Starlight

by Sun Aura

Apples

The train ride from Manehattan to wherever they were going had been a long one. The whole week had been long. It wasn’t every day that your parents get arrested and you get adopted by a pony you barely know. The busy cities she was used to seeing had been replaced with dense forests and mountains, and were now open fields. They used the express train, so instead of arriving the next morning they would be in town this late afternoon.

“You’re sure there’s nopony?” Starlight asked. “Nopny at all?”

“I’m sorry sugarcbe,” the mare across from her replied. “It’s been a thousand years, and all the names you gave were criminals too so-“

“It’s alright,” she sighed. “I knew what they were doing, so it’s to be expected. And it bothers me every time I think about something they taught me about that life.”

“At least you’re talking more,” the mare grinned.

“I know you’re not going to do anything if I disagree or go on too long,” she rubbed the scar on her ear; It still hurt sometimes. She looked up to see the mare’s grin had dropped. “I’m sorry Miss Applejack. I’m just, I guess bitter is the word. As terrible as Mama and Papa are, everything they had told me was true. Except for the one thing I could have used to save myself. I had to wait for a bunch of coincidences. I keep wondering what would have happened if you didn’t show up that day, or if they had decided a different target, or if I hadn’t gotten lost. And I keep wondering about if I had realized that one lie.”

“I can’t tell you, but what happened happened, and we get to make the most of it.”

“I’m just… it’s like… I can’t even think of a word!”

“Nervicited?”

“I don’t know how, but that makes sense.”

“Well we’re coming up on the town now, so you might want to start grabbing your stuff.”

Starlight paid no mind to the idea of cleaning up, there was only a book out of the bag anyway. She put her hooves on the window sill and her face to the glass. The town was small. On one side she could see a field and another had what looked like endless trees. Most buildings were similar, but there were a few tall buildings. There was large a farm off in the distance, probably the one Miss Applejack owned.

The two things she took note of was outside of the town. She could see Canterlot from here, and she expected she could see it from anywhere in the town. The other thing was a building that was completely out of place. It was huge, and the way the sun gleamed off it led her to believe the building was made of crystal. She bet there was a lot of expensive stuff in there.

She frowned at that. It was her parent’s way of thinking. She was not going to let herself follow their hoofsteps.
As the train came to the stop, she grabbed her bag and followed Applejack onto the platform. A fair amount of ponies were getting off while even more got on. Even then, it was nowhere near as crowded the other stations she’d been to.

“So now are you going to tell me why you spent extra time up there?” asked a voice.

Starlight looked up past Applejack to the mare who spoke. Her accent wasn’t as strong as Applejack’s was, but it was still strongly southern. The mare’s red mane was braided over her shoulder, held in place with pink ribbons. Somehow, the colors went well with her yellow coat. She was smaller than Applejack, but looked just as muscular.

“Well, you see, I uh…” Applejack was stammering.

“You didn’t tell her about me, did you?” Starlight asked, coming up to her side.
The other mare stared at the two of them while Applejack continued trying to explain. It didn’t seem to be helping. In the end, the yellow mare just sat back and brought her hoof up to her face.

“Mac’s going to have a field day with this,” she groaned. “How do you leave for the weekend, then come back a week later with a foal?”

“I’m sorry, Miss,” Starlight began. Her voice began wavering. “I’d go somewhere else, but there really isn’t anywhere else.”

Starlight stared down, not meeting the mare’s eyes anymore. She wasn’t sure about much anymore, but now she was sure she shouldn’t be here. Applejack was still trying to explain.

“Come on,” the mare sighed. “We should get home before dark. My name’s Applebloom, by the way.”

“I-I’m Starlight,” she replied.

The three of them walked down the road around town. She expected it led to the farm she saw from the train. She remembered when her mama took her to the park in Manehattan; she thought that it was the biggest amount of plants and open space she would see, yet as they reached the top of a smaller hill, she just stopped.

