Sweetie Belle looked into the infinite blackness of the void and sighed. It was all very well, being humbled by the minuteness of your own person when confronted with the vastness of the endless universe, but that tended to get old around the second week of a space voyage. Sweetie had taken a little longer than most; it had been the end of her fourth week before she had ceased to be awed by the sheer majesty of it all. But that had been over six months ago, and at this stage it was just getting old.
The view was beautiful, but when the view never changed, things got dull fast.
Back in Ponyville she had never much noticed the changing moods of the sky. But now that it was absent, she couldn't stop noticing. The weather team were unsung heroes. She should have sung for them a little more when she had the chance.
The thought of singing triggered a long-dormant urge, and Sweetie opened her mouth and let out a few short notes. "Doe, ray, mi, fa…"
Her voice was rusty, the notes were all off-key, and it made her cringe just to listen. Space travel was not doing her vocal cords any favours.
It had been a vocal warm-up, nothing more, but it instantly triggered a scramble of hooves and wings, and two breathless mares tumbled through the door into the cramped little room.
"Sweetie's singing!"
"Oh my gosh, Sweetie, are you singing again?"
Her mouth snapping closed again at the sight of them, Sweetie suppressed a sigh. "No, girls."
Apple Bloom pouted and Scootaloo groaned.
"Aw, come on! Just one song."
"One lil' itsy-bitsy song for your two best buds in the whole world?" Apple Bloom glanced at the viewing window behind Sweetie. "Or in space, I guess."
"No, I…I don't know why I tried, really." Sweetie Belle shook her head. "It doesn't sound right."
"Aw, can it," grumbled Scootaloo. "You can't fob us off with that guff about the acoustics again. We can't hear the difference, can we, AB?"
Apple Bloom shook her head emphatically. "Nuh-uh."
“And you used the same excuse two weeks ago,” Scootaloo went on. “And before you try it, you used the one about the recycled water and your throat the week before that.”
“Girls, please,” protested Sweetie Belle, sensing that she might be fighting a losing battle. “I only sang four notes, that doesn’t mean I have to do a whole song.”
“Does too.” Apple Bloom attempted to stomp her hoof – a gesture that would have worked better in full gravity. Instead, it sent her off on a slow, meandering spiral, her limbs bumping into walls, windows, and the other crusaders as she went.
“What Apple Bloom means to say,” Scootaloo interjected, buzzing her wings to position herself between Apple Bloom’s face and the ceiling it was about to collide with, “Is that we’ve been cooped up in here with no entertainment for nearly half a year, and we would love to hear you sing something.”
“Not no entertainment,” said Sweetie weakly. “There’s always–”
“–Don’t.” Scootaloo cut her off. “Don’t even talk to me about Pony Kong. If I ever see that stupid monkey-horse again it’ll be too soon.”
“It were more of a curse than a gift when Spike gave us that.” Apple Bloom finally succeeded in righting herself. “Them stupid monkey noises.”
Lack of much else to do meant that all three of them, Sweetie Belle included, were fully-fledged Pony Kong champions. But the dated little game cartridge and its tinny, endlessly looping eight-bit music were now safely locked away in a drawer, never to be unearthed again until a time of direst need and direst boredom. Sadly, with every day that passed, that time inched closer.
“Please,” Scootaloo whined, her voice climbing higher. “Just sing something.”
“I said no.” The word came out more forcefully than Sweetie Belle had intended, and both of the others flinched. She swallowed hard, and tried to force the tension out of her limbs and the strain from her voice. “I’m sorry, girls, but I just…I can’t, not now. Not here.”
Ears drooped and heads hung, and her friends turned sorrowfully to leave. “Alright. Sorry to…to barge in.”
With a pang of guilt, Sweetie stretched out her hoof. “Wait–”
–But it was too late. The flimsy fabric door covering had already flapped back into place, Apple Bloom’s careful hoof securing the velcro as she left.
And Sweetie was left alone with the knowledge that yet again, she had messed up. Tempers were fraying, and she lacked Rarity’s deft touch with a needle. She could not darn the tears. And so she was, as she so often was these days, alone in her poky little room – alone with the gargantuan void beyond the window, and the smaller void within her chest.
“Sweetie?” Rarity’s voice was careful. Cautious. “Can we talk for a minute?”
Sweetie Belle, hunched over the latest batch of sheet music from the studio, didn’t look up. She was on a twenty-four hour voice rest, but that didn’t mean she could skip rehearsal. She never skipped rehearsal.
“Sweetie Belle?”
With a flick of her tail, Sweetie Belle shooed her sister away. From nine until six, she was in the studio, or preparing to go into the studio, or on a five minute coffee break from the studio. Rarity ought to know better than to bother her now.
“It’s just…” Rarity hovered behind her, hoof half-outstretched. “There’s something I want to say to you.”
