Changes

Chapters

01 - The Visit
02 - The Funeral
03 - The Departure

01 - The Visit

I didn’t like how familiar the hospital felt.

Yeah, I’d been here once or twice after a nasty crash, but except for the time I broke my wings I never really stayed long enough to figure out the rotation of the meals. Come in, patch up, argue with the doctor, play a prank, sneak out, come back the next week to pay the bill. It had always worked for me.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked for Ditzy. I’d been watching her daughters for the last three months while she stayed in the hospital. I brought them to visit her every day after school, but lately the treatments had been taking as much out of her as that thing growing in her head. The headaches had been bad enough, but she’d looked like Tartarus over the last few weeks as her mane and feathers steadily thinned out.

Then last week, she’d asked me to bring Rarity to see her. I didn’t know why, and with everything on my plate I didn’t have the time to ask. I’d put it out of my mind until yesterday, when Ditzy gave each of her daughters one of her pinfeathers, attached to the end of a necklace.

I’d known she was in bad shape, but that … seeing those necklaces really made it sink in that she wasn’t coming back from this. Pegasi only give away their pinfeathers like that for two reasons: as a token of affection when they think they’ve found their soulmate, or when they’re about to die and want to leave something behind for their loved ones.

She’s their mom, not me. I could barely manage caring for a tortoise, and 90% of that was just getting a new head of lettuce every few days. But I told her I would be Dinky’s godmother the day she was born. I’d made that promise again three years ago, when Ditzy brought Sparkler home from a Canterlot orphanage. Being a godmom was supposed to mean showing up for birthdays or being an awesome foalsitter, not … taking over.

There are some promises nopony should ever have to keep.

Both the girls walked alongside me through the hospital door. Redheart looked up from the front desk, unsurprised to see me. I’d brought them to see Ditzy every day since she first checked in, which made us a pretty common sight around here. Dinky blew a raspberry as I went over to sign the guest log.

“Wait just a sec, Dinky.” Dozens of copies of my signature were scrawled over the pages of the visitors’ log, at least one per day over the past few months. I signed our names again under today’s date, and turned to head down the hall when I saw Redheart coming towards us. Something about the way she was looking at us bothered me. I began walking towards her, but Dinky sighed and stomped her hoof in frustration.

“Cool it, kiddo!” I instantly regretted snapping at her. I didn’t want to get upset with Dinky, but sometimes ... I dunno. Nothing about this really bothered her. Her days had consisted of her going to school, visiting Ditzy, going home, and going to bed. Rinse, lather, and repeat. It had become a routine for her.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, that was—” I sighed. “Look, I know it doesn’t seem like it, but this really is important, okay?”

“Fiiiine,” Dinky whined. “Sparkler, could you take the cupcakes for me? I gotta go potty.”

The older unicorn’s horn glowed as she took the box of pastries, and Dinky ran off towards the restrooms. Redheart came up to us, and I tried to ignore the knot in my stomach. It’s rarely a good sign when the hospital staff approaches you. Still, there’s always a chance it’s good news. I nonchalantly shuffled my right wing, shifting my grip on the Battle Clouds box tucked under it. “Hey, Redheart. What’s up?”

“Rainbow. Sparkler.” The bottom dropped out of my stomach at the way she said our names. “Please come with me.”

We wordlessly followed her down the hallway and past a set of cheesy-looking potted plants. She motioned for us to follow her into a nearby office, and for the life of me I did not want to go in. Sparkler went in and set the cupcakes down on the desk, then sat down on one of the cushions next to it. I did the same with the board game and sat down next to her.

Redheart closed the door behind us, and I felt the knot in my stomach tighten when she sat down across from us rather than behind the desk. Sparkler nervously tapped her foreleg against the carpeted floor, her gaze alternating from the nurse to me. We stared at each other for a minute before I finally spoke up.

“All right,” I said. “What’s going on?”

Redheart tentatively licked her lips as she met our gaze, her ears flat against her head. “Ditzy slipped away last night.”

“No.” Sparkler gasped, shaking her head as if refusing to believe what she was hearing. I didn’t blame her. “Mom … no...”

Redheart pulled her into a hug. “Oh sweetie, come here … oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Sparkler wrapped a hoof around her, then another. Soon, her shoulders were shaking in Redheart’s embrace as the nurse gently rocked her, stroking her mane as she wept.

I was rooted to the spot, lost for words. I’d known this was coming for weeks, but now that it had happened … Ditzy was gone. Celestia, it felt so wrong to even think that. She’d been Ponyville’s mailmare mom for seven years, and my friend for twice that long.

Sparkler’s muffled whimpering snapped me back to reality, reminding me of the two fillies Ditzy had left in my care. I awkwardly patted Sparkler’s back, not really sure what else to do while she clung to Redheart.

The nurse looked at me. “Did Dinky come with you today?”

“Yeah, um—I think she was going to the bathroom.”

“You should go find her. I’ll watch Sparkler until you get back.”

I stepped out of the office, closing the door behind me to try and block out the sounds as I made my way back across the lobby. A few patients craned their heads to try and get a look at the office, but I ignored them. The restrooms were near the front desk, the first two doors leading into the hallway on the other side of Redheart’s office. The door to the mare’s room creaked a bit when I pushed it open.

“Dinky?” I called out. “K-kiddo, are you in here? I, um … I need to talk to you about something, okay?”

Save for the drip of water from one of the faucets, the bathroom was silent. I couldn’t hear anypony else in here with me, and a quick check of the stalls confirmed that I was alone. Dinky must have had pulled a fast one on me and doubled back when I wasn’t looking. Under other circumstances, I’d have been impressed. I’d have to bring her along with me and Pinkie the next time we went out pranking.

If she wasn’t here, though … oh, no. There was only one other place in the entire hospital she would go. The bathroom door banged against the wall as I flew out, racing down the far-too-familiar hallway to the long-term care ward. I narrowly missed clipping Tenderheart on the way; flying indoors like this was insanely dangerous because of the risk of colliding with somepony. I’d probably get in trouble for it later, and I was pretty surprised when Tenderheart didn’t shout after me.

Like I cared. I needed to find Dinky.

I slowed down a bit as I got to the wing of the hospital Ditzy had been staying in, and I had to stop and catch my breath. The namecard outside of her room had been cleared away. It was just the number now, along with a blank slot where the patient name used to be. Clean, sterile, anonymous. There was no hint of the mare that had been living here for the past three months, no outward sign that anything had happened beyond another day passing. I took a few deep breaths and pushed the door open.

Somepony, probably Tenderheart, had turned off the monitors above Ditzy’s bed, and with the curtains drawn the room was surprisingly dark. I was glad for that. I could just make out the bed’s position to the right, along with what was on it. Seeing my friend like that…

I felt a perverted sense of relief knowing that Dinky hadn’t come this way yet. Small favors, right? Sure, I was going to bury my friend and then try to find her wayward daughter. First thing first, though: I wanted to say goodbye. I stood there for a moment, silently begging Celestia that my friend would show sign of life—any hint that this wasn’t real. Talk. Move. Anything.

“H-hey Ditzy,” I said. “It’s me—y’know, Rainbow. I’ve been keeping an eye on the girls for you...” Breathe, Ditzy, just … breathe. Please. “Um—I want you to know I’ll keep doing that, okay? Like I said yesterday, I’ll take care of ‘em.”

That had been the worst conversation of my life. I’d been caring for Dinky and Sparkler, yeah, but everything I’d done up until yesterday had just been foal-sitting stuff—wake ‘em up, fix their meals, make sure Dinky’s mane wasn’t a mess before Sparkler walked her to school, and take ‘em to visit their mom in the afternoon. Then the necklaces came out, and she told me she was … going. Even then, she wanted to make sure her daughters were going to have somepony to take care of them.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash.”

I froze in place when I heard Dinky’s voice. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could just make out her head poking out from Ditzy’s forelegs. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening. But there she was, wrapped in her mother’s arms beneath the covers.

“Dinky...”

She’d made it here before me after all. Worse, she’d wrapped her mom’s legs around her like some sick kind of blanket. The harder I tried not to think about the day she’d been born, the faster the memories came to mind: Ditzy lying there in bed, drenched in sweat and exhausted but happier than I’d ever seen her as she cradled her daughter in her hooves. Things had come full circle; here Ditzy was again, bedridden in a hospital with Dinky snuggled up against her.

This was wrong.

“I didn’t wanna wait to see Mommy,” Dinky whispered. “I kinda fibbed about going to the potty. Sorry if I scared you.”

That was all she was worried about, lying to me about where she had been? She’d just wanted to see her mom again. “It’s not that, kiddo, it’s so-some-” My voice caught in my throat. “Look, Dinky, I—um ... it’s gonna b-be okay, all right? You and Sparkler are gonna be okay, I’m gonna—”

“Shh.” Dinky snuggled closer against her mother. “Mommy’s sleeping.”

Oh, Luna. Anything but this, please. For the past three months I had thought Dinky was in denial, or else too caught up with hoping Ditzy would get better to try to think about life after Mom. Now I realized she didn’t think Ditzy could … die … because she had no idea anything like that could happen.

Seeing my friend dead was bad enough, but watching her daughter wrap herself in her arms like that went so far beyond wrong. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to tell her about her mom? I had no idea how to handle this. I couldn’t be here any more, I just couldn’t.

“O-okay. Um, tell you what, I’ll—I’ll be right back, okay Dinky?”

“Okay.” Dinky kept her voice low. I hugged her as carefully as I could manage, brushing against Ditzy’s leg as I did. She was so cold, she was—she—

I barely made it out of room and closed the door behind me. I had to be strong for them now. Dinky and Sparkler needed me. So how was I going to tell my goddaughter her mother was gone? When I saw her, I had expected—actually, I didn’t know what I’d expected. Crying, screaming, promises to eat her alfalfa and go to bed on time. Anything. I could have taken that; at least then I would have been able to cry with her.

But this? This was going to haunt me for years.

I could hear Sparkler howling when I stepped back into the hallway. I’d have to go back to her before long. Hay, part of me wanted to go to her right now. That way I could put off telling Dinky the truth for a little while longer.

I didn’t know what was worse: that Sparkler understood everything that had happened, or that Dinky didn’t.

Hooffalls echoed dully on the hallway carpet, and I turned to see Tenderheart coming back. She looked as bad as I felt. Her eyes were red, and I could feel her struggling to keep her breathing level as she put a comforting hoof on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Rainbow. I know you were very close to her.”

“Yeah.” No duh. Of course I was close to her, we’d been friends since before I had my cutie mark. We’d gone to flight camp together. I’d given Ditzy a home when she was pregnant and scared, and held her hoof while she screamed through the contractions giving birth to Dinky. I’d been there to welcome Sparkler to her new home. Ditzy had all but made me an honorary member of the family she’d built in Ponyville.

Saying I was just ‘close’ to Ditzy was a bad joke.

Tenderheart looked like she was about to hug me, but stopped herself halfway through. “Did you find Dinky?”

I swallowed and motioned my head towards the door. Tenderheart looked at the door and back to me, and her eyes went wide as it sank in. She arched an eyebrow, shooting me a look that seemed to ask why I was out here instead of with Dinky. It was a few minutes before I could speak.

“‘Mommy’s sleeping.’” It had become a mantra, repeating over and over in my mind. For some reason, I thought saying it out loud would help get rid of the image of Dinky. It didn’t. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

Tenderheart gasped and put a hoof over her mouth. She blinked away tears and forced a neutral expression onto her face. I envied her ability to just bury her emotions like that. Something told me I’d have to be doing that a lot before long.

“You won’t have to say anything, Rainbow. I’ll tell her.”

Like hay she would! I dunno what it was, but something in me wanted to tell Dinky myself. It wasn’t like I could make things any better, but I owed her the truth.

I shook my head and stood up, but Tenderheart stopped me with a hoof on my chest. “Rainbow Dash, listen to me. That filly is about to be pulled away from her mother for the last time. You don’t want to be there for that, and I don’t want you to be there for it. Sh-she … if you do it, she’ll never forgive you.”

I hated to say it, but she was right. I nodded to her, and Tenderheart took a deep breath and walked inside Ditzy’s room. It felt like hours passed with each tick of a nearby clock. Tenderheart’s words were muffled by the door, and I couldn’t even hear Dinky’s well-meaning whispers. If I didn’t think about it too much, I could almost pretend this was another visit.

At least, until the screaming started. I don’t know what Tenderheart said to her, and I was kinda glad for that. There’s a lot in life I don’t want to know about, and right at the top of that list is how to tell a child that their mother is gone.

“Mommy’s just asleep, Miss Tenderheart! Put me down! We’re gonna play Battle Clouds and I brought cupcakes and I wanted to show you my necklace again but you have to wake up first! Wake up, Mommy, please! WAKE UP! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE WAKE UP! WAKE UUUUP!”

Her wailing melted into a wordless scream of grief and horror. The door opened to Dinky flailing in Tenderheart’s grasp. The embattled nurse rocked Dinky, giving me enough time to blink away the tears at the edge of my vision. Dinky slipped out of her forelegs and threw herself against me in a crushing hug, as if Ditzy would be awake and smiling when we walked back through the door if I said Tenderheart was wrong.

“Mommy won’t wake up. She’s gonna wake up, right?”

I’ve never wanted to lie more in my life. “No. No, she’s not.”

The last spark of hope in her eyes died. I had taken away the one anchor in her life with four words. Tenderheart may have pulled Dinky away from her mom, but I was the one keeping her away. Dinky buried her head into my chest fur and wailed. I held her against me and cried with her.

What else could I do?

02 - The Funeral

I don’t know how long we stayed at the hospital. I don’t remember going back to Redheart’s office, but at some point Dinky let go of me and blindly latched onto Sparkler. I’m not sure how long the three of us were in there, just holding each other. I know it was only a few hours, but it felt like years.

Eventually—finally—Dinky fell asleep, worn out from everything the morning had hit her with. Sparkler somehow helped me load her sister onto my back, and I wrapped a wing around her as we made our way out of the hospital. She tried to look down the hallway where her mom’s room wa—had been, but a gentle squeeze kept her trotting with me. Bad enough Dinky had seen … that. Sparkler whimpered and buried her head against my chest. I think she knew what I didn’t want her to see.

The sun was well overhead when we made our way out of the hospital. Dinky wiggled on my back when the mid-spring heat hit us, but she jostled in place a bit without waking up. Wake up... Celestia, that was a phrase I never wanted to hear again.

When we finally made our way out of the hospital, the sun was well overhead. The streets were mostly clear, but the way home took us by the town square. Applejack had her stand set up in its usual spot near the edge, and she and I very briefly caught each others’ eye. She looked at the fillies with me, saw my expression, and nodded understandingly. I just stared at her for a few more seconds as I walked past, then focused on going back home. I didn’t need to do anything else; I knew she could tell what had happened, and I knew that she’d fill the others in.

