Filly, Separated

by scifipony

Rating: everyone
Tags: Drama, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike, Songbird Serenade, My Little Pony: The Movie, Slice of Life
Length: 5511

Spike meets a Saddle Arabian filly who was separated from her parents when she was 3 years old. He empathizes with her sense of abandonment for he doesn't know his parents either, but he does know he's going to help her. Another refugee lends a hoof.

Spike meets a Saddle Arabian filly who was separated from her parents when she was 3 years old. An uncaring government deported them and lost their whereabouts, and now she is searching the world to find them. Spike empathizes with her sense of abandonment because, like her, he realizes he doesn't know the whereabouts of his parents either—but he does know he's going to help her.

Another refugee lends a hoof.

Thanks to DoContra for pre-reading. The other refugee first appeared in Knight of Equestria: Certainty. If you like her part, read that next.

Published 2018-09-05 02:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-09-05 02:10:01 UTC

Searching for Mum and Dad

I marched from the library with the feather duster, found the first closet, and arrowed it in. "Now, just the morning dishes from the Pancake Invitational and out to Big Mac's to organize another chapter of Ogres and Oubliettes!"

I glanced at a clock and rubbed my claws together. "An hour before Twilight's return train. I should be able to make my nefarious escape—"

The loud bang-bang-bang of a hoof against the brass castle door sounded.

"Or... maybe not." With a sigh, I rushed downstairs as fast as my legs could carry me, forgetting until the last moment that I could have glided down the stairs.

Bang-bang-bang!

I frowned as I opened the door.

She almost rapped my noggin. Looking cross-eyed at her shiny black hoof, I asked, "What's up?"

Her body stiffened and her eyes widened. I knew that I've-never-met-a-dragon look. The shock didn't stop her from demanding, "I need to speak with Princess Twilight Sparkle! I need to talk with her. Right now!"

"Um. She's not in town."

Having grown up with Twilight, I could recognize a filly who was younger than she looked. Not a mare, yet, despite her height and upright carriage. The way she deflated like a balloon at my words confirmed it. The fidgety earth pony wore Saddle Arabian garb, basically linen pantaloons and a puffy blouse that bared her midriff. She wore white satin saddlebags that displayed a blue lightning bolt. Scarves of white linen wrapped her tail and mane, though black bangs escaped concealment. She had a black muzzle, and black ran up to her knees, but the rest, that I could see, sported red and grey fur, giving her a ruddy-pink color. She wore a red bridle with gold sequins. Definitely real gold from the muted weighty tinkle.

Her garb conflicted with what sounded almost like a Trottingham accent (softened Rs with Princess Twilight Sparkle pronounced Pwincess Twilight Spawkel). She had caramel brown eyes the same shape as Rarity's—big caramel brown eyes that began misting up and widening more.

Oh, boy.

I said, "Maybe I could help?"

She looked down, nervously dancing in place. "I–I always make wubbish out of everything!"

Definitely younger than she looked—and born in Trottingham. I opened the door and waved her in, hoping to prevent incipient tears. "I'm sure I could help you with something, if only getting you a muffin and a cocoa."

I received an interested but hesitant, "Oh?"

"I'm Twilight's assistant."

"B-but you're a dwagon," she said as she dashed past me to the stairs. Her neck craned as she took in the crystalline expanse of the foyer and the stairs to the main level.

"That's a long story. And she'd be a mess without me."

Her eyes followed me up the stairs. I still had dishes to do. At the top, she zipped up and beyond me, then to the kitchen I headed to. She reminded me of Filly Second. She glanced in, her hooves clattering as she examined the marble counters and hanging utensils, as if she were making sure nothing looked dangerously sharp, then at me.

I asked, "What's your name?"

"Goodness. So sorry!" She curtsied, momentarily still. "Rohan neigh-Reed, Mr. Dwagon."

I stepped past her. Sinks full of dishes lay to the right and well stocked glass pantry cabinets to the left. I went left and assembled a snack.

"And...?"

