The frothy-mouthed filly in the mirror had rabies. She was mostly green; oh, not just any shade of green, but a vibrant, creamy lime green. Lemon-yellow spots could be seen speckling her hide, and she had an enormous patch of citrusy sunshine over one eye. A yellow sock covered one leg, which didn’t seem very appealing, not at all. In fact, it rather looked like she’d stepped in pee—at least, when she was teased by her former friends, they said all manner of awful things about her yellowest bits.
Lime Tart brushed her teeth with youthful vigour and checked herself out in the bathroom mirror above the sink. The stool beneath her hind hooves wiggled a bit because she brushed her teeth so hard, and she braced her front hooves against the edge of the sink. This was her morning ritual, her morning affirmation. She had to learn to love the filly in the mirror, which was quite difficult to do. There was so much wrong with her that Lime Tart didn’t know where to begin.
The riotous colour for one. She was green like her Granana was green. Granana stood out, she did. Lime Tart wished that she was a shade of muted pastel, something that would blend in. Perhaps a nice shade of pink… or even a muted shade of seafoam green. All that yellow needed to go as well. It was just too yellow. It was so yellow that it gave her former friends a chance to tease her about pee-related stuff, and she hated it.
Yet, she did her best to learn to love the filly in the mirror, even if her legs were too stubby and her horn too short. Her body was a bit of a disappointment, a bit too pear-shaped. Of course, Lime Tart’s mother was somewhat pear-shaped, narrow in the front and wide in the rear, but her mother was shapely, beautiful, and the object of her father’s endless affections. There was also the fact that Lime Tart was the cause of her mother’s big wide behind. At least, her mother had said that. Lime Tart didn’t have an excuse about why her hindquarters were the way they were, because she was a filly.
It might be because her parents were bakers.
Yeah, that was it.
All those sticky buns had gone right to her buns—which were never sticky because she bathed. Morning baths were the best and off to her left, the enormous claw-footed tub had countless lime-green hairs stuck to the sides. A quick dip in a hot tub, a short soak in the scented water, and then a good rinse under the shower. All in all, a small price to pay to smell nice and be clean. Cute things were clean. Gross, dirty things were not cute, and if Lime Tart couldn’t be pretty like Mom and Granana, at least she could be cute.
Leaning in closer to the frothy-faced filly, she examined her hide. Too shaggy. Yep, too shaggy. She was a hairy little beast, and while not exactly long-haired, her pelt wasn’t exactly short-haired either. In some places, it had to be at least an inch long, which made her fluffy and floofy. It required extra maintenance, more time spent brushing, and she lived in constant fear of The Frizz. Perhaps the only thing scarier than her former friends, The Frizz was perhaps the most frightening lurking horror in all of Equestria. It transformed her into a hideous hairy beast and did so at the most inopportune moments.
Even worse, her father could summon The Frizz. He could rub his wings against his sides, until he loudly crackled with static, and then if he touched her, The Frizz would come out of hiding. She tried to run, but it was of no avail. Her legs? Too stubby. Her father’s legs? Too long. This was all the fault of Grandpops, who was a shaggy Shetlander. Pretty ponies were sleek, smooth, and short-haired. They were also gloriously free of The Frizz.
While the toothbrush went up and down and side to side, she thought about what had happened in the cemetery. It was horrible, but also wonderful, because she and Stargazer had a moment together. Something had changed between them, though she didn’t know what it was. The walk home might have been the greatest walk home ever. It was the best worst day ever, though she feared that there was more trouble still to come. She might get in trouble… or banished. It was a major no-no to use magic to hurt or otherwise threaten somepony. Of course, it was also against the rules to start fights in a graveyard, but the rules always worked out in Treacle’s favour for some reason.
Life just wasn’t fair.
Behind her, the door creaked open and she saw…
“Daddy, get out!” Her words left little foamy flecks of pepperminty toothpaste on the bathroom mirror. “This is my morning me-time!”
But Pigeon Pie, her father, ignored her commands. He strode into the small bathroom, moved behind Lime Tart, and his reflection appeared in the mirror along with her own. Was he going to make faces? Oh no, he was going to make faces. There was that maniacal gleam in his eyes that was a dead giveaway that he was in the mood to make faces. Lime Tart steeled her resolve, though she knew that it would do her no good. Her father’s faces were her undoing every time.
He was grey-blue, with a blue-grey mane, and like her, he was a painted pony. His spots were charcoal-grey mostly, but there were a few spots that were the colour of pale woodsmoke. It was his fault that she was a painted pony, and speckled. Up before dawn, he’d already groomed himself and was perfect, as he tended to be. His mane? Slicked back into a sauve swoop. Every inch of his short, sleek pelt gleamed.
