The Wind Rings True

by Pascoite

Rating: everyone
Tags: Derpy Hooves, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Silver Spoon, Apple Bloom
Length: 5952

Apple Bloom and I shared an unusual attitude about our mothers, and it helped to talk about it. But eventually she didn’t need her old friend Derpy anymore. I didn’t think it would hurt this much.

Apple Bloom and I shared an unusual attitude about our mothers, and it helped to talk about it. But eventually she didn’t need her old friend Derpy anymore.

I didn’t think it would hurt this much.

An entry in the May 2021 Pairing Contest of the Original Pairings group.

Featured on Equestria Daily.

Published 2021-06-01 02:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2021-06-01 02:20:02 UTC

The Wind Rings True

I hate feeling so angry all the time.

I never used to get angry. That amazed ponies, the way I could laugh off another clumsy thing I’d done like the turbulent waters of a brook sliding over moss-slicked rocks on the bank. Nothing stuck with me. Nothing hurt. I couldn’t let it hurt, because then they’d win, at least in the old days when everyone I knew was immature and petty. Now I have friends, real friends. Or… I did have friends.

Ponies talk about having unfinished business meaning you can’t move on. I’d never even considered it before, yet here I am, lingering like the leftover scent of onions from yesterday’s dinner. There must be something still I have to do, or learn, or figure out, but day after day I merely peer down at my old kitchen floor, the linoleum peeling up in places to reveal dusty pine boards beneath.

Carrot Top really needs to clean this place up.

It’s not even like my memory was ever that good. Trip over this, run into that, forget something important. Nopony expected much of me, except my daughter… What was her name?

I grit my teeth and shake my head as if trying to unstick a rain-sodden jacket from its icy grip on my back. Memory only gets worse when nothing remains to live for.

Dinky. Her name is Dinky. I must never forget.

But I had one other friend, too, one as clear in my mind as the fresh morning view from a cloud tuft, one I never would have expected. The sister of a national hero, and one whose life’s mission became to help others. I would have had no connection to her, just some batty old mare who delivered her mail. She was everything I wasn’t: calm, thoughtful, confident, popular.

Now I have only a few memories left to me, memories of why I should have known better, memories of why I’m angry.

I’m so tired of being angry.

A copper plate catches my eye as I browse over the wares at the smartly dressed dealer’s stall. Intricately enameled toleware, with the sun glinting off the iridescent geometric patterns, silver cutlery with a dull gray patina softening the gazes of the windigoes cast into the handles, all the way down to the plainest of tin cups. But I’ve always liked copper.

It would look nice on my kitchen wall, with its embossed design of carrots around the edge. I think Carrot Top will like it.

I hoist my mother’s old cast iron candle snuffer out of my saddlebag. Only equitable deals work at the Rainbow Falls Traders Exchange, of course. “Would you take this for the plate?”

He installs a jeweler’s loupe over his left eye and quickly scans down the black metal. “Dragon claw motif, maker’s stamp on the cup—not a major name in metalwork, but still, made about four hundred years ago.” Then he leans forward on his elbows. “Are you sure you don’t want any more than that one plate? You’d be welcome to take something from the table on the end, too.”

The unmistakable light of brass gleams back at me, all nice and hammered, but no. I only wanted a gift for Carrot Top. “Thank you, but the plate alone will do.”

He shrugs, then we shake on it. And there goes the last vestige of my mother.

I let the soft wind tease my nose with the scent of grilling onions for a moment before moving on. Good thing the food is exempt from the barter system—I check the heft of my bit purse and find the comfortable weight of a pepper flatbread’s worth and then some. It can wait a moment, however, as the breeze returns and elicits the sound of what always brought fairy’s kisses to mind.

Row after row of wind chimes hang from sun-bleached and ice-cracked wooden beams, seemingly threatening to crumble at any time. Beyond the metallic ringing carries a high-pitched note as clear as a distant eagle’s call in the mountains. I brush a hoof over the small glass bell, an inscribed ribbon affixed to its clapper dancing in the wind. Mother had brought one of these back from her travels to Neighpon, as I understand it. I always liked its sound, but I left it behind when I sold the house. Let somepony else enjoy it. Time to move on.

