I still can’t believe… well, all of it. Any of it! My life, my death, the rebirth—everything… just everything since. Like how I ended up, despite it all.
It still feels surreal. A fantasy my brain designed for me to slip into as I got buried in the Frozen North.
Sheesh, that’s a mic-drop. What a day, huh? How did I wind up there? Well, if you haven’t thrown this book across the room, you’ll know soon enough. If you even want to, of course—I don’t blame you one bit if you want to stop reading out of disgust. Because what I did to Twilight, to my friends who stand by me still, it was disgusting.
I guess I still haven’t changed much, if I’m thinking like this. They say old habits die hard, but I don’t think they die at all. They become suppressed. Mine were helped, though, and for that, I have my friends to thank.
I will always be indebted to those ponies: Princess Twilight and the Elements, Sunburst, Fizzlepop, Maud Pie, Trixie.
You might be wondering, how exactly did a pony like Starlight Glimmer end up here? And no, I don’t mean the horn-thing, nah, nor do I mean after that, when… well, when the proverbial manure hit the fan.
Coincidentally, it was that moment that tied back to the beginning, in a way: when they brought out Dad, and he said—sorry, he’s still… ugh, sorry, I still get all, a little bit…
Um. Yeah, I’ll keep all of that in. You can feel my apprehension in the text, right? Trust me, you’re not alone: nopony likes being honest with themselves. But to be able to do that was the hardest lesson I ever had to learn, and it probably always will be.
Woof. This prologue is a mess, isn’t it? Awk-ward! How about we just start on the night things went from bad to worse. When I still thought I could salvage something from the mess. That night, with Daddy—sorry, Dad’s—reminder fresh in mind, I dreamed of the time I forgot. It was clear as day, and part of me likes to think it was the will of Harmony that showed me it. If it hadn’t, I’d have never found myself in the Frozen North the next day.
You have to understand, what Daddy said filled me with… so much. Too much. It became more than a horrible gut feeling at the idea of losing a, uh… a motherly figure. It grew into far more than this subconscious desire, a need, driving my every action. It was scary, it was gut-wrenching, and yet, it was eye-opening. Even if I didn’t see that when I was screaming my head off.
It was like I, until that moment, had been building a house without a blueprint, only to realize I’d been living in a completed domicile all along.
And in typical Starlight-fashion, we had this sort of talk more than once, and I still forgot the point. But this version, where it all began, was the first.
It was at Sire’s Hollow.
One week after the passing of Aurora Starlight, my mother.
She passed of an incurable ailment.
The time was thirty-nine minutes past midnight. I was five and had lost my only friend—before Sunburst saved my life.
“It’s okay to miss her, Pumpkin.”
It wasn’t. Daddy was perfectly happy otherwise: he smiled at the library today, and Starlight just followed him, sniveling like an embarrassing foal—a foal who could walk and read at a grade above her and perform magic no other in town could. Mommy had been proud of her, Daddy obsessed with her, like he was a fan, and he offered her book after book to make her stop dwelling on that which was never, ever coming back.
Starlight tried to smile, drilling this hard life lesson into mind, through the ache in her bosom. But she’d think about the nights Mommy would read to her, and the squeezing inside would clench anew. A vicious cycle it was: Starlight kept reminding Daddy, and kids kept reminding her, and everywhere she looked, Starlight was mocked just by glancing at every mare in town because she no longer had what they did, and everypony knew it.
She didn’t have a Mommy. Everpony knew it, and nopony understood. Some tried, most couldn’t tell her more than sorry.
And it was annoying.
She told them that, constantly. Blue Spruce called her ungrateful, and a meanie when she screamed. So she told him again. More clearly. With her hooves.
She didn’t mean it. Why did she do it? Did she actually want to hurt him?
Daddy promised that she didn’t mean anything by it, but… it existed. Something within her made it happen. Therefore, it must mean something.
“I hate this, Daddy!” Starlight pushed herself from his woolen mire of a sweater, another thing she ruined. “I… I… I don’t want it to hurt anymore! I don’t wanna make you sad and hurt ponies, Daddy!”
“Oh, Pumpkin.” He stroked her pigtailed head over, and over, and over again. “We all have accidents, that’s all it was today. Don’t fret about it.”
“An… an accident?” Foals had accidents. Grownup ponies didn’t: that’s what Mommy always said. Mommy always said she was mature for her age, too. Starlight was supposed to be better than this, but she wasn’t. She was worse now.
“And there’s nothing wrong with missing your mother. I miss her, too! I suppose I’m not doing too good a job of hiding it, though.” Daddy moved his hoof to her back and hiked her close, into his love, his warmth. She hugged tight, in case she lost Daddy too…
“Why won’t I stop,” Starlight gulped, “hurting? I can’t stop thinking about Momma but I miss her and it hurts so much! Is-is-is there something wrong with me?”
“Sweetie, no! No-no-no… Hey, Show me your eyes, Chipmunk Cheeks,” he cooed, grasping her face gently, lifting her to his. His eyes glistened, the candle-flame behind her dancing in their black depths. She was making him cry by accident. She was keeping him up by accident. She was having an accident every minute of every day, even though Mommy called her a grownup, and he was still trying to make her happy. “You loved Mommy like a lot of fillies do. And Mommy adored you just as fiercely,” he said. “The fact that you miss her is simply that: a fact. That won’t change, not even your missing her. So don’t you ever think there’s something wrong with feeling sad, okay?”