There was so much preamble. Once, Rarity would have leapt straight into it. Told Sweetie Belle exactly what was on her mind, and what she intended that Sweetie should do about it. Sweetie might have fought her on the advice, but she would have listened in the end. She always listened to her big sister.
Rarity hesitated again. “Sweetie, please. Can you just stop for a minute?”
With an impatient sigh, Sweetie Belle flicked to the next page of her aria. The melody was complex, and even a mental run-through demanded her full concentration.
The days of listening to her big sister were long gone.
“Sweetie, I’m serious.” At long last, Rarity’s hoof finally came down on her shoulder. The touch feather-light where once it would have been strong and loving. They were hoof-to-skin, but that distance between them remained. “Look at me.”
With a sigh, Sweetie Belle turned. She wasn’t going to break her vocal rest, not for this — but a glance could convey impatience just as effectively as a sharp what do you want?
Her confidence faltering, Rarity took a step back. Her hoof fell away.
“It’s…it’s just that…”
For a second Sweetie Belle thought she had done it. A glorious vista of unbroken rehearsal stretched before her, almost tangible—
But Rarity stood firm, and mustered her courage. “It’s about Twilight.”
Sweetie raised an eyebrow.
“She’s…she’s going to ask you to do something. Something dangerous.” Rarity swallowed, the lump in her throat almost visible. “You need to say no.”
Her mind still half on the complex vibrato of the final line, Sweetie Belle raised her shoulders and let them drop. A shrug. If Rarity was going to be so vague, she wouldn’t engage.
“This is serious,” Rarity persisted. “More serious than one of your…your stupid voice rests. We need to talk about this.”
With a slight curl of her lip, Sweetie gestured with a hoof. Go on, then. Do it. Talk.
Rarity sighed. Looked away. “She’s been working on something in the palace labs. It’s new, and it’s big, and it’s dangerous. She wants three ponies for it. You three.”
Her eyes opening a little wider, Sweetie Belle tilted her head to one side. Apple Bloom. Scootaloo. Me. What did the Princess need, from three ponies with skills like theirs? A singer, a stuntpony, and a farmer. Three more disparate skillsets could not be imagined. Three more disparate ponies could not be imagined.
Matching cutie marks could take you a long way — but not, as Sweetie and her friends had found, quite far enough.
“I don’t know what it is,” Rarity answered, understanding as perfectly as though the question had been spoken aloud. “But I know enough to know that you need to refuse. You, and the girls too. You need to say no.”
It was all very well for her to say that. But Sweetie Belle was a professional, and she understood the PR that the Princess could offer. Royal opportunities did not come knocking every day. And a cutie mark crusader reunion? That might win a few headlines in its own right. And headlines meant ticket sales, and ticket sales…well, they meant everything.
“Sweetie,” demanded Rarity, frustration now evident in her voice. “Why won’t you say anything?”
But Sweetie Belle was lost in thought, even her aria forgotten in the wake of this new information. Something was coming her way. Something new. Something big.
This could be huge for her.
It wasn’t until the door swung closed that she even realised Rarity had left the room, and she blinked at the sight of the noise-cancelling foam panels.
Sweetie Belle, Rarity had said. Sweetie. Her name, over and over, in tones both angry and entreating. It was strange, how foreign the sound of her own name was when it came from Rarity’s lips. A name should be a link between two ponies. A caress, a familiarity. But from Rairty, somehow, it was a shove. A push, propelling her further and further away from the sister she had once idolised.
Because before, in that hazy, long-ago time, she would have called her darling.
“What’s for dinner?” Scootaloo’s voice was bright with hope, as though she didn’t already know exactly what the answer would be.
“Same as always.” Apple Bloom gave a melancholy sigh, no doubt preparing to wax lyrical on the endless variety and bounty of produce she had left behind at Sweet Apple Acres. “Taters.”
“Oh, Celestia’s armpit,” groaned Scootaloo. “I’m going to die if I have to eat another potato.”
“You ain’t gonna die, stupid,” Apple Bloom snapped. “But you will if you don’t eat your potato. Shut up and dig in.”
A melancholy sigh from Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle pressed her forehead harder against the cool glass of the window, until she could feel a dull ache at the base of her horn.
“I’m just so tired of potatoes.”
Apple Bloom harrumphed. “You got any idea how hard it is to grow a decent potato out of dried-up seeds and your own waste? Eat your potato and be glad you got anything.”
“But I just—”
“—Eat, Scoots.” There was a brief pause, and then a hesitant hoof tapped the wall outside of Sweetie’s alcove. “Sweetie Belle? You wanna eat dinner with us today?”
Her mouth suddenly unbearably dry, Sweetie Belle forced her lips open to speak. How long had it been since she drank anything? If she were to try to sing anything now, she’d croak like a frog. “No. I don’t think so.”