I give it another tap, and then a filly appears by my side and gazes up at the diminutive chime. “That’s an awful pretty sound!” she says with a warm grin. She’s everything I’m not. Personable, at ease, unafraid. She reaches up to jostle it herself, and the large red bow in her mane sets another few of them tolling.

Were it just about anypony else, I’d grunt a reply and make an excuse to leave, but something about her is so disarming. Plus I recognize her. My mail route takes me past Sweet Apple Acres every morning, home to one of Equestria’s greatest heroes, though a surprisingly approachable one. Yet her little sister Apple Bloom is one of the most unassuming ponies I’ve ever met. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken with her at length before. “Isn’t it?” I say with a smile.

“My sister tells me bells make her think of Mama.” Yet she looks awfully matter-of-fact about it.

“Does your mom like wind chimes?” I ask after a minute, but she only shrugs as she peers at the lily of the valley painted on the glass.

Then she stares into the distance as if trying to recall the answers to a test. “I never really knew Mama. She died before I was old enough to remember. But Applejack likes to tell me I have her boldness, or her sense of humor, or whatever.”

She’s everything I’m not.

“I don’t remember my mother, either. I grew up with my grandma. But she told me lots of stories about Mom, including how she liked this particular kind of chime.” Then I angle my head toward her saddlebag and the distinctive odor emanating from it, one I’ve enjoyed every day of my mail route. “Did you bring something to trade?”

Her grin sprouts up even more intensely than before. “I made some apple fritters myself! Not sure what I’ll get for ’em, but it don’t hurt to try.”

Maybe it’s a little presumptive of me, but the Apples are legendary around town. I know what family means to them. “Seems like a certain wind chime might be a nice way to honor her.”

She starts nodding before I’ve even finished asking the question. And the vendor’s eyes do keep succumbing to the grills and hot plates on the next row over. “Sir?” I call, beckoning him over. “How many genuine Sweet Apple Acres fritters would it take to get this bell?”

“Umm…” He reflexively licks his lips, but then he returns to canny business mode. “I could do four.”

“Shucks,” Apple Bloom mutters, kicking up a tuft of dust. “I only got two.”

But some things here aren’t for trade. “How about if I buy you one of those onion tarts to sweeten the deal?” I add, and after a very deliberate pause for show, he nods. And we all shake on it.

“Thanks a lot, Miss Derpy!” Apple Bloom says as we walk away, her traipsing all zigzag across my path while I slowly head toward the food line. “That was real sweet o’ ya!”

I didn’t think she even knew my name.

Then she starts into what she and her friends Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle have planned for the weekend, and what they’re studying in school, and a million other things that just make her so immediately likeable.

She’s everything I’m not.

“Miss Derpy!” I hear as I skim over the orchards. Did I drop some envelopes again? I glance behind me for the telltale curlicues of fluttering paper, but thank goodness there’s nothing I need to chase. So instead, I look around for who called me.

“Down here!”

In a small clearing, Apple Bloom waves a hoof at me, her bow wafting around with her gyrations like a holly tree in a strong breeze. I suppose I can spare a few minutes, especially if I get some of my sorting job done while I have lunch back at the post office.

So I swoop down for a landing, kind of like Cherry Berry does with her hang glider sometimes, and settle next to her in the grass, under the shade of an apple tree around the glade’s periphery. A little wind whispers through the blades, and then a tinkle starts from overhead.

“I hung up the chime here,” she says, as if it needs an explanation.

“Good,” I reply, but why does she want me to know that? “I don’t think I’ve ever been on this part of the farm. Why did you choose here to hang it?” Maybe it’s just a secluded spot where she can be alone when she has a few things to think through. At least I can gather some wisps of cloud to make my own out-of-the-way retreat. What do earth ponies do?

The smile on her face twitches between letting me in on some deep philosophical truth and putting me off with a dismissive shrug. “I… I just thought…”

Seems like the confidence I saw in her earlier has vacated its post. This isn’t like her. She’s everything I’m not.

“Can you tell me about your mama?” she finally says.