Starlight’s gut had plummeted, and wouldn’t rise again. “Daddy,” she found herself saying, “you’re so deep suddenly.”
Daddy chuckled, tears trickling down his cheeks. “I have my moments. Not as many as your mother, but I’ll try to make up for her.”
She didn’t want him to. But if Mommy were here… Starlight laid against the soaked sweater, Daddy’s heartbeat thump-thumping in the distance. “I keep getting mad at ponies.” She trembled, unable to see anything but rejection or scolding, even though Daddy never raised his voice to her. Not once. But there was a first for everything, Mommy had said. “I keep wondering why they think a couple words will make me feel better.”
Daddy sighed and said, “They don’t understand how it feels, my little ‘Light. But they don’t want to see you upset, either, and so they want to make you feel better however they can.”
“O-oh…” Starlight attacked them constantly.
“All you can do from here on out is try. Try and get them to understand. Or just take their sympathy with gratitude! Treat fillies and colts with the same understanding you’d want from them.”
That’s what Mommy always said, too. Starlight often tried, hard as it was, even when most didn’t seem to care. “Does this mean I want ponies to hit me, too? And to yell at me when I just try helping them?” She didn’t dare look up, terrified of the shock in his gaze as he lurched back.
“Chipmunk Cheeks, why—? Why would you think such a thing? You were just angry, sad, and hurting, and some ponies always feel that way! And if not always, then at least once in a while. It’s natural. What’s unnatural is not caring when something sad like this happens! And unfortunately, some ponies are just like that. Probably because nopony cared about what happened to them, not like you would.”
This crushing in her chest that couldn’t stop—feeling that, every single moment of every day, miserable for a thing they couldn’t help at all. And so they took it out on others, hurting them, misunderstanding their intentions. “That’s horrible,” Starlight realized. “All of that is… just so sad.” If she were Princess Celestia, nopony would ever feel lonely like that, never ever.
“And you’re a sweet thing for realizing that,” said Daddy, scrubbing her mane, and scrubbing until she giggled and pushed him away. “Oh, Starlight, my sweetheart. There’s my little girl.” He swept her in a tight hug. “Don’t you ever lose that, okay? There’s not enough ponies in this world who are willing to walk a mile outside their own horseshoes.”
“Huh?”
He made little circles in her back. “I mean to say, there aren’t very many who are willing to do what you do: empathize.” Starlight wondered what that meant, and Daddy could tell. With widened eyes boring into hers he said, “Uh, experience what those around you are feeling.”
That seemed so easy. So nice. Starlight needed that for herself, badly. For somepony, anypony, to understand what she was feeling now. And yet, most ponies didn’t care about any of this. “I don’t want anypony to feel this bad, Daddy. Never.”
He chuckled like that was something silly. And dumb. “That’s a sweet thought, Punky-Wumpkins. But, sometimes, a lot of the time, actually, there won’t be something you can do to stop that. Nothing but be there for them, and try to understand. To open your heart and put yourself in their place. It’s not much to you, but to them, that means a whole lot.”
Open my heart… Starlight had quite a bit to think about.
“Hey, Daddy?” It was some time before either of them had said anything, and Daddy snorted, jerking his head up off the sofa.
“Mm, what?” He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry, little ‘Light?”
“Daddy,” she reaffirmed, strengthening her voice with this newfound burning in her chest, “when I grow up, and ponies feel bad like me, I wanna do everything I can to help them!”
And he smiled. “I’m sure you will, Punky. Because you’re brilliant and kind.”
She didn’t know how, or even what, she totally meant, but Starlight’s heart beat for the first time in days with determination.
To stop ponies from making their Daddy’s cry.
From hurting their friends, and themselves.
Starlight Glimmer decided she would do everything and anything to make ponies happy. Of course, this wasn’t the day she received her cutie mark. Nor was this vow particularly remembered when the plastered smiles of Our Town regarded her, or those of Twilight in the month following her sacrifice.
...and that’s how I was, always, when it mattered most. I often found myself so consumed in my idea of what would make others happy, it blinded me to the reality of who they were.
But that’s that: how this life mission of mine started. Pretty unbelievable for a five-year-old to care in such a way, isn’t it? Most kids are so self-centered, but their world is usually all about them, so it makes sense. They’re doted over. But Mom and Dad, they raised me to consider everypony else, first.
Some would call that a terrible thing to imprint on a foal. I wouldn’t, though—I wouldn’t be who I am now if not for them. And at the end of the day, they were parents doing their best to raise a good little filly. Please don’t think bad of either of them. I wouldn’t be here, dredging up these painful memories, writing this stream-of-thought, if they hadn’t.
I guess we owe everything to Firelight and Aurora Starlight, huh?
My point in all of this, is because of a Hearth’s Warming story Twilight read to me, once. And it said something about the seeds of the past growing us into what we are in the present. It’s relevant to everypony, and I empathize with the main character, even now. The mistakes I made after losing my horn, they’re why I’m still here.
