//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: Renewal // Story: Roam-Springa // by Pascoite //------------------------------// “As it turns out,” I said, “Igneous Rock had spent barely a week on his roam-springa before returning home. Then he waited by my mailbox, after his chores, every chance he got for the weeks upon weeks it took me to realize what he had so quickly.” Yes, Igneous Rock, always so decisive. Very much the rock of our family. “I’d love to be able to introduce you to them sometime, but at least you get to see Pinkie Pie.” Some kind of warbling belly laugh echoed from the salesroom, no doubt a joke only Pinkie got. “It won’t surprise you to find out we never bothered with a roam-springa for Pinkie. The quiet, structured life would never have suited her, and there was no point in trying. But life blessed us with four wonderful daughters. Pinkie’s twin Marble came back from her roam-springa after only a day, Limestone a few weeks… even Maud—oh, you should meet her, she’s a delight!” I couldn’t help grinning widely. Our daughter of letters! “She just started a graduate degree in geology, and now she does traveling research.” The mare’s eyebrow arched a little. “Oh,” I said, waving a hoof, “we never stood too much on tradition. We run the rock farm and live a simple life, stick with our Hearth’s Warming observances, but you’ve already heard I don’t keep up the old-style speech, none of our daughters do, and their roam-springas weren’t tied to a betrothal. They can consult the Pairing Stone if and when they are ready. Maud made a commitment to the community, but that doesn’t mean we expect her to remain home. And I did write to Prim Hemline after a while.” I smirked at her and played at hiding behind my hoof—a little secret I’d share with her, though most of my friends already knew. Still, few ponies would have suspected me of being Crystal Essence. “I ended up doing several photo shoots with her over the years, usually for charity events so I didn’t have to deal with the hassle of getting paid, but occasionally if we had some expense—just one of them covered all of Maud’s college. I even got to keep some of the cute outfits! I didn’t think to bring any of the pictures with me, though.” A nice closing note for her tale, I supposed. Everything all wrapped up, no loose ends. At least none that I could tie up. “Of course I see Cup Cake and Mayor Mare regularly. I write to Ms. Harshwhinny once in a while, I see Prim Hemline and Pixie Cut on photo shoots, though it’s been at least four years now. And Buttercup, she…” Why did that one always hit a raw spot? Cup Cake and Mayor Mare had known her far better than I did, and they could talk about her easily. “She passed on about seven years ago.” With a deep breath, I wiped my cheeks dry. “I think that’s everything.” As she dotted the last period onto her page, the young mare wore one of those distant smiles, the kind I’d had plenty of in my lifetime, at the end of something thoroughly enjoyable, but still… at the end. No matter—good ponies looked forward to new beginnings. She closed her notebook, set her pencil down, and began packing up her things. “I hope you’ll stay the evening with us,” I said. “Of course, if you have to set out for home already, I understand.” The sun had dipped quite low in the sky, and the last train would leave soon, if it was even heading her direction. Surely she’d planned to stay the night—no telling how late our interview might have run, and she hadn’t been glancing at the clock. So she stood, and thank goodness she nodded, or I would have had to keep her here by force. And then I finally caught a glimpse of her cutie mark: a woodworking joint. Yes, Dovetail! That was her name. Maybe she wrote as a hobby? I couldn’t figure how woodworking might play into journalism, but I’d seen stranger combinations in my time. Something rather appetizing wafted in from the kitchen—carrots and squash, at least, and one of Pinkie’s confections. “Excuse me a moment,” I said to Dovetail. “I refuse to let Cup Cake handle dinner alone, especially in a kitchen I know like the back of my hoof, so I’m going to help her.” Her eyes flashed momentarily toward the floor. “But please! You don’t have to stay in here alone! You’re welcome to come with me or talk to the rest of the family in the salesroom,” I said, beckoning her along. “Pinkie’s no doubt in the kitchen, too. Like I said, we never bothered sending her on a roam-springa, but