The Parable of the Toymaker

Chapters

Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter One
Chapter Seven

Chapter Two

The next morning, my father awoke at his usual time: an hour before the sun dawned. Coming down from the loft that contained our two bedrooms, he immediately pulled open the blinds, and went to work. He dusted the displays that held prominent examples of his craft; he swept away the lingering scraps of wood shavings that rested in the corners of the shop like dust sprites; he counted up the register, just to see if any coins had come and gone during the night; and then, as was part of his ritual, he threw open the door, a bag of bits in his hoof, and headed out to Maretime Bay to grab us breakfast.

I awoke about an hour later to the familiar smell of wood and bagels. Downstairs, I found my father at his counter, taking a file to an old carving of a duck. He did not look up at me, but did not need to, and instead pushed the paper bag filled with bagels my way. “Cream cheese is in the fridge,” he said. “We still had some left over.”

And I was more than happy to finish that container off.

While I ate, careful not to spill any seeds, I watched my father polish and refine. It was part of my morning routine. Something about watching my father casually apply an expert eye to whatever model he had chosen proved more capable of waking me up than any kind of caffeinated beverage.

Normally my father would perform this task with such focus that sometimes he forgot I was there. Today was different. Every now and then, he’d glance up, first at me, then the door, then back to the wooden duck. Then his eyes would wander to the drawer under the counter which housed the notepads with all the measurements he’d taken of various commissions. It was easy to see what he was thinking about.

“Excited?” I asked.

That caught my father off-guard, and the file slipped out of his hooves. “It’s an interesting request,” he said as he went to retrieve it.

“Uh huh.” And yet, it was more than that. My father primarily used “interesting” the same way someone might use “hot” to describe the sun or “wet” to describe the ocean. It was superfluous filler, a word used in place of silence because it was sufficiently simple. But when he said it now, I believed he truly meant it, and then some. Something about the matter intrigued him, but I couldn’t say exactly what.

Nor could I say why, in my case, I was also excited. It was more than the fact that the whole thing was a secret wrapped up in the velvet earnestness of a strange yet heartfelt request. The thought of helping to make what were essentially our tribe’s greatest enemies terrified and thrilled me, yes, but that wasn’t it, either.

As I finished eating my bagel, a name struck me: Argyle. My cheeks darkened, and I turned away to cough, hoping my father hadn’t caught my strange behavior.

My father continued to busy himself by filing, but could not keep from becoming distracted. With a somewhat childish snort of disgust, he placed the file and duck to the side. “Where’s Easel?” he grumbled. He did not wait for an answer, choosing instead to disappear into his workshop for the time being. “Do you mind finishing setting up?” he asked me before going in.

I started. “O-of course. But—”

He’d closed the door already, leaving the rest of my statement unresolved. I shrugged. Some idea was no doubt nagging him, and he would have to come out sometime, I reasoned.

There was not much left for me to do—all of the usual tasks had been completed before I had a chance to get to them. As such, all that was left to do was officially open, and also wait for Easel Chisel to turn up for work.

He arrived late in the morning, and it was like the events of yesterday hadn’t even happened. Carelessly swinging the door open to the point where the hinges squeaked in protest, he entered the shop, wearing a wide grin and carrying himself quite highly. He looked around and, after seeing me set up a few cans of paint, approached.

“Morning, Maple. Where’s your father?” he asked.

Immediately I stiffened. Easel had never failed to address my father properly, even in his more emotional moments. Something was different, all right. “He’s in the back,” I said, trying to sound carefree. “Working.” I continued to stack the cans of paint, but one eye remained on Easel.

Easel went to his station to also begin setting things up. “What on?” he asked, looking towards the closed door.

“Something of his.” I shrugged. Inwardly I felt suddenly claustrophobic. “You know how he is.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He laughed a little. “You remember when one of the customers interrupted him while he was busy shaving down a wooden penguin? Priceless! I still can’t believe that the customer still came back the next day!”

I nodded, though I did not laugh myself. “And… as I recall, the whole reason the customer interrupted him was because you said he could enter the workshop.”

Easel waved a hoof dismissively. “Eh. I thought it’d be an exception to that rule, but I guess I was wrong. Your father—”

He caught himself, stopping short, then shook his head. “Well, never mind that. Actually, there was something I wanted to ask you, Maple.”

“Me?” I tried to sound casual, even as a bit of annoyance crept into my voice. He had hidden it well, but I could still sense a bit of anger directed towards my father, though if it was for the events Easel had described or for the ones from yesterday, I could not tell.

“Yeah. There’s a movie happening in Maretime Bay later this evening. It looks interesting. Something about monsters attacking a beach-side resort. I thought I might swing by later and grab a ticket. If you want, I could grab you one, too.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. The attempt was poor, if somewhat clever. “That doesn’t really sound like my kind of movie, Easel. I think I’m going to have to pass.”

“Oh? And what is your kind of movie?”

“I don’t know. Definitely not monster ones.”

“Action? Suspense? Thriller?”

“I don’t know. Something more hopeful. I haven’t seen a whole lot of them.”

He grinned toothily at me. “That’s because you haven’t seen a whole lot of them with me.”

I frowned at him. “It’s more than that. You remember what happened the last time all of us went into town? Everypony kept commenting about my eyes.”

“Your eyes… Oh.” Easel’s ears wilted. “Right. Sorry.”

I sighed. It was a bit of a sore subject. In theory there was absolutely nothing wrong with my eyes—I saw the world all the same. But apparently mine were a little different, a little glassy, and some ponies found that disconcerting upon first glance. It didn’t help that my sensitivity to others’ emotions meant that although they approached us with politeness, their concern and anxiety towards me was as evident as though they’d spoken. The last time I was in Maretime Bay, I had to duck into the bagel shop from which my father had gotten those breakfast items in order to give myself some space from everypony. It was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

“Well… maybe something else? For another time?” Easel suggested.

I shrugged noncommittally. “We’ll see. We’re super busy as is, so I honestly doubt that either of us will have any amount of free time.”

“Right, right...”

We were quiet for a time. Easel’s entrance had left the door a little open, letting us hear the crash of the ocean. The waves sounded a little more violent today, but I chalked that up to my imagination. Yet I could not bring myself to close that door. I was afraid that the moment I left my position, Easel would steal away into my father’s workroom, and a fight would ensue.

While he was putting on his work apron, Easel said, “That Argyle creep hasn’t come back, has he?”

That question, along with the insult, took me by surprise, causing me to drop one of the cans. It landed with a harsh thud, and though it didn’t break, the resulting echo still caused me to wince. I stole a glance at the workshop. The door was still closed.

“Well?” Easel didn’t seem to notice what had happened. He was fiddling with the straps of his apron, anxious—but, as I expected, also angry.

I bent to pick up the can. “No,” I said. I almost added, “Not yet,” but I knew it was better if Easel didn’t know about what we’d arranged with Argyle.

Easel nodded stiffly. “Good. That’s real good to hear. We don’t need that kind of nonsense filling up the shop.”

I didn’t answer. His anger was at a level I’d never felt from him before, and seemed to pollute every word, making it hard to listen to him.

“You’d honestly think that he’d know better,” Easel continued. He laughed to himself. “Those types always think they do. But then you smack them with reality and they realize they don’t know as much as they’d thought.”

“Those types?” I blurted.

“Oh, yes. You know. The ‘I specialize in this one niche field so I’m suddenly somepony special and important.’ They always think they’re better than the rest of us.”

“Argyle didn’t say anything like that,” I replied. Careful though I was to keep my voice even, I nonetheless felt an ugly tremor pass through me.

“Nothing explicit, you mean. But he totally was saying it in subtext. Go out a little more, Maple,” he added with an impish grin. “You’ll see what I mean. Heck, if you want, I could even show you.”

“You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Why not? It’s not like Argyle’s around, right?”

I glared at Easel, but this had a different effect; rather than shrivel up, he simply chuckled at my reaction. “Come on,” he said, “lighten up a bit. The day’s about to start.”

I turned away with a barely disguised snort. On cue, the first customer entered the shop, and Easel changed his scorn into practiced cheerfulness. For my sake, I tried to do the same.

All day I was in two places. One was in the shop, handling orders, talking to customers, giving advice as to which model was best for their kid, what paints I used and would recommend; the other was outside, on the jetty overlooking the ocean, waiting to see those familiar white sails coming across the horizon. I wanted the boat to come sailing in, proudly, like it was the head of a royal fleet. I wanted Argyle to appear, him and his easy smile, and I wanted him to announce himself in the doorway and refute everything Easel had said about him in a way that I could not. And I wanted, surprisingly, to ask him about his dream, why he had written down all those notes, and for what purpose would these wooden figurines serve.

But this place existed only in my mind. I could not leave the shop unattended—or more accurately, in Easel’s hooves—just to stand outside and wait, no matter how much I wanted to. The best that I could do was work quickly through each customer's request and pray that doing so would push the day forward.

The only consolation through this was that we were busy, and that, because of this, Easel was unable to contribute more snide remarks. But meanwhile, my father did not leave his workshop once, not even for lunch. This was not so unusual a thing, but my curiosity grew whenever I found myself looking at the closed workshop door. He’d long since ceased making any discernible noise, which may have meant he truly was in the middle of an arduous project, or (and the thought managed to brighten my gloom momentarily) he had fallen asleep. But just as I could not leave the shop, neither could I check up on him.

Day passed into afternoon, then into evening. The customers cleared out, and as we were cleaning up, Easel looked at the workshop door. “He hasn’t come out all day?”

Sharply, I looked at him, and found his gaze stuck there. “No, I guess not,” I said.

“Hmm. Strange.”

He did not ask if my father was okay. Instead, he rested his chin on his broom, looking intently at the door, as though wanting to throw it open using only his mind. When he finally put the broom away, he shook his head, as though disappointed in my father.

“Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow?” he asked me. He did not sound particularly hopeful or upset by the prospect, and, in fact, reminded me of how my father usually used “interesting.” This seemed another phrase meant only to fill gaps of silence, though this time it was gaps of understanding instead.

“Maybe,” I replied. But I was uneasy. I could not tell what Easel was thinking, but felt something stirring in him that did not appear wholly good.

Even after he had left, Easel’s comments still haunted me. I looked out the window, watching as the ocean turned inky-purple, and thought about Argyle. It made no sense to expect him to show up just the day after he arrived, of course, but I could not help but wish he would, if only to reassure me that he was not who Easel had made him out to be.

I could see from under the workshop door a thin, pale light. I hesitated. I knew my father preferred that no one, not even me, interrupt him when he was in his workshop, but he had taken breaks all those other times. He’d never stayed in the room for so long, not even for his largest projects.

Slowly, I made my way to the door and placed my ear against it. It was with relief that I heard my father’s steady, gentle breathing. Still, I wanted to let him know that Easel had gone home. I turned the knob and pushed the door open.

My father was hunched over the workbench, asleep, like a large brown boulder in a forest. His breathing was slow, almost as methodical when he was awake, and a few snores escaped his lips. I looked past him, curious as to what had made him slip into slumber. There sat, swaddled in the soft light of the workshop, a single, miniature wooden pony, complete with a sweeping tail and mane. It was made from the finest brasswood we had, the remains of which could be seen nearby in the shavings and scraps and dust that covered all of the tools in my father’s arsenal. It was impossible to tell that the figure had ever sprung from a crude block of wood—it seemed as though it had always existed in the form that I saw now.

I was familiar with my father’s work and knew he truly was a master at it, but as I drew closer to the workbench, I began to believe that this was his finest masterpiece. The wooden pony seemed filled with a liveliness that couldn’t be contained. I could barely make out the thin lines that revealed the original tree’s many grooves and edges. There were no awkward cuts, no clearly rough sections in need of intense sanding. It was, I thought, the closest to marble wood ever could be.

