When Starry woke up she was back in her own bed and her own room. The sun was pouring in through her favorite seated window and she knew her two favorite friends would be waiting for her when she finally got ready for the day. She couldn’t believe they had finally made it back to Ponyville, and that everything they went through was now a distant memory.
She thought about Edgy, too. She wasn’t sure what he was going to do now. Maybe he’d go back to Canterlot and find wherever it was he left behind, or whoever it was he left behind. There was still so much she didn’t know about him and she felt she would probably never know.
Thinking back on Canterlot and the day of the Friendship Festival, she remembered how she was supposed to do the light show at the end. She was told by Cass yesterday that somepony else managed to take her place and did a fantastic job, though nopony was sure who did it.
Starry’s face fell a bit. She had been nervous, but she planned on that being her show. The ponies weren’t disappointed at least, but she wasn’t able to be there at all.
It wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on.
She hopped out of bed and opened the window to take in the sunshine and the cool breeze of the day. Everything seemed so beautiful this morning. She could see Rochester in his little nest in the tree just outside, he and his wife were chattering away, but he took a moment to wave at her with a smile.
Turning around, she picked up a silver comb with her magic and began looking herself over in the mirror. She already started looking like she had never gone out of Ponyville. The scrapes and bruises were healed. She lifted up the mercury vial in her hooves as she combed and spilled a bit of it on the top of her dresser. Designs started forming in the puddle she had made as she started crafting out her ideas based on the sights they had seen on her journey. And after about two were fully thought through she began to smell the aroma of warm baked goods coming up from downstairs.
Trotting down the stairs she could see that Bee and Cass already had breakfast ready for her and a kitchen that needed cleaning up. Edgy had managed to come with them. Starry had been awake for when Cass set him up a room at the Ponyville Days Inn, but it was nice to see that he wasn’t going to sulk in there the whole time he was here.
Edgy sat back in a chair deep in thought over some words he was writing down on a scrap of paper. Either his hoofwriting was really bad, or it wasn’t in current pony writing. Neither Bee nor Cass could read it, so they had stopped teasing him over it a few minutes before Starry came upon them.
“Hey Em! We baked you some muffins! They are blueberry, your favorite,” Bee said and put one with a smiling face drawn on top on a plate in front of Starry. Starry sat down and began chewing on it. It was delicious. She hadn’t eaten actual baked goods since they started the journey and she had been starving for so long.
She looked at Cass and Bee but they shrugged back at her.
Cass and Bee continued seeming excited for a while, but it seemed like they were hiding that something wasn’t quite right.
Starry found out soon enough.
“I guess I better get back to the forge today then. I must have so many orders to catch up on.”
Cass and Bee flew over to Starry.
“We think you should probably take today off. You just got back, after all, and you’re obviously tired.”
“Your customers can wait. I already told them not to expect you back for another week.”
“But I feel fine right now. I really want to get back to work. I haven’t had a chance to work on anything more than a few odds and ends until now and I have a whole bunch of new ideas for designs thanks to our trip,” Starry said and smiled at Edgy. He glanced up and nodded before continuing his writing.
“Really, Em. You need a break. Your customers can wait.”
Edgy got up.
“I’m going to be gone for a while. There’s something I have to take care of.” He nodded at Starry before walking out the door. From the window, she could see him trotting off toward the train station.
Cass and Bee both had to stop for a second themselves as all three wondered why he left so suddenly, but Starry was used to it and snapped out of it soon enough to begin arguing with them again.
The two would have continued arguing with Starry forever, but Starry shut them up and was going to march straight out the door when Cass called out to her.
“Em, the jewelry shop dropped your works. He doesn’t want to help you sell your work anymore.”
Starry was stunned. He was her biggest customer. Sure, she had many customers that she could sell directly to, but having Clear Carot handle most of her sales for her was a big help. It made up the majority of her earnings and helped her have the free time that she did to pursue her designs rather than finding customers for them. Without him her forge was going to falter. She might have to go back to the boring but functional work she used to do with mending carts and making basic appliances. Factory and menial work she had promised, by Celestia, she would never do again. And the very fact that he was dropping her must have meant there was a big change. They had been doing business for years.
“Why won’t he carry my work anymore, Cass?” She said it softly, a little out of breath and a little wilted.
“Well, while you were gone, he ran out of merchandise of yours to sell and he had to turn away a few customers. That’s when Sunny Sapphire showed up. I know, her name is so ridiculous, it’s got nothing on yours, Em. But her work is pretty good. She could make the same stuff you did at half the time and price and Carothead decided to hire her. Plus, he wasn’t sure you were ever going to turn up again.”
“Did you all talk to him?”
“Yeah...” Bee started. She had a flashback of a rather snooty Clear Carot saying he wouldn’t take Starry back for the whole world. “He said no.”
Starry left the room and ran up to bed to bury herself under her covers. It didn’t matter that her friends were down below now starting to worry about her. It would take forever to work up a steady customer base like what Clear Carot had. She might not be able to recuperate from the losses from the past two weeks. Everything was going downhill. Life might as well be over.
*** *** *** *** *** ***
Edgy didn’t want to have to explain to Starry why he was going. He needed to get back to Trot Town. He wanted to face the neighbors that had given him up as a slave. He wanted to find what was left of his family’s home.
He hopped aboard the train with a ticket Cass helped him buy earlier. It led to the closest stop to Trot Town, still a few days journey away. While it hurt going on a journey by himself, he didn’t want to drag Starry into it. Not for the way he was going. This time he knew the powers he was capable of. Using those, he could turn the trip into a matter of minutes.
But what would Starry think? She was pretty accepting of most of what he did by now, but it still wasn’t normal for a pony other than a unicorn or an alicorn to have the powers he did. He didn’t want her to overreact to it or think of him differently. And even if he tried to hide it on the journey there, the residents of Trot Town would make it abundantly clear they know of his powers.
He was going to go. Alone. But, at that a few images from the past few weeks swam through his head and what looked like a smallish crease at the corners of his mouth appeared, not entirely.