she insisted she had to do something similar, just to be part of the family, and she’d love to tell you about the week she spent jumping. She called it her ‘spring-springa.’” Dovetail grinned and let out a little snuffle of a laugh, but when I opened the door— “Surprise!” Pinkie shouted as she hit me with a flying tackle. Not that it knocked me back any—I’d long since developed the ability to absorb Pinkie’s hug assaults, even unexpected ones, whenever I didn’t have her in direct sight. But behind her! A big cake! No candles, of course, since it wasn’t my birthday, but Carrot and Cup Cake wore huge smiles, and Mayor Mare! I rushed over to give her a hug, but as I got into the room far enough to see around the display case, there sat Pixie Cut at one of the tables! No way would I detour from a good, solid embrace with Mayor Mare. Even though I saw her every few months when I came to town, she’d always hold an extra-special place in my heart. And did her eyes wander down to my cutie mark again? She gave me a little chuckle and a sheepish grin, and I returned the favor, my eyes widening—words? More of them visible on the scroll? “Have you been writing poetry again?” I hissed. “Yes,” she said, not even bothering to lower her voice. “It’s alright. Everypony in town knows now.” “That’s wonderful!” I gushed, and gave her another squeeze, but then I did make my way over to Pixie Cut. A few speckles of gray had begun to dot her green mane. “It’s been a few years, Pixie! How are you?” Any of the previous times we’d met, of course my mane had been the order of the day, and even now, her hoof twitched up to undo my hairbun. Instead, she merely hugged me. “Good. And steadfastly refusing to apply any of my color products to my own hair, even though Prim keeps telling me to. I’m not the one on camera. What does it matter?” “As long as you’re happy.” I squeezed her back, and just as I was about to ask— The door’s bell jingled again, and Ms. Harshwhinny entered, hoof-in-hoof with Prim! “You two…?” I said, and Ms. Harshwhinny only blinked. I guess I’d stumbled onto their little party earlier than they’d intended, but Ms. Harshwhinny recovered quickly, with her usual imperturbable ease. “Yes, well…” Funny, I’d never heard her stammer before. “Officially, for a couple years now, but we’d dated for a while before that.” “Why didn’t you tell me!?” Really, those two! How could they possibly think I wouldn’t want to know? And now Prim took a turn at stuttering. “I—we just didn’t want to publicize—not that we don’t trust you.” She blushed a bright red. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” I said. “Just—hey, I don’t think you’ve ever met the Ponyville crowd.” So I passed introductions around, but as the hum of conversation started up again, I had to know. “Alright, what’s the occasion?” Everypony smiled back, so I intensified my stare at the usual culprits: Cup Cake and Pinkie. “Don’t you remember?” Cup Cake said, jabbing a hoof toward the calendar. “It was just a couple of weeks ago—the anniversary of when you first arrived in Ponyville. Of course we’d celebrate, since we knew you’d planned to visit.” Really? I’d never kept track of that, and we’d never had a party for it before. Maybe they felt like my meeting with Dovetail constituted a good enough reason. “Well… thank you all for coming. It’s wonderful to see everypony!” Surely Dovetail knew as well. I peeked back toward the cracked door, and there she stood with an impish grin. “Well, come in, then,” I said, beckoning to her. “Join the party!” That Pinkie, though. She could keep a secret, but not the fact that she had one. And she wouldn’t look me in the eye. “What are you hiding, Pinkie?” “Hee hee!” With a huge grin, she pronked over to the door and poked her head outside. “It’s alright! You can come in now!” Then she held the door open, and in walked— “Cranky Doodle!” I rushed up to hug him. Not that I’d ever done so before—he winced, but Pinkie hadn’t let the door swing shut. And my knees went weak at the sight of a jenny following him in. “Is… is this Matilda?” Had he found her? Had he really found her? Of course, if that wasn’t Matilda, then I’d just seriously stuck my hoof in my mouth. “Yes!” he said, and Mayor Mare raised her eyebrows at the sight of him smiling. “I’d given up, but I ran into her here in Ponyville, by chance, and we got married last year. I would have invited you, but I never learned your name or knew where you lived.” I