A heavy weight settles over me, as a lama might burden his apprentice to hold a bucket of water at arm’s length, no doubt to learn some lesson about perseverance or character. “I didn’t know her at all. Just what Grandma told me.”

“Oh…” The disappointment shades her face in gray hues. “Something told me she was special to ya. Can’t say as I know what made me think that.” She peers at me for a moment, and I try to stay neutral, but she sees some detail that makes her ears droop barely enough to notice. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be,” I reply before she can continue. “I just… I never knew her.”

She nods. “Kinda like me.”

“Well… I don’t know how to explain it. I never met her. Grandma told me lots of things about her, what her personality was like, what things she enjoyed. It’s almost like I know her. But she never told me about…”

I’m surprised I made it that far. It’s bad enough I fumble to keep my body coordinated, but I get lost for words, too, like watching a school of minnows scatter from my grasp. All the while, Apple Bloom sits there, patient as a rock. She’s everything I’m not.

“I know she died, but I don’t know when. Was I in school? Still an infant? Why did she leave? Grandma wouldn’t answer those questions.”

She taps a hoof against the tree, and knowing the Apples, she can ask it for advice. Then she musters up that Apple confidence. “You could find out, y’know.”

I could. “By the time I got old enough to look on my own, I’d kind of accepted that Grandma thought I shouldn’t know. Like it might disappoint me, or… I don’t know. I decided to leave it alone.” Apple Bloom starts to open her mouth. “And even she didn’t know who my dad was.” It closes again.

I really should get back to work. But the cool shade, and the little tinkling bell she’s hung up in a branch… well, across the clearing, now that I’m close enough to gauge direction.

“Do you love her?” she asks me.

I breathe up all those memories and let them out in a sigh. “I guess so. Grandma never gave me any reason not to, and otherwise, you’re just supposed to, right?” So many things, in her house. I didn’t know what to do with them all. I kept what I liked, gave some to friends, sold some. It’s all gone now.

“It’s just—” I try to start, but then this feeling always comes over me, like the other person couldn’t possibly care what I have to say about someone they’ve never met.

“At times… it feels like I’m missin’ something,” she says. She leans over and stares hard, some internal lock on her psyche at last shattered. “It’s huge. Like it looms over me all the time, but I barely even have a sense it’s there. Like I just know I’ve plumb forgot a real important deadline, but I don’t remember what I had to do for it.”

A hasty nod is the only response I can make. She’s described it perfectly.

“It’s like there’s this great big black cloud o’ ‘should’ hangin’ over my head, but I don’t know what, so I’m losin’ the biggest game o’ my life by not playin’.”

Again, I nod. “Do you love her?”

“Yes!” she shouts immediately. “I do, I love her a bunch. But more the idea of her than the actual her, and that makes me kinda sad. Yet Granny Smith tells me Big Mac has her speech mannerisms, and Applejack acts just like her when she’s embarrassed, and I love those things about ’em, and I love that Mama lives on that way. I don’t remember her though. I love her ’cause it’s so important to Applejack.”

Only a short distance away, the chime tinkles. Finally, I notice the tree it’s hanging from. Well, the tree next to it. Two trunks have twisted together into a heart shape. No way that happened on its own.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her watching me. She grins, oddly enough, the same way the parents grin over their children at Miss Cheerliee’s class plays. “Mama and Papa did that. They planted an apple and a pear and tended ’em to grow into one like that. ’S why I come out here—to sit with ’em.”

Again, the chime rings, adding the punctuation to her thoughts. “And thanks for your help pickin’ that out. Mama’d love it.”

Slowly, I stand and stretch the ache out of my knee. I do need to get back to my route. “And thank you for sharing your time with me,” I say.

I crouch down and spread my wings, the warm feel of magic spreading throughout my feathers, when she responds: “If you ever wanna talk some more about your mama, I’ll be here.”

She’s so grown up.

Apple Bloom has gotten almost as tall as her sister, and I think once her destiny has finished shaping her, she’ll be even a little taller.

“Hey, Mom,” she says while I touch down as gently as I can, not wanting the rustling of my hooves in the grass to intrude on the stillness and reverence this place deserves. It’s become so regular that I only halfway pay attention—more important that she’s talking at all, not so much the details of it. Years ago, she wouldn’t talk to her mother out loud, not with anypony here, not even me. Probably the one thing she ever showed any shyness about. She’s everything I’m not.

