“Do you know, Little Bit?” Cheerilee asked with a grin.
Little Bit looked up and sat straighter in his seat, but otherwise remained silent. The class looked to him expectedly while he seemingly struggled.
She cleared her throat. “Ah, okay, how about you, Pumpkin?”
“Bits can be exchanged for goods and services,” Pumpkin Cake said.
“That’s right,” Cheerilee replied with a nervous glance at him. “This is important because we as ponies value...”
The next thing Bit witnessed was the bell ringing, his classmates shuffling out of the room. He had lost focus. He knew the material, but he struggled to keep his mind in the present. He sighed and slowly wrapped his things up, preparing to end another uneventful day.
“Have you gotten word from your father yet?” Cheerilee called as he was going out the door.
“No,” he said, hanging his head.
##
Little walked down the massive driveway to his massive home. Little opened the massive doors just a little, revealing the massive entryway. He set his little saddlebag on the massive hangar beside the door, then shuffled his little hooves down the massive hallway towards the office.
He knew what was behind the giant doors; he knew it so well his mind’s eye involuntarily viewed it. A large desk backed by a portrait of his grandfather Stinky, with no clutter on it. Rather than the meters-tall stacks of paper you’d see in a cartoon, everything was neatly filed away in the filing cabinets along the sides of the room. And there, taking center stage, would be his father. He would wear a placid expression. He was always so proud of his work.
But he blinked away the image, knowing that wasn’t right. And sure enough, when he cracked open the door to peek inside, there was his sister Diamond sitting center stage with a scowl on her face, working some endless form. The office had been transformed from an orderly working haven to a cluttered procrastination sanctuary in the matter of weeks since she had taken over. She shifted her glare from the paper to the opened door. Her mane was pulled into a bun, having lost the punctilious sheen from when she was a teenager. The emptied mugs of coffee suggested she was in one of those states he needed to avoid.
He pulled the door back closed. But that wouldn’t save him.
“Bit, would you come in here? You gotta find something for me!” Dang. He went back in and she told him to look for some old tax form. He began digging through the old files, which he knew she wouldn’t be bothered to remember the structure of.
“Has Dad sent us any mail yet?” he said.
“Still nothing, Little Bit.” She had said the same thing every day he asked.
“I wish he was here. Money never seemed so bad when he did everything.”
“He put his trust in me to keep this household running,” she said.
“But, like, what if he’s gone for a whole year?” He ran up and stood on a chair facing her. “You can’t keep doing this, Diamond! You never play with me anymore. Since he left, you’ve just been... blegh, a big meanie!”
Diamond Tiara rubbed her eyes and yawned, then walked over and put a forehoof on his shoulder. “Bit... I know a few months can’t be that bad. When I was a kid, and it was just me, it was like this all the time. Dad never spent any time with me... I turned into a brat.” She glanced at a picture frame of her and Filthy Rich together when she was younger, with her beaming at him. “Things have changed since then... since you were born. I’ve needed to learn to be responsible. This is a big step for me.” She frowned and looked into his eyes, then sighed and turned back to her work.
No... he knew that she was just lying. It was all just an excuse to ignore him, because she would rather do her adult things just like his father. He hated that.
##
Little Bit sat in front of his small desk in his bedroom, examining the coins laid out across the table. This was his happy place. He had the most extensive bit collection in all of Ponyville, and it made him proud to count and sort them every evening.
But this evening, it just wasn’t doing it for him. There was something up in his head. The stress of the past few weeks with his father gone had just built and built and now he could hardly even think straight half the time. His eyes were unable to focus on the engravings right in front of his face.
He groaned and slowly got up from his chair, stumbling over to the queen-size bed made just for him by their butler. He hardly ever saw the old stallion, and for good reason; just another reminder. He told him to just back off for a while and give him space. He practically collapsed onto the mattress. Another long day having dragged by, another restless night to look forward to.
He buried his face into the pillow and resolved to count to a thousand. One Celestia. Two Celestia. Three...
...Twenty-seven Celestia damn it, I can’t just keep counting. So boring. What an awful waste of time. I could be contemplating my life.
Who wants to do that?
My father, Filthy Rich, left on a business trip a few weeks ago. Since then I have hardly spoken to anypony. My sister is, like, the one constant I have in this world. It’s not the same for him. He doesn’t hold anypony dear to him. The constant he lives by is the solid assets he accumulates in stocks and bonds. What a life. Getting on by the skin of the backs of those under you.
My grandfather Stinking Rich was different. He saw the value in everything below him. He knew what the world was about, and he set forth to invest in the land and the living to make the world better. I can picture him, even now—though I’ve only ever seen it in the family albums—riding a train into Ponyville at its founding. He would arrive and when he looked out the window he didn’t just see the rustic newly-founded farm village. What he saw was potential, he saw the growth of a massive community and a thriving ecosystem.
I follow him out of the boarding car and watch as he settles a plot of land and builds the richest-looking house on the block. That’s one constant in life, it seems. As time goes by, when the houses around ours grow up into the clean, crisp living arrangements my grandfather knew, our estate grows into something even bigger. It isn’t exactly bustling—it could house a dozen ponies, but we see no need to offer that out as everypony else gets by fine on their own.
My father walks out the door with our butler and a younger version of my sister, and while he’s not looking she has a scowl on her face. Typical Diamond Tiara. She still has her namesake perched upon her head, it seems. First day of school. He stops at the end of the driveway and waves as the butler continues on the path to the school, but she stops and turns around to face him.
“Daddy, why do I have to go there, where all the normal earth ponies are! Can’t you get me a private tutor?” But, while on the outside she seems pesky and annoying, on the inside she’s seething... and scared.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, walking past them and into our home. I don’t know what it looks like at this point in time; I can only imagine it’s about the same but with less of the furnishings that will accumulate over time. I walk past the entryway and into the family room.
There, seated on the couch and caring for me as an infant is my mother. She isn’t Diamond Tiara’s mother, though. She was conceived with some unknown benefactor, arriving as a ‘gift’ nearly a year later. Father had to hire a nanny to take care of her, and as time went by he grew to love her.
Of course, Diamond has to ruin it like she always ruined those nice, precious moments. “NOOO!” she yells. “Why don’t you spend any time with me now?” I sigh and mentally try to push her out of the shot. She disappears, and I blink and try to figure out the infant. I blink and take it’s place in my mother’s lap. This is nice.
“DADDY!” Diamond cries out from somewhere. I grunt in annoyance. Of course she had to get him involved. She always cries and whines to get all the attention.
“NOOOOOOO!” Wait... that doesn’t make any sense. With a gasp, his eyes shot open. He took in the darkness of the room. It was the middle of the night; an uneasy feeling permeated the air. He jumped out of bed and hurried to find his sister. “DADDYYY!!” she called out from somewhere.
He rushed through the house and found her slumped against the wall. A telephone receiver hung from its cord next to her. Her face was painted with anguish. She was trembling slightly. A vacant look filled her eyes.
He rushed forward and embraced her tightly. She broke down sobbing in his hooves.
Minutes passed. Finally, she took a deep breath, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Little Bit sat straighter and held her at an arm’s length from him. “Why are you crying, Diamond Tiara? What happened?”