Split Seed

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Scootaloo, Slice of Life, Babs Seed, Applejack, Apple Bloom, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Drama
Length: 54090

Apple Bloom knows that for kids, the major autumn holiday is pointless: she's with her closest family every day. So why is Babs spending Homecoming at the Acres?.

When you're a filly, there isn't much point to seeing Homecoming as a holiday. Apple Bloom knows exactly how it works: you have to clean everything, make a big meal, there's a lot of adults talking around the dinner table -- so it's basically like every other day, except with extra chores and special plates. Homecoming is when you're supposed to be with your closest family, and she lives with them. She doesn't wait for Homecoming so much as she waits to get through it, or just... waits.

On Homecoming, you seek out your closest family.
Babs is spending Homecoming on the Acres.
Why?

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group. New members and trope edits welcome.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Cover art by GroaningGreyAgony.

Published 2022-11-12 21:00:03 UTC
Last updated 2022-12-31 00:56:50 UTC

Hearsay

Scootaloo began to move immediately, legs surging forward as her mouth began to open in greeting --

-- and then she stopped. Or rather, the left foreleg stopped first, because the barrier which had just been imposed between it and the rest of the world wasn't going anywhere. The remainder of the filly's body was more or less forced to follow up from there.

The pegasus blinked. Stared down, found nothing, backed up a little more, and then located an angle from which she could glare at Apple Bloom's sideways-extended left foreleg properly.

"Hey!"

The earth pony didn't say anything. Instead, she just shook her head: one shift in each direction, sharp and quick, and did so at the same moment her tail flicked against Scootaloo's flank. Because the Crusade had produced far too many side effects, and one of the few which Apple Bloom didn't have to apologize for was the need for all participants to find a means of communication which the adults wouldn't notice. It didn't have to contain all that much vocabulary: just the basics of the Crusade. Most of that related to making excuses and, when the excuses didn't work, getting out of the area in a hurry. And when you lived in the same settled zone as Pinkie Pie, few ponies paid all that much attention to minor twitches.

A fast, sharp head shake and a tail flick.

'Let me.'

"...oh," Scootaloo softly stated. "Fine..."

(There had been a few false starts when they'd tested out the code in public. The fillies generally knew that they'd crossed the body language line if their attempts to pass the word led to mares and stallions diving under carts, giving the adults a somewhat protected place from which to fearfully watch the sky.)

Apple Bloom lowered her foreleg, noticed Babs watching.

She looks kinda nervous. Worried.
Now she looks like she jus' noticed Ah saw her lookin' worried, an' she's gotta look any other way so nopony has t' see the first one again.
Go forward. Slowly...

The youngest Malus moved towards her cousin.

There had been several requirements for breaking from the Crusade, and one of the biggest had seen Apple Bloom stop living in the now. She'd forced herself to survey the whole of it, finally acknowledging every last failure as she tallied up all the damage done. Because childhood was something which seemed to mostly exist in the present tense, accompanied by an eternal longing towards an unknowable future -- and maybe it took a little bit of growing up to kick any part of that perspective into reverse.

Apple Bloom had reached the point where she could review her own life, doing so from what she generally regarded to be a neutral perspective. She generally didn't like doing so, because a biased observer surely wouldn't be wincing quite that much. And there were some things which she still didn't examine too closely, because she was still mostly a filly and -- a few of them just hurt too much.

The youngest Malus was a little older now. Somewhat wiser. And wisdom could be expensive: just for starters, it had cost Apple Bloom several years of her life. And maybe some of the reputation could be earned back, but she'd traded time for the kind of memories which she mostly didn't want, stories that couldn't be told without all of the humiliation flooding back...

She was reviewing the first time she'd come up to Babs. The first time they'd all done it, and she couldn't use 'approach' as a description when 'full-scale assault' was a qualified candidate who needed the work. To consider exactly what the Crusaders had done upon seeing the new filly was to be grateful that 'came on too strong' wasn't a single word in Equestrian, because she understood how dictionaries worked and nopony was going to put your picture next to a phrase.

Because they'd rushed the Manehattan native. Tried to show her that she was one of their own. Personal space had been generously assigned at a quarter-hoofwidth, and then violated anyway because surely this was going to be a friend and she'd understand. And when Apple Bloom forced herself to look back on the bouncing, too-loud, too-close greeting of a filly who'd been almost immediately overwhelmed, translating what they'd done into how it had actually registered... it came across as this:

'Hi! You know that thing which makes you a target? Where your strongest wish is that it would just go away forever? The trait, or the lack of it, that kind of makes you hate yourself all the time? Because not being like everypony else makes you feel like a failure and all you want from being here is to maybe stop thinking about some of that for a few days? US TOO!'

There probably wasn't a mark for making a good first impression. They never would have managed that one either.

So she approached slowly while holding a slight smile, and managed to maintain the latter as a bulwark against the internal surge of confusion.

Why now? Why here? An' when y'make it here an' now...

Babs watched her, grinning a little. Apple Bloom came to a stop about four hoofwidths away. Face to face. Waiting.

Your move.

Her cousin did.

There was a nuzzle meant for family and, when it came from Babs, it was delivered with a little extra force. The family reunion had found Apple Bloom meeting it while reared up on her hind legs because that way, Babs had to match her and two limbs would be delivering somewhat less power than four: she'd nearly overbalanced anyway.

The nuzzle had some extra force behind it, because that was just Babs. But it was also careful. Gentle. Welcoming...

...this feels kinda -- off...
...oh. Her fur ain't lyin' right. Grain's off. Groomin' looked okay until Ah got up close, but it's rough. And she smells sorta -- dirty?

Which made some sense. Manehattan to Ponyville: that was days on a train. Apple Bloom figured the restrooms weren't exactly ideal, especially with the number of ponies who were using them. And some of those ponies would probably be just like Scootaloo, who had spent enough time living alone to have lost the concept of somepony else having to get in and go.

They nuzzled.

"Still feels like forever, ya know?" Babs asked. "Like there's all sorts of forevers, and some of 'em are longer." She backed away just enough to snort. "Spend enough time on a train, and 'forever' starts to look like the short option."

Her lower lip briefly stuck out, and a quick burst of upwards-aimed air ruffled the short mane.

"Least you're off it now," Apple Bloom pointed out. But why did you --

Her tail swished, and Scootaloo began to approach.

"Yeah, and not soon enough! Thought we weren't gonna clear Canterlot in time, not with all the ponies who got on!" The grin widened. "But I'm here now, right? Way before the next reunion! And here ya are, right on time like it means something -- hey, Scoots! --"

Apple Bloom saw her cousin's gaze start to shift, felt it coming --

-- it's been a few moons, so she's gonna look, everypony always looks --

-- braced --

-- Babs looked at Scootaloo's right hip. Got Apple Bloom's on the way back. And there was no reaction at all.

Of course, since her cousin's attention had shifted...

...nothin'.
None of us with marks yet.

She knew she was on the right track with the repair shop. She'd managed to acknowledge that a mark was something which potentially required more than an afternoon of effort, and tried to tell herself that she was getting closer to manifest every day. But it was the three of them on the platform, the only ones left on the platform with the train pulling away, and none of the fillies had their mark.

Ah jus' have t' keep goin'. Ah know it.
...an' when Ah was in the Crusade, that was jus' what Ah told mahself every day...

It was a line of thought which begged for a change of topic, mostly in the name of making those thoughts stop.

"So we all heading back together?" Babs casually asked. "Since I ain't seen Scoots for a while, and I figure she's got places to be with the hol --"

"-- Babs," Apple Bloom carefully cut in, "what are y'doin' here?"

Her cousin blinked. Ears went straight back, and the short tail sagged.

"Ya kidding?"

Apple Bloom shook her head.

"This ain't a joke," the Manehattanite continued. "I wanna make sure of that, one hundred percent. No jokes, no pranks, no nothing."

Again.

"I'm here for Homecoming," Babs stated, and the note of worry was close enough to the surface to quaver. "Staying through, and then heading back after. Ya didn't know?"

Head shaking, while an essential part of the Crusade's silent vocabulary, didn't seem to be capable of accomplishing much on its own.

"Because the dobbins sent a letter to your sis," her cousin explained. "Ages ago. To say I'd be here. And nopony sent anything back saying 'no', so I got on the train. And I figured ya had to know, because you're here, Appy! Right when the train came in!"

"Ah was jus' pickin' up some stuff for the cookin'!" It wasn't quite a protest: the shock didn't allow for that -- but she did manage to get enough of a jolt into her body to make full saddlebags shake. "Nopony said nothin' --"

"-- oh, I get it!" Babs declared. And grinned again.

Apple Bloom blinked. Scootaloo's wings sagged under the weight of confusion.

"Get what?" the youngest Malus asked.

"She wanted it to be a surprise!" The gamboge ears were now fully aloft again. "So she sent ya out on errands! Run here, gallop there, make sure ya go by the train station at just the right time! And there ya go! Surprise! So let's get moving!"

...would she?

Applejack bore Honesty. Apple Bloom knew that didn't mean her sister had to say everything. There had been too many times when it felt as if Applejack was under no obligation to say anything --

-- she could've.

She's a little too good at figurin' out how long somethin' is supposed t' take. Could have worked out the schedule an' had us around the station at the right time. Figured Babs would have spotted us, an' we'd get our surprise on the spot.

Except... she didn't give us a list of places t' visit. Jus' the stuff we needed, because she knew we couldn't count on any given pony still havin' stock left. An' we wouldn't have wound up on this side of town if some shops hadn't been sold out.

...maybe she jus' forgot?

No. Picking up Babs existed at the intersection of chore, appointment, and family. Applejack never overlooked any of the three.

An' if'fin we hadn't happened t' be goin' by...

Waiting at the train station. Potentially hours of looking for ponies who had no reason to seek her out, and didn't know she was there at all.

Alone.

Scootaloo took a breath.

"I... guess that makes sense," didn't quite emerge as a definitive conclusion, with the side glance towards Apple Bloom adding a number of question marks -- and then, because it was Scootaloo, the pegasus pushed a little too far. "Except that we --"

The next signal, indicated by a shift of ears and tail added to a subtle tap of the hind hooves, was among the oldest. When it came to the Crusade, it was certainly one of the most predictable.

'Stop talkin'. Trouble.'

"-- should probably start heading back," Scootaloo not-so-smoothly switched. "So you've got all your stuff?"

"Yeah," Babs declared. "Didn't leave anything on the train which didn't deserve to be there."

"Didn't deserve --"

"-- lousy as that ride was, the conductors can pack out my trash." She snorted. "Or let it ride all the way to San Dineighgo. Maybe that'll make the ticket price feel like less of a scam. Come on, ya gee-gees! Let's trot!"

Apple Bloom felt that she cared about Babs, and that was true on several levels. You cared about your family, although she'd recently revised that policy so that it only covered the ones who were worth it. She also saw her cousin as somepony who was going through so many of the same things, and it gave them an additional level of bond. Two fillies who had yet to gain their marks: a commonality which had initially won Apple Bloom two friends, and... things had gone to some rather odd places after that.

She cared about Babs. But it was a long trot back to the Acres, and it made Apple Bloom realize that she didn't really know her cousin.

There had been two visits. During the first one, they hadn't really talked. Or rather, up until Applejack had finally said something, the crucial words, that which Apple Bloom should have been told long before setting out for the train because it would have changed absolutely everything --

-- tooth grindin' ain't good for anypony --

-- the topics had been limited. Which was to say that Apple Bloom did her best to avoid speaking at all, and her cousin only brought up the sort of things which made the Ponyville native wish Babs would just shut up forever. Preferably as a prelude to vanishing for the same amount of time, which would definitely give the desired silence some level of assist. And on the second visit, Applejack had essentially made sure that nopony got any real time to talk. There had barely been enough available to gasp for breath, and some of the faints suggested that several ponies hadn't even found that much.

When it came to speaking with Babs, Apple Bloom wasn't entirely sure where to start.

Why Ponyville? Why turn up here for Homecoming?

That didn't feel like a good choice.

The traveler, moving at the center of the three-filly line, was visibly looking around. Examining the settled zone's buildings or rather, the places where buildings weren't.

"Can't get used to how empty this place is," Babs decided. The dense hooves came down a little harder.

"It just looks that way because of the holiday," Scootaloo immediately argued. "We're missing a lot of adults. Most of the ponies who live here aren't from here. I'm not from --"

Apple Bloom blinked.

"-- y'ain't?" They'd known each other for years, and Scootaloo had never said anything about --

The shrug came off as being somewhat too casual. "I wasn't even born in Equestria."

Both earth ponies looked at her.

"Y'weren't? You've never said --"

"So where are ya from?" With the audible equivalent of a wink, "Are ya even here legally? Do we gotta gallop for the cops?"

Defensively, "I'm still a citizen! Because --" stopped, took a breath. "-- because of the usual reason. Anyway, I was born in Akhal-Tekes." With a little too much speed, "And nopony else's ever heard of it, either. Miss Cheerilee just knows the name and Miss Twilight needed about an hour to find it on a map. And then there was a lot of stuff, and I wound up here."

'A lot of stuff,' as with the presumed distance to Akhal-Tekes, seemed to be covering too much ground.

Babs merely shrugged.

"Anyway, it ain't the dobbins not being around," she said. "There's too much space. Everything's just spread out, ya know? Ya get a building, then ya get a lawn, a street, a whole lot of nothing, and then maybe another building. You've got all this room, and nopony's doing anything with it."

"An' Manehattan?" Apple Bloom asked.

Another shrug. "I guess it's kind of spread out, just for how much acreage it's got. But every time it gets a little more land, all the new space gets filled. We're paddock-to-paddock with ponies. And a lot of other species. Manehattan's just like that."

"Oh," Apple Bloom managed, and tried to consider it solved.

We've got some tenants.
Couple of donkeys. One mule.
One zebra -- does she count? She ain't inside the borders.
One dragon.
Don't suppose you've got a dragon.

Actually, now that she was thinking about it, she'd never --

They passed a few more homes. The bridge which led to the old Acres road was coming into view.

"So how's the Crusade been going?" Babs placidly asked.

There was a single moment when Apple Bloom was waiting for a dual blaze of white light to erupt from her cousin's hips.

The worst possible question. Without knowin' it. That's almost got t' be its own talent --

But the thought cost her time. Precious seconds which let Scootaloo speak first, and the words were bitter.

"She quit."

The youngest Malus was silent. Because the Crusade had broken, and not every resulting wound had healed.

Sweetie... didn't talk to them at school. Didn't come out when anypony went to her home. She had always been the shyest, the most prone to curl up within herself if something went wrong, keeping it all inside until one of those forever-shocking bursts of anger emptied the emotional hopper. There were ways in which Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were waiting for that little explosion. Hoping for normalcy on the other side.

Scootaloo had sought Apple Bloom out after something horrible had happened, been there to comfort her for as long as she needed. And then everything had changed again, the pegasus had moved in, and... they'd reconciled, as far as they could. They cared about each other, and there was something sisterly in that. And Scootaloo had accepted that Apple Bloom was working at the device repair shop -- but she mostly saw that labor in two ways. A never-ending font of supplies for which the earth pony refused to grant access -- and the cheap, easy, doomed-to-failure way out.

In so many ways, Scootaloo was still on the Crusade. Determined to complete it all by herself, and show that none of the misadventures, disasters, small claims judgments, and tree sap had been without purpose. A dual flare of light, and she would prove she was right.

Scootaloo cared about Apple Bloom. The youngest Malus knew that. It was why she was sure that, in the event of actual manifest, her friend wasn't planning to spend more than a week in open gloating.

Babs's entire existence seemed to rotate toward Apple Bloom. A certain virtual gravity pulled most of the street with her.

"Ya did?"

Apple Bloom, avoiding all mention of the doomed stable sale and every last consequence which had come from it, explained about the apprenticeship. It got them to the base of the bridge.

Her cousin listened. And then she shrugged.

"Makes sense."

Blinking was also a crucial part of Crusader language. Apple Bloom was almost certain that she'd just ordered a three-way split and race for the horizon, because that made it a little harder for the adults to get all of them.

"...y'think so?"

"Yeah," Babs casually said. "That float was mostly you, right?" And then she winced. "...both floats. And it was a good one. Ya even rigged the steering mechanism."

Ah did.
Ah had t' figure out how t' tie it all in t' the timer. But it was still jus' clockwork. The hardest part was windin' up the springs so it would actually move once the blocks got dislodged. Had t' do that mahself. Trotted on the wind-up treadmill for hours. It's why Ah had so much trouble chasin' the float down when Ah realized...
...after Applejack finally --
-- it never should've gone that far...

"I just figured ya were waiting to build the right things," Babs off-hoofedly added. "Anyway, my end ain't been all that bad." Which was followed by a snort, and another puff of air aimed at her mane. "Maybe not as good as it could be. We've only had two marks so far."

Both Crusaders (current and former) now had their eyelids signaling an imminent apocalypse.

"Two," the potential last of Scootaloo's sanity voiced.

"Two," said the final hope Apple Bloom had in the world.

"Yeah," Babs told them, informally ignoring the pair of soul shutdowns which were taking place. "I would've written ya about them, Appy, but it turns out I've got kind of an anti-mark for letters." Another snort. "Made it easier to wait until I was here. Anyway, we've got kind of a different membership plan, I guess. Ponies sort of come and go. Even after I told 'em not to do the 'go' part."

"They sort of --" wasn't really a chorus. Neither filly had the strength to complete a sentence fragment on her own.

"They're supposed to stick around," Babs irritably said. "We helped ya get your mark? Then don't bail. Because it takes all of us, and getting the next pony to manifest? That's how ya pay it back. But I can't get everypony together every time. Those two say their marks mean they've got stuff to do. And the bigger idiot?" It was the loudest snort yet. "Dates. Or what she thinks is dating and let me tell ya something: she ain't right. So sometimes we're a few ponies short. But yeah... two manifests. Maybe it would be at three or better if the crew just stuck together on more than their own turn."

Scootaloo shook her head, hard and fast. "Turn..."

The apex of the bridge was right in front of them. That meant a downslope. The pegasus flared out her wings, went into a gallop and launched herself towards desperate distraction. Babs didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah. Turn."

"How d'you take turns?" Apple Bloom's morbid curiosity inquired. "Pull names out of a hat, an' that pony suggests --"

"-- we find out what one pony really likes to do. Something where they've already got some aptitude, more than a little skill. Like you with clockwork, Appy. And then we find things for them to try out with that skill until they're happy with themselves. Takes a while. But two times, their hips lit up." Babs laughed. "What were we supposed to do? Just pick a bunch of random cool-sounding stuff and hope somepony would be good at it?"

Somewhere up ahead, the near-random sputtering which substituted for speech was dropping in volume quickly and, given the nature of any glide launched by a pegasus with far too much on her mind, also dropped.

"So two," Babs shrugged. "Should've been three." Her head briefly turned, and green eyes examined her flank. "Not me yet, though. Obvs. That's 'Obviously' for ponies who can't talk right. But I've sort of had a lot going on lately." She took a deep breath. "Yeah. Distractions. Anyway, it don't bother me much. Mark's gonna come when it comes. Once some of the distractions clear out. Okay there, Scoots? Because I'm pretty sure that chin ain't meant to be used as a brake. So how's the Beller been doing?"

How is that not a mark talent?

Apple Bloom changed the subject.

There was a place on the road from which the Rich estate could be seen, and the roommates moved past the crucial spot at the usual speed. It meant they needed a few seconds before realizing that Babs was no longer with them.

The Manehattanite had stopped. Facing the turnoff, staring at the distant building.

"Forgot about this," Babs quietly said. "That they were out this way. I forgot she lived this close. And I didn't see it when I came to the reunion. Train came in a little late, so I got a hansom. If ya don't look out the window in time..."

Say somethin', me.
Anythin'.

But no words came, and Scootaloo was silent.

"Y'see her at all?" the heavyset filly asked, and the left forehoof scraped against the road.

"At school," Apple Bloom's tongue advanced without her. "Not much away from it. Not these days."

"She still going after you?" wasn't casual at all.

"No," Scootaloo said, and it was the truth. You saw Diamond in class, you spotted her on the street, and -- that was just about it. The failed stable sale had seen the most recent true interaction, and Apple Bloom still wasn't fully sure what to make of it.

She's different. Ah don't know how or why. But somethin' shifted. Somethin' big...

"Good," Babs breathed. "Good..."

The hoof scraped again. A significant amount of dirt failed to get out of the way in time.

"Seen her dad?"

Both fillies nodded.

"Her dad's nice," Babs decided. "I saw him a few times, when I was over at her place."

"...you've been t' her place," Apple Bloom's fully-independent larynx checked.

Her cousin was still staring down the road, and did that instead of looking at the filly.

"Well, yeah," came the stark tones. "Didn't exactly hang around the farmhouse much on that first trip, right? Or the clubhouse. Mostly gave that up once we knew you three weren't coming back. So she invited me over. We talked a lot."

"Talked about what?" coming from Scootaloo, was a perfectly natural question.

Babs was silent for a time. Sun shifted overhead. A breeze drove warmth away from their fur.

"Stuff," the third filly said. "We talked about stuff. Some of that was her dad. A better dad than she deserves..."

She stopped. Pulled her left foreleg out of the shallow trench, brought it back to level ground. Turned to face the others.

"Let's get to your place," Babs suggested. "Food on the train ain't good. I'm guessing your sister can still cook."

Apple Bloom tried to get ahead at the last, because the older sibling in question was currently on track to pick up a dinner (and breakfast, and lunch, and dinner again, and...) guest with no warning and the youngest felt even thirty seconds of advance notice offered in privacy might wind up going a long way. So she put her legs into overdrive, said something about needing to get her saddlebags unloaded, aimed herself at the last turn, charged --

-- and because life was entirely unfair, Applejack was outside. Pacing back and forth, and the ground-regarding gaze snapped up at the instant she heard hooves.

"'bout time," the older sister decided. "Ah was starting t' get worried there. Let me guess: Scootaloo decided t' launch a glide off the edge of the dam --"

"-- naw," Apple Bloom quickly said. "AJ, we went by the train station --"

"-- really? Yuca was a problem, then." The hat tilted forward. "Should've seen that comin'. Explains the stall. Mah fault for hopin' the cheaper place would still be stocked --"

"-- Applejack, we've got --"

"-- so that's how you do the race when it isn't seven-leg?" called out the brash voice as its owner rushed around the final bend. "No official starting call: just pound hooves and go? Back in Manehattan, we call that a duck-and --"

There was a final word in what would turn out to be a trio, and Apple Bloom wouldn't get the chance to hear it for a while. The non-sound of her sibling's head snapping up again fully drowned it out.

"-- Babs?" the older sister forced out. "What are y'doin' --"

"-- oh, come on: the surprise is over, she's already fetched me in --"

"-- why under Sun an' Moon are you in Ponyville?"

The true shock echoed off the trees, then bounced backwards into the house: Apple Bloom heard very large hooves starting to move. It also went directly into Babs, who stopped too quickly and found her body vibrating over frozen legs.

"-- ya didn't know?" This was followed by a near-frantic glance at Apple Bloom, one more checked the path and found Scootaloo just starting to come around the turn -- and then the full focus was on Applejack. "How could ya not know? The dobbins --"

"-- the what?" Applejack just barely managed.

"-- my parents! They wrote you to say I was coming, and asked ya to write back if I couldn't! I know they did! It was just about the only thing they did t --"

There were two sounds which cut off that word. The first came from the door, because Mac was a rather large stallion and having that much mass telling something to get out of the way in a hurry tended to produce a certain amount of noise. The resulting slam sent the hinges to their limits, with the rebound nearly taking the door into his neck: an intercepting hoof managed to catch the movement just in time. And then Apple Bloom's big brother was simply staring at Babs, because a future philosophy student probably had a lot of words on tap and at that moment, 'eyup' and 'nope' were exactly none of them.

The second was almost lost in the first. It was coming from well behind Apple Bloom, and somewhere above.

"Ah didn't get no letter!" Applejack declared.

"But you must have! They sent --"

The other sound was now descending.

"-- an' Ah know we ain't talked nearly as much as we should have, Babs, but Ah'd really appreciate it if y'wouldn't question me on that! When Ah say somethin' didn't happen, it didn't! An' this is me, standin' here with Sun an' family as mah witnesses, tellin' you --"

The source touched down. Four hooves tapped against the path, and every set of eyes turned to look at the source.

The grey mare politely nodded towards the elder siblings. One golden eye focused on Applejack: the other... Apple Bloom always had a little trouble with looking at the other, and generally didn't. She just watched the adult pegasus trot forward, overfull saddlebags seemingly threatening to tear from her body with every step.

The postpony stopped in front of the older sister. A rather pretty head turned towards the left saddlebag, and nimble teeth sorted. Eventually, an envelope was silently offered.

Applejack carefully nipped at a reinforced corner, took custody. The grey mare nodded again, then flared her wings. The wind backblast of takeoff sent road dust and the most recent fragments of Scootaloo's feather down everywhere. And by the time everypony else blinked away the last of it, she was gone.

The older Malus sister set the letter down on the ground. The return address was given a long, silent regard. The postmark and Sent date, however, received more of a glare.

"Give me a minute here," Applejack softly said. "Shouldn't take more than the one. This ain't too thick."

She pressed the letter under her right forehoof, crouched forward and got her teeth into the corner which hadn't been reinforced. It took a few seconds to extract the actual paper, followed by three half-muffled mutters before it was unfolded. And then she silently read the words which only she could see, as the Acres made a start on what Homecoming was really about. They waited.

Finally, Applejack refolded the letter. Straightened.

"Ah don't want t' hear anything said against her," the orange mare ordered. "Not one word. She's got a rough job with hard hours, an' it's me sayin' that. She's also the very last link in a chain which started real far off, an' she didn't have anythin' t' do with whatever happened before it got this far. All she did was manage the last furlong. She didn't sideline it a hundred times for every other part of the race an' make sure it didn't see the finish line until two weeks after the rest of the mutuel crossed. Everypony got that? Not her fault. So not one word."

Everypony nodded. This included Babs, and Apple Bloom presumed it was mostly just to keep the count intact.

"But..." Applejack sighed, "when y'think about it... Ah guess we've all gotten a little too used t' Spike."

Everypony except Babs nodded.

"...who?" the Manehattanite finally asked.

Ah was plannin' on it, when Ah heard you were comin'.
But y'don't do the cool things with somepony who's put you out of your bed. An' float. An' clubhouse. An'...
...so Ah didn't introduce you t' a dragon.
Ain't mah fault.

"Ah'll explain that later," Applejack sighed again. "Or... sometime. Right now, make it 'sometime'. Y'saw, Babs. Ah got the letter from your folks jus' now. Ah didn't know."

Everything about the heavyset filly took on extra gravity, and began to descend towards the dirt.

"I... I understand," Babs swallowed. "I've got the return ticket. It's open-date. I can just get on the --"

The older sister slowly shook her head. Glanced back at her brother, who nodded.

"Y'can get yourself into the house an' wash up," Applejack gently said. "Ah know Ah ain't got the best record with big groups. But Ah'm pretty sure Ah can manage a reunion for one."

Ex Parte

It was usually possible to leave autumn outside the farmhouse.

Winter was different. Apple Bloom lived in one of Ponyville's oldest homes: something which didn't mean much when you compared it to Canterlot and just about every other settled zone on the continent, but... old enough. Older than her, at least: something which could make the entire world feel ancient. And it was a house which had been constructed by earth ponies. Any attempt at thermal sealing was a task for precisely-fitted planks, with magic politely requested to wait outside the door. And when a house got old enough, once some of the wood started to warp...

In winter, the house leaked. Not much -- but enough that it could be uncomfortable to stand near a window for too long, when there was chill radiating from the glass. There were times when Apple Bloom had to bring a warming pan into bed, and few things were more awkward than trying to carry something that hot directly in front of your snout: the jaw grip was insulated, but her eyelashes usually felt as if they were going to start smoking. And Rainbow Dash had offered to use pegasus techniques on the farmhouse, keep some more of the heat inside where it belonged, but Applejack didn't want to rely on a system which she couldn't personally recharge. And when it came to placing the magic into something inanimate, an enchanted wonder which might draw its replacement thaums from the air... the weather coordinator apparently had a certain reputation.

Winter tried to follow you, waited for a chance to steal away the heat which came from flesh and fur. But it was usually possible to close the door on autumn. Sun's light streamed through windows which got cleaned just a little too often for comfort (especially when you were the filly who had to clean them), and having the wind blocked off meant getting all of the warmth without any of the chill.

The scents of the season were mostly associated with the Acres themselves: a crisp sweetness tended to permeate the atmosphere around the trees. Because there were a lot of leaves, just about every last one of them died when the trunks began to enter their silent slumber, and once the tiny corpses began to litter the ground... they decayed. There was some natural sugar in a leaf, and when that started to break down...

Spring and summer on the Acres were filled with the scents of life. Autumn on farming land meant Apple Bloom had to live at the center of a massive graveyard, and it made the air crisp and sweet.

Apple Bloom was a little older now. Wiser, or... at least she hoped to be. She was capable of looking back on her life. And she knew that there must have been a time when autumn had simply meant that there was a little more in the way of heated food and warm drinks, accompanied by a major upstep in the number of leaf piles available for jumping into. Or hiding within. She knew she'd spent at least one afternoon in giggling at the center of a mound, waiting to be found. And that had turned out to be a really bad idea, because it had taken a little too long before anypony had gone looking: enough for a very young filly (just past foal) to start wondering if anypony cared enough to search at all. So giggling had gone silent, transmuted into a soft weeping, that was what they'd heard, and...

Also, you got insects in leaf piles. A lot of them. The woolly caterpillars and pillbugs had been easy enough to extract from her fur, but it had taken over an hour to get rid of all the ticks.

(It wasn't necessarily a memory she wanted to have: focusing on a youthful past from an increasing age seemed to bring equally-increasing embarrassment. But there wasn't much of a selection available.)

The scents of the season were mostly associated with the outside. You could usually leave autumn at the door. But when you came into the farmhouse before Homecoming, with so much emanating from the kitchen... the same dishes every year, across all of the years, and every waft of air which touched your snout seemed to go directly into the brain and pushed you back in time...

Even if Babs hadn't been at the train station, being sent off the Acres would have still been the highlight of the day. Return and on this day, autumn would follow you. The season, the holiday, and everything which came with them.

Apple Bloom hated Homecoming. Hated how she was the only one who had to pause before going inside, because her siblings just stepped into the warm miasma as if it was all normal. Scootaloo had the excuse of not knowing enough to be offended, but her brother and sister should have remembered. Should have hesitated, if only for an instant.

And there must have been a time of innocence when she hadn't felt that way, when it was just a larger dinner than usual and an oddly-sleepy filly being carried to bed by the nape of her neck, too weighed down by warmth and dessert to protest, but... she couldn't remember it...

...a canine head lifted away from a tight curl of life as she entered, and warm dark eyes regarded her. The lightly-fringed tail wagged.

Applejack and Mac went past the dog, headed towards the kitchen because there was one more pony in the family who needed to be told what was going on and her hearing wasn't the best. And it had started as a good day for Granny Smith, but Apple Bloom had been away for a few hours and there had been plenty of opportunities to have it turn into a bad one --

-- Babs, who didn't know, who hadn't been there for any of it, simply came directly into the sitting room, then executed a complicated sort of shrug. It ended with saddlebags deposited to the floor.

