Now, we are older, remember less. Have forgotten things that make forgotten things. As mare looks back on fillyhood with broken fondness... There is the bend of a hill that reminds her of the fall of a friend, trotting back from where to when, in playful flight and runaround and dive, crash/fencepost going awfully still. And everything had been all right, Cloud Chaser—that had been her name—got up, moved on, but for that moment, dreadful second, when it all might have gone quite differently...
Following the turn of land and hup of hump to overlook the village properly, houses knit together into hamlet, then to town, seen by eyes of young and old again in light of future certainties, past centuries. Chiffon Swirl is being told she won’t see mama for a while. Her own foal is here at picnic with his coltfriend. The rowan tree whose branches fed them both is heavy with red berries. They look out over valley to distances beyond, unfelt. Berryshine picks hoof-fuls from the tree, stuffed hastily in saddlebags about to burst. Cheerilee will find these two days later, fierce and argumentative and running out of reasons to remain.
Caramel blames Carrot Top for his lacking. His love has become taken for granted, become a thing that is alien; he too has become alien, a thing to himself. Ponyville contains him.
Sassaflash arrived only recently. She isn’t like Canterlot at all, not really, but there are still too many flowers around for it to feel like home quite yet. Probably she is making a mistake, kissing Caramel, as their lips meet and hooves refind, define each others’ bodies. Only one of them will remember this moment.
The pony that Caramel might have been is seen passing distantly, in the background.
Hearts beat. Wind scours fields and rain-drenched pegasi arranging thunderclouds complain that they are not at home. Springtime creatures play beneath the sun.
...when in the park they met she had been cold. Lemon Hearts had slowly melted her. Magic done what else had not, she wrapped up winter with her friend, not envying the ponies in the sky above.
...there are tears, of course, plenty of tears, though not from her. Not many ponies visit Ponyville Cemetery, with its great old trunks and creeping shadows. The shadows only creep because she does, though she does not yet understand this. Grand Pear feels quite safe, here in the hoofsteps of his daughter.
...something glints in mere reflection deep in caves beneath. There are ponies who are drawn, who are not.
A world away, Minuette is pining for her community of lost hills. Wandering down paths she hardly knew in fits of strangeness; her dreams are full of foal-size houses, oak-shadowed knolls. Fresh grass smells like life and daylight, she is sitting beside that old wood trail, generation after conversation.
Daisy (Flower Wishes) takes up her trowel to replant the rescued rhododendron.
Back before she took on the farm, ponies had used to call her Golden Harvest.
Mayor Mare has always been the mayor, if not certain mare.
There is a stump where almost everypony sits eventually, cut tree slump gently into seat, worn down by pony after pony, all in take a breath and nodding fellow traveller, strolling day. Drip, drip, drip, long water carving rock into its resting place. Well met.
Dr. Fauna was never one for keeping secrets. Patient confidentiality is well and good for rabbits, but rumours spread through her impatient, nervous through a network of beloved pets.
Surprising news: quite shocking: neigh, distressing: it is difficult to tell, without a glance at the letter. Junebug’s expression holds many possibilities.
Water rises from the flowerbed. Scattered crystals glitter in sun, conjoining at the spout to pool inside the can. Walked backwards into cottage, sucked up again to tap, to larger body. Back again outside, barrel carried heavingly Big Macintosh, sweat unwiped from brow. Taking stock before the plunge, observing serious clouds rescuttling sky. Cherilee, an awkward wave: Eyup. Barrel opened, water rushing up to rejoin sky, tearing apart in vast formations pulled by wings away to weather factories, and thence again great mountain lakes.
Sea Swirl is unmoved by her sister’s plea. In bold rejection of her name’s begotten dynamism, she does not even blink, as carved from stone. Ocean frozen over.)
These are details that have gone amiss. In excavations, memory can only do so much. There in the turn of phrase passed from mother to mare, recalled by the filly to form. That Ponyville, our Ponyville. Those twilight hours...
Amethyst Star and her grand ambition, compressed by those who cared as much as those who didn’t, reduced unto the image of ambition, ambitious memory. Growing older every vegetable, raking furious her life.
The local drunk, Berry Punch, the line to every joke, whose first love holds a picture of her potential somewhere in her grandfoal’s closet.
Dave the changeling, whose identity remains a secret, forever unrevealed.
Did you hear the one about Ms. Hooves? her new name rather suits, I know. And Drizzle, what she was saying over tea about that Meadow Song? Captured in a gesture (split up with his husband of ten years ten days ago and searching, searching hard for some salvation? In his sorrow failed to face the ghost of their shared home and found himself in hers. One hundred and eleven years before, where ancient oak stood tall and proud, gave shelter to the caravan beneath the storm: divided and became their mantelpiece, supporting beam of a supporting wall. An acorn, two beeswax candles, one picture-frame, a marriage.
This world is vast, feels terribly small. Ponies passing ponies echo pennies in a well, shimmer spells in the reflection of its water. Tell stories of its ripples to their foals. Know it like you know your body; like the furrow on the brow of a foalhood friend.
It is not the Ponyville of Granny Smith’s youth (too much water has passed beneath the stones of the bridge where she kissed her wife for the very first time for that to be), nor can that place become again. Return from memory... Glimpsed through stories overtold to upright ears. Let this stand as the history of a place. Let time stop here.
...all these things. Names and places that we knew so well, names and places that we didn’t. This ground is filled with hoofprints. Ponies written on old stones.
Remember Ponyville. Those lives eroding imperceptibly; the hill becomes a valley as the ocean rolls... They live there still. That Ponyville is, that Ponyville was. And yet, so much is now so difficult to recall.