We got back to Dit—the house. Sparkler got the door for me, and I trudged through the mudroom and down the hallway to Dinky’s room. We laid her into her bed as gently as we could and closed the door behind us. Sparkler went right to her room while I turned left, back to the living room. Rows of pictures watched from the walls: Sparkler and Dinky with their mom, uncle, and grandparents at Hearthswarming. Dinky and Ditzy in their Nightmare Night costumes. Sparkler and Dinky lining up for the Sisterhooves Social.

As I went down the hallway, the pictures got older … Dinky perched on her mom’s head wearing Ditzy’s medal from the Best Young Fliers’ Competition. Sparkler walking a tearful Dinky to her first day of school. Sparkler looking to Ditzy as she showed her how to hold her three-year-old sister … I remembered taking that picture, that had been Sparkler’s first evening home after Ditzy adopted her. One of Dinky’s baths—Ditzy's dad, Klutzy, had insisted on showing his daughter the proper way to bathe a young filly. The picture was a perfect snapshot of him taking a hoof to the chin from a disgruntled grandfoal. Ditzy had promised she'd never let him live that down.

At the end of the hallway was one of the oldest pictures in the house. It was Ditzy, laid up in a hospital bed with her mane plastered to her face, holding a minutes-old foal against her chest. I stopped and stared at that picture. Had that really been just six years ago?

She looked so happy in that picture, for how tired she’d been. She was frozen in that image: a mom at twenty, basking in the presence of her newborn daughter, watching over her while she slept. It was so unfair.

I walked out into the living room. Dinky’s blanket, Favorite, was draped over the couch from where I’d left it last night. Celestia love her, she’d given it to me during my second week while watching them. I’d stayed on the couch for the entire time. Being groundside was so much warmer than I was used to in my cloud-house that even a cotton sheet was too much cover for me. Still, when Dinky lent me her blanket, there was no way I could turn it down. It made for a pretty nice pillow, really.

It was time to give it back, though. Dinky would want it back when she woke up. Well, she’d want a lot more than that, but... I took Favorite back to Dinky’s room and wrapped it around her as best I could, which basically meant that I remembered not to cover her face with it. A quiet gasp from elsewhere in the house reminded me that I still wasn’t done, so I made my way to Sparkler’s room.

She had her face buried in her pillow, and the covers shaking as she quietly wept. I walked in and sat down next to the bed, and stroked her mane in what I hoped was a comforting gesture. I remembered it used to work for Ditzy way back when... Sparkler eventually poked a single, bloodshot eye out of the pillow.

“Hey.” It occurred to me that there wasn’t much more for me to say. ‘How are you feeling?’ would probably be one of the dumbest things anypony could ask, but, dammit, I felt like I had to say something. “Can I get you anything?”

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. One pleading look told me the one thing, the one pony she wanted. It wasn’t quite as bad as hearing Dinky ask to go back to Ditzy, but still. I wanted to bring her mom back as much as she did. “I, um… Shout if you need anything, okay?”

Sparkler reached out for me—she was way too far away to grab me, but just seeing the motion made me stop where I was. “S-stay?”

She stared at me, her purple eyes red and messed up from crying. She was one step away from starting up again. There was no way I could say no. I climbed onto the bed and hugged her. “‘Course I’ll stay.”

I held her until she fell asleep. I don’t think it was more than an hour, but it felt like forever. When I felt her drift off, I eased my way out of the bed. I went back to the living room and flopped onto the couch.

I got up early the next morning. Even though I hadn’t been to work in over a month, I’d still gotten up at seven every day out of habit. It had given me enough time to fix breakfast for everypony—well, okay, pour cereal into bowls or take the stuff from Sugarcube Corner out of the icebox. Sparkler had done everything that required an oven or stove, and I gotta admit, that filly could throw together a pretty mean omelette. About the only thing I really knew how to make was coffee—cooking in a cloud-house required lightning clouds to provide heat, and I still hadn’t gotten the hang of gas ovens. I knew there was a trick to getting them to work, but somehow I doubted it involved a carefully timed kick.

I put the percolator on the stove and got it to a boil when somepony knocked way too loudly on the front door. I swore under my breath and flew through the living room as quietly as I could, hoping to get there before one of the girls woke up. I opened the door to find my fillyfriend staring back at me. Well, I guess she was technically my fillyfriend. She hadn’t exactly been clear about her interest in me on Hearts and Hooves Day, and even after that we’d only had a bit of time together before Ditzy checked in at the hospital.

“Pinks ... um, hey.”

“Hiya, Dashie.” Pinkie sounded as down as she looked. I hadn’t seen her mane this flat since she thought we’d abandoned her on her birthday.

I jerked my head. “C'mon in, I guess.”

Pinkie shut the door behind us and followed me to the kitchen. While I poured us both a cup of coffee, she set a pair of saddlebags onto the table. “So, I brought some super-yummy treats for you and the girls.” She pulled out a batch of cupcakes and offered one to me. It was one of her ‘Somepony’s sad so they need a cupcake to help cheer up’ cupcakes, a chocolate pastry with vanilla icing and sprinkled with little candies shaped like band-aids and broken hearts.

It was kinda weird, hearing her usual energetic choice of words when she was so down, and I blinked as they sank in. I hadn’t really thought about food. We’d been running low on cereal, and I think the icebox was pretty close to empty. I’d needed to get out to the market before too long, but I doubted I’d be leaving the house for days. Not after yesterday.

Pinkie’s mane wilted even more, and when I sat down she scooted her cushion next to mine.”I'm really sorry about Ditzy, Dashie.” I didn’t hug her back when she put a hoof around my shoulders, but I didn’t push her away either.

“Me too.” Dammit, I was starting to get stuffy. Yesterday, Dinky would’ve asked me if I’d caught aller-jeez. “Thanks.”

Pinkie gently shook me and rested her chin on my shoulder. “Dashie? It's gonna be okay, alright?”

I snorted indignantly. “Yeah, right.”

“Dashie…”

“No, no, perfectly fine. Just … like she said it would be.” I sat down and leaned against her. “And then...I found her .... like … and Luna dammit, Dinky found her first.”

“Oh, Dashie. I'm so sorry.” Pinkie kissed me on the cheek and stroked my mane. Normally it kinda bugs me when she gets all touchy-feely like that, but this time I didn’t mind it so much. It was … comforting.

I started shaking as the memories flooded back. “I had to be there to pull her away. Celestia dammit, why did I have to be there to pull her away?”

Pinkie held me for a minute before she spoke. “Because Ditzy trusted you to take care of her girls, Dashie. That's a super-huge responsibility, and she picked you because she knew you'd be the bestest pony in all of Equestria to do it.”

“I don't want to do it! That's her job, she should be … here...” I almost stopped talking when my voice broke. “Dammit, she should be here, not me.”

Pinkie sighed, and her head dropped down onto my shoulder. “Yeah, she should. I really wish I could be holding a 'Yay, Derpy's All Better Now!' Party.”

If I hadn’t been so worn out, I might have actually yelled at her. Feather the party, my best friend was dead and her children were orphaned. It’d be months before they so much as smiled again. “Why her? Why Ditzy? It's not fair.”

“No Dashie, it's not fair. I'm sorry.” She leaned in a little closer towards me, and the next thing I knew her lips were pressed against mine in a gentle kiss.

Oh, we were not doing this right now. I jerked my head back. “Pinks. No.”

Pinie pulled her head away, ears laid back and eyes wide. “Dashie? What's wrong?”

“I think I'd like to wait at least a few days before you try to shag me!” I snarled. Pinkie and I had been at odds about the whole physical affection thing ever since we hooked up, back on Hearts and Hooves Day. On a good day, I wasn’t interested in more than maybe a little kissing, and even that was just because of how happy it made her—and she wanted to go all the way now!?

Pinkie made a noise that sounded more like Fluttershy when somepony stepped on her tail. The hurt look on her face told me she didn’t want anything close to sex. Great going, me, why don’t you jump the gun again and hurt somepony you care about? “Sorry, sorry, that was....” I sighed and cupped her cheek with a hoof. “Pinks, it’s just … right now, Dinky and Sparkler only have me. I appreciate the food, I really do, but right now... I don't want, what’s the word, intimacy.”

If anything, that brought Pinkie even closer to breaking down. “Dashie! I wasn't trying to ... I just wanted to... I just wanted to make you stop being all saddy-waddy!”

She started crying, and as much as I hate to say it, the only thing that went through my mind was that if I didn’t shut her up right then, she’d wake Dinky. I pulled her head against my chest in a conveniently muffling hug.

For all her faults—and there are times when she does drive me up the wall—Pinkie really does mean well. She lives to make other ponies happy, and it really bugs her when she can’t. She’d outright cried on her first foalsitting attempt when she couldn’t make the Cake twins smile. Right now, she’d have to get over it. “Pinks … one of my oldest friends is gone. Even you can't throw a party to fix that.”

“If I can't even make my fillyfriend happy, then I'm a rotten party pony!” she wailed. I pulled her a little closer, so that she was actually talking into my chest fur. “I wanted to make you feel better, and I just went and made things worse.”

“I know ya didn't mean to, Pinks, you're just trying to help.”

Pinkie sniffed. “And now you're comforting me for being all frowny-faced, when I was supposed to be making you smile.”

Pinkie was easy enough for me to read, and usually I could pull her out of a funk pretty quickly. Those past times were gonna be good practice, if nothing else. Dinky and Sparkler were gonna need a lot of comforting, and it’s not like I could go get Fluttershy or somepony else who knew how to do the whole nurturing thing every time. “Ya brought breakfast, that's a good start.”

Pinkie’s tears left a trail as she looked up at me. “But you're still sad.”

“Ditzy's dead, Pinkie.” I just said it. I’d really just said it. “I don't want to be happy about that.”

“I just wanna make you all better.”

Me too. We sat there for a few minutes, just content to hold each other. I felt bad for snapping at her earlier. She really had just been trying to—oh, feathering Luna, Dinky’d woken up. I could hear her sobbing down the hall.

Pinkie poked her head out under my wing, “I can help! I'm good at cheering ponies up!” She looked up at me and gave a self-conscious little laugh. “Well, usually.”

I thought about it for a second. “You can try it, but... I think she's just gonna want Ditzy back.”

Pinkie’s hesitant smiled faded. She knew as well as I did that every trick she had to offer wouldn’t be of any help. “Yeah.”

I started to pull away from her, briefly wondering how the hay she’d managed to get her head that far under my wing. “Pinks, I um... I gotta go, okay? Help yourself to some more coffee before you head out. And, um, thanks.”

“Okie dokie lokie. Um...” She pawed the ground in a very un-Pinkie like manner and shyly looked up at me. “Can I get one last little kissy first?”

I gave her a quick peck on the lips, then went down the hall to Dinky’s room. It wasn’t much even by my usual standards, and I knew it; I told myself I’d make it up to Pinkie later. Assuming I could even find time for a ‘later’ with everything that I was probably gonna get hit with.

The next few days passed in a blur. The girls stayed in their rooms, mostly—I brought them food whenever we had it. Applejack, Big Macintosh, Carrot Top, and the Cakes took turns bringing meals over. I preferred it when it was Mac—not that I didn’t appreciate everypony else, but he got that I didn’t really want to talk. He’d come in, put the food on the table, and head out. AJ kept trying to see how I was feeling, and no matter how many times I told her I was fine she just wouldn’t take a hint. As much as I hate to say it, having one of the girls wake up crying was a bit of a relief: it gave me an excuse to tell her to leave.

Carrot Top … jeez, she was barely holding it together. I guess she’d been pretty close friend with Ditzy too. It was like flittering near a thunderhead, talking to her—never sure how close you can get before setting it off. First time she came over, she took out a loaf of carrot bread, stared at it for a second, and ran off sobbing. The Cakes weren’t much better, neither of them even wanted to look at the empty muffin trays when I gave them back. I hadn’t seen much of Pinkie since that first day, but honestly that was for the best. I just didn’t have time for her right now.

The girls were out of it, for the most part. Dinky rarely left Sparkler’s room, and the few hours that they were awake they spent huddled together. Sometimes I brought them meals. Most of the time I wound up on their bed with them, holding them. Dinky would curl up against Sparkler, who would curl up against me. I’d wrap my wings around both of them, trying to hold the shattered remains of this family together.

On one of the rare nights that Dinky slept in her own room, I stayed with her. She’d wrapped Favorite around her and had snuggled up next to me while she slept. Next thing I knew, it was the middle of the night and Dinky was shaking me and screaming for me to wake up, tears pouring from her eyes. At first I had no idea what she was going on about, but by the time Sparkler came in to see what was going on I was awake enough to remember.

I didn’t get a lot of rest that night. Twilight came over the next morning with paperwork and, Celestia bless her, a thermos of coffee. I drank about half of it in one go while she tossed around words like ‘"estate,” "executor," "probate," and "guardianship." I’m kinda fluent in legal-ese from my time as manager of the weather team, but … well, most of that stuff was just work-related stuff. Liability, fire damage, that sort of thing—not how to take over for a pair of fillies who lost their mom. I’d never even thought about it.

Ditzy had, though. From the bits I remember of Twilight’s explanation, Ditzy had given me custody of her girls while she’d been sick and had made sure that I’d be able to keep them if she … if … well, she’d made sure that I’d be able to stay with them full-time now. It sounded like Redheart had helped Ditzy take care of most of that stuff in the hospital—the only thing I needed to do to make it final was sign a formal adoption form, and that would be the end of it. I put the form aside for now. I wasn’t their mom. She was. Had been. Still was.

Dammit, why did I even have to make that distinction?

We burned through about a saddlebag and a half of legal documents—well, Twilight burned through them. Mostly I just sat there in a pre-caffeinated haze, nodding once in a while to let her know I was awake and occasionally filling her in on Ditzy’s medical information. Even despite the coffee, I started nodding off after an hour. Twilight had to nudge me awake once or twice, but after a while the sunlight starting coming in through the window. Naturally, it was all right where I was sitting, which made sleep even more inviting. Stupid sunlight.

Stupid sunlight. It occurred to me that it was supposed to be sunny until the end of the week. We’d have clear skies for the service the day after tomorrow... It would look nice outside. Beautiful. Happy.

Pretty stupid words to describe a funeral. Fortunately for me, I was still the manager for the weather team. If I remembered correctly, the big storm for the farms was supposed to be coming up at the end of the week. I could pull a few strings to bump it up a bit. While I thought this over, I went to put on the percolator to fix a round of coffee for the now-empty thermos, and realized that the stuff Twilight'd brought had just about finished its trip through me. I excused myself to the restroom. After I’d finished up and washed my hooves, I opened the door and came face-to-face with Sparkler. We both took a step back in surprise.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Um, you’re up.” Master of wit, that I am.