"Hey, Winona!" her cousin called out, and the wagging became a little more uncertain. Apple Bloom was certain that the canine remembered Babs, or at least recalled her scent. But the Manehattanite hadn't spent a lot of time with the family companion during either of the previous visits, and now Babs was going straight towards her --

-- the heavyset body dropped down. (Several pictures and knickknacks indulged in small leaps.) She moved in --

-- it only lasted for a few seconds. And then she snorted, puffed a little air into her mane, and watched the dog go into the kitchen.

(There was an indistinct babble coming out of the preparation area now. Apple Bloom knew Granny was part of it, but she couldn't make out the words. However, when it came to emotional tone, the mix seemed to call for two parts confusion to one part surprise and a major dusting of worry.)

"She ain't much of a cuddler, is she?" Babs observed, watching the tip of Winona's tail vanish past the edge of the door frame.

"She's a workin' dog," Apple Bloom said. "She usually don't stay still for long unless she's exhausted or asleep. Always lookin' for somethin' t' do." Which could actually be a problem with border collies. The breed often came across as the canine equivalent of Applejack: they needed to work -- and if there wasn't enough activity available, they would make some. "Good news is that she didn't try t' herd you. Sometimes, when we don't wear her out enough --"

"-- cats are better," her cousin decided, and made that announcement just as Scootaloo crossed the threshold. (The pegasus shut the door behind her. At least Scootaloo could remember to shut a door.)

Both of the local fillies blinked.

"...they are?" Scootaloo didn't quite ask.

"Yeah," Babs declared. "I should know. I've got a cat."

We really didn't get t' talk much before this, did we?

"Y'do?" emerged as the verbal end of that.

"Cats are smart," the visitor stated, frustrated gaze focused on the empty doorway. "Bianca's smarter than some of the ponies I go to school with. She's sure smarter than the average dobbin. A cat pays attention, all the time. So they know when stuff's going on. And they stick around. Share the bed. Cuddle. Because they know you need them around."

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo looked at each other. Kept looking, because very few ponies chose cats as companions. The majority of the population just wasn't comfortable in living with an open, prideful predator -- especially one who kept bringing in little still-bleeding gifts because the pony was clearly too stupid to hunt for themselves. It meant their central experience with the species was Opal. There was a certain silent agreement that any filly who tried to cuddle their body against Opal was going to wind up pulling back a little less body than they'd started with.

The youngest Malus thought about Opal. Which led to thinking about Sweetie.

She tried to stop. It didn't work.

"Bianca pays attention," Babs semi-repeated. "Sometimes, she's..." Stopped. Took a breath, and glared at the open door. "Dogs are good enough, I guess. And maybe some of them cuddle. Just not Winona." Hooves pushed against the floor, and she started to stand up. "I'll take my saddlebags up and unpack. But I've gotta go get rid of the train first."

"Washin' up?" Apple Bloom theorized.

"For starters," Babs admitted. "But train food is lousy -- well, maybe not all of it, but anything the dobbins paid into the ticket wasn't worth it. And there's stuff you just can't do on a train. Not unless you're getting off right after." And then she snickered. "So I'm just gonna go put a dent in the toilet trench. See you in a few!"

And without looking at the other two, she took up the saddlebag straps in her mouth and headed for the ramp, leaving the shock behind.

It turned out to be more than 'a few'. In Apple Bloom's opinion, Babs wound up staying in the bathroom for far too long. Several concerning questions about train cuisine were raised, initially tabled and then, because there seemed to be plenty of time for it, brought into open debate and eventually dragged through the deep realms of culinary horror. Apple Bloom's end of the argument started with theory and quickly moved towards pure imagination, because just about all of her train experience was in relatively short jaunts to Canterlot --

Babs lives on the east coast, Scootaloo wasn't even born in Equestria, an' Ah've hardly ever been anywhere

-- for school trips supervised by Miss Cheerilee, and Applejack always tried to send plenty of snacks along.

But then Apple Bloom was called in to stir a few pots. After that, there were chores to do, because autumn wasn't winter and the Acres weren't quite at rest just yet. She had to go out to the tenant-hosting portions of the land and check on a few things, there was a brief argument with a pig because having been in the kitchen meant she smelled like food and the pig wanted to know why they weren't getting all of it, she came back to the farmhouse and Babs was still in the bathroom.

It begged a few questions, and a fast hoof knock on the closed door settled the one about medical emergencies.

Ah don't get it. Scootaloo ties up the whole thing for too long 'cause she spent all that time... alone. Might as well stay in there for hours, 'cause ain't nopony who needs it after you're done. But Babs lives with her parents.

Two of 'em.

An'... don't she have a sister?

Hadn't that been mentioned, just before Babs had returned home for the first time? That her cousin was going to bring up the bullying to an older sibling? Apple Bloom was sure Babs had a big sister, and those were nature's perfect mirror hogs. especially before a date. But...

...Ah didn't see her sister at the reunion. Least, nopony pointed her out t' me, an' Babs sure didn't.

Have Ah ever met...?

But that was when Babs had come down, and all had been silently explained with a single look. Her cousin had been experimenting with mane and tail. There wasn't much to work with, not as short as Babs's cuts were, but -- it was possible to add a little bit of wave, try a few things to bring out that much more of the natural highlights. Add that to the fur grooming, and Babs almost looked like a different pony.

A different, rather hungry pony. And since it was dinnertime...

It turned out to just be the six of them. (Apple Bloom knew what the pre-Babs holiday guest list looked like, and her theory was that Rainbow Dash was saving up some internal space for the next day.) And there wasn't a lot of talk around the table. Plenty of eating, because Babs was hungry and Scootaloo's body was currently running the kind of internal engine which made trains look like they were on starvation diets. But when it came to talk...

Apple Bloom knew her sister. She was perfectly aware that Honesty didn't mean Applejack had to say everything, along with the fact that there were too many times when it felt as if her sibling said nothing at all --

-- y'didn't tell me --

-- and that made it easy to pick up on when the older Malus was holding words back. There were a few light inquiries made of Babs, but they were the sunken foundation stones of talking to kids: schoolwork and play. The sort of thing where you had to clean off a lot of dirt just to see if there was anything real underneath, and Applejack wasn't exactly doing any heavy excavating. You couldn't really ask Mac to contribute much into a conversation until a new presence had been around for a while, and Granny... just kept looking at Babs. A quiet regard, and it happened over and over. Something which made it impossible for Apple Bloom to tell if it came from the heart of a good day or a bad one.

They all ate. And then they had to clean up after dinner, there were a few more chores...

She couldn't sleep.

Again.

There was almost no light in her bedroom, not with a quarter-Moon hidden behind scheduled heavy night clouds. A little leak of illumination came from the door frame: something which suggested there was at least one adult awake in the house. That mostly served to give the space a few designated shadows, and two of them occupied extra beds.

Her bedroom was getting kind of crowded. The memories took up too much room.

The larger shadow was Babs. It breathed slowly, almost silently, and that didn't feel like it was quite what Apple Bloom was used to. But perhaps she was simply out of the habit. She'd spent a lot of time listening to Babs breathe in the dark. Staring at a dark ceiling, waiting for the exact moment when that breathing changed. Hoping for a precious second of warning.

Ah could've had a bed, the first time she was here.
All Ah had t' do was 'snitch' and say that she was in mine.
Didn't find where she put the one Mac brought in for her until two weeks after she left.

Babs... hadn't asked about the extra bed which had already been in place, any more than she'd questioned Scootaloo's possessions being in the room. She'd just claimed her space, and then she'd almost immediately gone to sleep. Apple Bloom's guess was that the travel had just worn her out. And Scootaloo had been sleeping a lot more than usual, because puberty took a lot of energy.

Apple Bloom wasn't staring at the ceiling. Sleeping on her back... that wasn't a natural position for a pony. She usually only wound up that way when she couldn't sleep at all, found herself twisting and turning in a desperate attempt to learn if there was some magical position which she just hadn't tried before. And even when she did find herself in the unnatural configuration... she was in her own bed this time. A canopy bed. It meant she was mostly staring at a dome of shadowed fabric.

Staring, and listening to Babs breathe.

Again.

Ah thought Ah was past this.

Ah couldn't tell Mac or AJ what was happenin'. Because that was 'snitchin'.' An' for some reason, that was supposed t' be wrong.

She put me out of mah own bed. An' every day, every time she was around me or us, she'd find somethin' t' do. Lots of stuff t' do on the Acres, always. Or t' do to the youngest pony there.

Ah had t' listen when she slept. 'cause that way, Ah'd know when she was 'bout t' wake up. Ah'd get a few seconds of warnin'. An' maybe if Ah was quick, Ah could get out of the room before it all started up again...

Ah was afraid t' sleep, with her in the room. Jus' in case she woke up first.

Lost hours of sleep. That's what happens, when you share a bedroom with your bully. Y'lose so much sleep that it gets hard t' do chores. Ah jus' stumbled around in a daze most of the time, because Ah wasn't sleepin' an' it was jus' gettin' hard t' think. An' after a few days, the thoughts Ah could still have got... strange.

Stuff like 'sabotagin' a float is a good idea'.

Babs' first visit had taught Apple Bloom a few vital things about herself. For starters, the filly had some vengeance in her heart. And there was a chance that she was a little too good at it.

Ah still feel like Ah care 'bout Babs.
It's a lot easier t' care 'bout her when she's a long way off.
Ah thought Ah was past this...

But her cousin was motionless. No harm was being planned, not even in dream. Just sleeping, and -- breathing. The sound was so soft...

The new shadow was curled up a little, with a small hollow at the center. Making room for something which wasn't there.

Maybe if Ah jus' move around a little.

Pretend Ah'm Winona. Jus' gotta wear mahself out.

Not that she could get outside and take a quick gallop. It was safe enough on the Acres at night, but autumn meant it was going to be cold. And any attempt to extract the necessary protection from the ground floor closet would require getting past whoever was still awake.

Ah can at least go out into the hallway. Pace a little. Somepony sees me, Ah needed the bathroom. If'fin Babs switches up her mane again tomorrow, gonna be a lot of ponies who need the bathroom. An' we've got more than the one, but there's gonna be guests...

Apple Bloom was fairly certain there was no mark for stealth. (Miss Twilight seemed to believe there was a suit for it, and the filly was pretty sure the adult was wrong.) But years of Crusading had given her some skill at quietly exiting the old bed.

She moved past the sleeping shadows. Blankets were jaw-pulled over wings exposed by restlessness. She found herself glancing at the larger mound of life more than she would have liked.

It took a few seconds to get the door open in a way which didn't produce noise, because getting out of the Crusade meant Apple Bloom had stopped dedicating quite so much time to lubricating the hinges. And then she was in the upper hallway, the light was streaming up from the lower level of the farmhouse...

Her bedroom door was no longer blocking sound. She could hear a soft snore coming through a partially-open doorway, just off to the right. Apple Bloom knew that snore by heart.

Granny's asleep.

It was a sound to which she gave close attention, because so much of her dreaded the night when it stopped.

So it's AJ or Mac down there. Could be both. Quiet right now, but --

"Can I see the letter?"

Her brother sounded tired. His voice always got a little deeper when he was tired...

"Want t' read it for yourself?" Applejack asked.

They're in the sittin' room. Definitely ain't gettin' out that way, if'fin it comes t' that --
-- wait.
The letter?

"Eyup." Which was followed by a sigh: something which, when it emerged from such a large body, always seemed a little too soft. "Just to see exactly what they said, AJ. The wording counts."

"Keep the reins on: Ah'll get it..."

Movement. Hooves on floorboards. Paper rustling.

They haven't heard me.
If Ah don't move too much, they won't --

"Not much here," Mac wearily said. "Just enough to get the basics across."

"Not much," Applejack agreed, and the youngest Malus heard a solid body plop back onto the couch. "Not much an' too much. At the same time."

"It's barely about Babs."

"Once y'take them out," Applejack darkly observed, "it's barely 'bout anythin' at all."

Apple Bloom froze.

They were talking about --
-- she wasn't completely sure. Not yet. But if it concerned the letter...

Can Ah get closer?

Kinda wish mah fur was a different color. This ain't fur designed for sneakin' close t' anypony. Maybe there ain't no stealth suits, but Miss Rights got the stealth fur...

She could hear well enough from where she was. There was no point in taking the risk.

"There's a pattern here," Applejack's open frustration observed. "When y'think it over."

"What are you seeing?" Mac asked.

"College colt don't know?" Only half a tease.

"Pretend you need to explain it," said her big brother. "Philosophy means more than most ponies believe, AJ. But I can only try to have your thoughts. I don't know what they actually are."

(The filly imagined a nod.)

"An' there's days," Applejack sighed, "when you're better off for it. Okay. The pattern? They don't deal with things, Mac. They push. Get it out of sight, an' maybe it'll resolve itself. The first time Babs came here, wasn't that their answer?" Shuffling against old cushions, with an audible compression of springs. "Ah... didn't think much 'bout that at the time. But now it's a pattern. They didn't try t' charge down her problem at the source. Jus' -- moved her away from it. An' unless she manifested while she was with us, the issue was still gonna be there when she got back."

"And if that did happen," Mac realized, "they would have missed it."

"Lots of parents do. Not always around when..." Applejack stopped. "Not always around."

Waiting.

"They would have missed the chance."

Silence, deep enough to hear the ancient clock ticking.

"Bullyin'," Applejack finally said. "Get her out of the area. Maybe it makes sense on the surface, but not deeper down. They pushed the problem away. An' now? They're pushin' her off again. It's the same answer. The same one, an' it doesn't work."

"I thought they were just too busy to attend the reunion," Mac slowly said. "It's not as if we ever get everypony. Too busy, so they sent her to represent the branch."

She never pointed a hoof at anypony an' said that was her sister.
Never brought me up to her folks.
It was jus' her.
Only her.
Alone.

"Or they pushed her out for a while." Volume dropped, and Apple Bloom's ears strained forward to catch what remained. "Ah was thinkin' durin' dinner. The train is days back an' forth. That first visit -- same as it was for the reunion. Different timin'. But it's autumn, Mac. The only way she's on the Acres for Homecomin' is for them t' pull her out of school. For nearly a couple of weeks. She's missin' classes an' friends an' everythin' else. Jus' so they can put her here for a couple of days."

"Pull her out of school," Mac slowly said, "or push?"

Granny snored. The clock ticked along. Somewhere behind Apple Bloom, Babs breathed, and did so in near-silence.

"Ah'm goin' t' bed," Applejack suddenly said. "Ah think Ah want t' deal with this under Sun. You?"

"Same."

Springs decompressed. Hooves began to repeatedly impact wood. Apple Bloom, trying to move as silently as she could, scrambled for her own door.

It didn't prevent her from hearing her sister's last words.

"They push it all away," Applejack stated. "Everythin'. An' now they're pushin' each other."

Burden Of Proof

She had to recover the voucher from the path: something which put her well behind Babs when coming back into the house. It provided enough distance to let her spot that her cousin had switched up the styling on the amaranth tail again, and Apple Bloom distractedly wondered how much bathroom time had been involved.

There also seemed to be a certain amount of makeup present. Babs had likely brought that with her. Applejack hardly ever used it, and Apple Bloom didn't have any: her salary was limited and she had very little concept of how the powders were meant to be applied. The fact that she was still paying off some small claims judgments for Crusade-related damages had added a few moons to the wait time before she could hope to pay for a learning experience.

It took a little work to put the voucher within one of Applejack's accounting ledgers, placed so that there was just a little bit of dampened edge sticking out: enough to see if you knew where it was, trigger a reminder — but otherwise, it was likely to be overlooked for a day . There was nothing which could be done with the payment on a holiday, and it was probably best off staying out of the way for a while.

Babs went into the kitchen. Apple Bloom headed for the lower-level restroom. When it came to water faucets, it had the closest ones which weren't subject to observation, and her tongue felt like paper, expensive inks, and... a hint of salt.

The door was kicked shut. She nudged one tap with her snout, got her mouth under the flow and swished the water around for a few seconds. Spit, because you could do that if you were a farm kid who had privacy and didn't need to worry about a sibling's commentary: with the social privacy offered by the Acres, it would likely be about her lack of ability to go for distance. Closed the tap again, rubbed the wet fur of her jaw against the nearest towel, and then stared into the old mirror. There was always a mirror available in a restroom, although this specimen was smaller than the one on the upper level. Any reflecting done was concentrated accordingly, and seemed to gain intensity.

Mah bow's a little off-center. Didn't get enough sleep. Wasn't payin' attention when Ah put it in. Ah should fix that.

Diamond usually would've said somethin'. Startin' with how Ah ain't got no fashion sense, but the off-center stuff would turn up eventually.

Diamond...

Weary orange eyes blinked back at her from silvered glass.

...Diamond... broke.

The blinks got a little faster.

Cried. She was cryin'.
...what?

Apple Bloom stared into her tired reflection. Then she turned around, went to the restroom door, and switched it from 'closed' to 'locked'. She felt as if she needed privacy, and that was hard to come by in the farmhouse — but a restroom had a certain amount to offer. Babs had certainly been taking advantage.

Back to the mirror. Her reflection seemed to have used their time apart to forfeit an extra two hours of sleep. The youngest Malus wasn't sure how that worked. Maybe if she found some way of getting to the mirror pool and trotting into the water, anypony who came out with her would be fighting not to fall asleep on the spot. Not getting zapped back through would mean a contest of staying awake...

Ah know Ah'm tired. That almost made sense.

She tried to focus.

Diamond doesn't break.
...she does the breakin'.

It felt as if she could remember everything the pink filly had ever said to her, and the majority still made the fringes of her ears burn: a sensation which still somehow nearly became lost when compared to feeling her tail trying to tuck itself between her hind legs. And that was just for the words Apple Bloom had received directly: Scootaloo had reported a few encounters, and Sweetie...

...she didn't want to think about Sweetie.

There were too many memories associated with Diamond, and the majority made her long for the false protection which came from being tucked deep beneath blankets. Or, just for variety and the dubious benefit granted by a more solid roof, under the bed. She'd spent a few cumulative post-Diamond hours under her own bed, and some of the wood there was probably flavored with faint traces of salt.

Too many memories. But the most recent pair had swapped out emotions: humiliation for deep confusion. First it had been the strangeness of the stable sale encounter, during which Diamond had seemed to be offering... advice.

An' also talkin' t' 'Cameo'.
Whoever that is.

And now... this.

Diamond didn't break. Diamond did the breaking. The harder material drove edged words into something softer, aiming precisely for whatever was seen as a weak point. The Crusaders had conveniently offered a minimum of two each, located close to the hips. Strike with precision, and the fracture was just about guaranteed. And, once they'd reached privacy again, the tears.

Diamond didn't cry. What did she have to cry about? She was the cause of misery in others, and she enjoyed every last minute of it —

— enjoyed.
Ain't been somethin' she does. Not lately. It's been turnin' into something she did.

It... almost seemed as if she should have felt good, seeing Diamond cry. If it was regarded as a basic hoofstep towards balancing the accounts, then the pink filly had a long way to go before the scales would be anything close to even. But...

...what was that even about?

She scrutinized her reflection for clues. It just looked tired. And also like it wasn't all that good at scrutiny.

Think.
Telling Diamond's mother.
Or Diamond could go do whatever she had to, in order t' — tell her mom herself.
What do Ah know about Diamond's mom?

When she thought about Diamond’s parents… well, of course anypony was going to picture Mr. Rich first. Diamond’s father was arguably one of the town’s foundations. A cornerstone, holding up quite a bit of the local economy. He was known to be fair, open-minded, had never gouged on any price, looked after his customers while offering fair salaries to every employee…

On the most fundamental level, he was a good pony. Apple Bloom recognized that, and did so in the same moment which found her acknowledging his two major faults: namely, that he tended to believe Diamond first and foremost on anything, and — had something of a blind spot regarding the majority of counterevidence. Anypony trying to testify against his only child generally found that the filly was effectively controlling the judge’s bench.

He treated his daughter as something precious. By contrast, Diamond tended to invoke her father as a weapon. Do this or my daddy will… well, ‘stop buying here’ could be most of it, but it was understood that a cross-continent business had to keep attorneys on retainer and Diamond had claimed to be capable of starting lawsuits against those she didn’t like. Threatening to sue for emotional damages had been common, because there was no source of lifelong trauma quite like Not Getting Her Own Way.

However, any inner agony which Diamond inflicted upon others clearly didn’t count. They’d had it coming. Besides, the primary court had already rejected those witnesses. Diamond was generally careful not to put on a full performance in front of anypony whom her father might actually find credible —

— the train station. Jus’ before Babs left for the first time.
Talked ‘bout us right in front of Applejack. She usually holds back around adults, if’fin they ain’t who she’s after —

— no. Apple Bloom had to focus.

Diamond’s father was a good stallion, and there had been times when Apple Bloom had wondered whether he even truly understood how his only child kept wielding a parent’s wealth and influence as a blunt instrument. (Not that directly telling him would have done much good, because those two faults were still in play.) But when it came to the mother…

When it came to what her parents might be willing to do on her behalf, Diamond had invoked Mr. Rich all the time.

So what’s she said ‘bout her mom?

Apple Bloom concentrated. Stared back into so many of the memories she didn’t want to have, reviewed threats both implicit and implied.

There was a certain theme.

“You don’t know what he’ll do, if he thinks I’ve been hurt.”
“He won’t believe you.”
“My daddy —“

And when she forced herself to look at all of it, going over every last moment while trying to keep phantom echoes of pain away, wondering if the old weight would press down until her collapsed body was shivering against the scrap of bathroom carpet… there was also a certain absence.

Always the father. Never the mother.

Apple Bloom had never heard Diamond invoke her mother. She couldn’t remember anypony talking about that parent. Mr. Rich was part of Ponyville, fully out in the open, a cornerstone mounted well above ground, and his spouse —

— never seen Diamond with an adult mare. Not one Ah didn’t know worked at the estate. Servant, once in a while. But without that, it’s her dad or nopony.

Mr. Rich… he’s gotta go t’ parties, right? Ah mean, Diamond says he takes her t’ some of the business stuff. Meetin’ the important ponies. But if it’s in Canterlot an’ he takes her along… she’s said that’s an air carriage. Leaves from the estate. So Ah wouldn’t see her come out the path, or gettin’ on a train.

Ah wouldn’t see who else is on the carriage.

A few servants. Maybe three. She ain’t bad with the servants. Isn’t mean to ‘em. But when she’s in Ponyville with an adult, it’s usually her dad. Jus’ her dad. And she talks ‘bout him, she swings his name with her mouth like she’s tryin’ t’ hit the world with a splinter stick an’ it’s her dad, it’s always her dad —

— Diamond existed, generally in spite of popular demand. One parent was a stallion: when it came to arranging for that existence, The Most Special Spell hadn’t been involved. She was sure there hadn’t been an adoption: Diamond didn’t look all that much like her father, but there was something in the eyes and bearing —

— and she knew.

It was like sketching out the blueprint for an invention. Something where all but one of the pieces required could be purchased at a shop or personally manufactured, while the final component wasn’t quite solid or defined. You knew that one more gear was required, but… not what it looked like. Not size or rotation speed or just where it was meant to intermesh with everything you understood. It was the recognition of vacuum.

But there was a way to close that gap. You just drew up everything you already knew. Looked at the hole in the center. And if you were lucky, if everything else was already in place and you just tried to see… then the final component would be there. Floating within the mind, superimposed upon paper. Waiting for you to sketch the outline, as the first step in making it real.

Apple Bloom had assembled everything she’d already known about her enemy. Stared into the gap. And when it came to the sophisticated gears which made Diamond’s soul turn… there was only one piece which could ever fit.

Her mom is gone.

It was a cold thought: one which sent her ears backwards as her tail trembled, and it was all the more chill for being a nearly-familiar one. All she would have needed to do for an exact replica was apply a more personal pronoun, with the additional option to go for the plural.

Her mom is gone.

And there was a moment when she found herself making a wish on her enemy’s behalf, because there were things too cruel for even Diamond to have suffered. She wished for the absence to have come from the soft options. A divorce, perhaps: Apple Bloom roughly understood those to exist, but they were fairly rare. Or… a runaway? A parent fleeing into the night, for… some reason. Something she could barely fathom, for she felt herself to know a little about the father and couldn’t truly picture anything to run from.

But she was still looking in the mirror. Looking back and inwards and everywhere else. And when she forced herself to truly think about all of it, everything Diamond had ever said while on the attack… there was a second absence.

Bein’ a farm kid. Not havin’ as much money. Needin’ t’ work every day. Chores.
Fashion sense. Lack of it, anyway.
Stupidity. Ain’t like Ah didn’t give her plenty t’ work with there.
Not having mah mark, when she manifested so early. An’ then it was still not havin’ it. Year after year.
Mah home. Mah looks. Mah hips were jus’ convenient.

Apple Bloom looked back at the Diamond-occupied portions of her life and saw pain. Deliberate cruelty. A filly who believed herself to be immune to consequences, and so would do anything as long as it made somepony hurt. Anything at all.

Except that… there had been a line. One which Diamond had hoof-scraped into the soil. This far, and no further. Something she’d never crossed.

The words she’d never said. The recognition of vacuum.

Harder material going into softer, forever seeking the chance to hurt.
But never at the weakest point.
The never-healed wound.
The place where one good verbal kick had a chance to shatter the target.

Mah parents.

The first tears began to well up.

She’s never said a word ‘bout mah parents.

They almost always did.

Diamond’s mom is dead.

But she wasn’t sure who they were for.

Cause Of Action

She had to clean her face again, and getting rid of tear tracks was its own art. Apple Bloom had never found the chance to try makeup (and her only possible reason was something she hated herself for, dearly wished the dreams would just stop) — but when it came to smoothing out her fur so that it looked as if no emotions had been felt at all…

There was no mark for that. The youngest Malus recognized it as a certainty. The Crusade would have produced a triple manifest, and it would have taken place within the first three moons.

Dead.

She looked into the bathroom mirror. Sent the word through her mind a few more times, and only stopped when it temporarily ceased to produce a need for additional touch-ups.

When?

She didn’t have an answer for that, and when it came to getting a precise date… Ponyville didn’t have its own newspaper. (On the most technical level, it didn’t have one any more.) She couldn’t visit the library and look through yellowing pages for a single obituary. And even if that level of public record had existed — it was Homecoming. The library, as with every other local government building, was closed. A factor which closed off the true first resort, because there was no current means of getting into Town Hall and looking at those public records either.

The easiest way would have been through asking an adult, but… Apple Bloom would need to luck into one who knew. And there was another lingering side effect of the Crusade to deal with: when it came to even the most basic questions, too many mares and stallions would still want to know why the inquiry was being made. To ask about a death…

Apple Bloom didn’t know exactly when Diamond’s mother had died. But she could make a rough guess.

Long enough that ponies don’t talk ‘bout it no more.

There were things which the youngest Malus barely remembered. And as the years passed, time abraiding memory like a grindstone turning against moss…

She was losing memories. She knew it. She tried to bring back those days, concentrated fiercely on anything which remained, and sometimes wondered if the clearest images had been born from imagination twinned to the desperate desire to still have something.

Memories being lost to the void, while the things she didn’t want to remember would perversely insist on staying outside the abyss. But there were times when the latter category became useful, generally in moments of renewed pain. And in this case, it meant Apple Bloom knew a few things about death. The ways in which it faded, for all but those who were still wounded. Forever bleeding, for some things never healed.

There would be a death.

(There had been two.)

And it would just… take over. Death consumed your life. It was every moment. If somepony spoke to you, then that was the topic. Shiva started and for somepony too young to ever hear the final echoes which rose from the magic of the lost, all the mourning period did was grant you time in which death was the lone thought. And when shiva ended, when you went out into public again, complete strangers would come up to you and say how sorry they were, how very sorry and maybe they’d known the lost, but Apple Bloom had never met any of them and it didn’t feel as if they had the right.

Death was moons of falsely being offered comfort. (Or sincere attempts, but… they didn’t work, and the resulting void felt exactly the same.) Of being pitied. Of climbing into a cold, too-large bed because maybe, just maybe, it had all been a dream and she would wake up to find —

— but time passed. It stole memories, and it did so while weakening the majority of emotions. Eventually, the wound bled for her —

— for us, that ain’t fair, for us —

— alone. Ponies mostly stopped talking about it. If the topic did somehow arise, it was quickly dismissed. A few would even begin to speak of the lost with smiles on their faces, as if those gone forever would be coming around the corner at any minute.

Waitin’.

And when enough time had gone by, weeks into moons, moons to seasons and seasons passing year after year… nopony would speak at all. And that was the point at which Apple Bloom found her anger.

There was a saying: that nopony was truly dead as long as their name was still spoken. While they were remembered. But Apple Bloom remembered less every year, her own family seldom spoke of the lost, and when it came to the town… hardly anypony brought it up any more. With so many new ponies in town, there were those who would never speak. No memories to bring back, and no reason to inquire. The way things were… that was all they would ever know.

Diamond’s mother was dead. And it was an old death, for even the words had been buried —

— the bathroom seemed to be getting colder.

Babs told Diamond t’ go tell her mom herself. Whatever had t’ be done for that.

It was like being too close to Princess Luna when the alicorn was in a bad mood, only with all of the chill rising from within.

Babs told Diamond t’ kill herself.

She didn’t understand why the mirror wasn’t frosting.

”I don’t think ponies change. The most they do is show you who they really are underneath.”

Ah told mahself Ah care ‘bout Babs. Ah… want t’ care ‘bout her.

But Ah don’t know her, do Ah?

Who is Babs?

She didn’t know.

There was no realistic holiday means of staying in the bathroom forever (unless you were Babs): eventually, there were going to be questions or, if she really stalled, either guests who needed the space or the summoning of doctors because something clearly had to be exactly that wrong. Apple Bloom wasn’t entirely sure which was worse and in both cases, didn’t see any real hope of getting meal delivery until Babs got back on the train.

So she had to exit, because Homecoming still had chores to inflict. But before she went back out…

What do Ah say?

Was there anything to be said at all?

She didn’t know if there was any current point in telling Applejack about what had happened between Diamond and Babs. And it wasn’t from a desire to avoid ‘snitching’, because the youngest Malus now understood exactly how stupid that was. Her sister would likely believe her about all of it: the end of the Crusade had brought a slowly-increasing spike in credibility — but what was the current motivation for speaking?

Confront Babs on her own ‘bad attitude’?
…protect Diamond?

…probably not that last.

Apple Bloom understood that a lot of families fought on Homecoming, and… she didn’t want that. The part of her which was still fully a filly longed for warmth and comfort and somepony who would carry her to bed. Or, at the very least, not to wait any more.

But there was also a slowly-emerging inner adult to reckon with, and that party recognized that something might have to be said — while simultaneously feeling that before any words came out, the speaker had better make sure they were the right ones.

Each aspect recognized the existence of the other. This was mostly done through a lot of glaring, the not-so-occasional open tumbling battle through the interior of Apple Bloom’s skull, and a rather solid agreement about giving up on waiting.

Might be able t’ hold off until tomorrow mornin’. Jus’ get up first an’ talk t’ Applejack then. Won’t disrupt the holiday, an’ it gives me more time t’ get the words right. Ain’t like Diamond’s likely t’ come back —

— Diamond, when angry or bored, tended to drag her father into everything. With this new emotion in play…

Apple Bloom made a quick estimate for the amount of time which had passed since the encounter. Compared it against Diamond’s best hoof speed across the distance to the estate, and then factored for a slower adult coming back.