I set a piping hot basket of muffins on the table of the breakfast nook, pointing. She inhaled deeply the smell the sunflower oil, blueberries, and gingered carrots. I placed a crock of butter beside the fragrant baked goods.

As I poured milk and cocoa into a I Heart Canterlot mug, I prompted again, "What are you so desperate to speak with Twilight about?"

She watched intently as I heated the mug with a flame while she sat. The blue vinyl booth crinkled beneath her. I put the steaming mug before her and added, "Please?"

"I'm searching for my parents."

I plunked a strawberry marshmallow on top and watched her eyes cross slightly at the pink novelty.

I said, "The Canterlot Bureau of Records—"

"I just came from there."

"Then—"

"My father's chasing me."

"But you said—?"

"That's why I need the princess!" Her Head thumped to the table, her nose right up to the mug. "Rubbi—goodness, Rohan!"

"Let me get this straight. You're looking for your parents but your father's chasing you?"

She looked up at me like a sad puppy dog. "I make rubbish of everything! He's my adopted father."

That explained the muddled Trottingham accent and the Saddle Arabian giddy-up she wore. "And he's chasing you...?"

"Because I ran away to find my parents. Oh!" She sat upright and sniffed the cocoa.

"Drink some."

She sipped loudly and smiled slightly. She whispered, "To find my real parents."

"Try the carrot one. I baked them myself."

"With your green flame?"

"No. The oven." I slapped a towel over my shoulder and turned the tap. I soaped the dishes with a brush and said, "I've only a short time—"

"Me, too, Mr. Dwagon."

"That's Spike and... Princess?"

Between hungry chomps of well-buttered muffin and loud sips of cocoa, over me scrubbing away dried maple syrup and egg from clattering china, she said, "I haven't seen my real parents since I was nearly three. I remember being worried if we'd celebrate my birthday just before we finally had to leave. The borage harvest had turned to black slime in the fields everywhere and probably ponies without bits ate bark to keep from starving. I remember the captain of the boat promising us, and the rest of the fleeing herd, a land were everypony who could work would eat. That's not what happened." She gave a dainty burp.

I looked. She had finished all four muffins and she jerked her head up when I caught her chasing crumbs across the table with a long red tongue.

She blushed and put both hooves around the cup of cocoa. "For weeks they kept us floating off the coast. The city lights twinkled at night. I was hungry and thirsty and when they let us dock after so long, I don't remember much. Constables came and arrested ponies. And took away my parents. I hadn't known the word criminal before, but the sound of it stuck with me. I clung to the other foals." She stopped with a loud sip.

I put down the last dried glass and folded the towel on the sideboard. "That's horrible."

"It was!" She kept her eyes strictly forward. "And they took us away. To different places, like nopony wanted us. My memories are all muddled up, but they told us we couldn't hold on to each other. They told us to sleep on the floor, and only let us visit the water closet when they said, not always when I needed to. Many ponies cried, but I didn't. I kept asking for Mum and Dad when anypony spoke to me, but they didn't bring them and I couldn't remember their names or even mine; and then one day somepony answered that my Mum and Dad were gone and I knew that they'd left me behind. I stopped talking. It had to be weeks. I had no words and just couldn't understand what I'd done wrong that they'd leave me. One day a pony came, Father, and took me home to a new home and a new mother and food at every meal, and they loved me, and I forgot about all the bad things—until I read about the Trottingham famine in school."

"Read?"

"Fillies, separated from their parents." Rohan stood before the table, her nervous hooves again a blur. "Do you know what it's like to know you have a Mum and a Dad but you can't remember them? That somehow you'd been a criminal? To have thought forever that they'd left you because you'd done something bad?"

The totality of her words struck me like a bell. If Twilight had been given an egg, there had to have been parents for that egg. The sudden ringing in my ears sounded like an incoherent scream as I braced myself by grabbing the edge of the sink. My heart beat rapidly and I remembered something that had never seemed important. Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Applebloom had gotten Twilight to retell the story of how she'd gotten her cutie mark. My stomach began to knot. Celestia had tasked Twilight with hatching my egg, something Twilight's self-taught magic failed to do until a thaumaturgical shockwave triggered the magic deep inside her. The rainboom. After that, Celestia had made Twilight both her second personal student and my mother. It wasn't until the dragon migration that I asked and Twilight answered, Spike, you were given to me as an egg. I don't know who found you or where they found you.