The trees seemed to go on and on, she saw no end to them. The closest were normal forests, denser and wilder than those that they passed on the train. Further on the trees were more spaced out, and they were different than the those of the forest.

As they got closer to these new trees, she saw they had flowers on them. They were white and a bit familiar. It only took a turn of her head to remember where she saw them.

“These are Apple trees, right?” Starlight asked.

“You catch on quick,” Applejack chuckled. “You’re going to get to see all these trees fill up with apples over the summer.”

“There wasn’t much to ‘catch on’ to,” she admitted. “Part of Miss Applebloom’s Cutie Mark is the flower up there. What’s the hammer for though?”

“Didn’t you start asking stuff like that at her age?” Applejack teased the other mare.

“I was a bit older,” Applebloom retorted. “And the hammer is because I’m a creator, a builder. It comes in handy with how often things need rebuilt around here.”

“Things need rebuilt that often?” Starlight asked.

“For a small town we’re pretty busy,” she smirked. “We’ve learned to reinforce them a bit more now that we get creatures with powerful magic coming through every couple of days.”

Starlight spent the rest of the walk to the farmhouse wondering exactly what kind of town she was in.

The house itself was large and red like the barn, which was a little bit away. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, and some parts looked newer. She knew there would be more ponies inside. She gulped at the thought of what they’d think of her.

Before they could get to the door a large dog ran up to them. She looked older, but was still energetic enough to bounce around and lick Applejack. Once she was done, she sniffed Starlight too and decided she was worthy of a lick as well.

“Winona hush,” Applejack ordered as she opened the door. “We’re home!”

The room inside wasn’t painted, but the walls had a lot of pictures. There were two, no three ponies sitting on the couch. The mare was a mulberry color, smaller and a lot less muscle-defined than Applejack and Applebloom. She was holding a foal whose coat was a little lighter, probably only about two years old.

The stallion, on the other hoof, was red and enormous. Starlight had never seen anypony as big as he was. He looked like, if he wanted, he could pick her up and toss her all the way back the train!

“Welcome home!” the mulberry mare grinned. She tilted her head when she saw Starlight. “And who are you?”

The sentence didn’t come out as nice as she intended. Starlight shrank back behind Applejack instead of answering the new mare. She wasn’t sure what to do.

“We need to have a talk,” Applebloom said, walking into the next room. “AJ, do what you need to and come back in five minutes.”

The new ponies followed her into what looked to be a kitchen. Applejack led Starlight through the house and up a set of stairs. She was walked to a room with green walls; a bed and a night stand were the only furniture, but there was a small closet.

“This is my room,” Applejack told her. “I’ll sleep on the couch for tonight and let you use it, there’s a bathroom across the hall if you need it. Tomorrow we can get you your own bed; We’ll introduce you to the rest of the town while we’re at it.”

“The rest of the town?” Starlight questioned. “Is that normal?”

“Well this is a pretty small town,” she chuckled. “Pretty much everypony knows everypony to an extent. Plus we have Pinkie, who’s probably already setting up for your ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party. I’m surprised she didn’t jump out at us when we got off the train.”

“I never really liked parties that much, but maybe they’re different here.”

“I’ll bet they are.”

Starlight stayed quiet for a moment. This place was strange to her, stranger than any place she’d been before. She wasn’t completely sure what was going on, but she was sure that it wouldn’t end well.

“What….” She began, words catching in her throat, “What are you going to do if your family doesn’t want me here?”

The question surprised Applejack. She paced for a minute, figuring out the exact words to say. All it did was make Starlight more nervous.

“You’ll have to trust me on this,” she stated. “They ain’t going to have anything against you. They’ll be mad at me for dropping you on them without a warning, but they’re going to let you stay and be sincerely nice and friendly to you as possible. They’ll forgive me for it after a while too. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought they’d do any different.”

“Okay,” Starlight murmured. She didn’t really believe it.

“I’m going down to talk to them,’ she grinned. “You should get some sleep.”

Starlight watched her leave. She wanted to sleep, but she knew the bundle of nerves sitting in her stomach wouldn’t let her. She waited and listened until she heard them start talking before leaving the room.