They would’ve been here by now.

She paused. Listened carefully, and held her breath.

Or now.
Maybe now.
Maybe…
…all right: Ah know Ah can keep this up for hours. Figure they ain’t coming, work out what t’ say in a hurry if’fin they do. But Ah don’t know if she told her dad. If she’ll ever tell. Ah don’t know what Diamond does when she —
— cries.

Jus’ go back out there. Do chores. Help set up for the holiday. Pretend everythin’ is fine. Ah’m good at that, right? Ah pretended for a couple of weeks when Babs was here the first time. Pretendin’ is easy.

…not so easy that Ah got a mark for that, neither…

An’ Ah think Ah need t’ get a look at that letter. Maybe Ah can find where they put the thing. It’s like Mac said: the wordin’ counts. An’ since Ah don’t know what any of those words are…

She had the option to directly ask her siblings. Or Granny, for that matter. But she suspected the usual result was very much in play: that she would be told she was too young for such things, or… Honesty, asked for the favor granted by truth, would simply fall silent.

The youngest Malus turned away from the mirror. Holiday chores would keep her mouth and hooves busy for a while. In theory, that would buy the brain time in which to actually come up with something productive. And chores would mean avoiding Babs, gaining that much more solitude for thought.

She unlocked the door, started back into the main farmhouse, and nearly trotted directly into the center of the too-soft argument.

It was easy to pick out out the words. Applejack could just about whisper with authority, and with Scootaloo… the pegasus had a way of going quiet which effectively duplicated a scream.

They were in the sitting room, and only the near-instant freeze of Apple Bloom’s legs had kept her from joining them. She could hear every word — but to move enough for a single glimpse of fur would risk being seen herself.

Stopping at the border of a discussion. Eavesdropping, for the second time in less than a day. She knew the family wouldn’t approve. But having heard any of the words meant she knew not to step into sight.

The time before the holiday had seen Scootaloo growing increasingly quiet. Tense.

“I have to!”

There was a reason for that.

Almost gently, “Y’shouldn’t.” It was an honest opinion, and so the shine came off necklace and jewel.

“I have to be there!” The volume hadn’t increased. The desperation had. “Today of all days! If they’re ever going to — it’s right there, it’s in the name! I just need to check! Stay, just for tonight, because if they… and I’m not there, I have to be there — I can sleep there tonight, I know how to sleep in my own —“

“— an’ if they don’t?” Just barely above a whisper, and the soft tones failed to comfort or cushion.

“You don’t know!”

“Ah know,” Applejack gently said, “that the police put alarms on the house.” (There was kindness in the words, and Apple Bloom mentally raised the count of ruined Elements to two.) “Somepony tries t’ get in, and a signal goes off at the station. They’ll dispatch. They’ll come tell you, as quick as they can. ‘cause they always would, ‘cause that’s been the plan all along — but especially today, Scootaloo. They’ll always tell you —”

“— it’ll be dark!” the pegasus protested. “It’ll look like nopony’s home, because there isn’t! If I just —“

“— Ah can ask somepony t’ turn a light on,” Applejack offered and, before the youngest could evaluate the use of ‘can’, switched to “Will. It’ll be a little complicated, but Ah can get word into town.”

‘Frantic’ applied to tone and speech, if only as drastic understatement. “But they’ll go inside and see it’s just a light, and it won’t be — if I’m there…!”

“Scootaloo,” Applejack softly asked, “the alarm spell is still gonna send the signal. Somepony will be there, as quick as they can. An’… after all this time, if they got back an’ saw y’weren’t there — d’you think they’d jus’ go an’ turn around?”

The worst thing happened.

There were a lot of worsts on that particular holiday, with more to come on the day after. But when Apple Bloom looked back on all of it… there was an argument to be made that the nadir arrived at that exact moment. Forever embedded within an instance of perfect silence.

Applejack had asked a question. Something which had been designed to bring out a single, instantaneous answer. And Scootaloo… hesitated.

“…no.”

Her sister was Honesty, and that meant it was sometimes possible to hear when Applejack wasn’t speaking. But in that moment, if only for an instant, the youngest Malus picked up on the second silence. The place where the deepest of sighs would have gone, if not for the barrier created by responsibility and the bond which had yet to fully build. And perhaps that sound would have been followed by tears, and wet eyes pressed against welcoming fur.

But the older sister and the welcome guest weren’t there yet. And so there was only silence.

“Ah’ll get word t’ Miranda,” Applejack finally promised. “T’ turn a light on. An’ make sure the alarm is charged. Maybe even leave a note, sayin’ where t’ go. That’s a promise, Scootaloo.” With the lightest hint of ill-timed humor (and that was three now), “Appreciate it if’fin y’wouldn’t question that — “

“— I didn’t,” the pegasus quietly said. “I won’t. I’m… just going to go up the ramp.”

“Stay on the Acres,” was, all things considered, much more gentle than it could have been.

“I’m not leaving through the window,” Scootaloo stated. “I’m just — going to try a glide. Because… maybe if they…” Stopped, and Apple Bloom heard the effort which went into the next breath. “Gliding. It’s… something they could see, if Chief Rights brought them over. So I’m going to practice…”

Apple Bloom listened. Briefly wondered exactly what Applejack could do to ruin Magic, because that seemed to be next on the list and putting a crack in Loyalty was going to take some work.

But all her sister said was “Go ahead. But don’t go too far.”

The lighter set of hooves shifted. Slow, dragging impacts made their way up the ramp. And Apple Bloom, unsure of whether it was safe to move, reverted to that which was most common.

Ah hate this day. The day, an’ everythin’ that comes with it.

All the things which don’t come. Which never come, no matter how much y’hope. Pray, t’ Sun an’ Moon, until y’realize that none of it gets heard. Or if it is, then… there’s nothin’ which can be done. Ever. An’ they don’t want t’ say so. All y’get is silence.

An’ when it’s quiet, you jus’…

…wait.

How many times, Scootaloo?

Did y’clean the house? Get everything all polished by yourself? How many days t’ make ready?

Ah know y’ had a budget. You’ve almost bragged a few times, ‘bout how one of the reasons it took so long t’ get caught was because y’ kept all the bills paid. There was money for the house. For staying alive, an’ none of it ever went t’ the Crusade. So that meant a food budget. Y’learned how t’ cook a few things. No other choice. But the budget didn’t have a lot of extra space t’ use.

You never came over. Not on this holiday. You were always home. And when Ah saw you after, you’d be tired. Slow. Y’wouldn’t really talk much for a while.

How many times did y’ go hungry for a few days, because you made a meal for three? ‘cause none of what y’made for the other two was stuff you could actually eat?

How many times did you jus’…

…wait.

We…

…we really are sisters…

She kept herself still. Forced her breathing to steady, and pushed it all down. The anger, the hatred, the loathing of the holiday and all of its lies. And then she stepped forward, went into the sitting room, and almost trotted into Applejack’s forelegs.

“So there y‘are,” her sister exhaled. “Good. Got something Ah need t’ ask you.”

Or maybe, Apple Bloom’s mind frantically spun out, the Riches came around t’ the back door —

— no, there had been no time, not unless it had happened well before she’d come out. Or — if her sister knew she’d been listening…

“We’re a little ahead of the work curve right now. So,” the sibling generously stated and, in doing so, managed to effectively pervert a fourth Element, “why don’t you hold off on chores an’ take Babs around the Acres? Show her your workshop: Ah bet she’d love t’ get a look. An’…”

Green eyes briefly glanced towards the ramp.

“…take Scootaloo along,” Applejack finished. “Ah think she could use the company.”

Finding Of Fact

The Acres were warming quickly, because that was what the Weather Bureau had dictated for every settled zone in the nation: unseasonable warmth, so travelers could visit their loved ones in some degree of physical comfort. If not for a near-forest of mostly-barren trees and a few scant blooms which would never find their chance to mature, it might have been possible to feel as if it was the first moon of autumn, instead of the last. True warmth in the recent past, instead of having near-endless cold lurking ahead.

Or perhaps 'unseasonable' was the wrong term: after all, the Bureau scheduled the same thing for every Homecoming, and the false holiday never shifted its temporal position within the season. It always occupied the exact same day on the calendar: a treacherous emotional ditch which Apple Bloom had memorized years ago, should have known to step around -- and every dinner would still find a foreleg dropping into the virtual pit, rebounding her chin off cold, silent earth. An impact which was strong enough to draw tears, and that was part of why she spent so much time trying to force them back.

She blamed the good plates. Something which should have remained locked away forever, because they were so clearly good for nothing at all.

Nothing real...

...it was always warm on Homecoming. But that was a quality which never got any further than the surface, content to rest upon fur and skin. To Apple Bloom, it felt as if most of what the warmth did was force the true chill deep inside, compressing it into a small, tight package of crystalline ice. The final result would be driven between her ribs, displacing the heart and pumping pure cold through arteries and veins --

-- it had taken several years for the filly to recognize that Homecoming rendered her somewhat morbid: a mood which took a few days to fully settle in, required an additional number before any portion truly lifted and somehow, none of it was ever noticed by her siblings. She blamed the myriad of collected lies which made up the holiday and told herself that the only requirement for everything to change was for any of them to become truths. Because Honesty was a virtue, and a virtue should care.

Honesty was a virtue. But it wasn't Kindness. And so it allowed the lies to go on.

Warmth shining upon her fur, ice radiating from her heart. It was a good way to describe Homecoming as a whole. And since the conditions were already present, they could also be used to summarize the experience of trying to take Babs on a tour of the Acres. Because as descriptions went, 'uncomfortable' technically got the basics of the chore done -- but it also missed a few spots, skipped out on the rough parts, and needed a lot more work experience before it would be ready to take on a hard job.

She was trotting with her cousin, and that was being done at fairly close proximity. (Scootaloo kept getting ahead. Or dropping behind. Or, for periods of variable duration, going above.) There were any number of bad memories in play, and some were a little too recent -- but Apple Bloom didn't currently view Babs as a physical threat. At least, not for herself.

Keeping company with family. But there wasn't a lot of talking going on, because she had no idea what there was to talk about.

Then again, how much do Ah really want somepony who goes an' suggests suicide t' talk at all?

(Diamond hadn't come up yet, perhaps because there was some way in which that wasn't the worst possible topic.)

The youngest Malus didn't know what she would have done if her cousin had said those words to her. (Babs had never gone that far during her bullying of the Crusaders. It felt like an exceptionally scant comfort.) And when she attempted to imagine it, only to feel her head trying to lower for the charge...

Jus' take her 'round the Acres. Sooner started --

-- maybe it would help them find something to talk about. Apple Bloom was hoping for that. A cue to discuss something good, because you were supposed to love your family and she wanted to be offered a reason for loving Babs.

We could compare farms.

...could they?

Ah don't even know what her parents do for a living, do Ah? There's gotta be farmland around Manehattan: most of the settled zones get that outer ring if'fin there's any room t' set it up. But it ain't like every Apple is a farmer. An' it sounds like Babs lives in the city part.

Maybe that's part of it. Maybe cities make you mean.

They passed the grain silo. There was an extended pause while Scootaloo galloped up the ramp, picking up both speed and rapidly-accruing sweat on her way to the launch. Babs was suitably impressed.

And then they were at the barn.

The Manehattan filly directed a squint at the exterior of the painted walls, forcing inquiry and suspicion to fuse under the pressure of narrowed eyelids.

"What happened to that barn we raised at the reunion?" was a fairly natural question. "I remember the color." Babs snorted. "Because I'd never painted anything that big before, and some of it got into my fur. I didn't get all the paint out until just before the train pulled into Bellemont."

"Bel --" Apple Bloom started, and then stopped because the next syllable would have hurt too much.

"Manehattan's train station. Anyway, that ain't the same color. This has a lot more green in it. And I think those doors are different. More solid. Thicker. So this isn't the same barn. What happened to the last one?"

The brief exchange of glances which passed between Apple Bloom and Scootaloo lasted just long enough to silently summarize the experience of living in a settled zone which hosted the Bearers, was in direct proximity to the Everfree, had to deal with the local weather coordinator's rather flexible definition of 'landing zone', and also happened to be the place which occasionally saw Discord drop by. For fun.

The vocal end of that emerged from Apple Bloom's mouth as "We go through a lot of barns. Anyway, mah workshop is in here. Ain't much yet, honestly. Ah still don't feel like Ah have all the parts or tools Ah need t' get the best stuff goin'."

Which was partially a matter of finances. Miss Ratchette was willing to let the filly borrow a few things, and whatever was beyond use could be tinkered with endlessly -- but most of that just wound up teaching Apple Bloom why those parts were beyond use. The vast majority of equipment had to be purchased, and... there were still a lot of Crusade damages to pay off.

"It's still a workshop," Babs rather philosophically decided. "So show me what you've got right now, and then maybe we can talk about what you want to get next. Everypony's gotta start somewhere, right?"

"Right," felt normal enough on her tongue, although the followup "Ah guess," was oddly bitter. "Let me jus' get the doors open..."

It really wasn't much. The majority came from simply having a corner to herself, plus some space around it because she had to haul quite a few pieces in and she had to unhitch somewhere. Multiple tools rested on wall-mounted hooks, with everything placed low enough for her mouth to reach it. The display ended next to a small, frequently-refreshed tank of water, because when you had to operate the majority of pieces by mouth, it was usually a good idea to clean them off first. Apple Bloom had a supply of flexible jaw grip pads, but they tended to wear down with frequent use.

She had a repurposed, heavily-battered, grease-stained armoire. The drawers held gears, screws, bits of metal which weren't doing anything interesting yet but you never knew, and an assortment of springs which usually didn't try to fly apart when she wound them up. The wind-up treadmill was in a separate corner because 'usually' wasn't 'always' and when something did explode, it was best for the fragments not to reach whatever hadn't.

Pieces of half-disassembled clockwork were scattered about the area. Some machines responded to a neglect in basic maintenance through reminding their owners of exactly why such light duties had been needed: the ponies who didn't take the results to Miss Ratchette usually wound up dragging the debris to the front of their fences and leaving it there, generally while muttering about how they were going back to devices because at least those explosions were more colorful. Applejack and Mac had taken to hauling such discoveries home, and the youngest Malus frequently found herself able to prove exactly what had gone wrong. The most certain means of doing so was through making it go wrong again, only faster. Miss Ratchette called that a 'stress test': the rest of the family didn't bother to call it anything in particular until they were certain everypony could still hear.

There was a nailed-up bookshelf. Most of its guests were temporary: whatever Apple Bloom had been most recently able to borrow from the library. But there were a few precious tomes which belonged to her alone -- along with a selection of parts catalogs. The majority of that last category had come from Mazein, and the workshop's owner currently possessed the same capacity for reading Minotaurus as she did for teleportation. But the pictures were nice to look at, there was the chance to theoretically possess a little more money someday and if that failed, some of the images could be potentially reversed-engineered into reality by anypony in possession of time, mark-evidenced talent, and a much better workshop.

Multiple windows and isolated devices combined their efforts to make sure the area was exceptionally well-lit: after all, it was vital for Apple Bloom to see what she might be doing wrong. A powerful (and shatterproof) magnifying glass further assisted with that goal, along with helping her find some of the smaller faults and, after something hadn't quite worked out, just where the tiniest gears had landed. And as a final sign of sibling consideration, the entire barn had been designed so that the majority of destructive causes would have the walls fall away from the workshop section. The hope for the minority was that inwards-collapsing segments would balance their impacts against each other and wind up as a sort of wooden tent.

It was, in all ways, an assembly of love and in what might have been the surest sign that she truly was on track for her mark, Apple Bloom was the only pony in the world who understood how the parts arrangement system worked.

Babs, whose expression seemed oddly thoughtful, waited for Apple Bloom to stop jabbing a yellow forehoof in the general direction of whatever was about to be explained next. And when the little half-babbling verbal tour finally wrapped up, simply and silently regarded the whole of it for nearly a minute, while the other two fillies waited for anything to be said at all.

Apple Bloom shuffled all four legs. Considered that four was really too many to shuffle, then picked up on a rather soft rustling, glanced to her left, saw how Scootaloo's wings were just about vibrating, and decided she'd personally gotten off easy.

Finally, Babs nodded to herself.

"It looks good," the heavyset filly decided. "Most of what's separating you from the pros is that you don't have enough stuff yet." She shrugged. "Well, ya know. You work in one of those shops. If you can take a deep breath without your ribs poking into something... But I've been in enough of the real things that I can sort of see what's missing." And shrugged. "You'll get there. It's time and stuff. And knowing that you need to build the right thing."

Scootaloo was utterly silent. Apple Bloom, who had no concept of how to manage a sudden upwelling of inner pride, barely managed a nod.

Babs's regard moved to a worn adjustable wrench.

Casually, "I bet that could really sabotage a float."

Flank check.
Nothin'.
...seriously: how is that not a mark talent?

"Ain't exactly gonna try," was all the youngest Malus wanted to say. "So you've been in workshops?"

"Yeah," Babs distractedly replied: she was now examining one of the somewhat less exploded gears. "It's the dobbins --" and snorted. "Well, the stallion. She's got her own race to run."

"The --" Scootaloo tried, and did so before Apple Bloom could truly reconcile 'stallion'.

"It's Manehattan." This snort was louder. "Everypony's gotta be in a race, ya know? Trying to keep up, or get ahead. With whatever they think is worth galloping for, against whoever they're competing with. So for one of them, that's the little automatons. But it's not even the practical stuff, Appy. You know, like having a cabbage corer which would sort of do the coring itself, so you don't have to always worry about whether you've got your hoof lined up on the right angle? He likes things that draw pictures. The same picture every time, unless you swap the plates. And then there's this little walking winder..."

Apple Bloom blinked. "A what?"

"You wind it up," Babs announced, and an extended lower lip blew a puff of frustrated air towards the restyled mane. "Then it kind of teeters forward and if you've got it lined up just right, it'll wind something else up. If the aim's off, it drills a nice little hole in the wall. We've got a lot of holes. And he could have just wound the second thing himself, but having a walker is how you keep up. Show off."

The words were getting faster.

"He'll get a little machine for anything, as long as it's something he can't do himself," the visitor declared. "Or won't. But only if he thinks it's not worth doing. He doesn't think much of art, so a machine can draw it. Winding is too much work, so maybe he'll find something that winds for him. Tell ya what, Appy: if you ever build something that'll tuck a bed, I can point you straight at your first buyer. Doesn't even have to open the door and come in to do it. Just sits in the room and waits, because opening that door just ain't worth --"

And then she stopped. Took a single slow breath, one where each rib seemed to shift in turn. The short-cut tail swayed, then swished.

"Nothing wrong with machines," Babs decided. "Or devices. But some ponies ain't fit to own either. Especially when owning is all of it." One more inhale. "So how's the clubhouse looking?"

They didn't go inside. That was one of the advantages to the old design: you didn't have to go inside. A vaguely interested observer could just observe from the ground or, as the fillies ultimately wound up doing, peer through the windows while standing on the encircling porch. There was also the option to do the same thing from the ramp.

We replaced that ramp.

...mostly Ah replaced it. Started on that two days after Babs left for the first time. Because she'd wrecked the original, and Ah didn't want that t' happen again. Looked at where she'd hit the original, an' then Ah had t' figure out how t' stop any repeat. Because Babs did it once, an' it ain't like Diamond's weak. Since Diamond knew where the clubhouse was...

Two days after she left. That's when Ah started on it.

Took four more t' get something which worked.

An' she ain't said a word 'bout her bein' the one who brought the first one down.

They stared through the windows, and none of them went inside. The visitor lacked a key (because Apple Bloom had also wound up installing a lock), and for the other two... the memories had overfilled every cubic hoofwidth of the space. The past exerted pressure, and for Apple Bloom...

The walls should have been bowing outwards. And if they opened the door, every regret would come rushing forth.

"It's dusty in there," Babs observed.

"Well, you know," Scootaloo bitterly stated. "It's not like we use it much any more."

It was possible that this had been ignored: the heavier filly simply reared up a little and pressed her snout against the glass. "I don't see the carpet."

"The thinkin'-spot scrap?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Yeah."

"We retired that."

"Why?"

Because it got t' the point where we needed t' blame somethin' an' since that was never gonna be us, the carpet was jus' convenient.

"Stopped workin'," the youngest Malus quietly offered. "Big-time."

The visitor dropped back down without changing her facing, allowed planted forelegs to give the shrug a little force. "I guess. I just don't like seeing it this way. Since it's where I got sworn in and everything."

"Maybe we need your carpet scrap," Scootaloo muttered. "Since ours stopped working, and your crew's got two marks."

"We don't have one." Words which had been directed at the glass. "Well, not a dedicated one, anyway."

Which, to Apple Bloom, brought up a safe-seeming question. "So where do y'all meet up?"

"We rotate," Babs told the window: she appeared to be inspecting her manestyle within the reflection, and the next puff of air adjusted a few hairs. "That's another thing about Manehattan. You can't always get space, or use the same one too much."

"What about your house?" Scootaloo asked.

Gamboge shoulders shrugged again. "Not for a while," Babs admitted. "We used to take Sunflower's room."

"...who?" the pegasus asked.

"My big sis."

Ain't mah fault.

Apples all over the continent. Even Applejack needs t' follow a chart in order t' track 'em all. If'fin they don't come t' the reunion or keep in touch, y'lose track. Ah barely knew we had that many ponies out in Manehattan until Ah got told Babs was on the way. The Oranges, an' -- that was it. For as much as they might be Apples at all, given how little we ever see 'em. And AJ barely talks 'bout that part of her life. Jus' the once, like it's somethin' she wants t' forget an' the comin' home was the whole of it. The mark.

Ah couldn't pick Babs's parents out of a picture. Never seen a photograph of her sister, an' nopony's even brought up the name before this.

It ain't mah fault, not knowin'.

It ain't.

"Ah kind of wanted t' see her at the reunion," was, after some intensive mental sorting, the whole of what reached the world. "Ah mean, you've met mah big sister. Seemed only fair."

This snort came across as somewhat bemused. "Good luck with that, Appy. She's... well..." Visible thought was reflected in the impromptu mirror, bounced back into itself and searched for words among the impact fragments. "I thought I saw the Beller with her sister that one time. The white unicorn with the really flouncy mane and tail." The tail swished again. "Using Curlatura. I'd know that shampoo anywhere... Anyway, they're what, at least ten years apart? And that's how it is with Sunflower. She's a lot older than me. Old enough that she doesn't have to live at home any more. Which means the dobbins can't tell her what to do."

Even in the heat of the day, the burst of exhaled air fogged the glass.

"Not that they don't try," Babs announced. "That's why they keep her room ready. Like she's gonna come back after everything fails. Like she'll just realize she made a mistake and want to start over. But she works. Enough that I don't get to see her much, or talk, or... well, she can't step in when she ain't there, right? Same for school as home. She's got a mark and a job and a birthday which says she doesn't have to do what they tell her. She's... on her own."

"So durin' the reunion?" Apple Bloom checked.

"They asked her to go with me," her cousin informed the dust particles which floated through the clubhouse, dancing under Sun. "But she had work. It's a fair excuse. Better than the one they had for not going at all. For never going."

Mac's leaving soon.
Holidays and semester breaks. That's when Ah'll see mah brother.
Maybe not even then.

And before the thought could drive the chill ever-deeper, Babs said "But it means her room's available for meetings, ya know? So we've used it a few times. Just not every time. My house isn't always good."

One last shrug.

"Sunflower ain't home. Ever. But sometimes the dobbins are." She turned away from the glass, and her now-unseen reflection duplicated the final shrug. "So where next? Just wanna make sure it isn't someplace we nearly got to on the race course. Which means Canterlot's probably out."

Trees. You could always show off trees, especially when you had all of the cultivars memorized and didn't need a single bloom as an indication of what you were facing. The Acres were starting on Eastern Red Giants now, but... Babs wasn't all that impressed by saplings. A quick talk about the collective family effort required to bring the seeds that far before winter did get her attention, but it wasn't exactly the kind of topic which could last for very long.

There were hills. Scootaloo launched off most of them. Babs continued to be suitably impressed. She even managed to maintain most of it after four very bony knees came down in the center of her back. And Apple Bloom had panicked, started to move forward, wondering if she could somehow block a kick from her much stronger cousin -- but Babs had merely laughed, and said that too many ponies in Manehattan got used to moving around with their heads down. Apparently eye contact wasn't always a good thing.

A patch of layer-disrupted earth was carefully avoided.

Little trails. Swimming holes which were moons away from seeing use: the air was warm enough, the water wasn't. A good long tour, because it put off the chores for a little while. It also postponed the moment when Apple Bloom had to trot back into the farmhouse and all of its Homecoming scents: a place where individual wafts could be tantalizing, but all of it put together did little more than trigger a sort of low-level nausea: something which grounded itself in skin as much as stomach. And it was always just her...

They trotted together. There arguably wasn't all that much talking, because the Ponyville filly barely knew her cousin and couldn't always think of things to talk about.

But Diamond was never mentioned. Scootaloo hadn't been told about any of it: Apple Bloom simply hadn't found the chance.

And there were times when Babs laughed and joked and felt very much like somepony who could be loved. But the youngest Malus had to consider all of her cousin's words.

Some of the most important ones almost became lost.

The farmhouse was coming into sight, and the wind had done Apple Bloom the courtesy of keeping the scents away for a little while longer. She didn't feel all that hungry anyway, even after the trot. It had been hours since she'd last eaten, but... her stomach didn't really feel as if it was in the mood to uptake all that much.

She still felt tired. Her thoughts seemed to be forcing themselves through fog. She needed to sleep...

There were hoofsteps audibly coming down the main approach path. Impacts which had strength behind them, but -- the pace, as with the power, was being constantly moderated. A sound which had become familiar and, on this day, one which was expected. Factors which combined to keep her from truly thinking about it at all.

Scootaloo's ears perked. She smiled.

The visitor, unattuned to comings and goings around the Acres, didn't really notice.

"Gonna need a bathroom when we get in there," Babs casually announced. "And the mirror. Mostly the mirror. You two might want to get ahead and stake a claim on the other one. It's gonna take some time --"

A white pegasus stallion trotted around the bend in the path.

You got used to him after a while. Being a Ponyville native meant getting used to a lot of things, and the seasonal evacuation drills could start to feel like one of the lesser aspects of settled zone life. When it came to first-time encounters with this stallion, everypony looked. A few managed to hold off the full stare until they were in a place of relative concealment, because he was a decidedly large specimen (shorter than Mac, but bulkier) and for those who were truly on their first encounter, there would be some concerns about what might happen if the red eyes looked back.

But if you spent some time in his presence -- something which wasn't always easy, as the stallion was still getting used to having ponies wanting to be near him -- then it all became familiar. The rough-hewn features, bulging musculature, brush-cut mane... even the wings would start to feel normal. Apple Bloom's only remaining point of mental discontinuity was his voice: appropriately deep, but... too soft. He was good at proclaiming one word: making all of the others fully audible often felt like a work in progress.

He didn't spot the fillies. Most of his focus was directed at the door: the remainder was being used for the hoofsteps required to reach it. It had been a few moons and based on a few things which Applejack didn't know she'd overheard, the youngest Malus suspected the stallion still had to tell himself that he had the right to approach at all.

He reached the goal. Carefully knocked. The door opened once again for him, and he went inside.

The snicker didn't erupt until it had fully closed again.

"I thought you went into town to pick up everything yesterday!" Babs snorted her laughter, and some of the less-directed gusts of mirth wound up giving the upcoming mirror time a little more to do. "But I guess it was too much to ask, getting you to haul all of that back, right?"

Scootaloo's voice went tight at the same moment as the suddenly-flared wings: the words were far too steady, but the extended limbs vibrated. "Haul all of --"

"Gotta take delivery on that much weight!" Babs decided. "So is that the appetizer or a main course? Sure isn't dessert. Ya don't want to finish a meal by serving up that much ugly!"

There were two sounds, and the first was almost buried within the second. Everypony heard Scootaloo take a single hard hoofstep towards the Manhattanite. The static which discharged from feathers, however, barely made any noise at all. Just a soft crackle, accompanied by the sudden bleachlike stink of ozone.

"Take. That. Back."

Later, Apple Bloom would consider Babs's first reaction to have been exceptionally intelligent. She backed up. Just a single hoofstep, but -- she backed up.

The words, which served as a second reaction, forfeited a certain amount of sapience.

"Why?" The gamboge head tilted slightly to the right. "I mean, if too many muscles are your type, I guess that's fine. Better than that one of my crew who thinks she's dating did. But we've still really gotta talk about being attracted to ugly and stupid --"

It took two seconds before Apple Bloom realized that she'd been the next to move, and most of that came from the sudden jump of Babs's startled expression within her vision.

"Y'wanna go talk t' Applejack 'bout types?" the youngest Malus challenged. "T' her face, for preference. Since she's the one who's datin' him!"

"Dating --" drifted into the world on a twisting current of disbelief.

"Dating my mentor," Scootaloo hissed, and blue-white sparks arced between pinions. "My flight instructor, the only pony who was willing to show me any techniques at all! Maybe Rainbow would have, but she doesn't have enough time and she won't slow down enough to teach --"

Babs blinked.

"He can fly?"

Apple Bloom's left foreleg went sideways, blocked, just barely making any contact at all as shifting wings began to part Scootaloo from ground --

"-- ow!"

Scootaloo's focus instantly changed.

"Apple Bloom?" the pegasus frantically checked as her hooves almost slammed down. "What happened? Why are you shaking your leg --"

Ah think we can take her.
Ah think she knows it. The way her eyes keep movin', from one of us t' the other. Not sure who to block first. She's already lost an' she knows it. We could take her.
An' Ah'm pretty sure that's the worst thing which could happen.
Ah've gotta calm Scootaloo down. Fast.

"-- little bit of a shock," Apple Bloom pushed out from between gritted teeth. "Like dragging mah hooves across a carpet in winter." Only the carpet had been half the size of the West Fields. "It'll pass. Scootaloo, just 'bout anypony seein' him for the first time has trouble with the flight. Y'know that. It's a natural question. Give her that much. And even AJ says he ain't a looker. Looks aren't why they're datin'. Babs didn't know. 'bout the mentor stuff, 'bout any of it. She don't live here!" A little more slowly, "So jus' tell her. Slow. Lots of ponies react funny, 'cause they don't know him. An' the first way she's gonna meet Snowflake is through you. Jus'... talk."

Scootaloo took a very slow breath.

"Talk," the pegasus said. "We can do that."

Wing joints began to refold. One degree at a time.

"...Snowflake?" Babs finally asked, and glanced towards Apple Bloom. "Your sister is dating...?"

Apple Bloom sighed, because it was arguably another natural question. And then they talked.

It had taken a few minutes and, for purposes of sanity, some of the finer details had been left out. Babs had wound up staring at the ground through most of it.

"It wasn't anything personal," the visitor finally said. "I didn't know he was your teacher. And I guess... if Applejack wants him, then there's something worth wanting, right?"

Both Ponyville fillies nodded.

Babs abruptly snickered.

"Unless she just wants --"

She said something. Scootaloo's features twisted with confusion. Apple Bloom, whose much-resented dreams had gone in a different direction, still experienced a moment when she had to decide exactly how innocent she wanted to be.

"Wouldn't know," the youngest Malus said. "Don't care t' find out, neither. He's good enough for her. That's all Ah care 'bout."

An' your family ain't a major branch, are they? Ain't exactly close by, neither. So no scrolls from when Mac used Spike t' spread the word. An' if y'all don't talk t' the others much...