Sparkler nodded. “Yeah. I was getting a little stir-crazy being in bed all the time.”

Well, since I was heading out anyway... “I gotta go into town for a bit, if you wanted to come along.” I gave her a quick once-over.” Ya might want to run a brush through your mane first, though.”

“That bad, huh?”

I snorted at her. Her mane was frizzy enough from spending days against a pillowcase, and she’d somehow gotten a cowlick that looked like a second horn growing out of the back of her head. “Kid, right now you make me look fashionable.”

Sparkler gave a soft laugh and smiled for the first time in days. “All right, give me a few.”

She stepped into the bathroom, and I heard her grunt and swear under her breath as she fought the mess of tangles. By the time the aura from her horn faded, there was more than a little bit of purple hair left on her brush...

“Jeez, Ditzy.” I was a little muffled through a mouthful of handle. “How’d ‘oo ge’ sho ma’y knots jush from lyin’ in bed?”

Ditzy chuckled. “Heh, sorry. I’ve been a bit out of it over the last few days, I haven’t really had time to brush my mane.”

I spat out the brush for a second. “Yeah, well when I say it looks bad, you know you’re in trouble. Good thing I caught ya before school got out, ‘cause Rarity’s bringing the girls over. She’d drag you down to the spa for some prissy new manecut.”

“That sounds nice, really.” Ditzy let out a wistful sigh. “I wouldn’t say no to some pampering right now.”

I picked the brush back up.“Tell ‘oo what, then.” Brush. “Whe’ ‘oo get out, ‘ll take ‘a ‘oo the shpa.” Snag. “‘ole ‘ackage, my treat.” Pull.

At first, I wondered how the snag had come out so easily. Then I saw that it was still there, and still caught on the brush--a whole section of Ditzy’s mane had come out, leaving a bald patch the size of my hoof just below her left ear. We both stared at the golden lock of hair as it flopped limply to the side.

“Well,” Ditzy finally said. “At least we know the treatments are taking effect. Think I should just have somepony cut the rest off, Rainbow?”

“Rainbow?”

“Rainbow?”

I shook my head, forcing the memory into the back of my mind. “Yeah?” I said in a voice high enough to sound like Pinkie’s. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yeah, what’s up?”

Sparkler stood in the doorway of the bathroom, eyeing me apprehensively. “I asked you if you were ready to go.”

“Totally. C’mon.”

I caught a glimpse of Dinky curled up on her bed as we walked down the hallway, still wrapped in Favorite and a small smile on her face. I hoped she wasn’t dreaming about her mom. It sounded a little cold even to me to think that, but reliving all those memories only to wake up to find... I shook my head again and went back to the living room.

“Hey, Twilight?”

Twilight looked up from whatever it was she’d been reading. “Hmm?”

“Sparkler and I are gonna head out for a bit. Keep an eye on Dinky for me, okay?”

“Of course. I’ll be here if she wakes up.”

I nodded to her, and Sparkler and I stepped outside for the first time in days. We both winced at the onslaught of sunlight, and I used my wing to shield our eyes for the first minute or two as we made our way through town. I thought about going through the back alleys again, but the weather team office was in the Ponyville Town Hall, which in turn was in the middle of the town square. There wasn’t any way of getting there without passing through some kind of crowd.

After a few seconds, I decided to take the straight shot through the square; it was late enough in the morning that the market stalls wouldn’t have as much of a crowd around them yet. The less empty sympathy we had to wade through, the better.

I swallowed when we got to the town square. The lunch rush hadn’t hit yet, but there were still enough ponies around that it’d be tricky to get past without getting in talking range of somepony. My wing settled into place around Sparkler as we picked up the pace. Lyra and Bon Bon traded a look with us as we passed by their bench, and I pretended I didn’t see Carrot Top waving at us from her stand. The only pony we actually got close enough to talk to was Big Macintosh, but he just tilted his head and let us pass by.

The town hall looked as boring as ever. The repairs had set in so well that you really couldn’t tell there was any damage at all, unless you knew where to look. We stepped over a hollow point in the road, where I’d tried to catch that falling beam... I was still amazed at how much damage that goofy bubble-butt had caused just by sitting down. I caught myself before I could laugh at that memory. That had only been a few days before she’d checked in and found out...

I shook my head. Something was getting in my eye, and the last thing I needed was to trip on the stairs. The cool air inside was like a cloud-blanket, a refreshing all-around feeling that never got too cold. Well, for me anyway; Sparkler nudged just a bit closer to me as we passed by some of the ponies inside. A few of the weather ponies had gotten in early for their lunch break. Thunderlane, Cloudchaser, and Raindrops all nodded to me as I passed by. I nodded back, though Sparkler didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead to the office.

I wasn’t surprised to see Blossomforth sitting at the counter, hunched over some weather form. She and Cloud Kicker had both been taking over more and more of my work while I’d spent more time watching Ditzy’s girls. The usual pile of paperwork I had left carefully scattered over the desk had been neatly stacked and sorted by type, with incoming and outgoing schedules pinned to the tackboard. Next to her was today’s paperwork filed away into their appropriate slots.

Huh. I didn’t know we had an ‘In’ and ‘Out’ box.

Blossomforth glanced up when she heard us coming, then did a double-take when it clicked who we were. I guess she hadn’t expected me to come back so soon. Neither had I, for that matter. She pushed the paper in front of her away.

“Hey, Rainbow—and, uh, Sparkler,” she hastily added. “What’s up?”

“Blossomforth, what the hay did you do to my office? I had a system going in here.”

“I fixed it.” When did Blossomforth become such a wiseass?

“Well, I hope you like the changes, ‘cause I may make you stay in here.” Kind of a weak joke, but it looked like she had done a lot of work to clean things up. If she’d put even half as much effort into running the weather team while I was gone, I probably owed her a raise.

With the playful banter out of the way, it was time to get down to business. I licked my lips before speaking again. “So, um … is that big storm for Sweet Apple Acres still on for Friday?”

“Actually, I’ve bumped it up to Thursday. There’s supposed to be a heat wave coming through then, so I figured the extra precipitation would help the trees weather through it.” She giggle-snorted at the accidental pun. “Why?”

“Since it’s supposed to be a big storm, I was wondering … think you could put the clouds in place a day early? I, uh, was kinda hoping for an overcast sky for... Y’know.”

“The funeral.” Blossomforth nodded sympathetically. She clapped a hoof over her mouth when Sparkler whimpered next to me. Celestia dammit, Blossomforth, I’ve been flitting next to a thunderhead as it was. I shot her an annoyed glare as I pulled Sparkler into a side hallway. I wrapped a hoof around her and let her sob into my shoulder.

“Sorry, s-sorry,” she stammered after a minute. “I—I just—”

“It’s okay.” I rubbed her back in what I guessed was a comforting gesture. “It’s okay. You good to go now?”

She gave a dry hiccough. “Yeah. I’m good.” It was a hollow question, and I knew it. Credit where it’s due, though, she put on a brave face and actually lead the way back to the counter. Blossomforth cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Sorry about that, I … so. Overcast for tomorrow, then storm as usual sound good?”

I nodded. “You know what to do.”

“Got it, boss.”

I turned at left. The walk home was a bit more crowded than I’d wanted it to be. Sparkler had taken enough time to calm down that by the time we’d left, the majority of the weather team had filed in to clock out for lunch. They all gave us a wide berth and a sympathetic look. Outside it was even worse; the stalls had begun to attract new crowds for the lunch rush, and of course it was one of those days where everypony wanted fresh produce for their meal instead of packing their own.

“Buck,” Sparkler whispered. We hadn’t even left the city hall yet and already it looked like we’d have to wade through half the town just to get home. Blossomforth didn’t exactly keep an ear to the grapevine, so if she knew Ditzy had—that—well, if Blossomforth knew, pretty much everypony knew. Already we were getting hushed whispers and fleeting looks from some of the ponies close to us. No way we’d get through that mob.

“Feather this,” I agreed. “You up for a quick flight?”

Sparkler nodded and hopped onto my back. She was a little heavier than I’m used to—usually I only gave rides to Scootaloo or Dinky, but if I could pull Rarity’s prissy flank out of free-fall, I could manage a fifteen-year-old.

A twenty-minute walk turned out to be a three-minute flight. It was a straight shot up and over most of the buildings, though I couldn’t quite clear Carousel Boutique with Sparkler.

I heard somepony speaking when we got back to the house—no, two someponies. Twilight’s voice I recognized, but the other one belonged to a stallion. Sparkler and I rounded the corner to find Twilight talking to a grey pegasus with a blond mane. For a minute, I thought it was her.

“Mom?”

The pegasus’ head jerked at Sparkler’s voice, and seeing a male face shattered the illusion. “Sparkler—Rainbow, hi.”

“Uncle Cirrus...” Sparkler’s voice broke as the emotions she’d swallowed all morning finally boiled over. Cirrus got up and hugged her, and guided her into the living room as she broke down. Twilight motioned her head for me to join her in the kitchen.

I sighed and sat down on the cushion Cirrus had just gotten up from. Twilight got a bottle of apple juice from the icebox and levitated it to me, and I drained it in a couple of gulps before laying my head down on the table. She took a healthy pull from her own and sat down across from me.

“How’d things go in town?” From the tone of her voice, it wasn’t hard to figure out what she really meant.

“I’m fine.” Great, another pony who wanted to know how I felt—and since it was Twilight, she’d probably try to break it down in big, eggheaded terms instead of just saying, ‘How are you?’

“How are you?” Well, there’s a first time for everything. She cut me off with an upraised hoof. “I mean, really, how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” I said again.

Twi wasn’t gonna let it go. “Rainbow, one of your best friends has died. If I were in your horseshoes, I’d be heartbroken.”

“I’m … fine,” I repeated. Maybe if I said it enough, I’d start to believe it. I didn’t look up, though: on some level, I knew she was right. Ditzy was … dead. There, I admitted it to myself. She’s dead, gone, no longer here for her daughters. That feathering thing in her head had killed her, and not even Celestia could’ve done anything to stop it. I would know, I’d flown to Canterlot and asked. Well, technically I’d barged into the throne room and demanded that she cure Ditzy right then and there. It didn’t work

I realized that Twilight had started talking again. “...I mean, from what Cirrus told me, you’ve known Derpy since—”

“Ditzy.”

“Huh?”

“Her name’s—was Ditzy,” I told her. “‘Derpy’ was just a nickname.”

Twilight stared at me. “It was a lot more than that—that’s all I’ve ever heard you call her.”

That much was true; Cloud Kicker’s nicknames had a way of sticking, and Ditzy had gotten such a kick out of hers that she’d started using it to introduce herself about two years after Dinky'd been born. After a while, even I called her ‘Derpy’ whenever we passed each other on the streets. I hadn’t even called her by her real name until recently, when we’d started spending time together after … she told me.

I’d spent so much time with Twilight that sometimes I forgot she hadn’t been in town as long as the rest of us. There was a lot she’d missed out on—some good, some bad, but either way she was still technically the new girl. Hay, if she hadn’t agreed to tutor Dinky in basic magic, I doubt she would have even met Ditzy in the first place.

Now that I thought about it, though, I wondered how many ponies really knew Ditzy’s name. Her clumsiness and muffin obsession had been legendary around town, but beyond that … who really knew her? Yeah, she was the mailmare, but did anypony know who she worked so hard to support? Yeah, she was a bit clumsy, but how many ponies heard the bubbly apologies or watched her stay to help clean up whatever she’d broken? Yeah, there'd been gossip about her having a foal long before she should have, but did any pony ever see how hard she'd tried to be the best damn mom she could? She wasn’t perfect, but she was a good pony.

Had been.

“Her full name is Ditzy Doo,” I said again. A thought occurred to me. “Tell me you did not order a headstone that says ‘Derpy Hooves.’”

“No, no!” Twillight started digging through the mound of papers on the kitchen table. “Her brother came in and asked to … well, he filled out the order. It’s somewhere... Aha! Here.”

I waved away the tear-stained paper as she levitated it in front of me. Whatever Cirrus had put, I knew he would have made it something really cool. Because Ditzy deserves something that told everypony what an awesome friend and mom she was.

Somepony knocked at the front door. Twilight and I both got up to answer it, but Cirrus beat us to it. Sparkler had calmed down enough to let him go, and by the time I’d gotten out of the kitchen he already had the door open. One glimpse at the massive wall of red blocking the doorway told me who it was.

“Cirrus.”

“Macintosh.”

Mac jerked his head towards a pair of saddlebags on his back. “Lunch?”

“Thanks.”

“Eeyup.” Wow, listen to those two chatterboxes jabber away.

Cirrus looked around for his coinpurse. “How much?”

“Nuthin’.”

Cirrus nodded gratefully, Macintosh set his saddlebags on the ground, taking an empty set that I’d left next to the door earlier. “Cirrus?”

“Yeah?”

Mac took a pretty deep breath, pausing before he spoke again. “Ah am so sorry fer what happened t’ yer sister. We all are.”

Twilight and I stared in shock. I think that’s the most he’s ever said in one go. Hay, he’d used … grammar.

Cirrus bit his lip and looked away. “Thanks.”

Mac nodded and turned to go, but held the door for Twilight as she edged past him. She paused at the doorway and looked back.

“Rainbow, I know you say you’re fine, but if you ever want somepony to talk to... Come find me, anytime.”

“Eeyup,” Mac agreed.

Cirrus closed the door behind them and carried the saddlebags into the kitchen. Sparkler and I helped him unpack today’s meals—a cobbler and a large pile of apples from Mac’s family, three loaves of bread and a cake from Sugarcube Corner, a bunch of different candy from Bon-Bon, and some kind of vegetable stew from Carrot Top. Jeez, it looked like everypony had thrown something in.

We sat back down at the table once we’d gotten things sorted and put away. I took a seat at one end of the table, while Sparkler scooted her cushion next to her uncle. “Uncle Cirrus? How long are you gonna stick around?”

“Captain Gust was only able to get me a few days’ emergency leave.” He shot me a quick, angry glance. “I have to be on the train Wednesday night, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Sparkler chewed her lip pensively. “Are Grandma and Grandpa coming?”

“They’re—no, they couldn’t make it for tomorrow. But they’ll be here as soon as they can, too.”

Her shoulders slumped like a rag doll. I really did feel bad now—with her mom gone, she’d probably really wanted to see her grandparents. “Okay. I’m, um... I’m gonna go back to bed.”

“All right.” Cirrus bit his lip, then caught Sparkler as she started to walk away and wrapped his forelegs around her. “I love you so much.”