I felt abandoned, just like Rohan.

"I know," I whispered. What had I done for me to lose my parents?

I'd been more concerned back then that my pony upbringing had made me an inadequate dragon. I'd needed to know how to grow up a dragon. Twilight had been a good mom, a supportive one, despite her insisting that I called her by her name, and despite her giving me more chores than oft-complaining Applebloom ever got.

What had happened to my parents? Thinking about them now felt like remembering a friend that I'd hadn't seen or heard from in a really long time. A hole. Loneliness. New found loneliness. Applejack had talked about the feeling on the rare occasions I'd overheard her talk about her parents.

I shook my head. Now my stomach did hurt.

"Mr. Dwagon?" she asked, suddenly a hoof-length from my side, a sheet of yellowed paper in her lips.

I took it. As I examined the front page of the Desert Post Dispatch dated about eleven years ago, I said, "I think I do understand."

It was printed in curlicue Saddle Arabian script. As Twilight's number one assistant, I'd learned to read many languages. Ember had said once that dragons were good at languages because they migrated all over the world.

What I hadn't asked Ember was about my past...

Anyway, the headline read, Filly, Separated from Parents, above a black and white photo.

Standing beside me, Rohan pointed. "That's me."

I looked at her black and pink roan face, and her glistening brown eyes, then at the picture. I angled it right and left. "Hard to tell. How do you know?"

"It says, 'Nameless filly cries for mother and father but goes mute when told authorities deported them.'"

"The photo is very shadowy."

"Look." She tapped the photo with a hoof. "They called me 'Sprinter' in the article, and I'm fast." She dashed out of the kitchen and back to prove it. "See that lightning bolt on the foal's flank?" Any Equestrian filly would have proudly lifted a dress to show me hers, but she pointed with her nose at the identical graphic on her saddlebag. "You're going to have to believe me! That's my cutie mark. Good Saddle Arabian fillies don't show that sort of thing." She blushed as she nodded, trying by force of will to make me believe.

"I believe you." I took a deep breath as my stomach gurgled. "I know what you feel, but what does Twilight have to do with it?"

She snatched the paper and stashed it in her saddlebag. "My father doesn't want me searching for my parents—"

"Because maybe you ran away?"

She whined as she added, "He thinks I should forget them like they forgot me! It's so unfair! What if they didn't leave me but were taken away? I know the word deported now, too. She's the Princess of Friendship. She can help me find my parents. That'd be the friendly thing to do. She has to keep my father from taking me back home without searching!"

"Well, the good news is that Twilight is returning on the next train from Canterlot."

Rohan looked down, deflated. "And so is my father."

"How—?"

"I saw him through a window"—she began rapidly pacing—"when visiting the Trottingham Ex-patriots and Trotting Society in Canterlot this morning. The scone I was eating hit with a splat when it landed jam-side down! That frizzy-maned clerk at the Bureau of Records must have sent him. I ran and caught the train leaving at the station. It was only a Ponyville local, though, and the next train stops here, also, and he'll be on it, and— Oh, rubbish! What do I do now!?"

I stopped her wailing with a claw on her withers.

She added, "It was a good scone, too, with clotted cream and strawberry jam and all!"

"I can help. You see, I can send Twilight a message to talk to—"

You know that stomach ache I'd felt, and the gurgling? That was somepony preparing to send me a scroll and changing their mind. Success feels like a punch in the stomach when it hits. I stepped back, doubled-over by the suddenness and the acid running up my throat to ignite as I burped. Flames burst out and Rohan screamed, jumping back; but a teleported scroll flipped into the air, twirled, and dropped unburnt to the stone floor.

It read, and I read it aloud, "Spike. The girls and I have taken a balloon to Cloudsdale. Wonderbolts friendship problem. Back tomorrow!"

