Say Goodbye Like You Mean It
The ketchup bottle on the table was almost empty.
Almost-empty ketchup bottles take a lot of abuse. Smacking and shaking.
The end of the day must be nice for an almost-empty ketchup bottle.
"Are you still going to the vow renewal?" Starlight asked carefully.
The vow renewal.
Mac and Sugar were still together enough to wanna say it all over again. Though, being honest, I always thought vow renewals were the first sign of trouble.
"He's my brother, ain't he?" I said.
Starlight rolled her eyes. "Am I still coming to the vow renewal?"
The implication: with you?
But she never actually said it.
"Dunno," I said. "Are you?"
She hated when I did that. I could see it on her face. A little crinkle between her eyebrows that I used to think was cute.
"I was planning on it." Nonconfrontational, but biting. A hard “t”, spat at me.
"You can do whatever the hay you like." I took a sip of my coffee. "I ain't the boss of you."
Starlight gave me a look.
"You're giving me the look."
"What look?"
"The anti-honesty look."
She scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what I said. You don't always like me to tell the truth, and you give me a look when you wish I'd lied to you."
The look again.
"I just know you, is all."
That's the whole problem, she thought.
I know that because I know her, not because she told me.
"That's not the look," Starlight argued. "I'm giving you the lie-of-omission look."
I reached over and took a slice of toast from her plate. "And that is?"
"The look I give when you get off on a technicality," she said, ignoring the toast I'd swiped. "Why don't you want me there?"
I chewed Starlight's toast thoughtfully.
Granny once told me that restaurants use the stale bread for toast since you can't tell the difference anyways.
But I could tell.
This toast was stale.
"Not your scene," I said simply. "Too mushy."
She sighed. Not our scene, she thought.
She's very good at reading my subtext, even though she pretends she ain't.
“Maybe I like mushy,” Starlight said softly.
It was bitter, though.
You don’t know me as well as you think you do.
She did like mushy.
Sometimes.
I remember a night on the threshold. Breathless and wordless. Our first kiss—before anything else—exchanged between the pouring rain and the soft yellow glow of the lights from the kitchen.
I leaned to her for the first one.
She pulled me in for the second.
She pulled me into loads of things. Flying kites and pulp romance novels. Picnics and stargazing. She made me think I might like mushy, too.
I tried. I cooked her meals and did the chores she secretly hated and kissed her in the places she secretly liked and it never quite felt like enough.
Starlight was the maker of romance. The way she read it. If I’d written her a toaster manual, she could read it like a love poem.
Twilight says we have an old-fashioned romance, which I believe because all her romances are old fashioned. She's always going out dancing and reciting sonnets and bringing home roses.
But I think what Twilight meant is that our relationship just feels old. Like it's been in the works a long time. Or like it just ain't that sharp anymore.
Like it's gone stale.
Like diner toast.
Because all those things—all the special dates and the special meals and special words and special living—they turn to work quicker than a fresh-cut apple goes brown when you’re with the wrong pony.
There comes a point where you both know it, and it’s just a game to see who says it first. I guess if you’re with someone a little less stubborn than the two of us, it happens at the right time.
For us, though, the right time was long gone.
So it just hurt.
That was the crinkle on her brow.
That was the sigh and the eye-roll and the harrumphing.
It was hurt.
But we’re too good to say we’re hurt.
My Granny was the same way. Before she crossed some invisible threshold and became “old”, she was the one fighting to stay awake while bucking apple trees and washing dishes. Then, suddenly, she learned to say no and stop hurting.
Thinking about it, it was around the time she divorced my Gramps.
Funny how you don’t make those connections ‘til later.
“Y’know, Star,” I said, pushing my coffee aside, “I’m gonna miss this.”
She blinked. “Hm?”
“This. Us. I’ll miss it, is all.”
Her mouth opened.
“You know what I mean.”
Her mouth closed.
I sat back in the booth. It let out its own sigh so I didn’t have to. “I was talkin’ to my little cousin Babs the other day, and she told me the worst part of meeting Apple Bloom and her friends was how hard they tried to stay friends. Even though they knew it was impossible.”
Starlight deflated. Her hooves shuffled on the table.