That’s why I’m asking you not to judge, at least not completely, until you reach the end of this memoir.
I hope that, by the end of this, you’ll see yourself and your loved ones in much the same light.
Starlight exited her room, mane weighty with water, plastered against her stump, her cheeks. A long, hot, totally-unintentionally-long shower was a typical start, but now came the hard part: reality outside those porcelain walls.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve got nothing better to do today. I haven’t for weeks. I’ll just wander until my legs bring me to Trixie. Again. She could already hear the witches sneering at her to seek other interests, despite the fact that she tried with Trixie, secretly, and failed to find joy in them as well. Nothing excites me like magic used to. Theories, cobbling different charms together, ugh! I loved it! I want to do it so badly!
Her heart kissed the heavens, and her memories plummeted it back to Equestria.
Quit dwelling and sulking already. It’s been a month! The weight crushing her didn’t lessen, but it felt normal, and was easily ignored. Now, what to do today? Perhaps reading? No, Starlight could barely read a paragraph before her mind wandered towards, well, everything.
“Glimmer!”
Starlight’s heart surged into overdrive as she whirled: Fizzle was halfway out her door, bare of her guard uniform. “Hey.” She donned a subtle smile, as did Starlight’s cheek tug upwards, if only a little.
“Got the day off?”
“No. Just taking my time, like always,” Fizzle sighed. “If only to stop Twilight from telling me to take it easy.”
It was a wonder if Fizzle even knew how—always just as tense as Starlight. “So, what’s up?” she chuckled.
“Drowning in my sea of mistakes. Nothing unusual.”
“Ditto.” Still, that didn’t make it not-sad. “Wanna talk about it over tea?”
Without faltering Fizzle replied, “I’ll just take the tea.” Her smile lowered a centimeter, gaze softening. ‘We both know how it’ll go regardless,’ her eyes said.
Starlight understood. Yet she, too, was ashamed enough to ignore it. Neither liked bothering one another like that, despite constant reassurances from the other that it was okay, even relieving.
Two broken records, creating a majorly funky-sounding whole.
“You read my mind!” Starlight winked.
“It’s just...” Fizzle grunted, face held between her hooves. “I can never tell if she’s thankful or disdainful of my presence.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Like, of course she’s happy to have me—she says it every day and I know a liar. But… does she really not have any complaints or criticisms? How am I meant to improve if I don’t know the boundaries I cross?”
Starlight nodded, surged with emotion. It was like Fizzle and her shared the same soul. “You can never know a hundred percent. And that’s the gross, horrible part that makes you feel like a paranoid idiot.”
“Harsh.”
Starlight sipped her tea. “Yeah.”
There was a lull in which neither of them looked up from their cups. “I can’t stand it,” said Fizzle, “I say things she’s grateful to hear, I can actually feel her relief when we… um.” The dark fur underneath her eyes lightened, her eyes flicking away to the armored ponyquin. Clearing her throat, she muttered, “When we, um, uh, hug… But I never knew anything like it! This I can’t tell if it’s acting or not. So my distrusting nature can’t help but put these thoughts in my head: ‘Is this Twilight being herself, or is she sincerely relieved to have me? Is she just sparing a small kindness and trying to make me feel useful? Does she regret having this-this mute signpost of a pony shadowing her every waking moment?’ I mean… she must now the detriment I spare her image.”
Fizzle, hooves extending above her head, clattered unto the table. Starlight gingerly lifted her own teacup as they fell, so as to prevent drippage, and set it back down after another swig. “I know how that feels,” she said.
“I know I’m probably overthinking it… You know I’m overthinking it,” Fizzle added, throwing a smirk, “but neither of us can know for sure. Because I know she’s faking it for you.”
“As we’ve discussed at length, something you don’t gotta tell me twice,” Starlight rambled. “She’s been painfully obvious anyway. And I get why, I totally get why she’s like this after that fiasco in the dining hall, but—oh, listen to me. Listen to me! Because I just have to mention this every single time we talk, but… well, it’s always on my mind. I have to face the results of that every single time we talk. Think like you do. And I just can’t help it.”
“I know.” Fizzle set her face sternly. “And I keep telling you that that was my fault. Stop shouldering all the blame.”
“You had good intentions, though!” Starlight cried, shooting up in her seat.
“And you didn’t?”
Good intentions didn’t mean she practiced them. “Trust me, Fizzle: any other pony would have benefitted from this kind of talk. But I’m just—”
“Not the same kind of pony I am,” Fizzle finished, in her own words. “And that was my grave mistake, which Twilight and her friends were too desperate to consider. I assure you, you’re not broken, Glimmer. I mean that. And yet, in my… zeal, I suppose, of wanting to help, I had given a friend some poorly conceived advice that ended up festering an open wound.”
Starlight wrinkled her nose at the mental image. “Gross. Could you have picked a cleaner metaphor?”
Fizzle leveled her with a serious stare. “This whole situation is ‘gross,’ Glimmer. None of us have done much to clean it up.”
Nothing could be done, though. It was all on Starlight, the broken one and the one who breaks others: Twilight, her friends, Maud—who she hadn’t seen since blowing her efforts off like a jerk. Maybe even Fizzlepop; after all, Starlight was just bringing her down with angst instead of helping her move past it.