whipped around to Matilda and shook her hoof vigorously, and naturally she recoiled a bit. “It’s so good to meet you!” Then right back to Cranky, with what must have looked like the gleam of a madmare in my eye—“How did you even know to come here?” Pinkie cleared her throat. “I, uh… overheard you talking about him, and he’s my friend, so I snuck out to get him once the other party guests started showing up.” “Yes,” Cup Cake added, “you’d told me long ago about helping a donkey, but you never said it was Cranky! I could have told you he had a house in town!” Then Pixie Cut pulled a card out of her saddlebag and held it out to me. “Bell Hop sends his regards. He couldn’t get away from work to attend—he’s the day manager of the hotel now!” “He… he remembers me? After so long?” All this love. Around me, because of me, for me. My smile buckled, and I started to cry. “What’s wrong?” Prim said. “I-I just can’t believe—” a big sniffle “—I still can’t believe I deserve all this, but every one of you means so much to me, a-and it’s beautiful. If only Buttercup could…” Of course somepony pulled me into a tight embrace. And of course it was Mayor Mare. She tugged me down into the seat next to her—“You’ve made all our lives so much richer, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, giving me a peck on the cheek—but I couldn’t take my eyes off Matilda. He’d actually found her! I’d spent all these years wondering. “H-how long did it take?” “Close to thirty years,” Cranky answered from beneath some ridiculous toupee. He’d never been blond. I broke out laughing. That couldn’t have fit any more perfectly! Almost thirty years for me to get to today, when I finally got to see this culmination of the love I’d collected in my lifetime. I shook my head at the quizzical stares directed my way and turned to Pinkie. “C’mon! Let’s party!” And party we did. With Pinkie in charge, we didn’t really have a choice. But even she knows when to let things wind down. The out-of-town guests, except for Dovetail, had left for their rooms at the inn, and I’d go see them off at the train station tomorrow. Cranky and Matilda had gone home, Pinkie and the Cakes were cleaning up the kitchen, and Dovetail had gone to get settled in the guest room. So I found myself sitting on the front steps outside, in the dark, with Mayor Mare. “You’re the only loose end, you know,” I said, patting her withers. “Somehow, I knew we’d end up talking in the cold night air.” Out of her saddlebag, she unfolded the quilt I’d given her for Hearth’s Warming over twelve years ago and draped it across us. “And don’t you worry about me. I’m not a loose end.” I sidled over to lean against her as a puff of steam floated away from her sigh. “I seemed to find love for everypony else. But not you.” With a smirk, she gave me another quick kiss on the cheek. “You still can, if Igneous is willing to share.” And that earned her a swat on the shoulder. “You’re terrible!” “Mmhmm.” But her sharp smile melted into cottony softness. “Really. Don’t worry about me. We ironed things out long ago, and I’ve never kept anything hidden from you. No anger, no hurt, no nothing.” “But you deserve love as much as anypony. I do still feel guilty, and that’ll probably never change.” A short chuckle echoed in the street. “Stubborn to the last. But really.” Her eyes flicked away from me for only a split second, but that was enough. She… Did she? A wide smile plowed its way across my face. “You found somepony.” An even bigger grin answered, but she only stared down at the quilt. “Yes. Maybe. Just… they’re fragile. Like you were. I don’t want to start rumors—not that you would—but leave it for now. I’ll tell you soon enough.” “Keeping nothing hidden, huh?” And now I got a swat in return. “You’d know better than anypony. Just give them the space they need for now. Please.” She didn’t have to ask at all, and she knew it. She also knew that nothing else could have made this day more perfect. A warm quilt, her soft coat like lamb’s breath, the stars rippling through the thin clouds overhead—I leaned in and kissed her cheek this time. “See you tomorrow?” “Definitely.” She gathered up her quilt and slung it over her back, then waved and stifled a yawn as she strolled off for her home. “Good night.” “Night,” I said. A frosty breeze absolutely scraped across my ribs, and I fought off a shiver on my way back inside. Almost one in the morning, according to the clock in the hall, and the whole place