Lost Summer

Day Four

Diamond laid atop a rocky crest with a little monocular to her eye. Below them was a rural outpost with a train station where a hooful of unicorns were boarding the cars. She looked curiously from passenger to passenger and cutie mark to cutie mark. These were the first sentient beings they'd encountered since fleeing.

“These Kirins are all in their animus form and I can't see any clan identity anywhere. Could they all be Banished or deserters like us?”

With her eye she followed the iron road under the strange smoking conveyance. It stretched into the foothills and up the mountain side. She gasped as her lens landed on a great city with an enormous castle high on the mount.

“They've formed their own clan all the way out here and even appear to have a princess… or at least some sort of sophisticated ruling body. How could a group of castoffs create such an advanced society?”

The train wailed and she put the monocular away. Then she turned to Summer who was babbling under a tree and trying to stand up.

“We're going up there. This might be the answer we're looking for.”

Day Sixteen

Diamond pushed the shopping cart down the aisle, her new adopted daughter sitting in the seat flailing her limbs and watching the blur of colorful shelved foods speed by.

She'd just found a job but hadn't gotten paid yet. That fact did not stop their need for food and diapers, thus they were shopping and renting a hotel room with stolen bits.

Summer watched in awe as a burly white stallion pushed his cart past them. She turned her head to follow and pointed at him.

“Gaa!”

Diamond looked at the cereal, wondering if she should get the mildly satisfactory brand she bought last time or try something else. This commercialized and mass produced society was strange. Back home they bought oats out of barrels and rice cakes out of bins. Nothing came in a dozen different flavors in a dozen different cardboard boxes with a cartoon character on it. She turned to toss a box of the same stuff in the cart. Her heart stopped as she realized the seat was empty. Summer was gone.

Diamond glanced down at the floor in a panic. Then spun around, looking in every direction.

“Rarity?” she shouted in alarm.

She'd been taken. How? Right from under her muzzle. How could she have been so careless? Her vigilance was dull from lack of sleep. She slipped a throwing knife from her satchel and abandoned her cart to gallop down the aisle.

“Rarity?”

Diamond heard a sort of commotion coming from just behind the end cap of the aisle. She rounded the corner, knife semi concealed floating low at her side.

“Well where did you come from?”

She skidded to a stop. There, a big white unicorn stood at his cart, floating a giggling baby now covered in bleached flour.

Her nerves settled a bit in relief. She hadn't been abducted; she'd just spontaneously teleported into this stallion's cart. Cookie quickly stowed the blade in her hair bun. “Oh, thank goodness. I'm so sorry about that.”

She took the foal with her magic and began trying in vain to brush her off. She was going to need a bath.

“It's no problem,” guffawed the stallion goodnaturedly. “Grocery shopping is always so boring and predictable anyway.”

“She's never done that before. She's still so young. I'm new to this whole parenting thing.”

“Oh, she's your first?”

“Yes.”

“How exciting. Oh, uh, Name's Hondo.” He held out a hoof. “What’s yours?”

“Cookie,” she smiled confidently, reciprocating the shake.

“Nice ta meet ya. And who's this cutie?”

The dirty foal gurgled at him.

“This is Rarity.”

Year Three

“Hold still,” grumbled Cookie, trying to push a toothbrush into her squirming daughter’s mouth.

“Id tiggles,” giggled Rarity, backing away into the counter.

“I know. Just open up; we're almost done.”

She finished, or maybe gave up, on brushing. Then Rarity washed her mouth out and followed her mom to her bedroom.

Cookie tucked her in. Then she checked the window, then the closet, then got down low on the floor to peer under the bed.

“Why do you always do that, mommy?”

“To make sure you're safe.” She tousled Rarity’s mane and then laid down next to her.

“Where's daddy?”

“I'm here,” he huffed, popping into the room from his nightly checking of the house perimeter. He laid down on her other side with a creak, making for a rather tight fit on the bed, especially with his larger than average frame.