“You regret deciding to stay?” Off to the side, a mannequin dressed as Princess Twilight’s one and only loyal bodyguard glistened with not a scratch upon its surface. “There’s not much in the way of action around here—”
“Action? Excitement?” scoffed Fizzle. “Let me tell you something, Glimmer: my life wasn’t a Daring Do adventure. I spent every moment drifting from one to the next, with no consideration for those around me, no feeling inside me but anger. This new life? It’s quiet… a-at least externally. Plus,” she mumbled, lifting her tea, “I... have... you. So, it was a worthy trade, I think.”
Starlight’s heart warmed, and ached. She couldn’t smile for much longer as she thought of their entire dynamic. “I’m sorry for being such miserable company,” she told her chamomile.
“Same.” Fizzle was mirroring her, though simultaneously their eyes flicked upwards, met, and skittered away so as not to seem weird. Two sides of the same coin indeed. “I’m always sorry for attacking you at the Gourd Fest.”
She was looking right at Starlight, her face set in stoicism, while her eyes...
Part of Starlight felt honored to see this side of her: the real, vulnerable side, without that chilly wall of a glare. Starlight didn’t deserve it. None of this. “I’m just sorry. All the time. For everything.”
Sorry for being me, most of all.
“I hope you know,” Fizzle’s eyes scanned the table, “that… you mean a lot to a great many ponies. That’s more than I have, so… be grateful for them. Even when it’s hard to feel it.”
She was. She had to be, otherwise their efforts would be wasted. “And I’m sure they’re totally not regretting the choice to be invested in me.”
“Ditto,” Fizzle threw back.
A feeble chuckle was shared.
An awkward, tea-sipping five seconds later, Fizzle threw her eyes to the grandfather clock and stood suddenly. “It’s time,” she said stiffly, militaristically, which she caught before Starlight could cock her brow. “Um, I mean,” she continued, stiff in a different way, “there-is-something-I’d-like-to-do-with-you-today, Starlight.”
It was something special when the usage of her first name wasn’t the strangest thing about any of that. “Um, oh-kay—?”
“And-don’t-laugh-please.” Tempest glared, her stormy exterior donned. “Or I’ll beat you with your own hooves.”
Starlight’s weighty heart skipped a beat, it was enough to make her hoot. “Oh, wow, is it bad that that prospect actually excited me, if only a little?”
“Keep talking like that and I’ll do it here and now.” Fizzle flicked her mohawked head to the door. “C’mon. The others are waiting for us.”
But she didn’t even bother clearing her little center-table, nor don her uniform. Eh. It’s her house. Starlight shrugged, following.
“If this is another intervention,” she warned in the hall, “I’m just going to turn and walk away. I’m serious.”
“And if it was even remotely such a thing, I’d… probably slam you into the ground and call you a coward for fearing your friends efforts.”
“And then I’d start screaming like a maniac,” Starlight countered. “So, we’d both be a couple of mules.” It warmed the heart to make Fizzlepop chuckle, especially when Starlight seemed to be the only pony capable of such.
“So,” Fizzle said after a while, “are you still a fan of, uh, Dragon Pit, I think is the name?”
Maud was used to slow and boring. She liked slow and boring. Preferred it, actually.
It was Trixie’s groaning and complaining of her costume that made it painful. It didn’t make a difference when Sunburst cast a self-proclaimed “feeble” coolant charm on her—her complaining shifted to Starlight’s walking speed.
As if Trixie had plans today that a little game had ruined.
But it wasn’t long before the library doors were pushed open, and that Tempest pony and Starlight entered.
Everypony here… Oh, gosh. Starlight gasped a breath. This is just like… like…
This was going to be another disaster. It always was. It was going to be horrible and heartbreaking and Starlight could do nothing about it because she could barely control herself when it mattered most.
Her heart sank as the presence of a friend she’d been horribly ignoring came to notice.
Maud’s heart jostled twice, once upon seeing her, and again, painfully, when their eyes locked.
“M-Maud.”
"Hey." Maud's heart rate picked up, impossibly. It hadn't lessened since Pinkie Pie pitched this to her last night, and Maud, helplessly lonely and missing her friend, despite how irritating she's been, jumped on the idea.
Maud was angry. She was so, so angry and she hated it. It was awful feeling so hostile towards a pony, even one as difficult and stressful as Starlight.
She ought to have known better than to mistrust Maud.
Just as Maud should have met her halfway. “I’m sorry for avoiding you.” She didn’t care that the others were present, or that all eyes were on her weird, random self. She didn’t care about her silly little dragon costume, or the colored books strewn about the library.
The world was just her and Starlight.
“I’ve not been much better. I'm really sorry for how I've been acting,” confessed Starlight, ears wilting. Did she hear the sadness in her voice? Part of Maud wanted clarification—to know, desperately, if her emotional display after the Gourd Fest meant anything to Starlight, if she understood at all.
Everypony’s awkward stares, Starlight’s judgement and fragility, pinned these thoughts neath an immovable rock. They didn’t matter right now. Later, maybe. Probably not. Starlight likely didn’t care nor did she remember, and she shouldn’t. Maud wasn’t going to turn into Trixie here and now. She wouldn’t let herself.
