the handle protruding up from behind the counter, a picture of an apple gracing its knob. I’d rather liked the cider Cup Cake had suggested I buy at Ponyville’s market. Something, anything to return to those simpler days, just a couple of months ago, when I had no concerns but rising early, helping bake, then reading before bedtime.

Returning to familiarity would defeat the whole point of leaving home, though. Good ponies stayed mindful of their purpose. But even good ponies needed a rest, and Mayor Mare—

I covered my eyes with a hoof and sniffled. “Just a cider, please.” Then I reached down for my coin purse and fumbled it onto the polished oak surface. “Is this enough?”

He plucked out four bits and filled a mug right in front of me, the foam dancing on top. And there it sloshed, under my nose. It smelled different. It tasted different, too. Kind of weird, but I’d already paid for it, and it wouldn’t do to waste it.

Strange. It burned my throat, and I had to swish it around in my mouth, swallow it little by little, but the more I had, the less it bothered me. Just numb. My stomach growled even louder.

Late afternoon, and some ponies must have gotten off work—they came in and filled out the tables. Some with construction vests on. My head felt all jittery, and I glared at them. They’d whistled at me, all of them. Nice and tart and apple-y, and a smile sprouted over my face. “Is this enough?” I jabbed my hoof at it, my—my purse. How many times now?

Too loud, too many voices, and I slumped face-first on the counter, breathing in the cool air, except I’d picked the seat by the fire, hadn’t I? Pretty dumb. Pretty, heh. That was me, the pretty one. I blinked hard, and if I kept my eyes closed, I could imagine the voices dying away, leaving me alone. I pulled the cold mug against my cheek.

Empty? Already? I shook the glass, but now I’d have to open my eyes to make sure. Over to the side, wasting space at a table by herself—an orange mare, blonde mane, trophy cutie mark, and wearing a blazer and turtleneck. She kept watching. And about the time the stallion asked me if I wanted another cider, she walked over and took the seat next to me.

“Cold Draft, you’ve been helping yourself to very generous tips all evening. Don’t you think you’ve both had enough?”

He frowned, and before I could ask him to count my money again, he’d wandered down to the far end of the counter. The mare frowned, too. What’d I do to her?

While I sat there trying to hold my head steady, she sipped at some dark red liquid from a glass that looked like a big eggcup. “That good?” I asked her.

She daintily touched the glass to her lips again and looked away from me. “Why don’t you put your money away?”

What difference did that make? But she kept staring somewhere away from me, so I corralled my purse toward me. It fell on the floor with a jingle. So I bent over, and—

The lights on the ceiling stabbed at my eyes as I lay on my back, and a hoof pulled me up, tugged me to a chair, my saddlebags plopped on the table in front of me. Light blue eyes, not as deep as… as… I couldn’t remember who.

“You’re not one of the regulars. What brings you here?” the mare asked. Her frown gone, now a little smile, exactly like Igneous Rock would give me if I skinned a knee. Making sure I was alright.

“I’m a model,” I replied, puffing out my chest. “On my roam-springa!”

“Your what?”

“W-we have to—” I stifled a burp. “I beg thy pardon. We have to see what the world is like, to see if we wish to stay home.”

Her eyes lit up. “Oh! I guess I have heard of such a thing. How long—?”

“I learned to bake and model a-and not get scared of crowds.” It seemed like the buzzing in my ears had faded, so I opened one eye wider. “Dost thou like pecan twirls?”

I’d seen a grin like that before, turned upon the nonsense of foals. “Do you have a chaperone?”

Ch-chapter pone? “No, just poetry. I only read half of it, though. Here—” I reached down for my saddlebags and nearly toppled to the floor again, but she caught me. Oh yeah, they were on the table now. Pretty dumb. Pretty, dumb. Heh. “You can read if you want.”

Like the wind coursing through the quarry at home, she let out a heavy sigh. “I apologize in advance, but I have to do this.” She then proceeded to pick through my saddlebags, holding up whatever scraps of paper she found. Her frown returned the more she looked.

Then another sigh. “I don’t see a key, an address, or anything.”

“No, I got nowhere,” I mumbled. “’Cept the park.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” she said flatly, but I didn’t answer. Seemed like everypony could read that from me anyway. “I cannot in good conscience leave you to fend for yourself. Come with me. You can sleep it off at my apartment.”

“Oh… okay.” How did we get outside? And when had it gotten dark? She had on saddlebags that looked just like mine! I tried to follow, but sometimes she had to slow down and let me catch up. I might have stopped once to retch in an alley, but maybe I only thought I needed to. I wouldn’t want to do that in her apartment, and clean ponies were good ponies.

Some stairs, but not many, so only a little exercise, and then I stumbled in to a small three-room suite. A table and sofa and kitchen appliances in here, a bed through the archway, and a washroom.

I needed a bath. I was gross. But I flopped onto the sofa to catch my breath, and I heard some muffled sounds of a toothbrush and clothes hangers. The light turned out, and it felt like somepony draped a blanket over me.

A bath could wait until morning.

“Hi-choo!” My eyes snapped open, and I peered over at the sunlight piercing the room at a shallow angle. “Hi-choo!”

“Huh? Wha—?” somepony said. What room was this? Not my hotel. But then rustling cloth, and through an archway, I saw an orange earth pony roll off the bed and land on the floor with a thump. Then a head popped back up with a blazer draped over it.

“Oh! I apologize!” I said, grimacing and holding a hoof to my mouth. “I did not mean to wake thee! But I couldn’t help it!”

Small place, three rooms. Fairly modern style, but not one I’d seen before. How did I get here? But then the pony shook the blazer off, and—a mare. She glanced at the clock as she trotted in, wearing a flannel nightgown. “No, don’t concern yourself with it. I didn’t stay up late, so I can stand to get up early. Would you care for a bath?” she said, pointing at a washroom.

Maybe it’d make me feel better. So I strained my way off a very comfortable sofa and stepped in, my hooves clicking on the tiled floor. My dress, hanging over the curtain rod! Had—had she undressed me? I whipped my head back around, and she craned her neck from her place in front of the kitchen sink, halfway through dumping a scoop of coffee grounds into a percolator. “Is that dry yet? You got it all soaked with rain yesterday.”

Oh. Well, that was okay, I guessed. I patted my dress with a hoof, and it seemed dry enough. “Mmhmm.”

I took it down, folded it, and placed it on a wicker box before stepping into the shower and drawing the curtain closed.

“Clean towels are in the cabinet across from the sink!” she called. And some kind of hiss started from the kitchen.

I turned on the hot water and bathed as quickly as I could. I still didn’t know where I’d ended up, but bits and pieces began drifting onto my memory like ashes. Yesterday, I’d run to that… beverage establishment. Things got fuzzy after that, but I did remember talking to a mare. Yes, that blazer I’d seen on her head just now. This was the mare.

A bit of soap, and—wow. Three or four kinds of shampoo, something called “conditioner.” Pixie Cut had told me not to use soap, so I tried the bottle with a picture of hyacinths on it. What a nice lather it made! I swirled it into my mane with both hooves, and it all clicked! Pixie Cut used something like this when doing my mane. I’d never watched her. It felt positively luxuriant!

I could have wasted an hour in there, but I had no business taking up somepony else’s bath. So I shut off the water and found a towel, right where she said they’d be. But my mane, just hanging free! I didn’t have a hair tie, and where did my saddlebags go?

Back out into the main room and—there, on the floor, next to the sofa. I let out a heavy breath.

“My word, you’re rather pretty!” she said. Yeah, pretty dumb. But why did that pop into my head? She dished up two plates of eggs and toast. “Here. Have some breakfast. I don’t think you ate anything all day yesterday.”

Food. Mmm, it smelled good, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from it. “I-I can’t. I’m a model.”

“Who told you models couldn’t eat?”

What would happen when Prim Hemline found me? I slumped onto the sofa and got out a hair tie, then gathered my mane up into a nice, tight bun. And luckily, my glasses sat in the saddlebag, too. Had she put them in there? On they went. Yes, who’d told me models couldn’t eat? The same ones who’d told me the train left at three.

So I staggered over to the table and sat down. My legs would not stop shaking.

“See?” she said, angling her nose toward them. “You’re malnourished. And probably dehydrated.” A cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice soon joined my plate in front of me.

“What did I do?” I said, holding my throbbing skull as I nibbled on a piece of toast.

“Had too much cider. Way too much,” she replied through a mouthful of eggs.

I shook my head. “But I’ve had cider before. It didn’t do this to me.”

“There’s more than one kind.”

A touch of nausea still tiptoed around my stomach, but the toast seemed to help, like a hygroscopic mineral, sponging up moisture from the air. “How can I tell them apart?” Not that I’d want cider any time soon.

She took a sip of coffee, and her mug clunked against the table. “If it says ‘hard’ or ‘alcoholic’ on the label, you should probably stay away from it. And if you’re at a bar again, order virgin cider.”

My cheeks burned fiercely. “That’s not anypony’s business—!”

But she held up a hoof and grinned. “It’s just an expression. That’s all. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh.”

“By the way, I don’t know your name. I gave you mine last night, but I don’t expect you remember. It’s Ms. Harshwhinny.” She extended a hoof, and I shook it.

“Cloudy Quartz,” I offered. “Or Crystal Essence. Prim said to go by that.”

Right away, her eyebrows shot up. “Prim Hemline? You’re one of her models?”

Another crunch of toast. She’d buttered hers, but I preferred it plain. “Mmhmm.”

“Okay, there’s obviously a story behind this.” Besides the few isolated breaches, she’d worn a cold, stony expression the whole time. It rather suited her, and now it returned, but still with a hidden warmth underneath. Like Igneous Rock, especially as he grew up.

So I told her everything. Starting from my own front door, into Ponyville, to Manehattan. How I’d made friends with so many in Ponyville, though I left out the grislier details. Good ponies didn’t parade kisses around, either the good ones or the misguided. And then how I’d made very few friends in Manehattan.

She didn’t speak the entire time, and even when I’d finished, she remained a statue, with her eyes closed.

I wedged in a few bites of eggs before I spoke again. “If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am, why did you decide to help me, and before you even knew any of that?”

After a deep breath, she turned steely eyes on me, like one imparting a catechism. “In my profession, I encounter many types. From canny mayors who wheel and deal to get any advantage possible to first-time athletes from backwoods towns who think that the best pony really does win. I can see it in their eyes. You’re one of the latter, and for the life of me, if not for ponies like you, I would retire. You make my job worthwhile.” Another smile threatened to crack free, but she must have awakened enough to wrest it under control.

But mayors and athletes? “What kind of work do you do?” I asked.

“I’m the chairmare of the Equestria Games committee. I help organize the Games, make sure they run smoothly, and facilitate bids for future venues.” Her eyes softened for a moment. “When Equestria is no longer a place friendly to the naive, I will take my leave of it. And somepony has taken advantage of you.”

“N-not Miss Hemline!”

Ms. Harshwhinny snorted. “She knew or should have known.”

If Prim never found me, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Unless Ms. Harshwhinny wanted to help get me to Canterlot, but what would that solve?

She didn’t speak again, so I finished my eggs and toast and juice and coffee. Then I merely sat there staring out the window.

Finally, she moved, and it made me jump. “We need to discuss where you go from here. But I have some business matters to take care of today. You’re welcome to accompany me, if you’d like to see some more of the city.”

As long as I’d been here, I’d barely seen a few buildings. The hotel, the studio, the train station. The bar. I nodded quickly. For the first time in weeks, I’d eaten my fill. It felt good.

“I’m afraid my meeting would only bore you,” Ms. Harshwhinny said as we passed through a large wooden door in a carved stone archway. She waved a hoof toward the ceiling, as cavernous as the central mine chamber back home. “But town hall is a historic building. Feel free to look around. They aren’t busy today, so one of the desk staff can give you a tour. Just tell them you’re here with me. I’ll return in two or three hours.”

“I thank thee.” Partly hidden by the hinges’ squeaking, a quiet chuckle sounded. My old style of speaking was one of the few things that had reliably made her smile so far.

She started up a broad staircase, no longer making room for me or waiting for me to catch up. So I supposed I’d come as far as I should. “If you want some lunch, there’s an employees’ cafe in the basement. I’m a civil servant, so I have a tab with them. Just give them my name.”