"Okay," Babs eventually allowed. "Just --" and her eyelids briefly sagged "-- don't tell him I said anything, okay? I didn't know."

"...okay," Scootaloo finally offered, and the trio started to move forward again. "Let's just get inside. And then I can get him out here." Her rib cage puffed out. "He hasn't seen my last silo glide. I've got distance."

"So his family ain't from around here?" Babs checked.

"Las Pegasus," Apple Bloom admitted. "Long trip. Applejack asked him to spend Homecoming with us."

Her cousin nodded, and then looked at Scootaloo.

"So this way, you're sort of spending it with him?"

"Spending it --" was as far as Scootaloo got.

"Since your parents ain't here," Babs casually observed.

How is that not a mark talent?!? The worst words, at the worst time...!

The pegasus stopped moving. Apple Bloom instinctively dropped back, came to a stop next to her half-frozen friend.

"I thought it was a sleepover," the Manehattanite shrugged. "So I didn't say anything about it. I just figured your dobbins were traveling for the holidays." The next snort disrupted the rough majority of her mane. "I mean, kids travel without adults, right? So why not the other way around? You stay with Appy, and that gets your friend and your mentor at the same table." This time, her head tilted to the left. "How long are they gonna be gone for? You had a lot of winter clothes in the bedroom. A moon? Two?"

Silence, as an orange head dipped and sorrow-weakened wings sagged towards the ground.

"...Scoots?" Babs softly asked.

"...I..."

Apple Bloom tried to press against the shivering flank. The wing was getting in the way.

"I -- I ain't from here," Babs slowly said. "And I ain't good with letters. I don't know what happens here when I'm on the coast. If --" and now the heavyset filly was beginning to shake "-- if they -- I didn't mean --"

"...it's... it's not..." Which was followed by a slow, shuddering breath.

"You don't have to," Apple Bloom quickly said. "Not if y'don't --"

"-- it's not that." Every syllable was bitter. "Most of the town knows. Babs might as well hear it too."

There were less details to leave out this time.

Babs listened. More than that: she listened. Apple Bloom had never seen her cousin so focused on the words of another. Her ears were fully forward, and a certain gravity seemed to pull the world's attention with them.

She listened to everything. She waited until Scootaloo was finished. And only after the very last quiet words had made their way deep into attentive ears did Babs offer a comment of her own. Something placid, almost passive. Four utterly calm terms combined into a single observation.

"Maybe you're better off."

Purple eyes went wide, and the orange ones were right behind them.

"Better off?"

"How can y'say --"

The anger was surging again, to the point where Apple Bloom was both waiting on the ozone and wondering if she could find something non-conductive to block with. And Babs -- shrugged.

"Being on the Acres," her cousin calmly said. "And having ponies know. Because you can't fix a problem which nopony knows about. Not one that big, not by yourself. It ain't like you can go and search. Not the whole world."

She's thought 'bout it. Ah know she's --

"...yeah," Scootaloo said. "Come on. Let's just go ins --"

"-- what was it like?"

They were both staring at her. Nothing in the green eyes seemed to notice.

"What," Scootaloo slowly asked, "was what like?"

"Living on your own, as a kid," Babs evenly clarified. "All Sunflower can tell me about is the adult stuff. Lots of adults live alone. But --" and the grin was both sudden and sincere "-- how many kids, right? And doing it in secret? That's a Tartarus of a trick, Scoots! Name any other filly in this town who could've gotten away with it for that long! One colt! One kid, any species! I can't believe you kept everypony from catching on!"

The pegasus was beginning to smile.

"Well," Scootaloo tried, "when you put it that way..."

"It's kind of like surviving in a wild zone, ain't it?" Babs asked. "Because a city is just a wild zone with different rules. I don't know if I could ever do the plants-and-monsters one." Another puff of air went through her mane. "I'm a city filly. I just know brick, stone, metal, and -- different monsters. How did you keep ponies from figuring it out, Scoots? Shopping for yourself, paying bills, lights on and off at different times, all of the excuses -- how does that work? What were some of the tricks? Because I've got the only filly on the continent who got past every adult, all of the dobbins, and there's got to be a hundred stories wrapped up in that, maybe a hundred every day!" The grin was wide and fierce. "Tell me how ya pulled it off!"

It was a question which perhaps only the chief of police had asked before. Apple Bloom avoided the topic, because she had believed it would hurt her friend. But as it turned out, the query meant a lot more when it was coming from another filly. That turned it into a chance to brag.

The discussion kept them outside for quite some time. Babs wanted details.

Summons With Notice

There was a certain warmth to Homecoming: a quality and condition separate from the conditions imposed by the Weather Bureau every year. It was something which even Apple Bloom had to acknowledge, if only internally because that was the best way to keep anypony from commenting on the potential muttering. But for most ponies, the perception of that warmth came with an automatic falsehood: the internally-applied lie which said that it was always a positive trait.

It wasn't.

For Apple Bloom, Homecoming's warmth was perfectly suited to the season, because it was the sort of thing she most often encountered during autumn. It would be a chill night: the kind of conditions which encouraged her to place an extra blanket across her bed. Possibly two. This was occasionally followed by unpacking a quilt, giving it a good shake, making sure it was draped properly and then jumping up and down on it a few dozen times because she'd told herself that was the best way to make sure all the stuffing got evenly spread out.

She would do all of that, push herself under the layers and after a while, the warmth would build up. Accumulate to the point where it was nearly all she could feel: there would always be at least a touch of chill lingering around her head.

The warmth would build.

Then it would just keep building.

It usually didn't take long before the heat started to become oppressive. Every strand of fur would gain awareness of just how many layers were pressing down, and that weight quickly turned suffocating. Too much warmth under the layers, with an excess of mass trapping her within it.

But she had a way out. All she needed to do was kick the layers away. Fully expose herself to the air and at the instant that happened, the cold would come crashing in. And every tenth-bit of the chill which had been making itself known to ears and snout would stab towards her heart.

Entering the farmhouse again put her within the miasma of scents. Most of that arose from the foodstuffs which were being prepared for the holiday, added to a low-level presence of sweat: something which slowly rose through levels of awareness as the ancient clock ticked down the last hours until deadline. But the furniture had its own scents. The walls.

The pony sense of smell wasn't as sharp as that possessed by some of the other species: Apple Bloom dimly recalled that from a years-distant International Studies class, and was somewhat surprised that she'd retained that much. But even a subtle olfactory signature could be writ large through constant exposure, and she'd been living within the same drifting text for her entire life. It was possible to pick out her family within the layers. She could distinguish Mac's faint musk, Applejack's sweeter scent, and the liniment which never really did Granny's bad hip any true good: the carefully-supervised exercises which Snowflake had been teaching the elder were accomplishing significantly more in the way of improvements.

It was easy to scent her family, when she was within the walls and wished to focus so finely. On rare occasion, a gentle current would allow her to do the same outdoors (although she acknowledged that in Ponyville, she was probably just picking up on the eternal saturation which rose from the wood of the apple cart). Even with all the cooking odors in the air, she knew that each member of her family had a presence embedded within the house, and --

-- curled up in the bed, snout against the pillows, an' then when Ah was lookin' through the attic, Ah thought Ah found some of the old sheets, but there wasn't anythin' left an' all Ah was breathin' was linen an' dust, but Ah jus' kept pushing mah snout deeper in because there had t' be somethin' --

-- it was a miasma. On this day, that was all which truly existed. Too warm, with an excess of weight. And to fully kick it away would only allow the true cold to come rushing in.

She felt so tired, and most of what strength she had left seemed to be going into making it look as if everything was normal. Something which, when it came to Homecoming, almost served as a personal tradition. It was just more typically based in a different kind of exhaustion.

Apple Bloom wanted to lie down for a while. To take a nap, because surely even a little bit of sleep would help and that way, she might even discover just what Granny and Miss Rainbow found so deeply fascinating about the experience. But she was a farm kid, and taking Babs around the Acres meant certain chores had only been postponed. And when she added in all of the little jobs which the holiday kept inflicting upon her --

--- well, upon everypony, because that last indignity was effectively universal. Applejack tried to make allowances for guests, but a mare who'd effectively forced Apple Bloom to look up the definition of 'workaholic' at the age of six was going to be a mare who still possessed certain issues with not distributing the load. It had taken multiple failed first-and-only dates before the older sister had realized that the best way to explore romance with a potential partner might somehow not be through treating them to the full twelve-hour Acres workshift experience or rather, as much of it as anypony could actually complete: the first moment of distraction was typically treated as a chance for the stallion to channel the final dregs of strength into dragging his spent body out of sight.

And with the pre-dinner push on... Applejack slipped. Babs wound up washing cooking pots so they could be used again, while Snowflake was asked to stretch out the dining table. The latter wasn't a question of trying to give the wood some exercise: there were support poles just under the surface, ones which slid into each other: unlocking and extending them created a gap, and carefully-placed wood filled it in. The panels for doing so were called leaves, and Apple Bloom wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe it had something to do with the way unbalanced ones tended to drop out.

Babs wound up washing pots -- but not for long. Eventually, the Manehattanite got into the bathroom again and once she'd successfully reembedded herself within her favorite habitat, she didn't come out for a while. The farmhouse had two designated spaces for seeking personal relief and Babs had just left one available for everypony else. Between Scootaloo's own dubious time habits and the fact that Granny occasionally seemed to take the toilet trench aside for a very long and extremely personal talk, Apple Bloom almost wound up seeking out a friendly tree: this was defined as any trunk which completely hid her from farmhouse view, needed the fertilizer, and couldn't be seen by the tenants because she'd recently offended the pigs and they would tell.

Apple Bloom wanted to rest. She needed sleep. But she had chores. Things she had to do just about every autumn day. Homecoming just added to that. And she had to do all of it, because getting through the tasks she had to accomplish would surely make a few minutes magically available for that which she needed to do. But there didn't seem to be enough time. Strength was also in short supply. Blinks, however, seemed to be coming more frequently, and it could take fifteen seconds before a particularly slow specimen got her eyes open again.

(The youngest Malus was vaguely aware that when it came to puberty, getting the right amount of rest was potentially vital for proper growth. Babs wasn't just costing her sleep, but future size. She was going to wind up at least a hoofheight shorter than she should have been, it was all her cousin's fault, and she was tired enough that this too seemed to make some degree of sense.)

She forced herself across the familiar trails of the Acres, grateful for the fact that she knew them so well because that way, her legs could pretty much do the job on their own. By contrast, yellow ears were deliberately and constantly rotated towards the farmhouse, at least until she found they'd reached the limits of their turning range and any additional degrees were going to have them twist off. But she had to listen...

...except that when it came to what she was still expecting to arrive, nothing was happening. Diamond had something real to tattle about, and yet the Riches never appeared.

...she had to do something about Diamond. Apple Bloom was sleepily aware of that fact, and felt a vague annoyance towards her inability to refine the definition beyond 'something'. The filly faintly recognized that some sort of action needed to be taken, and -- that was it.

There was a freshly-drawn blueprint. But she wasn't sure of what needed to be fixed.

Or broken --

-- she almost had time to herself in the farmhouse. Over and over. Some of the scant thoughts Apple Bloom managed to fully assemble concerned the best places to start looking for the letter, giving her what felt like the vital chance to directly see what Babs's parents had written -- and then Applejack would subconsciously register the renewed presence of A Filly Who Can Be Put To Work, followed by appearing so she could do something about that.

Of course, it wasn't always work. Snowflake and Scootaloo were on the Acres at the same time, and that mandated certain activities. For starters, he carefully reviewed Scootaloo's homework. This was something which Applejack usually tried to get away with, and she generally failed because she couldn't use it as the final gateway before starting a flying lesson. And when there was a flying lesson...

It put Apple Bloom outside, with her sister's blessing. The announcement even displaced Babs from the restroom, and it took the youngest Malus a few seconds of gawping before she began to spot exactly how the mane and tail extensions had been tied in. (The color of the artificial length was just about an exact match for Babs's own hues, but there was a certain thickening at the join points.) The earth ponies watched as Scootaloo demonstrated her increasing glide distance: something which only involved coming down on top of Apple Bloom once. Snowflake offered gentle corrections, then demonstrated some feathering tricks and did so while in possession of less than half of the typical feather count. Babs, to her credit, was rather more than suitably impressed.

Hours passed. Minutes fled. The day seemed to blur, and then a too-early Sun-lowering brought in a clear night: one where all of the fog was in Apple Bloom's head. Miss Rainbow turned up, because there was a theoretical temporal formula which allowed her to stall long enough to avoid all of the work while still being able to access every last bit of the food and eventually, she was going to figure out exactly what it was. And with the adult mare pegasus muttering to herself as she searched for the fancy mugs, it was just about time for the group to head into the sitting room...

The youngest Malus never found an opportunity to search for the letter, and the revelation of what it had contained would only come after it was already too late.

They were all in the sitting room. The Malus family, Babs, and their invited, expected guests -- which totaled out to Snowflake and Miss Rainbow. Apple Bloom imagined much of Ponyville would have been surprised by that, but... the Bearers had their own lives.

Miss Pinkie spent Homecoming with the Cakes, and did so in a state of near-exhaustion. The holiday featured a lot of home cooking and baking: it was just that most ponies felt it still counted if some of the labor had been performed in somepony else's home. Sugarcube Corner dealt with a lot of special orders for Homecoming, put in what Applejack considered to be excessive hours in order to fulfill them all, and the holiday dinner wasn't so much of a formal event as it was a chance for the adults to slowly sink into soft cushions while hoping that nothing would happen to pry them out again. Or, given that the twins were the only ones with any true strength left and tended to get some rather impressive headstarts, hoped it wouldn't happen too many times -- but when it did start up, they always had the option to wearily turn towards their guests.

Miss Twilight had spent the previous Homecoming on the Acres: something which had actually gone fairly well until she'd used her field to try and get the cooking utensils organized and, after trying to set up an automatic set of repeating movements which would let her focus on something else, effectively wound up getting them unionized. This year would have her with the Cakes. Apple Bloom understood that when it came to the alicorn, hosting duties were effectively being rotated. The small adult still had a few bad habits, and high among them was a tendency to treat any holiday which saw the library closed and Ponyville's population distracted as a chance to lock herself in the tree's basement for a full day of Experimentation Without Interruption. Somepony had to make sure she spent Homecoming in a decidedly more social setting, and the 'somepony' varied by the year. Something which was done partially for her sake, and largely for Spike's.

Spike would be with her...

Apple Bloom was vaguely aware that Miss Pinkie had been adopted by the Cakes. (She didn't know what had happened to the birth parents, and -- she'd never been able to ask. She didn't want to ask, because she knew how much pain could be inflicted by what so many would have seen as a simple question.) And Spike was legally a part of Miss Twilight's family. Those who had been welcomed in, spending Homecoming together. She wondered if Miss Pinkie and Spike ever talked about that sort of thing...

She didn't know what had happened to Miss Pinkie's birth parents -- but it felt as if there was the tiniest chance that the apprentice baker spent each holiday with the Cakes by choice. When it came to Spike...

...it won't always be with Miss Twilight. Could visit her parents, or maybe that brother. The one Applejack was so irritated 'bout, because nothin' annoys her quite so much like somepony not bein' truthful 'bout their family.

But when it's Homecoming, it'll always be that family. There's nowhere else he can go.

It ain't as if he'll ever be with --

Homecoming was usually about her own misery. But as she watched the interactions in the sitting room, failing to truly rest while Scootaloo kept trying to call her attention to whatever that last feather adjustment had done... there was time to spare a little sorrow for Spike.

And then there was Sweetie. She would be at home, of course. She was always in her own house for this holiday, because Applejack wasn't entirely comfortable with inviting Sweetie or Miss Rarity over -- and the problem wasn't the designer: it was the fact that their parents lived in town. Miss Rarity was the only other Bearer who could say that, and Applejack didn't want to pull them away from a full reunion: both sisters, mother (whom Applejack really wasn't comfortable with), and --

-- almost a full reunion.

Miss Rarity would attend, of course. Apple Bloom had overheard her saying something about obligation, generally with a sigh and dip of head and horn. The designer didn't always seem to get along all that well with her mother, and -- the father was a hoofball coach. There were times when the schedule allowed him to spend a holiday at home. It was more common for him to be well outside Ponyville, presumably seeking out a quick dinner at a distant restaurant. Even when the team wasn't active within the sporting arenas, there were future players to scout. Trades to consider, and trips being made to evaluate them. And when the dangerous sport was in season, you would need all of that information to bring in replacements. Because players got hurt in hoofball. Players and, when something went wrong in a fashion dictated by nightmare, coaches.

Sweetie wasn't really talking to Apple Bloom. The youngest Malus didn't know where her friend's father was.

...Sweetie waits a lot.

Miss Rainbow was with them, because Applejack wanted her to be around other ponies. The weather coordinator barely possessed any cooking skills, treated restaurant reservations as something which could obviously be done while standing within the overbooked eatery's entrance... she wasn't going to be having a good meal at Homecoming unless somepony else had prepared it. And she was a little twitchy on the holiday. If Apple Bloom looked towards the sleek adult at just the right time, she would find the pegasus turning towards the west. Over and over, staring out the window into Princess Luna's night. Exactly as she'd done during the previous Homecoming.

It was something the filly hadn't originally understood, and it had taken a lot of awkward inquiries (made to just about anypony who wasn't the observed party) before she'd been told that at certain times, pegasi just felt the need to... go home. A factor which would become a little stronger on a holiday when just everypony was going home. And for Miss Rainbow, home was Cloudsdale -- and the cloud city was in the west.

Apple Bloom had wondered if Scootaloo felt the pull. If that instinct was yet another part of why she was so desperate to be in her old house during the holiday, or -- if she wanted to be in Akhal-Tekes, wherever that was. But she never caught her friend repeatedly seeking out any particular direction. And Snowflake didn't seem to look at all. He was simply talking back to Miss Rainbow -- or was at least sort of trying to put forth some rough effort in that direction. The actual results were substandard.

As a group, The Bearers had accepted that Applejack was dating. Nopony had apparently said anything unkind about her choice or taste, although Apple Bloom suspected Miss Rarity had probably come up with a number of rather pointed questions. And they accepted Snowflake's presence in Applejack's life: a factor which came with the recognition that every so often, one of the other mares was going to expect 'she' and come across 'they' --

-- but four of the five had a hard time speaking with him, and the exception was the ironic one. Miss Fluttershy seemed to care about Snowflake on the sibling level, looking to him as both her substitute caretaker during missions and somepony she could trust. Miss Fluttershy spoke to Snowflake more often than she talked to just about any stallion, and at noticeably higher volume.

The other mares had tried to welcome him into Applejack's life. But they hadn't been able to do the same for any presence within the group. He wasn't a Bearer. He didn't open up easily, had trouble talking to anypony he didn't know or, when it came to Mac, hadn't soundly defeated in a public fight. Getting to know Snowflake through conversation had to work past the barrier of 'Yeah': something which was mostly launched in an effort to prevent him from having to say anything else. And when it came to Miss Rainbow...

Both pegasi possessed a drive for self-improvement. (Snowflake's produced considerably less in the way of crash sites.) But that wasn't what Miss Rainbow was trying to talk about. They'd both been through the Wonderbolts Academy: an experience in common, the intersection where the weather coordinator seemed to feel they could connect. But Miss Rainbow had become a reservist, while Snowflake had been sent home early on: his speed and maneuverability were within the team's standards, but his magic was too weak to execute the techniques which were a vital part of every performance. Apple Bloom wasn't sure he wanted to talk about his Academy time, and... it was what Miss Rainbow thought would work.

Miss Fluttershy had trouble getting away from the cottage, and it wasn't just due to her reluctance to deal with a social setting: the grounds offered up at least as many daily chores as the Acres, while demanding that they all be performed by a typical workforce of one mare. A full evening away from home usually required the caretaker to hire a watchpony, and the primary substitute was currently occupying a significant percentage of the oldest couch.

She had trouble arranging for her presence at group gatherings. She hadn't tried to reach her birthplace: Applejack had once mentioned that as Stratuston. But she was still celebrating Homecoming -- because according to the filly's older sister, Miss Fluttershy had decided to play hostess. She'd set up the cottage to welcome someone who was participating in his very first Homecoming. And, according to overheard rumors, wasn't entirely sure what the holiday was supposed to be about.

Miss Fluttershy had set up a Homecoming dinner for Discord.

Apple Bloom could barely picture what that might be like. Then she tried to assemble an image of what the holiday meal might turn into (in a flash of white light) if it had been hosted at his home. This immediately led to the filly attempting to form some concept of what Discord might call 'home' and at that point, her imagination shut down in self-defense.

Her brother had a padded bench to himself: carefully-selected words occasionally came from that direction. Granny kept going into the kitchen, and Apple Bloom kept a close eye on those movements whenever she could: the sheer duration of her blinks seemed to be costing her a certain amount of clock. Applejack made the rounds.

Babs seemed to be distracted. She wasn't really talking to anypony. Most of her attention seemed to be focused on the windows. The door. Apple Bloom dimly wondered if earth ponies ever felt a pull, then remembered that the door didn't face northeast. And it was natural for her cousin to not really be all that involved, because the adults outnumbered the kids and there were a lot of strangers around. Even when it came to family... well, it wasn't as if Babs had spent all that much time with the older siblings during the first visit, and nopony had found the chance to do much of anything other than Mandatory (Not) Fun before Applejack had finally recognized the scope of her mistake towards the end of the second. The lack of interaction felt normal, because Babs didn't really know anypony.

Ah barely know her.

And Apple Bloom was too tired to talk about much. She tried to mutter at what felt like the right times, and she felt that she had to be hitting a few of the proper syllables because nopony questioned her choices. Conversation flowed around her, while she simply longed for sleep.

If it had all wrapped up in the sitting room... if it had just been adults and kids in a too-warm space, spending a few hours together before scattering to their respective homes and beds... then perhaps Homecoming would have been bearable. Time with those you were close to, and the ones you were -- still trying to figure out.

The Riches had remained notable by their absence. No scrolls had appeared from bursts of near-heatless flame: the missions had taken the holiday off. The sitting room, and then directly to bed and sleep... Apple Bloom would have simply decided, partially in the face of significant countering evidence, that it all could have been a lot worse.

But then Applejack and Granny went into the kitchen at the same time.
Then they came out again.
And it was time for dinner.

Ah won't wait.
Ah won't.
Maybe she won't even --

But Granny did.

It was possible to place some portion of the blame on Applejack, because the older sister arranged the seating. Each pony was assigned a bench along the extended table as they entered, and had to go exactly there. No questions were asked, because this was Miss Rainbow's second year and she knew better now. You couldn't get a reassignment. Anypony asking why Applejack had put Snowflake on her immediate left was presumably punishable through withholding of cobbler.

Everypony was placed along a table mostly filled with plates: the food had yet to make an appearance. A little bit of resentment managed to peek out through Apple Bloom's weariness, because her sister had managed to create a children's section. The three fillies had all been placed along the same facing -- and, for extra offense, positioned so that Applejack could keep an eye on all of them.

Most of the family took their benches: Granny was nowhere in sight, but it was possible to spot her designated position at the table's far end. The guests tried to get comfortable.

And then Apple Bloom saw it. Something which woke her up in an instant, if only for just long enough. What felt so much like the very last of her strength rose, burned through her with something which partially felt like rage and denial and a refusal to go through it all again.

It only partially felt like all of that, because the majority was designated as a temporal echo. Something which reached back through every Homecoming she could remember, and stopped where memory ran out. Suffocated within the darkness inflicted upon her by advancing years, where the images she wanted to bring back were the ones which had been lost forever.

The table could be extended as much as sliding poles and wooden leaves would allow. But it would always be a rectangle. Three of the sides were occupied. Only three.

And somewhere just beyond the kitchen, Apple Bloom heard the black ironwood chest unlock.

She had a little time to reflect on the unchanging nature of that sound. How every last dolorous note was exactly the same as before. Time during which she presumed dust was being removed, and which doubled as the duration for red and orange-furred heads to dip.

It took Granny Smith three trips to fully set up the empty end of the table, because there was only so much she wanted to carry at once. Something which was just as true on a good day as a bad one, when the elder was being so delicate.

Was doing this a sign of a bad day? The same bad day, year after year? Or was it something born from what others would have somehow termed as a good one?

Apple Bloom didn't know. Couldn't know, and would never be able to ask. She just watched, as the echoes continued to sound their endless dirge. And all everypony could do was wait.

Finally, it was all there. Or at least, everything which could be there was in place. All that was ever there.

There were mugs. The one on the left was considerably larger. It bore a faint scent of cinnamon, because the spice soaked into wood and a pony who liked chilled cider to bear a little inner fire was eventually going to wind up with a mug all to himself. The smaller was crystal: the only crystal mug in the house. Dimmed inner rainbows did their best to coat the wood.

The good plates were colorful. They were decorated with a custom pattern: something which showed two very different kinds of fruit blossoming from the same tree, and Apple Bloom only saw it once a year. As with the benches, they had been put a little too close together, but... that was just convenience. Something which assisted those who liked to nip food from each other's plates, generally when they pretended nopony was watching.

Don't stare at the plates.
Stare hard enough an' Ah'll probably chip 'em --
-- good --

Everypony was looking at the good plates. The settings which had been arranged for two, and the vacuum which rested behind them.

Miss Rainbow, for whom it was the second year, only did so for a few seconds. Snowflake was silent for a long moment, and then the red eyes slowly closed.

It won't happen.
It can't happen.
It never happens...

Everypony looked. And then nopony would.

"Ah'll jus' get the food comin' in, shall Ah?," Applejack abruptly declared, and the tones felt far too light. "Tried somethin' new for the appetizer this year, everypony. Little bit of Las Pegasus food on this table!" The snort was soft, almost bemused. "Which Ah'm told is mostly every other settled zone's food. But in a 'buffet'. However that happens t' operate. Anyway, let me know how it worked out, since that one was pretty much all me. All the credit or, if'fin Ah've got it comin', all of the blame."

She got off her bench. Began to trot towards the kitchen --

-- Babs spoke. At normal volume, in a questioning tone, using words which could have been successfully argued as innocent.

It wasn't a mark talent. Perhaps there was no mark strong enough to encompass it.

"Shouldn't we hold off?"

"No," Apple Bloom softly said.

"Ain't we waiting for a couple of ponies?" her cousin rather naturally inquired. "We probably shouldn't start without them --"

Nopony looked at her. Nopony at all.

"No," Apple Bloom quietly answered. "Nopony's coming. Nopony ever comes."

It wouldn't happen.
It couldn't happen.
It never happened.

She tried to bring it back every year, every time, sights and sounds and scents, and -- all she remembered was the empty places. Good plates, which were good for nothing at all. If the good plates didn't exist, weren't intact, if it was possible to get into the chest and --

-- her siblings had told her about memories. That she'd been too young when it had happened, that it was natural to forget. But she fought against the closing darkness every year, lost again and again, had sought out pictures so she could tell herself that was what she remembered and --

-- she remembered the first time Granny had put out the plates. Looking at the way it had all been set up, as if the entire table was just --

-- waiting.

And there was magic in the world, there had always been magic and there had to be enough of it for one wish...

And she'd waited.
And it hadn't happened.
And a year had passed.
And there had been two perfect settings.
And she'd waited.
And...

And now she was older. Bigger. Wiser.
She knew better.
That it had never happened. Wouldn't and couldn't.
And she waited.

She felt herself waiting. The anticipation, directed towards a door which would surely open this time. The wish.

And she hated it.

She hated herself.

She was bigger. But she wasn't big enough, and her heart was too small to hold the hurt.

She'd lost too many memories. But there were others which had simply never found a chance to form. Certain prerequisites existed for forming memories, and consciousness was rather high on the list. When Apple Bloom tried to recall what had happened during the majority of that Homecoming dinner, everything ran out in the middle of the second course -- because as she would eventually be told, that was when she'd fallen asleep at the table.

Perhaps somepony had carried her up, possibly even by the nape of her neck. Tucked her in. She didn't remember that either. She was too worn out for such things to reach her, beaten down by confusion and mystery and too many kinds of sorrow. Driven deep below awareness, to the point where nothing which happened around her on that night registered at all. Even the shivering was lost, and that might have gone on for minutes or hours: she had no concept of when she'd kicked the blankets away.

The night passed without notice, as Apple Bloom's body and dreams twisted within the sleep of the dead.

And when she woke up, Babs was gone.

Discovery

It felt as if she must have been cold for a very long time.

That was the first thing Apple Bloom became aware of as she slowly rose up through layers of sleep: something which, when she finally registered the presence of air against her fur, further discovered a total lack for any layers of blankets. Because chill tended to soak into the body.

It usually started by trying to put a touch of frost into the tips of her coat. Given enough time, the void of degrees would work its way down to the skin. Ignore it for too long and it would find a means to get through, entering the muscles before forcing its way deeper still...

There weren't as many chores to do on the Acres in winter. But Apple Bloom had a few, and the Weather Bureau always scheduled at least one extended period of true hard freeze. Without mercy. It meant she was intimately familiar with what deep cold felt like, for that which was imposed from the outside as well as the chill which rose from within. And with the former...

She recognized the cause before her eyes fully opened: she'd kicked her blankets away. Something which had happened a minimum of an hour ago, and done so during a night when at least one window hadn't been fully resealed. (She automatically blamed Scootaloo.) The virtual ice was well beyond her initial lines of biological defense, but hadn't quite managed to fight its way down to the skeleton yet. It would still be possible to warm up in something under another hour. Finding an active fireplace would help.

Of course, she was a farm kid. Waking up at nearly any hour usually meant she had to get started on chores.

Apple Bloom softly sighed, and forced herself to look around.

Even in the near-darkness created by a pre-dawn hour and Moon getting close to the horizon, she managed to spot the open window first. The first line of defense hadn't been breached so much as neglected, and the enemy was steadily working its way through the ignored checkpoint. Homecoming had only been scheduled for warmth during the day, and the extra degrees had dissipated quickly. Some of the renewed chill was passing over Scootaloo, and restlessness-exposed feathers vibrated as the pegasus shivered.

The next thing she found within the shadows was the second guest bed. Those blankets had collapsed across vacuum in a way which had a miniature hollow mounding up the fabric, as if a cat-sized filly was trying to take shelter from the cold. And a little pressed-in section of ruffle showed where a bulging pair of too-basic saddlebags had once been leaning against the side.

Babs was gone.

It was possible that Apple Bloom wasn't quite awake enough to be surprised. Most of the awareness she'd scrounged seemed to be directed at a rather more basic level of irritation. She didn't have to wonder about what had happened. It was so obvious. Applejack had made the typical unilateral decision, because asking the younger sister for her opinion was still a very rare event. Babs had been sent back on the earliest train. It took a fair amount of time to reach Manehattan and maybe this way, her cousin would get back to her classes a little sooner because clearly school was the true priority. And Apple Bloom had been sleeping so deeply (or trapped in the nightscape to the point where she couldn't escape) as to have missed the whole thing.

Typical.. Even the thought was irritated. Ah didn't even get the chance t' say goodbye. Would have been nice t' see her off.

...Ah think...

...very least, could've trotted down t' the train station with 'em. When did they...?

She wasn't sure. Given how dark it was outside, it was possible that they were still on the way -- especially since Apple Bloom wasn't entirely sure just when the first train out actually left. It was possible that there were extra departures running, trying to get everypony away from Homecoming. You could do that, when you were an adult. It was the kids who couldn't escape.

