Without her, what is left?
Mom —
Byfleet is dying to see his grammy, and even Zap Apple won’t shut up about how cool you turned out to be when he finally got to meet you. He wants you to come and stay with us, and I don’t think it’s a crazy idea. Rainbow Dash has promised to be nice, or to stay out of our way altogether if that’s what you’d prefer.
Please come, Mom. It’ll do you good to get out of that house. And Byfleet’s only going to be a baby once. You don’t want to miss out on these prime grandparent moments. He’s looking fit to start walking any day now.
Miss you, Mom. Now that I’m stepping into your horseshoes with a kid of my own, I feel like I get what you and Momma went through a lot more. I get how hard it would be to do this alone, now. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if Zap Apple — but I won’t go there. Don’t want to bum you out.
Please come visit, Mom. Or at let us come to you. You’re on your own far too much. And we all miss you. I miss you.
Love from
Dust Devil
(and Byfleet S. Apple, Zap Apple, and all the other gazillion Apples!)
Lightning Dust let the letter slip from between her hooves and sighed. It came to rest on the dusty surface of her desk, disturbing the powdery grey coating that now covered its surface.
She didn’t have much reason to come up here to the music room any more. Not much reason to sit at her desk and pretend to do a little paperwork — letters to the Washouts’ fans, booking new shows and gigs, whatever else she could reasonably occupy herself with — all while listening to the real attraction of the music room. Those slow, sweet strains of violin music, rising and falling like waves, like the slow and beautiful breath of something incomprehensibly ancient.
Now the only strains that filled the once-living air of this room were the slow, tortured wheezes of Lightning Dust’s own withered lungs. Ruined by inactivity, atrophied by sloth, just like all the rest of her.
Dead or dying, same as her heart.
“Lightning! Wait for me!”
“Hurry, Fiddly! She’s gonna go any second!”
“I’m gonna do it, Momma!”
“Gah! Just hang on one second, Sweetie! This dang camcorder won’t turn on!”
“I’m gonna jump in three, two—”
“—We can’t miss filming her first flight, Lightning, hold her back—”
“Dusty, baby, hang on—!”
“—ONE!”
Lightning Dust sat in the darkened room, light from the TV flickering over her face, the noise of their happiness ringing in her ears. Ensconced in the familiar comfort of her old red armchair, with the same old reel of home videos playing for the umpteenth time, she could almost forget.
She could almost ignore the emptiness of the blue armchair beside her own.
It had been a slow decline, a gradual onset of aches and pains that they had realised too late spoke of a deeper trouble. And then the decline had been anything but slow, and only six months after the first doctor’s appointment, Lightning found herself suddenly alone in their family home.
The cozy rooms became vast, echoing halls, frightening in their emptiness. The music room fell silent. Their home, their life, became a tomb, and Lightning herself was just a ghost who was haunting it.
Most days, it felt like it had been her who had died.
The worst of it was, she knew Fiddly would have done better if their roles had been reversed. She would have thrown herself into her music, her friends, her daughter — and the newest miracle, their grandfoal.
But Lightning Dust was not her wife. She had never had friends, nor more of a career than the Washouts could offer her. She had only ever had Fiddlesticks, and that had been enough. It was all she had ever wanted.
What then, when she was taken, was there left to do? Nothing but wait to follow in her wake, as Lightning had always done.
And in the aftermath, as she waited for the dark hooves of death to embrace her as they had done her wife, it had been too painful to visit Dust Devil. To see that smile on her lips, those expressions flit across her face. The echoes of the one pony Lightning Dust had loved the most, in the shape of her eyes, the turn of her head, flash of her teeth as she laughed. It had been like losing Fiddly all over again, to see those faint shades of her in their daughter.
It was just too much.
And so Lightning had ceased her visits to Cloudsdale, ceased attending the Wonderbolts’ displays. Ceased even her daughter’s trips home. It must have hurt Dust Devil — it must have — but she never spoke of it. She was her mother’s daughter, after all.
Lightning sometimes wished she would confront her. Throw it in her face. Why don’t you let me come see you anymore, Mom? Why don’t you love me anymore?
It would be almost pleasant, to feel the pain of it.
To feel anything.
For the second time in one day, Lightning drifted back up to the music room. Mostly she tried to steer clear of it — succeeded for weeks at a time. It hurt too much to be in here, where they had been the happiest together.
