Lost Summer

Rarity woke up with intense anxiety mixed with giddiness. The Kirin were waiting just down in the valley. She'd be there in maybe a couple of hours. She ate breakfast despite her eagerness to just pack up and go.

Once her bag was reassembled Rarity changed into her Kirin form thinking that it would be most appropriate for the moment. She set off at a grueling pace, eager to finally see the end of her journey and meet her family.

One hour of heavy breathing passed, then another. She should have been there by now she thought… or maybe not. That was just a guess based on the constellation of lights she'd seen on the ground last night. Either way she was only growing more anxious with every step she took.

Just as she thought she was going to need to climb another tree to reassess her path, the forest began to open up. The trees were ending as a clearing began to materialize. Her eyes widened as she saw edifices, a plethora of buildings. This was it; she'd found it.

Rarity stopped near the edge of the forest, still some distance away from the edge of the obscured town. From cover she scouted out the situation, peering through the monocular and scanning cautiously across the town. It didn't take long for her to notice something very strange was afoot. There were rows of cottages built of stone and wood but their doors were left open or their roofs were sagging. There were tall weeds growing in the empty streets and rotting carts discarded by the wayside. There were no Kirin in sight. There was no anyone in sight. The entire city was deathly silent and looked as if it had been abandoned for some years.

She frowned in dismay as she put the monocular away. She stayed in place for several moments, waiting for something to move or someone to appear but the place was just as it looked, a ghost town.

Hearing nothing but the light breeze rustling through the trees, she finally decided to venture out of cover and look around.

She was certain she had seen the telltale lights of civilization last night in the dark but they weren't from this place. Was this really Sky's Edge? What happened here?

Rarity’s hoofsteps were muffled on the stone Street as she trod upon moss and grass clumps sprouting through the grout cracks. She came to a house with an overgrown garden and an ominously yawning front door.

Dirt and leaves from seasons past had blown into the entryway. Inside there was still a kitchen table and some furniture but much of everything else looked like it had been moved or looted. There were empty cupboards and drawers left hanging open.

“Well, this whole venture is looking a bit anticlimactic,” she sighed, turning back to the door.

She continued to wander outside where a faded wooden store sign creaked in the wind. There was a cobblestone well in the center of what probably used to be a bustling marketplace. Rarity stuck her head over the side to peek in. She could see a dark reflection below so she lowered the bucket inside by rope. What she pulled up looked surprisingly refreshing. One taste confirmed the water was good. She refilled her cantine, drank with wild abandon and then refilled it again and screwed the lid back on.

She stopped suddenly to listen as a new sound met her ears. It sounded almost mechanical, a faint rhythmic thumping like a metal blade hitting earth.

Rarity’s eyes boggled around, trying to hone in on the source of the sound. She noticed the looming but silent castle in the distance with gates open and no flags flying. She left the plaza for a residential area as the thumping became louder. Above the top of a little fence she could see a floating implement swinging up and down to break the soil. As she got closer, she saw someone there, a white Kirin with a chartreuse mane facing away and wielding a hoe to till a garden.

Her heart began to beat faster as she hurried toward the mysterious gardener. She came up to the fence and called out to her.

“Um, excuse me? Is this Sky's Edge?”

The hoe paused abruptly in the air. The mare turned around stiffly to face her. Rarity saw that she was elderly and her expression was one of shocked bewilderment. The old mare looked her up and down before finally answering.

“Yeah, this is Sky's Edge… Least it used to be. How do you not know that?”

Rarity mouthed silently as her train of thought faltered. Getting answers would be pretty difficult without ultimately divulging her identity. “Oh I'm, I'm from Equestria.”

“Equestria? You mean… from out there?” She gestured to the forest. “Are you one of the deserters come back?”

“Er, no.”

“You're too old to have been born out there. Who are you?”

“My name is Summer Storm.”

The old mare creased her brow and shook her head slowly in disbelief. “Summer Storm? No… The princess? The one who disappeared?”

“Yes… I suppose. I was coming back to see my family. Do you know where they are?”

She let the tool fall to the ground. “You really don't know anything. Yeah, I know where they are… They're dead… Sorry.”

Rarity's face fell. “They're dead?

“Been dead seventeen, eighteen years,” she sighed.

“How?”

“Executed after the coup.”

“Oh…” Rarity felt a sudden and profound emptiness. She'd come all this way and at the end there was nothing. No town. No Kirin. No family.

“What happened here?”

“You should just come in and sit. It's not really a conversation you can have over a garden fence.” She turned away, leaving her work half done.

Rarity cast a look over her withers at the vacant city before teleporting behind her. She followed her into the kitchen of her simple cottage and set her pack on the floor.

“Tea?”

“Oh, just water for me, thank you” replied Rarity, producing her cantine and shaking it in the air. She sat down at the table.

“If there was a coup then who's in charge here?” she began, still confused at the disrepair and desolation that surrounded them.

“Well I like to think I am,” answered the old mare, pouring herself a cup. “But really Queen Equinox is.”

“Queen Equinox…” Rarity murmured absently. She racked her brain but was unable to recall seeing the name in the journal. Then again, her mother probably didn't need a name tree for her own clan. “Is she an Ice Kirin?”

“Yep. Typical, I know.”

“How is it a coup if someone from another clan did it?”

“It's not. You asked me who's in charge. That's who's in charge. She took over and united the three clans years after the Lightning Clan’s military coup that killed the royals. That was staged by the head general of the Lightning Clan. He's dead too.”

“Oh… I see. This is rather complicated and sordid, isn't it?”

“Everything always is. When was the last time you were here?”

“My entire life ago.”