Least it's over. Another year 'til the stupid good plates come out again. But the thought wasn't bringing much in the way of relief, and she tried again. Another dinner an' holiday over with.

...Ah don't remember most of dinner.
Hardly anythin'.
Jus' when did Ah...?

She didn't know. But she was now awake enough to be fully aware of her own body, and a certain twinge in her bladder suggested that she'd been asleep for a very long time.

The youngest Malus managed to repress nearly all of the soft moan. Slowly, carefully extracted herself from the bed, then forced herself into a short detour: the window had to be closed. This was followed by careful teeth going to work, and Scootaloo was quickly covered up again.

There's mah quilt. A mound of puffy shadow near the wall. Got some distance on the kick.

There was something odd about that. If Babs was gone, and the quilt was against the wall...

The half-concept nagged at the chilled edges of her mind, and did so without ever truly coalescing into a thought. Apple Bloom had something rather more urgent to deal with.

Babs was on the way home. If the filly had been more awake, that might have meant any number of things. Right now, it mostly told her that the bathroom was available.

Granny was softly snoring, and so at least one thing was right with the dark world.

Apple Bloom wasn't the first one up. Her sister was presumably at the train station -- or still on the way there, possibly heading back... there were plenty of options for Applejack, and all of them irritated the youngest because she'd been left out of every last one. But when it came to this level of the farmhouse, the filly seemed to be the only one awake. However, she could hear the faint impressions of adult hoofsteps coming up from below: somepony trying to move quietly. Process of elimination had Mac getting an early start.

It still meant the bathroom was available, and she went inside.

She took her time about toiletries. Splashed a little water in her face to falsely complete the waking-up process, and then made sure her fur was completely dried after: chores meant she was probably going to wind up going outside well before Sun was fully raised.

Whenever that is. Should've peeked at the clock.

Don't smell anypony startin' on breakfast. In fact, she wasn't getting much in the way of food scents at all. A quality which usually wasn't absent on the morning after Homecoming.

...door's closed. Door's gonna block out most of it. Comin' in an', thank Moon, goin' out.

Go down the ramp. Greet her brother, find something to eat, dig a jacket out of the closet, and then get an early start on chores. It would provide her with time in which to think, and... maybe she could figure out what to do about Diamond. Even when it was now starting to seem possible that Mr. Rich wasn't going to turn up on the doorstep, might never come --

-- maybe she'll never turn up on the Acres again.
Never even look at me durin' classes.
No Diamond, no more. Ever.

She... wasn't sure how she felt about that, and her mind quickly changed the topic.

Didn't even get t' say goodbye t' Babs.
Thanks, sis. Thanks a lot.
...how do Ah feel 'bout Babs?

Weary orange eyes stared into the mirror. The reflection of a rather confused filly gazed back.

How do Ah really feel...?

She didn't know.

Maybe she would be able to work it out after she ate something. Her bladder had been full. Her stomach didn't seem to have fully participated in the holiday activities.

Jus' go t' the kitchen. There's gonna be leftovers. Some of 'em should be nearly decent.

Apple Bloom exited the bathroom, stepping quietly so as to let her grandmother and friend sleep. Headed for the ramp.

Probably gotta get there before Mac finishes off the best of it.
Which he might have already done, big as he is.
...stupid brother.

But Mac wasn't in the kitchen.

"Mornin'," offered the actual occupant of the well-lit room -- and then powerful orange shoulders shrugged. "Technically, anyway. Ah jus' wrapped up some of the cleanin' in the sittin' room. That much less t' do."

How early was that first train out? For Applejack to have gotten back and already be at work...

Maybe she didn't see Babs off. Just left her at the platform an' turned around on the spot --

-- no. Not when it's family. Applejack would have stayed until the departing steamstack had vented.

"Mornin'," Apple Bloom half-sighed from her position in the doorway. A mornin' when y'couldn't be bothered t' wake me up -- and she couldn't say that either. Not without starting a fight. It was too early to fight.

Applejack looked her over, from bow to tail. Apple Bloom had slept with the bow on, and the bathroom session hadn't been enough to get the whole of her mane untangled.

"Smile for me," the older sister ordered.

"...what?"

"Smile," Applejack repeated. "Nice an' wide. Ah want t' check your temperature." With a perfectly straight face, "An' y'know the smile is doin' it the nice way."

Oh.

The filly smiled. It felt forced. Fake. The near-grimace also pulled back her lips at the corners, and Applejack carefully pressed her snout against the half-exposed inner surfaces.

"Normal," the adult observed as she pulled back. "Good. Ah got worried when y'fell asleep at the table. Y'weren't runnin' a fever last night, but passin' out still felt like y'might be gettin' sick --" and this smile was much more sincere "-- or jus' played around a little too much. Either way, Ah wanted t' let you rest."

Which was why she didn't wake me up. And now Apple Bloom was glad for not having said anything. But it still would have been nice to have had the chance at a goodbye.

"Jus' a busy day," the filly technically failed to lie.

"Today should be a little easier," Applejack offered. "Most of the cleanup got taken care of last night. Even managed t' rope Rainbow into some of it." Which produced a tiny shudder. "An' then Ah didn't lose too much time in cleanin' up after her. It's pretty much jus' standard stuff left, plus the one big thing."

"The one big thing," Apple Bloom carefully repeated, because this was her sister and one big job could mean anything from 'scrub down the upper level bathroom' to 'so who wants t' help me clean up after all the pigs?'

"Jus' the one," her sister failed to reassure. "Actually..." Green eyes glanced at the nearest clock. "...Ah should probably get started on that now. At least long enough t' work out the schedule. Back in a few."

She trotted past Apple Bloom, heading towards the ramp. The filly, already anticipating a long day of dealing with tenants, moved towards the icebox. There was usually plenty of food in it, because the household's calorie assignments had to deal with two working earth pony adults, a pegasus whose hyperactive metabolism had stepped everything up for puberty, and Apple Bloom. But food frequently had to be prepared, and she was saving her energy for the labors ahead. The thought of raw fruits and vegetables didn't seem to be putting any extra saliva into her mouth...

It didn't matter. Homecoming had ended, and Apple Bloom had fallen asleep before forcing down her share of the dinner. Even with Mac's appetite potentially having picked up some of the slack, the one thing she could count on for the morning after was leftovers.

She nosed the icebox open and stared inside. Multiple empty shelves regarded her with endless patience.

...where's all the stuff? It was a question which came with an immediate answer. Miss Rainbow. 'cause Applejack usually tells everypony t' pack out some extras if'fin they want to, nopony stopped her, and mah breakfast is up in the clouds.

Apple Bloom tried to push the irritation back: something which seemed to take more energy than her hungry body could readily provide. There was still food around. She could always have an apple, although even the Maluses tried to discourage that from happening all the time: a pony couldn't quite live on cultivars alone, and it wouldn't take all that long before they stopped enjoying the experience. Or maybe there was some greenhouse lettuce left --

-- there were hooves coming down the ramp. Quickly.

"AB?" her sister called ahead. The mare's voice was pitched just a little too loudly for the hour, especially when there was a sleeping elder upstairs. And the tone...

"Yeah?"

The words themselves were almost calm. A melting sheet of thinning ice over boiling water. "Where's Babs?"

The filly blinked.

She backed away from the open icebox: the old door failed to swing shut. Turned to face the kitchen entrance, and saw her sister framed within the doorway. Spotted green eyes which were just a little too wide.

"She ain't in your room," Applejack quickly said as orange fur began to shift out of grain. "Ain't in the bathroom, neither. An' Ah would've thought she jus' got up a little early an' decided t' wander around the Acres for a while, but her saddlebags are gone. So if y'happen t' know where she is, this would be a really good time --"

"-- Ah thought y'took her t' the train an' came right back!" the filly quickly protested. "Get her started out early, so she'd miss less school! That's why Ah didn't say nothin'!"

Where is she?

The mare's head moved from side to side with enough force to destabilize the hat: an emergency inwards double ear press barely managed to keep it in place. "Ah've only been up for an hour. In the house the whole time. She never went past me. An' it ain't like the alarms go off when someone opens the door from the inside. Not any more --"

Because there had been a Crusade, and Applejack's trust in her younger sibling had quickly dwindled --

"-- since Ah've stopped worryin' so much 'bout Scootaloo tryin' to sneak back," the mare softly finished. "Apple Bloom, if'fin y'know where Babs is, y'have t' tell --"

"-- maybe she went t' the station on her own?" Apple Bloom's uncertain heart proposed. "She's got the ticket." And her cousin had been making jokes suitable to somepony whose (im)maturity of humor was ahead of the actual years. Who thought she could manage her own affairs, at least in comparison to 'the dobbins'.

"Could be." But there was doubt in Applejack's voice, even if it was just barely detectable through the thick layers of self-suffocating concern. "Might even catch up t' her on the road, if we head out quick enough..." She nodded to herself, hard and sharp. "Which is what we're gonna do. Ah'll wake up Mac, tell him we're goin' out an' ask him t' check the Acres. You an' Ah are goin' t' the station. If she's already left, then the attendant would've seen her get on the train. An' Ah can be mad at her for cuttin' out early later --"

Or doin' a duck-and-somethin', Apple Bloom's increasingly-frantic thoughts spun out. However that ends --

"-- especially for the part where she didn't tell anypony that's what she was gonna do." Frustration briefly raised the right foreleg, and a solid hoof impact made dishes jump inside the cabinets. (Apple Bloom briefly hoped for something to have happened to the good plates.) "But Ah can forgive her for that, jus' as soon as Ah know she's on the train." The thick blonde tail was starting to lash. "Plus about a moon for calmin'-down purposes. But we've gotta verify, especially with what she's been goin' through. Ah've gotta know she didn't try anythin' stupid --"

"Goin' through?" emerged with considerable force. What was in that letter? What didn't y'tell me --

None of it penetrated. "-- an' we need t' start on that now. Grab your jacket." Followed by, in a near-automatic big sister add-on, "An' close the icebox. All the cold's gonna get out --"

The mare stopped. Stared, with the intense gaze going over Apple Bloom's back.

"-- where did all the food go?" Applejack half-whispered -- followed by, all at once, "Aw, no! She's got it! Supplies! Get that jacket, Apple Bloom! We've gotta --"

"-- what's goin' on? What haven't y'been sayin'? Tell me now!"

Her volume hadn't increased by all that much. It was the raw force of the demand which pushed her sister back by half a hoofstep, partially collapsing hind legs and putting the tail-binding rope loop against the ground as those green eyes widened in shock...

...but all the voice said was "We ain't got time for a tantrum, AB. Not right now. And y'wanna remember that Granny needs her sleep. Ah'm hopin' that didn't wake her up. Get your jacket --"

"-- no. Not until you talk."

It had been a statement.

She didn't know where Babs was. What had happened, what could be happening. And still, there was no moment other than now. Because she couldn't fix anything when nopony would --

Applejack's legs straightened, took a single step forward as her head went down. Thinner, weaker yellow limbs rotated slightly, ground keratin against the kitchen floor and planted.

"Ah said," the older sister softly began as nostrils flared and lips pulled back from teeth, "we ain't got time --"

"-- y'had all the time y'needed," Apple Bloom pushed out, swaying her body in a way which gave the words a little more momentum as she let them go. "Time t' speak with me. An' you didn't. Again. Same as her first visit, 'cause y'knew everythin', Applejack. Everythin'. And that ain't the part Ah'm mad 'bout. Ah'm jus' sick of you bein' the only one who knows. Sick of you not tellin' me anythin' real, because y'think Ah'm too little, or that Ah can't deal with whatever the truth is --"

She was watching her big sister. The lashing tail, the backwards-leaning ears. Every last sign of a mare who had recognized a challenge and was getting ready to fight. That was what the vocalized words had already done, and Apple Bloom was fully aware that there were more to come. She could feel them pressing against her tongue, demanding release.

She knew what her next words would be. Had to be. Things which, once said, could never be taken back. Breaking words.

Ah can't talk t' her like this.
Ah never --

But there was nothing else left.

They were breaking words, and Apple Bloom knew it. But they also felt like something she should have said a long time ago.

The youngest Malus took a deep breath, and felt the syllables shatter her world.

"-- because that's what y'did the last time, what y'do every time. Y'don't talk. Not t' me, not unless Ah'm all that's left. That's the only reason you an' Ah talked it out after y'asked Snowflake on that first date, ain't it? Only one who didn't walk out on you, who didn't judge, an' Ah guess all your friends were jus' too far out for a fast trot. Y'don't talk t' me unless you've got no other choice. Not even when Ah'm involved, 'cause that's what havin' a cousin stayin' on the Acres, in mah bedroom does. It gets me involved. But y'didn't talk 'bout Babs. Either time. An' --"

Her own tail didn't lash. The soft fall merely swayed. Disappointment did that.

"-- Ah've gotta wonder what Honesty really means t' you, Applejack. If'fin it means anythin' at all. Anythin' real."

The orange mare stopped breathing.

The yellow filly, chilled from within and without, kept going.

"Any words which come out -- you've gotta at least believe they're true, right? So if every word has t' be true every time, then the best way t' deal with that is by not sayin' anything at all? Ah don't think that's right. Ah feel like y'go quiet so much as t' turn silence into its very own lie."

Her sister's current wordless state might have been forging a new lie. A steady, staring gaze drilling a new exception into the former truth which had once been known as 'family'.

Finish it. It was a tired sort of thought. She'd never felt so weary, not even after the stable sale. And there were ways in which the situations were similar. A single instant when she finally looked at everything which had led up to it, forced the situation to exist, and realized that something had to change...

"An'..." Apple Bloom quietly said, "Ah'm tired, Applejack. Maybe Ah'm on track for mah mark. Finally, right? Ah want t' believe that. There's still things t' learn before it comes, Ah think. But Ah think Ah've figured out one of the basics. That it's nearly impossible t' fix somethin' when nopony will tell you what's broken."

Nothing. Not a word. The blonde tail flicked, as the tips of orange ears twitched.

"Miss Ratchette taught me 'bout stress tests," the adolescent told the mare. "Runnin' things hard, until they have t' shut down. An' then you look at where it all went wrong. But that's not what y'ever want t' do first, because... you're lookin' at somethin' which broke once already. Twice might mean it can't be fixed. An' when nopony ever tells you what's wrong in the first place, when everythin' y'do might jus' mean more stress..."

It was the sheer exhaustion which made her sigh. A sound which felt as if it had taken six moons to fully emerge.

"It's like the bullyin'. If Ah'd known 'bout that from the start, if'fin you'd jus' told me... it all would have been different. 'cause Ah know what it feels like. Known for years." She didn't want to think about Diamond right now. "Ah could've talked t' Babs. All three of us could, as ponies who were goin' through the same things. If you'd told me from the start, before she got off the train -- everything would've changed. Maybe Ah could've helped. But y'didn't say nothin', did you? Jus' kept quiet. An' it was a couple of weeks of bein' chased an' getting pushed out of mah bed, out of our clubhouse, not even sleepin' right because you didn't talk --"

Which was when her sister spoke, with head still down and half-closed eyes regarding nothing more than the kitchen floor.

The voice was right. The intonations were not. Because Applejack had spent a significant amount of her youth away from Ponyville, and... it was the sort of thing which could change you. Alter the way you sounded, as a natural accent was worn away by foreign pressures.

Any effort required for Applejack to speak 'normally' was minimal. Subconscious. It functioned without attention, requiring no more maintenance than was found in simply being on her own ground. But sometimes...

"-- I wanted her to have a break. Just be in a place where she didn't have to think about any of it for a while. She would feel better if it all just stayed away from the Acres the whole time, from Ponyville..."

"It don't work like that," Apple Bloom quietly said. "It never does. Ah'd know. You jus' wind up -- waitin'. Gotta go back sometime. T' school, or wherever they are. Y'can't ever run away when you're a kid. Not when adults keep sendin' you back. Y'didn't tell me, an' it all could have been so different if Ah'd known. She's mah cousin --"

"-- mine too..."

"It ain't the same," the adolescent insisted, and did so at the same moment in which she took a tiny step towards the motionless form. "You boss ponies around a lot. Ain't sure how that works with the Bearers, but Ah saw enough of it at the last reunion. If you decide you're in charge, then y'take over everythin'. An' that was with a bunch of adults in the mix. When they're younger... you act like you're the parent. An' Ah can't remember you bein' any other way."

She sighed.

"That scares me sometimes," the youngest Malus reluctantly admitted. "How little it feels like Ah remember, compared t' how much there must've been. But you ain't her mom, Applejack. An'..."

There had already been breaking words. It didn't feel as if there was any more damage which could be done.

"...y'ain't mine."

She was wrong.

Somethin' just fell. Dropped off her face, the way she's lookin' down.
She's...
...she's cryin'.
Ah jus' made mah sister cry...

Half of the inner chill evaporated. The fast-rising pain needed the room.

"Ah hear some of the talk 'round town, from the new ones," the youngest sibling whispered. "The ponies who moved here in the last few years, never knew 'em, don't know they were ever here at all. Some of 'em think you are mah mom. An' Ah know y'had t' act like it. Had t' try an' be her, when you couldn't. Had t' be in charge of whatever y'could, 'cause it felt like there wasn't nopony else. Y'did everythin'. Kept on doin' it, even when it was too much, right? An'... Ah don't hate you for it. Ah don't. 'cause there wasn't nopony else, nopony who would have been able t' keep all of us together. Y'had t' be a mom for a while. But you're not. You're mah big sister. A sister who doesn't tell me enough because -- Ah think all she sees is a foal who can't do anythin' on her own. Can't manage. Sometimes y'treat the whole world like that. An..."

bleedin'
she's cryin' and it feels like ah'm bleedin' inside
every word jus' hurts an' ah can't let 'em stop or they might never come again

Stress test. Gallop forward until everything broke.

"...Ah know how much Ah screwed up." One more step forward, even smaller than the last. "Maybe y'don't know how much Ah'm afraid that Ah still might have it wrong. Ah know why y'don't always trust me. But Ah'm growin' up. Tryin' t' grow up. An' it's a lot harder when the ponies Ah love the most won't treat me like anythin' except a foal. Applejack -- you don't talk t' me. Not about the real stuff. Not about Babs, first time or this one. An' --" the pain spiked, sent shards of ice through her heart "-- maybe Ah said the wrong things t' her, 'cause Ah didn't know what the right ones were supposed t' be. Ah..."

It was almost funny. If she was still any part of the family, she would have potentially been punished for the next part. For admitting to eavesdropping. As it was, the admission almost felt harmless -- but mostly in comparison to what had come before.

"...couldn't sleep the other night. It's from all the times Ah couldn't sleep with a bully in the room. It don't go away that easy. So Ah heard you talkin' t' Mac 'bout the letter. Y'showed him what was in it. But not me. Never me. So all Ah knew was that somethin' was wrong, but -- not what. Ah still don't know."

Silence, but for the soft impacts of falling tears.

She tried to take one more step toward her big sister, and found her legs wouldn't work.

"Applejack -- if y'ever trusted me with anythin' before the Crusade, if y'ever thought Ah could grow up t' do somethin' right -- please..."

"Her parents are getting a divorce."

It was like listening to a foreign language. One where the youngest Malus knew just enough to spot a single word. A definition which was barely understood -- and yet, every translation led directly to pain.

The orange head had lifted, just a little. Enough to meet Apple Bloom's shocked stare on a near-level plane, as the elevated tears began to soak into soft fur.

"They push," Applejack said, and every too-steady, even word struck with the force of a hoof-hammer. "They don't try to solve any of their problems. They just push everything away and figure it'll all resolve itself. And that finally led to what they must have decided was the natural conclusion. They pushed each other. They've barely been in the same apartment most of the time. Babs's father has been in and out. When they do get together, they fight. And her parents didn't want Babs to be in Manehattan during Homecoming because they didn't think all of them could be at the same table without the biggest fight breaking out again."

"The --" was all Apple Bloom could manage.

The fur tracks were becoming saturated.

"The one about who Babs is going to live with."

And then the youngest Malus found herself unable to speak at all.

"They've been fighting over that for moons," Applejack bitterly declared. "There really wasn't all that much in the letter. But I got the impression that it probably started after Babs got back from the reunion. They can't agree on where she'll live, how often the other gets to visit, and it's just about at the point where they want a judge to nudge over a decision because that way, they pushed off the responsibility for that too. And they asked me not to bring up the divorce. Because not thinking about it for a while might make her feel better --"

"They wrote you to say I was coming, and asked ya to write back if I couldn't! I know they did! It was just about the only thing they did t --"

"Bianca pays attention. Sometimes, she's..."

"Tell ya what, Appy: if you ever build something that'll tuck a bed, I can point you straight at your first buyer. Doesn't even have to open the door and come in to do it. Just sits in the room and waits, because opening that door just ain't worth --"

"My house isn't always good."

Her parents push everything away.
An' Babs learned from them, didn't she?
So Babs pushes.
She pushes her own hurt into somepony else.

"-- it didn't," Apple Bloom quietly cut in. "'cause you don't stop thinkin'. Maybe you can get distracted for a little while, but the thoughts are still there. Waitin' for their chance t' come back. Applejack, it's like bein' a doctor an' treatin' a patient who won't even tell you they're sick."

"Worse," the older sibling darkly voiced. "Because you can't treat them. All you see are symptoms getting kicked out, little things which don't connect because you don't have the most basic information. The part which says something is wrong. And if you don't know that, the symptoms just get lost..."

She stopped. Green eyes closed, and two tears were squeezed away.

"I should have told you about the bullying," Applejack said. "I..." One deep gulp of air, and then the rest of it was jarred loose. "...screwed up."

The youngest Malus blinked.

"Y'jus' -- you're tellin' me you know it wasn't right --"

The right foreleg was now slightly raised: wait. "And I should have told you about the divorce. Because then you could have kept an eye on Babs. You would have known something was wrong, and if there were any symptoms, warning signs... you could have told me. Before it all went wrong, before she ran away and took the Homecoming leftovers with her so she'd have food for a few days."

Probably more like a week, the way this family cooks, went through Apple Bloom's mind without sufficient cause.

"Honesty," the older sister softly stated as her eyes slowly opened again, "is the hardest Element to bear. That's my opinion, I know, but... it's an honest one, at least. But I think you might agree with me. Maybe you even understand now, since you've been through it."

"Ah..." was as far as her sibling let the youngest get.

The larger body moved.

And then her face was being nuzzled by a damp snout.

"Sayin' all of that," Applejack whispered, "must've been one of the hardest things you've ever done. Ah ain't mad, AB. Not at you. Jus' at mahself. An' that part is gonna take a while t' work out. But Ah ain't mad at you, an' Ah ain't gonna be mad. Promise. An' that's mah word. The word of Honesty..." The nuzzle pressed in, warm and damp and almost desperate. "...if you're willin' t' still let that mean somethin'...""

And then Apple Bloom was crying.

The mutual nuzzle went on for a little while. The nuzzle meant for family, as mutual tears flowed into welcoming fur. But a little while was all they had.

"But now," Applejack told her, stepping back just enough to meet her sister's eyes, "we've gotta find Babs. Get some idea where she's gone, an' try t' catch up. She could have a powerful head start."

Apple Bloom nodded.

"Ah'm gonna go wake Mac up, like you said." Since everything which had happened in the kitchen hadn't done it. "But then Ah'll fetch Scootaloo. They've both gotta be in on this."

"Granny?" her sister asked.

"For the startin' gate," Apple Bloom considered as she moved past the older mare, heading for the ramp. "Don't want her runnin' too much. But she might come up with somethin'. An' right now, Ah think we need all the ponies we can get."

Ah should've known you hadn't fetched Babs.
That quilt was off the bed for at least an hour. Maybe a lot more.
An' if you'd come in t' get her, you would've tucked me back in.

Dissipation

The whole of the family had initially been gathered in the sitting room, and the briefing had been mutually delivered at the best speed which the sisters could manage: something which had included a few vocal collisions as each accidentally stumbled into the other's verbal race lane. And now nearly all of them were getting dressed: something which was being done at the best speed which a family could manage. Nopony among the group was a unicorn and when it came to getting jackets on quickly, it helped to have a few extra mouths around.

Which hadn't prevented some confusion. The initial group assault on the ground floor closet had somehow wound up providing Scootaloo with one of Apple Bloom's garments: the pegasus had only truly noticed that the slightly-too-large piece wasn't hers at the moment when she'd discovered that excess leg length didn't guarantee enough torso space to accommodate wings. The smaller adolescent was now getting into her own cold weather garb: something which was distressingly taking a little longer than usual. Scootaloo either wasn't fully awake, or was having some trouble getting focused. Her expression suggested deep distraction, as if the nightscape had captured part of her attention. Or she might have just been thinking about something.

Beneath the initial layers of desperation, most of what Apple Bloom was thinking about was that the entire family was in the sitting room, and that designated group somehow still included her.

She'd been in the presence of breaking words before: everything which had happened between Applejack and Macintosh when the older sister had first announced her intention to date Snowflake. Sentences which had ultimately sent precision vibrations into well-concealed cracks within the foundations, and when the resulting earthquake had finally ended...

So much had broken on that night. Apple Bloom suspected that some of the local repairs were still a work in progress. And with that which had echoed through the earth, sending tremors across roots and branches into so much of the family... it was possible that some things could never be fully fixed.

Some ponies...

(She didn't want to think about that. She still had dreams about it, and was lucky to wake up just before the advancing soil crept over her own snout.)

Apple Bloom had spoken breaking words: an act which limited experience had told her could only end in nightmare. It was why she'd felt her sister would reject all of it. But Applejack still loved her.

Maybe all breaking words didn't make things go wrong. And yet... something had broken. It felt as if the nature of their relationship was shifting, with old parts falling away as new ones attempted to form out of fresh debris. The resulting pieces felt strange, and Apple Bloom didn't know what they were ultimately going to build.

Sun's light was just beginning to kiss the farmhouse windows. They had to hurry.

"How are y'all doin' this?" Granny sharply asked. She was the only one who wasn't layering herself against the cold, because the elder (on a good day) recognized that the herd could only move at the speed of the slowest pony in it. Granny was going to stay at the farmhouse, she'd been the one to call it on herself, and she still wasn't happy about it. "Presumin' there's at least the basics of a plan. Or you'd better come up with one before y'cross the bridge."

"I'll take the train station," Mac offered. "Hitch myself to it for a day or two, if there's any chance that she's counting on catching a later train after the initial search fades out. She ain't necessarily planning to stay in Ponyville, and that ticket's an asset."

"Keeps y'out of the main chase," Applejack noted as powerful hind legs kicked themselves into rack-held boots, one after the other.

"And you're better off," the oldest sibling argued. "Because we all know about me and long sprints." It was the factor which had kept him from advancing beyond amateur athletics. When it came to extended normal efforts, her brother could plod along for hours. And he had a decent burst of short-term speed in him, something which was almost minotaur-like -- but just as with minotaurs, he lost it quickly. If there was anything which stood a chance to drop Macintosh into the dirt, it was an extended attempt to truly race.

The sports undercard currently had Apple Bloom wrestling with her own jacket. It was somewhat too large for Scootaloo, and it was now slightly too small for its intended user. The shoulders were giving her some trouble.

An' Granny jus' saw that.
So much for gettin' anythin' which ain't clothin' for Hearth's Warmin'.

She had to focus. They needed to find Babs.

"Fair enough," Applejack acknowledged. "Set up there -- an' you jus' thought of somethin'. Ah know what that expression looks like, Mac."

So did Apple Bloom. Her brother's eyes had just gone bright --

"I'm switching it out," the big stallion announced. "I'm going straight for the library."

The elder sister frowned. "Gettin' Twilight involved? Ain't gonna turn down an extra pair of eyes. But it ain't safe t' try teleports around town, today of all days. Most of the usual clear spots won't be, not on the day after Homecomin'. An' trust me when Ah say she ain't quite ready t' search from the air. An' when it comes t' getting reinforcements, first priority should be t' go for the police station --"

The red head quickly shook. "Spike," Macintosh announced. "All he has to do is get a scroll off to Babs. She isn't gonna be behind one of those lockdown spells --" winced, followed by an automatic "-- sorry, Scootaloo -- and once it shows up with her, he'll know --"

"-- he won't," the pegasus softly broke in. "It... doesn't work that way. The magic finds her. But it doesn't tell him where the scroll went."

Applejack's regretful nod started at the same instant in which Mac's expression collapsed.

"Ain't your fault," she told her brother. "Y'ain't exactly had much cause t' learn all the ins an' outs of his trick. Scootaloo's right. An' if Spike did send her somethin' -- AB, does Babs know 'bout Spike?"

It ain't my fault.
It ain't.

She spat out fabric, released the "No," and then went back to jaw-pulling on the too-thin forward right tube.

"Then it's jus' a burst of flame showin' up right in front of her," Applejack pointed out. "When she's already on the run, maybe jumpy an' ready to break. She probably ain't gonna stand still long enough t' see the scroll drop, Mac. It'll startle her, an' she might jus' gallop. An' if she did hold out, opened it an' read whatever we sent --"

She ain't good with letters.

"-- what do we say? That we're lookin' for her? T' come back t' the Acres? Still might jus' make her run all the faster." The older sister sighed. "Or go off whatever the course was supposed t' be. If she winds up gallopin' into the Everfree..."

All of the earth ponies shuddered. The pegasus was still distracted.

"Or," Mac groaned, "that might have been her plan in the first place. Go through the fringe, cross the border --"

The next words were as much announcement as statement. The vocal signature of somepony who had just worked everything out.

"-- she's not going into a wild zone."

It focused their attention on Scootaloo, as jaws froze in mid-motion and some too-narrow fabric tubes did their best to lock Apple Bloom's knees.

The orange features were oddly tight. Almost grim.

"She said it yesterday," the pegasus quickly told them. "That she couldn't do plants and monsters. She's a city filly. She just knows brick and stone and metal and different monsters..."

"Scootaloo," Applejack carefully tried, "Ah ain't sure what your i-dea! face looks like. But if that's it --"

It got them a single fierce nod.

"I think I know where she went," Scootaloo said. "Let's move."

And then there were four on the gallop, a miniherd moving down Ponyville's oldest road: something which had hooves pounding across half-frosted ground as Sun fought to do its work, passing the entrance to what felt like an oddly-silent Rich estate as Apple Bloom's jacket, tested by fresh pressures and a growth spurt which had been a little too slow to pick up on, began to split at the seams.

The group didn't stay together long. Macintosh quickly put himself onto one of the side paths, shortcutting for the train station because Scootaloo acknowledged there was a chance she was wrong. And once he was gone, the pegasus was rendered into the slowest member of the herd -- because she was on the gallop. The scooter could be used on the old road, but lost speed to rough surfaces, imprecise turns, and rocks which had been there yesterday. Galloping meant not having to pick the scooter up over and over or, just about as frequently, not having to put portions of it back together.

Scootaloo wasn't the worst on hoof. Several years of Crusading had offered a myriad of reasons to become good at getting away in a hurry. But she wasn't an earth pony, her glide spots cost her speed, and she had trouble maintaining the pace. It quickly reached the point where Applejack's struggles against the urge to try a mouth carry were just about visible.

