Language check. All in English.
There wasn't enough room around the table for everyone to sit, and even the living room didn't have room for so many bats to use their wings to eat. Joyce herded everyone into the backyard, and ensured everyone had a drink to go with their meal.
Everyone sat around, eating and chatting, but Joyce was flanked by both her daughters. She had quickly realized that Robin wasn't going to give her enough room to use her left wing to eat with, so was relying on her right side, and simply used her left to hug Robin to her side.
"You're really going to learn medicine?" Joyce couldn't keep herself away from the topic. It was safer talking about the far future rather than what would happen the next day.
Robin nodded, chewing away on some cut mango. She gulped it down as soon as she could. "Yup! I'm going to learn how to make everypony feel better. Just like you, Mum."
Something tightened in Joyce's belly; she knew too well how long it took to study medicine. It would be more years than she could probably bear before Robin would be finished with that schooling. "That's great!" She didn't feel great about it at all.
A sudden desire to throw the trip away and stay with her little girl surged in Joyce. She had to turn her head away from Robin to hide her expression.
"What's wrong, Mum?!" Lyra saw the agony on her mother's face, and winced at it.
"Mum!" Robin poked Joyce with one thumb-claw, the tip not breaking her mother's tough hide, but definitely getting her attention. "Mum! I want to study medicine in Equestria."
Confusion flooded around Joyce's pain. She tried to put the words together, and only barely got to her daughter only finishing high-school before she surrendered her bowl of fruit and hugged Robin for all she was worth. "Why didn't you start with that?" The words were strained by the emotional flip-flop that had happened.
"I thought you'd realize that. I want to be like you, Mum. I want to help everypony, but all the schools here will know about his humans." Robin squeezed her mother back just as hard; her own eyes growing wet.
Joyce pressed her snout against Robin's, and held her close. "I'm going to miss you so much, my little Robin bird." She was startled when Robin's wing stretched up and booped her on the nose with the leading edge. Looking at the offending limb, her snout scrunched up a little in surprise, Joyce looked at her daughter with some curiosity.
"I'm not a robin anymore, Mum. Robins have feathers. Robin's a sidekick" Robin giggled a little, and curled her left wing around in front of her, half covering her face. "I'm Batmare!"
Lyra, listening in on the exchange, cracked up laughing. "That's my lil sister!"
Covering her face with her own wing, Joyce shook her head. "Candela, I'm sorry for leaving this one with you. I think she might already be tainted."
Candela chuckled. "I'll forgive you, but only if you take the other away. She's having an entirely odd effect on my other students; to say nothing of my daughter." She winked at Lyra, earning a laugh from her.
"I guess it'll have to do." Joyce leaned against Robin and kissed her daughter on the cheek. "Now, where was I?"
"You're going to miss me. Then you called me a bird, but I'm a bat." Tilting her head up, Robin pressed her cheek against Joyce's neck. "I know why you're going, and I know it's the right thing, but I'll miss you, Mum."
"I'll miss you too, my little—" Joyce managed to stop herself before calling Robin her "little bird." Rather than get upset, she started grinning like a loon, and even laughing.
Robin was confused by her mother's antics. "Mum?"
"Do you know what they call a young bat?" Holding back some more giggles badly—that is to say not at all—Joyce's eyes danced with merriment.
"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?" Shaking her head, Robin let out a sigh. "Okay, Mum, what are young bats called?"
Joyce just grinned, having been handed the perfect set up for her punchline. "I'll tell you later my adorable little puppy."
"Wait, really?!" Shouting as always, Lyra looked around at all the bat ponies. "So with everypony being young-looking you're all pups?! That's the cutest thing ever!"
"Huh." Robin tilted her head to the side. "So I don't say, 'Look at those kids playing over there,' but, 'Look at those puppies playing over there'?" She looked to her mother first, then Candela for approval, and got it from both with encouraging nods. "But what if somepony thinks I'm talking about actual puppies?"
Lyra cut in before her mother could answer. "Sky puppies!"
Joyce giggled along with it. "Sky puppies works quite well, or just pups." She let out a less sorrowful sigh and squeezed Robin again. "I'm going to miss you, Robin pup."
"Not half as much as I'm gonna miss both of you. Who's going to teach me all the worst jokes?" Robin leaned against her mother.
Getting up, Lyra walked around and curled up on the other side of Robin. "I'll save them up for you, Spud!"
A screech from some nearby trees announced the return of another bat; this one was much smaller than the pony kind. Tufts glided toward the group and shed altitude so that he approached Joyce more or less directly. At the last moment he aimed to Joyce's right and caught hold of her outstretched wing. "What's going on?"
Joyce tried to jerk Tufts back in time, but the bat artfully speared a piece of banana from her own salad bowl and started chewing away on it. "We decided that tomorrow's the day we leave for Canterlot. Are you still coming?"
Tufts looked pointedly in Dream Thunder's direction, then back to Joyce. "Of course I am, my darling. I would follow you—and mangoes—between worlds in a heartbeat."
Tufts, Joyce had noticed lately, had become a master of shifting food around in his mouth to talk and chew at the same time. "Flatterer. We just organized a little get-together to say goodbye to our friends."
The little gathering continued on after dinner, but eventually it was time for parting. Joyce watched Lyra and Rose saying their final goodbyes, but her eyes slid to Dave. She wandered over to the miner, trying to read his expression and failing. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Dave coughed a little, then reached up to half cover his mouth lest it happen again. "S-Sorry, love, just thinkin' really. It's been a crazy year, all told."