"Oh, noes! What now?"

I was going to have to do what Twilight would have done—talk to Rohan's father, if I could figure out what to say. Twilight always said trust yourself. This time I knew I had to succeed because I understood what Rohan felt. I thought about the ponies of Ponyville, and I knew some who had resettled from Trottingham. They might know others. "Let's go talk to some ponies and see if they know about your parents."

As we headed into town, I began to realize Pinkie Pie wasn't entirely unique in one way. Rohan found it hard to walk normally. She'd sprint ahead, stop, dance in place, then zip ahead, then back. Never far, though. Many ponies watched as we went to Pip Squeak's house. His parents confirmed that they knew of no "Trotters" in Ponyville that had lost family, but then they'd admitted moving to Equestria five years after the famine.

"You might chat with Spinfluff and Duster. They arrived before us."

After the pinto mare closed the door, Rohan muttered, "A shopkeeper. Probably lived in the city and never got hungry like some ponies."

"You went hungry?"

"Uh-huh. It's hard to forget. The hay lines running out of hay. Mum said the soup at the soup kitchen might have had a vegetable waved over it, or it might have just been dirty water. Thinking about it makes me want to eat everything I see without thinking! The pony deep inside is worried I might never find food ever again. I'd be as round as a buckball if—" She demonstrated by zipping about half-a-block away, then back. "Forever hollow. Being hungry might have been the reason I wasn't able to remember who I was, or Mum and Dad's name after the boat ride."

"Here," I said, stopping before a house with a big eyebrow dormer sticking out of its thatched roof. The white stucco and brown cross-beam garage half the size of the house looked new. Rose bushes cut into dancing mares stood to either side of the door. I knocked as Rohan danced in place.

A minute later, a golden-beige mare with a ropy black mane tied up in a bun answered the door. She looked Twilight's age and wore dark blue pajamas even though it was afternoon. I found myself looking at the familiar design that peppered it. My brow raised involuntarily. The design was Princess Luna's cutie mark.

"A friend made it for me." She rubbed an eye with a hoof and yawed. "Allo, Spike and, who might you be?"

Come to think about it, the blue-eyed mare looked familiar and wasn't Spinfluff who I knew was an orange middle-aged pegasus mare. Spinfluff's daughter, then. I said, "This is Rohan—"

"I'm looking for my parents. Are you Spinfluff? We were separated during the borage famine. Do you know where they might be?"

"I'm afraid I do not, luv, and I don't even know their names. Mine is Flopsy Mopsy." She lifted a hoof.

Rohan clacked it. "Neither do I," Rohan muttered.

"What's this all about?" Flopsy Mopsy looked to me as the adult.

I explained all I knew about the filly's separation, ending with, "And Twilight raised me, so I know what she feels."

Flopsy Mopsy said, "I remember even finding the lawns nibbled to the dirt and that hollow feeling that you might never eat again. Mum reminds me I was a picky eater once, when she thinks of what-might-have-been. Mum and Dad had to emigrate here because Mum's a pegasus and Dad's an earth pony. That meant Equestria. We had no difficulty other than finding ponies to put us up until we could make bits to pay them back. It's sad the Saddle Arabians weren't friendly."

"Is there anypony else who came here that maybe didn't Emmy great directly?" Rohan asked.

"Don't know. Mum and I were servants and Dad was a groom. I know some Trotters settled on farms, but other than meeting them at the market or sharing a scone and tea on Hearthswarming, don't know much about their origins."

"Can you take me to one of the farms?"

She shut her door behind her with a wing. "I can do one better. Today being midweek, the farmers market is open."

As she trotted down the street, I said, "Pajamas," rushing to keep up.

"These were made for the Sleepover Beats to Dawn festival I worked in the south of Prance. Pretty tough." Sotto voce, she added, "She's probably more comfortable with me dressed."

"Yes. I am. Thank you. Can we go faster?"

I said, "Her father is following her—"

"What?" She hovered abruptly as Rohan overshot. Yellow-beige wings outstretched, she looked even more familiar. As did the way she spoke to me—like we'd spoken before.

