Six years ago
I slowly trotted down the stairs. My heart was racing and I felt butterflies fluttering in my stomach. My seven-year-old sister ran passed me and I heard the joyous shouts of her friends before the front door slammed, making a few pictures on the wall swing from the vibration.
I finally set hoof down in the foyer and looked in the living room. Not seeing anypony there, I turned and went down the hall to the kitchen. I saw Mother through the window, tending to her garden. Papa, home for one of his days of leave, stood at the sink washing a couple remaining dishes from our late breakfast.
“Papa?”
“Yes, Agate?” he replied without looking.
“I was wondering if we could, you know, talk about something,” I said.
“What is it?” Papa set the last dish in the drainer and wiped his hooves on a towel.
“I want to be a royal guard,” I smiled broadly. Every generation in my family had been military. I just knew Papa would be proud of me for wanting to join.
“No,” my father said gruffly.
I could hear my brain screeching to a halt. I shook my head. Surely I’d heard him wrong?
“What?”
“I said no, Agate,” my father’s face hardened. “No mare in my family will be in the military. I won’t allow it,”
I could feel my soul being crushed by his glare. I glanced at my flanks.
“But Papa, my cutie-mark—”
“Doesn’t matter. The military isn’t the place for a mare,”
The hurt turned into anger and I felt my blood begin to boil.
I stomped my hoof. “I thought you’d be happy that at least one of your daughters is brave enough to go into service,”
“Don’t bring your sisters into this,” Papa growled.
“Fine, then how about my brother? Garnet’s dead, Papa! I know you wanted a son to continue your legacy, but that dream died with him four years ago! He could have never even been in the military anyway. He was too sickly!”
“Do not talk about my son!” he stepped towards me.
“Then let me be a guard,” I took a menacing step forward as well.
“The military is the work of a stallion—”
“That’s old fashion thinking, Papa!” I yelled.
“As long as breath fills my lungs you will not become a guard! And that’s final!” my father shouted back. “You are not to ever speak of this again.”
“Why can’t you support me in something?! Ugh, I hate you!” I turned tail and ran out the back door, nearly knocking Mother down as she was coming in.
Present Day
“Okay then. Let’s talk,” Sterling said calmly, crossing his hooves on his desk.
I’d never seen my father so calm in my life. It was unnerving. I began rubbing my left hind leg to my right like I always did when I needed to calm my nerves.
“You remember when Garnet died, don’t you?” Sterling stiffened at his dead son’s name.
“Yes.”
“You were different before then.”
“All parents are different after losing a foal,” he said.
“But you and mother had already lost three. You were still the same, but with Garnet you changed. Why?”
“I don’t wish to talk about this, Agate,” Sterling answered roughly.
“Why?” I asked again.
“Agate…”
“Why?” I pushed.
“No, Agate!”
“Why did you change after my brother died?!”
“BECAUSE HE WAS MY SON!” Sterling stood up quickly, knocking his chair over and slamming his hooves on his desk. His outburst caused me to jump back half a step, but I wasn’t afraid. I’d actually wanted this response.
“Do your daughters really matter that little to you? That you’d carry on fine after losing three, but break at a son?” I asked softly.
Sterling’s eyes went wide. He looked down at his desk and picked up the framed picture of his wife which had been knocked down. He set it back in its place and spent the next few moments picking up his chair and fixing the papers he’d messed up.
“Do I matter, Papa?”
Sterling jerked his head and stared at me.
“It’s been years since you called me that,” he finally said.
I didn’t reply.
Sterling glanced back down at his desk before continuing, “Yes, you—and your sisters—matter,”
“You were so happy when Garnet was born. You’d finally gotten your son, a son that could carry on the family legacy,” I said. “When you and Mother found out that he would never be a healthy colt, your hopes for him died. And then he and Topaz got sick…” I felt my eyes tear up. I’d never known how much I missed my baby brother.