Sparkler returned the hug. I sat back, feeling a little awkward. I wasn’t about to break up their time together, but now that he was here I felt a little out of place. He might not be Ditzy, but he was the next-closest pony to her. He was her uncle, part of her family. I’m just her mom’s friend.

I took the saddlebags from the table and carried them to the usual spot near the front door, then sat down on the sofa in the living room. They needed their family time. Eventually, Sparkler trotted past me and down the hall to her room. I went back to the kitchen after I heard her door close and grabbed a bottle of cider before I joined Cirrus at the table.

“Want one?” I asked, motioning to the cider. Probably should’ve thought about that before I sat down. Awkward.

Cirrus shook his head. “I really don’t think I should have any alcohol right now. To be honest, I dunno that I’d stop.”

Well, that just doubled the awkwardness. I drank the cider a lot slower than I usually do. “So… Your parents aren’t coming?”

“They’re out of the country.” His smoldering glare told me I was about to get an earful. “They didn’t know they’d need to be here for Ditzy’s funeral, Rainbow. Dee never told us she was sick, not once! The first clue I had that something was wrong with her was when Captain Gust brought me her obituary last night.”

I flinched at that. Ditzy had told me she’d take care of getting in touch with her family, but everything had progressed so fast... “I thought she told you. I helped her write the letter—”

“Which would’ve helped if I knew something was wrong.” I saw him blinking back tears. “I got it the day after she sent it, but... I thought it was just another letter. I didn’t even think about it for three days, I had to cover for somepony at an event and just put it aside. Then this morning, Captain Gust brought me a newspaper clipping … I went back to open the letter and this fell out.” He tapped a familiar-looking necklace around his neck—the feather’s color was so close to his that I hadn’t even seen it until now.

Cirrus hung his head, cradling the feather against him with a hoof. “You should have told me. Luna damn you to oblivion, Rainbow Dash, you should have told me she was dying. After everything I’ve done for her, after everything I gave up for her... You had no right to keep us in the dark. If nothing else, we deserved a chance to say goodbye.”

“Uncle Cirrus?”

I jumped at Dinky’s voice. She wobbled a little bit against the doorway, watching us with bleary eyes, Favorite half-balanced on her back and in danger of slipping off. With how un-excited she was to see her uncle, I don’t think she was fully awake yet.

Cirrus hastily cleared his throat before turning around. “Hey, little muffin. I thought you were asleep. What do you need?”

Dinky rubbed her eye and yawned. “I had a sad dream. Could you stay with me for a bit?”

“Sure, yeah.” He stood up and gave her a loving nuzzle.

“Okay.” She looked up at him expectantly. “Can I have a ride?”

Cirrus knelt down and extended a wing. “All aboard, Little Muffin.”

Dinky scrambled onto his back and wrapped her hooves around his neck. Favorite draped over both of them like a too-small cloak, fluttering slightly as Cirrus trotted to Dinky’s room. I laid back on the couch, thinking about all the times I’d tried to get Ditzy to write to her family.

“Ditzy, you need to let your family know! This is bad!”

“Rainbow, I’m just sick. I don’t want to worry them unnecessarily, a lot of ponies get over cancer.”

“Ditzy ... um, how’re things?”

“I don’t think this is gonna go away... I’ll write them tomorrow after the first treatment, I promise.”

“Hey, um ... did you write to your bro?”

“Not yet… I’m so tired… Maybe after the girls come over.”

“Hey, Ditzy... Um, anything I can get for you?”

“Mm... Rainbow?... Could you take a letter for me?”

I almost didn’t get up Wednesday morning.

Even though my internal clock’s set to get up early, I usually wait until the sun’s peeking through a window before I roll out of bed. My request for an overcast sky kinda threw a wrench in that, and it wasn’t until I smelled coffee that I realized how late it probably was. I scrambled off of the couch and into the kitchen.

The percolator was bubbling gently on the stove. Leave it to the Guard to be up and ready before the crack of dawn; under other circumstances I would have kissed the pony who’d set it for me. Cirrus already had a cup at hoof on the table. I filled a mug for myself and sat down next to him.

He had an old photo album open in front of him. These were pictures that I hadn’t seen around the house—from how small he looked in them, I guessed they predated my time at Flight Camp. I scooted a little closer, until I was looking over his shoulder.

He flipped to the first page of the album, where there was a single picture laminated and centered: a young, grey pegasus colt cradling a foal in his arms, looking up at the camera with a goofy-looking smile. Cirrus wiped a few drops of water off of the page as he slowly traced his hoof along the edge of the photo.

“‘Morning, big guy.”

Cirrus didn’t even grunt a response. He flipped to the next page. I gave him a soft nudge.

“Hey—you with me?”

His eyes were so bloodshot when he turned to look at me that I could barely see any gold in them. I’d heard Dinky wake up earlier in the night, and between calming her down and trying to process things for himself, I wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all last night.

“So, um... I was thinking we could skip the reception and just go to the viewing. Let the girls sleep in a bit, y’know?” I was a little selfish in saying that. I’d spent a lot of time trying to dodge pity from anypony, and there would be no way I could dodge it at the reception Twilight had planned for before the memorial service. I saw two—well, now three—reminders that Ditzy was gone every minute of the day. The last thing I wanted was even more reminders from everypony telling me how sorry they were every five seconds.

I didn’t get much in the way of a reply; Cirrus just looked back at the photo album and flipped the page again. I sighed, and went to fix myself something to eat. The percolator was still pretty full, so I grabbed the handle in my mouth and poured myself a cup of coffee. I envy Twilight’s ability to use magic for stuff like this, because I spilled a bit before I lined up the spout with the mug. As I put the pot back on the stove, I noticed a lot of coffee stains on the counter. Looks like Ditzy’d had an even worse time with it over the years.

With coffee in hoof, I grabbed a slice of apple bread from the icebox and went back to the table. It was almost as good cold as it was hot out of the oven, and oddly enough dipping it in coffee first made it taste pretty good, if a little weird.

We sat for a while, with only the occasional flip of a page to break the silence. I got another cup of coffee and a plate of apple cobbler, polished those off, and idly sipped at my drink. Eventually, the silence got to be too much.

“So ... nice weather we’re having, huh?” It took all of my self control not to facehoof the second those words left my mouth. Good feathering goddess, what the hay kind of question was that? Of course we weren’t having nice weather today, I’d made sure of that yesterday! Okay, okay, different approach: how were his parents? Oh, right, not here. How’d the train ride been? Probably long, lonely, and painful. How was Cloud Kicker’s family doing in Canterlot? Sympathetic after they'd brought him an obituary. Food? Food seemed safe enough.

“Coffee’s pretty good.” I sipped at my cup. “Real good, you’ll have to show me how you did it. You make it a lot at the barracks?”

Cirrus turned another page.

Well, that has been a smashing success. I put my dishes in the sink, and was about to go back to the couch when a clock chimed from somewhere the living room. I’d just been letting Dinky and Sparkler sleep as much as they wanted ever since that day, so I wasn’t really surprised that they were both still out even at eleven in the morning. Cirrus sighed and closed the album, and after a quick discussion of which of the girls each of us would wake up. He opted to get Sparkler up, and the two of us trotted down the hallway to the girls’ rooms. Dinky’s room was first, so I turned and opened the door while he kept going.

Dinky was curled up in a ball again, with Favorite wrapped around her like a shroud. She was smiling again, and I could see her lips moving wordlessly while she slept. Even if she was asleep, why was she smiling on today of all days? I knelt down next to her bed and gently shook her.

“Hey, kiddo. Time to get up.”

Dinky blinked at me with glazed eyes. “Dunwanna... Five more minutes, ‘kay?”

Muted sobbing echoed down the hallway from two different voices. Dammit, I should’ve closed the door. I nudged Dinky as she started to fade back to sleep.

“Better not, your sister’s gonna get up soon. You wanna get into the shower before her, don’t you?”

“Mm,” Dinky grumbled. “Sheza hot water hog.” She grudgingly flopped out of her bed and let me guide her to the bathroom while she blinked away her exhaustion. She grumbled something about being a big filly and closed the door, and after a minute I heard water running. I knocked to make sure Dinky hadn’t fallen back asleep in the bathroom, and once I was satisfied that she was actually in the shower I sneaked down the hall to Sparkler’s room.

One peek showed me all I needed to know. Sparkler was sitting down next to her bed with her hooves wrapped around Cirrus while she howled into his mane. He, in turn, had a wing halfheartedly draped around her, and I could just make out the sounds of him weeping as he held his niece close to him.

I suddenly felt like I was intruding, seeing what was left of this family desperately try to pull itself back together. I ducked back into the hallway and went for another slice of apple bread. Skipping the reception meant that I probably wouldn’t get anything to eat until we got back, and, well... I doubted I’d have much of an appetite after that. I polished off two more slices and another cup of coffee before I decided that Dinky’d had enough time to wake up. I trotted back and had my hoof halfway ready to knock when she opened the door.

She let me in to help her brush her mane. True to what Ditzy had said, Dinky’s magic just wasn’t at the point where she could use it for much of anything yet. I forced myself not to think about how disturbingly familiar brushing somepony else’s mane felt, and bit down harder whenever I hit a snag in the hopes that it wouldn’t just come loose on the brush.

Finally, Dinky’s mane was under control. I didn’t spend a lot of time on myself, as usual—more often than not, my days include at least some flying, so mane-grooming is a bit pointless. We stepped away from the counter and passed Sparkler in the hall. While she was taking her own shower, Dinky trotted to the kitchen for something eat.

Cirrus was in the living room, hastily tucking the photo album away on a bookshelf. I could understand him not wanting it out right now. I got Dinky some breakfast—her own plate of waffles and a glass of milk—and sat down with them. Even if they hadn’t been eating, I’d realized that talking wouldn’t do us a lot of good right now. Sparkler joined us after a while, and Cirrus set a plate down in front of her. She took a few grudging bites of apple bread, but ultimately pushed it away.

The clock in the living room chimed the half-hour—11:30. Time to go. I heard the girls’ plates clink against the growing stack of dishes in the sink as Cirrus added them to the pile. We were in the mudroom and about to leave when Dinky tugged on my tail.

“Rainbow Dash, can I take Favorite?”

“Yeah, sure thing.” Like I was gonna say no to that. I got the blanket from Dinky’s room and helped her wrap it over her shoulders like a shawl. Once I had it tied in place, we set out from the house.

Ponyville was pretty quiet. Cloudy skies usually goes hoof-in-hoof with rain, so it looked like most ponies had opted to stay inside today. A few were out, but they were mostly in or near the town square—and even then, two stands that were usually the busiest of the lineup were closed. I didn’t have to guess where their owners would be.

Sure enough, Applejack and Carrot Top were two of the first ponies I saw when we got to the funeral home. AJ had her longtime rival in a one-hoofed hug and was leading her out of the building as she tried to help her calm down. Cirrus and I double-timed it past them.

Ponies were packed almost wall-to-wall inside. There were a lot of blue uniforms, almost half the crowd—Ditzy’s friends and coworkers from the post office. I was surprised by how many ponies from the weather team were here as well, given the kind of workload that comes with pushing enough clouds to block the sun. I could see Mac towering over a small crowd off to the left--Cheerilee, Pinkie, and Mrs. Cake, if I had to guess. Which I kind of did, I could only see the tops of their manes over the sea of heads.

The muted conversations faded as more and more ponies turned to see who had come in, until literally every set of eyes in the building was staring at us. Sparkler pressed a little tighter against me, and Cirrus stepped in front of Dinky after helping her down off of his back. A brown earth pony colt stepped out of the crowd of postal workers and came up to us.

“Hey, Spark.”

“H-hey, Ratchet.” Sparkler stepped away from me and awkwardly nuzzled him. Cirrus raised an eyebrow when he hugged her back, but let it go when I didn’t say anything. Right, I’d forgotten to mention to him that Sparkler had a coltfriend. I’d been a little nervous about whether I’d have to keep an eye on them when I first started watching her and Dinky, but as things had progressed I’d just been glad that Sparkler’d had somepony else she could go to when I had my hooves full with her sister. I nudged Ratchet and reminded him to bring her back when the service started.

Cirrus and I started working my way over to Mac, but we only got a third of the way there when I stumbled into Cloud Kicker. She was hugging the wall, quietly staring at the ground. Honestly, she was acting more like Fluttershy than her usual self. I mean, I know she wasn’t exactly strolling for dates right now, but she didn’t even try to talk to anypony else. About the only time she even looked up was when we went over to her. She nodded to me and Cirrus, but the first real sign of life we got was when Dinky hugged her. Cloud Kicker knelt down and nuzzled her right back, and gave her an almost motherly kiss on the forehead.

Dinky snuggled up against her, and I just couldn’t bring myself to try and pull her away. Cloud Kicker’s face was blank, like she was forcing herself to not have any kind of reaction. The last time I’d seen her like this was in the hospital after the incident at Flight Camp. She’d been devastated after Fluttershy had broken up with her, and that had just been some schoolfilly crush. This... I didn’t even want to think about how badly she had to be hurting right now. I nodded to Cirrus to follow me.

We finally pushed our way through to Mac and the others. Minus his sister, the rest of the girls were with him—my girls, I mean. Ugh, I mean my friends. I was going to have to rethink that a bit... Anyway. I’d been right about Cheerilee, Pinkie, and Mrs. Cake, but now that I was closer, I saw who else was with him: Rarity and Twilight were both kneeling on either side of Fluttershy, who was quietly sobbing into a handkerchief. Definitely a good thing Dinky was with Cloud Kicker right now, seeing ‘Shy like this might have made her cry too. I’d half expected Rarity to show up in some stupid all-black gown, but for once she’d toned things down. She just had a small, black veil-hat thing which still managed to get in the way when she tried to dab at her eyes.

Pinkie stepped away from Mrs. Cake and gave me a quick kiss, which for once I returned. I kinda needed the contact.

“Hey everypony,” I croaked. Twilight waved a hoof while Mrs. Cake nodded to me, and Rarity and Fluttershy both squeaked a greeting of their own.

“Howdy,” Mac said. Jeez, he’d been pretty talkative lately.

“Is Granny Smith coming?” I kinda doubted it, since Apple Bloom was nowhere to be seen.

Mrs. Cake smiled weakly. “She’s with my husband at Sugarcube Corner. He offered to watch the Crusaders as well as the twins, and I think she knew better than to let him weather that alone.”

On another day I would have laughed at that. Poor bastard probably had no idea what he’d signed on for.

Fluttershy calmed down and opened her mouth to say something, but she was cut off by a clock chiming from somewhere on the other side of the room. Twilight gave her a final nuzzle and stood up.