"Please!" cried Rohan, looking up and down the street at the intersection.

I said, "Her adopted Father."

"Daddy not approving? Curiouser and curiouser."

She arrowed ahead, aloft. Rohan sprinted along, needing only to slow every block or so. I needed to stop sooner, huffing and puffing, then remembered and jumped into the air. The first few strokes overload the muscles in your shoulder and chest, but then it's just glide and flap. My wings make a buzzy sailcloth sound. Really cool.

Ponyville isn't Manehatten. Possibly by law, no street is straight. I had started to lose sight of the pair behind some houses and trees when I saw a tall stallion dressed in white linen. He was looking toward town hall with the train station behind him.

Not toward us.

Flopsy Mopsy executed a superhero barrel roll that Rainbow might have envied, swooped down on Rohan like an eagle, and with arduous-looking downstrokes flung them both into the dense green canopy of a golden oak tree.

I heard an "eep!" from Rohan.

The stallion looked and trotted my way. I made sure I caught his eye with a curl of flame. As he approached, passing under the tree without looking up, he whistled. Two similarly dressed stallions galloped up from different directions.

He was tall and shared the same long legs and lean build that Celestia had, though barely Luna's height. Mares of his coloring were called black beauties. White peppered the fur around his eyes while gray streaked his Mohawk mane. He wore puffy white pantaloons that rustled in the breeze. A white cape hid his back and tail. He wore red mirror sunglasses.

In a deep Saddle Arabian-accented voice, he said, "You must be Spike, the Great and Glorious." He stopped and appraised me from tail tip to snout. I didn't tell him I understood Saddle Arabian pretty well. "Though, sir, I do not remember any wings on the statues I saw."

I stood straighter. "I've matured since then."

"I wish to introduce myself. I am Leed far-Reed. And these are my associates, Acacia," a yellow brown-maned pony like him, "and Sandstorm," who was brown dark-brown. They shared tailors and sunglass vendors, though theirs were plain black. "Is it that you are the master of this town?"

"You can say that, again." He could. I liked the sound of it, even if I wasn't saying it was so.

"I am looking for my daughter."

"Rohan?"

The two "associates" came to attention, causing me to realize they'd surrounded me. I felt suddenly like I'd returned to Maretropolis and had Mane-iac's minions scoping me out. I tasted the sulfury-iron tang of a flame that curled above my nose as I looked at them. Sandstorm stepped back.

Leed said, "You have met her?"

"Yes..."

"Know that she ran away from home."

"By ship and by train. Pretty capable kid you raised."

"I have followed her from my country all over Equestria, just today from Canterlot. I need to return her home before anypony asks why she is missing."

"Why's that important? I mean, compared to finding her birth family?"

His lips compressed and he looked at his associates. "Rohan clings to a fantasy. You did not hear that." He waved the two away with a hoof and they retreated out of earshot, notably to either end of the street.

Leed continued. "She holds this fantasy that she will find these happy ponies who will love her. The world is large and those times were... chaotic."

"But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt or doesn't still hurt. Princess Twilight Sparkle hatched me. Hatched by a pony and raised by one—you think I might know how Rohan feels?"

"I think I know how it will feel if she hurts her marriage prospects if ponies realize she was adopted into our house—"

I had to fight glancing into the tree, a superpower in itself. I could see how Rohan superficially resembled her adopted father, especially with black points and with her black muzzle. Her body shape wasn't typical Saddle Arabian, more like Sassy Saddles which was close—however, if you were to doubt her ancestry...

"I know how it feels that my daughter ran away and somepony is not telling her father where she is!"

"She's safe."

"Your word."

"Twilight would know the answer to this, but why is it a problem if Rohan—"

"I will see my daughter again."

I chose to pretend his statement was a question. "It's inevitable." She was in the tree next to us and one of the passers-by, who looked at our meeting, would eventually look up into the tree rustling less than ten pony-lengths away.

"With or without answering your questions?"

"Yeah... Do you want to be her friend as well as her father?"

