//------------------------------//
// Rising Moon 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Starlight climbed back onto the airship's deck, letting her horn return to rest and carrying her blanket on her back. Maple was right where she had left her, waiting with a patient smile.

"Here," Starlight mumbled, shuffling and wrapping the blanket until they were sitting side-by-side, leaning together for support and warmth with the blanket beneath them, drawn up over their backs and around their sides until only their heads and forehooves were free.

"Hmmm..." Maple hummed, craning her head back and watching the sky. "What were you talking about on the bridge while I was with White Chocolate?"

Starlight exhaled into the cool night air. "First I talked with Shinespark. She's down in the observation room. Then I went up there, and Gerardo was rambling. I think he was telling everyone about how great the Griffon Empire is, but he made it sound pretty bad. He's not very good at describing stuff."

"He's not very good at a lot of things," Maple added wryly. "But at least he really tries to be nice, and that's better than some ponies. What did he say that made it sound bad?"

"Nothing interesting," Starlight huffed. "I mean what he said didn't make it sound interesting. Just a lot of stuff about lords and empresses and houses and betrothals and stuff. Betrothals are like marriages you have to do, right?"

Maple paused. "We don't have them in Riverfall, but I think so. That's what I've read about in books, at least."

"Yeah." Starlight let her head droop. "But that's all he talked about. A few important ponies with a bunch of plans and drama and he couldn't even think of what to say about normal life for everyone else without putting Slipstream to sleep. But it's not like we were going there, anyway."

Maple snorted. "Plans and drama and important ponies? Where have I heard that before...?" She held a frown for two seconds before cracking into a faint smile, then giggling. "Ohhh... I'm making jokes about Ironridge now. I wish I understood how I worked, sometimes..."

Starlight pressed against her. She didn't think she could put her picture of Maple into words, but at least knew what she wanted, and how to make her happy. Maple reciprocated, nuzzling the top of Starlight's head.

"Horn still feeling all right?" she asked, whispering.

"Yeah." Starlight didn't move, or look up. "But the moon's risen high enough that I can read from it, so we don't need my horn anyway."

"It's a pretty moon," Maple said. "And the stars, too. I was just looking at them while you were gone. In Riverfall, the trees get in the way of the sky, so you have to go somewhere special if you want to see them like this. And in Ironridge, we never had time to appreciate them, and I think it was raining anyway. Here, though, I can see the stars from horizon to horizon, and there's no light coming from anywhere to wash them out. It's... beautiful. Could you see the moon easily in Equestria?"

Starlight nodded, lifting her head and looking along with her. The stars burned with extra intensity, not a cloud on the horizon to cover them, in stark contrast with the weather they had endured in Ironridge. The moon itself was waxing, less than a week off from being full. The last full moon, she remembered, had been in the mountains, when she wore a charcoal cutie mark and was all on her own. Had it been that long? Nearly a week of Ironridge, and a week of Riverfall, and a week of being sick in the cave, and... Well, maybe it was a little further off from full. But her ears still folded at the sight, the memories and the realization of just how recently her distant past was.

"I liked looking at the moon," she whispered. "We had an old story Sunburst's parents told him that we'd scare each other with, about how there was a pony on the moon who was evil and would eat us if we were bad. The Mare in the Moon. If you look right when the moon is full, the dark patches look kind of like a mare. After Sunburst left, I tried not to think about things that would get me a cutie mark... but mostly about things we did together that hurt to remember, I guess. But I did wonder what it would be like to be all alone on the moon for a thousand years."

"Hmm." Maple nudged her, letting her go on.

"I felt... I don't know. Like I knew how they'd feel," Starlight admitted. "Sometimes I daydreamed about them being my friend, and just imagined what they'd be like. And I didn't imagine them as evil then. I didn't have anything to do back then besides imagine things."

Maple gently shifted her haunches. "Did you wish for a lot? That things could be better?"

"Yeah." Starlight hung her head. "I hated making myself miserable. But I didn't know what way to go." She sighed, and added, "I still don't. But I'll stay here in Riverfall with you while I figure that out."

"You know that's what cutie marks are, right?" Maple murmured back. "Granted wishes? When a pony wants something very much, enough to dedicate their life to achieving it, sometimes the world will give them the power to make that wish come true... a cutie mark. I bet there have been a lot of ponies who had something they needed to do, without enjoying their life, or especially because they weren't, who still got marks."

"...Great." Starlight drooped. "So everything I put myself through didn't even do anything, and it was just luck that I'm still blank. What if I wished I could change the past?"

Maple hesitated. "I'm not sure I've ever heard of a cutie mark that can do that..."

"Whatever," Starlight grumbled, curling closer to Maple. "All that already happened."

"Mmm..." Maple wrapped a foreleg around her, lifting her slightly in a hug. "Well, you're still a filly, and I'm hardly old either. We've got our whole lives ahead of us for things to go better, don't we?"

"Yeah," Starlight agreed, neither protesting nor grumbling. "Living... growing up... getting old in Riverfall..." She paused, letting the thought swirl around in her head. She was... what, eight or ten? She probably had another seventy years ahead of her. But already, she had crossed an uncrossable mountain range, and almost died to save a city of hundreds of thousands from legendary monsters. Was it really reasonable to expect that she could live the rest of her life in peace in one place after that?

She frowned. "You know we're not going to stay there forever, right?"

Maple tilted her head. "Huh?"