I waited until she’d glanced back to make sure I’d heard her, then bowed my head slightly. “I thank thee.” She smiled, but I would have missed it, had I not been looking for it.

What grand deed had I performed in my life to deserve such kind ponies? What would have become of me if not for Cup Cake taking me in and now Ms. Harshwhinny looking after me? Surely Equestria wasn’t as treacherous as Ms. Harshwhinny liked to think.

I did spend about half an hour strolling about the ground floor. Impressive, but not really that much different from the train station, if less crowded. Then the clock tower outside struck noon, and I went down to the cafe for a small salad, which I paid for myself, and returned to the lobby. Good thing I’d brought my saddlebags.

Ms. Harshwhinny had insisted I didn’t need to, that I was welcome to return to her apartment, but I didn’t dare presume. And it meant I had my quilt with me.

The first time in weeks I’d worked on it, and oh, how peaceful it felt! The two ponies at the desk watched with interest, and a few entering or leaving the building smiled down as well. “That’s beautiful!” a passerby said. “How long does it take you to sew one?”

“It taketh two or three weeks, if I work continuously. By my troth, I have not given this one the attention it deserveth.” These days, I tended to speak that way only when shaken, but it seemed to fit this place.

A quiet giggle sounded, and she turned to her companion, whispering, “Did you hear how she talks?”

But they walked on. Another good day, and I could have the quilt finished. When would I ever get back to Ponyville to give it to Cup Cake, though? I ran a hoof over the blocks Mayor Mare had cut and sewn herself. And I couldn’t stop the tears. I’d never written her a letter, I’d never finished her book, I’d let her efforts on this quilt languish. What kind of friend had I been that I warranted all the kindnesses afforded me? Good ponies gave more than they took.

I kept working. If I didn’t see it through, it wouldn’t matter if I ever got the opportunity to present it to Cup Cake. Near the middle of the quilt, the first two blocks Mayor Mare had ever cut for me, but I had to assemble when she couldn’t overcome her trepidation at doing the actual sewing. Two rows down, the first one she’d sewn herself. Then the entire next row with her stitching, a little more closely spaced than mine.

Why? Why did it hurt so much? I collapsed onto the fabric in my lap, and I didn’t have a tissue, but those old gray dresses—I pulled one out and wiped my eyes dry.

Did I love Mayor Mare? Just as quickly as the thought burgeoned, a resounding “yes, but—” rang through my mind. I couldn’t put my hoof on either part of that, but she was dear to my heart, and I definitely wanted to see her again.

I’d… never thought of it before. The Pairing Stone had chosen Igneous Rock and me for each other. But I hadn’t at all considered that his father would have done the same as mine: walked him to the road, wished him well, and sent him on his way. His own roam-springa. Was he trying new things? Would he return?

Did he love me? Was he even pondering the question?

I barely felt the bench move, but somepony had sat down. I stayed hunched over my quilt.

“You look as miserable as me,” a growly voice said. “You okay?” Without sitting up, I shrugged. “Yeah, that’s life,” he answered.

For a minute, his hoof tapped against the bench’s leg, but then the seat moved again. “Sorry to bother you,” he said from a few steps away.

“No, no!” I replied, wiping my eyes again. “I’m not in a social mood today. Please. Don’t leave on my account.”

“It’s alright. I gotta get back to work anyway.” As he walked off, I stole a glimpse. A donkey?

I watched him leave, and then I picked up my needle again, but no, I couldn’t sew right now. Away they went, my needle, my thread, my thimble, all in my saddlebag. I left the quilt in my lap, though, all nice and warm. And I reached for the book. Her book.

Ms. Harshwhinny dabbed her glass at her lips, but if the level in it went down any, I couldn’t tell. “I must have watched you for a full minute before coming down the stairs. I’ve never seen anypony snuggled up in a blanket in the lobby, but there you were.”

The same table as last night, in the same bar. She stopped here every night she was in town, or so she said. I could have done without coming here, but the stallion behind the counter didn’t seem to recognize me, thank goodness.

“Another drink, ma’am?” the waitress said from beside me. I looked up and stared at her for a second, then nodded. “What were you drinking?”

“V-virgin cider.” She didn’t laugh, then or when I’d first ordered it. Maybe Ms. Harshwhinny was right.

When the waitress had left, I gazed back at Ms. Harshwhinny. Some of the old speech clamored to get out, but I held it in check. I didn’t want to elicit an answer through charm. “I don’t understand. Why have you shown me such hospitality? You don’t know me.”

In return, she gave me a curious stare, her eyes sparkling. “Your story. You’ve fallen on some very hard times for someone so lost in this world. Who would I be if I turned a blind eye to that?”

The waitress set a new mug in front of me. I still couldn’t believe I’d try cider again so soon, but with Ms. Harshwhinny’s assurances that it wouldn’t result in a repeat of last night, I’d lost my timidity. “More wine, ma’am?” she said to Ms. Harshwhinny.

“Does it look like I’ve finished?” she replied, swirling her beverage in her half-full glass. Funny, she treated everypony else with either brisk professionalism or obvious disdain. Not me.

She watched the retreating waitress, then let her gaze drift back over to me. “Honestly, you’re the kind of pony we all wish we could be. So purely innocent, so excited to see everything for the first time. And, unfortunately, so easy to hurt, since you wouldn’t expect ponies to be capable of doing that to you. We should all have such a zest for life.”

The foam on my cider bubbled up, deflated, dissipated, disappeared. How could I follow that? She made too much out of me. Cup Cake, Mayor Mare, Igneous Rock. Those were the amazing ponies. Not me.

“Like I said,” she continued, “if we as a society stop valuing that naivete, I’ll have outlasted my desire to work for its benefit.” And she flashed me the fullest smile I’d yet seen on her. “You bring out the best in others, Miss Quartz.”

I couldn’t make any kind of coherent response to that, even if I believed it. So I just silently sipped at my cider until she’d tired of scoffing at various bar patrons, and we went back to her apartment, where I might resume my quilting.

I didn’t know how the time escaped from me or how Ms. Harshwhinny didn’t feel put upon, but over two weeks had passed, and I still traipsed all over town with her, shared a drink at the bar before dinner, and stayed on her sofa. And I’d learned a lot. This really was a pretty town. And there really were nice ponies here. I just couldn’t tell the difference until it was too late.

But my thoughts kept wandering back to something I’d wondered when I first got here: did every place have a Cup Cake? Ms. Harshwhinny couldn’t have been more different than her, but she’d done no less for me. Yes. Yes, every place did have a Cup Cake, it seemed.

Ms. Harshwhinny’s duties had brought her once more to the town hall, so I took up my station on the bench. I’d sewed more and more of the quilt during my evenings at her apartment, and she’d even tried her hoof at one block. A little lopsided, but no more so than Mayor Mare’s first effort, and like it, only a bit of scrutiny could single it out from the rest. That was the second time I saw her wearing a full-bore smile.

But today, my needle remained in my saddlebag. Instead, I found my place in Mayor Mare’s book. To my surprise, somepony joined me on the bench.

“Hello again, kid.”

“Oh!” That donkey! “I apologize for last time. I was in a dreadful mood.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “I could tell. That’s why I sat with you. Misery loves company, right?”

Immediately, I thought of Bell Hop. He’d kindly offered his time, but I hadn’t considered going back to see him again. “Things are better today,” I said absentmindedly as I scanned down another stanza of poetry whose meaning was lost on me.

“LIfe’ll give you a reason to think so,” he grumbled, “until it pulls the rug out from under you again.”

Ms. Harshwhinny had spoken of naivete, but this donkey lived at the opposite end of the spectrum—he had a severe case of world-weary gloominess. “What happened?”

Quite possibly more than one thing, but he had that dogged cling to his pessimism that suggested a single fervent hope dashed instead of constant failure. He had a job, after all, unless he’d lost it since our first encounter, and he looked well fed. “You wouldn’t understand. What’s true love to someone so young?” If he could tell I was only halfway listening to him, he didn’t let on.

“I am betrothed to Igneous Rock Pie.” He blinked at me and didn’t speak right away, silent as a silicate, as Father might say, so I got through another incomprehensible short poem.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Name’s Cranky Doodle, by the way.”

“Cloudy Quartz.”

He sat up straighter and ran a hoof through his thinning mane. “Last year, I met the most amazing jenny,” he said, his eyes twinkling with whatever tableau existed in his mind. “At the Grand Galloping Gala, and we danced the night away. We couldn’t have been more perfect for each other, but come morning, she was gone.”

Hm. Maybe she hadn’t been as enamored as he. But I dared not suggest that. “What did you do to find her?” I’d just started a rather lovely nature poem, but I paused after the first line. He deserved my attention.

“Looked around all of Canterlot, but no hope there. She had no means of staying after the Gala. She’d made that clear, but we didn’t connect again in the morning. By then, it was too late. I would have followed her anywhere. Anywhere.”

Chasing something through an unfamiliar world? Now he really had my attention. Still, a kindred spirit, it seemed. Except one thing. “Then you gave up.” I hadn’t gotten to that point in my own journey yet.

“Kind of. No.” He forced out a rough sigh. “It’s complicated. See, I had to come back here for my job, but on all my lunch breaks, I walk over here—” he rolled his eyes up and traversed his gaze across the vaulted ceiling “—and go through the public records, just in case I unearth a single mention of Matilda. If I had luck on my side, she would’ve turned out to live here. So of course she didn’t.”

He fell into silence again, so I showed him a sympathetic smile and returned to my reading, retracing that opening line. It drew me in like none of the others had. It felt like a teasing memory of childhood, of my days spent playing after chores, romping through the fields and woods with Igneous Rock, and then the second line—

My jaw dropped, and my trembling hooves nearly lost their grip on the book.

“…rocky with promise, overgrown with heart…”

“It’s her!” I shouted. His head jerked toward me.

No way something she’d simply read could have become her life’s meaning, not in that manner. Those were her words. She’d written them. And she’d shared that with me and nopony else.

My heart nearly tore from my chest, and I entreated him with tear-filled eyes. “It’s not enough! Thou hast to go, wherever it taketh thee, all over Equestria. Look for her!”

Everything crashed down on my head, and my stomach lurched as if I’d had too much of that cider, and not the virgin stuff. The snuggling, the kissing, it… I didn’t know. I’d never sorted all that out, but I did know that I’d do anything to be Mayor Mare’s friend again. Just to talk to her, to see her, to laugh with her. To find that place of rest.

I’d failed her. If I really loved her, in any capacity, how could I have just abandoned her? Never contacting her, always justifying it with a flimsy excuse, because I was too afraid of what I couldn’t even define, because I’d let all the shiny baubles distract me from what really mattered!

“You had something special, something that you may never find again! You can’t let that get away from you!” He scooted away from me with a grimace as I snapped the book shut and held it to my chest. “Don’t give up on her, please. Find her, no matter what, or you’ll always regret it!”

“Y-yes,” he said, gulping and staring wide-eyed at the floor. “I-I could, I could ask for travel assignments at work, use the vacation time I’ve built up…” For the first time, he met my eyes. “What if I don’t find her?”

“Then you gave yourself the best possible chance, and you will have experienced a lot of new things along the way.” It seemed the roam-springa had wisdom for those in the outside world as well. Good ponies sought wisdom.

A timid smile emerged. “I-I’ll try that. Thank you, Cloudy Quartz.”

And with a quickness anathema to his previous trudging, he hurried out the door.

The silence gathered against me like a snowdrift, and only then did I relax my hold on Mayor Mare’s book. A piece of herself she’d never shared before, except anonymously, but she trusted me. I flipped to the page again and read the remainder of that poem.

I absolutely loved it.

“I think I see what you mean,” I said, “about ponies in situations that just speak to you, and you have to help them. I met somepony like that today.” Off and on, I’d tried things other than virgin cider. Today, Ms. Harshwhinny had suggested strawberry lemonade. It actually tasted pretty good!

She touched her glass to her lips, maybe drinking some wine, maybe not, and nodded. “Yes, we regain a little of ourselves when we do that, and not just for the special cases, either. How did it turn out?”

Honestly, I doubted I’d ever know. “I could only help him choose a path, but at least he started down it. The rest is up to him.”

“Interesting.” She drained the last of her wine and stood, leaving a stack of coins on the table. “If you recall, on the first morning after we’d met, I said we needed to discuss where you go from here. I think it’s time, but better if we wait until we’ve gotten home.”