Pulled by its impossible allure, I raised a hoof to inspect it up close. At that moment, my father stirred. His eyes slowly opened, momentarily drowsy, but when he saw me, a hoof outstretched, it was like somepony had pulled a cord.

“Don’t touch it!”

His voice shook me. Crying out, I stumbled back. Not seeing what was behind me, I tripped on something and fell, shaking the whole room. The wooden figure teetered, about to fall as well, but my father shot forward with surprising speed and managed to catch it in time.

Just as quickly, he was by my side, helping me to my hooves. “Are you hurt?” he asked gruffly. Concern was in his eyes.

I winced. “I'm a little sore, but I’ll be fine.” I looked questioningly at him. “What’s with you?”

He stepped away. I saw that his notepad of measurements stuck out of his apron. He caught my gaze and for some reason moved to hide it, then, sighing, gave up on the matter. “Sorry,” he said. “For a moment I thought you were somepony else.”

“If you mean Easel, he’s already gone home. It’s evening already.”

“Is it?” my father squinted through the only window available in the workshop. “So it is… How was the shop?”

“The shop was fine. We were quite busy. Even Easel was asking about you. You didn’t hear him?”

My father shook his head. “Huh,” I said, relieved. “I guess you must have really been into this.” I walked past him and returned to the workbench. “Is it what I think it is?”

He joined me at the bench. “It is. The first one, in fact.”

“I thought you were going to wait until evening to do it?”

“I couldn’t wait,” he answered simply. I giggled at his response. “Had I, it’s likely I wouldn’t have finished it until much later.”

“So it was a hard model to make?”

“Not really.” He withdrew his hoof and walked around to the other side of the table. He took out the notepad and placed it down, turning it so I could see what was written. “It’s just that our new customer had given plenty of specific requirements. Some, I had to change, but the rest worked fine.”

I flipped through the pages, examining the numbers that my father had copied down. “Shouldn’t that have made it easier, though? Most customers can’t be bothered to tell the length of even one side.”

My father seemed to hesitate. “Yes, well…” He looked down at the figure, and his eyes became distant, in a way similar but different to how they’d appear when he thought of my mother. “I suppose it would have been easier, yes.”

“Then… why did you take so long?

“…Perhaps because I wanted to make this right.”

It looked right, more than right, at least to me, but my father must have meant something else. He looked, for a second, at me, some strange expression on his face, before he returned to looking at the figure.

I also looked at it. “Who is it?” I asked in a soft voice.

“According to Argyle’s notes, it’ll be Applejack. Look at her face, closely. Do you see those dots?” I did. “They’re her freckles. She also wears a hat, which I’ll have to carve out of another block.”

My father looked at me. “You’ll be painting her?”

“I…” Why was I all of a sudden afraid to say it? Perhaps it was because, though my father did not say it, there was an enormous importance placed on this task, a holiness that I did not want to besmirch. I swallowed my fear. “Yes. I will. Once Argyle comes back. Or if…”

“He’ll be back,” my father said. “Of course he will.”

Then, as though he was cradling a child, he picked up the wooden figure and carried it over to one of the drawers. It was full of old wood, which he pushed aside to make room. “We’ll leave her here for now,” he said, “until all her friends are ready.”

“Friends? You mean, her and the others? Even the non-earth ponies?”

“Even, and especially.”

“But how do you know they’re friends?”

He did not answer. He closed the drawer and asked me to help put his tools away. Diligently I did, but his reticence bothered me. It wasn’t like him to put stock in what was essentially just feeling—that was my job.

When we were leaving the workshop, though, I noticed that he’d left the light on. “Oh,” was all he said before turning it off, but he seemed just as surprised by his thoughtlessness as me.

Chapter Three

Argyle returned at the end of the week, via boat, of course, right as we had closed. Easel had already gone home, and I was glad—his jibes had become so pin-pricky that I could barely stand in the same room as him. It seemed that Argyle not being there during the week had emboldened Easel to aggression, and the days with him had consisted largely of him disparaging Argyle’s name and research. I had tried not to let it get to me, in order not to reveal mine and my father’s secret. But that had proved exhausting, and my attempts at redirecting the conversation resulted in little progress, such that by the end of the week I had chosen instead to stew in silence, hoping that would dissuade Easel from speaking out.

Of all his comments, one thing stuck out the most. He’d said it on the last day of the week. He’d noted that my father did not come out of his workshop to talk to any of the customers. “Must be some super secretive project,” he muttered under his breath, as though not wanting me to hear; but hear him I did, and it caused a moment of panic to surge through me. But he did not investigate further. He simply shook his head, grabbed his belongings, said goodbye to me, and left. I hoped he would chalk this up only to my father’s eccentricity.

When Argyle arrived finally, it was as though all of my exhaustion was exhumed. His easy-going smile and full knapsack were welcome sights, and I could not contain my enthusiasm when I came out to greet him—I hugged him without thinking of the sailor, who watched, still amused.

“Oof! Hey, Maple. I’m happy to see you, too. How’s the shop?”

I told him that things were good, business was steady. I told him how We’d sold that old set of figures—the ones that had granted me my Cutie Mark—to a mother and her twin daughters.

Argyle smiled at these things. Then, as we entered the shop, he said, “I’m glad to hear that things are still going well. And how have you been?”

I laughed, but, for some inexplicable reason, became flustered. My mind jumped back to Easel, and I found myself wanting to tell Argyle, but thought it would be wrong to sour his jolly mood with my doubts. “I’ve been good,” I managed to say, then cringed, for it sounded so awkward to me. But Argyle didn’t comment on it.

“There you are,” came my father’s voice. We saw him come out of the workshop, his apron covered in shavings and flakes. He was smiling. “It’s good to see you again, Argyle.”

“Good to see you as well. How are you, Master Mallet?”

My father waved a hoof dismissively. “Bah, that is irrelevant. The work is what matters. Speaking of…” He held open the door and gestured us in. “Come, come.”

“Wait,” I said. “Dad, are you sure…”

“Of course I’m sure. It’s his stuff. It wouldn’t be right hiding it from him.”

“My stuff?” Argyle asked, excitement in his voice.

“Yes, yes!” My father spoke impatiently, and his gestures mirrored his tone. “Come in! Never mind the mess.”

Where there had previously been one figure on the workbench, now there were three. Each came with a uniquely styled mane and tail, and all had received the same degree of craftsmanship and care. One of them, I saw, even had a pair of wings attached to their torso, and one of her eyes hid behind her mane in a shy manner.

“Wow,” Argyle breathed. He came closer to the models. “These must be Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy!”

“Correct,” my father said. He tapped his chest proudly. “I hope you don’t mind the change in how I modeled the wings. I know in your drawings, the wings were out-spread, but I decided to keep them to her side. That ensures they won’t accidentally break.”

“I wouldn’t have thought about that. But then again, I guess that is why you’re the master.” Argyle let out a low whistle. “Honestly, this is more than I had expected. I would have been just as happy to see only one!”

“He’s been working on them every day,” I explained. Easel’s observation whispered in the back of my mind, but I shoved it aside. “Even during shop hours. It’s how he managed to get all three done.”

“I’m grateful for your commitment, Master Mallet.”

“Pshaw.” My father grunted. “Save your gratitude for when I’m finished with all six. I trust you’ve brought your work?”

“I have, but honestly I’m not sure if you’ll need them, since you took down your own reference sketches when we first met.”

“They’re not for me. They’re for my daughter. I understand you’ll be helping her paint.”

Argyle looked at me. “Well, not paint paint. But I said I’d be able to show you some colored references to help with choosing the colors.”

“I appreciate the help,” I said. I felt a strange flutter of emotion, and it took me a second to realize it was from me.

“Excellent. Maple, why don’t you and Argyle set up over there?” My father pointed to one of the tables in the workshop. “You can start painting Applejack. Oh, and one more thing.”

From a small drawer he picked out a little wooden hat. “You’ll need this for her.”

My father settled himself at the workbench, while I momentarily stepped outside to grab a few cans of paint and my palette from my room. When I returned, I saw that Argyle had already sat down, the Applejack figure placed in front of him. He was smiling, but sat a bit awkwardly, rocking back and forth on his seat a little.

When I sat down, he retrieved his journal from his knapsack and opened it up for both of us to see. He flipped past the initial reference pages to one that had a few colored photographs. They appeared to be of a stained-glass window, with simple figures in the shape of ponies taking central focus.

“These are… references? Actual references?” I was impressed.

“My research has to be thorough.” He seemed about to explain why, then stopped short. “Anyway, there you have it. I’ll let you to it, then.”

It was easy to find the right shade of orange for Applejack. I placed a glob on my palette. Then I dipped one of the brushes and held it before the figure. But I didn’t move. It seemed as though the room had shrunk. While I could see my father working out of the corner of my eye, my attention was focused on the top of the brush. But more than that, it was on the fact that Argyle sat just in front of me, so close that I could see a thin stubble starting to grow like blue foliage around his chin. I could see myself in his glasses, and this suddenly made me very aware of the fact that I hadn’t bothered to wipe either the sawdust or paint from my apron, or comb my mane after a morning breeze had disrupted it, and a thousand other minor grievances and inconveniences of the body that seemed to have been magnified by the same amount.

I put my brush down.

“Maple?” Argyle’s voice was filled with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Ah, well…” I felt a bout of weak laughter bubble up inside me. “It’s just, um… I haven’t even painted anything in front of somepony else. Aside from my dad, I mean…”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” How anypony’s smile could be so unwavering was beyond me. “You have my notes, so you should be fine. Should I go wait on the boat?”

“N-no, no! O-of course not!” There was a shrill in my voice, which I hated. “I-I don’t mind. It’s just something I’m not used to. You… you can stay.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind. I could even just wait outside the workshop, if you want.”

“It’s fine. Really!”

Somehow, I managed to convince him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll stay.”

I nodded, and picked up my brush. I attempted a few tentative strokes against the wooden, naked body. But the silence weighed heavily on me. I was hyper-aware of our breathing, of the sound of my father filing and cutting a new block of wood. I felt cramped, and couldn’t focus on painting in the slightest.

I couldn’t take it. Finally I said, “Actually…” And trailed.

“Yes?” Argyle replied kindly. “What is it, Maple?”

My cheeks darkening were not, I hoped, as obvious to him as they were to me. I swallowed. “Could… could you tell me about your research?”

Argyle blinked at me. “My research?”

“Yeah. You said you’re an archaeologist, studying ancient Equestria.” I pursed my lips. “What… what was it like back then?”

So he told me.

In that moment, I wondered if he had chosen the wrong profession for himself. For Argyle no longer seemed to have a talent only for unearthing artifacts and hidden troves of history. He was a gifted storyteller, too. He told me about the past—a past that did not seem real, could not be; a past that clashed against everything I had ever known. He told me about those six ponies, how, despite their many differences, they were friends—nopony was scared of being laser-blasted, of being aerially abducted, of being stomped to death. He told me about Twilight Sparkle, who, with her wings and horn, was an alicorn, a representation of unity between all three tribes. And he told me how it wasn’t just her and her friends. Friendship between all kinds of ponies had once existed, and even between ponies and non-ponies. This was Equestria, he said; this was who we used to be.

“It really was like that?” I asked at one point. I had been so enthralled by his story that I could not tell if my father was still in the workshop with us. I had been painting Applejack while Argyle talked, and for some reason, the color seemed more vibrant now, and her body seemed to emit a healthy glow.