But the herd could only move at the pace of the slowest pony in it, and Scootaloo was in the lead. She was the one who knew the fastest route --

-- other ponies began to appear on the road: something which was initially experienced as short-term bursts of surprised colors. And then they came up on the bridge, raced over the span, and there were lots of ponies. Because it was the day after Homecoming, and that was the traditional launch to the Hearth's Warming shopping season. Stores opened a little earlier (while trying not to temporally back all the way up into Homecoming itself), and much of Ponyville's population was already out and about. Seeking the best local bargains, or heading for the train station in order to be much too late for whatever had been on sale in the capital.

There were already dozens of ponies on the streets, even near the edge of town. Residents who saw one Bearer accompanied by two Crusaders, with all three on the gallop and a youth in the lead. And for the most part, in spite of the fast-fraying false evidence offered up by Apple Bloom's dying jacket, they did not instantly conclude that there was a really good bargain on adolescent sizes somewhere up ahead.

The town was getting used to having the Acres host two Crusaders. Having a galloping Bearer following one of them did not strike the majority as a reassuring concept.

Ponies began to scatter. Most of them chose a direction which wasn't theirs and committed. And at the forward edge of vision, something very much like a living shadow visibly started, and then raced towards them all the faster --

-- it was strange, watching the unicorn move: a quality which went beyond trying to isolate the movements of joints within the strange blend of dark fur. The adult kept herself in good physical shape: something made necessary by profession and mark. But she still wound up having to essentially fling herself into a hard turn as she reached them, allowing her to gallop forward with the herd, now flanking Applejack on the left. The sharp change in direction, accompanied by a minimal loss of momentum, nearly wound up dumping the unicorn into the cobblestones.

"How did you know?" Miranda gasped, doing her best to accelerate again. "I was just heading out to the Acres so I could tell her!"

"Know what?" Applejack inquired with steadier breath. (It was just easier for earth ponies.)

The police chief blinked.

"You didn't --"

Orange ears twisted, and did so in a way which allowed them to continue exerting the pressure which kept the hat in place. "Jus' tell me, Miranda! We were probably gonna come t' you at some point, but this saves time --"

"-- the signal went off at Scootaloo's house!"

A silent alarm. Somethin' lights up at the station, an' that's it. Little bit of unicorn magic discharges on the other end, but that ain't somethin' an earth pony can feel.

"Jus' went off," the adult tried to confirm.

"Just a few minutes ago! I've got an officer on the way there to keep watch." There was just enough breath for the snort. "One. It's all I can spare right now, because Homecoming was the usual mess. He's going to watch from the outside, and he won't move in unless he sees somepony trying to come out. We're trying not to startle whoever's in there." Grey-green eyes focused on the filly. "Scootaloo, I promise, we'll give them a chance to explain --"

"-- it's not them."

It was another statement. And normally, that would have been the worst thing, but... it was the day after Scootaloo had hesitated.

The shadow stared at the pegasus.

"...what?"

"Applejack, you tell her," was jarred loose by the force of orange hooves pounding against the road. "We've gotta turn left here --"

A few minutes ago. 'cause she doesn't know Ponyville, not like we do. Took her some time t' find the right house. We've got a chance --

-- somepony had a chance.

It was possible that Scootaloo was wrong. A factor which had a chance to create both disaster and miracle.

"Scootaloo," Apple Bloom called out, "she could have gone for the train station! Y'know that! An' if she did --"

There was no answer. The grim pegasus turned left, with the shift making pieces of feather down spin away from half-extended wings.

The herd followed, and a new group of ponies began to scatter before them.

And then they were across the street from the house.

It was a fairly basic two level structure. As homes went, it could easily host a family of three, with the option to move that number into four and beyond. And if you looked at it from the outside, stayed away from the battered backyard which had been the staging ground for too many failed micro-Crusades...

...if you'd never known about just how long it had been the home for just one...

...it would look normal.

But Apple Bloom knew.

We didn't think 'bout it.
They were in town yesterday, she'd tell us. Jus' missed 'em. Or comin' back tomorrow. But never today.
Never thought 'bout how it was jus' the yard. Come in through the back gate, use the yard. Her parents wouldn't mind. But we never really got into the house. Bathroom just past the rear door, for when we needed it. An' that was all.
Never slept over at her place.
Never saw her bedroom.
Never got a look at theirs.
An' she made that feel natural.
You were good at the lies, Scootaloo.
Too good.

And when you knew...

The house felt as if it was radiating silence. Walls almost seemed to bow inwards, pulled by the vacuum of absence.

Years of living alone. In the rankings of horror, there were many ways in which that constituted a lesser one. But when Apple Bloom truly thought about what it must have been like for Scootaloo to have been on her own every day... to have those days add up into weeks and moons and years of just waiting...

The structure was no longer empty. It was currently hosting at least one pony, perhaps two. Certain levels of coincidence would bring the number to three. Or... Scootaloo's parents had been gone for years. It only took eleven and a half moons for a different route to reach that total.

An alarm had gone off, and that meant the building was at least temporarily fulfilling its purpose. But it was still a place which had hosted some level of horror, and so Apple Bloom shivered.

It's cold here.
Too cold.
Colder than the schedule said it was gonna --
-- oh.
It's cold 'cause Ah jus' shivered off half mah jacket into the street.
Stupid seams.

There was a single stallion near the opposing fence. Watching.

Miranda slowed, dropped from gallop to trot, approached the officer.

"Anything visible?"

"Nothing through the windows," the stallion said. "But they haven't tried to leave either. The back door signal hasn't gone off. Same for the glass."

"The stuff y'set up allows ponies t' jus' go in?" Applejack asked. "Don't think y'ever mentioned that part."

This snort had all the qualities of a rather short, exceptionally bitter burst of sarcastic mirth. (Apple Bloom had never heard the police chief laugh.) "It takes a little effort. If you don't have the key. Or the counterspell, and I had to trigger that yesterday. Just long enough to turn the light on and leave that note. But it's too suspicious if the house is completely closed off. Especially since it's their house. The plan was always to let them get inside, Applejack. If they decided the place was abandoned --" the glance towards Scootaloo was fairly subtle, but not quick enough "-- then they might start trying to look elsewhere. I wanted to keep them here."

Scootaloo was silent. Apple Bloom took a small step forward. More fabric dropped away.

"So how are we doin' this?" the youngest Malus asked. "'cause if it is them --"

"-- it isn't," the pegasus quietly said. "You should be the one who goes inside."

Three adults looked at the adolescent, and Miranda Rights did no more than listen.

"Scootaloo --" Apple Bloom tried.

"-- just you," Scootaloo softly added. "There's more of us here now to watch every possible exit. And... one on one is meeting somepony. Two or more means being she's chased. Adults make it into a hunt. She might not run if it's one. If it's you."

The shadow simply nodded.

Miranda Rights looked tired. She usually did, because being the police chief in Ponyville wasn't exactly an easy job and Homecoming meant law enforcement across the continent got to experience a very long night. But even with all of that factored in, the shadow-furred mare just looked... tired.

"If you're willing, Apple Bloom," the mare said. "But I'm staying just outside the door. One shout from you and we're coming in. One shout from me and it means we saw somepony come out. And if you think she's a threat --"

Weeks of barely sleepin'.
Not bein' able t' think that much, an' havin' the ones which were left go strange.
All because Ah was afraid of her.
It doesn't go away that easy. It just don't.

"-- no," Apple Bloom softly replied. "She ain't. Ah'll go."

The entry had been on the rough side. It was easy to see where a dense hoof had been slammed into the right side of the door frame. The force had been enough to jar part of the molding loose, and after that... well, as Miranda Rights had said, you wanted ponies to go in.

She entered as quietly as she could. The door hinges, which had escaped the abuse, failed to creak.

It was a clean house. Surprisingly, it had more or less remained so while Scootaloo had been in residence, especially for the portions which were visible from the doorway: too much dirt was suspicious. There was furniture and clothing racks, sturdy bookcases which only had two shelves each because atlases were big. She passed a closet. The doorway which led to the kitchen --

-- there was a pair of bulging, too-basic saddlebags on the kitchen floor. The icebox door was slightly ajar, and Apple Bloom shivered as the cold leaked out. The last scraps of jacket fell away.

Multiple drawers were open. A few of the limited baking supplies appeared to have been freshly rummaged. The adolescent couldn't tell if there was anything missing.

She's in here.

It was a thought which brought reassurance and pain in equal measure.

Ah'm sorry, Scootaloo. Ah am.
Maybe the next time --
-- if --
-- did Ah jus' hear...

Hoofsteps. Just barely detected, a sound which surely hadn't reached the upper level, but -- it had to be hoofsteps. Adult hoofsteps, a single set --

-- oh.
Yeah. Not like she's Honesty. Wasn't gonna really let me go in by mahself. Lot more visible in the light, but she's gotta be pretty good at movin' quietly. That fur don't do all the night work by itself, an' it don't hide noise. She'll let me talk an' give us some space -- but if it was Scootaloo's parents, she was gonna come chargin'.
Kinda nice t' know she's lookin' out for me.
Real annoyin'. But kinda nice.
Probably found a place t' hide already. Won't move again until Ah do. She should see the saddlebags after that.
Try the upper level.

She backtracked (and caught no glimpses of living shadows), ascended. Planting her hooves on the ramp in a way which didn't produce any sound -- that was tricky. The Crusade had offered so many opportunities to prove there was no mark for stealth...

...not that any of us were all that good at it...

Every little impact of keratin seemed to echo in her ears, and she had to keep them rotated forward. Trying to hear...

...water runnin'. 'cause the police had t' leave all of that turned on too.
...
...'course she's in the bathroom --

-- the water stopped.
The door opened.
A smiling, content, soft red filly came out.

She knew her cousin's build: the heavyset form which possessed even more weight than the body suggested. The features, and the green eyes which hadn't been changed because contact lenses couldn't be improvised quite so easily as fur dye. A basic fur dye just required a pony who was willing to put in some work. Just for starters, certain kinds of leaves could stain: the Crusaders had located most of the ones around Ponyville by crashing through them, generally while covered in tree sap. But if you didn't have access to the real thing, had to deal with autumn, were worried about having somepony look through your saddlebags, or were simply trying to avoid the distinctive stink which lingered for several hours after application... a filly who'd done some studying could do a lot with food coloring.

On one level, she knew it was Babs: the form gave her cousin away. But even so, there was a single instant in which Apple Bloom's inner moorings came free, because the fur had been altered, the blue mane and tail styles were completely different, she realized that Babs had been preparing to do this for days and yet, something within still insisted she was looking at a completely different filly.

Somepony she'd never known.

A single sharp inhalation of shock burned into her lungs. The red filly's ears instantly went fully aloft, rotated in shock, and the hard head turned to match them.

There was a second during which they were looking at each other. Just... looking, as Apple Bloom braced herself. Watching for the first sign of breaking, the attempt to run. Scootaloo was currently treating every sufficiently-large window as a possible gliding exit. An earth pony, who didn't really have to worry about a one-story fall, just had to aim for the center of the glass --

-- the red ears drooped. The filly's head went down.

"I left a note."

Apple Bloom blinked.

She had been expecting -- well, there were quite a few words which might have emerged from her cousin first. 'I left' was a reasonable list entry. She didn't know what 'a note' was doing there.

"A note," the youngest Malus repeated, and heard the hollows within her voice.

"Said I was going to the station myself." The sentence felt far too calm. "You'd think I'd just headed back on my own. And here ya are."

"...didn't see no note," Apple Bloom forced out. "But one of the windows was a little bit open. Maybe it blew off from wherever y'put it?"

Babs sighed.

"And this is why I don't do letters," she wearily said. "Look what happens when I write something down. Same as the dobbins. Still don't get there on time." The Manehattanite took a slow breath. Her tired gaze moved across Apple Bloom, then seemed to go through. "More ponies outside, ain't there? I'm guessing your sister, just for starters."

"Yeah."

The blue tail sagged. So did most of the extensions, in perfect concert.

"You were supposed to think I just left," Babs quietly semi-repeated. "But a window was a little bit open. And it all went wrong. And they're going to send me back. Back to the dobbins." Another sigh. "Can't even get you for snitching, right? Not when you didn't know what was really going on."

"Snitchin'," Apple Bloom firmly said, "is one of the stupidest accusations there is."

Babs shrugged. The left side of her mouth almost twitched up. "Still kept ya quiet for a while until you figured that out." And before the youngest Malus could say anything, "I should've ditched on the way here. I kept thinking about it. Over and over."

Lost years united with hard-earned wisdom, weighed down Apple Bloom's voice and kept it falsely calm. "So why didn't you?"

"Because I thought you had the stupid letter!" The words had been bitten, and a lashing tail which wasn't quite dry began to lose some of the blue. "You were expecting me. If I don't show up when there's ponies waiting, then the search starts all the sooner. But if I did it on the way back -- that's when the dobbins might just figure ya kept me around for an extra day or two. It buys more time. And you would have looked, when I didn't show up. But maybe they wouldn't ever look at all."

The tail was lashing more quickly now. Drops of torment were flung onto the walls.

"Not when they don't want each other," Babs snapped, and lips pulled back from teeth. "Not when they're fighting about who gets stuck with me. I just leave, and maybe that solves nearly everything. But you had to go and care. Care enough to go looking when ya didn't find the note. Why did ya have to go and..."

She stopped. Her eyeslids briefly squeezed closed, and a loud inwards sniff pulled most of the moisture back.

"I was just gonna sublet for a few days."

The blink didn't come with a vocabulary lesson.

"Sub --"

"This place is paid for," Babs said. "Scoots said so. So it can take another tenant." She snorted. "I'm from Manehattan, Appy. Subletting is normal. And I wasn't sure about the extensions, or the styling. Dye needed some work. So... a few days in here. But just a few. It was a place to practice some more. Because I couldn't stay in Ponyville, not where somepony knew me."

Ah never knew you at all.

"Not where they could look past the colors," Babs wearily added. "And I've got an open train ticket. No date. Canterlot's on the way. It's right there. And it ain't so empty."

"An' where do y'stay once you're in the capital?" Apple Bloom quietly asked.

Her cousin's lips quirked.

"That's a city. I'm a city filly. We've got ways. And Scoots taught me a few extra tricks. Not that she meant to, but it was stuff that helps."

"She figured out where you were."

"When I didn't decide until last night," Babs bitterly stated. "I should've just gone straight for the train."

Apple Bloom looked at her cousin. Thought about the adult who was somewhere in the house, listening to all of it...

Ah don't want t' say it.
Not where she can hear. Not any of it. Anythin' Ah say around Chief Rights could get used against me. Even if she's givin' us time, won't come up unless somethin' goes wrong -- she's still listenin'.
But it's Babs.
(She didn't really know Babs.)
(She had never...)
Family.

"Ah was thinkin'," Apple Bloom quietly began. "That we're kinda all the same. Me, mah friends, and you."

"Crusaders together," was almost spat. "Except that you quit. Not that I blame ya --"

The yellow head slowly shook.

"Homes," the adolescent softly corrected. "Homes an' waitin'. Scootaloo's spent years waitin' for her parents to come back. Sweetie... y'know her dad was a hoofball player, right? Coach now. An' there's a lot of ponies who get hurt in that game, even when they ain't playin' it no more. Sweetie -- she waits t' see if her dad comes home. Or if there's gonna be ponies who haul back whatever's left."

Ah never really thought 'bout that. Never until now.
Ah'm sorry.

Her cousin blinked. Looked up, just a little, until green eyes met orange. Waited.

"Me..." The sigh refused to project, hovered over her spine and tried to press her into the floor. "...every Homecomin'. Because what you saw last night -- that's where mah parents used t' sit, Babs. So the good plates come out, and -- they ain't good at bringin' back the dead." The bow seemed to sag, nearly went across her eyes. "But Ah catch mahself waitin'. Wishin'. Every year."

The slightly uneven "I'm sorry," was, under the circumstances, exactly the right thing to say.

"An' you," Apple Bloom forced herself to press on. "You're waitin' t' go home. Except you don't know where that is no more, or -- who's gonna be there."

"It's not with them," an increasingly-shaky voice insisted. "They don't want me. I'm gone, that's one less fight --"

Almost frantic now, "-- letter said the biggest fight is over who you're gonna live with. They wouldn't fight if they didn't care --"

The heavyset body reared up, and the double forehoof slam shook the hall.

Apple Bloom held her ground.

"-- they don't want to lose!" Babs shouted. "Loser gets stuck with me! If they loved me, they'd stay together! They love Bianca more than me, and my dad hates her! Ain't even her fault! Kittens in a new house hide under blankets because they're scared! Something comes at 'em fast, they're gonna bite! So she got his ankle and he's never forgiven her, never --"

"-- you were gonna leave her!" It was a low blow: the sort of thing you launched in a fight when politeness was no longer even remotely a consideration and you just had to win. It also felt like one of the last moves Apple Bloom had left.

Her cousin didn't rear up again. Ears and tail drooped in unison.

"I know," Babs whispered. "I know. But my mom cares about her. She'd have somepony. I'm sorry, it hurts, but... I couldn't take her with me. Not on the train, not when the dobbins know you have a dog. It was my only chance to do it with distance. A head start. Manehattan's big -- but it's just one city, Appy. For all they knew, I could have gotten off anywhere on the train line back. It's too much to search, if they'd looked at all. A few days, and they would've stopped. So I planned it out. Duck-and-bobble."

Rather naturally, "Bobble?"

Her cousin almost smiled. "When ya move like that, there's usually a little stumble coming out of the gate." And made a point of looking at the Ponyville resident. "Obvs."

They were both quiet for a while. Apple Bloom wondered just how close the police officer was.

"Somethin' Ah've been wantin' t' ask you," she finally said. "The bully stuff. With us. That wasn't the first time, was it?"

The responding "No," seemed to emerge a little too easily.

"Who got it first?"

"The ones who were after me," Babs immediately said. "Because I didn't have a mark yet. Ya can only take being pushed so long, Appy. So I started pushing back --"

Stopped. Closed her eyes again, and sighed.

"-- and maybe after a while, I was just pushing," she finished. "Guess there's no mark for that, because I'm good at pushing. But it was always the ones who started with me, at least until I got here. Maybe all the dobbins ever saw was the pushing. Same for most of the colts and fillies at my school. I lost my friends because no one wanted to be around the filly who kept getting kicked, just in case they took a hit. I didn't have any new ones until I started up the Crusade. And then I had a crew. There wasn't exactly overlap."

The hind legs folded, and did so in a way which let Apple Bloom see where Babs had missed a few spots. The heavyset filly slowly sat down.

"You're lucky," the Manehattanite said. "Luckier than me. Yours stayed with you. All the way."

"But y'came after us," needed saying. "Because Diamond and Silver --"

"-- I didn't know you," Babs quietly told her. "Any of you. And then you were all right in my snout. That ain't good in Manehattan. In my snout, and talking about the thing which got me pushed in the first place. I was out of the city and everything was just so empty. Not having a mark -- that's being empty inside. All you did was remind me about that, and they -- gave me a chance. The way I was. Maybe just because of where I was from, to start. But it was a chance..."

Ah knew we screwed up.
Knew we screwed up big.
But...

"Y'could've told me," the youngest Malus half-whispered. "Made it an act. A little in front of them, then jus' have fun when they're gone --"

"-- I didn't think of it," Babs immediately said. "And..."

The forelegs folded, and the filly was lying on the floor. Portions of the wood began to take on stain.

"...I'm a little too good at pushing," her cousin quietly finished. "Except I didn't want to push you again. Not after I was part of the club. Not when that got me friends again, even when I wasn't gonna see them any more either. But if I'd pushed this time, when I got off the train... maybe you wouldn't have looked. Maybe you just would have been glad to never see me again. Like the dobbins..."

"They're fighting over you," Apple Bloom firmly said, "because they love you."

Fierce, angry. "You don't know."

The youngest Malus fell silent.

Her dad doesn't come into the room.
Ah don't remember if mah --
-- that should be something a dad does.

"You're right," she finally admitted. "Ah don't. But you push, Babs. So do they. They're pushin' each other away. Not you."

Except they've sent her out of the city twice. Maybe three times, if somethin' was happenin' around the time we had the reunion...

Babs' head went down, and the damp chin touched extended forelegs. "Appy -- the ponies waiting outside are gonna send me back. What are they sending me to?

She wasn't a Bearer.
She didn't hold an Element.
She didn't want to.
Honesty hurt.

"Ah don't know."

It got her a tiny nod. And then the filly didn't move.

Apple Bloom could see some of the edges now. The places where things had been broken. But she didn't know how to fix any of it.

Slowly, she lowered her body to the floor. Brought her head down, until she was facing her cousin on the same level.

"Babs?"

It got her a motionless "Yeah?"

"'Dobbins'... ain't a very nice word, is it?"

Her cousin abruptly snickered.

"It was kind of fun to curse without anypony knowing." A little more softly, "Is Sweetie okay? Kind of easy to notice that whenever she came up, ya changed the subject."

"She's... scared, Ah think," Apple Bloom sighed. "Scootaloo and Ah weren't talkin' for a while, after the Crusade broke. Sweetie didn't want t' choose between us. An' now that we're livin' in the same house... Ah feel like she doesn't know how safe it is t' approach. If the Crusade's gonna kick back up, an' it'll all go wrong again."

Curiously, "Wrong? You've got the workshop, but how does it go wrong if the other two start again?"

Not without irony, "For starters? 'cause we were mostly pickin' a bunch of random cool-soundin' stuff an' hopin' we'd all be good at it."

Babs blinked.

"Ah've got stories, if y'wanna hear 'em sometime." Apple Bloom added. "Ah think that's the best word. Stories. That's the stuff y'wish you could call fiction, because havin' it as the truth is jus' too embarrassin'. But Ah've also got souvenirs. Could let you have a few." She paused. "Ah don't know what the plants are like in Manehattan. How are y'fixed for tree sap?"

And then her cousin was giggling.
They were both giggling --
-- no, it was laughter now, both fillies laughing as Babs's tail just kept twitching and Apple Bloom's forehooves lightly beat against the floor --

-- it faded, after a while. Babs's lower lip extended, blew a tiny air puff through the discolored mane.

"We've gotta go out there. To where the adults are. Right?" The too-even tones of resignation. "They've been waiting the whole time."

Apple Bloom nodded.

"And they won't let me leave town by myself. There's gonna be somepony along for the ride. All of it."

Again. The proposal made a certain amount of sense.

Babs, moving as if she was testing each joint in turn, slowly began to stand up.

"Sorry for leaving you cold," the Manehattanite said. "I couldn't get the window closed."

"Latch is a little tricky," the adolescent admitted. Stretched out all four legs, got ready to move.

"And I was afraid that if I got the quilt all the way back over you, the movement would just wake you up."

"All the --"

"-- you sort of started twitching and kicking when it was halfway across. I had to stop. Appy?"

"Yeah?" (Snowflake had inadvertently taught her about several of the word's many uses.)

Softly, "Stay with me? Until they put me on the train? Please?"

Apple Bloom didn't know her cousin very well. Hardly at all, and there were things about the Manehattanite which she barely understood.

"...yeah."

But each got up. Babs approached, the youngest Malus turned, and they fell into step with each other. They left the house together.

Apple Bloom didn't really know Babs.
She didn't understand her cousin.
But neither was a prerequisite for love.

Counterclaim

There were two geographically-divided branches of the Crusade, and the separation had created a number of differences. The version witnessed by the largest settled zone on the east coast had resulted in two manifests. The original edition, viewed in the most charitable way possible, had brought only knowledge. And on rare occasions, the information gained would even be beneficial -- under limited circumstances. Because lingering in the hallway outside Miranda's office had a way of impeding traffic, and the youngest Malus had instantly proposed the single most comfortable place to wait it all out. Knowledge which had been born from the heated forge of fur-singing embarrassment, along with rather too much direct experience.

Apple Bloom doubted that Babs was intimately familiar with every last square hoofwidth of Manehattan's central police station.

They hadn't been able to stay within the house: the central excuse provided was that the alarm spells needed to be reset, but the youngest Malus suspected that Chief Rights mostly wanted to get Scootaloo out of the area. It was also a factor which had prevented the questioning from taking place in the street. And... there had been ponies moving through the area, because it was the day after Homecoming. Some shoppers only attended the earliest sales, followed by bringing their purchases home. Those adults would have seen the gathering in the road, automatically slowed as they tried to figure out why the police were involved... guaranteeing privacy would have been difficult, and any gossip which was already on the gallop might have found an instant second wind.

So it had all been moved to the precinct station. And they'd still passed more than a few residents as they'd moved through what were normally the least-used routes. Several had paused to look at the little procession, with the discolored Manehattan resident staying so close to her cousin.

Most of those adults had been hauling small carts. Some were bringing future Hearth's Warming gifts home for their children.

The waiting area was comfortable enough, even when decades of accumulated worry had pressed permanent grooves into the padded benches. But it felt a little cold. Apple Bloom no longer had a jacket, and... the police chief hadn't let her stay with Babs during the questioning. She'd been told that Babs had to be alone with the unicorn for a while, there had been a protest because she'd promised, and... when you were a kid, protests were something which adults mostly ignored.

Mostly. Miranda, speaking much more softly than usual, had... apologized. But there was a procedure, and it had to be legally followed.

The adolescent was in the waiting area with her big sister and friend: the former was next to her on the largest bench, while the latter was examining the Wanted posters on the far wall. They'd all been in the station often enough to have the worst of the lot memorized, but there was always a chance to get a new one and when it came to the older offenders, there was also the theoretical chance to find an updated printing.

But it was just something she was doing to pass the time. All three were actually engaged in the same activity.

"Still doesn't have their real names," Scootaloo announced.

"Pity," Applejack sighed. "Ah'd like a few fresh curses t' use on 'em. All the ones which work with 'Flim an' Flam Fields' are gettin' kinda stale."

"You could still work on something," the pegasus reported. "There's six new aliases."

Curiously, "Each or between 'em?"

-- hoofsteps were moving down the hall. All talk stopped. The trio focused on that approach, and then they got to listen as it moved past their door.

They were talking. But not about the true subject, because they all needed a little more information before picking that up again. There was one true activity in that room, and every pony within was an equal participant.

They were waiting.

There was a clock on the wall. The audible ticking struck Apple Bloom as being somewhat sadistic.

More hoofsteps outside. Approaching, going away. Then a third set: one where the precise sounds produced had been memorized long ago, and a group of rather specialized fur strands began to stand up along the nape of Apple Bloom's neck.

It was a rather special sort of knock, when it came from an officer. Polite enough on the surface, but with a distinct undertone of I Have To Come In Anyway.

"We're ready, Miranda," Applejack softly called out.

The door opened, and the dark unicorn stepped inside. Weary grey-green eyes briefly regarded the two adolescents.

"I can talk to you," the adult told Applejack. "As a relative. It's up to you as to how much you tell Scootaloo. But it's probably best if Apple Bloom goes into the hall with her for a few --"

The pegasus started to protest. Apple Bloom found her legs spontaneously straightening, pushing her upright because standing on a bench was going to do a lot to take away Miranda's height advantage -- and it was also going to put her on a concerning angle for the horn. The police chief's horn was noticeably longer and thicker than that of the average unicorn: nowhere near the size which would have made it into a perpetual hazard -- but more than enough to serve as a constant reminder that the mare came with a permanent weapons attachment.

"-- no," Applejack quietly stated. "Ah understand that part of the law, Miranda, far as it goes. Kinda like the medical stuff, right? Easier t' give out information t' blood or --" there was the briefest of pauses "-- unions. So legally, Scootaloo's probably gotta step outside for a while. But Apple Bloom stays."

The unicorn's head briefly dipped.

"Understood," the mare said. "Scootaloo, just go in the hall."

"But --" the pegasus automatically began.

"-- Ah'll give you whatever Ah can," Applejack promised. "Step out, Scootaloo. ...please."

Wings partially unfolded. Curled back in.

"On the way back to the Acres," Scootaloo said. Applejack nodded, and the smaller adolescent trotted for the exit. Miranda waited until the sweep of purple tail was fully clear, then nudged the door closed with her left hind hoof.

The unicorn took a slow breath: one which seemed to make each rib shift in turn. The shadow-fur was oddly out of grain. Apple Bloom wondered just how much sleep the police chief had managed to find.

"Babs is in the shower," the mare told them.

As thoughts went, Tyin' up the bathroom seemed to be beyond Apple Bloom's direct control.

"You've been in there a few times," Miranda continued, adding a small nod towards Apple Bloom.

Yeah. The precinct had a rather comprehensive restroom available for the staff -- and the occasional detainee. If policing and Crusading had anything in common, it was in being dirty work. The adolescent wondered if the adults had finally brought in a soap which could help with tree sap...

"Gettin' the dye off, Ah'm guessin'," Applejack decided.

The unicorn nodded again. Took another breath.

"I dispatched somepony to the train station. They're bringing Mac in. And just to get this out of the way: there won't be any charges for breaking into the house." Just a little wryly, "As the resident of record, Scootaloo might have a few protests there. And... it's not something which should be done. Period."

"Thank y'kindly," emerged from the older sister as a long exhale. "An' -- the rest of it?"

Miranda hesitated. Glanced at Apple Bloom again --

"-- she stays," Applejack stated. "Let's hear it."

Ah don't want --
Ah've gotta.
That's what growin' up is. Bein' there for the hard stuff.

"She says there's been no physical abuse," Miranda began. "I don't feel that she's lying there." Another pause. "And I still brought in a doctor. There were no visible injuries, or signs that something had healed."

Both sisters managed a nod.

"From what was said, any neglect has been emotional," the unicorn added. "But that's her description, and it doesn't produce evidence I can look for. She just says they fight all the time when they're together, and -- she knows that custody is part of what they're fighting about. A battle over who she'll live with, and they don't realize that it's all loud enough to reach the filly down the hall. Who just curls up with her cat and waits for it to be over." The dark head dipped again. "Except that it doesn't end. The father apparently storms out for a while, and a few days later..."

Mah head shouldn't be this heavy. This hard t' move.

"So she was removing herself from the equation," Miranda told them. "She started planning this as soon as they told her that she was going to Ponyville for the holiday. There's money in her saddlebags, more clothing than she needed for the trip... the basics."

"Why not stay with her sister?" Applejack softly asked.

The unicorn didn't sigh or rather, the sound didn't emerge from her mouth. Every other part of her body seemed to sag in a way which indicated the sigh had been relocated. But the voice was steady.

"Microapartment," Miranda told them. "It's a Manehattan problem. The rents are high, and Sunflower is just barely earning enough money to get enough space for one mare. Babs loves her sister, but she doesn't want to stay with her. It's not just lacking room: Sunflower can't afford her. She doesn't want to be a burden."

Applejack nodded. And then the solid form shivered, every muscle vibrating as mane and tail fought to slip out of the rope loops.

"Ah can't," the older sister half-whispered as green eyes squeezed shut from the pressure of pain. "Not like this. Ah can't --"

She's hurtin'. Why is she --

"Applejack?" the younger sibling quickly asked. "What's wrong? Y'can't what?"

"Ah can't take in another one." Just barely audible, words emerging as suggested patterns overlaid onto wafts of breath. "It ain't jus' tryin' t' pay for all of it. Ah managed t' shift the budget enough for Scootaloo. But Babs's parents are expectin' her back. They're both alive, they're both there. Even with the divorce, whoever leaves her place is gonna be around. Ah can't jus' have her stay at the Acres, when they know she should be goin' east. Not like this..."

The unicorn took a small step forward.

"There shouldn't be any money problems with Scootaloo," Miranda declared. "Those vouchers are still coming in. The majority has to go towards the house payments, but the rest was always intended for everything Scootaloo needed to survive. Food, clothing, a gift budget for birthdays and holidays --"

Applejack's eyes shot open, and the angry glare nearly transfixed the other mare.