She went down the hall before stopping at the top of the stairs. She remembered the way they creaked when they walked up. She fluttered her wings, wondering if they’d be strong enough to carry her down, and wondering if she would be heard.

It took her a couple of flaps to get off the ground, but after that it was just pushing forward. She forgot that she wouldn’t stay that six inches off the stairs, she’d be off the second floor. She nearly dropped straight to the bottom as she saw how high she was. Sure, she’d been at the top of Manehattan’s skyscrapers, but here she was held up only by herself.

She let herself drift down to the first floor. The decent went a little faster than she wished. As noiselessly as she could she set her hooves back on the wood and tucked in her wings.

Lifting her hooves slowly, she made each step count. At least those thieving lessons were useful for something else. She made her way back to the first room and stood outside the kitchen, listening to their argument.

“I still don’t get why you couldn’t have at least sent a letter,” Applebloom was scolding.

“I found her Saturday,” Applejack explained. “I couldn’t have sent one until Monday, and then it would have only gotten here today, maybe tomorrow if the post office had a bad day.”

“Hey, we’ve done worse,” said who she assumed was the mulberry mare. It was free from the accent the other mares had. “Mac and I didn’t even tell you we were seeing each other until it was time to get married and move in together. And we’d barely gotten used to that before Lady surprised us.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Applebloom said. “At least Lady was a predictable surprise.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t give y’all a warning,” Applejack apologized. “But I couldn’t just leave her there. Her actual parents were terrible enough, and that foster care system wouldn’t be much better. Mac, we were there for a couple days; you have to remember how terrible it was.’

“AJ, our parents had just died,” said a new voice. His voice was deep, and the accent stronger than Applejack’s. “Anywhere we went would have been terrible.”

“They kept the fridge under lock and key!” she insisted. “And Applebloom, you remember the stuff Scootaloo told you. Heck, I could see she was downplaying a lot of the stuff. She barely hovered by the time most Pegasai would have passed flight camp.”

“We get it,” Applebloom sighed. “I get why you did it, and I’m sure we would’ve taken her in too, I just wish you’d have discussed it before you got back.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for that,” Applejack said. “But other than that, you’re all going to be okay with her being here? Okay, I know you are, but I want to hear it.”

“From what you said, she sounds like a good kid,” the mulberry mare said. “At the very least I can say it’ll be interesting.”

“Granny would’ve gone nuts about this,” Applebloom huffed. “But I see why you did it, and it’ll all be fine and normal within a week.”

“Eeyup,” agreed the large stallion.

Starlight couldn’t believe it. They were okay with this? She couldn’t help but grin widely at the thought. Soon she found herself jumping for joy around the room.

“Did you know she could do that?” Applebloom asked, pulling Starlight out of her giddiness. She’d made enough noise that they’d come to look.

“Nope,” the stallion said.

“Well I had guessed,” Applejack admitted.

Starlight looked down to make sure she hadn’t begun flying around again. She was still on the ground, but her hooves were translucent. Her coat sparkled like that diamond from Trottingham. She began jumping with joy once more.

“I’m doing it again!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen this in years!”

“Years?” the mulberry mare whispered. “How long exactly?”

“I think I was like two?” Starlight answered, still jumping around. "I'm not sure, that whole year was kinda blurry."

She was oblivious to how worried the three of them looked. Once she had tired herself out jumping, she let Applejack lead her up to the bed once more. She was so tired that she didn’t even make a comment about them not punishing her for eavesdropping.

Starlight actually found herself looking forward to the next day. This place was strange, and this place was wonderful. She couldn’t wait to see more of it.

Author's Note:

I think I mentioned previously, but 1. this is going to be from Starlight's perspective, and 2. this happens about five years after the canon. Y'all get to see my ships. Some are popular, some are really unpopular. We're in for a strange ride.

Comments

[badninja]

I am looking forward to seeing how the adjustments to Ponyville is going to go.