Oh… yes, I couldn’t stay with her forever. My ears drooped.

But her eyes softened. “I mean in life. I didn’t mean I was kicking you out. You have a purpose, and we need to make sure you’re accomplishing that. Stagnating will do you no good. Always forward! I don’t think either of us can abide an idler.”

True enough. And I did still need to decide what to do about… all of it. I glanced at her coins. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t pay for much. If I’d only been able to get to Ponyville—I have some money in the bank there.”

And she glared at me like I was one of those simpletons she complained about every day. “You do realize banks have branches, right? You could have gone to any bank in this city and made a withdrawal.”

“N-no.” I could have gone to Canterlot and caught up to Prim Hemline. I could have gone back to Ponyville. I could have avoided being a parasite to Ms. Harshwhinny. “I’m sorry,” I squeaked.

“Shh, it’s okay,” she said, dabbing at my eyes with a napkin. At least I didn’t have eyeliner to run. I hadn’t worn makeup in weeks. “I’m not mad. I’ve enjoyed the companionship, and if I’ve managed to give you some peace, it was well worth it.” Then she reached an arm around my withers and corralled me toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go home and cook dinner.”

Yes, we’d had fun cooking. She’d said her job made her travel a lot, and she mostly had to eat restaurant food, but when she got home and could spend time cooking, she could unwind. Only good fortune smiling on me yet again meant that she hadn’t needed to leave town since we’d met.

We walked side by side down the gaslit streets, and after a few blocks, the same questions that always teased at my thoughts once more cried out like a hungry infant. “Why are you helping me? Why do so many ponies want to help me? Why do I deserve it?” I could never repay them all, not even close.

She stopped, right next to a darkened alley, and looked me in the eye. “Because you’re beautiful.” An honest answer, I guess, but not one she’d given me before. Would she still like me if I hadn’t been a model?

“I mean—” she started, then shook her head. “You are beautiful.” She lightly touched my cheek and brushed the few hairs escaping from my bun. “But you’re really beautiful where it matters. In here,” she said, poking my chest. “You’re so full of wonder and joy and kindness, like everypony wishes they could be.”

I didn’t even do anything for that. I didn’t earn it. So I teared up and sniffled, and she reached into her saddlebag for another napkin, but she never got there—I pushed her into the alley, against the wall, and kissed her.

She backed off just enough to let my skewed glasses tumble off my nose and catch on their chain, then she pressed in, one hoof around me in an embrace and the other running along my neck. My hair tie soon came undone, my mane spilled over her arms, I tasted wine on her lips—I could have floated up from the pavement and touched the sky!

Her nostrils flared for breath, and her heart beat against mine, her giving heart that she said didn’t measure up, yet it was just as beautiful, but then she paused, panting, our foreheads resting together as she softly bit at my lower lip.

“W-what’s wrong?” I said. Her downcast eyes, her hoof gently pushing me away.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this to you,” she replied quietly, as if rationing out her final breath.

My tears had never really stopped, but now they gushed out again with renewed purpose as I picked up my hair tie. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Please forgive me!” I’d offended her somehow, played the game wrong. Something.

But she patted my shoulder. “No, just… Let’s go home, start cooking. I’ll be able to talk if I’m cooking.” With her eyes focused somewhere far off, she lumbered toward her apartment. I actually considered running away. I’d get answers with her, but answers I didn’t want. Answers that would explain why I wasn’t worthy of her.

Ten minutes later, I set my saddlebags down next to her sofa and walked into the kitchen with her. Our usual setup ensued: cutting boards out, the hiss of oil in her saute pan, me with the clack-clack-clack of the knife over celery, carrots, peppers, and her peeling garlic.

Everything in the pan, and she turned the heat down to a slow simmer. Then she hugged me from behind, kissed me on the cheek, and began.

“I’m a few years older than you, so I’ve been around a bit. I know how these things work. My job takes me all over the place, never staying still for long, and I don’t have an opportunity for anything but short-term romance. And through those relationships, many with younger folks like yourself, I’ve adopted one chief rule: never leave the other pony in worse shape than I found them. I don’t want regrets or pain on either side.” I only stared at the cutting board, at the loose carrot ends, only fit to be discarded with the rest of the day’s waste. The pan clanked against the burner momentarily as she tossed its contents.

Then she ran a hoof lightly through my mane. “You couldn’t handle that fast pace, going to another city every few days. Maybe you’d get used to it eventually, but you’d never enjoy it. I can tell. You’re the type who needs to find her place and stay there, and the city will never suit you.”

I—I needed to hear somepony say that. I’d thought so, too, but I’d been laughably misguided about so many things. Her hoof still twirled through my mane.

“Ponies have used you,” she said, “and if I went through with this, I’d be no better.”

“But what if I want it? Don’t you?” Another question I shouldn’t have asked, since I just might get an answer.

She squeezed me a little tighter. “I should have seen it from the beginning, when you first told me your whole tale. You don’t want this. You just don’t know that.”

If not for her holding me, I could have reassembled my bun, put my glasses back on. Not looked so pretty. “But you’ve been wonderful to me! Why wouldn’t I want that?” I blinked hard and shoved the knife and cutting board nearer to the sink. “Or am I not worth it?”

“You’re worth more than that,” she said, pressing her muzzle into my neck. “As much as I’d love to love you, that’s not what this can be. And it’s my fault I didn’t see that sooner.”

I sank to my knees and slumped against the counter, but she stayed with me, all the way to the floor. “Don’t you see? You’ve taken every friendship you’ve made and tried to construct a romance out of it. You just didn’t understand—one doesn’t have to become the other. You can love friends just as much while remaining friends. After you tried that with Cup Cake, you were still friends, right?”

We were. I had other foalhood friends at school, too, but I’d grown up now, and… Try new things! Why did it have to be so confusing? “Then how do I know when it’s more than friends?” I said through my sniffling.

“When you really love them and want to spend time—” She exhaled sharply and smiled at me. “You know, it’s kind of hard to say. Of course you love friends. But think of somepony you want to see first thing every morning and last thing every night. Somepony who gives you strength just from a touch or holding hooves. Somepony you could see raising children with, if that’s your thing.”

Mayor Mare. I loved her, I did, but I’d see her on spontaneous visits. I didn’t wake up every morning—and sneeze twice, of course—beaming about the chance to walk over to her office, rushing through my routine to get there faster. I loved her, though, like… like I loved Cup Cake.

“I can tell,” Ms. Harshwhinny said, leaning around to look me straight in the eye, “that you won’t find that with me. And right now, letting you entertain any thoughts to the contrary would do more harm than good. I can’t be what you need: somepony stable, always present, who can give you back the same devotion you keep trying to entrust everypony with. Not many ponies can earn that from you. It’s a rare, precious gift.”

She patted my shoulder again, her subtle warmth radiating through me like the last ember from a blazing hearth. “Keep that for somepony special, somepony who really deserves it.”

As if that made any of this easier. It didn’t solve a thing!

She must have seen my teeth grinding. Or felt my body tremble. “I realize,” she said, “that’s how you already lived, back on your farm. It’s not a ‘new thing’ to you, but I think you’ll find it applies in both worlds.”

The warmth only grew, and my heart stilled, like a hummingbird’s impossibly rapid wingbeats finally taking their rest. Yes, try new things and test them, weigh them. And quite possibly conclude that the old ways worked better for me. Ms. Harshwhinny would probably be happy, but first, I needed to know one more thing.

“You deserve somepony’s love, too. It’s only fair,” I said, and she chuckled.

“Somepony sitting around incessantly waiting for me? Not likely. Another of me, maybe—doing their own thing, just as dispersed around the nation, then intersecting with my life on the few weekends I find myself here.” She waved a hoof at the walls surrounding us, and for the first time, a sheen of tears marked her immutable cheeks. “So I move from island to island, leaving each unspoiled, and once in a while, even I emerge better off.”

“I wish I could do something for you.”

A genuine smile, one no doubt born of days before she’d succumbed to her own loss of naivete, crystallized on her face. “I know. And honestly, the sentiment is enough. Really.” Her eyes crinkled, and she lost some of her stiff posture. Perhaps she’d found rest of a kind as well. Perhaps I’d helped. Good ponies returned favors in kind.

“I think I should return to Ponyville,” I said.

Once more, she kissed me on the cheek, looking more like a proud mother. “And I think you’ve made the right decision.”

Author's Note

Coming June 14, Chapter 5: Just Desserts.

Chapter 5: Just Desserts

The young mare didn’t have too much of a taste for sweet things, either, and Cup Cake had, rather considerately, only provided us a few of her pecan twirls. Though I thought the mare had found them unexpectedly to her liking.

“So, you’d think I’d take the first train in the morning back to Ponyville, if not catch the last one out that evening, hm?” I said. She hastily set her teacup down and picked up her pencil once more. I daresay the wood of a pencil might taste especially bitter after a pecan twirl.

“Relax,” I continued, reaching for my own cup. “I’ll give you ample warning, but for now, I’ve gotten a tad parched. I don’t normally find my voice taxed so.”

Quickly, she flashed me an apologetic smile, but I waved it off.

“No, no, it really is my pleasure,” I said. “I don’t mind talking to you at all, and by my troth, I’ve enjoyed reliving those days. I don’t know that I’ve even told my daughters in this much detail before. Perhaps I should take it as a blessing that you’ve decided to record it. They might find it an illuminating perspective on their mother.”

My tea had cooled by then, so I took a generous swallow. “Provided they will have the opportunity to read it, of course. That is entirely up to you.”

She’d laid her pencil down and raised her fresh cup, mimicking me in breathing in a deep draught of its rich steam, but here she paused to nod vigorously.

“I thank thee—you,” I said, and then chuckled at my own foolishness. “I still get caught between worlds at times.”

For a moment, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. The young mare would have a chance to savor her tea at a more sedate pace, and I could bask in the banging pots, clinking dishes, and bantering voices lilting in from the kitchen. “You know,” I said, my eyes still shut, “it’s amazing how certain instances in time absolutely crystallize in your memory. I may not remember what else happened that day or even that week, but one infinitesimal point will simply sparkle, and you can see it in your mind as if were happening right now.” Like that day I’d baked part of Buttercup’s surprise cake for her. I recalled every nuance, as if in a photograph; I could see it frozen in space, linger on the details, maneuver through the scene: the wooden spoon churning through the mix, the recipe card propped up on the counter, a puff of flour floating beside my face, and a huge smile at managing a creation on my own.

I’d taken part in enough of that cooking mayhem long ago, when everything felt fresh and frightening and thrilling all at once, reading my first romance novel in the bedroom upstairs, learning to speak so customers could understand me, then much later, peeking back at the kitchen door, cracked open, to see if Cup Cake would nod her approval at whatever stallion had asked me on a date that day.

Not many cleared the bar with her, and she never steered me wrong, though they never led to a second date, either. Intimidated by the competition? I never noticed at the time. More likely put off by me sitting there silently at dinner, wondering why coloring my face and wearing my hair loose appealed to them so much, and them finding me boring. No wonder I’d had success as a model—nopony expected me to go beyond appearances. And that dating nonsense had all stopped once I’d started seeing Mayor Mare anyway.

I took a deep breath and sat up. By the time I’d opened my eyes, the young mare already had her pencil at the ready.

“Instead of heading back to Ponyville immediately, I spent another day in Manehattan with Ms. Harshwhinny. We cooked lunch together one last time and went for a stroll through the park. ‘Easing me back into a slower-paced life,’ she called it, but really, I think she needed a friend, just a little bit longer. It was a luxury she’d never quite had before, and I happily indulged her. But she’d shown me how to withdraw money from the bank, and I’d gotten enough to purchase a ticket on the evening train.”

I tilted my cup back—both it and the pot had run dry. All things must end. “She accompanied me to the train station to see me off, but we had walked over that way early so that we could get a drink at her favorite bar again. Knowing us, I would have expected a very quiet evening. But fate had different plans.”

“Virgin cider,” I said to the waitress. Our usual table was occupied when we arrived, but after only ten minutes at the bar, it emptied, so we’d taken it again.

“House red wine,” Ms. Harshwhinny said.

“Alright, I’ll have those out for you in just a minute!”

My saddlebags, all packed, rested against my chair. I kept glancing down at them and tapping my hoof against the buckle, seemingly a clock ticking away the seconds we had remaining together, and after the fourth or fifth time, Ms. Harshwhinny spoke up.