“Tell me the one about the Kirins,” demanded Rarity, grinning in anticipation over the top of her sheets.

“Which one about the Kirins?” asked Cookie. She'd told her dozens of stories about Kirins.

“The story about the thief who hid in the cart so she could steal the invention plans.”

Year Five

Cookie scooted into the diner booth next to Rarity. Hondo sat down across from them and immediately picked up the drink menu.

Rarity picked up a crayon with her magic. “Do they even have a movie theater in Ponyville?” she grumbled, scribbling on her disposable foals' menu.

“There are lots of things to do in Ponyville,” replied her mother. “It may be smaller than Canterlot but when you start school you're going to meet… lots of friends.” The words put a knot in her stomach. Going to school was a huge security risk. She hated thinking about it but Hondo had convinced her it was a good idea.

“But does it have a movie theater?” she reiterated without looking up.

“Yes, Rarity.”

Cookie looked around the room once again before nudging her oblivious daughter for attention. “Hey, I have a game for you, Rarity. Sand up on the seat so you can see and look around the diner. Who do you think is the most dangerous pony in this room?”

Rarity blinked in confusion but dropped her crayon and put her forehooves on the backrest to look around. There weren't that many ponies in the diner but she quickly decided that it probably didn't matter anyway.

“Um… You are?” she shrugged.

Cookie rolled her eyes. “Correct,” she admitted. “Excluding your parents, who you already know, who do you think? This is just supposed to be based on watching strangers.”

“Oh,”

Her eyes scanned around the room again, quickly fixating on the mare in the hairnet working in the big kitchen window.

“What about the cook in the kitchen? She probably has lots of knives like you.”

“That's a good guess,” nodded Cookie. “Who else do you see?”

Rarity paused on a unicorn mare sitting alone in the corner with an open book propped up in a little stand. She became momentarily distracted by the spiraling coils in her mane, imagining how they'd look on herself.

“The mare in the corner doesn't look very dangerous,” mumbled Rarity.

“Can you read the title of the book she's reading?”

Rarity's forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Um… Defen… Defensive Spells.”

“That’s right. It's a book that teaches you how to use magic to defend yourself. I don't think most ponies bring little book stands to restaurants like that. It's almost like she wants us to know what she's reading. Why do you think that is?”

“She wants us to know she knows defensive spells?” she guessed.

“Something like that.”

“So is she dangerous?”

Cookie shook her head. “Probably not. If she’s trying that hard to tell us about it it probably means she's unsure of herself and feels scared around other ponies. It's a bluff. Most of all what she's doing is trying to avoid a fight by making herself appear intimidating or knowledgeable about fighting.”

“I wouldn't have thought of that… Oh, what about the stallion sitting over there?” She pointed excitedly. “He's very big.”

“Shh, not so loud,” her mother cautioned. “Did you see his ears?”

“They have little… little-”

“Little nicks and funny bends like they've been hit. He's been in a few fights before. I'd try to avoid making him upset. There's a lot more you can discover about ponies when you look at the details. Just doing that can help you be safer. Scan the environment. Scan the ponies. Find potential danger and make a plan. Sit with your back to a wall. Don’t stay in places with only one exit. Every time you enter a room, every time you walk down the street, this is what your brain should be do-”

“Any drinks to start out with,” interrupted the waitress, appearing at the end of the table.

“Oh, the little one's gonna have a chocolate milk,” replied Cookie genially, patting her daughter on the head. “And, oh, gosh, there's so many choices,” she giggled, looking back at the menu. “How about an ice tea. Does it come with a little lemon wedge on the rim like in the picture?”

“It sure does,”

“Great! Honey?”

“Oh, uh, I'll just have a cider.”

“Alright. I'll be back with those in a minute.”

The waitress drifted away to the kitchen window to pass the order along.

“But chances are good that you're not in any real danger most of the time,” assured Hondo with a dismissive chuckle.

“But you'll never regret playing it safe,” added Cookie. “Plan from ahead, not from behind.”