There was a very small release of breath from beyond the curtain. The sound of defeat. “Okay. Well, I’ll just post it through. Same as normal.”
The tearing noise of velcro releasing sounded, and Sweetie turned to accept the sealed container of mashed potato from the yellow hoof that had crept through the gap. When she had it in her grasp, the yellow hoof receded, and Sweetie was left once more to her thoughts and the blackness beyond her window.
“It’s a manned mission,” Twilight said, the barely suppressed excitement audible in her voice. “Out past the moon. Into…well, we don’t know exactly what. That’s what’s so important about it.”
“And…” Apple Bloom spoke slowly. Sceptically. “And it’s safe?”
“Well,” Twilight hesitated momentarily, “Yes. Yes, definitely safe.” She rapped her hoof against the steel hull, and it clanged loudly. “Completely airtight and self-sustaining.”
Scootaloo glanced at Apple Bloom. Some wordless communication flashed between them; something Sweetie would have once understood but was no longer privy to. Even after all this time, it still hurt, to see that.
“Why us?” Scootaloo asked. “We’re not exactly experts.”
Twilight nodded, her mane undulating gently in that uncanny invisible current it had developed in recent years. “We need a group of three; access to every magic type in the smallest group possible. We need an established rapport and proven teamwork capabilities. We need ponies with,” she paused delicately, “Not many ties or responsibilities.”
Sweetie Belle narrowed her eyes; this sounded dangerously close to something Rarity would say. You seem so lonely, Sweetie. Would you like me to introduce you to somepony? I met the most charming young mare in Fillydelphia last week—
“Teamwork?” echoed Scootaloo, and again she looked at Apple Bloom — and then as one, they turned to glance at Sweetie Belle.
Her blood roaring in her ears, Sweetie Belle flushed scarlet and forced her gaze downward to her hooves. Pretend you didn’t notice. Pretend you didn’t see the two-headed hydra, locking you out the same as always. A team of two and an oddment of one.
Same as always.
“Come on, don’t be sad. I love you so much.”
Apple Bloom sighed, and there was the soft but unmistakeable sound of a kiss being pressed to a willing muzzle. “I know. I just wish we were home.”
“Ponyville, you mean?”
“No, course not, silly. Sweet Apple Acres.”
“Oh.” A muted giggle. “If we were there, what would we be doing right now?”
“It’s…let’s see, July now. So we’d be watering the trees up in the high meadow, the ones that get a little dry this time of summer. We’d be watching the apples get big and fat. We’d be revving up for harvest time in a few weeks.” Another sigh, longer this time. “I miss it.”
“Me too.”
“Liar. The only thing about Sweet Apple Acres you miss is the skate ramp AJ let you build out back.”
“Can you blame me? Me and Rainbow have caught some serious air on that thing.”
Another giggle, and Sweetie Belle gritted her teeth. These moments didn’t come often, these whispered conversations and tender nothings, but when they did…it made her want to scream until she’d never sing again.
“Scoots…do you think we’ll ever see it again?”
“Of course we will.” But even Scootaloo did not sound certain. “They gave us enough fuel to reverse course. And we’re still on the same trajectory. One push of that big blue button and we’re on our way home.”
“I wish we could push it now.”
“Me too. But…we gave the Princess our word.”
“Yeah.”
“I told Rainbow Dash I wouldn’t be home till I’d found a cool alien.”
Apple Bloom laughed, but there was sadness in the sound. “And how realistic is that?”
“Very.”
“I…I talked to Rarity before we went.”
Sweetie Belle flinched. As her sheets rustled, the voices in the bunk above fell silent.
“Is she awake?”
A pause, in which Sweetie was still as a stone.
“Sweetie Belle?”
She did not answer.
“I don’t think so,” Scootaloo said at last. “What did Rarity say?”
“Not much. But I told her…I promised her I’d fix it.”
“How?”
A bitter little laugh. “I haven’t gotten as far as figuring that out yet.”
Scootaloo moved, and Sweetie Belle heard the sound of yet another embrace that she was not a part of. The best friends that had been hers, but were now only each another’s.
“You will,” promised Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle bit her lip so hard it hurt. “We’ll fix it together, you and me.”
“Sweetie, we got something to tell you.”
“Can’t it wait?” Sweetie Belle was rummaging frantically through her stack of demos. “I finished a song on Saturday that I really want some feedback on. Honestly, girls, I think it’s really good. I think this might be the one that gets me scouted.”
“Sweetie, this is important.” Apple Bloom’s tone was stern, and Sweetie Belle finally turned to face her.
“Apple Bloom, even if this is official crusading business I don’t see why it can’t wait two minutes while I show you the track I’ve been working on for a month.”
“Hear her out,” Scootaloo said, stepping forward. Coming to Apple Bloom’s defence — as though she needed defending from Sweetie.
“Okay,” Sweetie said slowly, the demo forgotten at last. “What’s up?”
