//------------------------------//
// Mother Talk 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

"...We're going to Riverfall," White Chocolate sighed into the darkness of the galley.

Maple nodded, a faint slit of light from under the door the room's only illumination now that Starlight and her glowing horn had left. "Should I tell you about it?"

White Chocolate was still. "That's where you're from, isn't it? You said you knew Faron. He's there too, isn't he?"

"Well... yes," Maple admitted, feeling her ears droop. Her entire body still wanted to follow suit, and it took conscious effort to keep from laying down all the way and resting her cheek against the wood flooring. "We're going to have to deal with that, aren't we? But the town is big enough that if it doesn't work out..."

"Oh." White Chocolate's voice grew faint. "I suppose Riverfall is very isolated, then? Not a place airships usually go?"

Maple shook her head. "The only way in or out for seven years has been a secret ferry to Sosa that runs at night, and I doubt that's still in service."

"So Sosa helped him run." White Chocolate sounded defeated. "I always wondered if that was the case. When he first went missing, and they told me they found records of an airship ticket, but didn't know where to... I wonder if they thought it would make it easier."

"You could ask Shinespark yourself," Maple offered. "She's somewhere on this ship. Though after everything that's happened, I can't imagine she's feeling very good about herself right now..."

White Chocolate was silent.

"Remember," Maple said, "no matter what happens with Faron, Riverfall should be a much better place than Ironridge. He has a new foal of his own, and another wife, but he still cares about you enough to ask me to check on you when he heard I was leaving Riverfall. But with or without him, things should be better now."

Still, White Chocolate said nothing.

"Still awake?" Maple asked.

"Yes. Mmmmm..." White Chocolate sighed, then stretched. "The foal's still not calming down. It's just uncomfortable. You can keep talking. I'm still listening."

Maple sat up straighter in concern. "You're all right, right? I don't need to get anyone?"

"Oh, no. Definitely not..." White Chocolate shifted in the darkness, her voice taking on a more tender tone. "I'd know it if they were coming. I've done this enough times..."

Now it was Maple's turn to hold her silence. Ever since she had lost Aspen, even talking about foaling made her nerves tingle.

"Don't worry," White Chocolate assured. "Even if they did come now, it would be fine. There are plenty of safe rooms and supplies here, and thanks to you, I'll have a place to stay in Riverfall soon. This is hundreds of times better of a place to foal than the refugee camp where I was..."

Maple's ears flattened against her head.

"I spent every hour I was there afraid of that," White Chocolate whispered. "At first, it was just going to be a day, and I thought, 'stay in there, little foal. Please don't come now...' But then they started saying there was a flood, and that Gnarlbough was a swamp, and I no longer had a home to go back to. I was going to stay there for months. I'd have foaled there for sure, and I couldn't care for an infant in a place like that! My youngest are young enough as it is... And actually doing it there when there's nothing but cold metal floors and so many strangers nearby..."

"White Chocolate..." Maple's eyes clenched shut, and she cringed.

Oblivious to Maple's discomfort in the dark, White Chocolate continued. "I was so scared, I imagined hearing ponies calling to the crowd, asking if there was anyone with medical knowledge! Even after they moved me to a more private room, I thought I heard them outside my door! Or maybe I didn't imagine it, and someone else actually was-!"

"White Chocolate!" Maple blurted. "Stop! Please..."

"Maple?" White Chocolate tilted her head. "What's wrong?"

"I..." Maple gritted her teeth. "I adopted Starlight; I'm not her biological mom. The one time I tried to have a foal of my own it ended with me miscarrying, and a lot of other things went wrong in my life before that that I associate with it. It's something I've worked on, but still have a lot of bad memories attached to, so I can be fine around you normally but could you... please not talk about foaling?"

"Oh." White Chocolate sounded almost more disappointed than empathetic, but quickly righted herself. "I'm sorry. It's just something that's... No, not talking about it. That sounds horrible."

Maple wore a too-wide grin, shaking her head. "It's fine. It's in the past."

"I'm sorry," White Chocolate repeated. After a moment of silence, she added, "I was considering whether to ask you if you wanted to feel them kicking, but..."

"Changing the subject!" Maple announced, grin twitching and failing as she stood up. "It's too dark in here. Let's go to the main hall, where there's a window."

White Chocolate followed, and Maple actually didn't stumble as she crossed to the glass panel in the floor. A rectangle of blue light shone up from the night below and illuminated the table folded into the ceiling. Maple chose to lay directly on the glass - it was chilly, but not more than the rest of the ship, and the view gave her something to do with her eyes. They were still losing altitude, she noticed.

Pointedly, she kept her eyes averted as White Chocolate laid across from her, trying and failing to reset her brain after the sudden application of stress brought her to a halt. "...So," was all she managed.

"Changing the subject," White Chocolate whispered. "Were you...? You were involved with the Sosans, weren't you? That's why you were able to get on this ship now, and bring me and my family. Do you know everything that happened? I only heard snippets that Hayseed brought back to me..." She yawned heavily, forcing her ears back and shivering from the effort. "It doesn't matter now, I suppose, since we're leaving all that behind. But if it's something you can talk about..."

"I can talk about it," Maple sighed. "I was paralyzed for most of it, though."

White Chocolate perked her ears in interest.

"There was a bomb threat," Maple started. "Something Gerardo found, I think. And then we had a meeting, and I don't remember what we decided, but I wanted to come back for you first, so that's when we returned the first time..." She lifted a hoof and wiped her brow, memories of the murderously-hot trek from Gnarlbough to Grand Acorn sending phantom beads of sweat cascading down her forehead. "And after we left you there, we went to Copsewood to... to do something with a power line to try to help another friend, and then we got hit with a stun grenade, and there was a whole bunch of fighting and..." She squeezed her eyes shut, memories swimming, trying to remember. "I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, am I?"