had gone deathly quiet. The kitchen all cleaned up, put away, everypony settling into bed. I flicked off the light and cut through the den, toward the stairs, but a lamp was still on— “Dovetail?” She sat there, on the sofa, and her eyes had gone very still, like the waters in a quarry, calmly concealing vast depths. “Did nopony show you to your room?” Dovetail nodded and pointed toward the back of the house. “Couldn’t sleep, then?” A stack of blank pages lay on the cushion next to her, along with a package of fresh pencils, but her notepad remained shut. Halfway through another nod—a head shake, a shrug. Then she tapped a hoof to her forehead. “It’s just a simple story from a simple pony. I take it this isn’t your first time interviewing. You must have heard many tales more interesting than mine.” I shouldn’t have presumed to keep her up any longer, but against my better judgment, I sat down on the sofa beside her. “I do know the feeling of getting something in my head that I can’t help mulling over before I can sleep. What has you so engaged?” Her hoof flinched toward the notebook, withdrew, then finally tapped on it. She picked it up and held it out to me. “You don’t mind?” I asked, and she shook her head. So I took it and began paging through all the neat script—for how quickly she’d jotted everything down, she had exceptional mouthwriting! I didn’t recognize any of the names, not explicitly, anyway, but I was familiar with several of the family names. From rock farms, blacksmith shops, quilters… all manner of traditional crafts. And all stories of ponies on their roam-springas. Here, only two pages on a stallion who returned after a scant three days, there another stallion who spent nearly three weeks deciding he couldn’t go back and who now ran an advertising firm in Baltimare. A mare who returned after five days but decided years later to leave after her husband’s death. So many windows into ponies’ lives! But none more than a few pages in length. Still, I leafed through them all, savoring the fragments Dovetail had lovingly gathered from doing nothing more than sitting there and listening. Then came mine. I wouldn’t make Dovetail wait as I counted, but… there had to be forty pages here! Of notes, not even smelted and cast into a formal narrative yet! “Why do ponies keep treating me like I’m something special?” I said as I wiped my cheeks dry. And when I turned to Dovetail, her own eyes glistened. She quickly mimed running a pencil across the page as I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “Y-you want to get started writing? It’ll bother you until it’s out of your head, won’t it?” I’d never learned hoof language—never had a need to—but her gestures said clearly that she thought my story was beautiful. “What are you even going to do with all this?” She pointed at the bookshelf. “I hope you’ll take everypony’s privacy into consideration—Mayor Mare’s poetry, Ms. Harshwhinny and Prim’s relationship…” I said, and Dovetail nodded hurriedly. So I let out a long breath and sank into the cushion, as I often did at the end of a hard day in the rock fields. “You know… in spite of the painful moments, I wouldn’t want to change anything, not if it led me to where I am today. Whenever I walk through Ponyville and see the wonderful friends I’ve made… I said it once, back when I didn’t have the wisdom to temper my heart, but sometimes the unpolished stone holds the most value, letting its crystal essence shine: the roam-springa carries a lesson that anypony can learn.” In response, she grinned like a mother watching her foal open their Hearth’s Warming presents, and she scooted over to flip to the inside of her notebook’s front cover. There, in heavy pencil but not smudged, just as sharp as everything else she’d written only hours ago: Try New Things: Portraits in Exploring Life. “I thank thee,” I whispered, leaning in to hug her. If she minded my tears on her shoulder, she didn’t say so. But it must have gotten close to two o’clock already, and I should let her get to sleep or start writing or whatever she needed to calm her heart. The first beams of dawn shone through the window. Goodness! And of course—I turned my head away. “Hi-choo!” One. “Hi-choo!” And two. Dovetail’s shoulders shook in silent laughter, but as she angled her muzzle skyward to let the disappearing stars carry her mirth with them, I noticed— “Do you mind?” I asked, already reaching a hoof out. She kept her chin up and shook