“I’m just glad to see you," she replied after the long silence.
It warmed the heart to see Starlight smile, her twinkling sapphire-eyes brightening. “Same.”
Starlight might have been avoiding her. She might have thrown Maud’s vulnerability, her offering of a shoulder, back in her face the morning after the Gourd Fest—indicating how she really considered her dull rock of a friend, her value. It hurt. It was understandable, but it hurt like losing Granny Pie. And Starlight might be the densest material to ever grace Equestria with the paradoxically softest heart of them all, and for that, she was an exhausting presence to even consider having in Maud’s otherwise simple life.
Starlight might be too much for Maud, while she herself wasn’t enough for Starlight, who would have considered her more, thought more highly of Maud and showed it, if that were the case. She would have hung out with her like Trixie, or regaled the truest depths of her heart as she had to Twilight, Pinkie and the rest.
But none of that mattered in the end. In the end, Starlight needed ponies she could rely on to be honest. Who she could trust. Things she claimed Pinkie wasn’t—wrongfully so, regardless of how her baby sister felt about it all. A sit-down was in order for the three of them. Later. Maybe.
Because right now, Starlight was stunned by what was supposed to be a heartwarming sight: the book-tiles winding about the floor, her friends in their dragon costumes.
“It’s Dragon Pit!” Trixie proclaimed, as if Starlight was actually confused by the sight. “Your fave.”
“Uh,” she started, a promising sign, “I, uh… don’t really feel like playing!" Maud's heart stopped, then sunk. "Sorry! So, thanks for coming guys, but I left my shower running, so let me go, uh, go check on that real quick!” Starlight galloped ahead as fast as she could, but only made it about a foot before her tail yanked her into Tempest’s long legs.
“Don’t be a foal,” she said sternly, stepping off her curled tail. “We wanted to surprise you with… uh… this.”
“A relaxing game with friends,” Trixie corrected.
“Uh, it’s called, ‘Dragon Pit?’” Sunburst, in a purple dragon costume, pushed his glasses up. “Come on, Tempest. I-I know you’ve been, well, gone for most of your life, but I know you had a foalhood! Everypony knows Dragon Pit, right, Starlight?”
She merely tittered, red in the face, embarrassed of this now, apparently.
Fizzle turned to them fully, eyes half-lidded. “Indeed. And it was spent outside, playing ball-sports. Not sitting around with dumb games.” Sunburst’s bottom lip trembled. Tempest winced, giving herself a firm smack on the stump as Maud wondered if asking her to stand in King Thorax’s place was one of Pinkie’s brighter ideas.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unsurprisingly. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
And that’s what worries me. Starlight and Tempest in the same room, it was a recipe for something volcanic to transpire.
“Your opinion is abundantly clear, Fizzle,” sighed Starlight. “Sorry. You don’t have to force yourself to play. I know you don’t want to.”
“I want to, though. And you’re not going to change my mind. Got it?” She couldn't possibly say that a little less threateningly.
Starlight looked to her, then each of them, at a loss for words but desperately grasping for some. Maud was reminded of herself in Tempest, or rather “Fizzle,” through the forcing of unpleasantness for the sake of a friend.
Starlight lowered her eyes. “I don’t want to play,” she confessed to the floor. “Thank you. All of you. And I’m sorry you came all this way, Sunburst—”
“You’re just going to send him back?” Tempest gestured to Sunburst, who was baffled only as she did so. “After making the journey south and paying for a train ticket?”
As Starlight’s fear melted into guilt, Sunburst told her gently, “It’s fine. Really! I mean it—my position allows for free rides anyway, and besides, Twilight—”
Tempest said, appalled, “And you’re just packing up and leaving without so much as a peep of protest? And you’re her best friend?”
“No, I am!” Trixie proclaimed.
Maud groaned internally. “That’s your addition to all of this? Are you kidding me?” Oh how she wished she screamed it.
“Everypony QUIET!” Starlight was frozen for a second before she gasped, panting, avoiding everypony’s gaze in favor of the floor as per the new norm. “This is why I don’t want to play. Ponies just fall apart around me.”
“We’re sorry, Starlight.” Sunburst approached, magically throwing back the hood of his dragon suit, his rumpled mane bouncing free. He reached out. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to—”
Starlight lowered his hoof before it touched her chin, which she lifted herself, meeting his gaze. “I love all of you for doing this.” Maud’s heart twisted, and from Sunburst’s crumbling expression, his throbbing shoulders, he clearly felt the same.
“Starlight, don't push us away,” he murmured, his horn crossing over where Starlight’s once was as their foreheads joined. Starlight shut her eyes, accepting this as he added, “I’m so sorry for not coming sooner. You must feel so lonely, like you did after I left for—”
“No.” Her volume matched his, hoof just as forceful as she pushed herself away. “I realize now that you had your life to live. You still do. I was being crazy and selfish and I still would be if I felt any bitterness at all, which, if I’m being honest, I kinda do. Isn’t that awful?”
“But you have every right to be,” said Sunburst. “I’ve been assuming you didn’t want or need me, because… well… take right now, for instance." Starlight's face twisted with pain, indicating Sunburst hit the mark. "Clearly I was wrong, too, and I haven’t been much better.”