“Yes,” he said. There wasn’t a trace of doubt in his voice. “All of us—all the unicorns, the pegasi, the earth ponies, and all sorts of creatures—lived together in harmony.” He smiled, but then his gaze turned wistful. He looked away, staring at the Applejack figure coming to life, and I got the feeling he was seeing something else entirely. “Can you even imagine what that must have been like?”

“To be honest, it sounds like something out of a fairy tale.”

“Hmm. Maybe. But a lot of fairy tales hold a nugget of truth in them. We just forget that over time.”

“Is that what happened?” I’d lowered my voice, now looking directly at Argyle. “Are you saying we… forgot?”

He met my gaze, and his face adopted a pained expression. “I’m not sure. All that my research has uncovered so far was that things used to be different—we were different. But as to what led up to this change…” He shrugged, smiling helplessly.

Applejack’s body was finally complete, so I consulted Argyle’s notes to view what other colors she had, then prepared them on my palette. I glanced at my father. He was still working on cutting and measuring the wood. I could not tell if he had heard our conversation. “Can I ask you something?” Argyle’s voice was so soft, I almost didn’t hear it. I nodded my assent. “Why are you doing this?”

Then he laughed. “Wait. I’m sorry. That’s not really being specific, is it? What I mean is, why did you agree to help out with this?”

“I…”

Somehow I hadn’t even considered that question before. I looked between Argyle and the figure. “I… you mean, painting? It’s… It’s what I do.”

“Very well, I might add. But that’s not quite what I meant.” He rubbed his hooves together. “I mean, why are you helping me? You and your father? Not that I don’t appreciate it, it’s just…” Again trailing, he coughed and looked sheepish. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m making a whole lot of sense.”

He was quiet, and so was I. The workshop was filled only with the sound of my father laboring.

“I guess…” I looked down at the Applejack figure. It looked smaller now. Fragile. It may have been made of sturdy wood, but even that, as evidenced, could be hacked away with the right amount of force and direction.

Argyle was looking expectantly at me. I put the brush down with a sigh. “I guess it’s just…” I frowned, trying to think.

“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” There was laughter behind his gentle voice, but it sounded a note too sour to me.

“Yes,” I admitted, “but you believe it. Don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then… then I want to believe it, too. And that’s why…”

I picked up my brush once more. I dabbed at the areas where my father had indicated her freckles, and they appeared like little glowstones. Then I changed colors, working green into her eyes. I tried to make them pop, to give them the same liveliness that had spurred Argyle to tell his story. Finally, I consulted Argyle’s notes, and found Applejack’s Cutie Mark: three apples neatly arranged on both sides of her. These I painted gingerly, like it was not sturdy wood I handled, but a real pony, prone to pain, to pleasure.

The final thing I painted was the hat my father had given me. When I was done, I placed it next to the figure. Already I could imagine how Applejack would look once everything was dried and complete, and thought that she looked as lovely as anything else. All of them would be. And perhaps they all were lovely, at one point, if what Argyle said was true.

Of course it’s true.

“I can do this,” I said, “for this.”

We were quiet for a time, though it was not as awkward or as heavy as before. I provided a few finishing touches to Applejack and showed Argyle, who nodded with sage approval. We would have to let her sit for a time in order for the paint to dry, before we could move her; so, we decided that our table would be where we’d put all the wooden figures once they were ready.

“We can move to one of the other figures, then, if you want,” Argyle said.

“Yeah. That’s a good idea.”

He made to get up and grab one of them, but I stopped him. “Argyle…”

“Yes. Maple?”

“About Equestria, and all those old stories… the myths, or if they were real… do you think we could ever go back to those times?”

He frowned for a second, looking away from me. I thought I’d upset him somehow. But then he looked back at me, and he was smiling, and something seemed to glow in his eyes. “I think, if more ponies thought like you, we definitely might.”

Chapter Four

Argyle made it a weekly habit to come and check up on us and the project itself. He came in the evenings so as to avoid interrupting our business and Easel seeing him. Each time, he came bearing gifts: stories from the old days of Equestria that I greedily ate like they were some divine fruit, a smile that could never waver in the face of uncertainty, and notes for whenever my father needed extra information. The same things would occur as they had the first time he’d returned: while my father worked, Argyle joined me at the other table, and it was there that he would tell more about what he had researched and discovered.

The past had never interested me all that much beforehand. My one significant connection to it was in the faceless form of my mother, and that had never quite bothered or interested me. The present, with all of its idiosyncrasies and rituals, kept my attention. But with Argyle it was different. I doubt I can say I was as interested as he was in unearthing old ruins and finding the truth to the mystery, but I know for certain that his passion for what came before spread to me. Sometimes, as I painted, we’d simply discuss ideas we had for why things had changed, and though these conversations were never substantiated by great amounts of evidence, I found them just as enthralling as the stories themselves. I looked forward to them and to him, and I wanted to think he felt the same way.

Yet privately I wondered what would happen after we had finished the work. Would Argyle visit regularly, perhaps during the day? Easel might take offense to that, of course, but there was also the question of why Argyle ought to visit afterwards in the first place. Several times I came to the point of posing the question to him, but each time, I hesitated, afraid, I think, of becoming crestfallen. It was far better to enjoy the moment while it lasted, and at the very least, I had the comfort of good company.

One evening, however, he told us he would be away for much longer this time around. “I’ve discovered something,” he said. He spoke with far more seriousness than I’d ever heard from him. “Something big. And I’ll need time to thoroughly explore it—time that, unfortunately, would cut into these visits.”

My father, who had been cleaning his hand-saw again, paused to consider what Argyle had said. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

Argyle’s smile was apologetic. “I really can’t say. I hope it isn’t for too long.”

“Then there is a chance we shall have completed the job before you get back.”

“That would make my return all the more sweeter, wouldn't it?”

“Indeed. My daughter, I am sure, would rather you not leave.” He looked conspiratorially at me.

“Dad!” I exclaimed with laughter—laughter that, I could tell, was far too nervous to be taken at face value. “You can’t just say that!”

“Because it’s true?”

“Never mind him,” I told Argyle quickly. “You can tell that he’s getting old. Senility always begins with the signs of somepony seeing things that aren’t there.”

Argyle’s smile became mischievous. “Oh? Then I suppose you don’t really look forward to my return?”

“That’s not—I mean, it’s not like that! You've got to go because, well—I—” And I continued to stammer out half-baked rebuttals, much to both stallions’ amusement.

“It’s fine, Maple,” Argyle said once he was done laughing. “But I will miss you. I’ve come to enjoy our little talks. It’s… it’s nice to have somepony who cares. Who believes, or wants to.”

Have somepony. Those two words made me feel light-headed, and I grinned despite knowing my father would endlessly tease me for it.

This, however, was not the only shocking decision Argyle left us with. Turning to my father once more, he placed down the journal containing all of his notes. “Master Mallet, I leave this in your care until my safe return.”

My father raised an eyebrow. “Your notes are in here, Argyle. You’ll need them.”

“I have other journals,” Argyle said dismissively. “Besides, I believe you and your daughter will need this more than me, at least for the time being.”

Though one hoof was poised over the journal, about to take it, my father would not move. “This is your life’s work. It could very well be your legacy. Parting with it, even momentarily… there is a potential sorrow here. It is not a matter to be taken lightly.”

“I am aware of that. Still, I’d like you to have it, to keep it safe while I’m away.”

“Why us? Why me?”

“Because you understand: this is my life’s work, my legacy, as you put it. You understand what it could mean, and does mean.” Argyle glanced briefly at me, then looked back at my father. “I don’t take you for a pony who would toss another’s vision aside just because it’s different. I’d like to believe you’re still the same stallion I met all those days ago, who did not say I was crazy simply because I believe in something better.”

Argyle sighed. “I won’t pretend to know all the reasons why you chose to listen, to work on my request—I won’t ask, since I believe they are yours to keep. But, I think I can depend on you. I can trust you. You, and your daughter. I’ve had no reason to think I’m wrong. I hope I never will.”

It was rare for my father to look at somepony else as though they were on equal footing with him. He was a massive stallion, after all. Rarer still were the times he could say he admired somepony else. His workers, customers, and clientele earned his respect, but only the polite, distant, obligatory kind—and it was not always the case that that respect could curtail his frustrations towards others and their perceived incompetency. Many ponies, he believed, did not truly know what they wanted, either out of him or his works, and so most ponies bothered him with their inconsiderate meekness and procrastination, their obstinate insistence on “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” over simple, direct discourse. Most ponies, then, he privately frowned upon.

Argyle was not most ponies. When my father looked at him, it was with a steady, resolute gaze, calm, keen eyes, and the faint strings of a smile tugging at his lips. And if I allowed myself to entertain the notion, I would have believed he was looking at him with a great deal of pride and love—the kind a father has for his son.

“You are not wrong,” he said. He gathered the journal in his hoof, nodding. “Thank you for entrusting us with this, Argyle.”

“And thank you for making my trust worthwhile.”

He left shortly after, a strange spring in his step—excited, I think, in the same vein as my father, by the prospect of work. I watched him go, and though it was with sadness, there was also a measure of joy in me.

His final words about my father’s reasons, however, brought our first conversation rushing back. I had told him mine, but hadn’t thought about what my father’s might be. I hadn’t thought to ask. Like Argyle, I believed them to be his own and therefore none of my business.

But when I thought about my father’s reaction—how his eyes shone with some deeper emotion—I could not deny my curiosity.

And it was with good timing, too. That night, as I lay in bed, I heard my father get out of his and walk down the stairs. The definitive sound of the workshop door opening and closing followed shortly after. Now, I believed, was a good time to ask him.

I went down quietly, the whole shop encased in a soft darkness. When I came to the door, I paused only for a second to consider knocking, before I decided not to.

Inside, my father was inspecting our combined work. All six pony models had been carved into complete existence. Five of the ponies had been fully painted. The hardest for me had been Rainbow Dash, on account of her prismatic mane necessitating a far more careful consideration of her colors.

I watched as he bent low so as to examine her up close. He had Argyle’s journal open, and consulted the pages with the model. He nodded in approval at my work, and I felt myself swell with pride.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he said.

I was sheepish only for a moment. Then I went and joined him at the table. Above us, the light was starting to flicker, and a thought—We should change that soon—came and went.

“We can never show these off,” my father said. He sounded sad, but in the way that one is when one realizes a sweet candy will never be as sweet as it is in the mind.

“Even so,” he continued, “we can be proud of them. Of what we did.”

That brought to mind Argyle’s words. Before I could stop myself, I blurted, “Why do you care so much?”

He looked at me, mouth agape, and I worked quickly to redeem myself. “I-I mean, I care, too! It’s not that I think it’s wrong or—”

My father’s laugh, booming and heartfelt, filled the workshop like an expanding hot air balloon. For a while, it seemed all he could do was laugh. I would have been embarrassed, maybe even hurt by him laughing at me, were I not so rendered surprised by the whole event.

Finally, though, he did calm down. Wiping his eyes, he looked at me, and though he still had that thick, white mass of a mane, for some odd reason he looked twenty years younger, as though laughter had transformed him into the stallion who, in a time far beyond the scope of my understanding, had fallen in love with my mother.

“Don’t tell me Argyle put you up to this,” he said, still smiling.

“He didn’t!”

“Well, I suppose it was inevitable that you would ask me that. I had expected you to ever since I said yes to this project. But you never did, so I assumed you just didn’t even entertain the question. Until now, of course.”

The sixth figure was of Twilight Sparkle—the “alicorn,” I remembered Argyle saying. Unpainted, she stood out from the colored rest, her eyes blank and staring without purpose. My father took her into his hooves in order to wipe off a bit of sawdust using the edge of his apron, and he did so with a great deal of caution and timidity, the kind, I think, reserved for convalescence homes to cleanse patients suffering from age. He put her down, still silent.