"That's her money!" the older Malus fiercely declared. "Hers, an' Ah ain't bitin' it. She's gonna wind up needin' it sometime. An' she's gotten nothin' from them but money for years. At least let her have that!"

The confined echoes of the last word faded, and silence filled the room. Drowned out the clock.

Finally, Miranda took another step forward.

"Right now," she quietly offered, "I couldn't let you keep her at the Acres. Scootaloo's situation was different. Her parents had been gone for more than enough time to allow me some discretion in relocating her. But as you said... Babs's parents are still there. If she stayed here, when they're expecting her to return, and it's because you decided to keep her... foalnapping charges aren't something you want to deal with, Applejack."

The hat-shifting nod came across as an angry one.

"And it's more than that," the unicorn carefully added. "All I have is what Babs told me. And with no evidence of physical abuse, no chance to speak with her parents, and their end being multiple gallops away from my jurisdiction -- there's very little I can do."

Apple Bloom found herself breathing. There was probably something productive which could be done with the air.

"So what can y'do?" the youngest Malus asked.

"Put one of my officers on the train with Babs," Miranda told her. "The timing isn't good, not after Homecoming, but... I can find somepony. Whoever gets picked is going to be gone for at least a week, but they'll make sure she gets home."

"And they won't let me leave town by myself. There's gonna be somepony along for the ride. All of it."

She knew it. Tried t' get away, an' now they'll make sure she goes back.

"And they'll carry a copy of my notes," the unicorn added. "That'll go to their police. Eventually, Foal Protective Services. They'll look into things on their end. But... that's all I can do. Manehattan takes over from there. I can ask them to keep me updated, but... that takes time, Apple Bloom. And all I really have is what Babs told me, added to what Applejack provided from the letter. There may be more to the situation, and --" The left forehoof came up, started to come back down at speed -- and then froze for an instant before slowly lowering to the floor. "-- I don't know the full truth of it. I may never know. I can try to make sure somepony looks into her situation. And that's it."

Honesty's the worst Element.
Ah don't think Babs lied t' me. But all Ah've got is the truth as it is now. Ah don't know how it's gonna work out.
Ah might never know.
An' once she leaves...
Only way Ah'm gonna know is if somepony tells me. An' adults usually don't say much of anythin'.
Nothing' real.

She was shivering. She was cold. It was natural to shiver when you were cold.

"I can release her to your custody," the weary mare told them. "But you have to give me a timetable. The exact hour when she's leaving. Today. And then we'll put her on the train."

There was only a little time left, and Apple Bloom could hear the clock ticking. It tried to embed its sounds within her ears, making itself into the only thing she could hear at all. And she was trying to fight past it, catch and memorize every word because she didn't know how many more of them there were going to be, but it just kept counting down. Slicing away at the fractions which remained.

Mac arrived, joined them in the waiting area. A little after that, Miranda brought in Babs.

The group was sent back out into the world, and... they couldn't go back to the Acres. There was no reason to head for home, not with the length of the journey and the train station exerting a sadistic magnetism on the other end. Every one of Babs's too-many travel items was with her. All they had was Ponyville, and it wasn't enough.

There was no time to go home. No chance to make a proper meal. (The leftovers, which had been temporarily abandoned at Scootaloo's old house, didn't feel remotely proper.) But Applejack wanted Babs to have something which wasn't train food, so... they found a restaurant.

Apple Bloom didn't have much of an appetite. The majority of the food seemed to lack flavor, and everything which reached her stomach had very little interest in staying.

There wasn't much conversation. They tried, but the Cornucopia Effect didn't work on words. Topics died on the vine.

They took Babs around Ponyville. Showed her a few of the stores, but -- the funeral procession never quite managed to reach the Boutique, or the tree, or the bakery.

Apple Bloom understood after a while. Applejack didn't want to seek out friends just now. The other Bearers might start to feel like reinforcements and with enough backing, the older sister might consider changing her mind.

Still... Babs was mostly back to her natural colors. But there were a few lingering spots of blue near the roots of her mane, and the youngest Malus briefly wondered what Miss Rarity would have thought about that. The designer had missed out on amaranth and gamboge again.

They took Babs around Ponyville. But there was only a little time left.

And then there was none.

The group was on the eastbound side of the train station, and they had plenty of company. There were a lot of visitors heading back after the holiday. They had come to their truest home, and... now there was another one calling for their attention. Or maybe their real home was at the other end of the ride...

At least they know where it is.
That they've got one.

The platform was crowded with ponies on the day after what had never really been a holiday. It also hosted a unicorn-shaped three-dimensional shadow against the part of the wall which was closest to their group, along with a rather confused-looking mare whose off-balance overloaded saddlebags suggested she'd packed in something of a hurry. That adult almost blended into the crowd, but -- being a Crusader meant knowing every last member of Ponyville's police force. By their full names.

They waited. You almost always had to wait.

There was a whistle, somewhere off to the west. Distant white puffs of steam began to rise into the sky.

Scootaloo tried to say goodbye to Babs, awkwardly wishing her luck. Mac made his own attempt. Neither found much in the way of words, and the Manehattanite mostly listened in near-silence.

Applejack looked around. Took visible and exacting notice of just where that shadow was, and then raised her voice.

"If it gets too bad," she fiercely told Babs, "if y'can't stand bein' in that apartment no more, there's nowhere t' go an' you ain't got no other choice -- you tell them where you're goin'. Them an' the authorities on your end. Maybe find somepony who can help y'say it, 'cause there's always lawyers: assigned by the service ponies, or hired by you, t' give the words more weight. Don't worry t' much on the cost. An' after that's done -- then you come t' me. Y'hear me, Babs? Straight t' the Acres. But only if they all know you're comin'. An' we'll work it out from there."

Her cousin nodded, just once. The shadow pretended not to be paying attention.

And then the rest of the group withdrew a little. Pulled back just enough to offer the illusion of privacy. Enough that it could have been just Apple Bloom and Babs facing each other on the platform, even with all the adults milling around.

It effectively was privacy. Adults seldom noticed the important things.

The youngest Malus looked into her cousin's eyes. A color so much like that of her older sister. Another sign of family.

"We'll talk," Apple Bloom said. "Soon."

A little too dryly, "I'm gonna be in Manehattan. Ya can't yell that loud."

"Obvs," the adolescent agreed. "But Ah'm gonna write t' you. Once a week, maybe more often if y'tell me things are gettin' bad."

"I'm..." The heavyset filly swallowed. "...I'm not good at the whole writing thing --"

"But you can read. An' jus' sendin' a little is enough," Apple Bloom promised. "Enough t' tell me how y'are. Please? An' -- y'heard what Applejack said, Babs. If it gets that bad, don't run away. Run to."

Babs hesitated --

"-- please --"

"-- fine. Since you're worried." A puff of air was blown through the mane, and was nearly lost in the gust which was being displaced by the incoming train. "And maybe the next time we see each other, we'll both have our marks, right? Because you've got the workshop, and that's the right place to be. And me -- maybe when the divorce wraps up, and the dobbins ain't so much of a distraction -- that's when I can get my mark settled. It'll be my turn eventually, right? Just gotta wait for it."

Apple Bloom managed a smile. Moved forward just a little, saw her cousin matching the shift from the other side...

The goodbye nuzzle had some extra force behind it, but... that was just Babs.

It also put the adolescent's snout into her cousin's fur. Close enough to scent the fear.

They push each other.
If they push her away...
Run to, Babs. Please.

Air rushed through their fur. The train was pulling into the station. They had less than a minute...

Less a minute. It was nowhere near enough time for Apple Bloom to work out why her own next words emerged.

"Write to Diamond."

The near-instant "...what?" set up an instant echo in the adolescent's own brain. But the words had felt...

"Write to her," Apple Bloom semi-repeated. "You've gotta. After what happened --"

A solid forehoof slammed into the platform. "-- she deserved --"

"-- no. It was 'bout her mom, Babs. Nopony deserves that. Not when their mom is gone."

The green eyes briefly closed.

"I can't. I can't write --"

"Two words," Apple Bloom told her. "Start with two words. Okay? An' see if she writes back."

Slowly, oh so slowly, Babs nodded.

The train doors opened. Ponies got off. Ponies began to get on.

"Love you," her cousin quietly said.

"Love you," Apple Bloom told her.

The heavyset filly turned. Got on the train, as her designated company followed. After a few seconds, a portion of amaranth mane showed up near a window. The doors closed, and the train began to move.

There was no point to chasing it, for pounding hooves would never be able to drive forth so much as an extra second from the clock. Instead, Apple Bloom simply watched as everything moved away, heading off into the distance and the unknown. For as long as she could, until the steamstacks vented and her fur went damp again.

And when the fog cleared, Babs was gone.

Settlement

Homecoming was always held on a weekday, and just about every pony who didn't have a job in retail wound up taking at least part of the following day off: what was the point of having all of those sales if you didn't make some effort to attend them? Apple Bloom, even before finding her cousin on the platform, hadn't possessed very many plans in that direction: there was only so much money to work with, and she would be paying off the damages from the Crusade for a long time.

Two weekdays.

But now it was the weekend.

...well, for a lot of ponies, it was the weekend. Time off. But there were always things to do on a farm.

The empty spare bed was head-pushed out of the room. A little cleaning found where the note had blown to, and then Apple Bloom checked the window.

Might not have gone after Babs if'fin Ah'd found the note.
...well, maybe. Applejack probably would've wanted t' make sure. See her off. But...

It had closed promptly on the first attempt when she'd tried it on the previous day, and nothing seemed to be having any issues now. In fact, if anything, the latch was working more smoothly than it usually did --

-- no such thing as ghosts.
Can't say the same for latch grease.

Scootaloo was somewhere on the Acres: Apple Bloom's guess was that her friend was continuing the ongoing search for the last undiscovered glide launch points. Granny was getting an early start on preparing lunch, and her siblings were busy with their own labors.

The youngest Malus wrapped up the bedroom cleaning, because it was her -- their bedroom, and she really needed to have more say in when it got cleaned. Then she attended to her chores and, once those were complete, found Applejack.

Apple Bloom, with all labors complete, was free to be off the Acres for a little while. Even with a relatively short travel distance involved, she wanted to make sure somepony knew exactly where she'd gone. That was just being considerate.

Providing the destination delayed her departure. Applejack hardly ever reared back with that much raw force, and it took them two minutes to find where the hat had landed.

Stepping onto the Rich estate was somewhat like being underwater.

She'd been down the approach path a few times -- partially: enough to get a good look at the house, which also gave her some chance of being able to hear whether the only daughter was home. If that hated laughter somehow made its way into yellow ears, then Apple Bloom could venture back to the main road. Some degree of safety for a day's activities could be assured, because their chief tormentor was otherwise occupied.

But to come all the way up to the front doors... to knock...

The servant who'd answered had been -- there was probably a word immediately beyond 'surprised' and if there wasn't, then the mare's initial reaction had demanded its invention. But the visible signs had only been present for an instant, and that had been followed by an inquiry regarding the reason for the visit. 'Inquire' had actually been voiced. Everything about the estate seemed to operate on some degree of Fancy.

She'd been told that Mr. Rich was at the store: the second day of Hearth's Warning sales still required his direct attention. But the reason she'd come to the door... that wasn't a problem. A shock, yes: the servant had needed to suppress that too. But if Apple Bloom truly wished to --

-- come in...

She wound up in a side room: something which jutted out from the eastern side of the house. The placement made it all the easier for the glass outer walls and curving ceiling to let a morning Sun send warmth inside. Concentrating both heat and lumens, to the point where both light and air had a near-liquid look. The servant politely told her the room was called a conservatory, and left her there before explaining how to spell it.

There were warm benches in the area, padded in exceptionally soft fabrics. A few bookshelves. Looking through the glass towards the estate grounds discovered the flower clock.

It was a botanical structure several body lengths across. Certain blooms were known to open petals onto Sun's light on a predictable schedule: precisely arrange a full variety across the huge circle, include those which took part of their nourishment from Moon, and an expert would be able to tell time -- within half an hour or so. This feat had an additional, seasonal requirement, and it was autumn. Most of what was currently available to view were stems.

Not dead. Dormant. Ah can hear that much. And even dormancy could be tricky, but somepony had been looking after the creation with exacting care. It'll come back in a few moons.

She tried to settle onto a bench: a single-occupant specimen which had an equally-plush partner on the immediate left. Warmth did its best to work through her fur and, once it reached the skin, found the dread counteracting it.

It'll be real pretty when all the flowers are back. Worth seein'.
But Ah --
-- this is --
-- Ah shouldn't be here --

Her legs almost jerked. She nearly got up.

But that was when the servant opened the door.

She only heard it happen: most of her visual focus was still directed at the dormant clock. She had to listen to the sharp little intake of breath: something which seemed to draw the air across a sharp edge. And then the door closed, the adult left, and it gave Apple Bloom the chance to listen as four solid hooves moved towards her.

"What are you doing here?"

There was a little bit of shock in that voice, along with a lot of demand. It also happened to be asking a completely legitimate question.

The youngest Malus briefly held her breath before answering, because being on the Rich estate was somewhat like being underwater. She was in a place which had the potential to be rather beautiful, and she still kept waiting for the foreign environment to kill her.

She turned her head. Forced herself to look towards blue eyes, and only found her gaze shifting enough to note the lack of tiara.

"Ah'm sorry 'bout your mom."

Diamond's eyes closed. The streaked tail went limp.

"Did she tell you?" a far too weary voice asked. "Or did you ask somepony?"

"Neither," Apple Bloom told her, and fought to keep the words steady. Gentle. "Ah... figured it out."

Slowly, the pink legs advanced, and did so while their owner refused to look at the world.

The adolescent watched as Diamond stopped just short of the companion bench. Smoothly climbed up onto it, still with closed eyes. You could do that sort of thing, when you'd lived in the same place all your life.

"Ah kept waitin' for your dad t' turn up, after Babs..." The adolescent sighed. "She's gone back, by the way." Which was currently as far as Apple Bloom wanted to go with Babs's side of the story. She was willing to talk about it, but... some other things needed to be settled first. "Anyway, Ah figured you'd have him on the Acres inside an hour, even with the big sale that close. But he never came. Why?"

Diamond's posture was still. The solid form was pressed down into the padding, and every breath was shallow. Her voice, however, still suggested that she felt Apple Bloom was an idiot. "Because I didn't tell him."

"Why?" was a natural enough question. "It ain't because you've said nearly as bad." Or possibly worse. Apple Bloom hadn't exactly been there for everything.

"No." The right foreleg briefly extended, dismissively waved before curling back up. "It was just words. They shouldn't matter."

"Except," said a portion of hard-earned wisdom, "they do."

Something about the accessory-free mane seemed to collapse in on itself.

"...yeah," Diamond eventually said. "And... my daddy doesn't listen to me any more." Quickly, with a touch of bitterness, "Not the same way, not first. Not since the last exams. I didn't know if he'd..."

Stopped. The streaked tail twitched.

"No," Diamond softly continued (and Apple Bloom had never heard that hated voice go so soft, so tired). "Words can matter. They mattered at the train station when Babs left for the first time, and they mattered on Homecoming. I didn't know what my mommy would have thought. About my 'bad attitude'. And... I'll never know."

Her head went down. Ears flattened, and the tail fell still.

"I didn't want you to know," the Rich filly quietly said. "It's easy to keep ponies from finding out. They don't ask. And most of the ones who know won't talk about it any more."

Ah know.
Ah've been there.
Still there. We both live there.

Apple Bloom had seen it as four fillies who had something fundamental in common. Incomplete families. But now it was five.

What do you wait for, Diamond?

It wasn't a question she could ask.

"But you told Babs." The more natural inquiries, however, felt free to keep coming. "Why?"

It got her a small, underpowered snort. "Same reason Silver knows. Because we were friends."

The blue eyes were still closed, and so missed the opportunity to see orange ones go wide. Liquid light did its best to coat the whole of the stare.

"Y'were --"

She'd never truly considered it, not for so much as a second: the concept would have been too unstable to hold together for the full duration. She hadn't thought about it before and something deep within almost needed to reject the possibility. For Babs and Diamond to have been real friends...

"I have friends," Diamond defensively stated -- and, after a moment, added "Plural. As in 'more than one'. Silver's my friend. Cameo loves me --" paused "-- you'll probably say pets don't count. So it's Silver, and Sna --"

The pink filly stopped. Took a slow breath, as the blue eyes refused to open. Apple Bloom forced herself to wait.

"She was from Manehattan," Diamond finally said. "We talked about that. What it was like to live in a big settled zone. What she called the bustle of it. It was fun to hear about, and... dream. I dreamed about what it would be like to live there." Calmly, without any real tone, "When I'll never go anywhere."

"Y'travel lots," the adolescent immediately protested. "With your dad: we all know that. He takes business trips all over the continent, an' you go with him --"

"-- but I live in Ponyville," Diamond expertly cut in. "And that won't change. Even when I grow up. It can't."

"...why?" Apple Bloom asked. "You've got enough money t' go anywhere --"

"-- my daddy is here," the filly quietly stated. "He won't leave. And I'm all he has."

The youngest Malus stared at her old enemy. One blue eye briefly cracked open, noticed and dismissed the regard, then closed again.

"...why are you tellin' me this?"

"Because you're sorry," Diamond calmly answered. (The voice was calm: the tail twitched.) "When you probably shouldn't be. I said enough things that you'd never have to be sorry about knowing. About... anything. But you're here. Even after everything, you're here."

Ah finally saw where the line was. The border. The one y'never crossed...

"Y'never said anythin' 'bout mah parents."

"Three years of you screwing up your manifest," the filly immediately declared, "gave everypony plenty of material --"

-- and sank lower into the padding.

"It's stupid," Diamond stated. "It all feels so stupid now. So I got my mark early. What if I'd had my period first?" Paused. "I probably did." And before Apple Bloom could even begin to deal with that, "I just thought about that. Three years of boasting about puberty. It feels stupid. So maybe all the mark stuff was stupid too. It's not as if anypony's ever not manifested at all. I looked it up. So even you three are going to get there."

Maybe ponies do change -- just barely found a hoof planting in Apple Bloom's mind.

Diamond snorted again. "Mostly in spite of yourselves."

-- but not all at once.

"You'll find your talent," the filly concluded. "Eventually. Maybe even soon."

The adolescent's head felt as if it was spinning on the inside. Thoughts were being flung out.

"Diamond?"

A lightly annoyed "What?"

"Ah jus' realized. What is your talent? 'cause you've never said." Boasted about your mark up one hip an' down the other, but not the talent...

"Leadership," was the quiet reply. "I say something, I try to put my magic into it, and -- ponies listen a little more closely. It works best when they don't know I have it."

The former Crusader was now adding an entire vocabulary of blinks to the silent language.

"And now you do," Diamond added -- and then slowly, softly sighed. "It's not a good talent for the business. When his magic is strong, then my daddy just knows what has to be done. I have to hope I can figure out which other pony does, because I can only tell them to do that. If I pick the wrong employee..."

Ah...
...Ah never really knew you at all, did Ah?
Didn't want to. Didn't feel like there was anypony there worth knowin'.
But...

They rested in silence for a time, as liquid light soaked into their fur.

"What was your mother's name?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Spoiled Sweet," Diamond proudly answered. "She changed it. You have to be brave to change your name. Daddy said it's like trying to rewrite destiny when you don't understand the language in the book."

An' Ah've got a friend named Sweetie. Y'come across the three of us, an' it's a reminder every time.

"Do you remember your mommy at all?" the near-prone filly asked. "Anything? Do you remember Pear?"

Silence.

"...you're not saying anything," Diamond observed.

Her body felt hollow. "Y'said her name."

Somewhat demanding, "And?"

"Ah -- ain't heard anypony say her name in a long time," a living vacuum confessed. "Not when they ain't family..."

"My daddy knows everypony's names," Diamond stated. "That's good business. So I remember names. Do you remember her?"

"A little," Apple Bloom quietly offered. "Not as much as Ah wish. Ah was... real little when she died."

They. But they were talking about mothers.

Diamond simply nodded. "I know how old you were."

"An' --"

Ah can't, Ah can't --

But they'd come this far.

"-- you? D'you remember?"

The quiet closed in, as Sun shone down on the conservatory and the clock slept.

"No. I wasn't even a year old. I don't remember anything."

It would have hurt less if the answer had been stark. Pained. Anything but that horrible matter-of-fact observation.

"I was jealous of you," Diamond added. "For having her longer, and being old enough to remember --" and then laughed for the first time. A new laugh, something bitter, sharp, and aimed inwards. "No. That's an excuse. Most things turn into excuses when you think about them long enough."

The pink form pulled in on itself, then pushed against the padding. Taking on more of a normal sitting position, as blue eyes opened.

Diamond looked at Apple Bloom, and the youngest Malus forced herself to remain still on foreign ground.

"I'm sorry."

Both voice and throat felt oddly dry. "You're really gonna have t' narrow that down."

"No, I don't," Diamond decided. "It's for everything."

"Such as?" Apple Bloom forced the issue.

The Rich filly snorted. "If you want the full list written out, then you'll have to wait a while. More time than you've got today. More paper than I've got in the house. And my daddy goes through a lot of paper."

The adolescent reviewed the previous Diamond-occupied portions of her life.

There was a lot to examine. The majority hadn't fully scabbed over.

Ah wanted Babs t' say it t' you. Or write, t' start.
Ah didn't expect...
...Ah don't know what t' --

"Ah think it's gonna take a little more than jus' the words."

"Like what?" opened the start of the negotiations.

"No idea," Apple Bloom admitted. "Might need some time t' figure that out."

Diamond nodded. And then her features slightly contorted, every limb shuddering as tail and ears twisted in concert...

It was like watching a pony trying to practice a wrestling move. On herself.

"...Diamond?"

The pink filly took a deep breath, and then exercised what Apple Bloom still felt was her real talent. She slammed harder material into softer, and watched everything shatter.

"Silver thinks you're cute."

Apple Bloom felt her brain shut down.

It was amazing, really. She wasn't thinking. No part of her was capable of thought, and movement was completely out of the question. But at the same time, she had been able to recognize the state. This seemed to indicate that there were multiple levels of paradox in play.

She needed to look up 'paradox'. The adolescent was almost entirely sure she had some part of that wrong.

...what?

"I've caught you looking," Diamond said. "The really quick ones, when you're all guilty because you looked at all and you don't feel like you should have. So has Silver. But she doesn't know what to do about it. " Another snort. "Or maybe she does, but not how to start. So somepony needs to start things, and it obviously isn't going to be either of you two. Silver thinks you're cute." With open self-satisfaction, "There. Now you know. So maybe you'll look for more than a second. Or let her see you looking."

...the dreams...

Diamond was peering at her features.

"I don't see it," the filly shrugged. "But I don't see it on mares at all. Silver and I talked about that. She was worried that it was going to change things, but... not mares, not with me. I feel like it's too soon for me to start dating anyway. And I have to get somepony up to my standards first. Doing anything with him is going to be a project. Another project." She squinted. "Your face goes all funny when you're trying to understand basic stuff. Do you need a drink?" Thoughtfully, "Oh, and you should probably meet Cameo. Officially."

Most of what Apple Bloom initially thought about as she staggered her way off the estate was that jeweled scarabs were more visibly affectionate than she would have suspected. It was better than thinking about any other number of things, because the majority of contemplation candidates lived in the nightscape and had no idea what to do with the mere concept of potentially existing under Sun.

Silver thinks Ah'm...

Her brain shut down again, and the next moment of true awareness found her halfway back to the Acres.

...maybe put that one aside for a day.

She tried to focus. Narrowed the world down to the functioning of her lungs, and breathed in crisp, cold, sweet autumn air. The scents of Homecoming.

There's gonna be another one. Every year. Maybe new guests. It would probably still be far too soon to invite Diamond over. Maybe... Certain vital neurons took an expert guess, and she forced herself away from the next crash. An' the table...

Granny set the table that way. Year after year. It was almost a... tradition.

Applejack broke one tradition. That's why Snowflake comes around. But there was a price for that.

Ah could jus' ask Granny t' stop. But... what's the price? What does Granny get from puttin' the good plates out? Is it somethin' she needs t' do, deep inside? Are Applejack an' Mac better off 'cause they get that moment, or...

Ah don't know.

The crisp, sweet scents of a graveyard. One which was only a few moons away from renewed life.

But it ain't just 'bout me. If it's somethin' Granny needs, then... Ah can jus' get through it.

Even when it hurts.

Growin' up hurts.

It was easier to be a kid. To be selfish, and pretend everything was about you. Diamond probably understood how much simpler that was, and -- how much it hurt to stop.

There was pain on Homecoming. But Babs pushed her pain into other ponies, and -- Apple Bloom didn't want to be like that. Maybe there was something else she could do with it. Or a way to make the pain fade.

Maybe she could even grow up enough to figure out what that was.

But for now...

Gotta get home. Gonna miss lunch. Ah can start workin' on that first letter t' Babs right after.

First one's gonna be a stamp. Ah can tell her 'bout Spike that way. The ones after that can go faster.

Yellow legs forced themselves forward. After a few seconds, some semblance of a steady trot began to settle in.

Home.

Ah'll come back on Homecoming, when Ah'm grown.

But Ah don't think Ah'll live here --

-- Apple Bloom froze.

...Ah won't, will Ah?

Might not be enough work for an engineer in Ponyville. An' even before that, this ain't one of the best places t' study. Not the college stuff.

Diamond thinks she's gonna stay forever. But Ah might have t' go...

...it took a moment before she fully recognized that she had twisted her neck and body. Doing her best to stare at the left hip. An expanse of chilled yellow fur failed to notice.

-- no, that was fair. Applejack got her mark by comin' home. Somepony else might set off a manifest when they realize they might have t' leave. But it's gonna be 'bout -- buildin' the right thing.

An' that might take some time.

She straightened her body, faced the general direction of the Acres. Looked down the oldest of Ponyville's roads, the most familiar, and recognized that every hoofstep was leading into something unknown. The mystery of a future. Something terrifying, because she didn't know what was going to happen next. Not to her, or to Babs (she had to make sure she wrote Babs), or... to anypony at all. Nopony could.

But she was older. (Not old enough yet.)
Wiser. (Very much a work in progress.)
And Apple Bloom felt herself to understand this much.

She could wait for the future to arrive.

Or she could go forward to meet it.

The young mare began to move.

Pro Se

As holidays went, the late autumn travesty marked on the calendar as Homecoming could stand a few improvements. And as luck would have it, Apple Bloom just happened to have spent what felt like most of a lifetime in working on them. Just for starters, the first, most obvious, incredibly simple way to make the whole thing better for colts and fillies all over Equestria was to stop giving them two days off from school.

And as ideas went, that particular one was so brilliant that Apple Bloom usually needed a mere two minutes of explaining herself before everypony else in her age group stopped accusing her of being utterly insane.

What was Homecoming? It was a day during which ponies were supposed to be home -- and that meant more than taking the old road out of town, carefully steering past the Rich estate, and waiting for that first moment when the combination of sights, sounds, and scents identified the edge of the Acres. On Homecoming, your heart identified the family members whom you were closest to in all the world, and then you did whatever was necessary to seek them out.

Ponies traversed a continent in order to spend time with their loved ones on Homecoming. Some crossed national borders. Others just had to trot through some small part of a single settled zone, which was still generally more than enough time for both reviewing the arguments from the last Homecoming and deciding just how they were going to pick up from where they'd left off. As Apple Bloom understood it from having spent a little too much time around disgruntled police officers -- the Crusade had produced a few side effects -- far too many ponies also wound up resuming the exact same yearly fights, frequently picking an identical spot for the sequel kick's initial target. If you worked in law enforcement, Homecoming was mostly known as a day which produced plenty of overtime in which to solve a logic puzzle: take at least three dozen ponies who'd just received a high-impact reminder of why they only saw each other once a year, and then divide them among twelve cells so that no two combatants were imprisoned together. Any incarcerated resumption of hostilities meant reworking the solution, along with possibly adding a few extra charges.

Those were the edge cases, though. For the most part, it was loving reunions. A few hours of precious time spent together, because... that might not happen again for a while.

It might not happen at --

-- that was how Homecoming worked for adults. Apple Bloom understood that, and... her brother was going to college soon. She wouldn't be seeing him anywhere near as much, it might just be the summer and a few holidays, and... maybe Homecoming would mean a little more then. She hoped it would mean something to him.

But that was next year. It was now. He was still at home, and Apple Bloom had a lot of growing up to do.

(A little less now.)

When you were a kid...

To Apple Bloom, Homecoming mostly represented all the things she had to do already, only with extra intensity. The family had to prepare a big meal? Living on the Acres meant nopony prepared all that much in the way of small ones. There was always somepony dropping by: Snowflake because he was now comfortable enough with dating Applejack to spend a few dinners at the farmhouse table, assorted Bearers would find their visits running into mealtime and there was almost always an extra plate set out, and then you had Rainbow Dash. The weather coordinator was effectively her own category, because putting more than one mare under 'near-perpetual meal moocher' would mean the pegasus got less food. Apple Bloom understood that Rainbow Dash didn't like to waste time with cooking, and had found the most effective solution was to let somepony else do it. Ideally, for free. Oh, and Scootaloo was going to be living at the Acres until things were... resolved. So bump up all food prep requirements by just that much, and then bump them again because pegasi starting into adolescence had rather quick metabolisms.

The house had to be cleaned? Apple Bloom wanted to know when that didn't apply and for preference, she wanted to know two moons in advance so she could schedule her escape from the rest of the chores accordingly. If you lived in a house, you were just about always cleaning some part of it. Especially your own bedroom, and that was just about the ultimate indignity because that was supposed to be hers -- well, theirs, at least for now -- and therefore, shouldn't she be the one to decide just when cleaning was required?

But that wasn't how it worked, because life was unfair. (Adults could also be rather unfair and the three in Apple Bloom's house had been known to ride herd over her life: there seemed to be a connection there.) So when it came to Homecoming... you started cooking the day before, and you didn't stop. Unless you were cleaning. Anypony who wasn't cooking usually had to be cleaning something, and Apple Bloom would wind up rubbing down furniture with polish cloths until her jaw ached.

Then there were the good plates. She wasn't entirely sure what those were for. 'Eating off them' would have been the usual answer, but a once-yearly purpose didn't feel like it fully qualified. 'Looking at' would have required them to be locked up in a clear display case, instead of the black ironwood chest which protected them from time, Ponyville and, to date, Apple Bloom -- while somehow still letting all of the dust in. She really didn't understand how that worked.

And Homecoming was always held on a weekday.

So when it came to improving the holiday, the first incredibly obvious step? Was to stop giving kids two days off from school, because you couldn't do extra chores if you were already in class.

Adults came home. But kids lived there. So Homecoming was extra chores. The same things you had to do every day, only with more intensity, a lot of additional stress, and the unwelcome presence of good plates when you still didn't know what they were good at. Homecoming was unwanted work, she didn't even get to watch any of what the other kids told her were the good fights, and then you had to clean up after the dinner which you'd just spent two days in cleaning for.

Except for the good plates. The good plates had to be cleaned by Special Measures. Apparently too much in the way of soap and water could be damaging. Apple Bloom was waiting for the day when she was told that the intensity of her regard was starting to chip the polish.

She prepared for Homecoming, and then she...
...she waited.
She waited for something which never happened. Couldn't happen.
She knew that.
And every year, she found herself waiting anyway.