White Chocolate gave a sad smile. "It's still news to me. But the Defense Force destroyed the dam?"

Maple swallowed. "The dam got destroyed."

Her gaze drifted back down, through the floor and at the nearing river below. Its waters were visibly swollen, and she could see where it had burst its banks and filled nearby ravines and valleys that usually formed tributaries. The badlands that created much of the terrain north and east of Ironridge were vast rock plains shattered and disrupted by some force many ages ago, then grown over with a thick carpet of jungle and forest such that there were more exposed trunks than canopy. Amid the impossibly-frequent changes in elevation, the river had somehow carved out a way, and that way was now doing its very best to drain Sosa of its flood.

"I can't even remember how long it's been since I've seen this much of the outdoors," White Chocolate murmured. "I never left my home in Gnarlbough. Once a month, maybe, even before Faron left. I always had nowhere to go, and too many foals to care for. I bet all of them have never seen something like this. Even Hayseed, who went out to do errands and buy food after Faron left, never went past Gnarlbough. Most of my children think we're on a great adventure."

Maple nodded, reminding herself that they had been flying for some time while she napped in Shinespark's room. "I wish I'd been able to have more of a real adventure, these past few days. I thought Ironridge would be full of wonder and discovering new things, but I don't even know what Stone District fashion looks like, or what ponies do for entertainment. My friends will be disappointed, too. I wish I could do it all over again, only not visit in a time of political crisis and get caught up in the middle..."

White Chocolate tipped her head. "Why did you come to Ironridge? Is it common for ponies to leave Riverfall? I've never heard of it before, though that comes with never going out."

"It's unheard of." Maple turned solemn. "For the last seven years, some stallions come and none ever leave. It wasn't like a prison. Very few ponies actually wanted to. Riverfall is peaceful, comfortable, and has plenty to go around. More ambitious ponies wanted more, but we always knew what we had was something to be satisfied with. But I came to Ironridge... It was my fillyhood dream, which I never got a chance to fulfill. And then I was in the right place at the right time to be offered that chance, and I took it without even a day to think it over."

"I suppose your dream didn't involve all of this," White Chocolate said. "Evacuations and floods and bad things."

Maple shook her head. "I don't think any of us had a clear picture of what it would involve. It wasn't things we dreamed of, it was ideas and feelings. Discovery, awe, excitement and wonder. Thrills... though Ironridge certainly was thrilling. It would be new, changing, and never boring. Because as peaceful and stable as Riverfall is, the price of that is that it doesn't change. Once you know it, there's very little it can do to surprise you."

White Chocolate nodded.

"What did you want to do when you were a filly?" Maple asked. "Before you started a family. Before Project Aslan, when Ironridge was supposedly happy. What was your life like then?"

Sighing in thought, White Chocolate rolled onto her side, letting her long mane spill across the glass. "Ohhhhh, that feels like so long ago... It doesn't even feel like I was the same pony." She paused, thinking, and soon the memories brought a smile to her moonlit face. "When I was a filly... my father was a technician in Sosa. He worked on mana microequipment, the things that make screens and terminals and cameras work. Anything that involves small wires. He'd always bring his work home with him, show me what he was working on and even make things just for me. I thought I was going to be just like him, but of course I didn't have a horn and couldn't manipulate small tools like I'd need to to do that. But he let me pretend. He'd let me sit at his workbench with him, and I could say what to do and he would do it, and we'd make things out of spare parts from his job. I remember one day so clearly... We made a real camera. The lens was distorted, and the case was held together with tape I put on myself, since the pins were broken, but the very next morning he took the day off from work and walked me all the way to the Stone District, and we took pictures and brought them back to my mother. Those were such different days..."

A tear leaked out of her eyes and dropped to the glass floor. The question of what made things change was on the tip of Maple's tongue, but she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"I wish it had lasted forever," White Chocolate continued, confirming her suspicions. "I was just old enough for him to explain why I couldn't follow in his hoofsteps when the airship failed. I would have been nine then... My father stopped smiling when he came home from work. He still played with me, but wasn't able to bring home new parts any more. I only found out later that he had been reassigned to do maintenance work on motors. Eventually, we stopped altogether. Then I had some family drama... You wouldn't want to hear about it. It ended with me going to live with another mare, a stepmother. She meant well, but didn't know how to be a good role model, especially as I got older. I reached the stage where I thought I could do anything, and spent all my time planning and daydreaming and wishing, and left the house a lot. Then I made some mistakes, and... eventually I was starting a family and married to Faron, in that order."

Her good cheer from the start of the story had all but evaporated. "And that's about it. I never did anything to earn a brand. Don't ask about the things I left out on purpose, because you wouldn't like the answers. I wish things could have gone differently, but..." She managed a last, gentle smile. "Maybe Riverfall can be different. I always did want to see my foals grow up to make something of themselves."

With that, she yawned again. "I'm falling asleep... Can you help me back to my room? I don't usually stay up past dusk, and it's hard to move around these days..."

Maple struggled to her own hooves. "I think so. Thank you for telling me your story."

"Thank you for giving me a reason to remember the good parts." One hoof at a time, White Chocolate got up, heaving a heavy breath. "Oof. Easy, girl..."

"I'm not at my strongest, either," Maple warned as White Chocolate started to move towards her. "I was stabbed by a cursed, strength-sapping sword during the battle on the dam. So don't lean on me too hard."

"Okay..." Steadying herself, White Chocolate matched her pace with Maple's, and they both moved toward the staircase to the cabin hall.