“I’ll paint her tomorrow,” I said, but all I received was a terse nod. It appeared he would not answer my initial question. Disappointed, I began to turn away.

“Your mother was a very special pony,” he then said, causing me to stop. “Have I told you that before?”

“Um. A bit, yeah.”

“I think I can’t express exactly what I mean by that, though. ‘Special’ does not come close to fully rendering her.” He narrowed his eyes, staring into Twilight’s eyes as though the past lay truly in there. “You have her eyes, though, so that may help you imagine partially what I mean.”

“Dad?” I was confused, but decided to let him keep talking. This did not sound quite like all the other allusions to my mother he’d seldom given.

“That ability you have? The one that Easel doesn’t believe in? Your mother had that, too, though it seems to me to have been to a far lesser extent. I think it’s something that skips a generation, at least in terms of intensity.”

“You mean, she also could feel…?”

My father nodded. “Actually, I think that’s how she figured out I loved her before I worked up the nerve to tell her. It made it easier for the both of us to say yes, though, which is good.”

He looked up at the ceiling, letting out a sentimental sigh. “So long ago… What is time if not life passing? Ah, what am I saying…” He shook his head, paused for thought, then looked back down. “The point, or the one that I’m trying to make, is that your mother wasn’t just special to me; she was just a special pony overall. And she had some special things to say about the world.”

My father left Twilight alone and walked over to the other figurines, inspecting them again. He was restless, no doubt because he recognized this was the most he’d ever spoken of my mother, and did not want to mince his words. “I heard and have been hearing what Argyle’s been telling you. About the past, Equestria, friendship between the tribes, harmony. It’s all very unbelievable, as I’m sure you and he know.”

“Oh.” My ears wilted. “I guess… I guess you don’t believe in that kind of stuff?”

But my father, to my surprise, shook his head rapidly. “I do, actually. Not because I’ve met pegasi or unicorns who don’t want to abduct me or fry my brain, but because this kind of talk was something your mother had said, too.”

My eyes went wide. “Really? You mean, she believed in those stories, too?”

“Oh, no. I doubt she ever heard of the stuff Argyle’s been sharing. I certainly hadn’t until he came. But, she believed in the idea that… that something was wrong about what we’d been told. Maybe it was because her ability to feel others’ emotions meant she could understand the difference between a fear supported by reality and a fear that’s nothing more than an empty yawn.” He frowned, furrowing his brow; his own wording confused him. “Or, something to that extent. Do you understand?”

“I think so…”

“Your mother, she—she believed in something else that the ponies of our time did not. That although all of us were different, deep down, we really weren’t. We are all afraid. And we all want not to be. And she told me this every night after we’d confessed our feelings for one another, like it was some kind of prayer. ‘We can’t have been meant to be separated forever,’ she’d say. ‘Why else are we so capable of love? If there is so much potential in us, it makes no sense just to keep that love to ourselves. We must love the world. We ought to try and love each other.’”

A pang of regret entered his voice. “I can’t say I’d always felt the same, or that I could say I did. If you think I’m poor with my words, your mother could speak in riddles derived from cookbooks. I don’t think I always understood her. Just that I felt I could, one day. But I’m an old stallion, though. It’s hard for me to understand new things. I’m old, old, old, and always have been, even when I was young. I can’t always see into the future when I’m stuck in the past of the present.”

“You’re not that old.”

“Mmm.” He looked at me strangely. He was smiling, but an unsettling sadness tinted his smile. “How often do children think their parents immortal? Or unaging? Forever young? I wish I could say that and believe in it, too.”

He turned away from the workbench. He went into the closet and emerged with a broom. Standing on his hind legs, he began to sweep, and as he did so, he continued talking. “I guess I never forgot what your mother believed in, even if it never made sense to me. I could never forget your mother, mind, but that sentiment—it’s been stuck in my skin since then. When Argyle came in and started talking, it was… almost like hearing her words one more time.”

He fell silent, fell into the simple work of cleaning. After a moment’s pause, I went into the closet, grabbed the dust pan, and fell into the routine, too. He would sweep a little section, gathering the chips and flakes in a little pile, and then I would come and collect them to throw them away. After a time, my father grew tired, and so we switched tasks. I would sweep, he would collect the remains and dispose of them. In this way we managed to clean the whole workshop, without a word shared between us, the night growing darker as seen through the single window, the copper light flickering intermittently, and the wooden figures just as quiet, looking over us, eternally.

When we had finished, we stood in the center of the room, looking over our work. I felt a great deal of satisfaction, in both the cleaning and the painting, and I could tell my father was feeling similarly.

When I glanced at him, I thought, for whatever reason, that he looked different—or rather, that he seemed to have several different appearances all at once. One was how I’d always viewed him: that sober, grumpy, thick-tongued toymaker who cycled through clients and assistants like the seasons themselves. Another was new: young, fresh, a vision of who my father had been, one that I could see through the glimpses which rarely, if ever, broke through his stoic shell. And still, there was yet another one: one that I could not truly see fully, nor understand, yet which, I felt, was the one that Argyle had seen all those days ago, the one that had convinced him to entrust this impossible dream to a stranger and his daughter.

“Thank you, Maple,” my father abruptly said. I looked at him. In the galaxy of his eyes I saw the wooden figures looking back at him. I thought, all of a sudden, of a telescope that stretched straight and true into the past.

“For what, Dad?” I managed to ask.

“For giving me a chance to talk about this. About her.” My father rubbed the back of his head. “I think I’d always wanted to—talk about whatever your mother believed in. But I could never find the right words.”

He touched the back of my head, then, with somewhat awkward strength, pulled me close for a hug. It was natural that I should reciprocate.

***

I think it was that night when I realized I loved Argyle. It was a simple admission, made only in the silence of my heart, and that simplicity and voiceless nature was what surprised me. The old stories—not the ones that powered Argyle’s dream, but the older ones, the first stories—said love was a powerful and all-encompassing force. They said when it was found, it was like a certain kind of magic took hold—a magic different from the kind that made fearsome monsters of unicorns and loathsome predators of pegasi. A purer magic, in some ways.

I didn’t believe those stories, because I knew what love was. It was the thing that had brought my parents together, and the thing which, upon my mother’s passing, had silvered my father’s hair. Their love had kept each other young, and my father’s love for my mother had kept him grounded. But love was also just a chemical. A series of reactions concocted in the brain of a pony as though it were an oven. And as with any chemical reaction, if improperly doled out, the reaction could prove volatile. When the old stories spoke of how one love drove a pony into madness, or had felled an entire kingdom, I did not believe them when they explained it was because love had magical properties. It was all chemical, and in those poor characters’ cases, all tragic, too.

But Argyle, as was always the case with him, challenged that belief. If he had a hidden talent for being a storyteller, then I also thought he had one for turning impossibilities into eventualities. That was what love was—an impossibility always tending towards eventuality. And it was all so simple! I loved him—and that was that. There was no need to rationalize it, nor provide a reason for it. I loved him because I loved him, without understanding, without needing to fully understand, in the same way that my mother had loved my father, and vice versa. And as I lay in my bed, looking up at the ceiling, at the dark outline of the light fixtures, I repeated that admission to myself until it had, impossibly, both lost and gained its meaning.

But it wasn’t enough just to keep that to myself, was it? Somepony had to know. Why else do we love the world, and all the things in it that make us happy?

A bold thought came to me—I would tell Argyle when he returned. Yes! He would come by the sea, as he had, as he always had. He would come to the shop under my guidance. He would see the completed set and be absolutely delighted. And then, then I would tell him!

Oh, it is easy to get swept up in those romantic notions, even when you are aware of their superficiality. But maybe that does not matter. Maybe it is those grandiose prophecies that tell us what love is. An impossibility tending towards eventuality. Like a vision of a past out of our reach for now, until we let ourselves believe in it for a moment, perhaps not forever—if we let ourselves live in the impossibilities of our lives until they become realities themselves.

I loved Argyle. I didn’t care to wonder if he felt the same about me. I loved him, and, yes—I would tell him so the next time I saw him. The thought warmed me, and so I settled in for a comfy sleep.

Chapter Five

The storm was what awoke me. A boom, distant but throbbing, sounded off from across the bay. I sat up with a start, confused at first until I glanced sharply out the window. The rain was pelting the window in a thick sheet of percussion notes, and a gray sky, vast like a single cloud, covered everything.

Then came another sound—the front door swinging open and crashing against one of the shop’s walls. Something stomped through, and because the floor was wooden and the house all quiet, their hoofsteps echoed resoundingly throughout the little area. There was a brief pause where no sound save for the rain occurred, and then I heard something like metal groaning. By then I’d already gotten out of bed, confusion transforming into dread, because I’d realized that the latter sound was unmistakably the workshop door being pried open.

I raced out of the room, only pausing briefly to look through my father’s bedroom door. Somehow he was still consumed by a deathlike sleep, as though our conversation from the night before had thoroughly exhausted him. I left him and galloped down the stairs, not caring if anyone heard.

The front door caught my attention first. It had been forced open, and now dangled on its hinges, fluttering in the wind. Outside lay shrouded in gray and rain, and the wind was shrill and scared. I saw a trail of muddy hoofprints leading from the door, around the counter, and into the workshop, and from inside I heard a male pony’s voice shout, “I knew it!”

There was no time to hesitate. I burst through the workshop door.

Almost as quickly as I’d entered, I came to a startling stop. “Easel?!”

Easel Chisel whipped around. His raincoat was soaked to the quick, and his unkempt mane spilled out of his hood. The rain dripped off of the rim of his hood and landed on his muzzle, which was twisted up into a wild snarl. In one hoof he had his bag. In the other, taken from an open toolbox, was a hammer, flashing dangerously in the copper light of the room, poised for striking.

Behind him were the wooden figurines—all six of them, even the unpainted Twilight Sparkle. I looked at them, then the hammer, and realized that my father and I had completely forgotten to put them away; we’d been too wrapped up in our conversation about my mother.

I swallowed. “Easel, what are you doing?”

He scoffed. “What am I doing? I should be asking you that! What on Equestria are these supposed to be?!”

He pointed the hammer at the figures. I cringed when the tip nearly toppled Fluttershy. “They’re… they’re just toys.”

“Just toys? Are you insane? You’ve got two pegasi, a unicorn, and some weird… hybrid monster in the whole lot of them!”

“E-even so, they’re just toys, Easel!”

He stared at me. His bewilderment was enough to make me dizzy, as was his disbelief. “Do you really take me for an idiot, Maple?!”

“N-no, o-of course not, I just—”

Without thinking, I looked past him at the six figures, afraid. He caught my gaze and returned to looking at them. I could almost hear the gears in his head working overtime in order to piece together the whole mystery. And with a snarl, he arrived at the answer. “This is what that Argyle creep was asking for, isn’t it?”

Seeing no way out, I could only affirm.

“Your father… I thought he knew better than to listen to that garbage. Don’t tell me I was wrong!”

“What are you even doing here, Easel?” I said, trying to divert the conversation. “You’re not even set to work today! And it’s definitely too early for you to be here!”

Yet he wouldn’t look at me. He continued to glare at the figures, his hoof holding the hammer shaking. “I knew something was up,” he muttered. Then in a louder voice, he said, “It didn’t make any sense why your father kept hiding away in the workshop for these past several weeks. I wouldn’t have thought anything about it had he not kept at it, and had not a few customers started asking some questions. And then there was you.”

Here, he finally looked at me. What I saw made me flinch. Unbridled contempt billowed out of him, but it was so vast in scope that I could not tell if it was directed at me, my father, both of us, Argyle, the figures, or everything. “Something was off about you, too. The way you behaved, like you wanted to rush through every order, and how you’d sometimes just stare at the workshop door, never going in. Surely, I thought, you’d noticed it, too, that your father was acting strangely? But you never did anything about it. At first I thought that was because you didn’t want to pursue the matter, but then I realized there was an even greater possibility that you were actually aware of whatever was going on.

