Chapter 3
Despite the town ponies’ first interactions with Syra, she soon became not only accepted in town, but actually quite popular. Pinkie Pie even threw her a party, although that wasn’t exactly surprising. Pinkie Pie threw parties for every reason, for every occasion and sometimes just because she felt like it.
Syra found herself up to her fins in ponies wanting to ask her questions about what it was like being a sea pony, not understanding that the sea pony mare had spent most of her life as a unicorn. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t exactly the most mobile of ponies, spending most of her day confined to a bucket of water, so she wasn’t exactly able to avoid it.
Lyra wasn’t exactly thrilled by this, not a single pony in town had asked her how she was, and despite originally getting off quite well with Syra, she had grown to resent her. She sat on the sofa at home reading over her textbooks for university, alone, with the lights dimmed. To be perfectly honest, she wasn’t actually paying the books any attention, she was far too annoyed to concentrate on them. She sneezed loudly; disgusting herself upon discovering that she’d covered the pages of her book in phlegm, there went any chance of selling the book when she was done with it.
Lyra’s head was pounding, her nose was stuffy, and her body ached. Now was a terrible time to be getting a cold. She sneezed again, loathing the world for its twisted sense of humour.
“Lyra! You sound terrible!” Bon Bon said as she trotted in from the other room, she sat down next to her friend and held her foreleg against Lyra’s head. “You’re burning up! We should take you to see Doctor Nightly!”
“Bon Bon, please!” Lyra said with a sniffle. “I’m fine, it’s just a cold, besides, Nightly had far more important things to be doing.”
Bon Bon frowned, but realised that Lyra had something of a point. Doctor Nightly had shut himself up in the Ponyville Clinic and hadn’t come out for days. His assistants, Nurse Redheart and Nurse Tenderheart took over much of the day to day operations of the clinic while Doctor Nightly researched a way to put Lyra and Syra back together.
Lyra couldn’t wait; Syra had inherited her magical abilities, leaving Lyra with nothing more than a horn unable to perform its function, though she wasn’t impolite enough to voice her frustrations.
“Are you okay?” Bon Bon asked as she huddled up next to Lyra, she placed her foreleg around her shoulder, trying to comfort her friend.
“I just want everything to go back to normal,” Lyra said.
...
“I appreciate this Pinkie Pie,” Syra said as she looked back at the pink party pony that was pushing the bucket she resided in along the street.
“No problem!” Pinkie Pie said as she pushed the bucket to the edge of the river bank, tipping it over and causing Syra to tumble into the river.
“I hate that bucket!” Syra said staring at it intensely.
“Why don’t you just live in the river?” Pinkie Pie asked as she sat down on the riverbank.
“Bon Bon would go mad if I did that, Doctor Nightly wants her keeping a close eye on me and Lyra, which means I’m stuck in that bucket for most of the day,” Syra explained.
“Well isn’t she just a grumpy gator!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed louder than necessary. “I should throw her a party to get her to lighten up!”
“I don’t think Lyra and Bon Bon would be up for it...” Syra began but was quickly interrupted by Pinkie Pie, who had already drowned her out with excited talking about her next party. Syra submerged her head under the water and let Pinkie Pie ramble.
She felt at peace as she lie under the water. She watched Pinkie Pie’s shimmering image through the water as she rambled on to herself about who knows what. Pinkie Pie was nice and all, but Syra would have much preferred the company of Bon Bon. Syra had been keeping her distance, she was fully aware that Lyra had started to resent her for becoming so popular. In truth, Syra couldn’t blame her for it, she would have been feeling the exact same feelings were she Lyra, and Lyra was Syra.
Bon Bon was pretty much the only pony who appreciated Lyra for anything... Everypony was polite to her, but other than that, everypony else seemed to pay her no mind. Lyra had always been rather quiet and unassuming; perhaps, this was the reason why she had so much trouble finding work. She just wasn’t what everypony was looking for.
Syra felt incredibly guilty for coming along and making it harder for her. She closed her eyes and let out a small sigh. She reopened them to discover that Pinkie Pie had stuck her head into the water and had proceeded to make silly faces at her, Syra jumped and instinctively rose to the surface, she came up quicker than she anticipated, causing her gills to fill with air. She dropped them back down quickly and catching her breath.
“Pinkie Pie... please don’t do that again,” Syra said as she tried to get her breathing under control.
“Hehe... oopsie!” Pinkie Pie said, covering her mouth with a hoof while she giggled.
Syra sighed again. “Could you fill up my bucket please?”
...
Lyra sneezed again and then again after that. Her headache had intensified from the pressure of the sneeze. She would have hated the experience all together, were Bon Bon not here to comfort her.
“You probably shouldn’t be so close to me, I don’t want to give you my cold!” Lyra said.
“I’ll be fine,” Bon Bon said.
Lyra smiled at Bon Bon brightly, she loved this mare, she wanted to tell her more than anything else in the world, but she couldn’t. The last thing Lyra wanted to do was make things complicated, lest she have to leave. What if Bon Bon didn’t feel the same way? Then where would she be?
Lyra thought back to when she met Bon Bon, it was more than five years ago when Lyra had been thrown out of her parents’ home in Canterlot and had to live on her own. There she was, alone wandering through the streets of Canterlot with an almost empty saddlebag, containing her lyre, an instrument that she could no longer play without the precision of magic and without a single penny to her name, and that was when she saw her.
Bon Bon had been in Canterlot delivering a large shipment of candy to a sweet shop. That day, the mare that would become her best friend and the secret love of her life was just the candy maker. Lyra had become smitten with her instantly, but had failed to work up the courage to talk to her. She trotted away, leaving Lyra feeling lonely and depressed; she had sat down on a park bench and sat there as it started to rain, not caring in the slightest that the downpour was falling on her.
“Excuse me?” Bon Bon had said, Lyra remembered looking up and finding the candy maker standing in front of her, wearing an umbrella large enough for two on her back, which she had promptly offered Lyra a spot under. She had taken it without a second thought, and so it began the wonderful friendship between the deadbeat musician and the candy maker.
“Are you getting hungry?” Bon Bon asked. “I can start dinner if you’re hungry?”
Lyra snapped out of her daydream and nodded her head in affirmation. Bon Bon gave her a smile and rose to her hooves, trotting into the kitchen to begin cooking. Within moments, wonderful smells began to waft from the kitchen, and while Lyra had no idea what she was making, she could already tell it was going to be delicious.
Lyra got up from her resting place on the sofa, her head spiked in pain, and she felt slightly dizzy. She figured that she had just gotten up too quickly, she had been sitting for the last several hours after all, and the fact that she had a cold certainly didn’t help.
Lyra’s vision began to blur and she stumbled forward as she walked. No, something was wrong and she could certainly tell it. The room began to spin out of control and Lyra collapsed, crashing down hard on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“Lyra?” Bon Bon cried from the kitchen, she got no response. She trotted back into the room, seeing Lyra lying motionless on the floor.
“Lyra?” she asked again, trying to shake her friend awake, she would receive no response.
“LYRA!”