It wasn’t all that long ago that her father used to bathe her, and though she would never say it, there were moments when she missed those times. A tub full of toys. Occasionally, there would be bubbles. Her father got stuck with tub duty so her mother could do all the kitchen prepwork so the bakery could open at the crack of dawn. But she was all grown up now, and she insisted that she bathe herself. Of course, her father kept popping in, just like he did now.
“My little filly is rabid.” A look of deep concern spread over Pigeon Pie’s face.
This was how it started. Lime Tart watched her father’s reflection in the mirror, as well as her own. When he moved, she heard the soft rustle of feathers. The sound was distinctive because her father used grooming oil on his feathers, which left them somewhat slick. He leaned in over the sink, his face now mere inches from her own, and he was almost cheek to cheek. She already felt the need to giggle, but she continued to brush her teeth while she maintained her composure.
“You’re so much like your mother,” he said and there was an abrupt change in the tone of his voice. The silly maniacal gleam in his eyes vanished and there was something else there instead. “Every day you turn out just a little more like her. She spends a lot of time in front of the mirror, just like you.”
Ears pricked, Lime Tart listened to her father.
“A little secret about your mother, Tarty,” he said in a low whisper. “She doesn’t think she’s pretty. Your mother doesn’t truly believe that she’s beautiful. So she spends a lot of time in the bathroom in front of the mirror, trying to convince herself that she’s pretty. She brushes her teeth, and brushes herself, and spends a little too much time fretting over her mane. What she doesn’t know is that she looks her best when she first wakes up in the morning. She’s perfect—”
“Daddy, hush.” She tried to give her father’s reflection a stern look. “I’ve seen Mom when she just wakes up.”
“Tarty, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he said to her, unconcerned by her stern glare. “Now, your mother and I, we’re considered good looking ponies. We are, there’s no getting around that. But it is all an illusion. All magic done in a mirror. Tarty, ponies are going to like you, because you’re pretty. You are. I’m not just saying that ‘cause I’m your father and you’re my pretty, perfect daughter.
“And that’s what worries me, Tarty. Lots of ponies are going to like you for all of the worst reasons, the most shallow of reasons. But, you’ll know who actually loves you, Tarty. They’ll be the ones who will see you at your worst, and still think that you’re pretty.”
Quite unexpectedly, Lime Tart thought of Stargazer, and how he’d looked at her when she was on the ground, trying to cool off in the snow. Drenched, soggy, covered with old dead leaves and bits of twigs. A ferocious flush burned her cheeks, and she suddenly found it hard to breathe. She certainly wasn’t pretty at that moment, no. She looked at her own reflection and then wondered to herself, did Stargazer think that she was pretty?
He was remarkably quiet on this particular issue.
“You know, Tarty, when your mother was just a little older than you are right now, she did a little modeling work. Yes, really.” The reflection of her father’s face bobbed up and down in the mirror. “They took a cute little filly and made her stunning. Her face sold soda pop and soap. But that all came to an end one day when your Grandpops decided that he didn’t like how the photographers and others leered at her, and tried to get her to strike suggestive poses… because that’s the sort of thing that sells soda pop and soap. Grandpops beat the stuffing out of those ponies… all of them… and your mother never got modeling work again. What I am trying to say is, everything that happened messed up how your mother saw herself, and how she saw beauty, and there is an artificialness about it all that I really hope that you don’t get sucked up in.”
He sighed, shook his head from side to side, and then patted Lime Tart with his wing.
“I have to go and prepare the lobby,” he said, and then he backed away. “You’re perfect just the way you are, Tarty… never forget that.”
With her toothbrush dangling from the corner of her mouth, Lime Tart watched as her father’s reflection vanished from the mirror.
Lime Tart bounced down the stairs two at a time (much to the consternation of her mother, who feared things like broken legs) and spilled out into the kitchen. It was gloriously warm and smelled of baked goods. The kitchen was cosy, a bit messy, and Lime Tart’s favourite room. It was long, narrow, and had a little nook off at the far end, where the backdoor happened to be. In this nook they hung their coats, but for Lime Tart, that was the place where she liked to sit and read, so she could be close to her mother while she worked.
Blonde Roux sat at the end of the preparation table, and from the looks of things, she was preparing the soup of the day. Or at least getting all of the prep-work done. A dozen knives chopped up mounds of broccoli, while a half-a-dozen knives cubed up a block of cheese. It was all effortless work on the part of Blonde Roux, and Lime Tart was endlessly fascinated by her mother’s command of the kitchen.