“I wanted to be a guard not just for myself, but for Garnet,” I sniffed and wiped my hoof across my muzzle. “And for you. Why wouldn’t you let me join when I turned eighteen?”
Sterling stumbled back into his chair, head down, and placed a hoof on his head.
“Because you’re my daughter,” he lifted his eyes to mine. “I knew when you were born, that there would be no mistaking you were mine. As you grew up, you had the same personality, attitude, and stubbornness I did when I was a colt.”
Even though I never wanted to admit them, I’d always known my father and I had similarities, but until Mother pointed them out, I never knew how much in common we actually shared. And I’d never heard Sterling bring them up in all of my twenty-one years.
“Gypsy and Penny were different. They liked dolls and playing dress up. You liked wrestling, and playing with little wooden swords, and jumping in mud puddles after a rainstorm,” he continued, chuckling.
“When Garnet was born, I thought I had the son I’d always wanted. However, when he died, I realized that I’d had my son. Only she was a filly. It frightened me, Agate. It frightened me because I knew from your cutie-mark that you were destined to join the military. It frightened me because you were so much like me. You still are,” Sterling rose from his seat and came around the desk to stand before me.
I looked up at my father, into the eyes that we share. I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised a hoof.
“I want you to go back to Manehatten. Spend the next week and a half with your mother, sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephew. No thinking of the guard.Just have fun,” Sterling said, nudging me with his raised hoof. “Go, Aggie,”
Not knowing what else to say, I backed away before turning and opening the office door. Before closing it, I looked at my father, who had sat back at his desk. In his hooves, he held a picture. Not the one of Mother, though, but a different one. I couldn’t see what or who it was of, so I closed the door and trotted down the hallway to the building’s exit.
________________________________________________________________________
“Topaz, honey, I know you love Glory and Moss and that you’re trying your best, but your diaper skills just aren’t cutting it,” Penny laughed as she re-did Glory’s diaper after Topaz’s horrible third attempt.
“Sorry, sis,” Topaz said.
I held Boulder Moss on my lap and nuzzled his mane. It still had that newborn smell and it was intoxicating.
It had been a week after I’d gone back to Whinnyanapolis to talk with my father. I still didn’t understand the mostly one-sided talk we shared. Did he love me? Or did he not? Did he actually support me in joining the guard? It was like deciphering a riddle. And I was not doing a good job at it.
I had enjoyed my time in Manehatten with my mother and sisters, and, surprisingly, Gypsy and I had been able to semi get along with each other. Two days before, Shift and Anvil had taken over foal duty and us mares went out for an afternoon in Manehatten. Penny took us to some of her favorite shops, much to Topaz’s delight, and that night Gypsy took us to her favorite restaurant for dinner.
The day before Mother, Topaz and I were set to go back to Whinnyanapolis, there was a visitor, though it was not a welcomed one.
I gently laid Glory down in her crib for her afternoon nap. Kissing her forehead, I leaned up and looked into Moss’ crib, where my nephew had just been put down for his nap by his mother. Smiling at my sweet niece and nephew, I carefully backed out of their room and shut the door.
I carefully tip-hoofed down the hall to my room and jumped on the bed, grabbing a book along the way. I groaned when the doorbell rang and went get up to get to see who was there.
“I’ll get it,” I heard Mother say to Penny and so I laid back down. I paid little attention to the muffled voices until there was a sound that I never want to hear again.
Mother’s shriek made me jump off the bed and gallop down the hallway. Glory and Moss began crying in their room and Penny raced past me, tears raining down her face.
I finally reached the front room, where I saw Topaz hugging Mother as tightly as possible, the older mare collapsed against the wall while in the doorway stood a familiar stallion from Fort Tacoma.
“Sergeant Major Comet Walker! What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry, Fire Agate. I’m so sorry,” the blue stallion said.
“Why? What’s wrong,” I asked desperately as my mother wrapped her hooves around me.
“It’s your father. He’s dead.”