So I quietly sit beside her and open my saddlebag, a puff of steam from the fresh muffins inside billowing into the frigid air. She tells her mom everything about her day, and her dad too. She’s still wrestling with that: why it weighed on her to have that disconnect with her mother, but not so much for her father. Does she pick up subconscious cues from her brother or sister? Had her mother been unusually close to Apple Bloom as an infant, enough to make a lasting imprint?

When she finishes, she turns a brass-bright smile my way and sets down the insulated bottle she has cradled in her arms. “I brought some hot cider.”

It’s not even a regular thing—I guess for the first few years, we met nearly every other day, but now about once a week, whenever I see her out here while on my rounds. I bring muffins, just in case, and if that means I have extras when I get home because she wasn’t here, then I can live with that. Carrot Top doesn’t mind bonus muffins, that’s for sure.

No wonder Apple Bloom had a lot to say to them today. She just finished college. Dinky, too. They graduated together, already have jobs lined up… I couldn’t be more proud. She’s everything I’m not.

I brush my graying mane to the other side, away from her, so it won’t get in the way of passing muffins and cider back and forth. “How’s Granny Smith today?” I ask.

“Hip bugs her more in cold weather, but otherwise, she never seems to slow down. She’s bakin’ up a mess o’ pies right now, for the dinner tonight.”

“Oh, right!” I say with a nod. “Graduation party. Your cousin Babs is coming, if I remember. Did she graduate too?”

With a shrug, she picks up a muffin and peels off the paper cup. “Naw, she went to the beautician academy and finished two years ago, top of her class. She’s got her own hair salon in Manehattan.” Then she pours herself a cup of cider and blows across it. “Did you ever decide to look up your mother?”

Once or twice a year, she asks me that. “No. I’m happy not knowing.”

While she eats, I take my turn. No gravestone here, and as far as I know, my mother’s final resting place could be anywhere. “Hi, Mom,” I say to the air. “My daughter graduated today. I wish you could have known her. One of the sweetest fillies I’ve ever met. She got wait-listed at the School for Gifted Unicorns years back, but she decided to withdraw her name, since she wanted to stay in regular school. What seven-year-old already makes such a practical decision of what career path to follow, but it’s not one that needs magic, so why stress out about the competition? She knew back then she wanted to be a writer, and now she even got her first novella published last week!”

I love talking about Dinky. Or Apple Bloom, for that matter. But my hooves begin to shake, so I finally bite into a muffin, and keep going with my update in fits and starts between chewing. I feel so tired all the time, but the mail needs delivering, and Apple Bloom tells me she likes sharing these moments with me. Never, ever would I let her down, or Dinky, or the ponies waiting on their letters.

It helps to stop and rest a bit here, but I do wish it was most days, like before. Isn’t that how life works though? Always wanting back what we took for granted.

I’ve probably already told Mom the same two or three stories for weeks now, so I toss in a hasty good-bye. “Apple Bloom, you still making progress on coming to peace about all this?”

“Don’t know as I’ll ever get there, not all the way. I always have that weight on my heart. But yeah, it gets a little better all the time.”

Good. Just from a chance encounter at a swap meet, I made one of my closest and most unexpected friends. She means so much to me.

And she’s everything I’m not.

Something is wrong. I don’t remember coming here to see Apple Bloom again, but when I do, I always land right in the middle of the clearing, in full view. Except today, I’m standing behind a tree, the potpourri of spotted sunlight dancing over me and the close-cropped grass under my hooves. Somepony else is sitting in my place.

“Hi! Good to see you again!” Apple Bloom says.

The other pony has her back to me, but a sucker growing off one of the tree trunks hides her from my view anyway, its leaves tossing in the wind and giving me only brief glimpses of gray. They really should know better than to let things like that grow! If she’d properly pruned it…

I lean around the other side of the trunk, but then an entire other tree stands in the way. So I duck down and sneak over to the next tree in the ring forming what should be our little haven. I can’t believe she’d let somepony intrude!