“Why don’t you seem happy?”

Didn’t I? The dead ends and indecision looming around my head like a great swarm of gnats for the last several weeks had finally dispersed.

But I hadn’t earned it.

“I didn’t follow through. I didn’t stick with anything. How can I say I tried even a single thing if I didn’t see it through to its conclusion? Have I wasted my time all along?” Months of it. I propped my cheek on a hoof and stared hard at the tabletop. If I kept my focus on something mundane, maybe I could keep from crying. Any thought would do, except my stupid attempt to kiss just about everypony—

How could I find something when I didn’t know what it was? Wandering blindly in, starting down an unknown path without looking ahead. At least I had my answer: I didn’t belong out here, displaced from everything that made sense to me.

The tears started anyway, stupid tears, cowardly.

Ms. Harshwhinny glanced around at the other patrons, her eyes gleaming like a watchdog’s, then sidled her chair nearer to me and held my hoof. “But that’s not the point. Your ‘new things’—I see the value, to make sure you really want the familiar before you commit to it. But…” She shook her head and dabbed at my cheeks with a cocktail napkin. “Say you cooked a new recipe and didn’t like it. Why would you torture yourself by eating it all when you knew from the first bite that it didn’t suit you? You gave it a fair shot, and that’s all anypony can ask of you.”

“But I let so many ponies down! I broke promises to Cup Cake, Mayor Mare, a-and Prim! She must have had to replan her show without me, the whole crew, the other models, they’re all put out because of me!” How could I have allowed myself to get so selfish? Prim probably had a tab with the railroad as well, and I was too dumb to think of it, too bound up in my own sob story to do what I should have. I could have made it only a few hours late, walked the runway, repaid Prim for the ticket, or—

With what money? “If I hadn’t been so dreadfully dumb, I could have taken money from the bank to get to Canterlot and fulfill my agreement, but I hadn’t made anything from the modeling yet and—”

“She never paid you?” Ms. Harshwhinny growled.

I flopped forward onto the table and covered my face. I didn’t deserve to be paid. “No way could I take money from Prim, not then, not after what I did to her,” I forced out between sniffles. “She must hate me.”

“Don’t you dare take the blame for that!” I jerked my head up at the metallic sharpness in her voice. “You were bullied and misled, and it’s a shoddy organization that lets that go on!”

I didn’t want anypony angry! Not at me, not at each other, and I couldn’t take the shouting! I laid my head down and held my hooves over my ears, and my elbow bumped my glass of cider, and when had the waitress even set it there? But it jolted off the table and shattered on the floor, splashed on my saddlebags, and all I could think about was Buttercup’s cake lying crumbled on the tile of Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen and a glut of icing on my hoof and a piping bag I should have known better than to entrust to my own incompetence.

My body went limp, and I sobbed into the table as quietly as I could.

“I’m sorry,” Ms. Harshwhinny said softly, next to my ear. “I thought I was helping.”

“It’s okay,” I whimpered. “Even if it’s not my fault, it still happened because of me. I don’t want to cause trouble.”

“Alright. Just calm down. Everything’s fine.” The waitress had brought a couple of wet towels, and Ms. Harshwhinny knelt to wipe off my saddlebags and my dangling legs. And behind me, the sound of a broom and tinkling glass shards.

Then Ms. Harshwhinny scooted her chair against mine and put an arm around me. “You haven’t caused trouble, and you haven’t wasted anypony’s time. You found out a lot about who you are, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

It must have raised some eyebrows to see Ms. Harshwhinny on the floor, cleaning up after me. Just more embarrassment I’d perpetrated. She rubbed a hoof up and down my back, and only then did I hear several gasps. They just now noticed the staid mare shamelessly comforting her young friend in public?

But… Ms. Harshwhinny gasped as well. “You!” she shouted. She sounded like she might murder somepony, so I lethargically raised my head, and—

Prim Hemline stood in the doorway, she’d already spotted me, and she made a beeline over, and oh no, no, no, no, no! She’d yell and scream at me, demand her investment back, and glare at me with such hate, I just knew it, but I couldn’t run away! I trembled and shook so hard that I fell out of my chair, my bun came undone, and my glasses hit the floor, and a renewed rush of tears ran down my face.

Ms. Harshwhinny immediately interposed herself between us and tried to help me stand. “Are you alright?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” I choked out as I gritted my teeth, stared up with wide eyes, and waited for Prim to enumerate all my offenses and failures and pass sentence on me.

But Prim had a hoof to her chest, and she gazed at me as if at an injured child. “Oh, thank goodness I found you!”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here to browbeat her some more!” Ms. Harshwhinny said.

Prim scrunched up her nose and peered at her like she had a toad perched on top of her head. “Browbeat!?”

“I think you should leave.”

“I just came here to—”

“After all you put her through? She’s been scared to death of you for weeks now!”

Prim blanched as if Nightmare Moon herself stood in front of her. “Is this true?” she asked me.

“Don’t talk to her!” Ms. Harshwhinny continued. “You drag her off somewhere she doesn’t have the first clue how to survive, you leave her to fend for herself—”

“If you could just—”

“You didn’t even pay her!” Ms. Harshwhinny yanked me up and into my chair, and I just covered my head again, squeezed my eyes shut, and why wouldn’t all the shouting stop!? “I suppose you think that’s fair in some twisted way?”

“I pay my staff every other week, and she hadn’t been with us that long—”

“She’d starved herself near to the point of passing out because you thought she was fat!”

“I never said—”

“If not you, then somepony in your employ, and it is your job to know that, you insufferable harridan! You”—I could practically hear her jabbing a hoof at Prim’s chest—“are responsible!”

“For the love of Celestia!” Prim roared. “Could you please tone down the self-righteousness and shut up for five minutes!?”

Only my soft whimpering sounded throughout the room. Something warm up against me—Ms. Harshwhinny, her arm around me. Slowly, I raised my head up, and on the table, my hair tie. Ms. Harshwhinny must have set it there. My glasses dangled by their chain, and I reached down to put them back on, but…

One of the lenses had cracked.

Another spasm wracked my throat, and I held it in, but not without sniffling. And I still couldn’t stop shaking.

“You had me so worried,” Prim said softly. She must have taken the seat across from me. I blinked and finally met her gaze—not a trace of fire in her eyes. She wore a gentle smile. “I came back that evening, as soon as I noticed you hadn’t made it to Canterlot. I asked at the train station and the hotel, and they remembered seeing you, but they had no idea where you might have gone. I assumed you had decided you didn’t like modeling anymore, but I couldn’t abide leaving you on your own in a big city, either. I spent two days looking, and then I had to go supervise the fashion show, but every chance I got, I returned, asked around, followed up on rumors.”

Her smile grew, and Ms. Harshwhinny’s death grip on my shoulder relaxed. “You’re a very unique mare, and it wasn’t hard to catch word of sightings, but you turned up all over town. If you’ve been accompanying Ms. Harshwhinny, that makes sense. Still, I could never predict where you’d be, until I got a tip that you came here at the same time every evening.”

She reached a hoof toward me, but it only got halfway before she pulled it back. “Pixie Cut will be so relieved to hear you’re alright. She was worried sick. You said something to her that made her think you might…” Leaning over the table, she crossed her forelegs against her chest and pursed her lips. “Well, she thought you might harm yourself. At least the few hints I got of your continued appearances around the city helped dispel that notion, if not eliminate it entirely.”

“Harm… myself?” Why would a pony do such a thing? I’d never heard of the like before.

Again, Ms. Harshwhinny’s hoof grasped my shoulder, and my heart thudded with the rising grumble in her throat. “That’s all well and good, but Cloudy was mistreated. Nothing you’ve said changes that.”

But Prim held up a hoof, and Ms. Harshwhinny actually stayed quiet. “You’re right. I’m the one in charge, it’s my fault, and I’ll do what I can to fix it,” she said, staring pointedly at Ms. Harshwhinny, who’d bared her teeth in preparation for a renewed argument, but she deflated. And she gave a gentle nod, then Prim turned to me. “Who did this to you? Was it High Heels?”

I just shook my head and followed the swirling wood grain on the table in front of me.

“No? Then Sunny Shore?”

I didn’t respond. “Go on,” Ms. Harshwhinny finally said, poking me in the side. “Tell her who. Then they’ll get what they deserve.”

Didn’t they understand? I pressed my hooves to my temples. “I don’t want to make trouble! Not for you, not for them…”

“But they did something wrong!” Prim said. “They need to face the consequences of that!”

I took a deep breath and let it out as a long, tremulous sigh. “I hope they will on their own. But I can’t fault them for being what they are.” I sat up, retied my hair in a bun, and perched my glasses on my nose. This close, the crack didn’t really sit in my field of vision. “Just like I need to be what I am.”

“She’s better than this city deserves,” Ms. Harshwhinny muttered.

Igneous Rock had never tried to make me into anything other than me. So many others had, and yes, that wasn’t fair to ponies like Cup Cake who only wanted to help. But long before all this, back to my foalhood, Igneous Rock represented the one constant. Waiting for me in the mornings to walk to school together, helping each other with homework… For Celestia’s sake, I’d only felt comfortable letting my hair down in front of him, even though I eventually got used to it around Mayor Mare.

I’d forgotten. That one spring day last year, and I’d gotten into a strange, melancholy mood, and we sat there on a huge slab of rock overlooking the river. We watched the sunset together, holding hooves as the chilled breeze tingled like frost on my coat and the warmth radiated up from the sun-baked granite. He hadn’t noticed me watching him, but he felt as steady as the rock under us. So faithful. What had Ms. Harshwhinny said? Somepony I could envision raising a family with. And that day, with the water cascading past us and the trees creaking in the wind, I’d thought to myself what a steadfast father he’d make.

“I’ve decided to go back.”

Prim folded her hooves in her lap and looked down. “I can’t say that surprises me. When I’d talked to Pixie Cut, trying to figure out where you might have gone, she told me about the conversations you had while she did your hair. I didn’t know all of that, where you came from, why you were in Ponyville. I should have, and—”

She shook her head and sighed sharply. “I don’t know if it would have changed things. I still would have found you an exquisite and alluring model, and I still would have wanted you on staff. But perhaps I would have taken more personal care in making sure you adapted well, or…” Huffing out another breath, she looked away and propped her chin on a hoof. “I shouldn’t have tried to get you to adapt at all. Then you’d lose what makes you true to yourself and special to all the rest of us.”

It… it was nice to hear she felt that way. My heart finally slowed, and I took in a steady breath. “Not just to Ponyville. I’ve decided to go back home.” A light warmth spread throughout my body, and I didn’t sense that huge city looming over me anymore. Back home, to the farm and Mother and Father and Igneous Rock. I did love him, and I’d tested that, and it came up true, though only now did I realize: What had transpired on his roam-springa? Would I return to find nothing waiting for me? Either way, I had to try.

Prim kept her face diverted, but she did roll her eyes back toward me as she pursed her lips. “I hope you believe that I didn’t intend for anything bad to happen to you.” I began to nod, but she continued even before getting my response. “I’m disappointed for myself, but not for you. Though if you ever decide you’d like to do some modeling work—no big production, just some small-scale freelance shoots: you, me, a photographer, Pixie Cut, somepony from wardrobe, a makeup artist other than Glitter Glow—”

“She should be fired,” Ms. Harshwhinny spat.

“She’s good at what she does, and it’s hard to find somepony of that caliber—”

“It doesn’t matter. She overtly—”

“You don’t know that. Cloudy never said she—”

“Then why are you already presuming to exclude her?”

“Please,” I said, not covering my head this time. “Just let it be. I’ve done enough damage.”

“But you haven’t—” Prim started.

I grimaced and sniffled, and I just didn’t want to talk about this anymore! “Please,” I said, my voice trembling.

Prim’s ears drooped, and her shoulders sagged. “Alright. I’m still going to give the whole staff a good talking to. But if you would ever be willing to do some modeling, just you, nopony else, then the offer is open. Write me anytime.” She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a slip of paper. “And Ms. Harshwhinny is right about something else, too: you never got paid. Payroll gave me this when they couldn’t locate you. I’ve carried it with me ever since. Sorry I left the name blank, but ‘Crystal Essence’ was all I could think of at the time, and they didn’t have your real name on record yet. You can fill it in.”