"You can say that again." Joyce ummed and ahhed about her next question, but in the end decided she needed to ask it. "How serious is it?" She nodded her head toward Rose.
"Me and Rosie? Apart from Steve, he's the only person who's ever just 'got' me. We can just talk, and neither gets pissed off about the other. He's got a great ass, too." Dave froze after his last words, then slowly turned to look at Joyce, only to catch her grinning.
Joyce couldn't keep the smile off her face. In all her time in town Dave had never been this relaxed around her before. "It's mutual?"
Dave nodded. "Yeah. At least he hasn't kicked my arse about anythin' yet."
"It's love?" Joyce knew it was the more direct question, but also the one with more possible answers and evasions.
A long sigh escaped Dave. "I don't want to use that word until I know it is, but…" He looked down at the ground. "Every time I do something I wonder if Rosie would want to do it too, and when I come up with some idea it's him I go to with it first."
"Sounds complicated." Joyce turned and looked at Rose. He was chatting with Candela and Lyra (which was obvious by the occasional shout) but every few seconds Rose Quartz's eyes strayed over and landed on Dave.
"Not as complicated as you'd think. And not as complicated as some of the other shit going on." When Dave lifted his head back up, his eyes locked with Rose's. The grin that spread across his face was a clear indication of where his heart lay.
"At least the research guys took me seriously this time. They can't say I didn't warn them." Mildly defensive about her part in everything, Joyce was almost oblivious to the little interplay of expressions, winks, and nods that passed between Dave and Rose. Almost. "If you want to leave—"
"Might take ya up on that." Dave fought not to break into a trot. When Rose excused himself from his own conversation and the pair met in the middle of the backyard, everyone froze to watch Rose and Dave kiss.
Lyra was the first to react, and without thinking it through shouted, "Damn! That's cute!"
The kiss marked the beginning of the end for the evening. Dave and Rose were the first to leave (accompanied by much eye-waggling from Lyra). Steve was next, and approached Joyce.
"Guess it's goodbye and good luck." Steve looked Joyce in the eyes. Since her change, Steve had been closer to Lyra than Joyce. "Did we have a chance, Joyce?"
"Life got in the way. A lot." Feeling more than a little uncomfortable, for reasons she couldn't fully justify, Joyce gave a sigh. "You're a great person, Steve, but—"
"But your kids and your job come first. You're doing a great job with both, you know." Without meaning to, Steve's eyes flicked to Lyra. "She helped me deal with a lot of stuff. Dream's little trick did too, but it's Lyra that kept me sane."
"What? Lyra?" Joyce was startled by the revelation. "You and Lyra were—"
"What?! God no! She helped me come to terms with—with this." Gesturing to herself, Steve smiled. "Life's not exactly how I thought it would go, but being a mare isn't the end of all things. For one, I'm better at my job now. I swear the stone whispers to me and tells me what's near it."
"How about a goodbye kiss for luck?" Wearing as warm a smile as she could manage, Joyce started to turn to present her cheek when Steve's lips found hers. There was no passion in the kiss, just a slight hint of the more-than-friendship they had shared together. But like their initial relationship it couldn't last.
"Goodbye, Joyce." Steve turned slowly, waved a hoof toward Lyra, and plodded off.
An overwhelming feeling of completeness filled Joyce. If she were taking Robin with her she would easily have left for Equestria at that moment. "Robin?"
Robin trotted over to her mother, and barely got within a wing-length of her before she was pulled into a hug. Leaning against her mother, and not all that much smaller, Robin let out a soft sigh.
"You want to help me clean up?" Still hugging, Joyce inhaled the scent of her daughter and nuzzled into the ruff of red fur around her neck. Crying would have been easy for her to do, which was why she held back her tears.
Robin had to pull back a little—but not away—from her mother to nod. "Sure. Just a few bowls, though. Tufts was going to give Dream and me a lesson on magic."
Raising one eyebrow, Joyce reached a wing out to ruffle Robin's mane. "I don't know what that bat's game is, but if he keeps you busy while I try to sleep I'll be happy."
"Why are you sleeping at night?" Before the town was almost completely turned into bat ponies, the question might have been odd. Robin used a wing to reach out and gather up a bowl.
"Because I want to look my best when I get to Canterlot. If I can slip back into a nocturnal pattern there, all well and good, but I can't expect anyone to make allowances for me." Joyce gathered her own share of bowls.
How Lyra had been meeting with Steve now made complete sense to Joyce: they were both daytime ponies. Leaving Lyra, Maud, and Dream to the darkened evening, Joyce took Robin inside to wash up the plates and kitchen.
Working mostly in silence, Joyce and Robin soon moved to the living room together.
"You need to do everything Candela tells you. She'll be taking care of you now." Joyce had the delight of seeing her daughter roll her eyes. "I mean it."
"Mum. She was our teacher all year, if we weren't already doing what she says we would have failed. Besides, she's smart." Curling up on the couch despite a lack of sleepiness, Robin cuddled under Joyce's wing.
Not for the first time did Joyce ponder on how mature her daughter sounded. She tried to compare her little filly with the human child who had rode in the car to Cowwarr at the start of the year, and was astounded. "I'm so proud of you, Skypup."
Robin let out a little sigh that had a distinctive, soft screech to it. "I'm going to learn everything I can from Candela and Dream, and then I'm gonna come and learn everything I can in Equestria. You'll see. I'll be there in no time."
"I know you will be." Joyce leaned her head down for just a second—just a bare moment. She had been deep in a nocturnal habit, but having spent most of the day awake she was defeated the moment her eyes closed.