Two-Hundred and Thirty Four Days until the Summer Sun Celebration
The Everfree Forest was a place that exuded a sense of foreboding throughout all times of the day and any season that passed through it. The late fall was no different, as the chilled wind worked its way through the trees. The eerie shadows that were cast by the crooked wooden guardians gave them the visage of malicious watchers waiting to pounce on any creature that dared to pass with their attention not on their surroundings.
One little filly didn’t care about the throngs of timber that surrounded her. She didn’t care about anything today. She had left her house and just started walking to get away from it all. To her, the forest didn’t seem as dangerous as the situation back at her home. The screaming, the crying, the arguing, it was much worse than some dark trees.
“You did the right thing, Lily…” she told herself, stepping over roots and foliage that were in her way. She had to keep reassuring herself that she had made the right choice to get away. She had to keep telling herself that Rose and Daisy and her dad didn’t understand, that they would never really get it deep down.
The news still made her blood run cold, it made everything in her head stop and shut down. Just seven years after meeting her mother for the first time and now it was all going wrong. The mare who had abandoned her on her father’s doorstep had finally reconnected and now it all seemed so pointless.
“Sky’s sick and not getting any better,” the letter from somepony named Hard Bargain had started. Apparently her mother’s uncle and one of her last remaining family members. “The rot’s back and it’s going to get her this time,” had been where she had stopped reading. It had been the point that made everything feel so helpless.
Lily would be the first to admit that her relationship with her mom wasn’t the best. ‘Skyward Glory was an upstanding citizen of Canterlot’ had always been the thing she heard, but that didn’t make her the best mother. The sporadic visits had been consistently marred by spats and history that Lily couldn’t let go.
Ever since she was six, ever since those first days that she had met her real family, Lily had wanted to forgive her mom. She always thought that you needed to give ponies a second chance, that there was always something good deep down and you just needed to work to find it.
Every time her mom came to town it felt like that belief was tested.
It wasn’t her mom’s fault either, the kindly pegasus could never even attempt to be hateful or rude, Lily knew it was her problem and hers alone. There were just some things that Lily felt were insurmountable, that you couldn’t just forget and leave behind you. For better or for worse, it regularly colored the filly’s view of her mother, and not in a positive light.
How were you supposed to get over an abandonment like that? Lily’s aunt, Vinyl Scratch, who she hadn’t seen in seven years, once told her never to forget it. To hold onto it, and Lily had. It was close to her heart and it was a poison she couldn’t ignore or dispel easily. The immense need to get over it, to just move on and try to forgive her mother was always there. The strangling plant that grew from that seed of distrust so long ago had been the barrier to it all, one that either needed to constrain everything or get burned away, now that there was a time limit it seemed that the decision needed to be now or never.
“I just want more time…” Lily sighed as she stepped over a series of roots that curved out of the ground and between a series of rocks that were strewn across the dead-leaf covered ground.
Pulling herself from her thoughts, the little earth pony looked about to see if she had any semblance of an idea of where she was. The answer was a pretty solid ‘no’. Most of that changed however when she saw the mass of ruins looming through a dense fog in the distance. She had heard of the ruins, but thought of them mainly as a myth or legend, and the only thing it told her was that she was pretty deep in the Everfree. The haunting castle seemed like the perfect target to unleash her frustration at.
“I JUST WANT MORE TIME TO MAKE IT RIGHT!” Lily screamed across the chasm that separated her from the castle. “WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!” The tears started to well in the corner of her eyes as she let out her frustrations.
“H-hello…?” A voice called back from across the chasm. It was soft and plaintive, like a scared child that had been reprimanded. “Wh-who’s there…?” Lily was taken aback at the voice, she wasn’t expecting someone to answer her. After a period of silence, the voice piped up again. “I-I didn’t mean to frighten you, I promise I’m not a monster or anything.”
“What are you, then?” Lily called back across the gap, looking at the shattered wooden bridge that once connected the castle to the mainland. Nothing should be out here, not anything normal or even equine.
