Sweetie Belle's hooves hurt.
She's still too little to really help with the war effort like her sister does. She doesn't have the dexterity to sew uniforms day in, day out in a workshop… and even if she did, everypony agrees that the war is not quite bad enough to resort to foal labor. (At least not in Canterlot.)
But she helps with the smaller things. Running materials from station to station. Fetching water for Rarity and the other tailors when they're too busy to get it themselves. Things like that. Today she stood by Rarity's station for hours, holding pins and scraps of fabric for her because her telekinesis was too shaky from exhaustion to hold them herself.
She still doesn't understand the sheer scale of the war, per se. She knows the basic facts, from newspapers and from Miss Cheerilee the year she still taught before she had to leave to help in the war herself, but there's really no way to envision "thousands of crystal ponies fighting for Sombra" in her mind's eye. It's a distant, horrible thing, like a storm cloud on the horizon that will never draw close. (She hopes.)
But she's seen it at home. Twelve-hour shifts in the workshop among the constant hum of sewing machines; hardtack dipped in applesauce to soften it up. Her sister's sweat-stained face; the bags under her eyes that never leave.
This is how it's always been. She can remember, distantly, a time when there wasn't a war, but it's a far-off haze through her child's memory. Those unreal times when she was younger and Ponyville was still colorful and the apple factory didn't exist down there yet; when her sister's boutique still hummed with life and she sewed capes out of the spare fabric, playing at becoming a skilled tailor just like her. It was a time when she still cared about things like getting her cutie mark.
Rationally those Ponyville days weren't so long ago, not really… but she feels like she's a different pony now. Somepony else who's always lived up in Canterlot, whose job in life has always been to run materials up and down the rows of workbenches in the tailor shop until her hooves hurt.
Sweetie Belle theorizes that it's something about the war that makes her feel older. Those Ponyville days are just a silly dream under the haze of factory smoke; those blue skies something that only happened in her imagination, an experience she was the only one to have. It's like a fairy tale: once upon a time, she dreamed of pastel houses and her sister humming some tune in harmony with the buzz of her sewing machine.
And then she woke up, and the skies above were dark with soot, and now it makes her feel sad when she looks up at the clouds.
At least the skies above Canterlot aren't like the one above Ponyville. It's dark with pollution too, but at least Canterlot isn't like Ponyville with its tireless apple factory and the mournful calls of shorn sheep. So Sweetie Belle just chooses to stare at the cobblestone beneath her hooves and tries to enjoy this rare moment of free time rather than listening to the lingering guilt in her chest that tells her she's not doing enough.
She's never doing enough. Nopony is. Otherwise they'd be winning the war, right?
Sweetie Belle ends up wandering into Canterlot's outskirts. She thinks the plaza she's roaming through was some kind of commercial district once, but it's not a place she ever got to visit with Rarity before the war. She's got a good imagination—she can see in her mind's eye how this place might have been bustling and full of life a few years ago. Maybe it would have even been beautiful.
But there's no place for beauty during a war, no place for luxury, and now the shops are all boarded up and rotting with neglect. She hardly gives the abandoned storefronts a second glance before wandering to the edge of the plaza and sitting before its lip. It's low and smooth and gives the impression of one being able to walk (or stumble) right off the edge, but this close Sweetie can hear the low, subtle hum of its forcefield spell. Somehow after all this time, it's still active, and she leans forward to rest her chin on it and looks down over the rest of Equestria.
She can see Ponyville from here.
Mostly she can see the clouds of soot hanging over it like dirty storm clouds, a dark spot among its rolling hills of grey-green grass, but if she squints and leans in she can just make out the faded colors of pastel roofs, and the sprawling darkness of the Everfree beside it.
She's startled from her melancholy by the gentle tap of hooves behind her. She looks over her shoulder, eyes wide (Sweetie wasn't expecting anypony down here); only to calm when she realizes it's just another foal about her age. A pegasus, actually, which would have been an uncommon sight in Canterlot before the war. But nowadays, they take anypony they can get that has a trade skill, unicorn or not.
Despite her age, she doesn't have a cutie mark, either. She's got a coat the color of orange creme and a mane of dark magenta; both are ruffled and disheveled and dirty, maybe from factory work. Rarity would throw a fit if she saw her.
Sweetie can't help but like her.
"Hey! Whatcha starin' at?"
Sweetie blinks and starts, trying an awkward smile up at the other foal. "You're a blank flank. Like me," she says, swishing her tail to the other side so it doesn't cover up her flank.
And now it's the other's turn to stare, although to her credit she doesn't do it for very long. There's a moment of shock reflected in her expression before she blinks a few times and huffs, tossing her mane. "Huh. Cool. I mean, not like it matters much. I bet lots of ponies don't get their cutie marks anymore 'cause of the war. You get locked into one thing your whole life whether its your talent or not."
"We all have to do our part," Sweetie Belle says, a line she's heard a dozen times from other, older ponies but one she clings to regardless. The pegasus just huffs and shakes her head, but shuffles closer to the edge of the plaza, staring down at the world below.
"What were you lookin' at?" she asks.
"Ponyville," Sweetie says.
"Huh. Where's that?"
"Um, right over…" she gestures. "There."
The pegasus raises an eyebrow. "That nasty old sootstain?"
"Hey!" It's true, but she can't help but defend the place regardless. That was her home, once. "I used to live in that 'sootstain'."
She waves a placating hoof. "Okay, okay, geez, I'm sorry!"
Then she takes a couple steps closer, squinting at the place where Ponyville is. A beat passes before she settles next to Sweetie Belle, sitting down at her side. "And uh. Sorry. About your hometown. Guess it must've looked pretty nice before the war."