Or maybe this is something different.

The characteristic squeak of the hinges on Apple Bloom’s picnic basket sounds, then the clink of cider bottles. “Hi, Mom,” she says.

No. This was supposed to be our thing! This was supposed to be the special bond we shared!

“Applejack and I got out the telescope last night. Did you ever get to look through one? Big Mac says y’all liked stargazin’, but I didn’t know if you got to see ’em up close.” She gestures over to the other pony. “You remember my friend, Silver Spoon?”

Her!?

I… I know she’s not like she used to be. It’s not… not that… that it’s her. But when did Apple Bloom even get to know her? When did she share all this with her? When… when did she let Silver Spoon replace me?

“We took a trip to Canterlot last week, and—oh, we did so much! We stopped by Rarity’s shop to say hello, but of course she wasn’t there. But that was alright. Silver Spoon’s spent a lot more time there than I have, so she showed me some cool museums, and we ate at one of her favorite restaurants.”

I cry as softly as I can. If they notice me… what then? Will Silver Spoon make fun of me? Will Apple Bloom feel ashamed? And now I feel terrible. Why should I think Apple Bloom could only talk about her mother with me?

I’m being so selfish. We can both help her. It’s just that… she told me I was the only—

“I appreciate you comin’, Silver. It means a lot that I can share this with somepony. I don’t—” she briefly rolls her eyes up at the sky “—have anypony else.”

But she does! She does, and how could she forget? She’s lying, she’s lying to Silver Spoon, and she lied to me. My knees go weak, and I sink to the ground, my hooves shaking as I furiously wipe away the tears. If they hear, they don’t let on. Maybe she told Silver to ignore me. Maybe I just manage to keep quiet enough.

“No pressure, but if you’re ready to give it a try, go ahead. It helps, I promise.”

The silence wears on as I shudder and huddle on the ground, wipe my running nose across a smooth tree root. The foals used to love doing that when I was young: tell me what I needed to do to belong, but if I ever succeeded at their stupid and cruel demands, of course they only added more. I soon learned not to bother.

“Okay,” Silver Spoon mumbles, then her voice rings out as clear as that wind chime. “Mom, I… I wanted to love you. I tried, I really did. But… did you ever—” a pronounced sniffle sounds “—I’m sorry, I can’t…”

I stand up. I set my jaw. I stalk out to give Apple Bloom a piece of my mind.

And then I died.

Not right then and there, at least I don’t think so. But the anger. I’m tired of the anger.

The anger over how Apple Bloom could so easily replace me. How she could lie to me. How my own selfishness would have made me disappointed even if she hadn’t lied. And until I can come to peace with that, I will remain here, observing, drifting, floating at the whims of the wind and the shreds of my own memories.

If I tried, I might be able to communicate with Apple Bloom, just a little. I can slightly interact with the physical world, but if I did, what then? Make her feel guilty? Would an apology set me free? Is it even worth my rest to cause her pain?

If I could, I would stay here and watch, I guess. Watch her be happy. Watch her talk about her mother with me. Every time I hold onto that memory, it stings me with the one about Silver Spoon as well, taunts me that I can never have the pleasant without the devastating. Are tears better simply by virtue of not being an empty void?

When I languish here, I only ever see one thing: a faint crescent moon, seemingly pulsing with my heartbeat. If I fly toward it, I will experience the same memories again. If I sit here, nothing will change.

It could drive me mad if I let it! Maybe I should. Then I could forget and live here forever not knowing any better. But would I still go into my memories, torment Apple Bloom over it? Is that how hauntings occur?

I don’t know what to do! I pound my hoof against whatever passes as ground here, and I shout at the sliver of moon shining its sickly smile down on me. “What am I supposed to do!?”

What would constitute coming to peace? Consigning myself to rot here, declaring my friendship with Apple Bloom disposable, descending into lunacy? Fitting, with the moon perpetually—

The moon.

Something about it. “What? What do you want from me?” Words, filtered, as if I have cotton stuffed in my ears, but oddly familiar, in tone, if not in shape. I’ve heard that voice before. Not Apple Bloom. Not…

What was her name? I have to… I have to remember.