“Yesterday, when I was in Maretime Bay grabbing some food, I overheard something equally strange. One of the sailors was talking about having to make a weekly trip to our shop in the evening.” I almost asked what Easel meant by “our” shop. “It didn’t take me long to figure out somepony was stopping by, and had been doing so for quite some time… and notably, in the hours when I wasn’t working. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

“So, I decided that I’d stop by before anypony else was awake and see if I could discover anything. Just my luck it decided to storm today! Those hinges to the front door were rusted over, so I had to force it open just to let myself in.”

Inwardly I was cursing myself. I had been foolish; now that Easel had laid it out, I recognized our behavior as painfully obvious.

He took an advancing step forward, his head slightly bowed, and I stepped involuntarily back. Something hit my hind leg, and a quick glance behind me revealed it was one of the brooms.

“So. What gives?” Easel demanded. “If this is that Argyle’s creep’s doing, how’d he get your father to work on it? Was it money? Blackmail? Did he threaten somepony? Threaten you?”

“Threaten me?” I said incredulously. “He’d never!”

“Then why? Why are these… these monsters… in the workshop?”

“They’re not monsters!”

I hated how I sounded, how petulant, childish, woefully insistent. But for whatever reason, that declaration caught Easel off-guard. He stepped back, the hammer momentarily drooping. “What are you talking about?”

Sensing a potential opening, I decided to lay everything out. “I’m sorry we kept this a secret from you, Easel, but honestly, with how you reacted when Argyle first came here, how could we not? You were already hostile to the existence of unicorns and pegasi—how would you react to what Argyle had uncovered about them, how they really were?”

“What are you…”

“We weren’t always so divided. We used to be friends. Something happened, something made us all afraid of each other. But unicorns and pegasi aren’t the monsters you make them out to be. They never were.”

I looked at him, trying to feel whether my words were having any kind of impact. But the storm was so loud and distracting that I could barely focus on what I was saying. “Argyle believes we could one day be friends again. And I believe him. And so does my father. That’s why these are in the shop. Because we believe. Can you, Easel? Put aside what you think you already know and tell me: do you really want to go on thinking that this is how things have to be?”

He was quiet, unable to keep an even gaze with me. Slowly he turned to regard the figures, but the hammer was no longer held ready. I thought that I’d succeeded, and let out a breath. Thunder shook the whole shop, and the light bulb above us flickered and wavered. Craning my neck, I tried to hear if my father had awoken, but he didn’t seem to have. A coolness settled in me, one that was disarmingly calm.

When Easel next spoke, however, that coolness evaporated under the heat of barely restrained fury. “You believe that nonsense?!”

It was like I’d actually been physically struck—I’d never felt him so strongly before. “I-it’s not nonsense!” I protested. “I-it’s true, every word of it!”

He slammed his hammer down on the table, missing the figures by a breath and causing them to jump and teeter. A startled gasp escaped me. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Easel spat. “The Maple I knew would never let some two-bit stranger’s ideas infect her. Us? Friends with unicorns, with pegasi? Only the mad would think that would be ever possible!”

“Easel, wait—”

He glared at me. “That Argyle guy must have put you and your father under some kind of deep delusion for you to defend him like this. It must be the fault of these figures, I’ll bet. Some powerful magic’s taken hold of you both.” His lips had curled into a twisted, triumphant smile, like a coyote’s. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll free you in a jiffy. Just as soon as I do this!”

“Easel, no!”

He raised his hammer, ignoring my cries. But I couldn’t let him do this—I wouldn’t!

Without thinking, I twisted around, grabbed the broom, and threw it. Easel turned just in time to see it fly towards him. With a startled cry, he ducked, but the broom still succeeded in knocking the hammer from his hoof.

“Are you crazy, you stupid—”

I didn’t let him finish. I charged and threw my body against him with all my might. Carrying all of those heavy paint cans day-in and day-out had resulted in a fair bit of strength in my limbs, and I managed to knock him to the ground. We rolled away from the table, and I began to wail on him with reckless abandon. I wasn’t even aware I was crying.

But Easel was strong. He managed to kick me in the stomach, driving the air from my lungs. My balance now upset, I couldn’t prevent him from throwing me off. I landed against one of the shelves, pain erupting across my back. Stars swirled in my vision.

He was moving to stand, shaking all over. The hammer was gone, and Easel looked for it in vain. He let out a disgusted snort. “Fine! Then I’ll—”

As I struggled to stand, Easel grabbed the six figures and shoved them into his bag. Shooting a withering glance my way, he turned and galloped out the door.

“No!” I forced myself to my hooves and ran after him.

Once outside, I soon realized that this was the worst storm I’d ever seen. The wind battered down the trees and shook the leaves and branches loose like a foal hitting a piñata over and over again. Spears of rain soaked through my fur and muddied the entire land, making it difficult to run without slipping. All was dark and gray, but the ocean was perhaps in the worst state. Pillars of waves rose up like behemoths from an untold time and slammed against the beaches and cliffs, spewing frothy breaths of foam and roaring with a fury unmatched, and each hit, it seemed, risked slicing our outcropping off from the mainland.

Easel was a faint silhouette struggling to run through it all, and I was similarly unable to find my footing. Water seemed to come from all sides; I regretted not having the foresight of grabbing a coat. As I swiped at my face, trying to continue after Easel, I remembered something Argyle had told me: in Equestria of old, the pegasi had controlled the weather. Storms rarely were this bad, and only the scattered accounts of a certain Storm King invasion revealed any similarly chaotic weather phenomena. The memory was so absurd, I would have laughed. But instead, I coughed; I sputtered; I gasped for breath—and pressed onward. I didn’t bother shouting; Easel would not have heard me, and even if he did, he would not have listened.

Just as I feared I would lose him, a tree, on the verge of collapse, was finally struck down by a mighty burst of air. It landed in front of Easel, slowing him down long enough for me to close the distance. “Easel, stop!” I cried.

He whipped his head around, saw me, then darted away before I could grab him. The tree had blocked off the road that eventually led to Maretime Bay, forcing Easel to instead take a path that led him to the edge of the outcropping. It seemed that the storm picked up, then—the wind screamed in my ear, and the rain gushed and throbbed in some terrible, spastic, percussive dance. I began to shiver so uncontrollably, I nearly lost my balance. Exhaustion quickly crept up on me.

And it must have also crept up on Easel, for, after much slipping, sliding, and maneuvering, he came to a stop at the cliff’s edge. I was about to reach him, when, panting heavily, he grabbed the bag holding the wooden figurines and held them over the ocean. “Not another step!” he shrieked. “Or otherwise say goodbye to this junk!”

My heart leaped into my throat. I stopped coming towards him. “Easel, please, wait! You don’t have to do this—”

“Shut up, already!” He was looking at me with such an intense hatred, it was like he was poisoning me from the inside out. I felt sick and nauseous. And the wind, which threatened to steal the bag from Easel and toss it into the ocean itself, only further contributed to my condition. “Shut up, shut up, shut up and listen, damn it!”

He choked and spat, eyes brimming with that hatred, freezing me in place. “You should be thanking me for what I’m about to do! Don’t you get that?!”

“What you’re doing is just madness!” I shouted back. Another bout of nausea struck, however, and I had to close my eyes and lower my head, trying to fight it.

It was then that I noticed that the ground below Easel looked heavily eroded. A tiny mudslide was beginning to form, and the rain continued to mine a ditch into it. Each time that Easel adjusted himself in order to compensate for the wind’s strength, the ground looked like it was in danger of crumbling. Every movement of his also brought him closer to the edge of the cliff.

“Easel, wait, the ledge, you’re too close—”

“Why won’t you listen to me?!” he shouted. There was an ugliness to his face, a mix of profound anger and grief that could only mean madness. “I’m just trying to protect the business! Protect you, that’s all! That Argyle creep, he’s bad news—why am I the only one who sees that?!”

I stared at him. He wasn’t making any sense, teetering into strange territories of words that could never explain themselves to me.

I took another step. This time, he did notice, and he stepped backwards, apparently unaware of how close he was to the edge. “S-stay back! I’m warning you!”

Two things seemed to happen at once.

The wind reached its highest speeds yet. I fell to the ground, clutching at the dirt, trying not to get blown away. Meanwhile, behind Easel, the ocean heaved its strongest wave and struck the cliff with the force of an earthquake. The ground rumbled. Then it cracked apart like someone had wedged a crowbar into it and pulled. Easel, already stepping backwards, fell on the piece splitting off from the rest. His body pitched backward as a result, and, in a last-ditch attempt to save himself, he thrust both front hooves out to grab onto something.

But there was nothing there. Instead, the bag slipped off of him, falling towards land, while Easel fell and vanished before the cliff face. I don’t think I even heard him scream.

It happened all so quickly that by the time I’d recovered, Easel was already gone. Yet by some miracle, the bag had landed right in front of me. Rapidly, I picked it up, ignoring the shivering of my hooves, the mud that clung to my fur, and the sickening sensation in my gut. I checked the bag’s contents.

All of them were there. Safe and sound, if a little wet.

I know I should have stayed a moment longer, if only to see if Easel had somehow survived. But once more, my attention was diverted elsewhere. The wind changed direction yet again, picked up its speed, and tore roots from their fledgling foundations—plants, brushes, and trees alike.

I turned just in time to watch, in abject terror, as a massive, dead tree shot through the shop’s top floor—right where my father slept.

Chapter Six

Later they would say it was the worst storm disaster that Maretime Bay had faced in recent memory. The ravaged coast led to more than ten miles of beaches being swept away overnight. In the town itself, though many of the brick and sandstone buildings remained standing, they were nevertheless damaged by the torrential downpour of wind and rain. Windows shattered, and the glass shards littered the streets in such a way that, in one area, you could walk from one shop to the next without once touching the ground. Entire balconies were ripped away and flung to all corners of the world. Hedges and shrubbery that had long been maintained were uprooted and tossed aside with the same offhand cruelty a foal might take to an anthill.

It was fortunate, however, that, aside from a few bruised and battered bodies, no one suffered a deadly fate in that town. Damages to buildings and roads could be repaired with time, and earth ponies are always capable of hard, tedious, but ultimately rewarding work. That fortune did not extend to those of us who lived separate from the town.

Of all the victims, two did not live to see the sun again. One was Easel Chips, whose sea-swept body was never recovered. The other was my father.

I was the first to find him. Entering the shop, I found that a steady stream flowed down the stairs, entering from the gap that the tree had just opened in the roof. The power had gone out, but as I trudged determinedly upwards, I thought with no small amount of apprehension that the water seemed more viscous and thick than was appropriate. The tree, like some terrible arrow, pointed upwards in the direction of his room, its great trunk splintered and its branches scattered all across the ruined floorboards.

“Dad!” I cried, my voice hoarse. Twice I slipped on the stairs, banging my knees against the wood. The bag jostled against me. “Dad! Are you all right?”

No answer came. Shivering, I finally reached the top of the stairs. The flung tree had landed in my room, having barreled through the walls. In the sizeable opening left in its wake, the wind howled with an unholy note of vengeance.

My father’s bedroom door was partially torn down. It hardly stood up to my weakened hooves. A skeletal thud sounded with its collapse. And on the other side lay a sight that nopony should ever have to see.

Amid a crumbling mess of mortar, shattered wood beams, displaced roof tiles, and a slowly yet steadily growing puddle, was my father. He was unconscious. A pronounced bump protruded from his head, and I could see a trickle of blood trailing down from his scalp to his neck. His once pure white mane was dirtied beyond all recognition.