Those distant memories drift up like smoke in Sweetie's mind; dreamlike and happy. Painfully so, now. "Yeah. Um. Yeah… it was."
They lapse into awkward silence. Two fillies side-by-side, staring out at an Equestria that was bright and idyllic, once.
They're the same age, right? Sweetie bets the other filly probably remembers what Equestria was like back then too. Maybe she didn't live in Ponyville, but there's gotta be some other town out there that was bright and full of life before it got all used up, too. When living turned into just surviving.
She can't help but feel a little kinship with the other filly her age, also without her cutie mark.
It takes a while before the pegasus speaks again. "Hey. You remember much about Ponyville?"
"My sister owned a boutique there," Sweetie says. "It was super popular before the war. She made dresses, and everypony wanted to buy one from her."
She was jealous of that back then. Jealous that everypony liked her sister but not her. Jealous that Rarity was always working and never had time to spend with her little sister. Upset that Rarity always complained about their parents and how they were never around for the two of them, because didn't she see that she always did the exact same thing holing herself up in her workshop and refusing to come out?—never realizing that her dresswork then was just as important as sewing uniforms was now.
That past resentment feels so silly, surrounded by the smoke of the war. So foalish.
"Y'know, I was gonna live in Ponyville once," the pegasus says.
"Really?" Sweetie Belle asks, attention snatched from the smoky cloud hanging over Ponyville and her own dark thoughts.
"Yeah. I lived with my aunts, and one of them was a florist, and apparently the Everfree has a whole buncha exotic flowers you can't get anywhere else. Y'know ponies used to pay a lot for poison joke if you harvested it right? Apparently they liked the color."
"What do they do now?" Sweetie asks, noting the word 'was'.
The pegasus goes quiet, shuffling her wings uncomfortably. "They uh… they're gone. War, y'know?" She flashes a smile at her, bright and full of teeth, but it's strained at the edges. Just like most smiles Sweetie sees ponies wearing these days.
"Oh," Sweetie Belle says.
A beat, and then Sweetie shuffles closer to lean gently into the pegasus. "I'm sorry."
She stiffens, and for a moment Sweetie thinks she's done something wrong… but then she feels feathers brush against her back and realizes the pegasus has spread a wing to hold her. She's staring out over the landscape, glaring, as if looking hard enough could make her smiles real, but Sweetie can see wetness in her eyes.
She understands that.
"My parents…" Sweetie starts. "They're… they're gone, too. They left me with my sister before the war started and just… never… never came back. We—we never…"
She swallows, unable to say the obvious. Unable to say the phrase 'we never found their bodies'.
She rephrases. "We never knew for sure. I think it's just one of those things where you make your best guess, but deep down…"
Sweetie shrugs. "You know."
The wing over her back tightens, drawing her closer. "I know."
Sweetie's unsurprised when she finds her vision starting to blur. Tears bead in her eyes and roll silently down her cheeks; she turns her head and rests it on the pegasus' shoulder, unable to look down at Ponyville any longer.
The pegasus, for her part, doesn't comment on her tears; just leans in a little more.
They stay like that for a while, sitting in companionable silence. There's nothing but the whistling of the wind and the rustling of little swirls of dust and abandoned papers crinkling down the street as their company. Neither pulls away from the other. They just stay there like that; two small figures silhouetted against the setting sun, staring out over a dying landscape that once felt like home.
A distant call breaks the quiet. Over the soft wind, a musical voice high with just that little bit of panic rises; it's faint, but even from far away Sweetie Belle can recognize Rarity's voice.
"My sister's calling me," she says. But she makes no move to leave the warm embrace of the other's wing; a shelter against the unfairness of the world. The pegasus glances over her shoulder at the noise, but she, too, makes no effort to move. She nods slightly in acknowledgement but if anything just holds her tighter—unwilling to let go.
"...do you have somepony to stay with?" Sweetie Belle asks, grappling for an excuse to extend the conversation just a little longer.
She shakes her head. "Cloudsdale's still accepting pegasus refugees, I think. Gonna stow away on a supply zeppelin and find someplace to stay there."
You could stay with us, Sweetie almost says; a flash of a wild, crazy impulse. A thought of this pegasus staying in her home with them, alongside her and her sister; the pegasus could have her bed and Sweetie could sleep on the floor. The pegasus could find a home here. She doesn't have to leave for Cloudsdale.
But she knows better than that.
She knows there's barely enough rations to split between the two of them; she knows that Rarity's mane is practically turning grey having to take care of Sweetie on her own. It wouldn't be fair to shove another foal on her sister like that.
And besides, the orange-coated pegasus would be impossible to pass off as a long-lost family member, finally free from the open fields of the war. There's no way she could stay with them. There's no place for her in Canterlot. She's better off in Cloudsdale.
Still, she sits there with her, staring out over the horizon, pretending that she doesn't have sewing duties to get back to and an overnight shift to help Rarity with, under her sister's voice rings out again—"Sweetie Belle!"
"I—I have to go," she forces herself to say. "Um. Good luck out there. I hope you make it to Cloudsdale."
"Thanks," the pegasus says, tucking her wing back at her side. "Good luck with… whatever you've got goin' on. Bye."
"Bye," she says, turning to leave.
As she walks back down that cobbled road, she spares a glance (just one) back over her shoulder.
The pegasus is still sitting there, looking down over Equestria, all alone.
And then Sweetie turns a corner, and the pegasus vanishes behind the form of a cracked, paint-chipped wall, and she never sees her again.
