//------------------------------//
// Part 3:  Photographs 
// Story: A Million Miles from Home 
// by TooShyShy 
//------------------------------//

A week after her visit to Wilted Lily, Lyra found herself standing outside a cheap coffee shop.  Next door was the Equestrian Society of Obscure History and Scientific Miracles.

She noted how small and innocuous the place appeared despite its grand name.  Very few ponies took an active interest in history and science, obscure or otherwise.

Lyra had spent most of that week casing out the place.  It wasn't the smoothest or the most guarded operation in town by any means.  No security guards, no cameras, no motion detectors.  Lyra was surprised they didn't just leave the place unlocked at night.

Lyra was wearing a large sun hat and a particularly unattractive long dress.  She kept raising a pocket watch to her eyes and glancing around impatiently.

After a few moments, the door of the history and science building opened.  A mare with a pierced nose and a bored expression stepped out onto the sidewalk.  She looked both ways to make sure there were no carts coming, then pulled out her phone and crossed the street.  In a minute the mare had disappeared into a clothing shop.

Lyra waited two minutes.  When nopony else emerged, she hurriedly ducked into the alleyway.  She stripped off the dress she was wearing and stuffed it into her duffel bag.  Underneath the dress was a pair of artistically stained overalls.  She then pulled off the sun hat to reveal a backwards baseball cap.  Lyra tossed the sun hat aside and emerged from the darkness of the alleyway.  She hurried into the history and science building.

Risky, but a flawless execution.  Anypony walking by would have glimpsed an irritated mare waiting outside a coffee shop.  Anypony who happened to glance her way as she entered the building would have seen a mare in a baseball cap carrying a duffel bag that read “Laundry”.  Most importantly, nopony was going to report having seen Lyra Heartstrings enter a building she'd been preemptively banned from.

The front desk was empty, but there were two Earth pony mares bringing in boxes from a side door.  They didn't seem to notice Lyra as she casually slipped behind the desk and grabbed one of the key cards.

“Bucking boxes,” grunted one of the mares.

Lyra pulled out her phone and pretended to take an interest in it.  The two mares passed the front desk spewing muttered profanity.  They each gave Lyra a vague but polite nod as they struggled with the boxes.  Lyra lifted her bored eyes from her phone, shrugged disinterestedly, then returned her attention to the screen.  She didn't lift her eyes again until both mares had disappeared into the back room with the boxes.

Once the mares were gone, Lyra made a show of tucking her phone into her pocket.  She could hear hoofsteps that suggested somepony else was coming, but she didn't pause.  Lyra casually left the front desk.  She used the key card to access a door marked “Historians Only”.

With their nonexistent security, it was rather surprising the place hadn't been bombarded by thefts in the last week alone.  In truth, anything of significant value was either kept in a heavily locked room loaded down with security spells or had been donated to their much larger “branch” in Canterlot.  Fortunately, Lyra wasn't looking for anything that required security measures.

The whimsically named “Historians Only” room seemed to be a mix between a physical catalog of historical events and a makeshift break room.  There were empty coffee cups stacked on top of the file cabinets and a mini fridge stuffed into one corner of the room.  Newspaper clippings—mostly recent—were taped all over the walls.

Lyra opened the fridge and pulled out an unopened bottle of lemonade.  She popped the cap with her hoof and took a long swig of it.  Refreshed, Lyra wandered over to a particularly crowded wall of newspaper clippings.

The clippings were all from the past ten years.  Lyra grinned when she saw her name more than once.  She doubted the pony who'd collected these was a fan, but she was happy somepony thought she was worth documenting.  Granted, most of the clippings were basically the same:  a sarcastic header, an ill-conceived poke at Lyra's mental stability, and a single dry takeaway from the whole matter.

To ponies in the news industry and a large amount of the public, Lyra Heartstrings was the infamous “Liar Lyra”, the pony who insisted on the existence of a town that nopony else had ever heard of and could not be found on any map.

“Liar Lyra,” Lyra said aloud.

She liked the name.  It had a certain ring to it despite its cruelty.

Lyra opened one of the file cabinets.  The date on the cabinet specified ten years preceding this moment.  It was filled with documents, photographs, and various newspaper clippings.  There was no real system to how things were filed, but Lyra found what she was looking for in minutes.  She pulled out a single photograph and examined it.

The photograph was of two mares standing in front of a well.  The mare on the left—an Earth pony—was leaning on a shovel.  The mare had pushed her stetson back and was wiping her brow with her other hoof.  The mare on the right—seemingly a unicorn—had her mane tied back and was holding an open book with her magic.

Lyra turned the photograph over and read the badly-written note on the back:  August 1st (year illegible), Princess (name illegible) and Apple (second half of name illegible) pose in front of the Starswirl the (illegible) Memorial Well.  

This was it.  It was exactly as the letter had described, right down to the note.  Lyra tucked the photograph into her pocket.  She casually left the room, a bored look on her face.

The mare with the pierced eyebrow was back at the desk.  She didn't look up from her phone as Lyra passed, although she did vaguely register Lyra's existence.  In the back of her mind, she noted another employee heading out for a long coffee or shopping break before closing time.

Lyra tossed the empty lemonade bottle into a trashcan by the door, then stepped out of the building.  Still acting the part of the disillusioned employee, she trotted next door to the coffee shop for a latte and a danish.  Lyra took her time eating and drinking, her eyes focused on the hustle and bustle outside of the window.  After she had paid and left, she disappeared back into the alleyway and returned without her baseball cap and overalls.  She was now wearing a skirt that hid her Cutie Mark.

Evening was drawing near and the city was coming alive to some extent.  The sidewalk was steadily crowding with ponies who'd gotten off work.  It took Lyra a few minutes to hail a cab.

Lyra had the cab driver drop her off at an apartment building a mile or so away from her own.   Next door was an aggressively modern-looking house with a sign outside that read “Home for Lost Ponies”.  Unlike Wilted Lily's orphanage-turned-residence, this place seemed to be fulfilling its original purpose tenfold.  The outside was deserted, but the inside was bustling with activity.

Lyra emptied the contents of the duffel bag—the dress, the overalls, and the baseball cap—into a clothing donation bin to the side of the building.  She then started off on the long journey back to her own apartment building.

Upon arriving home, Lyra pulled the photograph from her duffel bag and put it in her suitcase.  She had taken to sliding the suitcase under the bed before she went to sleep.  Along with the photograph, it also contained something of perhaps more importance:  every single page from An Objective History of Equestria: Volume 3 that mentioned Ponyville.  The pages had been neatly torn out using magic, therefore the book showed no actual signs of injury.  They had been stapled together and neatly placed in the suitcase like a pamphlet.

Lyra took The Wizard of Canterlot from her suitcase.  She opened it and flipped to the start of Chapter 6.  She had fond memories of this book from her foalhood.  Lyra's mother had read it to her almost every night.  Chapter 6 was of special importance to her, as it introduced the wizard and started off his remarkable journey towards defeating the evil queen.  She had always loved that chapter.

Lyra turned the page to reveal a photograph she had placed in the book.  It was a color photograph of a smiling mare leaning on a counter and reading a cookbook.  She didn't seem to notice somepony was taking a picture of her, although she had a faint smile on her face.

“Bon-Bon,” Lyra whispered.

She ran a hoof across the photograph.  Her eyes burned with tears.