My voice shattered upon that sight. A strangled cry, barely equine, escaped my lips, and I threw myself upon him. He stirred, and a groan—impossibly weak—rose out of his body like a steam engine’s final breath. He opened his eyes but could not focus them on me.

“Dad!”

“Maple?… Where… what happened…?”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m right here, Dad, I’m right here!” I clutched his hoof in one of mine, but to my horror, I could barely feel it. I was either too cold, or he was. In his other hoof was Argyle’s journal, and by some miracle, it looked to have been kept dry and intact.

He noticed my soaked appearance. “What happened to you?”

“I… I ran. After Easel.” In halting gasps I recounted what had happened only minutes before, trying to look everywhere but the blood.

My father shifted his head; it was an attempt at a nod. “I heard… crashing. Thought someone had broken in. Meant… meant to go and confront them, but…” He coughed up spit and blood. “Did you…”

“Y-yes! I got them!” I showed him the bag and its contents. “See? They’re all here. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle…”

“Good. Good. And, Easel…”

I couldn’t answer. I hung my head, too ashamed to even cry.

His hoof came up and touched my face. For a moment, a familiar strength emanated from him, and he spoke with absolute conviction. “It’s not your fault, Maple.”

“But—I could have stopped him sooner, and now—”

“Shh. It’s not your fault. It was bound to happen.”

I looked at him. He sighed. “I knew he might find out, one way or another. But I didn’t think…” When he fell silent, a cold spike of fear stabbed my heart. I shook him, hoping he wasn’t… And when he coughed, fresh relief flooded my system. “Maple,” he gasped.

“Dad?”

“You… you have to finish them. The wooden figures.”

“D-dad, wait, never mind those now. I have to go get help—”

“No, sweetheart.” He craned his neck, searching for me. His eyes were glossy. “It’s… done. The figures…”

“Dad, please—”

“Listen,” he hissed, as though every utterance tore his body apart. He brought the journal up and pushed it into my chest. “Don’t you see? This whole affair—it’s bigger than you, me, and even Argyle. We have to see it through. You have to.”

Finally, he managed to find my face. His eyes were trained fully on me, in one final burst of clarity. “Promise me that you’ll see it through. Please.”

I stared at him, my vision growing blurry with tears. I barely heard either the rain or the wind over the screaming in my head. My father stared back, but he was already losing focus.

I wiped my face. “O-okay,” I said shakily. “I… I promise, Dad. I’ll do my best.” Then, gingerly, I took the journal and placed it into the bag with all the figures, feeling how heavy it was.

He smiled at me. “I know you will. I love you, Maple.”

His head fell. His eyes fluttered, then closed. The wind slowed, the rain paused, and there was a silence like all the world had slipped away.

***

The terrible memories of that terrible night, and of those terrible days that followed, pounded repeatedly inside my head. Maretime Bay remembered to send a team to check on us after they had cleared the road. But there was no need. All they found was a husk of a toymaker’s shop, wet and moldy and smelling like a cellar, and the daughter-turned-orphan, shivering and cold beyond all feeling. They gave me blankets and something warm to drink. No one asked about my father. But they all knew, and though they tried to hide their pity, they could not hide it from me.

They volunteered to help clean up the place. I refused them. For one, I did not like the idea of strangers coming in and possibly snooping around our shop. And for another, I sensed that no amount of work would ever clean the stains and scars left upon my home.

At the very least, I accepted their help in burying my father in a small plot of land just behind the shop. He still rests there, next to my mother.

Though I had promised my father to finish the task, I could barely stand to even look at those figurines. I kept them tucked away in some corner of the workshop, away from all eyes, even my own. The workshop itself had not escaped damages. Water had broken through the walls, and these would have to be repaired before I could address either the shelves that clutched at the nails barely holding them in place or the wallpaper that peeled away from the walls like loose rattlesnake skin. All that ruin made for easy company, and also for an easy excuse not to work, for if everything lay in a squalor so deeply infested that no amount of cleaning could ever hope to contain it, then there was no point in even trying.

For days I sat outside the workshop, staring at all our wares. Miraculously, though the shop’s walls and floor would have to be replaced, most of our items remained untouched. Many had survived the storm—thanks, no doubt, to my father’s expertise. But they all seemed ugly to me, deceitful. Some of our loyal customers came by to check on me, but I regarded them in the same way. Some attempted to speak with me, to offer their condolences, but I brushed them off in a dumb stupor. Finally they understood and left me alone.

At some point I actually considered throwing away the figures, as Easel had intended. What good could they do? Even if they were real and their stories really did happen, it didn’t seem to matter. They were dead. What good could they possibly do? Wouldn’t they just be taking up space? Far better to be rid of them. All they gave me were painful memories.

Just as I was about to follow through, though, Argyle’s letter arrived. It was short and sloppily written, like he had been shaking all over when he wrote it:

Have heard terrible news. On way back now. So sorry.

I was only somewhat comforted by the knowledge that he’d be returning. But though it was miniscule, his letter reminded me of why I had begun helping him, and what I had felt. Such memories came with the bitterness of grief, yet still they glowed with a rare warmth, a gleam of hope in the darkness.

Leaning against the workshop door, I read the letter again. I looked up, and saw it was sunset already. I remembered when Argyle first arrived, and I remembered his questions, his calmness, the way he made my father look, the way he made me feel.

I remembered my promise.

Shakily, I stood, hoofing the letter aside. I turned and faced the door. It had survived that night completely unscathed, and looked back at me without a shred of guilt or vindication—not that I would have expected any. Letting go of a breath, I gently opened the door.

I did not immediately go to work. I paused, first to regard the room and its condition. Aside from my placing the bag there, I had not touched anything, and so found it in the same state of disrepair it had been in when Easel had entered. It saddened me to see my father’s pride and joy like this.

The broom lay where it had fallen. I held it in my hooves, thinking about how, only a short while ago, my father and I had cleaned up this place together. The memory caused fresh tears to well up in my eyes. I wiped them away.

“I promised,” I whispered to the room.

And so I set myself to work. Taking the broom, I worked in a parallel line, sweeping from one side of the room to the next. Dust and debris rose up and were brushed to the side. When that was done, I hoisted all the garbage and deposited them in bags to be thrown out later. Next, I took a dust pan to the tables and cleared them off, ignoring the soreness that pervaded throughout my body, especially my back, where I had fallen. My father’s toolbox was opened, the items gently pulled out, scrubbed, cleaned, and wiped down before they returned to their spots, and I handled each with the same care he had afforded to the models, until they looked brand-new. I took the collection of work aprons, bundled them up, and placed them in a bucket of hot water, then used a steel-wool sponge to remove the stubborn dust particles that had, for years, sat like greedy flies on each garment. When I cried over this, I did so in silence, knowing that my father would have understood: for the pain in my heart was not as powerful as the love, and the difference in measurement was what resulted in these tears. And when I had finished cleaning them, I drew a line out of the side of the shop and hung the aprons from it to dry, and along the way my tears dried, too.

The process took up the better part of that sunset-driven evening. Yet, surprisingly, I was not tired. The world dwindled away into a dark and forgetful slumber while I remained in the workshop, seeing only by the glow of an oil lamp.

I took out all six figures and the journal. Twilight Sparkle stared at me through lifeless eyes. Yes, I thought. This was where I’d start. This was what I would finish.

I do not remember much else of that night. Perhaps it is best that I don’t. If I worked happily or sadly through it, if I cried or smiled—the mind has a habit of swapping back and forth through the extremes of emotions. And sensitive as I was to the emotions of others, in that room, alone, with nothing but those wooden ghosts to talk to, I was even more sensitive to my own. I believe it was best for me to not consciously be aware of them, if only so that I could fulfill my promise—a moment’s pause, a second of distraction, and my grief would have overrun me, and nothing would be done to cure myself of the sickness that comes with the relief and sorrow of having survived, of having lived and loved.

And although I worked in total silence, my face paled by the little oil lamp, I did not feel alone. The figures kept me company, and I could almost imagine them talking to me while I painted Twilight Sparkle. I could not tell you if I knew their voices distinctly, just that it seemed that I heard them in my imagination, like echoes of the unknown past that I interpreted into the tragic present. And in between those imaginary voices, I thought I could hear, could feel, my father nearby, watching and nodding with quiet approval, coaching me through why he had carved the wood in a certain way, the importance of craftsmanship, and more. Of course, I knew this was just my memory coming to erratic life before me. But it seemed to me that the line between what was remembered and what was lived was beginning to blur. Remembering the past and living the present seemed impossible to disconnect. One did both by doing both.

In any case, at some point I must have finished, for when I awoke the next day, still in the workshop, the friendly face of Twilight Sparkle was looking down upon me.

At the same time, I heard somepony furiously knocking on the front door. And a familiar voice: “Maple? Maple, it’s me! Argyle! Are you in there?”

The spell of sleep was broken. I stood and, in a few short steps, exited the workshop and approached the front door. Argyle stood on the other side, and when I opened the door, he stepped back in momentary surprise.

I tried to smile at him, but I was too tired. “Hello, Argyle.”

He only hesitated for a second before rushing forward and hugging me. No words were said, nor could be said. I closed my eyes and hugged him back. I thought I could cry then, but found I was simply too tired to shed anything more.

When eventually we broke our hug, he could only look sorrowfully at me. “I’m sorry, Maple,” he said. “I… I should have come sooner, but mail doesn’t travel that quickly through the Ponyville Badlands and—”

“It’s all right,” I automatically said.

“It isn’t,” he replied. I knew he was right.

We went inside. For half a moment it was like that very first day, but that moment quickly passed. I told Argyle in a subdued tone about what Easel had done. He was quiet in turn, then asked, in a somewhat guilty tone, what had happened to the figurines and the journal.

“They’re in here,” I said, and showed him into the workshop.

The two of us stood before those six, as silent as they were. I felt strange. I was proud, and yet, felt empty looking at them. The joy and ardor I had felt previously looking upon any one of them was missing from me. Apathy was all that remained.

“They’re perfect,” Argyle said. I believed him, and yet also I did not—not fully.

“Who will they be for?” I asked.

“My daughter. She was just born, actually, sometime before I first came here.”

He did not need to say more. And despite the massive implications, I found I was not at all surprised. But I knew then I could not tell him how I felt. And perhaps I never could. And that tore my heart up, even as I knew it was true.

As he carefully scooped all six figures up and placed them into his bag, he asked, “How much do I owe you?”

I did not know. My father did not have a set standard for commissions, preferring to decide the price after the deed was done. But even if there had been a standard fare, I doubted I could name it. No price could cover the cost. I knew that, and I knew that Argyle also did, too. This knowledge poisoned us, I think, and I felt myself drifting away from him, both physically and emotionally.

I arrived at an answer, one that shocked me. Yet it seemed the most necessary thing. “Not a penny,” I said slowly, “but there is one other thing.”

We made our way to the front door. Argyle walked with his head slightly bowed. He knew what was coming, but he did not ask for it—did not raise his head or open his mouth or look back at me until we were back on the jetty. It had survived the storm. Sitting next to it was a small, one-pony boat, with black sails attached to the mast.

“Name it,” Argyle said. He did not sound scared or upset, and so, although I was, I chose to put my trust in him.

First, I reached into my pack and handed him the journal. He looked at it as though he had never seen it before, but, then, nodded and also placed it into his bag. Then I sighed and said, “I… I think this should be the last time we see each other.”

Another simple admission, but whereas the one of love had brought with it life-giving elation, this one brought only a crushing numbness. But I stood by it anyway.

Argyle nodded. “Very well. I… I can do that, Maple.”