“My name’s…” There was a hesitation. “...Mia. My name’s Mia. I’m a pony, like you presumably.” Well that raised more questions than Lily had originally, but it did answer some at least. “What’s your name?”
“Lily.” She called back. “I’m from Ponyville, just outside the forest.” There was again a silence, as she hadn’t provided an opening for more conversation. So Lily decided to carry on. “What are you doing out here?” The most pressing question to be sure, and one that needed answering.
“I live out here, I have for almost a decade now.” The next sound was either a sigh or gust of wind, Lily couldn’t tell. “What about you? This is no place for a little pony.” It was Lily’s turn to sigh now.
“I don’t know, I just felt like I needed to get away.” Lily had been really bottling it up for a while and she needed to talk to somepony, even if it was just a voice across a canyon. “I’m not sure if you’re real or not, so I’m just going to talk until I feel better, okay?”
“I’m a good listener, so please go ahead.” That was comforting, even if this voice was some figment. Even if this was all some sort of stress hallucination, it would be worth it just to expel all of the nonsense from her system.
“My mom is sick, like really sick.” That word, ‘sick’, it weighed so much on the tongue. “Wing rot, and it’s bad. She’s had it for a long time, but it’s always been managed.” Her mind drifted to the myriad of hospital visits over the years, each worse than the last. It was never easy to see her mother’s ribs poking painfully through the skin, or her gaunt face and glazed over eyes. “They don’t think she’ll make it through this time.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mia’s voice echoed across the canyon, a sad twinge pervading the apology. “It’s never easy to lose someone, but you have to make peace with it. Trust me, I’ve seen what happens when you don’t. It will be hard, but I think as long as you say your goodbyes it will be okay.”
“It’s not that easy.” Lily sat down on the ground, kicking up several dead leaves as she did so. “We-we’ve never had an easy relationship. When I was younger it was a lot simpler, but we’ve both said some mean things, things we both regret I think.” Words, Lily had learned, were always heavy and always carried real meaning even if you never meant them to. Something said in a moment of blind passion could destroy something good, it could devastate a relationship.
“How old are you, Lily?” Mia asked. Lily swore she saw a thin patch in the fog and could see the silhouette of a tall thin pony sitting on the opposite side of the gulch. Maybe there was a horn sticking out of the form’s head, she just wasn’t sure. The distance and the fog made it difficult to actually determine any concrete features.
“Twelve,” Lily responded. “Almost thirteen, just like my sisters.” Another thought that just drifted through her mind, Daisy and Rose. They didn’t understand, yeah they saw Skyward Glory as a surrogate mother but they didn’t have the same connection that Lily did. The same history of pain wasn’t shared there.
“You’re very well spoken for somepony so young.” Lily could feel that warm, almost proud undercurrent in the words. They were almost motherly in that regard and full of an inherent love. “It’s very admirable.”
“My dad makes me and my sisters read a lot. He took us out of public school and started homeschooling us because he didn’t think the stuff they were teaching us was intensive enough.” Also the fact that there was a boom in the flower business and he needed the help was a big player, but they didn’t really acknowledge that. “It doesn’t stick as well with Daisy, and Rose is more into the earth sciences, but I like learning new words and reading.” ‘Verbose’ was a word she had picked up in a novel a few weeks back, and thought that it described her aptly.
“Well your mother, however she is medically, should be very proud of such a smart filly.” A small amount of pride welled beneath Lily’s pink coat. Between her very busy father and sick mother, there wasn’t much pride spread around the household anymore. “I’m sure that you and your mother will both see a need to reconcile before she moves on.”
“Yeah…” Lily wasn’t too sure of that. From what she knew, the last time that Skyward Glory had been told or asked to apologize for abandoning Lily, it led to Vinyl Scratch disappearing completely from everypony’s lives. That kind of pain didn’t need to exist between them this close to the end. “I just don’t think she’ll ever be ready, Mia.”