“Sure.” Starlight chuckled wetly. “Yeah, but I was worse, and my terribleness overrides your mistake.”
“That doesn’t excuse it, then or now.”
Starlight swallowed, smiling, her hoof never leaving the front of his costume. “Thank you.” She regarded the room, raspy voice a hair louder. “Thank you all for everything. The motion, the sympathy. I wish I could pay it back—”
“GAH!” Trixie howled, galloping forth, the hood bouncing off her mane. “Stop it!” she demanded, kicking aside book-tiles in her gallop. “Stop talking about payment for once!" She froze before their wide-eyed selves, Tempest coldly neutral throughout it all. "Stop feeling like a burden when I keep telling you you’re not!”
“Then tell me, Trix, how is that in of itself not burdensome?”
Trixie just choked, unable to dismiss it.
And Maud realized it wasn’t that Trixie didn’t see it as annoying, but she didn’t care. Yet, she didn’t know how to voice that, preferring to avoid hurting Starlight.
“We don’t care.” Maud approached, throwing her hood back. “Just like I don’t care that you forgot about me this past month—”
“You deserve better, though.” Starlight’s voice trembled, but not her gaze, penetrating and hard: her classic determination which Maud so admired. “All of you deserve better… See? I don’t hear anypony arguing against that.”
“I don’t want better, I want you! I want my best friend back!” Trixie cried.
“She’s spent every day with you, Trixie,” said Sunburst.
“Yeah! But feeling sorry for herself and her stupid overreactive friends, those are the ponies that don’t deserve her!” Trixie swiped a foreleg across her eyes, and Maud scanned the room: all but herself regarded Trixie with sympathy, even Tempest.
Maud felt only dread: this was building up for a while, and she was going to say something terrible. “Trixie, don’t say—”
“Quiet, Maud!” A blue hoof threw itself at her. “You might not care enough to put aside your petty hurt feelings—”
“And you are?” Maud challenged. “I can’t remember the last conversation between the three of us that didn’t involve prioritizing yourself.”
It was a stupid, thoughtless thing to throw her into the spotlight like that. Maud regretted it immediately, unsure of what overcame her. Jealousy. Shame. I’m no different, I just hide it.
She hated herself as Starlight stood there, trying to form words. What could she possibly be thinking now, who refused to play out of fear of something like this? "She thinks everything is her fault," Pinkie had said. "It's really, super sad, and nothing we said made her change her mind."
Of course, Trixie didn’t notice or recall this. Her ego never allowed it. “I have been nothing but supportive of Starlight in this trying time! While you and Twilight were off skulking, I was the one she talked to! Me, Trixie!”
“Stop it, Trixie! You’re not helping!” Starlight cried.
“Why not?!” The mare whirled on her. “I’ve spent all this time making you feel comfortable, and what do I get for it? Nothing! Not even the same honor and honesty you give Twilight!”
One could hear a pebble drop. Boulder could come in spinning plates on a unicycle and nopony would care. Tempest stepped away from the group, probably the wisest one of them all as Starlight sucked air through her teeth, her eyes widening, pupils shrinking and brows furrowing all at once.
“Seriously?” Starlight mumbled, and then, "SERIOUSLY?! All this time, I thought you cared! All this time I’ve been with you, feeling afraid—terrified—that I was bothering you and annoying you and making you waste your time and life on mine! You give me no reassurances, no indication about how you really felt! And then you turn around, sling these demands in my face?! And to top it all off, you just casually admit that it was all to prove you’re a better friend than Twilight?! Still?! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, TRIXIE?!"
Trixie, over the course of all of that, had sunk to the floor, belly flat as were her ears upon her head. “I—”
“And I know you’re aware of what I told her and the rest—!”
Trixie shot back up, tears sitting in her furious eyes. “Only after hearing it second-hoof from literally everypony else, yesterday, might I add—!”
Starlight stormed a step closer. “If I wanted to talk to you about that, I would have! You know that!”
“But you didn’t, and that's what I don't know, is why! What? Hm? Did you think I wouldn’t understand?”
“Yes! Obviously!”
Trixie’s voice cracked like a fault-line: “And why is that?! Tell me, Starlight, tell me how I wouldn’t understand despite knowing you better than anypony does in this whole stupid town!”
“Understand?!” laughed Starlight. “That’s just the thing, Trixie—you don’t and yet you think you do. Your hubris makes you think you would when, in reality, it’d just blind you to the obvious!” ‘Like always,’ she omitted but felt deep down, because everypony present knew it. Even Tempest, who let out an, "Oof."
Trixie stormed closer. “Quit speaking in riddles and tell Trixie what's wrong with her already!”
“Because you never cared before!”