The paper whispered as it slid across the tabletop, whispered about my aborted attempt to have an impact on the greater world, whispered that this token might seal our agreement to consider it an ill-conceived venture and never speak of it again, and it came to rest against my foreleg. My eyes shot wide open. “Eight thousand bits!?” No, no, I shouldn’t have shouted! That would sound like bragging and—I quickly covered it with a hoof to keep it from prying eyes. “Eight thousand bits!?” I hissed.

She looked like she’d just gotten caught ridiculing Celestia by one of her personal guard. “That’s… standard. Nine working days at five hundred bits each, three days of five-hundred-bit bonuses for the front row, and a bonus of two thousand for your magazine cover. Were you expecting more?”

“No, I—” My nose wrinkled up, and I started crying again, but for the first time in weeks, the good kind. “I don’t know what I’d ever do with this much money!” I keened. In the months I’d helped out at Sugarcube Corner, I’d only saved a little over two thousand, after I’d insisted on contributing to the household expenses and bought quilting materials. The tips had kept piling up, but still, to multiply the amount of money to my name that much in one instant?

“I can’t accept this.”

Prim frowned, though her eyes sparkled. “You can and you will. This is no charity case; you earned it. Your magazine cover sold like hotcakes, and somepony is going to make money off it. Might as well be you.”

She had that set to her jaw that Father always got when nothing I could say would move him. Good ponies accepted credit, good or bad. “O-okay,” I said.

“And I’ll pay for your train ticket home,” Prim continued. Her frown had softened, and she finally did reach across to pat my hoof. “Though it sounds like you want to stop in Ponyville first. Anyway, I brought you here, and it’s my responsibility to see you back again. I insist on bearing the cost.”

“Just Ponyville. I’d prefer to walk the remaining distance.”

“Done.” A full smile now, and even Ms. Harshwhinny wore a grin. “May I see you off at the train station?”

I couldn’t stop staring at the slip of paper—I guessed it was one of those “checks” Ms. Harshwhinny mentioned when she took me to the bank. But Prim gently pulled it away from me and slid it into my saddlebag. “Yes,” I finally replied. “We were just on our way there.”

I strode back from the ticket counter and eased onto the bench between Ms. Harshwhinny and Prim Hemline. As it turned out, Prim did have a tab with the railway. I could have made it to Canterlot long ago, yet it seemed like things had ended up exactly as they should.

“When does your train leave?” Prim asked.

“Twenty minutes. They’ll start boarding in ten.”

Ms. Harshwhinny scooted against me and gave me a one-armed hug, a hidden warmth radiating from her, one most ponies would never suspect she had. “Now you look happy,” she said with a grin.

And I was. I felt about twenty pounds lighter, though a little too late for it to make a difference in my modeling career. But I smiled, and I could just as well have been rolling out of bed an hour before sunrise, waiting for Cup Cake to finish her bath, mixing up all the standard muffin and bread doughs, worrying a little about wearing makeup that day, and eventually sneezing. Twice. Just knowing I’d found a spot in the world I could really belong. After a long day in the fields, going home to Mother’s cooking and Father’s fiddle playing. Home.

“And I apologize for my outburst,” Ms. Harshwhinny continued, leaning forward to look across me at Prim. “I had no right to insult you.”

“You were looking out for Cloudy,” Prim answered, and she patted my withers. “I can’t blame you for that. I would have done the same. And I rather like—” she wore a strange little grin “—when somepony stands up passionately for something she believes in. I find myself surrounded by quite enough yes-mares.”

Why did everypony like me so much? I hadn’t earned that any more than I’d earned my decision to go back home. I’d cut off everything in the middle, or had it cut off for me. Everything!

Ms. Harshwhinny must not have seen Prim’s hoof there, around my back—she reached up as well, bumped it, and flashed Prim an apologetic grin. “You’re a very courageous pony,” Ms. Harshwhinny said to me.

No. No, I was so scared all the time. Only being this oblivious saved me from worse. “My fear is my courage,” I replied.

But Ms. Harshwhinny only gaped. “No, I hope you don’t feel that way! You completely turned your life upside down, left behind every trace of what you knew. Not many ponies can do that. And you brought a little sunshine everywhere you went. Look how many ponies retained the best part of you because they had the good fortune to encounter you on your travels. I wish I could say I produced that same effect, here or abroad. And even when I am here, who would put up with that kind of schedule?”

Before Ms. Harshwhinny had stopped speaking, Prim had already started nodding. “Yes, if I’m lucky, I might spend six months out of the year at home,” Prim said, “in fractured weekends, bits and pieces of workdays, scattered remnants of evenings passing through to somewhere else. It’s a wonderful career, but not very conducive to companionship.”

With a quiet chuckle, Ms. Harshwhinny said, “Every night I actually find myself in town, I go to that same bar for a glass of red wine before dinner. If you check when you happen to wander through, you just might find somepony willing to engage in another public screaming match with you.”

Prim barely held in a laugh, and a small snort did escape her.

But almost immediately afterward, a sharp whistle sounded. “All aboard for Ponyville!” the conductor shouted.

With a sigh, I stood and brushed the dust off my saddlebags. Just minutes ago, it had felt so serene to visualize returning to Ponyville. Not that I didn’t still look forward to seeing Father again and telling him of my decision—he’d crack such a big smile and have Mother roast the prized rock in the field for a banquet, invite the neighbors, maybe play his fiddle in front of them, if he didn’t feel too self-conscious. But now that it came time to say good-bye…

I gave Ms. Harshwhinny a long hug. “Thank you so much. This city would have bested me if not for you. I never told you this, but I wondered if there was a Cup Cake in every town, somepony that fate would direct unprepared travelers to. I think there is, and I found it here in you.”

She sniffled a bit, so I gave her a kiss on the cheek as well, adding, “That’s meant as a friend only. I learned my lesson.”

Then I stepped over to embrace Prim. “I wish I’d gotten to know you better, but I do admire you. At heart, you’re a kind pony, and you treated me so gently. I won’t forget you.”

I wiped away a few of my own tears, but I eventually had to climb the steep stairs up to the train car. “Good-bye, Cloudy,” they both called, waving.

“I’ll write to you. I promise,” I answered before ducking inside. Unfortunately, all the seats on that side were taken, so I had to move to the far side. Rather stuffy in here—I opened the window and stuck my head out for a breath of fresh air just as the train on the adjacent track began pulling away.

And inside it—Cranky! He caught sight of me and dashed to the end of his car, leaning out the open door. “I did it!” he shouted, jabbing a hoof behind him, to the west, as he receded into the distance. “I asked for a traveling position, and I’m going to San Franciscolt, then on to Las Pegasus! I’ll look for her wherever I go!”

I had to laugh. In the midst of failing to find any romance of my own, I’d managed to find it for quite a few others. Cup Cake, Buttercup, Cranky Doodle. The train lurched forward, and I fell into my seat, but I quickly raised halfway back up to peer through the opposite windows and wave to Prim and Ms. Harshwhinny. I thought they saw me. But they did smile and watch the train leave as they stood there. Together. I had to laugh again.

One loose thread, though: Mayor Mare. I swallowed down the lump in my throat as the buildings flashed by outside, soon enough giving way to trees and countryside.

Market day, but what day wasn’t market day in Ponyville? This time, I made up part of the crowd disembarking from the steaming hulk of iron, and the few dozen ponies with stiff necks from sleeping overnight on hard benches may well have looked like a thousand to some poor inexperienced mare emerging from the woods. I hadn’t even awakened with the sun, hadn’t sneezed. Could nothing go back to the way it was?

By this hour, the line at Sugarcube Corner easily stretched out the front door. I… What should I do? Wait my turn? Beg everypony’s pardon, squeeze past, put on an apron, and start helping customers as if I’d never left?

No, none of that. Good ponies didn’t presume anything. I merely sat down against the wall and listened to all the voices spilling out, the bell tinkling with each new customer who edged through the door. The scent of pecan twirls wafted out, and my stomach growled. I just closed my eyes and let the late autumn breeze tickle my coat.

After who knows how long, the bell rang one final time, and the door clicked shut. The lunch rush over, and business wouldn’t pick up again for another two or three hours. Then one more jingle, hoofsteps, the harsh rustle of a trash bag, and… a loud gasp. I looked up.

“Cloudy!” Cup Cake shouted, the corners of her mouth inching upward as the forgotten trash bag fell to the ground. “You’re back, you’re back!” she chanted, and she easily picked me up—she was an earth pony, after all—twirling me around and around until I thanked the stars above I hadn’t eaten breakfast.

But her face fell at the first teardrops landing on her arms, and she put me back down. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen in Manehattan?”

“I’m sorry!” I gushed, and I nearly tackled her with a hug. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was so awful to you and Mayor Mare, and I never wrote you, and please, please don’t hate me!” Once I went back home, I might never see either of them again, so why did it even matter?

It… it mattered because they were my friends. Because I loved them like family, and I couldn’t imagine never seeing them again. I didn’t live that far away, and I could visit, if they’d have me, if they still liked me, and—

Anything else I tried to say only got lost and choked off. “Sh-sh-sh,” Cup Cake said, holding me close and rubbing my back, the same way she had when I’d so stupidly kissed her. “It’s okay. Ponies get busy, and you must have had a whirlwind of a time. But I only asked you to tell me about it when you could, and here you are! No harm done.”

I desperately wiped at my running nose, and Cup Cake eyed a couple of barely used napkins that had spilled out of the trash bag, but with a well-hidden grimace, she took off her apron and held it to my muzzle.

“Blow,” she said. So I did, and then she dried my eyes with the other corner. “C’mon. Let’s go inside, and you can tell me everything.” She stood, and it took a few rounds of her beckoning me along, but I gave in and followed her.

So many good ponies I’d found on my roam-springa! I didn’t deserve them, but I’d gladly accept their friendship. Good ponies associated with good ponies.

Cup Cake guided me to one of the cushy benches near the counter and sat down next to me. But before I could start talking, Carrot Cake strode out of the kitchen with two large cake boxes balanced on his back.

She’d… replaced me? Already?

Quickly, I rubbed the tingle out of my nose. Of course she had! A business needed to run, after all, and she couldn’t wait for me indefinitely. Otherwise, she would have gone without help for well over a month now.

As soon as Carrot caught sight of me, he let the empty boxes fall to the floor, rushed over, and shook my hoof vigorously. “Good to see you again, Cloudy! Chiffon told me you’d left to pursue a modeling career.” He cocked his head and squinted.

“That didn’t go so well.” On the bench beside Cup Cake, he reached a hoof around her, and she absentmindedly gave him a peck on the cheek.

When she saw me staring back, she blushed a little, like some ruby jack ore, the light glinting off it at just the right angle to pick up a red tint. “We-we’re dating now. And Carrot left his job at the delivery service to work for me.” My ears drooped. “No, don’t worry! We still have a place for you here! In fact, the more, the better. I have a business loan due soon, and things are getting tight, so any more product we can make and sell will only help.”

A sweet gesture, but really, I didn’t need it. And they didn’t need me. “I’ve decided to go back home,” I said.

A pained jolt shot across her face, but just as rapidly, it faded into a soft smile. “Is that what you want?” To Carrot’s credit, he quietly slipped back into the kitchen.

“Yes. Yes, it is. I belong there, and—” I let out a soft giggle. I hadn’t said it before, not out loud, but it felt right. “I love Igneous Rock.”

She sighed, nodded, and patted my hoof. But she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I would have to say it for her: “And I need to tell Mayor Mare that.”

Another nod, but still she wouldn’t speak.

“Is she mad?” I said.

Cup Cake took in a breath and braced as if to speak; instead, she held it and finally looked up. “She’s…” The breath came out again in a rush, a zephyr shifting the air deep within the mines. “She’s hurt.”

“I-I was so exhausted, I kept forgetting to write, and when I finally had time, I got so scared that I couldn’t—” A tremor ran through my legs, and I averted my gaze downward. “It’s a poor excuse, and I’m a poor friend.” And while I could still command my voice, I told her everything. Even about my foolhardy attempt at another romance.

Cup Cake sighed again, rough, like loose shale scrabbling down a slope. “Go talk to her.”

If I’d stopped shaking at any point, it now returned with a fervor, but I clenched my jaw and knotted up all my muscles. I had to do this. And Cup Cake, she’d—she’d seen. She gave me an almost pitying smile, but she stood anyway. Over to the counter she walked, and she packed up a small paper bag of pecan twirls. “Here,” she said, holding them out to me, “a peace offering might help.”