Year Eight

“Float the knife into the air and point it at the target,” commanded Cookie, pointing at the training dummy. “Push it both forward and backward as hard as you can and then you let go of the tip end. It releases all that coiled energy at once making it shoot forward and stick in the target.”

Rarity bit her lip in heavy concentration, trying not to think about what kind of dress would best compliment the form of the pony-shaped dummy before her.

The glowing knife wobbled in the air and sprang forward with lackluster velocity. The blade bounced off of the flank of the dummy and fell in the grass.

“That’s good,” Cookie encouraged. “You have the right trajectory now. You just need to work on coordinating your release. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can just pick up and throw in quick succession without even thinking about it.”

Rarity dropped to her haunches. “Ugh. I don't want to learn how to throw knives or where to buck ponies, I just want to make pretty clothes.”

“This is important, Rarity,” she argued sternly. “If you're ever in trouble, you need to know what to do.”

“I don't even carry knives so how is this useful?”

“It's a life skill that has other applications and can be used without knives. Improvisation is another important skill we'll get to eventually.”

Year Ten

“I didn't have a party when I got my flourishment,” grunted Cookie. “I don't even know when I got it. I changed into unicorn form one day, looked back and there it was and I moved on. That's normal.”

“That's normal for Kirin,” corrected Hondo, scooting up against her beneath the sheets. “Cutie marks are a real big deal to ponies.”

“I know but the gathering she wants is larger than what I'm comfortable with.”

“It'll be fine,” he insisted. “They're mostly just kids.”

Cookie sighed. “She's far more gregarious and outgoing than I feared. I think that accent she does is just for attention.”

“It’s a persona. She picked it up watching you. She's social but she's still cautious. Ya know, someday she's gonna leave us and just go places and meet ponies and do things we don't even know about.”

She shivered with horror. “I don't want to think about that.”

Year Thirteen

Cookie laid on the bed clutching the brand new foal tightly to her barrel. She was a halfbreed, unlike anything they'd ever seen, but she looked more Kirin than unicorn. In any case, she didn't look like her sister and wouldn't pass as a pony naturally.

Hondo ran a hoof through the girl's curly mane. “She'll be just as beautiful as a pony,” he sighed. “But we'll never see what she really looks like again. We'll never use her true name.”

“We won't need to.”

“Doesn't this make you sad? How can we just never tell her?”

“When she's old enough to understand and be responsible.”

“You’re still saying that about Rarity. She's old enough to know who she really is, don't you think?”

She shook her head gravely. “No. I still think the less she knows, the safer she is. And it's not just about her knowing she's a Kirin, I'll have a lot of explaining to do for myself that day and I don't know how she's going to take it.”

She paused, gestating on the strangeness of their found family dynamic. “This must feel like a lot. I bet you didn't envision all this when we married. I didn't either.”

“Yeah, it does feel that way,” he breathed. “But I’d still do it again and I wouldn't think twice.”

Year Eighteen

Rarity stood alone at the podium, representing her graduating class as valedictorian, now just moments away from finally getting her high school diploma and punching her ticket to design school.

“If success is a soup, discipline is not an ingredient in that soup… Discipline is the pot you cook that soup in. It’s the hooves that prepare it. It’s the idea that stays in your brain that proclaims defiantly, No, I’m not just going to get fast food again tonight.”

The audience laughed.

“You can’t taste the discipline but without it you can’t taste much at all… We stand at the cusp of a new chapter in our lives, let us embrace the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Let us be kind, compassionate, and happy to make a positive impact on the world. Let us strive for excellence in all that we do. And let us never forget the most important non ingredient for success… And now, in the immortal words of Mr. Cloud, It’s diploma time.”

The audience gave a resounding applause but none louder than her parents. The cords swung from Rarity’s neck as she returned to her seat.

Cookie put her head on Hondo’s shoulder, overwhelmed by the moment. “Must be all that princess blood in her,” she murmured.

“No,” he replied. “We did a good job.”