“That’s noon. It’s time to start the service.” She wove her way through the crowd and unlocked a set of door on the far side of the room. Several rows of cushions lined the viewing area, split in the middle to allow us a clear path into the room. Cirrus and I took our seats at the front of the room, on two of the four pillows set aside for us. A simple, wooden coffin sat open in the middle of the room, but from this angle I couldn’t see inside it. Thank Celestia for small favors. Next to it was a small podium with a blown-up picture of Ditzy and her daughters at some carnival in Canterlot.

I wasn’t really surprised that nopony had been able to find a photo of Ditzy on her own—pretty much every picture I had ever seen was her with one or both of her daughters. When she hadn’t been working, she’d been with them. Now that I thought about it, her time in the hospital had probably been the first time she’d been away from them for longer than a day or two since Dinky had been born.

Hoofsteps echoed in the room as everypony filed in behind us. Cloud Kicker brought Dinky up to us and took her seat on a cushion closer to the wall. Half a minute later, Ratchet and Sparkler came up as well; she gave him a quick kiss and sat down between Cirrus and Dinky, her eyes firmly glued to the floor.

Twilight trotted up to the podium and tapped it for silence. She didn’t need to, pretty much everypony had stopped talking when they sat down. After a few brief words about her own time with Ditzy, she stepped down and opened the floor to anypony else who wanted to speak. Tool Time was the first one to go; he went up, took one sideways glance at the casket, and backed away shaking his head. He sat down without saying a word.

Some of the ponies came up and talked how they’d met Ditzy, or else some great memories they had of her. Some of them were funny, some of them were boring, but every pony who went up to talk mentioned how much she’d loved her girls. Once in a while, somepony would throw around phrases like ‘too soon’ and ‘before her time.’ It was a little corny, but when it boiled down to it they were right. Dinky and Sparkler deserved so much more time with their mom.

Cloud Kicker was one of the last ponies to get up to speak. For a second I was pissed off at how calm she was. She and Ditzy had a‒well they had a thing going before she died, and Cloud Kicker wasn’t even crying or anything. I hadn’t seen her acting this stiff since Flight Camp ... oh.

Guess everypony has their own way of dealing with it.

Cloud Kicker seemed to need a bit before she finally started talking, and when she did she sounded kinda ... weird. I dunno how to explain it, really. She was just ... off.

“Derpy ... Derpy was something special. I knew that from the moment I ran into her.” She let a short little chuckle. “Well, it was her that ran into me. We were both getting lunch at the Flight Camp cafeteria, and there was only one muffin left up for grabs. We ended up splitting it, and that got us talking and...”

Cloud Kicker trailed off and shook her head, then went quiet for a bit before she started talking again. “She was the best of us, and I don’t know what we’re gonna do now that she’s gone. But we’ll find a way, because that’s what she would want. All of us hurting because she was gone isn’t the way she would want us to remember her. She’d want us to remem ... reme...” Cloud Kicker ducked her head for a moment and cleared her throat. “She’d want us to remember the good times. So that’s what I’m gonna try to do.”

Fluttershy went up to speak after Cloud Kicker. Or, well, she tried to. She got as far as Ditzy’s name before everything she tried to say starting coming out out as a bunch of high-pitched squeaking, which only got worse the longer she tried to talk. She leaned against the podium and started crying, and I saw Rarity get up to go to her. To my surprise, it was Cloud Kicker who beat her there. Fluttershy didn’t even look to see who she latched onto when she felt somepony try to pull her away.

“It’s okay, Eepysqueak. It’s okay.” She stroked Fluttershy’s back comfortingly as she clung to her like a life preserver. “C’mon, you don’t have to say anything else if you don’t want to. Just being here is enough.”

Fluttershy sobbed something half-intelligible into Cloud Kicker’s shoulder, and Cloud Kicker pulled her closer.

“I know, Eepy.” I could see Cloud Kicker trying to blink away tears. “I miss her, too.” She helped Fluttershy stand up and guided her back to the rows of cushions laid out. I was a bit surprised when they sat back down together.

I waved Twilight away when she asked me if I wanted to say anything. I’d already promised her I’d take care of her girls; what else was there to say? Besides, anything I would have said would have just been for Ditzy, and I wasn’t going to repeat it in front of half of Ponyville. Cirrus looked at the empty podium, then to the casket before hugging Dinky just a little closer to him. I think he felt the same way.

With the speeches out of the way, everypony got up to see Ditzy one last time. Most of them only spent a few seconds before moving on—casual acquaintances from town or work, I think. Mrs. Cake and Pinkie took a moment; Pinkie reached into her mane and pulled out a muffin, which she set in the casket. “She always made them better than me.”

Tool Time bowed his head when it was his turn. He’d been the closest to Ditzy, from their time working together at the post office. They’d started off as boss-and-mailmare a little after she first moved to town, but they’d been pretty close friends in the years since.

Fluttershy took a brief glimpse and trotted away. She’d calmed down after trying to talk, but I think seeing Ditzy like that for more than a second would have set her off again. When she stepped away, Cloud Kicker took her place and leaned down to whisper something to Ditzy. Nopony heard what she said. Nopony needed to. When she finished, she kissed Ditzy on the cheek and dropped something into the casket.

Cloud Kicker stepped away, and then it was just me, Cirrus, and the girls. I took a hesitant breath and stepped forward.

Ditzy looked … calm. Peaceful, almost. She’d been given a wig which was a pretty close match to what her mane had looked like—I think. It had been almost two months since she’d had anything more than body fur on her head, and even though the wig was a pretty good one, seeing her with a mane again was weird. Her fur had been brushed to almost creepy neatness, and the few feathers left in her wings had been groomed to make her plumage look fuller than it really was. The trinkets other ponies had put in were respectfully strewn around her: a muffin tucked into the corner, a sealed letter stashed into the siding, a light purple feather gently resting against her hoof.

Somepony gasped beside me, and I saw fresh tears quietly tracing down the well-worn trails on Sparkler’s face. I realized that this was the first time she'd actually seen her mom like this. Before now, her last memory of Ditzy had been from the day she’d given her and her sister their necklaces. Ditzy had looked and sounded like Tartarus, yeah, but she’d still been alive. Now...

Sparkler gingerly stepped forward, shaking her head. Words formed and died without sound as she opened her mouth. She dipped her head into the casket and gently nudged her mom, as if trying to wake her up from a nap.

Ditzy remained still. I gave Sparkler another minute, then reached out with my wing and gently pulled her away. There wasn’t any emotion left on her face. She wasn’t even crying anymore. Something about her eyes just looked … hollow. Broken. Empty. She let me guide her a little ways away, following like a wind-up toy that went through its motions without understanding or caring why.

Behind us, Dinky stepped up onto a stool next to the casket. I could tell she was trying not to cry, brave little kid, biting her lip as she stared at the mare that had brought her into the world just over six years ago. It was too much for her. Her eyes flooded with tears, and Cirrus wrapped his wing around her, ready to pull her away. For a second, I thought he would have to. Then Dinky did something I will never forget for the rest of my life.

She pulled Favorite off of her shoulders and draped it over her mother.

Dinky’s self-control crumbled as she struggled to tuck it in around her, and she gave up after a few seconds. Cirrus wrapped a wing around her and pulled her as close as he could without tipping her off of the stool. He reached in and grabbed the blanket—Dinky’s blanket, his old blanket—and gently tucked it around Ditzy’s shoulders.

“Just … th-think of this as extended loan.” He kissed his sister’s forehead. “I love you, Dee.”

Cirrus reached up and closed the casket, sealing Ditzy in with the love and gifts of those she had touched during her life in Ponyville. Dinky buried her head into his shoulder and screamed as fillies only can when they know they’ve said goodbye for the last time. Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. This was so far beyond unfair to her. This wasn’t fair to any of us.

Cirrus’ wings drooped low enough to scrape the ground as he hobbled towards me, holding Dinky against him with a hoof. He gave her a reassuring squeeze and set her down next to me, letting her latch onto my leg. “I’m—we’re gonna go take Dee to … to... The girls shouldn’t see this, you should take them home.”

I nodded to him, and he nuzzled Dinky one last time before turning back to the coffin. Applejack and Carrot Top stood ready at the rear of the coffin with Tool Time at one of the front corners, the carrying poles resting beside them at shoulder level. Cirrus reached his corner, and almost got into position when he froze. I think it finally hit him, what he was about to do. Twilight went up to him and said something I couldn’t hear. Cirrus shook his head in a no, and rested his hoof against the lid, as if he wanted to open the lid again for one last goodbye. Instead, he laid his forehead against the polished wood and sat there, necklace dancing beneath him as he gasped for breath.

Somepony sniffled to the right of me. Cloud Kicker’s reserves of calm had finally given out. I think the combination of where we were, what we were doing, and seeing Ditzy like that was too much even for her to take. Fluttershy had wrapped her wings around Cloud Kicker to the point that I couldn’t see much above her head, but from how much she was shaking she had to have been crying as hard as Dinky.

Of all the things it took for them to get over the past... It was sick, really. Feathering Celestia, I’d tried so hard three different times to help them patch things up, twice while Ditzy was around to, what was the word, moderate. Every single time it had gone to Tartarus, with Fluttershy less and less willing to even talk to Cloud Kicker. Now here they were, huddled together like a pair of schoolfillies, finally able to connect with each other again. In spite of the progress, it felt so empty, like getting first place in a competition after the winner had been kicked out for cheating.

I know Ditzy would've been happy to see them finally get over their differences, but the fact that she wasn’t here to see it—no, that it was probably only happening because she wasn’t here—was just perverse. What’s the point of fixing one friendship if you have to lose another friend to do it?

It took Cirrus a while to pull it together. Eventually, though, he calmed down enough to walk again and knelt underneath the carrying pole, setting it in place against his shoulders; the other bearers did the same, and at a nod from Twilight they stood up together. Mac and Twilight led the way, opening the doors for the casket’s procession to pass through. Fluttershy and Cloud Kicker followed the closest behind, side-by-side, along with Rarity, Pinkie, and Mrs. Cake. Behind them was a crowd of ponies from the post office and the weather team, coworkers, friends, and others who’d known her. Ratchet stepped aside to give Sparkler a hug. I don’t think she noticed.

It took a while for everypony else to file out. I waited until the sound of hooffalls outside faded before I knelt down to let Dinky awkwardly stumble onto my back, where she buried her face in my mane. Sparkler mutely allowed me to wrap a wing around her and guide her, and with that I stepped out the back door and took my goddaughters home. Dinky cried the entire way.

Sparkler was silent.

03 - The Departure

I had a little trouble with the doors when we got back.

Getting used to them had taken a bit of time for me, anyway. Living in a cloud-house meant that taking the door was more of a suggestion. Most pegasi I knew didn’t even bother with them beyond having a place for their mailbox; they just flew in through one of their windows. Besides, I could just make a new entrance if my hooves were full.

I couldn’t really do that with ground-houses. Well, I could, technically, it’s just that wood and plaster don’t really stand up to it all that well. I had some trouble with doorknobs from time to time–for some some reason, I could never get them open with my hoof, I always had to bite down on them to get it to work. They tasted awful, and years ago I learned I couldn’t really do it if I had somepony on my back. Dinky had been fine, but after that I’d always let somepony else get the door for me.

I couldn’t really do that right now, though. I took my wing off of Sparkler for a second to brace Dinky. Sparkler looked dully ahead, staring numbly at the door without really seeing it. I opened the door as quickly as I could and got my wing back around her, gently pulling her inside. She let me guide her, walking when I nudged her and stopping when I didn’t. I had to let go for a second when we got to her room to put Dinky on her bed, and when I turned around again she was just … there. Looking at me—through me, hay, I dunno. The house probably could’ve collapsed around her, and I doubt she’d so much as blink.

Sparkler needed some help getting onto the bed—I actually had to put her forelegs on the bed and nudge her up. Dinky instantly latched onto her, and I pulled the covers up and climbed in with them. Dinky had cried herself out on the walk home and only whimpered into her sister’s chest for a few minutes before her breathing evened out and she fell asleep in her sister’s hooves.

I couldn’t see from my angle if Sparkler was still awake or not—I could see her chest gently rising and falling, but given her current condition I don’t think it would have made much difference either way. She was running on automatic right now, the bare-basic functioning a pony could work off of. It scared me seeing her like that, and more so because I couldn’t think of a way to help her out of it. Seeing Ditzy like that after watching her rot from the inside out hurt like hay, and I was just her friend; seeing that from her daughter’s perspective … I don’t think even Twilight knows a better word for that than ‘torture.’

I heard the front door open, and the sound of hooffalls echoed around the front of the house. Cirrus was back, and it sounded like somepony had come back with him. “Rainbow?” Twilight’s voice carried through a little too loudly.

“In here,” I whispered as loudly as I could. She came down the hallway, and I saw Applejack with her just outside the doorway. Cirrus tip-hoofed in as carefully as he could, but he still bumped his hip on the dresser. I couldn’t really get on him for it, though—his eyes were so puffy I was amazed he could see at all. Twi and AJ had probably come with him to help guide him as much as for moral support. I scooted over to make room for him on the bed, but he shook his head.

“Ra-railway’s gonna shut down ‘til Tuesday. I … last train’s going out in a bit, I gotta … be on—”

Whatever else he was gonna say got cut off by Dinky murmuring—dammit, she’d woken up. Cirrus instantly knelt down next to her and spread a wing over both her and her sister. He took a steadying breath and started to sing:

“Hush now, my nieces
Lay down your dear heads.
The time has since passed for weeping.
Quietly, quietly,
Go now to bed.
Though the sunlight is fleeting
While Celestia is sleeping,
Luna will watch over you.

“Rest now, my dear girls
At the end of the day.
Rest calm ‘neath the care of the moon.
Sleep and find solace
Soon again you will play
For Luna will guide you
‘til your mother’s beside you.
Y-you will ... see her in your … dreams.”

Cirrus choked on the last part, and I was pretty sure I heard Sparkler sniff too. “I love you both so much.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead, then Dinky’s. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I p-promise.”

I followed him out of the room, closing the door behind us. Twilight and Applejack were both waiting for us on the couch in the living room, I’m pretty sure I heard him whimper when he stepped into the hall.

“I’ll go with him to Canterlot,” Twi said. “I’ve been meaning to take a few days to see my family anyway … um, I’ll be back on the weekend.” She made a beeline for the door with Cirrus. I think they were a little past Carrot Top’s place when I heard him break down outside.

I sat down on the couch hard, breathing like I’d just flown the Best Young Flyer’s Competition a few times in a row. This day had been … the worst thing I’d ever gone through. We’d only been up—what, three or four hours, and already I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and write everything off as a bad dream. Come to think of it, I’d been wanting to do that for the better part of four months.

AJ sat down next to me and put a hoof on my shoulder. “Ah don’t think Ah need t’ ask how ye’re doin’.”