Leed sighed. He took off his sunglasses and hooked them into the color of his cape, revealing amber eyes and a wrinkled brow. "If what I say gets out—"

"Princess Celestia sends Twilight on diplomatic missions all the time, and I go with as her second in command. I know not to blab."

"Very well. Rohan is our only foal, but she had a 'sister', once. Her name was Rohan, too, and as foals they looked similar when I first met her. When the pony-pox took our little filly, it devastated Ferndell. My government job had sent us to the capital for almost a year because of the crisis in Trottingham, so I was there when everything went pear-shaped, for us, and the crazy ponies who feared the Trotters would ruin our pony nation. Then Ferndell saw the picture of the illegal immigrant foal in the paper."

"I've seen that picture."

"Ferndell kept the clipping. She always wanted to tell Rohan she was adopted. We love Rohan as much as our own life. We told her."

A voice from the tree piped up. "But not that I had had a sister."

We both gasped.

As Leed trotted over, squinting into the leaves, Rohan added, "And don't you tell me to come down right now! Don't you dare! I'm not liking you too much right now."

"Rohan—"

I warned, "Do you want to be her friend?"

"Yes. I do. I want to be your friend."

Rohan said, "You worked for the ponies who separated fillies from their parents. Didn't you?"

Leed glared at me with eyes that became suddenly hard like stone. I pointed up into the tree.

That moment, amidst snapping of twigs and a rain of leaves, Flopsy Mopsy flew Rohan down, though it was more of a controlled fall. Rohan bounced on her hooves. The pajamaed mare flared her wings, which made her look substantially larger, and took up guard half a pony-length in front and to Rohan's left, between Rohan and her father. Her eyes were implacable.

Leed waved off Acacia and Sandstorm before they got close.

"Didn't you?" Rohan asked.

I could tell he'd raised her by her return glare so much like his.

"Yes. I did."

"I don't know if I can forgive you. You took my Mum and Dad away."

"Whether you forgive me or not, I am still your father, and it was others who did those stupid things. I just tried to keep everypony added to my creche safe, but nopony kept the proper records and ponies were being sent away to many places and who-was-with-which family got lost. Lots of stupid ponies."

"You didn't look for my parents."

"I might have. I probably did, before—amongst hundreds I looked after—before you and dozens were left with no family, and they were going to deport the permanently-orphaned to I-do-not-know-where because Trottingham refused to accept you back. Your mother said it was a sign that she saw you in the paper and that you looked like our lost foal. So, we became your father and mother. It cost me my job, but we got you and found a better life where the crazy ponies did not go."

The two stared silently at each other, neither talking except to themselves in their own heads. Rohan blinked and looked toward Flopsy Mopsy. She smiled and pointed with her nose back at Leed.

Rohan said, "You chose to be my father."

"Your mother chose. I agreed and did what everypony I worked with insisted I should not or could not, and then nopony would speak to me. But I did it, and I do not regret it. I think we did the best we could for you and you have always been a joy."

"You are my father—I'm not saying you're not—and I love you. But you have to make this right for me." Tears streamed down her cheeks. She stomped the ground. "You have to!"

"As your father, I must do what's best for you."

Flopsy Mopsy's eyes narrowed and her ears edged back. I had to wonder how she thought to advocate for her former country pony, but then Rohan let out a sob.

Leed added after a silence, "If the news gets out that you were adopted from Trottingham, you will find it difficult to find a good stallion—"

"Then I wouldn't want him!" she yelled, causing ponies to turn their heads toward us, up and down the street. One opened the drapes in a window. "I'll work in the family business—"

"If you were discovered not to be a Saddle Arabian pony, you would not legally be able to inherit."

"Or I'll find work, or move to Equestria where ponies are appreciated for who they are and what they contribute, not for where they came from! Or-or-or I-I'll live with my parents, when I find them, if they'll have me and love me."

"No parent could help but love you, Rohan."