My heart lurched. “Peace? You m-mean she does hate me?”

Before I could grab her apron off the table again, she’d already dashed back over, waving a hoof. “No, no! It’s just an expression. But… like I said, she’s hurt. Just go talk to her.”

Good ponies didn’t run away from their responsibilities.

So I tightened my jaw more, took the bag of pecan twirls, and started for city hall. Nopony paid me any attention on my way there, but the receptionist gasped a bit: “Cloudy!” I only afforded her a short nod, and a few of the other civil servants did a double-take or dropped papers as I wove through the hallways.

After the normal lunch hour, when I used to come by here, so naturally, Mayor Mare had her door swung shut and her “out to lunch” sign displayed. I walked in anyway, without knocking. She didn’t look up from the paperwork splayed across her desk. Had she even heard me?

Nothing had changed in here. Her chair, big enough—my lip quivered, but I held it in. I wouldn’t cry, not for myself, not here! Big enough for two. The end table where she’d kept the old pair of glasses she gave me, the comfortable sofa, one that still needed a quilt I’d promised myself I’d make her.

I sat on the sofa. The bag of pecan twirls, the paper, it—it crinkled a bit when I set it on the table, and she finally looked up, I could—I could see, out the corner of my eye, but I just took my place there on the sofa where I had many times before, when the summer had still lingered, when the autumn brought its nip. And I began to sew.

The quilt, almost finished now, only a few blocks and the binding left to do, and I sewed, silently, alone. I muffled my crying as much as I could.

Was she glaring at me? Or just watching? My eyes had blurred too much to tell, and I should have known better than to try sewing what I couldn’t see, but what else could I do? When I blinked, it looked like her chair had turned, blocking less of the sunlight. She must have left.

I sniffled hard, covered my eyes with a foreleg, and whimpered. I’d only make things worse, and I should return home before I hurt her any more. But the sofa jostled, barely, and the springs creaked. “Why did you go?” she said. She sounded so small.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but someone wanted me to model, and it was the newest of new things I’d ever encountered!” I forced through my tears.

“I know. Cup Cake told me, that it came up suddenly, that you needed to try. It’s not why you left Ponyville. It’s why you left us. Didn’t I mean anything to you?”

“I meant to write, I really did! But I was exhausted all the time, and then I’d put it off so long I just knew you’d think I’d forgotten you, and I didn’t know how to explain it—” Those old gray dresses, still good for something. I tugged one out and clumsily swiped that wad of cloth across my eyes. “I did still love you, I thought I did—I do still love you. Ms. Harshwhinny told me—”

“Harshwhinny?” She wrinkled her brow at me. “How did you meet her?”

I shook my head, and if only I could bury it in the cushion and wish all this away! “I-I’ll tell you later, but for now, just listen, okay?” If she gave an answer, I didn’t hear it.

“She explained it to me, that I’d so desperately wanted to test my love for Igneous Rock that I’d beaten every friendship I’d made into the shape of a romance, and she’s right! I wanted to love you, so much, that I invented it all—” That sounded awful. How could I say that?

I whipped around toward her, clutched at her shoulders, peered wildly into her eyes. “I love you, I do, not that way, but just as much! Just as much, and I don’t want to lose your friendship any more than I want to lose Igneous Rock! I was terribly unfair to you, I know, and I can only beg you’ll forgive me! You and Cup Cake are the best friends I’ve made, and I don’t know what I’d do if I broke that so badly it couldn’t be fixed.”

Still no reply. At least she hadn’t asked me to leave. “I love you, and I expressed it in a way I didn’t mean, in a way I didn’t even know I didn’t mean, because I was stupid and naive.” I stared at her, and she recoiled a bit—I didn’t intend to do it that intensely! “If you can’t be friends with me anymore, I’ll understand—” a sob leaked out between the words “—but please, please don’t hate me!”

Mayor Mare pursed her lips, and her eyes shifted back and forth between me and her desk. “You should get that lens replaced,” she murmured, pointing at my glasses. “It’s gotten a crack in it.”

“No, no, it’s from you, and it’s not in the way, and I’d never dream of changing it!”

Little by little, a weak smile formed on her face, but as she sat there with her gaze fixed on the upholstery, it faded again. “It did hurt.”

“I know. I know, and I’d do anything I could to make that up to you.”

One last sigh, softer now, like the moss on the boulders near Igneous Rock’s house. “Alright,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “Friends?”

I couldn’t answer. I only flung my arms around her, and the tears wouldn’t stop, but now I didn’t want them to. I might have even heard a quiet giggle.

“You know, we really ought to finish that quilt,” she said.

“Definitely!” I replied, and still sniffling, I unpacked the quilt and draped it across our laps. Needle and thread, only two blocks left—I gave them to her, then found another needle and started on the binding, at the opposite corner from her.

Nice and warm, and I dared to scoot up against her! She’d lost nothing, doing a very good job of stitching the blocks together, and she looked so peaceful at it. Eyes half-lidded, gentle smile, and she hummed along softly. I still hadn’t stopped crying, but each time I wiped my eyes, she looked up and returned my grin.

“I missed you,” I finally said. “I told everypony about how wonderful you are, and how you liked—oh!” I’d forgotten! I grabbed the paper bag and set it on my leg. “Pecan twirls! Please have some.” She needed no more prompting than that, and she jammed a whole one in her mouth! I collapsed forward, laughing, and luckily I didn’t spill any of the twirls, but Mayor Mare did rescue one from falling out of the bag and somehow fit it in there as well.

It took her a good minute to finish chewing, and she’d gotten the first block added. Only one left to go, then she could help me on the binding, and lastly, I’d embroider our names on the back, down in the corner. Both—no, all three of us! Ms. Harshwhinny had helped, too!

“I think Cup Cake will love this,” she said. “The color matches her decor, but then you knew that when you started, right?”

“Mmhmm.” I paused from my stitching and put my hoof on hers. “Thou shouldst give her the quilt with me. I want her to know how much thou hast done on it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

I could only shrug. “It comes and goes.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing Cup Cake again. It’s been a couple of weeks, and whoever’s listening at the door had better get back to work!”

I counted at least three sets of hooffalls galloping down the hall. They hadn’t exactly maintained a high level of stealth back there if I’d noticed them.

But now without an audience, I leaned down and removed her book from my saddlebag, from where it had lain safely ensconced among the scraps of fabric and threadbare dresses. “Rocky with promise, overgrown with heart,” I said. A quick glance at her cutie mark—hidden more now, only the bottoms of a few words exposed, but not enough to decipher them if I hadn’t already known. Did I do that to her? Did I take her book and her passion and her inspiration away?

“I read that one. I’m not much for poetry, but I read that one, and I loved it. It’s you, right? You wrote it.”

After a short pause, she returned a tight-lipped nod.

“Thank you,” I said, “for trusting me with that. It’s the most meaningful gift anypony’s ever given me.” I leaned into her shoulder and nuzzled her. Then with only the clock’s ticking permeating the room, we kept sewing.

On a hunch, I tried something at the bank. I… I couldn’t let Mayor Mare witness this, so I asked her to wait outside. The sun would feel good, I told her, and I’d only be inside for a minute. Then we could continue on to Sugarcube Corner to give Cup Cake the finished quilt.

As it turned out, the bank took great pains to verify who withdrew money. Not so much with who deposited it. Was this illegal? Would I have to forge Cup Cake—er, Chiffon Swirl’s name? The teller had instructed me to write “for deposit only” on the check in lieu of a signature, so would she get in trouble, too?

Either way, I took the pen in my mouth. After using one of the sterile wipes they always kept next to it, of course. That many ponies, all day long, using the same pen? I tried not to think about it too much. But I filled in Chiffon’s name as the payee, wrote what the teller said, gave her my eight-thousand-bit check, and clamped down on the urge to shout out a confession of my crime to every client in the place. At least I didn’t have to sign her name—I could have put whatever money I wanted in her account.

I stayed silent. I also took the check I’d gotten from the teller at the far end of the counter—would this one notice I’d gone through the line twice? Had she already made some manner of silent signal to the guard standing over by the vault?

One more check, for two thousand bits. All the contents of the account where I’d stashed my tip money, minus the odd one hundred twenty-six leftover bits I had in my saddlebag, in raw coins. Far more than I’d left home with, and an outlandish sum to bring back to Igneous Rock. If he was still waiting for me.

Cup Cake would find herself far closer to paying off her mortgage, and if anypony tried to accuse her of wrongdoing, I’d step forward. “This one, too,” I said as I pushed the second check at the teller.

It would have been much easier to simply give Cup Cake the money in cash, but she’d never accept it. This way, she couldn’t know for sure.

“Alright!” the teller replied with a smile. She stamped the deposit slip and let it slide through the space under the little metal bars in front of her. It stopped just short of the counter’s edge—she was good at this! “Will there be anything more?”

For years to come, yes. I’d have to stash that deposit slip away, somewhere under the floorboards at home, in case I ever had to prove Cup Cake had no complicity. But if Igneous Rock found it, what shame, what ignominy I’d have to endure!

But such is the value of friendship.

“No,” I answered, avoiding her eyes. I strolled outside, collected Mayor Mare, and set off toward Sugarcube Corner once again.

I felt so… detached from everything for the rest of the afternoon. Cup Cake squealing at the gift, but not near as much as she’d squealed at seeing me and Mayor Mare side by side. Not in that way—she understood—but knowing our friendship had survived. Except she’d always known it would. My voice sounded distant while I told my story again. As if hearing it for the first time, Cup Cake leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. And Mayor Mare ate up every word, like she would another pecan twirl.

All I did hear clearly was my own thoughts, dredging up what Ms. Harshwhinny had called my final day with her: easing me back into a slower-paced life.

“Do you mind,” I said as the evening waned and wound to a close, “if I stayed a little while, just a day or two?”

Cup Cake positively beamed at me. “Of course! Your old spot’s still here, in the room upstairs, in the kitchen, at the cash register. It’ll be like old times!”

“Just a day or two,” I said, and both of them nodded weakly.

We’d stayed up well past midnight. And “just a day or two” turned into a week. But eventually, I had to leave.

I didn’t live that far away, though, and I promised to visit often. This time, I’d keep my promise. I’d keep my friends. For a lifetime.

Half a day’s walk had brought me almost home again, and just over that rise in the distance, the plains of Father’s rock farm would spread out before me. Would Father be waiting by the mailbox? Or would I have to look for him, fixing the siding at the back of the house or tilling the soil for rocks? He’d smile so big, no matter what.

And what of Igneous Rock Pie? Father might tell me he had elected to stay in the outside world, and I needed to consult the Pairing Stone again. Surely, they would not make me endure another roam-springa, though… how else would I put my love to the test? My love.

The stone couldn’t choose anypony else. I knew him best. I already loved him, and none other, ever.

No, Father would tell me Igneous Rock had only recently arrived home himself, and I should go right over and see him. Reunited. I’d tell him all that had happened to me, and that I’d realized he’d held a special place in my heart as far back as I could remember. I’d tell him that the Pairing Stone was very wise.

Then I crested the low hill, and by the mailbox, a figure: Father.

No. No, it was—”Igneous Rock!” I called as I rushed to him. He gazed at me as if he hadn’t seen me in years!

I risked a hug, even if Father might be watching me from the front window, but honestly, it didn’t matter anymore. In time, all would come out. I’d tell Igneous Rock the whole tale, but at the moment, only one thing need be said: the words that would complete our betrothal.

I took his hooves in mine. “Igneous Rock Pie, I am Cloudy Quartz. The Pairing Stone hath chosen me for thee.”

He wore a broad smile. “Cloudy Quartz, I am Igneous Rock Pie. The Pairing Stone hath—” a few tresses of mane escaped from my hair tie, and his eyes crinkled, his grin softening around the edges “—hath chosen me for thee.”

Cloudy Quartz Pie. I liked the sound of that.

So I kissed him, in full view of anypony who might see. He even kissed me back.

Author's Note

Damn, that argument was fun to write. But so was inadvertently drunk Cloudy in the previous chapter.