I shrugged noncommittally. “I’ll live.”

“Figgered you’d say that. RD—aw hay, Rainbow...” Oh, boy. She only stopped using my nickname when she was about to get touchy-feely. “Ah’m here for ya, any time ya need me.”

“Y-yeah.” Great, I’d gotten something in my throat. I coughed and tried again. “Yeah. Thanks.”

AJ nodded understandingly. “What’re ya gonna do now?”

I shrugged again. Things had gone day-to-day for us from the start: the biggest problem I’d ever had was figuring out what to make—well, okay, try to make for meals. Beyond that, I’d just done everything thinking that Ditzy would come home to pick up being a mom again. Until this week, none of us had given much thought to what we’d have to do without her. Even when she’d brought out those necklaces, Sparkler and I kept going, hoping that she was wrong—that we’d come back the next morning to find her still there for us. And then...

Mommy’s sleeping.

It took me a minute to push that thought away. AJ was still there, watching me—still understanding, but now there was something else. Not just sympathy, but … concern? “Rainbow, Ah know it’s hard, but ya gotta figure somethin’ out, an’ fast.”

I cleared my throat. “I know, all right?”

“Do ya?” Her foreleg went from on my shoulder to around it, bringing herself a little closer to me. “It ain’t just you anymore, Rainbow. These girls need somepony in a bad way, an’ Derpy trusted ya with ‘em.”

“I know,” I said again, a little harsher than I meant to. “I’m figuring it out.”

AJ’s sympathetic expression turned into a frown. “Ya had over three months t’ figure things out. It ain’t practice anymore, Rainbow. It’s go-time.”

“I know!” How many times did I have to say it before she got the picture? I got up and walked over to a picture of me and Ditzy together at the Best Young Flier’s Competition. “We just got back from saying goodbye, AJ. I’m figuring out how things’re gonna go from here. I mean—jeez, you saw Sparkler, what am I supposed to do about that? Go back to life as normal?”

“‘Normal’ ain’t gonna be the same fer ‘em,” AJ said with a sad shake of her head. “Their mama’s gone, that’s a big, hard part o’ their lives they gotta get used t’ not havin’ around anymore.”

“So what, then? Just send ‘em to school tomorrow like nothing happened?” It sounded even more wrong when I said it out loud.

“S’exactly what Ah’m sayin’.” AJ stood up and walked over to me, meeting my shocked expression with a stare. “They need that kinda routine t’ help get their minds offa things, give ‘em time t’ adjust. Just bein’ around all th’ time … it eats atcha. It’s why Ah left fer Manehattan.”

Whoa... I remembered hearing something about this when the Cutie Mark Crusaders had gone around asking ponies about their marks. Their little trip ended with me giving them the best story of the bunch, but I’d only been kinda paying attention when Scoots told me about how the three of them had worked their way up to me. I’d never asked why her parents weren’t around to take Apple Bloom to school or help on the farm, but … jeez, hearing her say it was something else.

Still, it didn’t seem right, sending them back to school this soon. They’d missed a couple of classes already, and with the break coming up at the end of the next week I didn’t get what difference a few more would make.

AJ kept going before I got a chance to say anything. “When Ah came back t’ Sweet Apple Acres, Ah started workin’ full-time in th’ orchards. It hurt t’ be back, but gettin’ outta th’ house fer a bit helped me get mah mind offa things long enough t’ adjust.”

So that was her grand advice: a few days home, then back to school. Would they even want to go to school? If they didn’t, could I bring myself to make them?

I sighed. “I’ll … think about it, okay?

“S’all Ah’ll ask for, right now.” She hesitated, then gave me a quick hug. “Ya know Ah’m here if ya need anythin’.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks.” ‘Course she would be. She’s AJ. I followed her to the front door and was about to close it behind her when she spoke up.

“One more thing ‘fore Ah go.” She caught the door with a foreleg. “Ah know Dinky’s been cryin’ a lot. Make sure she gets somethin’ t’ drink now an’ again; it takes a lot fluids outta her.”

I didn’t have to ask how she’d know that off-hoof. “Yeah. Thanks, AJ.”

Once I locked up behind her, I realized that she was probably right—Dinky hadn’t gotten a lot to drink earlier, and Sparkler’d barely touched her food. Now that I thought about it, I don’t think either of them had gotten more than what I’d brought ‘em. I went to the kitchen and checked around for a couple of drinking mugs, only to find that most of them were dirty. I got the sink going and cleaned a few of them off enough to work for the moment.

We’d kinda need the rest of the dishes later on, so I let the sink fill up while I got the last of the apple bread out of the icebox. I put it on a tray, along with two glasses of milk, and took it down the hall to Sparkler’s room. Once again, the doorknob made a mockery of my multitasking skills. I didn’t spill too much milk getting the door open, but in hindsight I probably should’ve put the tray down.

Dinky was still sound asleep, wrapped in her sister’s forelegs in the room’s half-light. For her part, Sparkler was showing a little bit of life—I think. She still hadn’t moved since I’d helped her lie down, but a picture frame on her nightstand had been conspicuously turned to face the bed. Tears had cut fresh rivulets down her muzzle, trailing off to a growing spot on her pillowcase.

I nudged the picture back a bit to make room for the tray. “Hey, Spark. Figured you’d be a little hungry.” Silence. “I, um... brought’cha something. Last bit of apple bread, just for you. I went through a lot of trouble to pull this outta the icebox.”

So, I fail at humor. Good to know. We were both spared the indignity of another attempt by the sound of—goddess dammit, I’d forgotten about the sink! I growled to myself at the sound of water dripping down the hall. “Look, that plate needs to be empty when I get back, okay?”

I gave her a quick nuzzle before I cantered out the door. I’m not normally big on the affection, but I didn’t want her thinking I was just being a jerk. Yeah, I was being a bit of a hardflank, but it was for her own good.

The sounds of water dripping meant that the sink wasn’t overflowing any more so much as forming a small lake in the kitchen. I hovered over a growing puddle of suds and turned the water off with a string of words I should probably start cutting out of my vocabulary now that I’m supposed to be some kind of maternal … figure … pony. From there, I opened the window and ducked out into the nighttime air. I felt bad about leaving the girls, even for just a minute, but Ditzy had never bought a mop. As a pegasus, she didn’t need to.

On a whim, I poked my head back in the window and blew a large soap bubble off of the sink. I soared up, scooped a section of cloud from the grey blanket still over Ponyville, and went right back down to the house. My hooves touched down in the standing water right alongside the bubble.

Heh. Still got it.

Small breaks aside, I still had a mess to clean. I made a couple of passes over the kitchen floor with the cloud in hoof and got most of the water cleared away. Ditzy’d replaced the old flooring about four years ago to make it a little more derp-proof, so I wasn’t worried that a few stray patches of water would ruin the comfortable-yet-indestructible stuff Tool Time had put in for her. The cloudlet itself was now stained dark with grime and smelled faintly of hooves and lavender dish soap, so a gentle nudge from my wing pushed it out the open window and over a small vegetable patch in Carrot Top’s yard.

With that out of the way, I reached my hoof into the sink to try to find the ringlet on the water plug, spilling more water onto the counter. Right, water displacement. I found the plug after a few tries and emptied things enough for me to put some dishes in without making another waterfall in the process.

Twenty minutes later, I put the last dish on the drying rack and let the water drain. I missed my cloud-cupboards; all I had to do was put the dishes in and let it absorb everything. Replace it every three months and no risk of waterfalls in the kitchen, guaranteed. I wasn’t used to actually doing dishes, but I’d still let that pile build up way too much.

And there were still a few more. I sighed and refilled the sink, this time without overflowing it, before going back down the hall. Sparkler didn’t look like she’d moved when I poked my head around the doorway. I went in as quietly as I could.

Well, her plate was empty. She'd been there enough to hear me. That was something, at least. I stacked her dishes and picked 'em up as quietly as teeth clacking on plates can and walked back out, closing the door behind me.

My earlier cleaning frenzy had died down now that that massive pile of dishes in the sink was gone, so I just dumped Sparkler's into the sink and told myself I'd deal with it tomorrow. I was tired. After everything we’d gone through, after everything I’d gotten hit with, the whole emotional roller coaster we’d all been on... I’ve flown whole marathons that didn’t leave me feeling this drained.

Then again, everypony came back at the end of those marathons.

I went to the couch and flopped down. My neck felt a little stiff, and I realized that that my head was flat against the couch itself. I looked around for my pillow before I remembered that Ditzy had Favorite now.

I curled my wing and tried to go to sleep. It was kinda hard—wet feathers aren’t really comfortable.

AJ was half-right. Come Monday, Dinky was back in school. I thought I’d have to pull her out of her bed, but she’d gotten up and ready to go the first time I checked on her. Cheerilee had looked as surprised to see us as I’d been when she trotted into class. I didn’t know what to think about that, really.

Sparkler on the other hoof … you could barely tell she’d moved at all. She’d spent the whole weekend in bed, pinfeather necklace next to her on the pillow as she stared at the picture on her nightstand. The most I’d gotten out of her was an appreciative grunt when I’d bring meals in.

Today hadn’t been any different. I’d been scrambling to get some paperwork ready for the weather team after dropping Dinky off at school, so I’d hoped she would grab her own breakfast for a change. Judging from the empty sink, though, it looked like she’d stayed in bed again. I packed everything up and got ready to head to the office in City Hall, then grabbed her way-too-late breakfast out of the icebox—orange juice and a few muffins. This time around, I’d remembered to leave her door open and set everything out for her on her nightstand—I only had to push the picture back a bit so I could set the tray down.

“Hey, Spark.” I gave her a gentle little shake to make sure she was up. “Sorry I’m running a bit late today—I’ve, uh … had a lot to catch up on.”

Sparkler glanced at me with half-open eyes, actually seeing me this time. I held her gaze for a few seconds before it shifted back to the feather next to her on the pillow.

Celestia, I wished I knew what to say to her to bring her out of this. I didn’t know a lot about medicine outside of the first-aid stuff that was required for being on the weather team, but there was no way this could be healthy for her. “I gotta go to City Hall, all right? Be back in an hour or two.”

Still nothing. I gave her another gentle shake and trotted out. The catch-up paperwork was in my saddlebags near the door, so it didn’t take me long to slip them on and head out. I was halfway past the gap between Carrot Top’s house and Ditzy’s when I heard something weird. Or thought I did, anyway, it was so quiet I almost wrote it off as the wind. I’d read enough Daring Do to think twice about it, though, and on a hunch I looked back at the house.

One of the bushes was moving around, and I only just saw the window above them close. So that’s what it was, Sparkler getting some air. Still, the bush moving was a little weird. I was already running late and wanted to write it off as a cat or something, but some nagging voice in the back of my mind said to check it out anyway. Somehow I didn’t think it was a cat opening the window.

Those weather forms had waited this long, they could last another minute or two. I spread my wings and took off, over the house and landing on the roof as quietly as I could. Inch by inch, I worked my head over the side of the rain gutter, trying not to startle whatever was skulking around. Naturally, that’s when everything went still—a few leaves twitched in the breeze, glistening in the half-sunlight. I got bored after another minute and rolled onto my back, hoping that whatever it was would move again.

Still... If it was clear, why did the bush have water on it? Carrot Top had been taking care of the plants around the house lately, but she only came by on Saturdays.

My head snapped around when something rustled in the bush again—oh yeah, there was definitely something in there, I could see something brown poking out near the root. Quietly as I could, I got up and fluttered to the ground. Whatever it was looked small, not much bigger than my hoof, and seemed to know something was watching it. It was stock-still, frozen by the threat of something watching it under the cool afternoon. I brushed a wing against one of the wet branches by accident, and I grumbled as droplets showered down on … whatever it was. No way it wasn’t gonna bolt after that.

…

Huh.

I reached out a hoof and gently tapped it. Nothing. I poked it again, then pulled it out from under the bush for a better look. It was a piece of bread, half-molding and crawling with ants. The bits of it that had gotten wet smelled a lot like orange juice.

On a hunch, I lifted another branch out of the way. Bits of salad, pastries, and alfalfa were tangled up in the bush, and the orange-y smell was way stronger. The bush rustled again, and I scrambled back as something dropped from the top.

It was one of the muffins I’d set out for Sparkler.

I was on my hooves in a flash and threw the window open hard enough to knock it off-kilter. I clipped the nightstand on the way in, sending it crashing to the ground. Sparkler barely even had time to react before I was in her face.

"What the hay, kid!?" I snarled and threw the days-old piece of bread onto her pillow. “How long have you been throwing this stuff out?”

She scrambled back a bit, protectively pulled her necklace away from the molding food. “I‘m not hungry, Rainbow!”

“Horseapples you aren’t! I saw you toss today’s stuff out, and this sure as buck isn’t what I got for you today.” By this point I was inches away from her face. “I’ll ask again: How. Long?”

Sparkler looked away. “...Friday.”

Oh Luna. She hadn’t eaten in almost four days.

I snorted and dug my forelegs underneath the mattress, flipping it and sending Sparkler tumbling to the ground. A few quick flaps brought me to the foot of the now-empty bed, where she was crumpled in a heap.

In hindsight, I could’ve handled that a little better. I knew Sparkler had a couple of scars from her time in the orphanage system, and bringing those memories back to the surface on top of everything else probably wasn’t going to help either of us. I didn’t really care at the time, though—when I get scared, I get mad. And right then, I was terrified.

“GET UP!” I roared. “Get up and march your plot down to the kitchen now! I don’t care if I’m late picking your sister up from school—I’m not leaving this house ‘til I’ve watched you sit down and eat something!” I started to get angrier as Sparkler floundered on the floor. I really hoped she hadn’t hit her head or something, but she needed to get out of that bed.

“I can’t...”

I stomped up to her and was about to lay into her like a weatherpony recruit when she looked up at me. I was expecting—hay, I don’t know, shock, pain, indignation. What I saw instead scared me way past being angry. Sparkler had a look of helpless terror on her face, the kind I’d only ever seen once before in my life just a few short months ago.

“Rainbow?”

“Rainbow?”

“I can’t get up...”

“I have cancer...”

“Help me?”

“What do I do?”

I didn’t break the sound barrier flying to the hospital. I didn’t even come close.

I couldn’t afford to. Sparkler could barely wrap her forelegs around my neck, and I had to slow down a few times to lock my hooves around hers. Luna, I’d just had her on my back flying a few days ago, and it was way harder than this. Four days, hay—it felt like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. I buzzed a little closer to rooftops than I normally would, making Sparkler whimper nervously.

“Just hang on,” I told her. Wow, words of wisdom right there.

“Yeah,” she rasped. Good Celestia, her voice sounded like she’d been gargling sandpaper. She hadn’t been talking to me above a small whisper, but still—how’d I miss something like that?