I didn’t thank him. It was a thankless request, after all—selfish and bitter and cruel in all the ways that could disgust me. Yet Argyle still turned and smiled at me, in a way that made my heart soar and sink. He hugged me again, and into my ear whispered, “Thank you, Maple.”

I felt it from him—a familiar warmth, and something that could have been more, had our lives not turned out the way they had.

“Thank you for everything, Argyle,” I replied, my voice hoarse. “And… goodbye.”

He stepped onto the boat and waved one last time at me, before turning his gaze back towards Maretime Bay. Already it seemed he was a world away—a world full of impossible dreams and a hope yet unfulfilled, and also one of wooden figures and a past that spoke to him and him alone. Then he raised sails and pushed off from the jetty, the boat rapidly accelerating across the ocean, his back to the current and to me, and growing smaller and smaller with each passing second until he was a dot indistinguishable from the faded pink clouds still adorning that fragile horizon.

That was the last I ever saw Argyle.

Chapter One

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this way it resembles all the old thinking.

“Meditation at Lagunitas,” Robert Hass

***

Argyle came to us by sea, which, I suppose, was part of why he meant so much. Most ponies, especially the earth ponies who lived in Maretime Bay, preferred the safety of the train over any other form of transportation, especially when they wanted to travel to our humble shop, which presided over the edge of a cape that observed the great ocean to our west. According to my father, a stallion famous for the fact that all of his hair turned white before the expected age, that cape had once been part of a mighty coastal trading post that had sunk into the sea many moons ago, and that was why we had that isthmus facing the larger landmass of Equestria in perpetual longing.

I was a young mare, then. Only a few years prior, I’d earned my Cutie Mark: a wooden horse figurine accompanied by several brushes. At first glance you would have thought it was the exact same one as my father’s, for his also was of a wooden figurine, but it represented his talent for molding wood into form, of taking the mental picture of a model and fashioning it into reality. He had been doing this long before I had come around, and so I had always known him for the constant look of concentration he bore whenever he was examining new material. It was like a valley of impossible depth inhabited the space between his brows. When he worked, he insisted on no interruptions. The door to his workshop was closed. It would stay that way whenever he was designing a new set, meaning that the little shop would have to be tended to by another worker, one of the many who cycled through the door, brought in by the enticing prospect of studying under a master, then forced out, either in anger or in shame, by the master’s intense scrutiny and disappointment with their skills.

But my father treated me differently. I suppose that was because I was all he had left of his wife, a mare whom I never knew because she had died shortly after I was born. My father often told me how much I reminded him of her, though he seldom could explicate exactly why. We had no pictures of her in either the shop or the above loft where our bedrooms resided. And my father, though an excellent toymaker, was not prone to talking about her. It was as though she either escaped living description on account of being dead, or that he lacked the words, or the ability to find the words, best suited for describing her. As a result, when he spoke of my mother and compared me to her, in my mind I imagined only myself in her place. Though her voice and her figure shifted and ebbed like a creature able to transform into anything else at will, her face was like mine. A few workers, before they were inevitably fired, expressed concern when they overheard those somewhat frequent instances where my father would make such a comparison. “Isn’t that a lot to put on a kid?” they would say, worried that he was unintentionally ruining my conception of her. My father would bristle, and half the time threaten to fire them on the spot, for intruding upon the sanctity of his family was akin to destroying one of the models in which he took great pride.

Yet I understood he never meant harm. It was his way of attempting to bridge the gulf of memory that stretched between us. I could understand him and what he felt, even when, as often was the case, words failed him. As such, I never felt he was attempting to replace my mother with me—instead, I understood that he was working the impossible problem of making space for both the dead and the living. In the same way that he could look at a block of wood and see what it was meant to be, I could listen to his half-meanings and divine his true intentions.

That was why when, on a hot summer day, he raised his eyes from the register and said solemnly, “The day darkens yet,” I knew he meant that somepony truly notable had arrived.

The worker, a stallion only a year older than me named Easel Chisel, frowned at my father. “But it’s still morning.”

“He means we have a customer coming,” I said helpfully.

“Sure he does.” Easel Chisel rolled his eyes and turned away. He had been in my father's employment the longest out of all of the apprentices, but had failed to grasp my ability to understand my father and his feelings, attributing my interpretations to blind luck. I stuck my tongue out at him.

My father walked around the counter, peering out the door. He wore that same look of concentration, but something, I sensed, was different. Concern and intrigue came out of him like a slow crawl of blood. The door to the shop was partially open, to let in the cool ocean breeze. My father stood still as it washed over him, bringing with it a smell of salt and brine. I watched him, curious.

“Sails,” he said. “But black or white?”

He trotted out of the shop. I didn’t have to think twice. Against Easel’s protests, I followed readily after him.

He did not take the usual path that led to the gentle curve of cliffs which connected our shop to the rest of the world. Instead, he briskly took the other, which led him to the north-eastern side. As I followed him, I caught sight of what he had spoken: a plumage of cloud-white sails, that sat with quiet dignity along the back of a humble boat. It was moored to a rickety wooden post that supported the old jetty, about which my father had often expressed a desire to strip for good, dark sea-wood.

On the boat were two earth ponies. One was obviously a sailor, grumpy-faced and scowling. The other was a young stallion, with a light-blue coat and somewhat bohemian mane spilling down the back of his head. He might have been no more than three or four years older than me, but something about him was striking. It might have been his Cutie Mark, which was a yellow shooting star, or the large and thick knapsack he carried on him. Or it might have been the simple fact that he was smiling at us, and both his smile and eyes radiated a warmth and a kindness I had only ever attributed to the sun.

“Hello!” he called up to us. “Is one of you Master Mallet?”

My father harrumphed in satisfaction at the honorific. “Speaking.”

“My name is Argyle, sir. I understand you specialize in wood carvings? I’d like to engage your services!”

“A commission?” My father looked down at the stranger. “Hmm. Very well. Come up to my shop and we’ll talk details.”

Argyle nodded. He came off of the boat, but stumbled a bit on the jetty—evidently he was unused to sea voyages.

My father leaned down to me and said, “Go help him, Maple.” Then he turned and went back the way he came.

I went down the slope and approached Argyle. He was wobbling slightly, attempting to walk. While the sailor watched on, amused, I came up next to him and positioned myself so that he was propped up against me. He was lighter than I expected.

“A-ah!” Argyle struggled to balance himself against me. “Thank you, Miss…”

“Maple,” I answered. “Maple Craft. Give yourself a moment or two. But no longer. Otherwise, you won’t be walking regularly for a bit.”

Argyle chuckled self-consciously. “I guess you figured out I’ve never done this before.”

“Traveling via boat? What made you do that?”

Argyle shrugged. “No particular reason. But it looked like such a nice day over the water, and taking the train for what really is such a short distance felt like a waste.”

I noted that he still felt a bit off-balance, and asked Argyle if he wouldn’t mind if I carried his bag for him. He gave me a grateful nod, then let me slip it over my back. One of the pack’s pockets’ flaps came undone in the process, allowing me the chance to glance at its contents. There seemed to be some kind of journal in there, but I couldn’t tell what it was for.

Argyle told the sailor to wait here for him, and the sailor nodded. He seemed, however, to look pointedly at me, and there was an odd, half-grin across his face—nothing necessarily smug, but close to it. His yellow eyes seemed filled with a youthful energy.

I hadn’t realized I’d been staring until Argyle coughed. “Shall we get going, then, Maple?”

“R-right! Sorry. Let’s.”

The doorbell rang, announcing our return. Easel Chisel looked up and let out a half-strangled gasp. “A customer!” Scrambling around, he put on his best smile. “W-welcome to Mallet’s Wooden Workshop! H-how may I help you?”

“Thank you for offering,” Argyle said. I then thought he was enormously polite, almost naively so. “Actually, ah, I was wondering where Master Mallet went—”

“Over here,” my father said. He’d appeared in the doorway to his workshop. There was a pencil stashed behind his ear, and a flowing, olive-green apron—his favorite—hung over his torso. He waved us over to his counter, and I could see a familiar spark in eye—the spark of a tradespony excited by the prospect of work.

We gathered in front of the counter—all of us, even Easel Chisel. I raised an eyebrow at this, but my father, normally tyrannical when it came to personal space, did not mention it. Rather, he looked directly at Argyle, and said nothing, did nothing.

It was my father’s famed tactic. When one had to stare back at a wintry stallion who could chop logs with naught but a touch of his hoof, one felt little urge to talk shop. It was how, despite the somewhat copious number of belligerent clients, we retained a somewhat healthy business. Most ponies quailed before my father’s intense gaze. This made them state the specifics of their request much quicker, which meant we could get to work on them just as quickly.

But Argyle did not quail. Instead, he leaned forward onto the counter, in a laid-back manner. “What kinds of toys do you make?” he asked.

I waited to see if my father would remain reticent—some ponies had attempted to draw talk out of him in a similar fashion, always to no avail. But to my surprise, he actually responded.

“All sorts,” he grunted. He sounded even a little prideful. “Box sets. Trains. Carriages.”

“Big or small?”

“Big and small.”

“How small?”

“Once I carved a little doll out of a walnut.”

“That’s very small.”

“It is average-sized, I would say.” He guffawed, and Argyle chuckled.

Easel and I glanced at each other. Was my father actually cracking jokes?

“I understand you also make figurines?” Argyle then asked.

“Yes. We get all sorts of requests. Some want their figures small enough to be tucked away into a box. Others have asked for ones that are more life-sized. Those take longer,” he added, “and cost more, of course.”

“Of course. And these… requests. Have they been for pony figurines?”

In answer, my father vanished into the backroom storage and reappeared with a stand of wooden equines. They were of an older set, and I realized with some pride that they were the ones I’d painted—the ones, in fact, that had gotten me my Cutie Mark.

Argyle was gentle in handling them. He barely scuffed a hoof against their bodies—not that they would have broken, but it was still noteworthy how respectfully he treated them. I could see my father’s face shine with quiet approval—I am sure I was the only one who noticed.

“Magnificent,” Argyle said softly. “These are expertly crafted. But I suppose I should expect no less. Who painted them, if I may ask?”

“I did,” I said. I stood up a little taller.

Argyle looked at me. “You did? That’s incredible, Maple! You’ve certainly got quite the talent.”

He said this so earnestly that I felt myself blush and had to look away. “It’s no big deal. This is the work of a filly.”

Easel Chisel chuckled. His laughter dried up after a quick yet piercing glare from my father.

“Hmm.” Argyle looked back over the figures. “They’re earth ponies.”

“Yes,” my father answered. “We get a lot of requests for knights, firefighters, even a sheriff or two.”

Argyle hesitated, and I felt a discordant note in his next sentence. “And… only earth ponies? That’s all you make?”

My father detected what I had. He furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. “Well… I suppose not. But we’ve always been asked to make earth ponies, for earth ponies.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can only make earth ponies.” Argyle sounded excited now, but also a little desperate. His smile, while still there, had lost some of its zeal, and there was a weariness in his eyes all of a sudden, sprouting from the dark lakes underneath.

“No,” my father said carefully. “I can make anything. Provided I have the numbers.”

Argyle straightened. “I have the numbers, Master Mallet. Believe me, I do.”

My father nodded. “Then let’s see them.”

Argyle turned to me. “Actually, they’re in your bag. If you wouldn’t mind, Maple…”

Carefully, I laid the bag on the table and shifted its contents out. The journal was actually thicker than I’d anticipated. On top was an emblem of a five-pointed star. It didn’t match Argyle’s mark, so I wondered as to its significance. And more importantly, I wondered what was inside.

Argyle seemed to sense my curiosity, for he placed a hoof in front of me, stopping me from reaching out. “Before I open this, I must ask you something first.”