“Lot can happen in twenty-five whatever years.”

Rarity swallowed more water. “Where did all the Lightning Kirin go?”

“I think most of them relocated to the other two clans when they merged. That was what the queen ordered. Anyone who tried to stay in Sky's Edge risked being jailed or killed. The rest who refused to relocate and live amongst the other clans just packed up and fled into the woods and never returned as far as I know.”

“So you're the only one who lives out here?”

“Yep.”

Rarity shrugged. “How did that come about if they rounded up everyone?”

“I hid, stayed behind alone, ready to face the consequences but nothing ever happened. They know I'm here. Guess they figure one sad, old crone can't start any trouble anyway so why bother. I still see soldiers out here sometimes keeping tabs on me or checking the town to make sure it's still dead.”

“So I'm in danger just by staying here,” posed Rarity.

“Yep. But you're also probably in danger with the rest of the Kirin, especially if they figure out who you are. Best to go back to that Equestria you came from.”

“I was in danger there too. That's the only reason I know about this place at all and why I came out here. I thought I could resolve the issue somehow and find out who I am.”

“You must be crazy,” scoffed the old mare. “I don't know how you’re gonna do any of that but If you're decided on staying in Sky's Edge, it would be best if you holed up in some abandoned house across town. You don't know me and I don't even know you're here.”

“I understand… I'm sorry, what was your name?”

“Fizzle. If you wanna see their graves, I know where they are.”

Rarity blinked, still trying to track her peculiar way of conversing which sometimes sounded like a blunt flight of ideas. Maybe she'd always been like that or maybe it was just a symptom of the isolation. “Oh, okay,” she blurted.

Fizzle got up to leave, apparently deciding that they were going right then. Rarity put her pack back on and followed her to the door. She peeked into another room as she passed and saw an elaborate loom with a half finished blanket on it. On the floor were baskets of powdered dyes and pigments.

“Oh, you have a loom,” exclaimed Rarity. “I love textiles. You don't have sheep or… alpacas though do you?”

“Nope. I spin my own yarn from tree fibers.”

Rarity screwed up her face. “Is it soft?”

“Just as soft if you do it right.”

“That's very interesting; I'd like to see that.”

“Your parents,” she interrupted. “Typically they'd be in the royal family tomb but you don't make the rules anymore once you're kicked out of the castle so they're just in the regular graveyard which honestly they were lucky to get, all things considered.”

“If no one else is here, why don't you just live in the castle?” mused Rarity, pausing to look behind at the imposing fortress.

“‘Cuz that's not my home,” she grunted.

They walked in the opposite direction down the unkempt avenue, their hoof steps echoing.

“How did you disappear all those years ago?” asked Fizzle. “I remember seeing reward posters everywhere but you never turned up anywhere. It was a real mystery. No one ever figured out what happened or why.”

“Well I was kidnapped by an ice spy who defected and ended up raising me as a pony in Equestria. I didn't know we were even Kirin until last week. All of this Kirin business is completely new to me outside of bedtime stories.”

“An ice Kirin just decided to raise you? Never would have guessed that’s how things would end.”

“I’m still grappling with it myself.” Her eyes fixed on a young tree growing right up through a crack in the walk and displacing the stones. “Don't you get lonely living out here?”

“Yes,” grunted Fizzle.

“Do you not have any family?”

Her expression darkened. “I did… Maybe I still do somewhere.”

“They left then?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, not even knowing, that must be terrible. Could they all just be living in the forest somewhere? Or maybe they went to live in Equestria in hiding?”

“Could be. I just… hope they're safe.”

“This Queen Equinox must not have many fans if so many would rather flee their homeland than live under her.”

“Nothing really new about that. Terrible like all the rest of them. Having power over every clan doesn't change much except now we all get to hate one leader together instead of three different ones. Maybe that's what she means by unity… This is it.” She pointed ahead as they came upon a low fence which separated them from a yard of simple stone markers bobbing in a sea of wild, knee-high grass.

They teleported inside and Fizzle led her down an unremarkable row to an unremarkable spot.

“I think this is them. Yep,” she confirmed, teasing the weeds away to reveal one of a pair of shattered stone bases and toppled over markers showing the barely legible names she recognized from the journal.

“Been vandalized. If you go in the castle you'll see more of the same. There was a brief time of anarchy during the transition and a lot of Lightning Kirin had a lot to say about the previous generations of rulership.”

Rarity frowned as she gestated on the defaced names of her parents on the slabs. She never knew them, had little idea who they were but the sight was still tragically disappointing. She'd foolishly projected so much hope onto this moment only to have it be so disillusioning. Her mother was right and if she hadn't been kidnapped she might just have her own broken grave marker right next to theirs.

“I'll uh… leave you. You know where I am but the less time you spend wandering around in the open out here the better. You never know when soldiers will pop in.”

Rarity sat on her haunches and sighed as she watched Fizzle amble away slowly. She turned back to the graves once she was out of sight and ran a hoof over the coarse granite of her first mother's marker.

“I can't say for certain what your legacy was and maybe I'm happier never knowing but judging by your grave it doesn't look like it was a good one. I might not have much in common with you at all and I might even have been a disappointment to you. I don't really know what to say. It's not like I can change anything about the situation.”

She nodded at her own words. Even though this was deeply upsetting, it wasn't her fault and there was nothing that she could fix about it. It was already over, long over. She wanted to feel loved and accepted but she already had that from Cookie and Hondo and that would just have to be enough.

But with one affair settled, another arose: If her royal parents weren't looking for her and Sky's Edge was abandoned and the Lightning Clan's government had been razed to the ground then who had tried to kidnap her and why?