Anyway, I guess the reveal came in chapter 4, but this chapter wraps up the plot arc of Mayor Mare's poetry. So now I can finally post a link to what that references. If you want to see how present-day Mayor Mare learns to reconnect with her poetry, or if you just want to be able to read all of that particular poem instead of just the single line Cloudy read aloud, check out "The Poetry of Politics." It's not even that long! (The story or the poem.)

Coming next week, on or about June 21 (my schedule's a little up in the air, and I might not be able to post it on the normal day), Chapter 6: Renewal.

Chapter 6: Renewal

“As it turns out,” I said, “Igneous Rock had spent barely a week on his roam-springa before returning home. Then he waited by my mailbox, after his chores, every chance he got for the weeks upon weeks it took me to realize what he had so quickly.”

Yes, Igneous Rock, always so decisive. Very much the rock of our family.

“I’d love to be able to introduce you to them sometime, but at least you get to see Pinkie Pie.” Some kind of warbling belly laugh echoed from the salesroom, no doubt a joke only Pinkie got. “It won’t surprise you to find out we never bothered with a roam-springa for Pinkie. The quiet, structured life would never have suited her, and there was no point in trying. But life blessed us with four wonderful daughters. Pinkie’s twin Marble came back from her roam-springa after only a day, Limestone a few weeks… even Maud—oh, you should meet her, she’s a delight!”

I couldn’t help grinning widely. Our daughter of letters! “She just started a graduate degree in geology, and now she does traveling research.”

The mare’s eyebrow arched a little. “Oh,” I said, waving a hoof, “we never stood too much on tradition. We run the rock farm and live a simple life, stick with our Hearth’s Warming observances, but you’ve already heard I don’t keep up the old-style speech, none of our daughters do, and their roam-springas weren’t tied to a betrothal. They can consult the Pairing Stone if and when they are ready. Maud made a commitment to the community, but that doesn’t mean we expect her to remain home. And I did write to Prim Hemline after a while.”

I smirked at her and played at hiding behind my hoof—a little secret I’d share with her, though most of my friends already knew. Still, few ponies would have suspected me of being Crystal Essence. “I ended up doing several photo shoots with her over the years, usually for charity events so I didn’t have to deal with the hassle of getting paid, but occasionally if we had some expense—just one of them covered all of Maud’s college. I even got to keep some of the cute outfits! I didn’t think to bring any of the pictures with me, though.”

A nice closing note for her tale, I supposed. Everything all wrapped up, no loose ends. At least none that I could tie up. “Of course I see Cup Cake and Mayor Mare regularly. I write to Ms. Harshwhinny once in a while, I see Prim Hemline and Pixie Cut on photo shoots, though it’s been at least four years now. And Buttercup, she…” Why did that one always hit a raw spot? Cup Cake and Mayor Mare had known her far better than I did, and they could talk about her easily. “She passed on about seven years ago.”

With a deep breath, I wiped my cheeks dry. “I think that’s everything.”

As she dotted the last period onto her page, the young mare wore one of those distant smiles, the kind I’d had plenty of in my lifetime, at the end of something thoroughly enjoyable, but still… at the end. No matter—good ponies looked forward to new beginnings. She closed her notebook, set her pencil down, and began packing up her things.

“I hope you’ll stay the evening with us,” I said. “Of course, if you have to set out for home already, I understand.” The sun had dipped quite low in the sky, and the last train would leave soon, if it was even heading her direction. Surely she’d planned to stay the night—no telling how late our interview might have run, and she hadn’t been glancing at the clock.

So she stood, and thank goodness she nodded, or I would have had to keep her here by force. And then I finally caught a glimpse of her cutie mark: a woodworking joint. Yes, Dovetail! That was her name. Maybe she wrote as a hobby? I couldn’t figure how woodworking might play into journalism, but I’d seen stranger combinations in my time.

Something rather appetizing wafted in from the kitchen—carrots and squash, at least, and one of Pinkie’s confections. “Excuse me a moment,” I said to Dovetail. “I refuse to let Cup Cake handle dinner alone, especially in a kitchen I know like the back of my hoof, so I’m going to help her.” Her eyes flashed momentarily toward the floor.

“But please! You don’t have to stay in here alone! You’re welcome to come with me or talk to the rest of the family in the salesroom,” I said, beckoning her along. “Pinkie’s no doubt in the kitchen, too. Like I said, we never bothered sending her on a roam-springa, but she insisted she had to do something similar, just to be part of the family, and she’d love to tell you about the week she spent jumping. She called it her ‘spring-springa.’”

Dovetail grinned and let out a little snuffle of a laugh, but when I opened the door—

“Surprise!” Pinkie shouted as she hit me with a flying tackle. Not that it knocked me back any—I’d long since developed the ability to absorb Pinkie’s hug assaults, even unexpected ones, whenever I didn’t have her in direct sight. But behind her!

A big cake! No candles, of course, since it wasn’t my birthday, but Carrot and Cup Cake wore huge smiles, and Mayor Mare! I rushed over to give her a hug, but as I got into the room far enough to see around the display case, there sat Pixie Cut at one of the tables!

No way would I detour from a good, solid embrace with Mayor Mare. Even though I saw her every few months when I came to town, she’d always hold an extra-special place in my heart. And did her eyes wander down to my cutie mark again? She gave me a little chuckle and a sheepish grin, and I returned the favor, my eyes widening—words? More of them visible on the scroll?

“Have you been writing poetry again?” I hissed.

“Yes,” she said, not even bothering to lower her voice. “It’s alright. Everypony in town knows now.”

“That’s wonderful!” I gushed, and gave her another squeeze, but then I did make my way over to Pixie Cut. A few speckles of gray had begun to dot her green mane.

“It’s been a few years, Pixie! How are you?” Any of the previous times we’d met, of course my mane had been the order of the day, and even now, her hoof twitched up to undo my hairbun.

Instead, she merely hugged me. “Good. And steadfastly refusing to apply any of my color products to my own hair, even though Prim keeps telling me to. I’m not the one on camera. What does it matter?”

“As long as you’re happy.” I squeezed her back, and just as I was about to ask—

The door’s bell jingled again, and Ms. Harshwhinny entered, hoof-in-hoof with Prim! “You two…?” I said, and Ms. Harshwhinny only blinked. I guess I’d stumbled onto their little party earlier than they’d intended, but Ms. Harshwhinny recovered quickly, with her usual imperturbable ease.

“Yes, well…” Funny, I’d never heard her stammer before. “Officially, for a couple years now, but we’d dated for a while before that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me!?” Really, those two! How could they possibly think I wouldn’t want to know?

And now Prim took a turn at stuttering. “I—we just didn’t want to publicize—not that we don’t trust you.” She blushed a bright red.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I said. “Just—hey, I don’t think you’ve ever met the Ponyville crowd.” So I passed introductions around, but as the hum of conversation started up again, I had to know.

“Alright, what’s the occasion?” Everypony smiled back, so I intensified my stare at the usual culprits: Cup Cake and Pinkie.

“Don’t you remember?” Cup Cake said, jabbing a hoof toward the calendar. “It was just a couple of weeks ago—the anniversary of when you first arrived in Ponyville. Of course we’d celebrate, since we knew you’d planned to visit.”

Really? I’d never kept track of that, and we’d never had a party for it before. Maybe they felt like my meeting with Dovetail constituted a good enough reason. “Well… thank you all for coming. It’s wonderful to see everypony!”

Surely Dovetail knew as well. I peeked back toward the cracked door, and there she stood with an impish grin. “Well, come in, then,” I said, beckoning to her. “Join the party!”

That Pinkie, though. She could keep a secret, but not the fact that she had one. And she wouldn’t look me in the eye. “What are you hiding, Pinkie?”

“Hee hee!” With a huge grin, she pronked over to the door and poked her head outside. “It’s alright! You can come in now!” Then she held the door open, and in walked—

“Cranky Doodle!” I rushed up to hug him. Not that I’d ever done so before—he winced, but Pinkie hadn’t let the door swing shut. And my knees went weak at the sight of a jenny following him in. “Is… is this Matilda?” Had he found her? Had he really found her? Of course, if that wasn’t Matilda, then I’d just seriously stuck my hoof in my mouth.

“Yes!” he said, and Mayor Mare raised her eyebrows at the sight of him smiling. “I’d given up, but I ran into her here in Ponyville, by chance, and we got married last year. I would have invited you, but I never learned your name or knew where you lived.”

I whipped around to Matilda and shook her hoof vigorously, and naturally she recoiled a bit. “It’s so good to meet you!” Then right back to Cranky, with what must have looked like the gleam of a madmare in my eye—“How did you even know to come here?”

Pinkie cleared her throat. “I, uh… overheard you talking about him, and he’s my friend, so I snuck out to get him once the other party guests started showing up.”

“Yes,” Cup Cake added, “you’d told me long ago about helping a donkey, but you never said it was Cranky! I could have told you he had a house in town!”

Then Pixie Cut pulled a card out of her saddlebag and held it out to me. “Bell Hop sends his regards. He couldn’t get away from work to attend—he’s the day manager of the hotel now!”

“He… he remembers me? After so long?”

All this love. Around me, because of me, for me. My smile buckled, and I started to cry.

“What’s wrong?” Prim said.

“I-I just can’t believe—” a big sniffle “—I still can’t believe I deserve all this, but every one of you means so much to me, a-and it’s beautiful. If only Buttercup could…” Of course somepony pulled me into a tight embrace. And of course it was Mayor Mare.

She tugged me down into the seat next to her—“You’ve made all our lives so much richer, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, giving me a peck on the cheek—but I couldn’t take my eyes off Matilda. He’d actually found her! I’d spent all these years wondering.

“H-how long did it take?”

“Close to thirty years,” Cranky answered from beneath some ridiculous toupee. He’d never been blond.

I broke out laughing. That couldn’t have fit any more perfectly! Almost thirty years for me to get to today, when I finally got to see this culmination of the love I’d collected in my lifetime.

I shook my head at the quizzical stares directed my way and turned to Pinkie. “C’mon! Let’s party!”

And party we did. With Pinkie in charge, we didn’t really have a choice. But even she knows when to let things wind down. The out-of-town guests, except for Dovetail, had left for their rooms at the inn, and I’d go see them off at the train station tomorrow. Cranky and Matilda had gone home, Pinkie and the Cakes were cleaning up the kitchen, and Dovetail had gone to get settled in the guest room.

So I found myself sitting on the front steps outside, in the dark, with Mayor Mare.

“You’re the only loose end, you know,” I said, patting her withers.

“Somehow, I knew we’d end up talking in the cold night air.” Out of her saddlebag, she unfolded the quilt I’d given her for Hearth’s Warming over twelve years ago and draped it across us. “And don’t you worry about me. I’m not a loose end.”

I sidled over to lean against her as a puff of steam floated away from her sigh. “I seemed to find love for everypony else. But not you.”

With a smirk, she gave me another quick kiss on the cheek. “You still can, if Igneous is willing to share.”

And that earned her a swat on the shoulder. “You’re terrible!”

“Mmhmm.” But her sharp smile melted into cottony softness. “Really. Don’t worry about me. We ironed things out long ago, and I’ve never kept anything hidden from you. No anger, no hurt, no nothing.”

“But you deserve love as much as anypony. I do still feel guilty, and that’ll probably never change.”

A short chuckle echoed in the street. “Stubborn to the last. But really.” Her eyes flicked away from me for only a split second, but that was enough.

She… Did she? A wide smile plowed its way across my face. “You found somepony.”

An even bigger grin answered, but she only stared down at the quilt. “Yes. Maybe. Just… they’re fragile. Like you were. I don’t want to start rumors—not that you would—but leave it for now. I’ll tell you soon enough.”

“Keeping nothing hidden, huh?” And now I got a swat in return.

“You’d know better than anypony. Just give them the space they need for now. Please.” She didn’t have to ask at all, and she knew it.

She also knew that nothing else could have made this day more perfect. A warm quilt, her soft coat like lamb’s breath, the stars rippling through the thin clouds overhead—I leaned in and kissed her cheek this time. “See you tomorrow?”

“Definitely.” She gathered up her quilt and slung it over her back, then waved and stifled a yawn as she strolled off for her home. “Good night.”

“Night,” I said. A frosty breeze absolutely scraped across my ribs, and I fought off a shiver on my way back inside. Almost one in the morning, according to the clock in the hall, and the whole place had gone deathly quiet. The kitchen all cleaned up, put away, everypony settling into bed. I flicked off the light and cut through the den, toward the stairs, but a lamp was still on—

“Dovetail?”