"Then find my parents." She walked past Flopsy Mopsy, who lowered her wings and stepped aside. "Make this right. I know I might make my life hard, for all the reasons." She looked up at him. "I thought for months before I left home. I know you don't want to lose me, but this isn't final like your first Rohan. I know I can love more than one Mum and Dad. I know it, and I know what I must do."

She hugged her adopted father.

After a moment, he hugged her back.

"I love you, Father, now more than ever, for having saved me," she said. Even Leed's eyes became moist, but she added, "Do we look now or do I look later?"

"We look now," Leed whispered into her ear.

Exceptional dragon hearing let me hear and know he meant it. Flopsy Mopsy seemed to believe it, too, for she came to stand by my side.

I waited a minute until they separated. No Ogres and Oubliettes today. I said, "Come to the castle. Princess Twilight can surely help. I'll send her a dragongram and she'll list all the places to get help, and open doors you'd never have thought of."

Leed said, "Thank you Spike, the Great and Glorious."

I pointed toward the castle, which you can see from anywhere in Ponyville, and followed the pair. Acacia stayed in the lead and Sandstorm followed behind. I supposed Leed far-Reed was some sort of noble or a minor prince.

Flopsy Mopsy walked beside me. She was shoeless and her hooves clopped like muffled coconuts. She asked, "Mr. the Great and Glorious, how does it feel to be a hero?"

"Me?" My face heated up and I scratched the back of my neck.

"That's actually a good answer I can empathize with. But more importantly, how do you feel?"

"I'm happy I helped Rohan."

"Sorry, I meant about being raised by Princess Twilight Sparkle. Everypony knows that she got her cutie mark and became Princess Celestia's protégé by hatching your egg, an egg whose origins are unknown. I could tell Rohan's revelation unsettled you, mate."

I looked into her deep blue eyes. She smiled. My eyes wandered up to her ropey black mane tied up above her head and her pale golden fur color. Mate was the final clue, because I knew that melodious voice. Add a little blonde dye to half her hair, cover her face with her bangs, put on a black jacket with gold buttons, and tie on a pink ribbon. I'd worked closely with her at the Friendship Festival, before and after the Storm King. I'd helped Rarity apply makeup to bruises she'd suffered during that bad time—the all of us had gotten banged up then. She'd been a real professional, hiding a limp and dealing with a split hoof bolted together by an orthopedic horseshoe during the show.

"You're Songbird Serenade."

"It's a stage name."

"A secret identity!"

She grinned. "You've no idea. Seriously, though. Secret... Fans... Disturbing Mum and Dad? That'd be brutal."

I made a zipping motion.

"So... how did saving the Crystal Heart feel?"

"Scary. Even dragons can't fall from an unlimited height, you know. And Sombra, part shadow and part crystal trying to attack as I fell. But his boobytrap had caught Twilight. She was right; I had to step up even though I wanted to roll up in a ball, and I did. In the end, it felt good. But you know this—there's been plenty of re-creations and a book or two thanks to Twilight and the crystal ponies."

"You're right. I've made a hobby of studying Equestria's heroes. I wrote Rainbow during Tempest Shadow's occupation of Canterlot. The tears in the song were Princess Twilight Sparkle's."

"Are you going to—"

"Write a song about you? Don't know, yet. Depends on what you're going to do about that egg question. It bothers you."

I looked at Leed and Rohan. They were talking and now she giggled. "It's going to be like after jumping from the tower, and Cadance caught me before Sombra could, and we installed the heart, and the crystal ponies gave it their love. At first it was scary and hard to do and then it felt good."

"That's right. The question is: are you going to be the hero in your own ballad?"

She had stopped and I hadn't realized I'd walked away as I let the answer percolate. I looked back at her.

She pointed at herself and then her parents's house. "Pajamas."

For some reason I started laughing really hard.

She added, "You have friends. You might ask Dragonlord Ember. You should ask Princess Twilight Sparkle. She'll help."

Twilight would probably help too much, but she would help. Thinking about that, and her, gave me a warm feeling.

I answered, "I will."

Author's Note

This Songbird Serenade first appears in Knight of Equestria: Certainty. If you liked her part in this story, read more about her there. It's the first of a new series.