But sometimes she would slip, and then she would be in here for hours at a time, wallowing in the pain of it, glutting herself on the sorrow.
Fiddlesticks was gone, and Lightning Dust was still here. In what world was that fair? In what would could that ever make sense? Better to have died right there alongside her wife. Better to have thrown herself onto the funeral pyre, like the lovestruck ponies in the old Saddle Arabian fairytales.
But Fiddlesticks had been buried, and even in the rawest phase of her grief, the yawning pit into which her poor love had been lowered had been enough to frighten Lightning Dust out of that idea.
She was too weak even to die.
Since she had started the videoplayer off, the afternoon had fled, and night was now here in earnest. Rain was pattering against the windowpanes, and Lightning could hear the distant rumble of thunder. One of those summer storms the weather team seemed so fond of these days.
Time had slipped away from her again. It had a habit of doing that these days. She would look up and find that a whole day had suddenly vanished, or even two. When you went out as rarely as she did, it was easy to do. Lightning didn’t mind it. It was nice, not having to worry about days like she used to do. Dust Devil’s letters let her keep a vague sense of what the date was, and it wasn’t like she had anything to do anyway. The Washouts had been fizzling out for years, and had died a final death when Fiddlesticks’ did. Everything good in Lightning’s life had left her that day.
But no, it was nice, when the time sped by. The more time she could waste like this, without realising, the sooner she would see her Fiddlesticks again.
The raindrops drumming against the window were growing louder, more insistent. Lightning watched the little rivulets course down the glass with detachment. It was almost like the sky was weeping, too.
As it should, of course. The whole world ought to be mourning her departure. For a long time, Lightning had hardly understood how the planet could keep turning, without Fiddlesticks. She was as integral to it as any princess of the sun or moon.
Realising that nopony else cared had hurt almost as much as losing Fiddlesticks. Apart from Dusty and Lightning, no one had seemed to notice at all.
There had been a letter, just one, from Canterlot, asking if Octy would be welcome at the funeral. It had been signed Vinyl Scratch, and Lightning had left it unanswered. Fiddlesticks had spoken of Melody, the twin whom she had loved as a child, but that was a very different pony from Octavia, celebrated classical cellist at the Canterlot Conservatory of Music. In Fiddlesticks’ view — and therefore Lightning’s too — estranged sisters were not sisters at all.
And it had been more that painful enough to see Fiddlesticks’ shadow in the face of her own daughter. She did not need to see the mare she loved in the face of a stranger, too.
The wind was howling, beating itself around the house, echoing down the chimney and slamming against the windows. Sounding, in its rage, almost like somepony wailing wordlessly, an incoherent cry.
Drawn to it despite herself, Lightning padded slowly toward to look out at the storm. Her garden, having languished so long without the loving touch of an earth pony’s hoof, had already been wilting. Now the storm had rendered the once pristine vegetable plot utterly barren. Rotting carrots and lettuces had been ripped up by the roots. Flowers that had bloomed in defiance of Lightning’s wishes and the presence of their gardener were torn and scattered asunder. Beyond the low stone wall that edged the cottage’s boundaries, the trees of the forest creaked and moaned as the storm tossed them mercilessly to and fro.
The wind took on a new sound. Not like crying, not anymore. No, now it was more like — almost like — the sound that Lightning had thought she would never hear again.
As the gale shrieked outside the music room, it sounded almost exactly like the distant echo of a violin, played passionate and furious, without any regard for self-preservation or musical norms.
It sounded…it sounded exactly like Fiddlesticks.
Lightning did not hesitate a second longer. She stumbled forward and hurled the window open wide. The wind hit her like a brick wall, cannoning into her with all the force of a physical blow. Lightning flared her wings and slammed them down, the full force of a flap strong enough to earn her a spot in the ranks of the Wonderbolts, a thousand years ago. She regained her place by the windowsill and clung to it, peering desperately into the thrashing limbs of the trees beyond the garden wall.
“Fiddly!” she bellowed, her voice almost lost in the tempest. “Fiddlesticks!”
The music pitched and yawed, almost fading before climbing to a crescendo again, and Lightning began to sob. Thunder crashed outside, shaking the house to its foundations — and Lighting Dust screamed in rage and agony and loss.
“Why did you leave me?”
The wind screamed in response, tearing through her mane with all the force of a hurricane, stronger than it had ever been even in the steepest of her dives.