A horrified gasp. “After all the time we’ve spent—”
“Despite that, yes!" Starlight stomped closer, pushing Trixie into a seated, wide-eyed defensive. "Because why in Equestria would I suddenly think you wanted to hear any of my problems, when all you’ve done is dismiss them like I have?! You do realize that what I’m doing is unhealthy, do you?!" Trixie paled, her lips parted: she realized it, and probably knew it, deep down. "Twilight might have annoyed me to literal tears, but at least she demonstrated a modicum of concern, enough to make me realize it! And I know you weren’t in denial like me, because I know you well enough to know that you hate it—hate it—when I’m being a ‘downer’ and ‘not like Starlight.’ Well, guess what, sister?! This is Starlight, right here, right now! Screaming, and crazy, with ridiculously high expectations, and flipping her lid when they aren’t met! And I’m willing to bet that right now, you’re going to assert just like ev-ery-pony-else that this ISN’T the real me, as if you know a single thing about me that matters!”
“So now you’re blaming me?!" Trixie cried, hurt. "For your inability to be honest to your friends?!”
Starlight began marching a circle around her. “No! Quit thinking of yourself for once and listen. Listen to yourself! If you really know what I’ve told the girls, then how could I believe you’d understand at all!?”
“Because..." Trixie searched the floor, as Starlight returned to standing before her. "Because I’m your best friend! Because even if I wouldn’t understand, you’re supposed to tell me everything and not be afraid to do so!”
“Says who?”
“Says me!” Trixie cried. “Says the fact that you brainlessly threw away your life for that ungrateful sow, Twilight, complain about her every day, and told her you were willing to die for her just because she was soft enough not to throw you in jail! I’m your best friend, I’ve been your best friend and history proves I understand you better than her!”
“And the years before that, where you asserted that you were my best friend without my acknowledgement?" Starlight huffed. "Sweet Celestia! All the years you spent chanting ‘me-me-me-me-me,’ rubbing our friendship in Twilight’s face—even when she’s not there? How could you understand me, Trixie, when you never think about anypony but yourself?!”
Trixie, tears in her eyes, growled, “I’ve been sacrificing everything—”
“Sacrificing?! What effort has this taken on you—when you’ve spent all this time more concerned with slamming Twilight to the dirt than giving a single fig about how I felt!?”
“You didn’t even want ponies caring how you felt! That’s who you are! Because just like me, you are selfish, you do say stupid things when you don’t mean to, and you do end up hurting the ponies you love because that’s easier then letting them hurt you!" Starlight shrunk back as Trixie stood, jamming a hoof in her breast. "Am I wrong? Am I off the mark? Did Twilight understand this perfectly when you poured your heart out to her?! Deny it, Starlight, look me in the eye and deny it, I dare you!”
“That’s enough,” Maud droned aloud, just as Starlight growled, “Get out.”
All eyes turned on her, Trixie’s horrified as her best friend glowered. “You really only care about your worth beside Twilight? That’s all my feelings have ever been to you? Get out. Now, you miserable brat.”
"Ugh! Well, then." Trixie lowered her horn, holding a scorching glare. “Fine. But just for the record, I would have understood you perfectly,” she croaked. “And you would have avoided making a foal of yourself in front of Twilight and her friends.”
Starlight cackled sadistically. “Well it’s too late for that now, huh?”
“Yep. It sure is. When you’re done being a 'miserable brat' like me, you know where to find the Great and Powerful Trixie.” She swallowed, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Or perhaps not. I don’t know. Only thing I do right now is that I can’t deal with this. Goodbye!”
And in a pink flash, Trixie was gone, her dragon suit crumpling to the ground. “...Goodbye,” Starlight told it.
Maud didn’t know what to say, if anything could be said. Tempest was unreadable. Sunburst, biting his lip, sidled up beside Starlight, drawing a frightened gasp from her. “I’ll go find her. She knows you’re having a rough time. We all do.”
Starlight looked to the costume. “Why am I like this? Why…” Tears filled her eyes. “Why do I keep hurting the ponies that I love?” Damp tracks carved down her cheeks.
Maud forgot the others were there as she stepped to Starlight’s other side, hiking close. “I love you.” Her voice hitched, though it wasn’t audible. “I love you and I’m sorry for being such a bad friend.”
Starlight shook her head. “Y-you don’t hafta say—”
“I’m not forcing myself to say anything. I never have. I’m a coward, too—”
“Maud, please.” Starlight stepped back, away from both of them, Tempest making room for her to do so. “Don’t start comparing yourself to me to make me feel better. Don’t bring yourself to my level.”
“I’m not.” Her chest lurched painfully, but Maud powered through it for Starlight. “We’ve both been poor friends, all things considered. You acknowledge your faults but I’ve been too ashamed of mine.” That’s part of why you’re so amazing… You don’t think it, but you’re even braver than Pinkie Pie. She held that in, but why now, of all times? Why did Maud have to feel embarrassed now?
Did Starlight already think it was too much? She answered, avoiding Maud’s gaze altogether, “I would have been ignorant of my faults forever if none of this ever happened. That’s bad. They’re obvious, Maud. They do nothing but hurt ponies. Look at what I’ve done to you. All of you.”
“Starlight,” said Sunburst, “how come you refuse to acknowledge that we just don’t care about that. We’re your friends. We wouldn’t judge you.”
“I wouldn’t either,” said Maud.
Starlight, watery and fierce, shot up to meet her’s. “How am I supposed to know that? How was I ever supposed to know that from you, Maud, who told me that you never wanted to talk about our feelings?”