Her mother was beautiful. She was like a golden biscuit fresh out of the oven, a perfect, even golden brownish colour that was more gold than brown. Her mane was the colour of honey and her golden eyes gleamed with merriment. Blonde Roux loved her work, and so it wasn’t work for her, but fun. Lime Tart didn’t quite understand it, but she knew it was important. She and Stargazer would grow up to be astronomers, and so their work wouldn’t seem like work either, if what her mother said was true.
“Ah, Bubelah, you’re up. We need to talk.”
Lime Tart froze in place. Did her mother know? Mothers had a way of knowing. Did she know about the cemetery and what took place there? Had Treacle tattled? Would she be stood in the corner, or banished? Banishment seemed likely. Doing bad things with magic was frowned upon. There was something called a stigma that affected unicorns, and while Lime Tart wasn’t certain what it was, she didn’t want to be cursed by it. Which seemed more likely now, because she’d already trod down the wrong path.
Perhaps she should have told her mother and tattled on herself.
“I like what you’ve done with your mane, Bubelah. All swept-over to the side. That looks good on you. Sit down so we can talk.” She gestured at the wooden chair beside her with her hoof. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Bad news?
Still fearful of trouble, Lime Tart made her legs move. She trudged over to the table, climbed up into the chair, and then almost fell off when she tried to sit down. Her mother didn’t save her, but she knew that her mother would have saved her if she were in real danger. The chair wobbled a bit as she turned herself over and got situated. It was a full-sized chair, for grownups, and she was a filly. So climbing up into the tall chair was quite an accomplishment, and she did it on her own.
It was a long, long way down to the floor from up here.
While she felt quite accomplished, there was the matter that she could barely see over the edge of the table. She didn’t want a box or a few books to sit on—that left her feeling foalish—so she was stuck being a small filly at a large table. It was a stark reminder of just how much she needed to grow, but it was also liberating because she could still remember sitting in her highchair. A memory that was just too embarrassing to recall.
“I got a telegraph yesterday,” Blonde Roux said to her daughter. “Granana and Grandpops won’t be coming for Hearth’s Warming. Granana’s best friend slipped on some icy stairs and broke her leg. She also concussed herself. That poor mare. If only the cheapskate landlord had put a little salt on the stairway.” The busy mare rolled her eyes so hard that her whole head swayed with them.
Lime Tart, while worried and a little disappointed, was also secretly relieved. She had a plan, one that she hadn’t yet sprung on her mother. There was a pony in need of a Hearth’s Warming miracle, and that couldn’t happen if Granana and Grandpops came to visit. Of course, with them no longer coming, she might still be able to spring her plan on her mother, and get her to agree.
“Bubelah, whatever you do, don’t be a cheapskate.” Pointing at the mound of broccoli with a knife, Blonde Roux shook her head. “Look at how much broccoli I put in the soup. Just look. Now I could sell a soup with a lot less broccoli and cheese, but it just wouldn’t be the same. We have a reputation, Bubelah, and while it costs us a little money to maintain it, it’s like advertising. Word of mouth spreads like a room temperature butter.”
With a turn of her head, the little filly glanced in the direction of the broccoli. Less broccoli would be better. She was not a fan of broccoli and cheese soup, because it caused tummy troubles out the wazoo. Literally out of her wazoo. At least, she suspected that was her wazoo, because what else could a wazoo be? It was like a kazoo, but worse, so wazoo. There were times when her mother and Granana spoke a completely different language. At least, it sounded like one.
“Don’t be a bully, and don’t be a cheapskate. Got it.” Distracted, she paused for a moment and tried to stop thinking about her wazoo. “I’m glad that Granana and Grandpops aren’t coming—oh, that came out wrong.”
Much to Lime Tart’s immediate relief, she did not see anger in her mother’s eyes. All of the knives were still chopping, mincing, and cubing. If her mother was angry, her work would have slowed, or stopped completely. She had to fix this little blunder somehow, explain herself. There was a plan to do good at stake, and she found that she wanted to do good to make up for her past mistakes.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you about Hearth’s Warming, but I haven’t, and with Granana and Grandpops not coming, it makes it easier.”
“Why haven’t you asked me?”
“I was worried that you’d get mad if I asked. It would have been a big change in plans. You’ve been mad at me lately.”
“Well, I was.” The knives slowed in their work as Blonde Roux’s face fell. “I’m not mad now. Lime, you really, really hurt me and you didn’t even know it. You hurt your father, too… but he’s better at hiding it than I am.”