DInky! My beloved daughter! I must never forget her, never. But not her voice either. One I know, that seems to exist many times in my head, but one in particular. The moment I died! I don’t know when or where, but a whispered phrase that endures: “Death is timeless.”

Princess Luna!

The moon, yes, she rules the moon, and she rules death, and… and she rules memory. My memory, it—

Like a fish surfacing and sending ripples across a pond, the moon wavers, and its pure silver glow brightens more than it ever has. In that microsecond of insight, I gain one thing: I was wrong.

I had it wrong. Wrong, wrong, it was all wrong! Not the memories. Each was true. I met Apple Bloom, we shared a special friendship about our mothers, she abandoned me for Silver Spoon, I died. But I had it out of order! We became friends, I died, and then… Silver Spoon, silver as the moon.

She’s not a memory yet. But she needs to be. She’s the memory I have to make! And the moon brightens impossibly, washing out everything, until—

Apple Bloom strolls past the booths of bakeware, and her eyes lack a liveliness I’ve always known in her. She pokes and prods at the cooking pots like a disinterested foal who’s only looking at new clothes because her mother has told her no way would her old dress suffice for her grandparents’ milestone wedding anniversary party.

One row over, the same shelves of bric-a-brac where I first met Apple Bloom, the same tired old wooden beams supporting it all, the same tired old merchant presiding over his empire of odds and ends. But what catches my eye: Silver Spoon.

She heaves a breath and undoes an elegant pair of earrings, hefts their infinitesimal weight in her hoof and casts a critical eye over the other jewelry there. She looks unconvinced. I don’t know why, but I have to trust Princess Luna. She knows something I don’t. So I hover over Silver Spoon like breath and mist. I let go. What will happen is supposed to happen.

Another mumbled phrase touches my ears: memory and dreams and death are not so different. I close my eyes and listen, just listen to what her memory tells me.

Silver Spoon toddles into the dressing room adjacent to the bathroom and the walk-in closet and the master bedroom, where her mother checks every detail of her dress and mane in the array of mirrors. One of the servants adjusts a hem.

“Mom, look what I did!” Silver Spoon says, gesturing toward the smears of makeup on her face.

Her mother’s face immediately falls. “Honestly, Silver Spoon, did you have to make a spectacle of yourself? The guests will soon be arriving! The city council members will be here, the entire Blueblood family—”

Her frown only deepens, and she yanks a kerchief out of the lacy stack of them on a nearby shelf before roughly wiping it across Silver’s face. “You only turn four years old once, and if I’m to arrange a future marriage to one of the Bluebloods, then I simply must have you looking presentable!”

The coarse fabric soon rubs Silver’s lips raw, but she endures. She always endures. Surely it’s worth it to live in a huge house, and have every popular toy, and meet all the important ponies, and be recognized everywhere she goes. She’s heard all that countless times. Yes, she has it better than anypony else, so there’s no reason to complain. Even thinking about doing so would betray…

The mix of mascara and eyeliner being swabbed off her face becomes a bit damper. “I was hoping you’d show me how to put on makeup.”

“I don’t even do that for myself, dear—why would I do it for you? There are ponies to handle that sort of thing.”

“It’s not about—”

A pair of immaculately manicured hooves lifts Silver, turns her around, and sets her in the focus of all those mirrors. “Look now. Stand up straight, big smile, head high, ears pricked. Happy family. Yes, that’s it. Just keep it up through the party, and everything will go smoothly.”

Released from her rehearsal, she starts to trudge away, but “posture!” rings through her mind in her mother’s voice, and she struts to the doorway. “Mom—”

“Mother, dear. Call me Mother,” she replies, fiddling with an impressively detailed earring, molded into the shape of a rose.

“Mother, would you play with me later?”

“There are ponies to handle that sort of thing, too, dear. Just ask Steam Press or… what’s her name, the gardener. Gilded Lily.”

Silver waits a few seconds. “I love you, Mother.”

“Mmm.” Her mother tugs at her collar, smoothes her dress out, and smiles into the mirror.