Never had Maud been filled with so much regret. She really failed at this friendship thing, but never did she think a mistake was carved so deeply from day-one. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was afraid of failing to be the friend you needed if you ever came to me for that.”
“We both know it’d have never come to that anyway. I mean, look at me. The real me.”
But she just saw Starlight: the same friend who was always ashamed of her faults and failings, just like herself, and Pinkie, Trixie, Sunburst and even Tempest. “Let me make it up to you. It’s hard to believe but I promise—I promise, Starlight—” to which her best friend met her gaze, mystified, tearful, apprehensive, “that I won’t ever judge you.”
“Everypony judges each other, though. Even if they can’t help it.”
It’s why Maud had always been afraid. “And that’s why I’d understand. Give me a chance.”
Starlight’s lip trembled, her glistening eyes dropping. “It’s too late for me, Maud.” Her forelock fell before her face. “Wanna know the horrible thing? Even now… even after hearing this, all of it, from you and Trixie… part of me is still doubting its authenticity.”
Maud’s heart twisted. Her throat closed, but her words rasped through it. “Despite what I said?”
A hesitant nod. “Despite your efforts, yeah. Despite you leaving your comfort zone since losing my horn. Despite opening your heart and exposing it bare to me, to Sunburst and Fizzlepop, yes, I’m still not sure if what you’re saying is just a desperate attempt to get me to stop being a mopey little foal. I’m sorry. I can’t help it and I’m sorry. But I don’t want you doing this to yourself anymore.”
You don’t want me to be your friend? Isn’t that what friendship was, though? Powering through hardships for the sake of others?
If not that, then did Starlight truly just consider her sacrifice a repayment for Twilight’s perceived “troubles,” like Pinkie said? Was that the honest truth?
Maud didn’t know what to say. She thought that was just Pinkie being dramatic, misunderstanding Starlight. She thought Starlight was that amazing of a friend. Now, she didn’t know what to say. Now she was suddenly a foal again, uncertain of how to talk to ponies, fearful of their true feelings, and just shutting up altogether.
“What if I want to?” It was her voice. It was her heart. It was the best Maud could think of and indicative of the mediocre friend she had always been. “What if I don’t care how hard it is?”
“You’d be wasting your time. And if you really, truly felt so passionate about somepony like me?” Starlight muttered with disdain. “Then make it easier on your friends, and yourself, and be honest from the start. That's one takeaway I can give from this mess.”
This sounded like a breakup. Maud was, in a word, speechless. And breathless—inhaling, it was a harsh, broken sound she never heard from her own lips.
It was a sound that yanked Starlight from her gloomy stupor, replacing it with a look of heartbreak. “Maud…”
Something damp and warm tickled her cheeks. “I understand,” Maud said simply. “If that’s how you perceive the value of our friendship, then I won’t waste your time ever again.”
With what little strength remained in her forelegs, Maud tore that stupid dragon costume off. She’d never need it again.
Starlight mumbled her name as she exited the library. Maud powered on, pretending not to hear.
What have I done? Starlight knew exactly what: she just broke something fragile and beautiful.
Maud was being… She was being herself. Not forcing herself to be something she wasn’t: she genuinely loved Starlight. She genuinely wanted to shoulder her burdens, to understand her one and only best friend.
Just as Starlight had always been Trixie’s best friend. They gave me kindness and an offer of empathy, and I threw it back in their faces, mistaking it for a burden in of itself.
But they didn’t care that it was.
They didn’t. Just like I…
And I made them think I didn’t care, either.
What have I done?
What have I done?
“Starlight.” Not another. Please, she couldn’t handle losing another—a stallion stepped into view. A familiar one, with sorrowful eyes boring into her soul, seeing it for the first time. Except he regarded her no differently from how he normally did. “I was offered to stay in the East Wing by Twilight.”
Of course Twilight organized this. Of course she still hadn’t given up on her awful friend, like Starlight so wisely presumed.
“So, if you want to talk, I’d be more than happy to do so. Whenever. 1B—that’s the first corridor, though I’m sure you’re aware.” He tried a feeble smile that crumbled immediately neath Starlight’s misery.
It somehow felt worse, never realizing her home—temporary home, Starlight felt, her days truly numbered now—was organized in such a way. Such was her arrogance and ignorance.
“A-and the room beside mine, 1C,” he continued, pushing up his glasses “we were all going to visit him with you. Your father, h-he came, too.” Starlight heart stopped. “He’s been really worried. Not that he’s shown it but I could tell.”
Of course he has. Despite demanding Twilight never to contact him without her permission, she went and did so more out of worry for Starlight than the sanctity of what was left of their friendship.
It sounded so familiar. It sounded like Trixie and Maud. It sounded like Daddy and his limitless tolerance for his awful daughter. It sounded like Starlight, who was willing to deprive herself of amazing friendships just to make their lives easier, as well as her own life for the sake of a pony so much more deserving than she.
“Thanks.” Her voice was as hollow as it felt. “Take me to him, Sunburst. Fizzlepop. Please, just…” Her throat closed, she gasped, and a heaving sob threw Starlight to the ground—or it would have, had a soft, warm amber glow not caught her, followed by a pair of orange forelegs. “Please, take me to my Daddy, please.”