Apple Bloom compressed her lips nervously, and took a single pace forward. “It’s something that’s been growing a good while. Germinating, like a seed.”
“Germinating?” Scootaloo wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”
“Shut it, I’m being serious,” Apple Bloom said, but she grinned, and Scootaloo giggled — and Sweetie Belle finally realised that something was different here.
Something was wrong.
“We’ve been…trying something the last couple of months,” Apple Bloom went on. “And we didn’t tell you because…because—”
“—It wasn’t because we didn’t want you to know,” Scootaloo interjected. “You know we tell you everything.”
“We just wanted to be sure ourselves, first.” Apple Bloom’s voice was so earnest. She really believed in this. In the morality of what she had done in lying to her best friend — one of her best friends — for months.
Months? Sweetie didn’t understand. How could they have kept a secret from her for months?
“What is it?” she asked. Stupidly. Blindly.
“We’ve been…seeing each other,” said Scootaloo, when Apple Bloom stayed silent. “And it’s going really well.”
There was a crack in the foundation of the world. A splintering. A sundering. A chasm was opening, right beneath her hooves. Things were changing, and she would never be able to change them back again.
Apple Bloom found her voice again and nodded fervently, almost pleading for Sweetie Belle to forgive them. “Really well. We…we really like each other, Sweetie. Well, we did before, obviously. But this is different.”
This is different. This is different. With those three words, the gulf deepened and widened and grew, splitting Sweetie Belle off from her fellow crusaders. Three best friends, all alike and all equal. Sisters and confidants and family all in one.
Until now.
This is different.
And Scootaloo’s undersized wing came down on Apple Bloom’s back, and their heads came together. Apple Bloom turned her face into the caress, and their muzzles pressed against one another for the briefest of moments. Closer than sisters. Closer than best friends. Closer than Sweetie Belle had ever been with either of them.
They were a team, a unit — and she was nothing. Less than nothing. She was shut out.
When she awoke, Sweetie Belle’s neck was stiff and painful. The window was almost frozen against her skin, and when she pulled herself away she left an imprint on the glass. There was a dried crust of drool on her foreleg.
The view from the window was the same as always. Stars, cold and unchanging and unbearably distant. Princess Twilight had sent them out to do the impossible. What was unreachable would never be reached.
But as her waking mind came back to her, she realised something was different. Not externally; that world never changed. But the universe inside the ship, the microcosm that was her life here — something was different.
There was music.
Through the entryway to the viewing room, just through the flimsy fabric that passed for a door, there were voices. And Sweetie Belle heard a sound she had believed she would never hear again.
Voices, raised in song.
“High on a hill, I stand, I stand.”
And this wasn’t just any song.
“I watch where the sea meets the land, the land.”
This was her song.
The voices climbed higher, splitting apart to call and answer the next two lines.
“The waves lap the shore.”
“Each wave wanting more.”
They rejoined again, the melody as familiar to Sweetie Belle as the whorls of her own hoof.
“Reaching further and faster than those coming before.”
This was the song, after all, that had won her an agent. And that agent had won her interest from the record labels, real interest — and that had eventually given her the ultimate gift, the fruit of all her labours. A recording contract. A record deal. Something of her own. Something no one could take away, or shut her out of.
Something that was just for her.
The voices sang on, transitioning seamlessly into the next verse.
"I wish I could fly away, away.”
Slowly, Sweetie Bell pushed herself off from the window. Unhooking her leg from the grab-bar, she floated up from her accustomed spot, laboriously rotating herself towards the door.
“I’m tired of fighting to stay, to stay.”
She reached the door, and lit her horn to tug the velcro free. The curtain unfurled, just as the choir split into two once more.
“I dream of a place—”
“—Of the end of the race.”
And almost despite herself, Sweetie’s lips moved to mouth the words along with her friends.
“I dream of stars and of skies and of wide open space.”
They stopped then, at the end of the verse. Sweetie hung there in midair, like the sorriest excuse for a pegasus there ever was. Her mind still muddled from sleep, her defences down. Her heart, somehow, treacherously, hoping. And the three of them looked at each other. Really looked at each other. Without windows or walls in between them.
And Apple Bloom, eyes filled with tears, opened her forelegs wide. “Sweetie, just because we started loving each other more don’t mean we started loving you less.”
And this time, when the others began to sing, Sweetie Belle joined in.
The ship had left Equestria carrying five hundred relay radios. One to be dropped every thousand klicks for the first six years of their journey, each just within calling range of the next. A message could be sent, if it was urgent. It would take days, but it would arrive.
It would arrive.
Sweetie Belle reached for the transceiver, and pressed the red button until the speakers crackled. Recording.
“This is the astrovoyager ship Celestia One. Sweetie Belle checking in.” She paused, and took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “This is a message for my sister Rarity.”