Then Silver continues into the hallway. Her mother’s voice keeps floating out: “The Riches, across town, Filthy’s cousin—they just had a second foal. Maybe I should too, Linen Apron.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Silver puts on her glasses and bats a hoof at the wind chime hanging just outside her bedroom window. Below, hooves crunch in the gravel as the party guests begin to show up.

Silver glances again at the exquisite rose earrings balanced in her hoof. I wish I could tell her something. She could certainly get more in trade for it than anything here, but things are only worth the value we place on them, I guess. Still, I don’t want her to have any regrets. She’s elegant, cultured, beautiful. She’s everything I’m not.

I can interact with the physical world, just a little. So I reach out for a wind chime, concentrate as hard as I can, and nudge it, the tone carrying out over the crowd’s murmur. Soon enough, Apple Bloom comes trotting over.

“S-Silver Spoon?”

Silver looks up, first at the chime, and then at who called her name. “Oh, hi, Apple Bloom. I haven’t seen you since the school year ended.”

“Yeah, you doin’ okay? I tried to see if you wanted to hang out with the other girls a couple weeks ago, but the butler said you’d gone on vacation.”

“We have a cabin around here,” Silver replies.

Then Apple Bloom smiles at the chime. “I always liked those things. Reminds me of Mama.”

Immediately, Silver’s foreleg flinches. “I always liked wind chimes too. I was going to trade Mother’s old earrings for some other jewelry, but maybe I should get a new chime instead. The one I used to have blew away in a storm years ago.”

“Oh, your Mama’s not around anymore?”

Silver shakes her head, and she starts to open her mouth, but she doesn’t need to say anything. Everypony already knows about Bright Mac and Pear Butter.

“If you don’t mind my sayin’, I wouldn’t trade those. Maybe you’ll have a foal someday you’d wanna give ’em to, or you just might wish you still had ’em.” Then Apple Bloom leans in and whispers, “Nothin’ here’s as nice as ’em anyway.”

“I don’t know…”

Apple Bloom purses her lips. “I don’t… I don’t share this with many folks, but… seems like you had a complicated relationship with her?”

One of Silver Spoon’s eyebrows quirks, and she takes a step back. “That’s a lot of fancy language.”

“I have a private spot where I like to talk to Mama. AJ ’n’ Big Mac prob’ly know about it, but the only other pony who shared that with me… well, I lost her recently. We hung up a wind chime there.” Apple Bloom’s lip quivers, and for an instant, she looks as young as she did when I first met her. But there she is, and Silver Spoon too, even taller than I am.

For a moment, Silver Spoon’s eyes flick between the earrings held in her hoof, the table of jewelry, and the tinkling chime. Then she puts the earrings in her saddlebag and smiles.

“Hey, Mom,” Apple Bloom says as I watch from behind a tree. I did it. I made the memory that set up this one. Now I have to complete it.

I don’t stalk out this time. I don’t have a thousand things on my mind to scream at Apple Bloom. I do have tears running down my cheeks, though.

As before, Apple Bloom tells her mother about her day. Then comes the line I’m waiting for.

“I appreciate you comin’, Silver. It means a lot that I can share this with somepony. I don’t—” she briefly rolls her eyes up at the sky “—have anypony else. No pressure, but if you’re ready to give it a try, go ahead. It helps, I promise.”

“Okay,” Silver Spoon mumbles, then her voice rings out as clear as that wind chime. “Mom, I… I wanted to love you. I tried, I really did. But… did you ever—” a pronounced sniffle sounds “—I’m sorry, I can’t…”

I blend in with the air, settle around Silver Spoon’s shoulders, and concentrate just enough to convey a warm touch. “It’s okay,” the wind whispers to her in the sounds of the stream and the leaves and the ringing chime. “You can do this.”

“Mom,” Silver Spoon says with a tremulous breath. “I love you, but I’m not sure you ever loved me. In your own way, I think you tried, too. And I don’t know why, but I miss you.”

Apple Bloom wipes away a few tears, and I do too, but I started crying long ago. I had the luxury of knowing how this would go. They’re everything I’m not, and they need each other.

I’m not tired anymore. I’m not angry anymore. I feel complete, at last, and thank you, Princess Luna, and Dinky. I’m so happy, I think I can finally fade… away…