“That being?” my father asked.

Argyle took a deep breath. “What do you know about unicorns and pegasi?”

“Them?!” Easel exclaimed. “You mean besides the obvious?”

Argyle didn’t seem bothered by the outburst. “And what is the obvious?” he asked Easel.

“What, you don’t know?” Easel waved his hooves around in frantic, discombobulated movements. “Unicorns can chew metal and shoot lasers from their eyes! And pegasi will kidnap any pony unlucky enough to be out wandering at night and drink their blood until they’re bone-dry!”

“They’re pegasi, not bats,” I pointed out. Argyle chuckled at this for some reason, which made me feel better about the exasperated look my father gave me.

“Well,” Argyle said, smiling, “thank you for that… I can’t say I’ve heard those exact things before.. But what about you?” he asked my father.

He said nothing at first. He was staring intently at the closed journal as though it was yet another wooden form in need of carving. Then abruptly he looked at me. How intense! Yet also how sad—he was, no doubt, thinking about my mother.

“We are told never to interact with those outside of our tribe,” he began slowly, looking back at Argyle. There was a great degree of restraint in his voice, but to my sensitive bearing I could tell that it was not anger or fear he was hiding, but something else, something more nuanced. It was like a separate note playing against the ritualistic melody of his words. “That others are dangerous, that they could hurt us.”

“Do you believe that?” Argyle asked.

My father shrugged. “I’ve yet to see either a pegasus or unicorn fell a tree or drive an entire cliffside into the ocean—or see either of them in the first place.”

Argyle seemed relieved. Then he looked at me. “And you, Maple? What do you think?”

“W-what? Me?”

“Well, surely a mare such as yourself has some thoughts of her own on the matter. Or have I read that wrong?” He looked at my father who—to my surprise—cracked a small grin.

What could I say? I scrambled for a response. “I… guess I’ve never really thought about it. I mean, yeah, I’m told I shouldn’t try to interact with one of them, but…”

“What if you did, at some point?” he asked.

I frowned, scraping a hoof lightly against the floor. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d run away, or fight, or…”

“Are you afraid of them?”

“If I’ve never met one? I… I guess not really. Not more than those old stories about monsters being under the bed, I mean.”

“Do you hate them?”

“No,” I answered after a moment. “No, that seems a bit much.”

I looked at him, wondering if he would challenge my restraint. But I detected no judgment in him, shocking me once again. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “Truthfully, I don’t know what I’d do if I ever met a unicorn or a pegasus.”

He looked back at my father. “I’m glad you were able to answer that question, Master Mallet. Most ponies… well, they prefer to say other things.”

“So they do. Now tell me, Argyle.” My father tapped the journal. “Why was knowing what we’d say so important?”

With the precision of a surgeon, Argyle undid the flap keeping the journal closed. The cover was lifted, revealing a first page filled with notes and scribbles. But he didn’t stop long enough for me to clearly see them. Instead, he rapidly flipped through the pages until he got to a certain one.

“Here” he said. I stood on my hind hooves and leaned across the counter to see.

Easel’s harsh gasp alerted me to the contents before I’d seen them. They were a series of black-and-white drawings, consisting of six pony figures with front, back, and side-facing views. But they were not all the same. Two were earth ponies, but two more were pegasi, wings out-spread. One mare was a unicorn, and the final seemed to be both a unicorn and a pegasus, with both wings and a horn.

Yet, unlike the depictions that Easel’s words might have conjured, these figures did not appear all that menacing. They gazed serenely up at us from the page, and their eyes were large and kind.

Along with those drawings were several notes sketched into the margins. They seemed to consist of a series of approximate measurements for wing-size and horn-size, so detailed I would have thought they had been calculated in reference to the real-life thing. There were other notes, too: notes on their ages, Cutie Marks, personality traits, and names. Rainbow Dash. Pinkie Pie. Rarity. Applejack. Fluttershy. Twilight Sparkle. I recognized none of them, and yet something about them all suggested a degree of importance.

“These are…” my father murmured. I looked at him, shocked—did he know these ponies?

Argyle gently pushed the journal into his hooves. He flipped through a few pages, always returning to the one with the drawings. “You’ve toiled a great deal in the field,” my father said.

Argyle understood. “I spent a lot of energy gathering all of this information.” Then he suddenly looked askance, as though remembering something painful, and his voice filled with regret. “It hasn’t been easy, and I can’t help but think I’m missing more than I could ever know.”

“And you want us to craft them,” my father said. “Using what you’ve gathered.”

“If it’s not too much to ask.”

“Of course it’s too much!” Easel shouted. He slammed his hooves on the table, making the journal bounce and nearly toppling the stand with all the figures. “Master Mallet, there’s no way you can consider this commission! It’s out of the question!”

My father looked sharply at him, but this escaped Easel’s notice. He rounded on Argyle, stepping back from the counter and pointing an accusatory hoof at him. “What’s with this drivel anyway, huh? Asking us what we think about unicorns and pegasi and then asking us to build them? I demand that you explain yourself!”

“Easel, hang on,” I tried to say, but stopped short. Something seemed to draw my breath to a close—a tightness, followed by a swelling, like water barely held back. I thought it must have been because of Easel, but no—he was too obvious with his emotions. Next I thought of my father, but, looking at him, he seemed only to regard the situation with a stern coolness.

Was it really Argyle?

“I’m an archaeologist,” he said calmly, without looking at Easel. I heard it in his voice—a tremor of emotion held back by measured politeness. “I explore ancient Equestria’ past. This”—he waved a hoof at the journal—“is one of my findings.” He said this just as measurably calm, but I felt from him a swirl of pride and indignation, as well as unmistakable resolve. It pushed back against Easel’s perplexing hostility.

Easel scoffed. “Ancient Equestria? That’s silly. Why be bothered by the past when we’ve got the present and future to worry about?”

“Sometimes the answers to the questions we have for today and tomorrow can only be found in yesterday.” I got the feeling that Argyle had said that before, had repeated it to himself each day until it was etched into the fiber of his very being.

Easel was about to retort, when my father said, “That’s enough.”

We all looked at him. Easel grinned. “Good! I’m glad you’re not falling for this weirdo’s tricks—”

“Quiet.”

Easel blanched. My father looked coolly at him, and there was a frustrated edge in his voice, the kind that could mean he was about to fire somepony. “Your shift’s over. Go home, Easel. I will see you tomorrow.”

“B-but, Master Mallet, what about—”

“I will deal with it. Go home.”

“But—”

“Now, or otherwise you won’t come in tomorrow.”

Easel looked like he’d been slapped across the face. Slowly, he lowered his head, backed up, and slunk off to retrieve his belongings. When he left, it was with his tail between his legs. I felt a bit sorry for him, but did not feel it too badly, for when he was gone, he took his anger with him.

“I see,” Argyle said. He sounded sad. “I believe I understand your response. Well, then I won’t keep you any longer. Thank you for at least hearing me out.” He bowed, then turned to grab the journal.

“Wait a moment,” my father said. “I don’t recall telling you to go home.”

“Go…” Argyle looked up at my father. “But, what you said, to your acolyte—”

“Was not at all an answer to your request.” He looked down at the journal once more. “Which is, I will say, a most fascinating one. It is not every day somepony comes by the shop and asks for blasphemy.”

“Then… that means…” I said.

“I am interested in this. I am interested in why you want this.” He looked pointedly at Argyle. “But I have a feeling that will reveal itself in due time. That can only happen, I suspect, if I work on this commission, as you have requested.”

Argyle was beside himself with gratitude, but before he could express it, I had to jump in. “Dad,” I said softly, “we can’t be seen making this stuff publicly.”

My father sighed. “I know. We’ll have to keep this one close to our chest. Otherwise…” He looked at the closed door to the shop. The implication was clear.

“I’m sorry,” Argyle offered. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

My father shook his head. “Ponies always cause trouble, anyway. It’s never just the fault of one.”

My father tapped the open page. “Now, you have six figures here. Normally I’d be able to get them done in a week's time, but, if we have to do so secretly…” He shrugged helplessly. “Well, all I can tell is that it’ll take longer.”

“Maybe even more so, since Easel won’t want to help,” I added.

“That’s fine,” Argyle said. “I don’t have an expected due date in mind.” He seemed about to say more on the matter, but stopped short.

“But how are we going to keep these a secret?” I asked.

“We’ll do one at a time,” my father suggested. “After hours. Maybe we’ll get the earth pony ones out of the way first, since nopony would ask about them. Hrm. I’ll need, probably, a medium-sized chunk… maybe strong oak, or…”

While my father slipped into mutterings, Argyle turned to me. “I have a small favor to ask, Maple, if you don’t mind.”

“What is it, Argyle?”

“Well, you see.” He rubbed one foreleg over the other. “Originally, I was going to ask that just the wooden figures be made. But now that I’ve seen what you can do, I was wondering… would you be willing to paint them for me?”

He looked at me, hesitant. “I know I’m asking a lot, and I can see that this might be putting you and your father at risk, but—”

“Shh.” I put a hoof to his lips, forcing a smile. We were so close I was afraid he might hear the galloping of my heart. “I’ll do it, Argyle. I’ll paint them.”

He smiled with relief. “Thank you, Maple.”

A thought occurred to me. “But… these drawings. They don’t tell me what they looked like.”

“In that case, I guess I’ll have to stop by often, to show you my notes on their appearances…” He turned to my father. “Would that be all right?”

My father had been busy copying down the measurements on a legal pad. He barely glanced up at Argyle. “If you arrive the same way you came, at about the same time, and wait until everyone else has gone before entering, I have no complaints.”

“That sounds good. Thank you. Both of you.”

My father handed the journal back to Argyle. He nodded, then gathered his things and began trotting out the door.

“Thank us?” I called after him. “For what? We haven’t finished anything yet.”

Argyle looked over his shoulder, looking directly at me. “For helping me start fulfilling an old dream.”

And then, he was gone. And I found myself hoping it wouldn’t be for long.

Chapter Seven

But please, do not misunderstand. I know how this must sound. I am an older mare now, and I fear I have inherited, despite my best efforts, some of my father’s awkward and stilted speech patterns. If meaning has eluded you, let me make things clear, one last time.

Argyle came to us by sea. He gave us his notes, his smile, and his dream of a better world. More than that, he gave us a glimpse into that dream, and all it cost me was everything.

But I loved him anyway. I could not help it, you understand. Your father was simply a pony you had to love, for if you did not, then there was nothing in you but a terrible, wintry draft that billowed through the emptiness of your soul. If I had not loved him, then I doubt I could have kept going for all these many lonely years.

I do not regret meeting him. Neither did my father. I hope your father did not regret meeting us, either, even if it resulted in the banishment of living memory and the unobstructed death of the old ways of thinking.

Not that this meant I banished him entirely from my mind. I’ve thought about him, all these years. He was a constant presence, a warm voice, that traveled with me when I finally decided to rebuild the shop, that comforted and reassured me when I was uncertain as to whether I should keep it the same or change it into what you now see. I could never forget his living ghost, the one that had told me about the secret of the world and the hope for a better tomorrow.

When I heard he died, I wondered if his dream had died with him. Now, though, seeing you stand before me, I realize dreams do not die with their dreamers. If the dream is good enough, then one way or another it will live on—and if we are lucky enough, it may even come true. We need only to reach out and choose to make them real—but you already know that, don’t you?

Good.

Then, please. Why don’t you and your friends step into Maple Craft’s Workshop? There is much I want to show you, and much, I am sure, you would be interested in. Don’t worry: here, all dreams are allowed, even the least likely ones. Those are the kinds that brought Argyle to us, and now, I see, you to me.

Yes… You have your father’s spirit, his passion, his hope…

The End