Hearing her like that made me push a little faster. I banked a bit and started my descent.

I came in at the perfect angle for a Patented Rainbow Dash Four-Point Landing. Heck, I’d pulled it off hundreds of times, and a few dozen with somepony on my back—usually Dinky, or less often Scootaloo. Problem was, Sparkler was a lot heavier than they were, even in her current state, and as such I couldn’t adjust for the extra weight sliding forward. I was able to keep on my hooves, but for some reason the pony near the door dove away instead of opening it like I was telling him to.

Turns out the glass they use for those is really, really solid.

Lucky for us, a couple of nurses were close by inside. A white unicorn stallion in scrubs galloped out, stopping short when he saw me. “Good Celestia, Rainbow Dash! Even I didn’t think your precision insertions were that bad!”

Yep. Lucky me. I didn’t have time for his horseapples, though. Sparkler was crumpled to the ground behind me, and I could hear her scrambling to get her hooves underneath her.

“Shut up and help me!” I snapped. I tried to get a hoof underneath her stomach, but a few seconds later her whole body was encased in a yellow glow as she was lifted off the ground. Turns out that nurse was good for something other than smartassery after all.

He led the way inside, calling for a gurney the second we cleared the doorway. Sparkler was wheeled down a hallway by half a dozen nurses, including Redheart. I wondered for a sec if she ever took time off, but for some reason I was glad to see that she was here again.

“It’s not that bad,” Sparkler rasped.

“Not bad? Not bad!?” She shrank back as I got right in her face. “You haven’t eaten anything in four Celestia-damned days—you can’t even stand up! WHAT THE HAY WERE YOU—”

Redheart knocked me away and stepped between me and the stretcher. “Rainbow Dash, stop shouting at my patient.”

I rounded on her. “I’ll yell at my goddaughter as long as I want, as long as she keeps being so stupid!”

Redheart’s eyes hardened when Sparkler whimpered behind her. “Code Blue, get her out of here!”

The stallion from the front door nodded, and in an instant invisible ropes wrapped around my wings and muzzle. I tried to say something as he was in the middle of pulling me back towards the entrance, but since most of what I had in mind involved four letter words or nasty comments about his parentage it was probably a good thing I couldn’t speak. He took me all the way to the main waiting room at the front door before he let go, closing the hallway door behind him and pointedly standing in front of it.

“Miss Dash, you need to cool off.”

“Ya wanna move?!” I tried to flit around him, but the glow from his horn told me that he wasn’t gonna let me past him. “Now that ya know what happened, I damn well wanna know why!”

“I get that, but you need to calm down before I can let you back there again.” He held up a hoof to cut me off. “Look, it’s not my call. Hospital rules say that if somepony’s expelled from a room, they gotta wait until the head nurse says they’re clear to go back to see the patient. If you want to go back to see your goddaughter again, you gotta adjust your attitude first.”

“I’m taking care of her.” I hated to bring that up, but I figured this was one of those times where I’d have to come out and say it. “Ya gotta let me go back and see her. Her mom’s—gone, okay? It’s just me now.”

“I know.” I’d swear he sagged a little bit, even though he didn’t really move at all. “I took Derpy to the funeral home.”

Oh. My wings folded up, and I took a step back. I sighed and walked away to get something out of my eyes. Code Blue followed behind me and took a seat on one of the cushions lining the wall.

How the hay did things go so wrong? We shouldn’t have to come back to the hospital already. It had only been four days.

I growled at the thought. Four days... four days since Sparkler had said goodbye to her mom. Eight since that thing, that motherbucking cancer had killed her. Nine since she last told her daughters how much she loved them. Three months since she’d picked them up from school or tucked them into bed.

And those numbers were just gonna get bigger. Seeing her with a mane again, even just a wig, had been so weird; would I ever remember her with a full head of hair and think it was normal? How many weeks would go by before Sparkler remembered her mom’s voice without the tired rasp the treatments brought? How long would it take Dinky to get used to not having Favorite around to snuggle up with at night?

How long would it take them to get used to life without mom?

I sighed again and kept pacing. My head snapped around every time somepony came through that door—after the first dozen or so times, my neck was starting to get a little sore. Finally, the pony I’d been waiting for came out to the lobby. Code Blue took position behind Redheart as I cantered over to her.

“She’ll be okay,” Redheart said, answering my question before I could ask it. “She’s a little malnourished, but we have her on a feeding tube to get the nutrients back in her body.” She sighed. “What really worried me is dehydration. Ponies can’t just cut their liquid intake like they can with food, not for more than a day or two. She has IV drips to help replenish what she lost, but..”

“How bad?” I asked. Kind of a dumb question seeing that we were back in the hospital, and if I was honest with myself I really didn’t want to know.

Redheart gave me a steady, analytical look. “Nopony accidentally ignores being thirsty like that. Given what I caught during your exchange, I’ve put her on suicide watch as a precaution.”

I sat down hard at that, hard enough that Redheart had to help me to one of the benches. The hospital had Sparkler on... that was big, something I’d only ever heard about before. That was a round-the-clock commitment, with somepony either there all day or coming in to check at fixed intervals. They only did that for patients who needed supervision beyond the standard hourly check-ins I had when I was here. Hay, Ditzy didn’t need that much attention even when she’d been at her worst. And Sparkler needed it because...

Because she’d almost killed herself. I’d missed it for almost four days, writing it off as just missing her mom, but—oh feathers...

I felt a comforting hoof on my shoulder as Redheart tried to draw me back to the present. “Rainbow, you brought her to us in time. She’s going to be okay, and we’re going to do everything we can to help her.”

Sparkler had nearly died. That’s what she was really saying. If I’d waited, hay, just ‘til the evening to check on her...

I pushed the thought out of my mind. “Can I see her? You can watch me if you need to,” I added as Code Blue and Redheart shared a look. “I’m not gonna yell at her anymore.”

After a minute, Redheart nodded. “All right. But Code Blue’ll be right outside. If you start anything—”

“I’m gone, I get it.” I glanced at the unicorn, who gave a very small nod. We went back through the hallway, going through a couple of twists and up to the second floor to the short-term inpatient wing. Sparkler’s room was the second on the right—not too far from where I’d been when I broke my wing, now that I thought about it.

The bed closer to the doorway was empty, putting Sparkler in the one next to the window. Even with the curtain separating her bed from the rest of the room, I could hear the machines beeping as they kept track of her pulse. True enough to what Redheart had said earlier, an IV was feeding some kind of liquid into a needle just above her hoof. Two water pitchers, one empty and one half-full, were on the nightstand to her right, and she was levitating the accompanying glass in front of her.

I waited for her to put it down before saying anything. “Bet you wish you had all that food you were throwing out now.”

“Rainbow...” Code Blue glared at me.

“'d be pretty good right now,” Sparkler rasped.

Right. Tone it down, me. I shot a guilty look at the nurse before turning back to my goddaughter. “How about I bring you some home-cooked stuff? Or maybe some of Pinkie's cooking?”

That got a small giggle out of her. “Maybe something outta the icebox, I dunno if the fire insurance can cover your 'cooking.'”

I laughed with her. “Hey, the insurance covered Ditzy's ... just ... fine...” I cut myself off before I could dig myself deeper into the hole, but the damage had already been done. Sparkler whimpered and sank back into her bed.

Code Blue facehooved. “I'm gonna be outside the room … try not to jam every hoof in your mouth at once, Rainbow.”

Way to go, me. Let’s turn what could have been a good joke from Sparkler into a reminder that her Mom’s not here anymore. “So ... um ... you good?”

“Hungry.” She held up a shaky hoof to cut me off. “Yeah, yeah, my fault, I get it.”

‘Her fault’ didn’t even begin to cut it. I sat down on a cushion next to her bed. “Sparks, you scared the horseapples outta me.”

Her eyes went wide as she turned to face me. “You—what? I thought you were just pissed.”

“I ... you ... you coulda died on me, kid.” Just like she did.

“'m not sick,” Sparkler whimpered. “I just couldn't get up.”

Oh you have got to be kidding me! No way was I gonna let her get away with trying to pretend that this wasn’t a big deal. “Sparkler, did you not pay attention to what the docs said? Luna's starry flank, if I hadn't caught on to what you were doing today, we'd be burying you next to your mom!”

“Don't.” Her legs shook a bit as she propped herself up to look me in the eye. “Don't bring her into this, not like that. I died seeing her like that, Rainbow, so sorry if that bucked me up a little bit!”

“Yeah, you almost did die!” I snapped. My wings flared, barely missing the nightstand. “You nearly bought the farm for real because you were too much of an idiot to eat a plate of food when I put it right in front of you!”

“Bury your mom and see how hungry you are.” She flopped back onto her bed and sniffed, and when she spoke up again she was a lot quieter. “'m sorry I scared you, all right?”

Part of me was ready to keep yelling at her, but a pointed cough from the doorway reminded me that wouldn’t be a good idea. I forced my wings to fold back and lowered my voice. “Do it again, and I'll kick your plot so hard you'll kiss the moon.”

“I think Princess Luna would have a word or two to say about that. Kinda her turf.” She made it sound like a joke, but from the way she looked at me I think she was eyeing to see how serious I was. Her hoof slowly traced a long, thin scar on her left knee—a barely-visible reminder of being thrown down a staircase by her then-foster father.

Great, that was two for two jokes turned into painful reminders. Good thing my special talent wasn’t in stand-up, I’d probably redefine what it meant to kill an audience. I rubbed my forehead and sighed. “I ... look, Sparks, I just ... just want you to be okay.”

Sparkler eyed me for another minute before relaxing. “Thanks, I guess. You're doing your best, I get it. You're... you've been trying to be a good godmom, and you have been. But Mom's gone now, I—saw her like...that...” She sniffled and started getting that glassy-eyed look she had back at the funeral.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t think I could make things any worse, but I’d spent so much time putting my hoof in my mouth already I shouldn’t keep tempting fate. Sparkler flinched slightly as I put a hoof on her back, but after a second she eased up enough that I tried to put my wing around her. For once, I read things the right way—she turned around and hugged me. “Rainbow? Thanks.”

“No prob, kid.”

She held me for a little bit. It wasn’t much, but something had finally gone right, if only for a little bit. “You're not pissed any more?”

“I'm not.” Okay, I still was a little bitmad, but she’d gotten more than enough from me. “Just don't do anything stupid, 'kay?”

“Bit late for that.” She fiddled with the needle in her foreleg.

She had a point there. I pulled her hoof away from the needle and stood up. “Yeah, well... School’s getting out in a few minutes. I gotta go pick up your sister.”

Sparkler shrank back in her bed, her eyes wide. “Feathering Celestia... Dinky’s gonna freak.”

I opened the window and got ready to jump out. “Spark, you should’ve thought about about that four days ago.”

“So, um Dinky? How was school?”

“Fine.”

“And how was Cheerilee?”

“Fine.”

“Lunch taste okay?”

“Yeah.”

Wow, she was as talkative as her uncle. Then again, she had just finished her first day of school since Ditzy died. She’d probably spent more of the day bored out of her mind while everypony else treated her like a glass statue. “Um, wanna go see Sparkler?”

She brightened up a bit at her sister’s name. Horseapples. “Yeah, 'kay.”

We went airborne after I made sure Dinky was secure onto my back. I really, really wanted to avoid a scene, but there was just no easy way to tell her where we were going. I got us away from the schoolhouse and above the rooftops before I said anything else. “Um—look, kiddo, Sparkler kinda hurt herself earlier. We're gonna go see her and tell her to get better, okay?”

Her legs tensed up enough to make it hard for me to breathe. “What happened? Where are we going?”

“She—she's okay, we're gonna go see her, all right?” Don’t mention the hospital, don’t mention the hospital...

“Is she in the hospital?”

Crap, she was already putting two and two together. Saying ‘no’ and lying to her wasn’t gonna do me any favors, but the last thing I needed her to do was panic mid-flight.

“We are, aren't we?” Her voice was already starting to get to a panicky-high. “I don't wanna go!”

There was a sudden lack of pressure on my back as she started struggling to get off, and I had to do a half-corckscrew to flip around and grab her. “Dinky, don't do that! You don’t wanna fall from this height!”

“Noooo!” she shrieked. “I don't wanna go!”

I started descending as quickly as I could. I couldn’t keep a good enough grip on her for much longer. “Dinky, Sparkler is there—she wants to see you!”

Dinky shook her head as she kept struggling. “I don't want her to go away like Mommy did!”

“She's not gonna go away!” Because checking into the hospital had such an amazing track record so far. “She just hurt herself and has to get better!”

“You said Mommy would get better too!” Her shriek was interrupted by a dry sob. “She didn't wake up, and now she's gone and Sparkler's gonna be gone too!”

“She's not, I promise she's gonna be fine! Look, we're almost there, just—stop, I'm losing my grip!” My heart stopped when she finally wiggled loose and dropped to the ground. We weren’t more than a pony’s height above the ground, but Dinky hadn’t tucked and rolled on contact so much as slammed to a halt. “DINKY! Are you okay!?”

Dinky stood back up, and I could finally breathe again. If she was walking, she couldn't be hurt too bad. “Owie.” Dinky was favoring a small cut on her left foreleg. “Owie owie owie.”

Jeez, now both of them were hurting themselves. I cut myself off just as the word ‘numbskull’ formed on my lips and tried to think of how Ditzy would have handled this. I sighed and pulled Dinky into a hug, careful to avoid her knee. “You okay, kiddo?”

“I got an owie,” she sniffled.

“You're okay, kiddo. I gotcha.” I gave her a quick squeeze before looking her in the eye. “S'why you can't do that while I'm flying, all right? It doesn't just scare me, you could really get hurt.” Celestia, if she’d gotten loose while I was still over a roof... Nope. Not going there.

Dinky didn’t exactly see things my way. “I dunwanna go to the hospital. Get Sparky outta there and bring her home!”

I knelt down beside her and tried to pull her into a hug. “I can't, kiddo, she has to be there for a bit.”

“That's what you said about Mommy.” She stomped her hooves, with only a slight wince from the tension on her bad leg. “Bring Sparky home!”

Good Celestia, how am I supposed to explain suicide watch to a filly? “She’s hurt bad enough they're not gonna let her out today!”

That didn’t really do much to help me out. “Bring her home!Bring her home! ” She started thrashing around on the ground, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Bring Sparky HOOOOME!”

Ponies were starting to stare at the nice little mess this trip had turned into. I wanted to cut things off before they got any worse and tried to pick Dinky up to keep going. I got as far a getting a hoof around her stomach when she outright hit my eye.

“OW! Luna dammit, Dinky!”

If anything, her lucky shot just encouraged her to step things up. She starting beating her hooves on my foreleg as I massaged my eye. “I WANT SPARKY HOME!"