Ears down, Lime Tart wondered what she did that hurt her mother. Oh, she had some guesses, but she didn’t know for certain. Her mom was angry about her awful friends, or was. But hurt? Had she said something? Done something? Was it because she left every day to go with Stargazer to visit his father? Sometimes, she didn’t finish her chores, and while that was kind of bad, she felt it would be worse if she wasn’t there for her friend when he needed her.
“How about I tell you about why I was angry, and then you ask me about Hearth’s Warming?”
Peering over the edge of the table at her mother, Lime Tart nodded.
“Bubelah”—her mother’s voice was warm and buttery—“this might come as a shock, but your father is a huge dork. A nerd. I mean, he collects dolls, and has for all of his life. Your father wasn’t always the pony he is now, all confident and smooth. He used to be so nervous that he had a stuttering problem. And you… what you did, what you were doing, it upset him so much that his stuttering came back when we had to have a talk with your teachers. That… that left me angry.”
It was true: her father had a huge collection of dolls, and she rather resented him just a little because she wasn’t allowed to play with the really nice ones. All she could do was look at them in their glass cabinets. Some of the dolls were on display in the bakery lobby, and the customers loved to gawk at them. Dolls of every type, every species, and some of them were as exquisite as they were elegant.
She could not, however, ever recall her father stuttering.
“I was your age when I met your father,” her mother continued. “Well, I sort of knew him from school, but I didn’t know him. Your Granana took me with her to the pharmacy, and I felt so grown up, because she allowed me to go off to the toy aisle all by myself. It wasn’t much of a toy aisle, but the pharmacist was a smart one to have something to keep us foals busy.
“So I turn the corner and there he is. He’s looking at the dolls. And he sees me, and his eyes go all big, and he starts stuttering while he’s trying to explain himself. All of his feathers are sticking out, and he’s all puffed up because he’s so embarrassed.” Here, she paused, and began to fan herself with her right front hoof.
“I had no idea that I’d find my best friend in the toy aisle that day, but I did. We hit it off. And that’s when things took a turn for the worst for me. I was a popular filly in school, or was. Bubelah, your mom was a triple threat. I could sing, I could dance, and I could act. My tap dancing was second-to-none. But after I met your father, my name was Mud. Oy vey. Your father, he’s a weirdo. A nerd. A dork. And because I like him, because I’m with him, I’m a dork by association. Bubelah, your father was bullied. Constantly. Because he liked dolls. And I got bullied, because I liked your father, and I stood up for him. Which made everything worse, let me tell you. Your father wouldn’t fight back, and he had a filly fight for him. Which just made the teasing worse, oy vey. What a ruckus.”
“And you were mad at me because I was turning into a bully—”
“Yes,” Blonde Roux blurted out while she threw both forelegs out wide. “Oh, you have no idea how angry I was with you. I would lay awake at night in bed and itch. Kept me awake and I couldn’t sleep at night. All I could think about was all my old tormentors and how you were turning into one of them. Ooh, I wanted to shake some sense into you.”
For a moment, she thought about telling her mother what happened in the graveyard—but then she didn’t. If nothing was said, then her mother didn’t need to know. She did, however, feel pretty good about standing up for Stargazer, because that made her like her mother, and Lime Tart wanted oh-so-very-much to be like her mother, because her mother was a good pony.
“I became your father’s confidence,” Blonde Roux said matter-of-factly. “And he became my guide to a world that I didn’t know existed. A quiet, subdued world. We came here to Rainbow Falls to raise you, Bubelah, but it meant giving up the museums and art galleries that your father loved. He would show me paintings and sculptures and all kinds of art, and he would tell me that I was the prettiest piece of art in the room.” Her cheeks flushed a dark, reddish brown. “Dolls are art for him, you know. They represent existence. Little versions of ourselves, with clothes, and dollhouses, and all the consumer gewgaws that define our own existences. A doll can represent the era in which it was made, and your father could tell you so much more about all of this if you’ll listen.”
Again, something resonated within Lime Tart. Stargazer had shown her a new world through a telescope, and that’s when he truly became himself. Oh, he wasn’t a motormouth, but he suddenly had so much to say and he would talk about big lofty things that she had trouble comprehending. He underwent an extraordinary transformation and displayed a side of himself that so few got a chance to see. She remembered the night that her cutie mark had appeared, that night with Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Suddenly, she appreciated her father so much more, and she wanted to talk with him.
Her mother, too. She was glad and relieved that she was like her mother. Horn a-glowing, her mother put down her knives, fetched up a scraper, then began scraping all of the finely-minced broccoli off of the edge of the table and into an enormous stainless steel mixing bowl. She understood her mother’s anger and was thankful that her mother didn’t take her temper out on her. It dawned on her that she had extraordinarily good parents, and she was lucky to have them.