"In Riverfall," Starlight clarified. "In Ironridge, the moment you started feeling good about us, like we were safe, once we had met Shinespark in the warehouse, you wanted to run off and help ponies like White Chocolate and Valey. You did it in Riverfall, too. You once said me arriving was something you really needed, right? Like you were trying to convince yourself that life could give you good things, and me showing up was that? Just a few days later, you talked Arambai into letting us go to Ironridge." She pulled back just far enough to look Maple in the eye. "I think you like doing things. Feeling good makes you restless, or ambitious. So once we've gotten over Ironridge and everything that happened in it... I think you're going to want to do something else. And I'm going with you."

"I-I don't!" Maple stammered, looking like Starlight had just accused her of robbery. "Starlight, I..."

Starlight shook her head, then hugged back against Maple. "I'm saying I'll stick with you, not that I blame you for anything. Don't worry."

Now it was Maple's turn to wilt. "No, you're right. I've been..." She sharply sighed. "I know it's my fault that Ironridge ended up the way it did. I was the one who wanted to push our luck after we found the warehouse, and again after we helped White Chocolate. It was me who-"

"Maple..." Starlight warily cut her off. "We would have frozen to death if we hadn't been at the right place at the right time to stop the storm. Herman might have flooded the whole Earth District, and Valey and Fire would have died in that trapped room. Isn't what happened good?"

"I guess..." Maple mumbled. "It doesn't feel that way, though. Not when I think about you, or any of the ponies who got hurt..."

"Weren't you just telling me about how you were scared of laying down and not doing anything?" Starlight asked. "I told you, I'm coming too if you want to do stuff. I'm just saying I bet we'll leave Riverfall again."

Maple sighed, resting her chin back atop Starlight's head. "I guess that's true, isn't it? I'd like so much to give both of us happy lives, though. If you could have anything in life, what do you want?"

"To protect you," Starlight instantly replied.

"That can't be healthy," Maple murmured after a while. "I love you too, but you should have some wants and goals of your own."

Starlight grimaced. This was exactly what she had been thinking about earlier, wasn't it? "Yeah," she admitted, slumping. "I just don't have any yet. Maybe what I want is to find something to do with myself."

She didn't add what was in the back of her head: the audio chip from Fire containing a full explanation of Yakyakistan's actions. Fire had repeatedly praised her and called her special, promising that her role in world events wasn't over. If Starlight was honest with herself, she really did want to be satisfied with Riverfall, but she couldn't shake that prophecy or the thought that Riverfall wouldn't be enough.

"Well..." Maple nuzzled her again. "If I do get too ambitious, you and my friends can remind me to be happy with what I've done. If I really did save all of us and Ironridge by pushing us to go to Copsewood and help Valey, that should be enough making a difference for a lifetime. But for now, I don't think I have to worry about feeling that way. I'm just glad I have you, glad to be alive, and want so badly to go home..."

"And besides, it's not like there's anywhere we'd want to go," Starlight added with a shrug. "Yakyakistan? I never want to see snow again as long as I live. Varsidel has a war, and Gerardo didn't make the Griffon Empire sound nice. And I'm not ready to go back to Equestria."

"Hmmmm..." Maple shivered, the night breeze blowing around their blanket. "That's okay. But if we decide to do something like this ever again, I promise... and please hold me to this... that we'll think it over. No more deciding to travel somewhere hours before we have to leave. I bet if we do our research and stay safe rather than running straight into things, we'd have a much better time."

"Promise," Starlight agreed.

Maple thought for a moment. "You know where one place we could go is?"

"Where?"

"The mountains." Maple turned her head, looking south at the gigantic mountain wall causing the horizon to loom over their heads, even miles away. "Ten years ago, right after we realized we couldn't go to Ironridge, Amber and Willow and myself took the boat we were building and sailed up the side stream you floated down on, all the way to the big waterfall at the base of the mountains. It was like a miniature adventure that we could have, one that was safe even though the bigger things were out of reach. And it was wonderful. That trip was the only time I've ever seen the stars as perfectly as I do now, and it felt like... a suitable closing to that part of my life. But we could go back there, once again. The three of us, and you, and maybe Valey or some others too. To say... we survived Ironridge again."

Starlight's memories of the river beyond the waterfall were hazy at best, but she nodded. That sounded like a good idea.

"Gerardo left his boat with Amber, didn't he?" Maple eventually asked. "We have our old one too, somewhere, but it was kind of amateur. But if she kept that one safe from the flood..."

"Mmmm," Starlight mumbled, having nothing else to say.

Neither did Maple. Apparently, she had forgotten about the book, and Starlight wasn't sure she needed to read right then, anyway.

"What did you and White Chocolate talk about?" she finally said, in the name of restarting the conversation.

Maple squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh... this and that. I might have... She talked about her foal in a way that stressed me out and made my brain freeze, and I think it's rejecting that conversation right now." She heaved a bitter sigh. "I had hoped I was past all that, with Aspen. I thought getting you would be..." A tear trickled out. "Sorry. I'm not the world's most stable mare, am I?"

Starlight wished she had a better baseline to compare with, but in reality, the number of ponies she had ever known well sat firmly at two, with Maple being the second. So she nodded, sensing agreement and sympathy were what was called for. "Need to talk about it?"

"The opposite, I think," Maple half-chuckled. "Or... something. I don't know what I need. If I did, maybe I'd have found it by now. But you certainly don't need to hear about the details until you're at least a few years older."

Starlight sighed. Soon enough, she could ask Amber or Willow, and if they agreed, she'd drop it. In the meantime, she huddled closer to Maple, fixing the blanket around her lilac shoulders as the moon rose higher in the sky.