“I-” Mia’s words caught in her throat. “I did something wrong too-a long time ago-I hurt more ponies than I ever thought possible. It was all because I was afraid of standing still and letting everything go around me, I was so scared of all of the uncertainty.” There was genuine pain in those words, anguish layered beneath piles of self-loathing. “I intervened where I shouldn’t and it backfired, all I did was hurt those I was trying to protect. I lost my friends, my loved ones, and ended up here.” There was a long, pregnant pause after that statement. “But if I could go back and change it, I wouldn’t. I acted, and I did what I thought was right. I tried.” Confidence surged back into the words, and a sense of pride. “Doing nothing, just being a passive observer, that’s easy. Taking action and actually doing something, even if it end poorly will always be worth it because at least you didn’t just stand by and watch. At least you tried, even if you failed.”
Lily desperately wanted to act, she wanted to go to that shining city on the hill and tell her mother how beaten up she was over all of this. How much the sheer knowledge of her abandonment wrecked her self-confidence and fractured a lot of her personal relationships. Maybe Mia was right, maybe Lily just needed to stand up and confront her mom about everything. Try to get some closure, and even if her mom failed to see what Lily was trying to say then at least there would be some sort of conclusion for one of them.
It would just be hard.
“So why are you out here?” Lily decided to change the subject, she would ruminate more on it later. For now she had poured her heart to this stranger, and she would like to know more about this advice giving voice in the mist.
“Me?” Mia asked with a hint of guilt. “Atonement.” That was a very heavy word, one that Lily really didn’t understand fully.
“You’re looking for forgiveness?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
“Yes, or something close to it,” the voice answered, her voice level and calm. “I was sent here by my family, to keep me out of the public eye for a while. I’m just trying to make the best of my time here, trying to reflect and understand what put me here.”
“So...you’re in prison?” Lily asked with no small amount of uncertainty. It sounded barbaric, prison, but that’s what the situation seemed like. What an awful thought, being locked away, alone, with nopony to talk to.
“No, no, no,” Mia rebuked adamantly. “I’m not in prison, I’m just...sequestered for a while.” Lily wasn’t sure that even Mia believed what she was saying. “You should know we don’t have prisons in Equestria.”
“Except for Nightmare Moon’s,” Lily reminded the pony on the other side, her gaze turning skyward. She could just barely make out the moon through the quickly thinning canopy overhead, it’s cratered face staring down at her.
“Th-that doesn’t count!” Mia shouted back across the chasm, panic coursing through her words. “I-it’s totally different! I-I’m not locked up or in prison.” Lily knew denial pretty well, and there was a lot of it on the other side of the gap.
“Can you leave that place whenever you want? Like, if the bridge was fixed could you just walk over here and talk to me?” Whatever the answer, it would cement whether it was a prison or just voluntary confinement.
“I don’t need the bridge, I can fl-” Mia caught herself mid-sentence and Lily heard the very faint sound of cursing. “I’m not a prisoner here.” The reaffirmation came swiftly on the tail of the last statement.
“So you can just fly over here whenever you want?” Lily questioned.
“No…” Mia responded in a small voice. “I-I’m tied here, I can’t leave.” After a book she had read recently, visions of spirits tied to their former dwellings ran through her mind. They quickly dissipated and were replaced by more thoughts about the possible prison across the pit. An uncomfortable silence filled the void between them, it was laced with problems and sorrows from both ends.
“It’s hard to be alone.” Lily nodded with her own words. “It’s really hard to just stew in everything and have nopony to talk to about all of the bad things in your life.” She knew that Mia needed something to get her to talk, some sort of pep talk or encouragement. “But it’s harder to be alone with somepony else, somepony who you know won’t understand what you need to get off of your chest. Because you know that they’ve never been through what you have and they just won’t get it, they’ll judge and write you off as handling it wrong. I get how hard it is to be alone with someone else.” Lily stood up and turned back the way she came. “...I think I need to get back home before it gets dark.”
“Wait…” Mia called out from the other side weakly. “P-please, if you can, come back tomorrow? I think...I think I could use somepony to talk to.”
“Yeah, I’ll be back tomorrow.” This felt like the beginning of something new, something that Lily really needed. It felt like a kindred spirit in a way. She wanted to come back, maybe every day. It seemed like they both could use a friend .