“Why did you go?”
And as the wind howled, Lightning Dust howled too, and her tears mingled with the raindrops on the wooden planks of the music room floor.
When dawn came, Lightning Dust lay on the floor, barely awake. A breeze danced playfully through the still-open window, ruffling her mane and stirring the strings of the violin on its stand — just enough to draw a whisper of almost-sound from it.
The merest suggestion of it was enough to make Lightning sit bolt upright, looking wildly around her.
“Fiddly—?”
The breeze made the curtains billow, and Lightning deflated again. She gave a miserable little laugh.
“Right. Of course not.”
Moving slowly, she stood, her joints cracking with every movement. She winced. Falling asleep on the floor, at her age? She ought to have had more sense. She’d be paying for this for a fortnight.
The little gust of wind danced around the room again, disturbing the few papers left on her desk. The letter was caught up into the air, drifting toward the window — and Lightning flared her wings and dove for it. Stiff back or not, she wasn’t about to lose Dust Devil’s letter.
The envelope was disturbed in the course of her flapping, and as she landed, letter safely in her teeth, it thudded to the floor with just a little more weight than an empty envelope ought to have had.
Lightning turned and peered at it, eyes narrowed. Weird.
The breeze stirred her hair again, almost insistent. Lightning Dust took a single step forward, hoof outstretched. The letter falling forgotten to the floor, she tipped the envelope upside down, and a stiff piece of card fell out into her hoof. As she flipped it over, her breath caught.
It was a photo. A foal. A tiny baby, less than a year old, smiled up at her. And though his mane was the same obnoxious mess of colours as Lightning’s oldest and most hated rival, he was looking at the camera with eyes the same amber-gold as Dust Devil, as Lightning Dust herself. And his fur — his fur was the exact same creamy yellow; the same fur Lightning Dust had once known better than her own, had once kissed every inch of.
The exact shade of Fiddlesticks’ own fur.
Tears sprang unbidden into Lightning’s eyes and she pressed her free hoof to her mouth. She gazed down at this tiny foal, this second piece of proof that Fiddly had once been here, had once played melodies beautiful enough to make the gods themselves weep with joy. Lightning looked at him, and suddenly it was no longer painful to see that echo of her wife in another pony.
Dust Devil was in the photo too, cradling her son close. And it was as she looked at that face, so painfully close to how Fiddlesticks had looked in their youth, that Lightning’s tears finally began to fall.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Dusty.”
The breeze came again, whispering slowly through her fetlocks, stirring the fur there, and Lightning smiled through her tears. A painful smile, a very small smile — but a smile, nonetheless.
She moved slowly to her desk, pausing often to stare into both pairs of big amber eyes — so like her own, but brighter, better, in every way — and seated herself. One last glance at the violin on its stand, and she sniffed. She sniffed, and she began to write.
To Dusty —
Sure thing, kiddo. I want to meet my grandfoal more than anything. How does Tuesday sound? I can get the Monday overnight express. You better tell Rainbow Smash to steer clear, though — unless she wants a repeat of the thrashing I gave her last time. It was forty years ago, but she better not think age has made me soft. It hasn’t.
Don’t worry, though, I promise I’ll play nice. So long as she does.
I can’t wait to hold little Byfleet.
—Mom.
Lightning rested her forehead against the the train window, enjoying its coolness in the summer heat. The countryside rolled past, never lessening in its speed or its beauty. Ponyville was only an hour away. Her family was waiting for her. Her daughter, loyal and true to her still, despite the way she had tried to push her away. Fiddlesticks’ daughter. And their grandchild. A new baby with the same fur as his grandma. A new baby who would smile up at her with Fiddlesticks’ smile, with her light in his eyes.
Lightning’s hoof reached out, almost unconsciously, to brush against the violin case on the seat beside her. Byfleet might turn out to be a flier, like Dusty. He might turn out to be an asshole, like Lightning. He might even turn out to be an apple farmer, like his father’s family. But maybe — just maybe — he would turn out to be somepony who would pick up that old, ill-tuned fiddle and coax something wonderful from its aged strings.
Something beautiful.
A smile spread across Lightning’s face at the thought of it.
It turned out that even without her, there was something left. It wasn’t the same — it wasn’t even close — but it was…something. It was something, and Lightning intended to hold fast to it.