Stargazer had lost his father and now, she began to understand that loss.
“So how about you, Bubelah. What did you want to ask?”
For perhaps the first time ever in her life, Lime Tart wondered what ‘Bubelah’ meant and why her mother called her that. A smile showed itself unawares, the sort of smile that could only come from a habitual tooth-brusher. Why, Lime Tart was almost overcome with the warm fuzzies, which left her tingly all over. She decided it was best to just spit it out, to say it and hold nothing back.
She sat up a little straighter, a little taller, and said, “I wanted to spend Hearth’s Warming with Stargazer, his mom, and his baby sister. Not just me, but all of us. Together.”
Across the table, Blonde Roux’s face wrinkled with seriousness. “Bubelah, heart’s dearest, you can’t just invite yourself like that and—”
“Why not?” asked Lime Tart, who was surprised by the lack of her own anger. “We have to invite ourselves to make the Hearth’s Warming miracle happen. Stargazer is hurting. He goes out to the cemetery every day to talk to his dad. This is going to be their first holiday without him. What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t help?”
“Bubelah, this is a hard time for them,” her mother said while the furrows above her eyes grew ever-deeper. “I don’t know if we should intrude.”
“We should do more than intrude,” Lime Tart said to her mother. “We should invade. With food. And drinks. And stuff. Because Stargazer’s mother can’t leave her house and I’ve been over there and they don’t even have any decorations.”
Blonde Roux’s lips pressed tight together until her mouth almost vanished. It was now a tight little line, all shrunken in such a way that it made her nostrils look huge. It was the sort of face that she made when Lime Tart came home from school with a note from her teacher—and not a good note, either. Now that she’d brought this up, she was determined to do it. Somehow saying it had steeled her resolve to make it happen. Even if she had to do it alone, she would.
“Bubelah, you’re young. You don’t understand these things. There are social graces to think of and so much more. I really don’t know if we should. This is a very delicate issue. We could end up hurting instead of helping.”
“You were the one to help Stargazer’s mother,” Lime Tart said in response. “All that stuff you do to make sure she’s getting what she needs. To be her voice ‘cause she can’t complain. You make sure that she has food in the house, and firewood, and you make the neighbors all work together so she doesn’t do without. She needs a Hearth’s Warming, and if we don’t do it, who will?”
“Bubelah, I really don’t know about this. What makes you so sure that we could help?”
“Because we’re the only ponies who can,” she replied with great confidence. “Stargazer lost his father and I thought that maybe since I still have mine that maybe I should share mine with him. In school, we learned that Hearth’s Warming is all about sharing what we have with others and—”
Lime Tart yelped when she was suddenly yanked out of her chair. Up she was lifted with dizzying speed, and she almost somersaulted over the table. She could not ever recall moving at this terrific speed, but before she could think too much about it, she slammed into her mother so hard that it almost knocked the wind out of her. Before she could gasp, before she could recover, her mother’s forelegs were wrapped tight around her, and her mother began to squeeze.
Overstimulated, overwhelmed, it took several long seconds to understand what was happening. Her mother was crying; Lime Tart could feel the tears soaking into her pelt. Terrible sobs wracked her mother’s body, and being the little filly that she was, Lime Tart felt just awful for causing her mother to cry. She wasn’t sure if she’d live to regret it either, because her mother was making the best effort possible to squeeze out all of Lime Tart’s squishy bits.
“Mama, I am a tiny and small doll, be careful,” she wheezed as she was smothered.
It occurred to her that ‘small’ and ‘doll’ rhymed with each other when maybe they shouldn’t. What a strange thing to think about when one was crushed almost to death by their own mother, but these things happened and made no sense. With a dignity that existed well-beyond her age, Lime Tart resigned herself to her terrible fate, smothered by her mother. There were worse fates, but this one was deserved. She’d brought it upon herself.
“We don’t have much time,” Blonde Roux said to her daughter in a raspy whisper. “I was going to send over a care package the day before. Just treats and stuff. But if we’re all going to go, we’ll need a meal. Something enough for all of us. I already have some of it made, but we’ll need more. You’ll have to help me, Bubelah. Really help me… not just sit and read a book help me. And we’ll have to go to the market later and see if we can find any decorations. We have a lot of work to do. Miracles are all about hard work.”
“I can help, but I still hafta go to the cemetery later with Stargazer. He can’t go alone.”
Lime Tart made it a point not to say why.
“We have a lot of work to do, Bubelah. We must get started right away!”