Okay, that was way more than enough. “Then tell her yourself!” I grabbed her and took off, holding her against my stomach and keeping her hooves well out of range of anything I needed to fly. “She's there because she was stupid and she wants to see you—and you being a brat is not helping!”

She flailed at me for the rest of the flight, occasionally getting a lucky, weak hit with a hoof. I kept a good grip on her just long enough to get to the hospital. It only took me two guesses to find the right window, and her tantrum died away the second we were able to see Sparkler.

Dinky didn’t ‘freak.’ Using that word to describe things wouldn’t work because it makes it sound weird or out of the ordinary. After everything that’d already happened, her caring for her sister was normal. They were family—reminders of the mare they’d both lost, but brought together by her too. With their mother gone now, the only constant they had in life was each other.

So when she saw Sparkler in bed with an IV in her arm, the terrified scream that about blew out my eardrums was completely expected.

“NNNNOOOOOOOOOO!! NO NO NO NONONONONONO!”

We weren’t even halfway through the window before she leapt off my back, landing on her shoulder in a way that made me wince sympathetically. That didn’t even slow her down. She rolled with it and jumped onto the bed, banging her hooves as she scrambled up. “Don’t go to sleep, Sparky, don’t go to sleep! Please, please, please, please DON’T GO TO SLEEP!”

Sparkler weakly pulled her sister into a hug, crying into her mane. “It’s okay, Dinky, I’m okay...”

Dinky wasn’t having any of it. “NO! You’re here, and Mommy was here and she said she was okay, but she wasn’t, an’ if she wasn’t okay you’re not gonna be okay!” She wrapped her forelegs around her sister and wailed into her chest. “Don’t go to sleep, dungo to sleep, please...dunleaveme too...”

She trailed off into a mess of half-sobbing, half-pleading. Sparkler hugged her as tightly as her IV would allow, rocking her as she tried to find a way to convince Dinky that she was going to come out of this alive.

The door exploded open as at least ten nurses poured into the room. Tenderheart was one of them, and after a quick look at the three of us she shooed everypony back out of the room—but not before jerking her head for me to follow her out into the hall. Somehow, I got the feeling that she was a little pissed at me. Maybe it was the ominous glare.

Tenderheart had barely closed the door behind me before she and everypony else there rounded on me. “Oh, stuff it,” I snapped, cutting them off. “She figured it out on her own halfway here.”

A pegasus in a Life Flight uniform frowned. “There’re better ways to break it than just coming in like that. You could’ve at least tried to be subtle.”

He could stuff it, too. “‘Mommy’s sleeping’ happened the last time I tried ‘subtle.’”

Everypony flinched at that. Cheap shot? Yeah. They’d get over it. I flitted over them without another word. I didn’t really know where I was going, just that I didn’t want to be around that eyrie of gryphons for a while. Considering this was the first break I’d had in almost two hours, I opted for a drink. I got about a third of the way to a nearby fountain there before somepony exploded out of the stairwell.

“Dinky’s fit—heard it … halfway across market,” Cloud Kicker wheezed. “What happened?”

I crawled out from behind an empty IV stand that had somehow gotten between me and her, suddenly wishing I’d opted to argue with the pack of nurses instead. Yeah, they were mad at me, but Cloud Kicker looked scared. She gets a little dangerous when she’s scared.

Crap, there was no easy way out of this one. “I brought Dinky here to visit her sister,” I explained. “Spark hurt herself bad enough I had to fly her in.”

“How?”

I licked my lips nervously. “She, um ... stopped eating.”

“You let her starve herself?” Her voice had gone dangerously quiet.

“Hey, I gave her a plate full of food every day!” It was a weak argument and I knew it, but … dammit, she was making it sound like I’d completely... ignored...

Cloud Kicker didn’t let up. “Fillies take a bit more effort than your feathering turtle, Rainbow! Especially when they just lost their mom!”

Somehow, I didn’t think it’d be a good idea to point out that Tank is a tortoise. “Dinky was the one who couldn't stop crying for hours at a time! I told Sparkler to tell me if she needed something.”

Cloud Kicker was unimpressed. “So you didn't once bother to check up on her for—how long?!”

I laid my ears back, knowing she wasn’t going to like the answer. “....Friday.”

She didn’t. Her wings flared as she screamed at me. “Four motherbucking days?!”

I flinched at that. It was a case of the stray cloud getting kicked first. “I didn't think anything was wrong!”

“Did you once sit down and have a meal with her and notice she hadn't eaten anything?!” She got right up in my face. “Were you blind, negligent or just stupid?”

“She wanted to be alone, so I left her alone!” Celestia, even to me that sounded pathetic. “I came in, gave her her meals, and got the plates later! First time I came in and she hadn't eaten anything, I told her that plate had to be empty when I got back. It was, every bucking time after that! I didn't know she'd just been tossing it all out the window!”

Cloud Kicker sighed and facehoofed hard enough that I heard her hoof crack against her skull. “Fillies aren’t pets, you can’t just put food out and expect everything to be fine. They need a lot of attention on a good day, let alone when they just lost their mother!”

“I helped them say goodbye to their mom, Cloud Kicker! I'm not her, I didn't think I'd have to be!” I sniffed and wiped something out of my eye. “This was supposed to be a four-day thing while Ditzy got some new kinda aspirin. That was three months ago … it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“That’s not an excuse!” she snarled. “‘Godmom’ isn't just some trophy you can just add to your laurels. It’s a title, one that comes with responsibilities!”

Ah hay, she was talking about ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’ now. Whenever Cloud Kicker starts breaking out those words she goes from fun and goofy to … well, the kinda pony who rips into my plot. On the best of days she was a pain in the flank when she got like this, but now... “Ditzy was a year older than me, ponies our age aren’t supposed to get cancer! Being a godmom's supposed to mean showing up for birthdays and foalsitting and sending tickets their way when I make it in the Wonderbolts!”

“Horse-feathering-apples!” she roared. I instinctively took a step back—not even at Camp, or after, had she ever been this pissed. She looked half-ready to kill me. “That’s not what being a godmom means! It means being there for your friend and her children when they need you the most. It means that if a pony dies, they at least know their children will be taken care of by somepony they trust.” She jabbed me in the chest with a foreleg. “Derpy trusted you to take care of Dinky and Sparkler, the two most important things in her life, and one of them almost died on your watch!”

“I DIDN'T KNOW, OKAY!?”

“Somepony you care about is dying and you had no idea. I couldn’t imagine why that sounds so familiar.” Cloud Kicker’s face changed. The anger was still there, but more than anything I saw disgust. “And all you can talk about now is how inconvenient it is for you that Derpy's dead. You’d better get a clue, Rainbow Dash. It took you all of four days to let Sparkler run herself into the ground and try to starve herself to death! What would Derpy think if she saw all of you now?”

“You-you’re...” I looked to the ground. That hurt. That really, really hurt. I’d feathered up, but... I’d tried. I’d really tried. I tried to be a good godmom, I tried to let them readjust to their lives, I’d tried to give them time to figure things out. At every turn, I’d screwed up. When it boiled down to it...

“You're right.”

It wasn’t until I heard Cloud Kicker take a step back that I realized I’d said that out loud. I dunno what she was expecting to hear, but that probably wasn’t it. But she was right. I’d dropped the ball so completely as a godmom. I hadn’t spent time with them like I should have. I hadn’t even tried to break things to Dinky gently, I’d just taken her to the hospital—and I’d used her reaction as a petty way of getting back at Sparkler for hurting herself. Hay, I hadn’t even been thinking... I was mad at Sparkler, but scaring her sister to get to her wasn’t even cheap. It was wrong.

Cloud Kicker was right. I was a terrible godmom.

I’d never had any idea how to take care of a filly, much less two, even in the best of times. I’d been playing things by ear from the start, with advice from Ditzy, Fluttershy, and occasionally even Sparkler. Like an idiot, I’d waved a lot of it off trying to be the coolest foalsitter in Equestria. Now that I was supposed to start being a lot more responsible, things were falling apart. I’d hurt them. Bad.

“I'm... I bucked up. Sparkler got hurt, and Dinky’s terrified she’s going to lose somepony else,” I quietly admitted. “I bucked up as a godmom, I shouldn't... have them. You're right. Ditzy's family... that's you, not me.”

When I finally met Cloud Kicker’s gaze, all rage was gone. Her eyebrows had completely disappeared into her mane, and her jaw worked itself a couple of times before she finally spoke. “What are you talking about?”

“Sparkler's in the hospital, Dinky's terrified she's gonna die too—and you were Ditzy’s... ” I swallowed. “You'd still do a better job than me. I almost let my goddaughter die because I didn't know... It should've been you, y'know? I was just there ... you ... you had something special with her.”

There was no way I could meet her gaze. “You still could be, y'know. They need somepony who knows what the hay they're doing. Somepony who can help them better than me, someponey who—who—really, really loved their mom. I'm awesome at a lotta things, but...” I fell silent for a minute. “I promised her I'd take care of them, but maybe ... maybe the best way to do that is knowing that I can't.”

“Rainbow...” Cloud Kicker’s tone changed again—anger was still there, but buried under disbelief and … fear? She sounded like she was talking to a filly that was playing with a knife. “What are you saying?”

“I haven't signed that stuff yet, um... Dinky, Sparkler, the house, nothing. S'yours. They're yours, if you want ‘em. Y-you're a good pony, a good... a better godmom than me. 'm gonna go let Cheerilee know you can pick Dinky up from school, then, um...” I looked down to try and clear my vision back up. “n' I'll come back and pick Dinky up from visiting her sister and ... and I’ll bring her home.” I’d’ve let her take them right there, but hospital rules meant that kids had to have a guardian take ‘em. Ditzy’s thing with Cloud Kicker had been an open secret, but I’d been the one she’d left her girls with. For now. I blinked one more time and looked back up. “Just take care of 'em, okay? I b-bucked up, but ... doesn't muh-mean I don't care.”

The last thing I saw before I turned away was Cloud Kicker’s face. There was no other word for it, she was shocked. A little mad, still, but mostly just shocked.

“Element of Loyalty, huh?”

I didn’t answer her as I walked away. She wouldn’t get it. I wasn’t leaving them hanging, not by any stretch: I’d kept my promise to take care of ‘em. I’d found somepony who could do it way better than me.

It felt weird, walking this route for the last time. I wasn’t going home any more, I was going to their home. Dinky was gonna have somepony else tuck her in from now on, and when her sister got back they’d both have a better caretaker to help them rebuild as a family.

“So we’re gonna go home?”

I nodded, and shifted my wings to give Dinky a better perch. She was on my back again as we—well, I—trotted the all-too-familiar route home from the hospital. “There’s—stuff, I gotta do. Cloud Kicker’s gonna come for a sleepover, she’ll take care of you for a little bit.” It’s amazing how easy it is to form half-truths into a comfortable little white lie.

“You’re not gonna be gone like Mommy are you?” Dinky whimpered.

“No!” I leaned my head back and nuzzled her. Goddesses, I didn’t think about how much that sounded like Ditzy explaining things the first evening Dinky had to go home without her. “No, nothing like that. I’m fine, everypony’s fine. I just gotta figure some stuff out.”

We passed Carousel Boutique. Three minutes out. Tiny, warm forelegs reached around my neck as Dinky shifted again on my back. I was gonna miss these rides, weird as it sounded. She’d loved them even when she was really little. Guess that comes with growing up in a family of pegasi. It’s not like she was gonna miss out on that, at least—most of the Kicker clan had wings, and whatever problems Cloud Kicker had with her family I doubted she’d keep them in the dark about the recent changes.

Not like me.

Dinky shifted again to look back in the direction of the hospital. “And Sparky’s gonna be okay too?”

“She’ll be fine too.” At least I didn’t have to lie about that. “You both are. Pinkie Promise.”

Carrot Top was out working in her garden and waved to us as we passed by the fenceline. Dinky waved back, and I nodded to her as well. Carrot Top was all right, she’d been a huge help even before she and the others had started dropping off meals. Ditzy’d had a couple of stories about her, all of them good—it sounded like they’d gotten along pretty well over the last few years. Hopefully she and Cloud Kicker would hit it off.

We kept going to Ditzy’s house—Cloud Kicker’s, now—and almost made it to the front door when Dinky dropped the one question I’d hoped she wouldn’t think of.

“How long are you gonna be gone?”

I knew she was staring at me with those big, gold eyes, but I didn’t dare look back at her. “A while.”

I knelt to let Dinky off of my back and was about to knock when she bolted in. Right, her house, of course she’s just gonna head inside. She ran back when I knocked and waited at the doorway.

“C’mon in, silly!” She grabbed my hoof and pulled me inside. “Miss Cloud Kicker’s already here.”

Sure enough, Cloud Kicker was on the couch when we went around the corner. “H-hey.” She stood up to meet us, hastily closing an old photo album. Neither of us seemed sure what we could say with Dinky here. Come to think of it, I doubted we’d know even if she wasn’t.

“Hey Dinky? Why don’t you go get Fa—” I caught myself. Barely. “Why don’t you go get the Battle Clouds board so you two can … um, yeah. Go ahead and grab it, okay?”

“Okay!” Dinky took off down the hall to rummage through her room.

“I didn’t bring much, just—um...” I gave a hollow little laugh. “Nothing, actually. All my stuff’s at my cloud-house, I just gotta get Tank from Fluttershy.”

Cloud Kicker didn’t say anything to stop me, but I don’t think she was eager to see me stay much longer. She shot me a look that was half-glare, half … I didn’t know what, really.

“Boss...” she whispered. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I looked away. Of course I was. I didn’t want to, not like this, but ... it wasn’t about what I wanted any more. It was about what was best for them. She’d been right, I wasn’t ready for this, I was—hay. I was me. I could do a lot of things. But this wasn’t one of them.

“The, um... All the paperwork’s on the kitchen table. Didn’t really sort it too well,” I added with a chuckle, “but it’s there.”

“Yeah, I saw. Rainbow—”

Whatever she was gonna say got cut off by a rustling sound—Dinky coming back down the hall with the board game clamped in her mouth.

“Keh ‘oo—” She spat the box out on the couch. “Can you stay for a game first?”

“Sorry, kiddo. I gotta go.” It was getting really hard to breathe. And see. “Be good for Cloud Kicker, okay?”

Dinky clamped onto my foreleg. “Okay. Bye Rainbow Dash!”

I bent down and gave Dinky one last, long hug. She had somepony who could care for her and her sister now, somepony who knew what she was doing. Somepony who wouldn’t hurt her, even by accident.

I saw that her mane had gotten a little wet when I let go, and tousled it with a hoof to try to hide it. Then I stood up and stepped out of my goddaughter’s life.