her head as slightly as possible. So I touched them: jagged scars on her throat, four of them. That explained why she wouldn’t—rather couldn’t talk. Puncture wounds, not slashes, spaced rather like a rake. She must have fallen on one. “An accident?” Again very slightly, she nodded. Old scars, too, probably from childhood. I traced each one, down her neck, until it struck me: they weren’t quite evenly spaced. Almost, so that only a familiar eye would have picked it out. And the wounds, not so round, a little oblong, imperfect. I pulled my hoof back, and she met my eyes. “That was a hoof-forged rake.” And it all came together. Part of a carpentry family. The return address on her letters, just outside Fillydelphia and only a short journey from Landcaster. And a subject held very closely to her heart. She knew I’d see it, knew I of all ponies would put the pieces together, knew I’d understand, wanted me to discover this. “How long now?” She turned over her notebook and opened the back cover. A few notes there about a synopsis, along with a short biographical passage, including the date she’d set out from home. Nearly two years! I looked up, opened my mouth to— But she tapped a hoof further down the page, where she’d written out an acknowledgement. To all of us gracious enough to share our experiences with her, of course, though being included in the book at all served as thanks enough. And then to somepony named Loose Leaf, who owned a small publishing firm in Fillydelphia and had taken her in, shown her how to live in the city, watched in fascination every evening as she signed out what she’d done and learned and discovered and become that day, then encouraged her to write about it, taught her how to craft it into sparkling language and engrossing personalities. “You found your Cup Cake,” I said, the tears spilling out anew. It seemed every place in Equestria just might have one. She smiled in return, adding her own brimming tears. “Will you go back?” She closed her eyes, and with the most serene smile, she nodded. Did she have somepony waiting for her? Not all communities tied the roam-springa to betrothal; it may simply represent a period of self-examination. Either way, that was not for me to ask of her. Already, banging pots and pans from the kitchen and the aroma of coffee and baking bread. “Pinkie will be up as well,” I said, standing and angling my head toward the sounds. “It’ll be quieter upstairs if you want some sleep.” But she shook her head, took out a pencil, and attacked the first of many blank sheets of paper. “Don’t get so engaged that you forget breakfast. Please come and let us know when we can bring you something.” She didn’t react at all, not even an ear flick. I would come back around mid-morning with a tray for her, and then again in the afternoon to make sure she didn’t miss her train. All the noise would surely aid in keeping her awake. So I made my way through the salesroom, grabbed a spare apron, stifled a big yawn, and walked into the kitchen. “What can I do to help?” “First of all,” Cup Cake said, “there’s no need for that severe thing!” She undid my bun and set my hair loose, giving me a satisfied grin. If she’d had her makeup downstairs with her, I had no doubt she would have gone to work with it as well. “And no fair sneaking me your tip money! You keep what you earn!” My eyes shot wide open. “Y-you knew?” She just clicked her tongue at me. “Cloudy, we’re not the kind of business to have a ten-thousand-bit rounding error. Of course I noticed.” Then she hugged me tightly, as warm as always, with that same scent of vanilla. “And thanks.” With a chuckle, she rolled her eyes at the thumping of Carrot getting the twins ready upstairs before she bodily turned me and gave me a shove. “Now go unlock the door and wait on customers!” “Yes, ma’am!” I replied with a salute. “Hi, Mom!” Pinkie said as she poked her head up from behind a counter and waved madly. “We’ve got pecan twirls coming out of the oven in a few minutes. I’ll set some aside for you to take over to Mayor Mare after lunch!” Yes, try new things. But the usual ones weren’t so bad. Good ponies appreciated tradition. Another day at the old haunt, then I’d head back home tomorrow. I twisted the lock and scurried to get behind the display case before the line outside flooded in, and when the first stallion stepped up to place his order, he did a double take at my mane and gave me a lopsided smile. “How may I help thee?”