She sat there, on the sofa, and her eyes had gone very still, like the waters in a quarry, calmly concealing vast depths.

“Did nopony show you to your room?”

Dovetail nodded and pointed toward the back of the house.

“Couldn’t sleep, then?”

A stack of blank pages lay on the cushion next to her, along with a package of fresh pencils, but her notepad remained shut. Halfway through another nod—a head shake, a shrug. Then she tapped a hoof to her forehead.

“It’s just a simple story from a simple pony. I take it this isn’t your first time interviewing. You must have heard many tales more interesting than mine.” I shouldn’t have presumed to keep her up any longer, but against my better judgment, I sat down on the sofa beside her. “I do know the feeling of getting something in my head that I can’t help mulling over before I can sleep. What has you so engaged?”

Her hoof flinched toward the notebook, withdrew, then finally tapped on it. She picked it up and held it out to me.

“You don’t mind?” I asked, and she shook her head. So I took it and began paging through all the neat script—for how quickly she’d jotted everything down, she had exceptional mouthwriting!

I didn’t recognize any of the names, not explicitly, anyway, but I was familiar with several of the family names. From rock farms, blacksmith shops, quilters… all manner of traditional crafts. And all stories of ponies on their roam-springas.

Here, only two pages on a stallion who returned after a scant three days, there another stallion who spent nearly three weeks deciding he couldn’t go back and who now ran an advertising firm in Baltimare. A mare who returned after five days but decided years later to leave after her husband’s death. So many windows into ponies’ lives! But none more than a few pages in length. Still, I leafed through them all, savoring the fragments Dovetail had lovingly gathered from doing nothing more than sitting there and listening.

Then came mine. I wouldn’t make Dovetail wait as I counted, but… there had to be forty pages here! Of notes, not even smelted and cast into a formal narrative yet!

“Why do ponies keep treating me like I’m something special?” I said as I wiped my cheeks dry.

And when I turned to Dovetail, her own eyes glistened. She quickly mimed running a pencil across the page as I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose.

“Y-you want to get started writing? It’ll bother you until it’s out of your head, won’t it?”

I’d never learned hoof language—never had a need to—but her gestures said clearly that she thought my story was beautiful. “What are you even going to do with all this?”

She pointed at the bookshelf.

“I hope you’ll take everypony’s privacy into consideration—Mayor Mare’s poetry, Ms. Harshwhinny and Prim’s relationship…” I said, and Dovetail nodded hurriedly. So I let out a long breath and sank into the cushion, as I often did at the end of a hard day in the rock fields. “You know… in spite of the painful moments, I wouldn’t want to change anything, not if it led me to where I am today. Whenever I walk through Ponyville and see the wonderful friends I’ve made… I said it once, back when I didn’t have the wisdom to temper my heart, but sometimes the unpolished stone holds the most value, letting its crystal essence shine: the roam-springa carries a lesson that anypony can learn.”

In response, she grinned like a mother watching her foal open their Hearth’s Warming presents, and she scooted over to flip to the inside of her notebook’s front cover. There, in heavy pencil but not smudged, just as sharp as everything else she’d written only hours ago: Try New Things: Portraits in Exploring Life.

“I thank thee,” I whispered, leaning in to hug her. If she minded my tears on her shoulder, she didn’t say so. But it must have gotten close to two o’clock already, and I should let her get to sleep or start writing or whatever she needed to calm her heart.

The first beams of dawn shone through the window. Goodness! And of course—I turned my head away. “Hi-choo!” One. “Hi-choo!” And two.

Dovetail’s shoulders shook in silent laughter, but as she angled her muzzle skyward to let the disappearing stars carry her mirth with them, I noticed—

“Do you mind?” I asked, already reaching a hoof out.

She kept her chin up and shook her head as slightly as possible.

So I touched them: jagged scars on her throat, four of them. That explained why she wouldn’t—rather couldn’t talk. Puncture wounds, not slashes, spaced rather like a rake. She must have fallen on one. “An accident?”

Again very slightly, she nodded. Old scars, too, probably from childhood. I traced each one, down her neck, until it struck me: they weren’t quite evenly spaced. Almost, so that only a familiar eye would have picked it out. And the wounds, not so round, a little oblong, imperfect.

I pulled my hoof back, and she met my eyes. “That was a hoof-forged rake.” And it all came together. Part of a carpentry family. The return address on her letters, just outside Fillydelphia and only a short journey from Landcaster. And a subject held very closely to her heart.

She knew I’d see it, knew I of all ponies would put the pieces together, knew I’d understand, wanted me to discover this.

“How long now?”

She turned over her notebook and opened the back cover. A few notes there about a synopsis, along with a short biographical passage, including the date she’d set out from home. Nearly two years! I looked up, opened my mouth to—

But she tapped a hoof further down the page, where she’d written out an acknowledgement. To all of us gracious enough to share our experiences with her, of course, though being included in the book at all served as thanks enough. And then to somepony named Loose Leaf, who owned a small publishing firm in Fillydelphia and had taken her in, shown her how to live in the city, watched in fascination every evening as she signed out what she’d done and learned and discovered and become that day, then encouraged her to write about it, taught her how to craft it into sparkling language and engrossing personalities.

“You found your Cup Cake,” I said, the tears spilling out anew. It seemed every place in Equestria just might have one.

She smiled in return, adding her own brimming tears.

“Will you go back?”

She closed her eyes, and with the most serene smile, she nodded. Did she have somepony waiting for her? Not all communities tied the roam-springa to betrothal; it may simply represent a period of self-examination. Either way, that was not for me to ask of her.

Already, banging pots and pans from the kitchen and the aroma of coffee and baking bread. “Pinkie will be up as well,” I said, standing and angling my head toward the sounds. “It’ll be quieter upstairs if you want some sleep.”

But she shook her head, took out a pencil, and attacked the first of many blank sheets of paper.

“Don’t get so engaged that you forget breakfast. Please come and let us know when we can bring you something.”

She didn’t react at all, not even an ear flick. I would come back around mid-morning with a tray for her, and then again in the afternoon to make sure she didn’t miss her train. All the noise would surely aid in keeping her awake.

So I made my way through the salesroom, grabbed a spare apron, stifled a big yawn, and walked into the kitchen. “What can I do to help?”

“First of all,” Cup Cake said, “there’s no need for that severe thing!” She undid my bun and set my hair loose, giving me a satisfied grin. If she’d had her makeup downstairs with her, I had no doubt she would have gone to work with it as well. “And no fair sneaking me your tip money! You keep what you earn!”

My eyes shot wide open. “Y-you knew?”

She just clicked her tongue at me. “Cloudy, we’re not the kind of business to have a ten-thousand-bit rounding error. Of course I noticed.” Then she hugged me tightly, as warm as always, with that same scent of vanilla. “And thanks.”

With a chuckle, she rolled her eyes at the thumping of Carrot getting the twins ready upstairs before she bodily turned me and gave me a shove. “Now go unlock the door and wait on customers!”

“Yes, ma’am!” I replied with a salute.

“Hi, Mom!” Pinkie said as she poked her head up from behind a counter and waved madly. “We’ve got pecan twirls coming out of the oven in a few minutes. I’ll set some aside for you to take over to Mayor Mare after lunch!”

Yes, try new things. But the usual ones weren’t so bad. Good ponies appreciated tradition. Another day at the old haunt, then I’d head back home tomorrow.

I twisted the lock and scurried to get behind the display case before the line outside flooded in, and when the first stallion stepped up to place his order, he did a double take at my mane and gave me a lopsided smile.

“How may I help thee?”

Author's Note

Long ago, I got the idea of writing a rumspringa story just because I liked the quasi horse pun of "roam-springa," but I just envisioned it as a short, light comedy starring an OC. Sometime last year, Present Perfect and I were chatting on Discord, and he mentioned how he liked the idea of Cloudy Quartz sitting in Ponyvile, watching ponies go by, and reminiscing on old flings she'd had with some of them. So we started riffing on it a bit, and we both really liked the idea. So I figured why not merge that with the rumspringa idea?

However, part of what we'd envisioned was an older Cloudy having relationships with some ponies younger than her, and as was pointed out by a commenter in chapter 4, the campsite rule comes into play. I saw a wiser Cloudy as applying that to her relationships, but with her being the one on a rumspringa, it worked better having the rule applied to her. So PP and I argued a bit about who should write it, and I eventually got interested enough to dive in. Then Present Perfect and themaskedferret both helped me scour the story, and I appreciate it very much.

First, a bit of a step back. As many of you know, rumspringa is a real thing among Amish and Mennonite communities, but the variety seen here, where the person is turned loose to live out whatever fantasies they wish, is actually pretty rare. It's the more dramatic version, so of course it's the one that pervades popular culture, but for most communities, it simply refers to adolescence, when children naturally have a rebellious streak and start courting. The notion of it being tied to a betrothal here is entirely of my own invention, and even further necessitated that Cloudy be the naive one through her travels.

So on to the actual notes, roughly in order as they appear in the story.

I picked up all the terms and procedures about quilting from my wife, who enjoys it as a hobby.

I took care to look at screenshots from "Perfect Pear" to make sure the cake they made for Buttercup was show-accurate. That episode came out after I'd already mapped out how the story would go, but before I'd actually started writing, so I thought it would be fun to work it in, especially since Buttercup was important to Cup Cake and Mayor Mare, two major players in this story at about the right time period.

As I already noted in chapter 5's A/N, the subplot about Mayor Mare's poetry references another of my stories, "The Poetry of Politics." Check it out if you'd like to see the rest of the poem or learn how Mayor Mare reconnects with her poetic side in present day. It's a fairly short story and an even shorter poem.

Yeah, Mayor Mare likes nice butts. I was afraid PP would consider this character assassination (ass-ass-ination?).

When the crowd of school fillies is asking Cloudy for her autograph, the two who are named, Iris and Starry Night, are references to Van Gogh. I don't know why. I just liked the names.

In chapter 5, when Cloudy laments how scared she's been during the whole process, but she's even more scared not to go through it, she says, "My fear is my only courage." This comes from me mis-hearing a line from Bob Marley's song "No Woman No Cry" and deciding it made for an interesting thought anyway.

When the morning sunlight makes Cloudy sneeze twice almost every day? I've been like that ever since I was a toddler.

Ms. Harshwhinny enjoys a glass of wine before dinner whenever she can. My wife and mother both do the same.

In getting Mayor Mare to try quilting with her, Cloudy remarks, "You won't learn any younger." This is something my father in law always says.

Of course the bank deposits Cloudy made in Cup Cake's name weren't illegal. But she didn't know that. :)

Ms. Harshwhinny and Prim Hemline ending up together is a reference to Present Perfect's story "Persephone," which is a very short but good look at their relationship. He's really good at these character-driven types of pieces, and I very much enjoyed it.

I liked finally seeing FanOfMostEverything wonder who this mare interviewing Cloudy was, as I was hoping readers would begin to wonder why she had that much screen time. So of course I had a purpose planned for her. PP was convinced she'd end up being Cloudy's daughter from one of these flings. Magical love spawn or some such.

And there's a rather loose thread left out there, huh? Mayor Mare hints at being in a budding relationship, but she won't reveal any clues about who. Yes, this is a deliberate hook for a side story, one which I keep bugging PP to write, so everybody pile on and hassle him until he does it.

There was one more character I'd originally wanted to have Cloudy encounter, but it turned out to be a logistical nightmare that wasn't worth trying to work out. It would have seriously stretched the story's authenticity to warp plot events to make it possible. But I thought it would have been interesting if Cloudy had encountered Adagio Dazzle in her younger days, then met her again in the present day and marveled at how young she still looked. But what with how long ago the sirens were banished, and it would have required Cloudy to find and use the mirror many years ago, then get permission (or sneak off) to use it again in the present day, unless I invoked time travel, and... yeah. It wasn't gonna work.

I always hate posting the last chapter of a story, because the fun of watching everyone discover it is gone, and the last bit of anticipation is over. Still, it's a story I like and will come back to read occasionally. I appreciate all of you who stuck with it to the end!

And there's news! I conscripted Orbiting Kettle to write that side story about who Mayor Mare was talking about when she said she'd found somepony. Read his wonderful story Fulcrum to find out who it is.