“You get me?”
She nodded. “I… I get you.”
I raised my brows.
Starlight swallowed. The kind of swallow that meant she was just about to cry, but she was gonna do her best to hold it in.
She hated crying in front of other ponies.
I knew that ‘cause I know her. Not ‘cause she told me.
I reached across the table and grabbed her hooves in mine.
“Hey.”
She sniffled. “Hey.”
“It’ll hurt, but not any more than it already does,” I said. “This will stop making it hurt.”
She smiled softly. Nodded. “Applejack?”
“Yes?”
“I think… we need to break up.”
I chuckled. “I reckon we do.”
That made her laugh.
Which made her cry.
Which made me cry.
And then we were two ex-somethings crying in a diner right before it closed.
And that should have been sad.
But it didn’t hurt anymore.
First time in a while.
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Hmm odd pairing. This is very good though.
Very interesting
I like how the randomness of the pairing actually worked in its favor. There's just a tiny bit of affection there, but not as much as you'd suspect from an actual couple. Feels really believable.
Ow. Ow this hurts.
Mush why do you do this to me.
Somehow, this story manages to be great, and yet, it hurts too much to ever read again.
This sentence is loaded, Mushroom, holy crap. It tells you everything you need to know and confirms what you already expect is going to happen. I love to see Starlight paired with the Mane Six and I think you did a fantastic job here. Now I want to write some Starlight, so I think I will. You can just feel the emotions coming from Applejack's little monologues and her inner thoughts. She loves Starlight, and the best thing she can do for her, is leaving her.
Great job.
they're horse divorced :(
11193749
Literally :(
Howdy, hi~!
Ugh, this was so bittersweet. You manage to sell the dynamic between the two characters so well, then write their break up perfectly. The imagery and metaphor on display here is honestly peak Mush, and the stale bread was just superb with how it was incoporated. Loved reading this little break up snippet, definitely a good one.
Thanks for the read~!
... Im also tempted to start a horse divorce bookshelf now
Oh, this is masterfully crafted heartache. It's impressive how many layers and angles you were able to stuff into just a thousand words. (And let's face it, Starjack is a pairing doomed to failure in most cases.) Excellent job. Best of luck in the judging.
oof, this has so much feeling in so few words
Wow, what an incredibly efficient, biting story. So much emotion and history and context explained in so few words, yet even the diversions and the scene dressings remain relevant.
No notes. Just plain excellent.
ooh, what a lovely way to set the mood. deprivation, hurt, exhaustion, all in describing a ketchup bottle, augh great stuff
and augh, the way the cynicism colors everything here, love it
oof, this is so very much a dynamic i'd expect to occur in a less-than-perfect Applejack relationship
and augh, that negativity again, and Applejack's worldview of being convinced that she can see the worm under every rock is just so on-point
oof, just love how this section just tells a whole romance story so compactly, and this sentence in particular, augh
i can see this so well and i love it
oof, Applejack's stubbornness in this way being something she has in common with her family i can def see. and yeah, that invisible threshold is real!
love this detail
and oof, a lovely side of heartbreak to the main course of heartbreak
i loved this fic! every peak and valley and precious fractal little detail of a relationship packed so efficiently that it's no less impactful for being a thousand words instead of ten thousand. i am thoroughly sold on both why this relationship happened, and every little tinge of why they were not the right ponies for each other in the end. so much so that i even feel the "should have been sad" exactly. augh, it feels like i slipped into Applejack's boots so completely! it is sad, and i will miss this little slice of StarJack, but i am also happy for them both that they took this painful step toward what i hope will be a better life for each of them.
amazing stuff!
Oof. The hurt, the pain.
Loved how the 1000w limit gives both Applejack's narration and the piece as a whole this terse feeling, too much being said in too little, in a way that feels both true to Applejack, and foundational to the collapse of her relationship. Beautiful, constrained agony.
Hello! Have a review. Not at all surprised this won a Silver Medal (congrats!) as it's really good. I loved the bit about ketchup bottles near the beginning, but it never stopped being great. You don't see this kind of break-up ficified very often, and you did it so well here. An easy like and an easy fave.
wtf how did you do this in a thousand words
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