The Party Girl

by Godslittleprincess

Chapter 19: Gloriosa and Granny Smith

While Flash, Pinkie, and Twilight were taking their visitors to the welcome party, Gloriosa and Timber were at home, refusing to participate in the festivities. Timber was inside their house, still sulking over his conversation with Twilight while Gloriosa had sat herself down under Gaea Evergreen, the tree’s thick branches and bitingly fresh sent forming a soothing cocoon around her. Gloriosa thought back to that morning she saw the town fixing her fence and caring for her saplings, Woods and Stones alike. Filthy Rich’s daughter was even kind enough to respect her boundaries when Apple Bloom made them known.

Gloriosa didn’t want to admit it, but everything that happened that morning made her feel so good inside. Seeing her neighbors’ kindness had made her heart swell with warmth and happiness, but one thing prevented her from totally enjoying it. That one thing was her family’s generations-long participation in the feud. Gloriosa refused to admit even to herself that she actually hated keeping the feud going. Such an admission felt like an utter betrayal of her family, and aside from Timber, Gaea, and the nursery, the feud was all she had left of them. All that being said, something about keeping the feud going under the current circumstances didn’t sit right with her conscience. If her parents and grandparents were still around, what would they do?

“Well, well, I thought I’d find you here, sugarcube,” an elderly female voice jolted Gloriosa out of her thoughts. Gloriosa looked up to see the matriarch of the Apple family smiling down at her. “Now, what are you doing over here while there’s a party going on over there?”

“Oh, nothing,” Gloriosa answered forcing a smile before turning her gaze back towards the ground. “I just had something on my mind that’s all.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with how the whole town’s changing now, wouldn’t it?”

Gloriosa sighed, “It has everything to do with how the whole town is changing.”

“So, what’d ya think of it?”

“I, I don’t know. It’s different I guess, and I want to like it, but maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Why ever not? It’s the best thing to happen to this town in all my years of living here, and I’ve been here a good long time,” Granny replied with a hearty laugh.

“Really?” Gloriosa asked, disbelievingly. “You mean, you actually prefer the way things are now to the feud.”

“I sure do,” Granny said with another laugh. “I mean, this has been the most I’ve laughed my whole life, and my grandkids, well, whooo-wheee! My grandkids are happier than they’ve ever been, and being able to see them out and about and not having to worry about some Stone hurting them, well, that there has a way of making a granny feel 10 years younger again.”

“But if my grandparents were here, would they feel the same way?”

Granny Smith’s eyes widened at the question before her face softened in understanding.

“Listen, sugarcube, I’m going to tell you a bit of a secret,” Granny began. “Your grandparents loved a whole lot of things in life, the nursery, the tree you’re sitting under, but most of all, you and your brother. The feud was not one of those things. In fact, they absolutely hated it.”

“Really?” Gloriosa replied in shock. “But if you and my grandparents hated the feud so much, why did you keep it going?”

“A lot of reasons, all of them stupid looking back on the whole thing,” Granny recounted. “We didn’t know any other way. This was the way things have always been done. We didn’t see any reason to change things. Most importantly, we had a duty to keep the feud going, or at least, that’s what every clan head has told us since the dawn of time.”

“So, I won’t be turning my back on my family by not keeping the feud going for them for another generation?”

“Heck, if your parents and grandparents saw the way things are now and how much better the nursery is doing because of it, they’d be relieved.”

For the first time in her young life, Gloriosa smiled, a genuine, non-malicious, happy, relieved smile. However, it left almost as quickly as it came as a terrible realization dawned on her.

“Oh my,” Gloriosa gasped. “Timber. I, I’ve been making him utterly miserable by trying to force him to help me keep the feud going. I thought I was protecting my family, but really, I was driving the only family I had away.”

“Well, y’all are still young,” Granny encouraged. “It’s not too late to try to make things right with him.”

Gloriosa pondered Granny’s words, and her smile slowly returned.

“I’m going to go in and see if Timber wants to join the party in town,” declared Gloriosa. “Even if he doesn’t want to, I think I’ll check it out just to see what it’s like.”

“Atta girl!” Granny whooped.

However, the two of them had barely gotten up from the ground when they heard shouting coming from the middle of town, and they were not shouts of celebration. No, they were panicked, fearful shouts that seemed to be getting fainter as if whoever was shouting was moving farther away. Farther away where the outskirts of town would be, they saw two plumes of thick, black smoke rising to the sky.

“Oh my!” Gloriosa cried as she and Granny ran out the front gate to see what the commotion was about.

From inside, Timber saw the smoke and ran out to investigate also.

Author's Note:

So, a short but necessary chapter. I needed to make it clear that Timber and Gloriosa loved each other somehow because that bit is going to be important later on.

Comments

[SuperSonicHeroes]

Break the cycle of hate.

[Ro994]

OH NO! This can't be good

Also, as short as this interaction was, I quite like how you portrayed the relationship between Gloriosa and Granny here. I'm just a sucker for loving surrogate parent figures, as you probably know by now.