With a burst of light, Starlight's hooves touched the ground. She shook her head, clearing it of disorientation and gathering her senses, feeling the sky fall into place around her.
Her horn didn't even twinge from the spell, but if it had, the cool mountain breeze twisting down from the cloudless blue would have soothed and dampened it, freshening her mind and cleansing her lungs of smoky, unventilated cave air. Taking several deep, endless breaths, Starlight finally walked forward.
She was on a long glass plinth, sticking out from the Stone District as an observation platform. Designed for tourists and giving a full view of the city, it had been one of her first stops after arriving in Ironridge, when she and Maple and Gerardo had rested to get their bearings while carrying two crates up the mountain. Just like then, the sun was midway through rising above the mountains, and she could see the shadow of the remaining dam and the lighthouse mountain north of it slowly drawing back across the Earth District.
Behind her, below her and in a band all around the Ironridge crater, the Stone District wrapped, a staircase of buildings and terraced streets that bustled with early-morning life. Starlight looked straight down, staring through the glass at the street below. A roadside vendor sat in a roofed stall two stories down, selling something Starlight couldn't make out to a line of colorful equines three ponies long. A stallion trotted hurriedly past pulling a crate-laden cart... Why hadn't Gerardo stopped to get one of those? A mare and a stallion wandered aimlessly to the side, sticking close together.
"It's so peaceful..." Starlight sighed, folding her forelimbs on the railing and resting her chin on them with a dismal frown. "I wish every day could have been like this. It's not too hot, not too cold, ponies are doing normal things with their lives and nothing is exploding. Do they even know how close they came to dying? Why couldn't Ironridge have been like this for us? It's not fair..."
"I hate to break it to you," Valey remarked, leaning against the railing next to her, "but this is basically a normal day in the Stone District. Remember all that stuff Herman was going on about with all the problems being caused by just a few squabbling ponies? He was one hundred percent correct. Until you mess with the conspiracy crowd, it's all just normal citizens and... well, Ironridge had a reputation as being a city of progress for a reason. Not all of them, but a lot of the ponies here had it really good."
"Had," Starlight muttered. "And now they've got no power and no ways out. Poor them."
As they sat, Starlight thinking, Valey waiting with her tail swishing impatiently and Hestia standing by with impeccable patience, a stately-looking couple turned off the street and onto the bridge to the observation platform. They made it halfway down before growing close enough to recognize Valey, hesitating in veiled alarm, and trying as innocently as possible to look like they had made a mistake and had somewhere else to be.
"Really!?" Valey complained, loud enough for them to hear. "I don't even bite anymore! Come on..."
Arrested, the couple froze in their retreat, passed a whisper, and decided they thought themselves classy enough that leaving after being called out wouldn't be worth the loss of face. They trotted out to the platform, standing as far away as they could from Valey and smiling with as much politeness and as little nervousness as they could muster.
Starlight snorted. She would have been just as fine if the interlopers had left them alone.
"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" the mustachioed stallion managed, a tense note in his voice as Valey stared idly at his tweed suit. "That storm the other night was simply dreadful. They're calling it a new record."
"Are they?" Starlight and Valey dryly replied as one.
"They are, yes," the mare at his side agreed, bobbing her head. Starlight looked closely at her coat, noting the smoothness and lack of wrinkles, and then at her gray mane that let a few telltale streaks of pink through... Was she dying it to appear older than she really was? What a strange pony.
"They're saying it damaged the skyport," the stallion added with a very important air to his voice. "Probably just a few safety protocols and regulations they have to inspect it for compliance with. But ponies these days scare so easily, we went out yesterday morning and invested in padding out our wine cellar. That'll return a healthy profit the moment anyone suspects this closure of hindering imports! Oh ho ho!"
The mare standing beside him sulked. "Of course, I wanted to donate the money to help with that horrible housing crisis in the Earth District following the accident at the dam. Those poor ponies had enough on their hooves already, trying to stand up for their traditions and olden ways of thinking in the modern world..."