Maybe by next year, the dinner would mean a little more. It might even turn into something real. But this was now.

Apple Bloom hated Homecoming.

The holiday had earned it.

She wasn't Honesty. But she was still part of the family, a Malus from birth. And something in the blood told her the name was a lie.

Two days off from school (with neither wanted), and Apple Bloom had already gone through what she'd decided was the highlight. She'd been kicked off the Acres.

...okay: it wasn't a real kicking. She just had a different chore to do. Homecoming had a number of tricks to inflict upon the unwary: something it had probably picked up from temporal proximity to Nightmare Night. And one of the most common was to arrange matters so that no matter how much food shopping anypony did in preparation for the -- well, preparation -- they were always going to be caught short by a few crucial ingredients. And somepony had to go into town to pick them up.

Apple Bloom supposed it normally would have been Mac, but he was putting a little more into the actual cooking this year. There was a lot of food being readied, and most of what the youngest Apple had been allowed to do was fetch things from the pantry. She could stir pots -- under supervision, because the Crusade had been through a day where 'professional chef' had almost felt like an option, and... that hadn't exactly worked either.

Too much cleaning. Too much cooking, and it was the sort of day where the food felt as if it could never be good enough to make her forget about everything which had to go into it. (And that was food for Homecoming itself, because the day before was usually spent eating leftovers. So was the week after.) The sheer volume of labor, added to the heat of the kitchen and a desperate hope to see somepony had cumulatively gotten to Apple Bloom, and she'd... made a suggestion.

"So y'want t' bring in a little extra help with the cookin'," her big sister had slowly said.

Apple Bloom, whose idea had made perfect sense right up until the moment it reached her ears, had to force the nod.

"An' your idea of help," Applejack's voice had ground out, one disbelieving syllable at a time, "would be t' bring in... Sweetie."

Her neck didn't seem to be functioning very well.

"T' cook," the older sibling had added. And then she'd sneezed.

The larynx appeared to have stopped working entirely.

"Ain't sure 'bout your motive for the murders," Applejack had decided. "Method's pretty creative." There had been a soft sigh. "Ah get why y'want t' see her, AB. But it's her call. An'... not for that." The older sister had shuddered. "Never for that. So Ah'm gonna write up a list of the things we're short on, an' you're gonna go get 'em. Maybe some fresh air will clear the killin' out of your head." The hat had tilted right. "An' take her with you."

Scootaloo, who'd been trying to resolve the mysteries invoked upon the world by a cabbage corer, didn't notice. The initial conundrum usually worked out to 'Why does this exist?' and it was possible to take matters a rather long way from there.

"...Ah..." came into the world on the second attempt, and found itself without friends.

"Because one of the things 'bout having a pegasus livin' here," had just kept coming, "is that Ah've had the chance t' learn a bit of biology. Like how flight feathers come in. An' the fact that before they show up, a pegasus sort of goes through somethin' for the second time. Followed by havin' the exact same result from the first one."

She'd sneezed again. Unfortunately, this had to be followed by an inhale.

A myriad of tiny fragments were pulled into orange nostrils. The subsequent sneezing fit got most of them out.

"Ah can put up with sweepin' feather down out of the house," Applejack had finally choked out. "Don't add much t' pies, though. Go."

They went.

There were times when Apple Bloom forgot just how long the trot into town truly was. Going to school, visiting friends, simply heading back home after an afternoon of work at the fix-it shop... add up the distance across a lifetime and at the very least, she'd crossed Equestria. Possibly even gone around the world, while never really going anywhere at all.

The far edge of the Acres was fairly close to the settled zone's fringe. It took a lot of legwork to get there, and she did it automatically, without thought. She usually didn't notice. Special conditions had to apply before Apple Bloom truly acknowledged just how much time was required, and one of them was currently in play.

"So you've got the list," drifted down from above her as the shiver-triggering shadow crossed her spine. "Plus the money," wound up being called backwards from ground level. "How many stops do we have to make?"

"At least three," Apple Bloom said. "Could be five or more if places are sold out."

Scootaloo groaned, and didn't manage to hold the note for quite long enough.

"I see a rock. A big one. With a flat top."

"Ah see that rock most every day," the earth pony philosophically observed. "More of a boulder. Sort of a constant. It was here before Ah was. It'll be here after Ah --"

Ah won't wait this year.
Ah'm a big pony now.
...well, bigger.
Ah won't.

"I'm going to get on top of it," the pegasus declared.

"As y'like." At least she's talkin'.

Keratin scrambled against stone.

It took special conditions for Apple Bloom to truly register the length of the journey. Weather could be one of them, but the Bureau had scheduled the time before the holiday for the sort of autumn crisp and clear which was absolutely perfect -- as long as you were in direct sunlight and the air was utterly calm. Any actual gust of wind went directly through the fur, followed by penetrating most of the flesh. It was a reminder that better holidays were on the way, and also suggested to Apple Bloom that having gone out with nothing more than a scarf meant she was severely underdressed. Sun was being cooperative enough, but...

"Okay!" came from a point of moderate elevation, some six body lengths back. "Let's see how this works!"

There were ways in which the words were a comfort, because they represented more speech than Scootaloo had been offering for days. The pegasus had responded to the approach of the holiday through becoming increasingly tense and -- silent. Scootaloo had a way of going silent which effectively duplicated a scream. It was the sort of sullen quiet which both demanded notice and dared any observers to do something about it. The expectation was that they would fail, and that would give her another reason to descend ever-lower into sulk.

Apple Bloom hadn't been able to get through. But she'd kept trying, because... she'd understood. It was the holiday. Her friend was waiting, and -- the filly didn't know how to make that stop. If she understood how that worked, Apple Bloom would have stopped waiting years ago.

But it was possible to be distracted from the wait, if only for a little while. And if you wanted to get Scootaloo's mind off of one subject, you invoked her favorite: flight.

The pegasus wasn't quite there yet. Puberty was finally working several levels of magic, but it was the sort of spell which took a minimum of several moons to fully cast. The sheer indignity of having to keep waiting occasionally put a muttering Scootaloo in front of the bathroom mirror, where she could spend an easy hour in lecturing the very universe about its lousy priorities while -- she always forgot about this part -- completely tying up the bathroom.

She couldn't fly yet. But Snowflake's tutelage, added to the passage of time, had allowed her to learn some of the basics for gliding. And for Scootaloo to be offered any means of being in the air...

Gliding made Scootaloo happy. It pushed off some of the impatience for a little while, because at least now she had this much and the rest was on the way. It also created a few problems around the Acres, because gliding had a rather basic requirement: you had to launch from some degree of altitude. As a result, Scootaloo had taken to seeking out the high places.

She followed the circular ramp to the top of the grain silo at least five times a day. There was no barn attic which could be kept safe from pegasus intrusion. Apple Bloom's roommate was currently starting just about every trip outside the house by pushing off from the bedroom window, which would have been a lot more tolerable if Scootaloo could ever remember that it was autumn and bother to cut off the chill draft through simply closing the thing behind her. She'd identified most of the little hills around the Acres, every small cliff, and had been spotted in the middle of some worrisome examinations for the stronger tree branches. Verifying the health of trees was a basic duty. Attempting to climb one was a sign of insanity.

(It hadn't quite gone that far yet. However, Scootaloo had been asking Apple Bloom a few concerning questions about exactly what had to go into the construction of a portable folding ramp. And when the earth pony might reasonably expect to work on one.)

Whenever Scootaloo was outside, she would look for chances to glide. Continually seeking opportunities to get on top of things, all in the name of coming back down. She liked to glide directly over ponies, just to show them how far she'd come. And when she was traveling with Apple Bloom, the earth pony generally wound up shivering because a pegasus who never closed the window (and honestly, it was a basic kick: one hind hoof would have done it) also didn't consider what happened to the warmth from Sun's light when her shadow crossed somepony's back.

That was one reason for shivering.

"All right! See that little incline over there?"

"Nearly every day --"

"-- cool! Let's see what that does! No, you get ahead, I'll be back on the road in a second. Or over it! So it's up, get some speed, prepare for the jump, launch --"

The other was because gliding ultimately functioned in one major direction, autumn meant a distinct lack of useful thermals, and Scootaloo still had some trouble in judging glide distance.

"...ow..."

"Y'okay there?"

"You just had to move," Scootaloo grumbled. "I was just trying to get my legs up enough to clear you, and then you moved. And there was a rock under you." Suspiciously, "How long has that rock been there?"

"Centuries, probably."

If you didn't stay on alert, you either wound up with a shadow going over your back, or a pegasus going into it.

"Somepony should have moved it." Orange legs eventually pushed. Most of the road dirt fell away from the adolescent's chin. "There's been enough chances. And you didn't have to dodge that fast."

"Reflexes," replied an earth pony who'd been through several years of living in Rainbow Dash's chosen crash site and somehow still hadn't fully adjusted for Scootaloo's much lower glide speed. "Are y'hurt?"

"No," Scootaloo muttered. "It's a stupid rock. But it wasn't a stupid sharp one."

"We'll keep goin' when you're ready, then. Ain't far now."

Ponyville felt strangely empty.

Apple Bloom's home had started out as one of the smaller settled zones: something which was almost lost in Canterlot's shadow. Ponyville was exactly the sort of place which travelers regularly stopped in -- for ten minutes, because the train had come to a temporary halt, there were snack booths right over there, and prices were going to be a lot higher in the capital. It was a small town, and she'd assumed that it would always remain so. Because fillies and colts waited for the moment when their own lives changed forever, and never considered that an entire planet might get there first.

Princess Luna had Returned. The world had changed. And one of the smaller alterations had come when a surprising number of ponies had decided that the settled zone which hosted the Bearers would make for an interesting place to live.

It hadn't started immediately. But it also hadn't exactly stopped just yet. Ponyville had picked up a few thousand new residents, fresh faces and names and marks to memorize in every moon, and when a settled zone whose population was largely from Somewhere Else spotted Homecoming looming on the calendar -- it scattered. Took to trains and air paths and, for the truly wealthy, the escort network because being teleported would get them back to their loved ones all the faster.

There had always been ponies who left the settled zone for Homecoming, along with a base number of natives who stayed in place. And since most of the latter hadn't shifted, the subtraction was arguably no more severe than usual: after all, it ended with roughly the same total.

But there was hardly anypony on (or over) the streets. There were a lot of new buildings in Ponyville, and it felt as if too many of the homes had fallen silent. For the ones which were still occupied... shadows moving behind curtains, generally localized to the kitchens. The air was filled with scents, and too many of them were the same ones. Homecoming had a pair of dueling traditions for its dishes: you either made everypony's favorites because that was yet another reason to return -- or, if that was going to be too complicated for a large gathering, you made the sort of things which only came out once a year. It was what ponies called hearty food, and Apple Bloom suspected that was because anything you actually managed to swallow moved into the chest cavity, shoved the heart aside, and settled in for a long stay. The appetizers usually required about twelve moons to finish digesting.

And with the businesses... practically speaking, just about anypony who didn't sell things needed for Homecoming shut down for a day or two before the holiday. It was their chance to prepare for the Hearth's Warming Eve sales rush, which started the day after. Apple Bloom had already been considering what she could gift to Scootaloo, and was hoping for a few verbal hints to narrow down the list.

With the shops, the ones which didn't sell food, cooking equipment, and medical supplies had a reason to go dark. Add that to the lack of hoof and wing traffic, and Apple Bloom's settled zone was oddly quiet. It almost felt like the silence of something which was holding its breath. Waiting.

And it was more than just the places which sold.

"There's the fix-it shop."

Ah know. Ah work there --

Apple Bloom, who'd gotten a little ahead, picked up on the note of interest with about two seconds to spare. Glanced back, and found Scootaloo's intent gaze resting exactly where she'd expected.

"Don't try t' get on the roof."

"But she's not there! She won't know! And it's not like I'm going to do anything up there! Well, nothing which isn't jumping down." A pause. "Actually... what's that thing on the right corner?"

Apple Bloom measured her prospective answer for safety. Then she remembered that it was Scootaloo and the weight of intent was usually enough to break the scales.

"The sorta-sphere with all the gaps and flared ridges?"

"Yeah. It's rotating a little in the breeze."

"Heat vent."

"Seriously? Why does a device repair shop need to get rid of heat?"

"'cause some of the stuff's gotta be softened a little before it gets hoof-hammered back into shape." There wasn't a full forge in the shop: a number of the materials within couldn't be kept in close proximity to that level of heat, and the building itself hadn't been constructed to withstand those temperatures. Only a few metals could actually be melted: Miss Ratchette's equipment was just barely up to the task on aluminum -- but softening was a little easier.

"Which means that when the shop's active," Scootaloo carefully considered as purple eyes grew bright, "it's going to be kicking out some awesome thermals --"

Apple Bloom's imagination went into instant overdrive and produced seven slightly-varying results: the central variable was the exact moment in which she lost her job. "-- don't."

The pegasus irritably kicked at cobblestones. The street refused to go anywhere.

"Fine..." Scootaloo muttered. "Not like there's anything going on in there right now anyway. Since the shop is closed. And you didn't try to make that ramp yet."

The earth pony wished the repair shop was open: going to work would have meant both having a place to be which wasn't the Acres and a viable excuse for spending her time there. But...

Miss Ratchette didn't talk about her home much. Or herself. The usual topics in the shop centered on the repairs which were currently being done, anything that was coming up next, and the skills Apple Bloom needed to learn in order to manage any portion of it. When it came to her mentor's life, most of what the filly knew for certain was that the adult had been born in (or directly under) Cameo Cumulus: a place which the library's atlas said was a pegasus settlement on the west coast. Unintended hints suggested siblings, along with the fact that the shop's proprietor was the youngest of the group. Both of her parents seemed to be alive, everypony else still lived in their original settled zone, and --

-- she'd never said it directly. Miss Ratchette seldom came close to bringing up anything about what her life had been like before coming to Ponyville. But Apple Bloom had always felt as if her mentor didn't like Cameo Cumulus very much. There was something in the clouds which the adult had been trying to get away from, and the best hope of escape was through coming to ground.

Miss Ratchette didn't like her birthplace. But she loved her family. And when the holiday had started its final approach, she'd gone home.

The adult wasn't an endurance or speed flyer. She barely flew at all. Scootaloo spent more time in the air than the device repairpony did. And Ponyville was near the center of the continent. It would take days to make the full trip back and forth, and all but the very last bit would be by train. Days of being jolted by wheels and rails, just to have a few hours with her family. Days of just... waiting.

In practical terms, what it mostly meant to Apple Bloom was that she had time off from school and work -- but not chores. And never the holiday.

She had chores in town, for the holiday. Life was unfair.

Get 'em done. That much closer t' the whole thing bein' over.

"Do you think Town Hall is open?" Scootaloo innocently asked.

"Probably, at least today. Not tomorrow. Might be runnin' on short staff, though."

"Which means there's no one watching the ramp to the summit --"

She was a moon and a half older than Scootaloo. That made her the big sister. It was a position which came with certain responsibilities.

"-- no."

More cobblestones got kicked.

"You're no fun."

"Ah," Apple Bloom declared, "am all kinds of fun. Sittin' in Chief Rights' office while we're waiting for somepony t' pick us up? That ain't fun. All somepony has t' do is see you an' decide it's trespassin'. Or if'fin y'come down in the wrong place --"

"-- you don't know where I'll come down!"

She was still trying to figure out what to make Scootaloo as a Hearth's Warming gift. However, in the absence of unwitting suggestions --

Ponies get taller when puberty hits. Legs can go kinda gangly. All length an' angles.
Ah love you like a sister, Scootaloo. An' Ah think y'might wind up as sort of a looker, for the ponies who like t' look in that direction. Straight up, so they'll know when t' get out of the way.
Ah think you're gonna be kind of pretty, when it's all over.

-- it was going to be crash pads.

Something which went over the kneecaps.

Ah know where you'll come down. The same place y'usually come down, if'fin Ah get distracted an' don't move in time.
Me.
Y'usually come down on top of me.
You'll be sort of pretty, when it's done. But right now, you've got the boniest knees on the planet.

All four of Scootaloo's knees seemed to have an unerring instinct for coming down at the same place in Apple Bloom's spine and somehow, in defiance of logic and anatomy, at the same time.

They shopped or rather, Apple Bloom did. The Crusade had ended, the earth pony was safely apprenticed at the device repair shop (for the purely mechanical aspects of the work), and so a number of places had tentatively opened their doors to her again. Scootaloo generally got to grumble outside, and did so against a variety of backgrounds.

Saddlebags slowly filled. The Sold Out signs over the yuca bins added two extra stops. Apple Bloom had yet to figure out why it was sold at all because she felt that as roots went, yuca was rather accurately named.

It was, quite naturally, in the very last place they looked. (Apple Bloom fully understood that little rule: everything was in the last place you looked, which included finding it on the first try because once you'd located something, you stopped looking.) It put them closer to the center of town than she'd planned on, passing through the restaurant district.

"How do you want to get back?" Scootaloo reluctantly asked. Even with feather down in play, coring probably still awaited.

'Back'. Not 'home'.

"Head for the train station," Apple Bloom decided. "We already crossed the tracks one way t' get this far, and that's the closest hoofbridge for goin' over 'em again."

Scootaloo simply nodded. The pegasus loved stunts almost as much as Rainbow Dash, went through huge bottles of wheel lubricant just about every week, and tended to see anything moving as the unwitting loser in the next race -- but when it came to crossing train tracks, just about everypony who couldn't fly used the hoofbridges. There were school films about what could happen if you didn't, and nopony wanted to watch them more than once. The implied endings were bad enough.

They trotted, and even the restaurants were quiet. There would be a few open for the holiday, because some ponies got sick of the cooking and as Apple Bloom understood it, having the same old fights against a different background added some variety. But for now, they mostly seemed to be at rest. Waiting.

The sound of a train whistle reached them, surging down the eastern corridor. Cobblestones began to subtly vibrate beneath their hooves. There were usually a few more trains passing through just before the holiday, trying to manage the surge in travel numbers. Canterlot served as the system's national hub -- but just about anything going west on the outbound had to pass through Ponyville.

The train pulled up to the platform just as they reached the first of the ramps. It also put them exactly on time for the engine's steam to vent, and everything momentarily vanished within warm fog.

The fillies held their breath, felt fur go damp, and then automatically moved to stand against the westbound platform's back wall. Adults didn't always look where they were going.

Hooves trotted by, faded into silence. A few flapping wings helped disperse the vapor, and the two friends blinked against the harsh return of sunlight. Shifted away from the wall --

"-- and will ya look at that?" called out a brash, half-merry, familiar voice. "It's like ya think showing up exactly on time makes a good impression or something!"

They both turned. Stared.

The third filly on the platform -- the one who would, if not for coincidence, have found herself alone...

She was somewhat heavyset, and the visual end of that mostly served as an understatement. Every earth pony had a little more mass than their appearance suggested: there was a universal touch of extra density in flesh and bone. This filly took it further. Spending any real amount of time around her provided the impression that a rather significant amount of pony had been compressed into a fairly small space. A determined hoofstep from this filly could make a ramp shudder: a double-foreleg stomp stood a good chance to break one.

Her hues... Apple Bloom had overheard Rarity talking about them, shortly after the filly had left Ponyville for the first time. Mourning the loss of opportunity. "Amaranth and gamboge: how often does one get to work with that exact combination? Especially with those natural highlights! If somepony had simply provided me with a touch more in the way of warning...!" And when it came to the mane and tail... surely there was something the designer could do about the shortness of those falls, even when there was just barely enough of the latter to curl in towards a hip.

'Gamboge.' Apple Bloom had needed to ask about that one, and it had just turned out to be the formal term for the hue of the filly's coat: something which was currently being rather poorly set off by a pair of bulging too-basic saddlebags. But there were lighter spots: three under each eye. Applejack sported a similar pattern, and it was something which made the visitor a little more identifiable as...

...family.

There was a holiday upon which ponies set out to be with those whom they were closest to in all the world -- or rather, that was what the adults did.

Mares and stallions went home.
Fillies and colts lived there.

It was the day before Homecoming, and there was no reason for Babs Seed to be in Ponyville.

Note Of Issue

She was the first one up and for a farm kid, that was really saying something.

It wasn't a status she was going to hold for long, though. Automatic time off from chores was generally only offered up for her birthday and special occasions. (Some of the winter holidays meant a near-guaranteed chance to simply relax -- but that was mostly just winter.) Being up first generally gave her a chance to get ahead on her duties, and finishing up early would give her that much more time with Babs. That seemed important, especially since her cousin was heading back after the holiday and with no precise definition having been offered up, Apple Bloom was assuming that was going to be the following morning.

She could ask Babs, but... the traveler was still asleep, and Apple Bloom had exited the bedroom silently enough to keep it that way for a while.

Or Ah could ask Applejack.

Ah could ask her exactly what was in that letter.

Not that it would probably do much good. Apple Bloom lived with what some part of Equestria saw as Honesty and so she'd learned that as answers went, 'Ah don't want t' tell you' was very honest indeed.

She hardly ever tells me anythin'. There had been a few exceptions, but most of those seemed to center on the times when Applejack had absolutely nopony else to speak with. She treats me like a kid...

...Ah'm older now.
Kinda.
Ah ain't a mare. But Ah ain't a foal neither.
Ah'm not as little as she thinks Ah am.

Apple Bloom fetched some hay from the pantry, chewed thoughtfully. It usually took a lot of calories to get through farm work, but autumn meant smaller labors and... it was Homecoming. Just pretending to choke some of the offerings down meant leaving a certain amount of space.

At least there had been one small benefit to her insomnia: the holiday hadn't gained its usual chance to sneak up on her while she slept. She'd effectively gotten to watch it cross the threshold, all bold and brassy and not caring in the least how she felt about it. And she had slipped into the nightscape eventually, because a not-quite-mare body wasn't up to pulling full all-nighters, but... she was going to need a nap at some point. Which she resented, because naps were for foals, the elderly, and Rainbow Dash.

Sooner started, sooner ended.

Which felt like something an adult would have said.

Everypony else is gonna be up soon enough. Or almost so, because Babs would be allowed to sleep in: guests were permitted that much comfort. And Scootaloo generally wound up with fairly light chores: Applejack wanted anypony living on the Acres to pitch in, but both recognized that the new arrival hadn't grown up in the farming life and was still trying to find things which a pegasus could readily do. Boosting the local Cornucopia Effect wasn't it. Obvs. Or 'obviously' for the ponies who couldn't talk right.

It wasn't going to be all that long before the Acres were fully up. And after the usual autumn labor wrapped, the true Homecoming push would begin. Much of that would be isolated to the kitchen, but...

There would be waiting.

Ah won't wait this year.
Ah won't.

And good plates.

If they just didn't have the good plates...

...jus' get out there.

She patrolled the Acres, checked the trees. It was possible to get some late autumn blooms, but it usually meant the Weather Bureau had been scheduling a truly extended session of ridiculously warm weather -- and 'blooms' would be it: nothing ever lasted long enough for the fruit to mature. She was mostly looking after the health of her charges, making sure everything was getting ready for its own slumber. And it was warm enough for a good trot, because the Bureau had boosted the temperature for the holiday. There would be ponies getting off trains all over Equestria, and none of them would be stepping into deep chill.

A brief stop was made in the tenants' section. Several pigs said they knew about the food and were within their rights to get all of it. They demanded to speak to her sister, then her brother, followed that with the mayor, and finished up by threatening to get a lawyer. So unofficially, that was another holiday tradition out of the way.

There were a few minor cleaning duties around the main barn. She straightened her workshop, because she wanted to show Babs around. There was probably going to be a cousin comment about how the tools could be used to really sabotage a float.

Every so often, she would hear the echoes of movement coming from another part of the farm, or catch the echoes as Applejack (who had her own traditions) recited portions of The Tenants' ACTUAL Bill Of Rights to the pigs, at top volume, from memory. But nopony came close enough to speak with. Not until she was finished.

And it turned out to be somepony she'd had no intention of speaking with at all.

She was trotting towards the farmhouse, almost all the way up to the door. On the verge of getting inside and discovering who was currently tying up the bathroom. With both Scootaloo and Babs on the premises, it was probably about time to consider keeping a few of her things in the lower level's restroom.

And then she heard the hooves coming up behind her. A sound which had some weight behind it, but... not enough for an adult. None of the guests were due this early, and the approach was -- slow. Uncertain. Almost timid...

...Sweetie?

The thought alone was enough to make her stop, and she began to turn well before the rest of the realization arrived: that the approaching party was too light to be an adult, but too heavy to be a unicorn filly. There was too much solidity there, even if the vector was imprecise, hesitant --

-- you.

There had been a time when the word would have been meant as an expression of dread. Standing at the very edge of fear, waiting to be pushed off the cliff. Plummeting into terror, as the intruder laughed.

But she was older. And when you got older, some things clarified, turned obvious (obv?) and seemed as if they should have been recognized long ago... but others became confused.

She didn't know how she felt about Diamond any more.

Her -- 'classmate' was still about as far as Apple Bloom was willing to go -- had stopped moving at the instant the youngest Malus had turned enough to see her. Frozen in the path, about eight body lengths away.

She was a little taller these days. Her mane had been grown out somewhat: enough to show off the white streak. Diamond was wearing small saddlebags: barely enough to hold anything at all, and they shifted against her sides as if there was nothing within. And...

...her tiara.
Where is it?

Diamond didn't have it on all the time. It was always removed before swimming, and just about any other major attempt at athletic activity would similarly see it shed. Much more rarely, she would reluctantly decide it didn't quite go with a dress: this was usually followed by open criticism of the designer's skills. 'Directly to the designer' was also an option, but her father had to be out of the area.

You could catch Diamond without her accessory: it just didn't happen often. And this had been a mere trot to the Acres.

She was looking at Apple Bloom. Just... looking. No part of that uncertain regard had moved towards the hips.

"My daddy sent me."

The words had been fairly steady. Almost even. They also didn't seem to require a response, which was a positive because Apple Bloom didn't have one anyway.

Diamond's ears went forward. Listening to the silence, under Sun and still air.

There was a sound from overhead, like a window nudging open. The natural assumption was Scootaloo getting a glide start on her next chore -- and then it shut again.

"There was a mistake," the filly said. "With the jelly sales. Because when your fa --" Stopped. "The last --" Again, and her tail flicked. "When... the contract was updated, between the Acres and Barnyard Bargains... there were automatic lift clauses. Adjustments for inflation. Because a bit isn't always a bit. It'll look like a bit, but it'll buy nine-tenths or worse. And there's been a few new ponies in Accounting. One of them didn't review the right paperwork, and the mistake didn't get caught for a while. You were supposed to get more than you did. So my daddy sent me over with a voucher."

It wasn't quite the longest insult-free speech which Apple Bloom had ever heard from Diamond. Classroom presentations existed, and the one about history's earliest-manifesting marks had all of the insults implied.

Hoofsteps behind Apple Bloom, distorted through the walls. Somepony was moving inside the house.

"And he knows you can't deposit or cash it right now," Diamond awkwardly added. "Not on Homecoming. But he only found out last night. And he wanted you to get the difference as soon as possible, and... he's really busy right now, with Hearth's Warming Eve sales starting tomorrow. So he sent me over. Because..."

Trailed off, as head and ears drooped. Her left forehoof scraped at the ground.

"'cause?" Apple Bloom asked, and wondered why the sound of her own voice had made her want to jump.

"Because there's been a lot going on," Diamond told the ground. "So much that there's been no chance to come over and talk. And he wanted me to tell you that -- he's sorry. That it wasn't sooner. That he hasn't been by. That he's just trying to make it right. He's sor --"

The door slammed open, nearly rebounded all the way back before a forehoof caught it. The sound made Diamond look up, forced Apple Bloom to briefly take her eyes off what had once been the enemy so she could glance back. And it wasn't Mac, who did everything possible to control his strength. The sounds of dual impact had come from much lower down.

"Get out," stated the Manehattan voice, and did so as the lashing tail added its own portion of accent.

"...Babs?" Diamond half-whispered. "Why are you --"

"-- I just told ya to get out --"

-- and Diamond, ears now flat against her head, tail still and limp -- took a step forward.

"I'm delivering a voucher," the pink filly said. "On business. I have to drop this off --"

"-- like that's all ya were gonna do," Babs hissed. "Nopony wants ya here, nopony for any reason. Ya need to get a voucher to the Acres, ya know how mail works. Even if it takes a couple of weeks longer than --"

The words were soft. Too soft, for Diamond. And yet Apple Bloom heard them perfectly. It was as if the words were the only things which could be heard at all.

"-- it wasn't all bad, was it?"

Babs froze.

"We weren't horrible all the time," the Rich filly quietly said. "I know it. Even if it was just because there wasn't always somepony we could be horrible to. We talked." Her tail was almost on the ground. "You... liked talking to me. Because there were things we could talk about, even when Silver wasn't there. It wasn't all bad, Babs. That's why I tried to wr --"

"-- can't charge you down," was pushed out from between Babs' teeth, and all Apple Bloom could do was look from one to the other, waiting for the worst and -- not knowing who to stop. "Same as it was at the train station. Applejack was too close. Pretty sure she'll hear if I do what should be done. Same way she heard when you went all-out, just before I had to leave. And she didn't move then. So maybe she wouldn't stop me -- but let's keep her out of it, Diamond. You can leave. Or it's the same threat as last time. I can just tell --"

It wasn't the reaction Apple Bloom had been expecting. Not the sudden sharp rearing up on hind legs, a single hard lash of the streaked tail and the slam of hoofticured keratin into the soil --

"-- you know! I told you, Babs! Because we were talking, and -- I hardly ever tell anypony! You know, and at the train station, you said..."

Blue eyes closed, doing so at the same moment Diamond's tail went limp again. And Babs... laughed.

It was a sharp sound. Short and harsh, with no true humor in it at all.

"Yeah," the Manehattanite said. "I said I'd tell your mothers about your bad attitudes. But that's kind of a problem with you, ain't it? So why don't ya make it easy for me, Diamond? Why don't ya just go do whatever ya have to in order to go tell her yourself?"

It was almost exactly like watching somepony being kicked in the belly.

Diamond's eyes flew open. She stumbled back. Her features twisted, the tail went wild, and the only difference was that the air rushed into her lungs with the force of a second impact. And as Apple Bloom watched, the refined manestyle was whipped through more than a hundred and eighty degrees as the filly's body blurred into the spin --

-- the sound of the gallop faded quickly. And then there was just an ornate piece of paper resting in the path, half-trampled and sporting a pair of fresh water spots.

"Huh," Babs said, and that voice was just a little more normal. "So there was a voucher. Hope it's a big one. Guess you should get that, Appy. Ain't my money."

Apple Bloom's eyelids eventually decided to work.

"...what did you say t' her?"

"You heard me."

"Ah heard," the youngest Malus forced herself to go on. "Ah don't know why --"

In open satisfaction, "-- nothing which somepony shouldn't have said years ago. But ya know something? I'm glad it got to be me."

What happened?
What's...
...what happened between...

Apple Bloom didn't know. She didn't have any answers. There were too many questions for picking a place to start, and none of them reached her voice. Her only four words were something else entirely.

"She's changed..." the filly found herself saying, and it was as if she was watching herself speak the words. Witnessing everything from gallops away. "A little..."

Babs thought about it.

"I don't think ponies change," the -- former? -- bully said. "The most they do is show you who they really are underneath. Ya wanna get some breakfast?"