The stallion chuckled, winking at the mare with a twinkle in his eye. "Well, you see, love, once we cash in in a day or two, we can donate even more money! Or perhaps buy that deluxe reading chair for the sitting room I've had my eye on..."
"Oh, you don't need that..." The mare glanced coyly back at him, teasing her eyes around his gaze. "With the power off, these last two days have felt so rustic! Sitting inside in the storm using blankets for warmth... Using batteries and sunlight to light the house... I think it's romantic. Can't we put off upgrades at least until they get around to turning our power back on?"
She teased at his chin, and for a moment Starlight was worried the two were going to kiss. Then Valey interrupted, face just flat enough to ruin the moment. "You guys know fruit wine is a Sosan thing, right? It's made in the Earth District, not imported."
It took the stallion a minute to remember what she was talking about. "Oh ho ho, yes!" His face lit up and he slapped his knee. "I suppose that means we donated to the cause after all, doesn't it, love? You see, I was thinking of you all along!"
The mare blushed back, and she wasn't quite able to stammer out a rebuttal.
"Yeah..." Valey kept up her lazy expression. "Also, you know Ironridge's power generators were in Sosa, right? And that's pretty much gone? It's gonna be a pretty long time before whoever this they is gets you off those oh-so-rustic batteries."
Both ponies blinked at her. "Are you for real?" the stallion managed. "No power for..." He shook his head. "You're important; you must know what's going on. How long are we talking about, here? Another day? Two?"
The mare looked hopefully at Valey's deadpan face. "Three days? That might be kind of long..."
"I think she means a whole week, love," the stallion whispered in her ear.
When Valey's expression contorted to stop from laughing, the mare's ears drooped under her hat. "I-I don't know if I want to live without power for that long. This doesn't sound fun anymore..."
The stallion wrapped a foreleg around her shoulders, leading her away. "Don't you worry, my love. Let's go home and clean out the icebox just in case, and then we'll check some reputable sources and if it sounds like this blackout is going to last for more than a few days, we can sell off the cellar and go on a nice cruise to pass the time the moment the skyport reopens. Really, whoever was responsible for that travesty at the dam ought to be sued..."
Starlight felt the ghost of a little box with a button underhoof as they left, and consciously caught herself putting all her weight on that leg.
"That's the Stone District for you," Valey sighed, waiting until they were out of earshot. "About as typical as you can get. Well-off, well-meaning, and completely clueless about what the world is actually like. Those two probably think poverty is something out of a storybook, or something."
"T-They..." Starlight stared after the retreating pair. Her stomach hurt, and they were to blame for it. "They were sitting inside during that storm, while the power was off. With a blanket. They thought it was romantic. Romantic. While we were dying." She held up a lilac hoof, turning it over in front of her eyes. She had always been pink, right? "While I did die."
Hestia's eyes widened, though like a respectful secretary she held her silence and didn't press.
"It's not fair," Starlight whispered. And with those words, she was struck by a realization heavier than any storm winds or magic attack she had weathered since leaving Equestria: it wasn't fair. She had risked her life to stop Herman and the windigoes, when she could have just stuck with Valey and ran. The Stone Districters had stayed safe and warm and not even needed to realize the danger. They thought of it as a fond adventure, experienced from the shelter of their familiar homes. For her, it had been terrifying, staring into the face of oblivion with a body that didn't work properly, far from home and in defense of a city that had done nothing for her. Still, she could have ran, and she stayed.
Despite all that, despite the dust from the dam explosion on her hooves, despite everything that could be conceived as extreme acts of heroism or villainy and either way undoubtedly special, she had just met two ponies who treated her as so normal, they barely acknowledged she existed.
Once, that had been everything she ever dreamed of. But now, three days later, Ironridge was ignoring her. History didn't matter. She was normal... and it didn't feel fair at all.