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// Scene 11: #ThingsChange 
// Story: Post-Processing 
// by Bookish Delight 
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For Juniper, riding shotgun in the Vignettemobile consisted of long stretches of quiet cruising, followed by the occasional sudden stop and loud rant in trendy vocabulary that would have made zero sense to anyone who didn't spend all their time online.

In other words, it was instantly nostalgic. 

Juniper wondered how she had ever managed to live without the experience all these years. She resisted the urge to indulge her inner child by way of rolling down the window and poking her head out. Fortunately the rain helped with that; not to mention her hair becoming longer and more unwieldy as she got older. Keeping her preferred ponytails perfectly pristine was an eternity of work that the world would never understand.

That said, the windows weren't helping much closed, either. The rain had worsened since they'd started their trip, and the large splattering pelts against the glass meant that she could hardly see where they were going from her side of things. The sportscar's wipers seemed to work well enough for Vignette's aggressive-defensive driving, however, and before long, Juniper noticed several bright, colorful and... familiar lights shining through the her waterlogged point of view as Vignette pulled into a parking lot.

"Um, Val..." Juniper said, cracking the window slightly and verifying the sign that those lights illuminated, "what are we doing at Canterlot Mall?" She turned to Vignette with a grin. "I know movies are always behind the times, but you do know The Mall hasn't been the hip 'teen scene' hangout for, like, years, right?" She finger-quoted to get her joke across.

Vignette huffed. "Ugh, yeah, it's not exactly the Houvre. But okay, you're a Canterlot native—name one higher-profile place that doesn't require us to drive an hour downtown."

"Sure! Just hit up—" Juniper raised her finger, ready to fire back a response... just before realizing she had none. "Aw, crap baskets," she said, deflating.

Vignette turned off the engine, laying back in her seat with a chuckling sigh. "Junie, Junie, Junie. I've said it once, and I have a feeling I'll be saying it a hundred more times: you have got to get out of suburbia. Seriously, I've let you get away with living here this long because school, but you're college material now. About ready to see the world. And there's so much more out there. I was riding down waterfalls at your age, remember?"

"Okay, for starters, pick some new turns of phrases," Juniper laid back in her own seat, waving a dismissive hand. "You're not that much older than me."

"That's #SweetOfYouToSay, thanks." Vignette turned the car light on, examining her nails. "And that's also what I mean. You know what happened to PostCrush when they decided to go on hiatus?"

Juniper blinked. "Who?"

"Bingo." Vignette preened, slipping her fingers through her hair. "Two-girl pop duo, really, really big. The hottest for, like, a good couple of years. I had trouble getting interviews. But then, out of the blue, they decided to just not play anymore. To not go for it anymore."

"'Whoa,' on all counts. Okay," Juniper said, humoring her cousin. "What happened when they stopped?"

Vignette turned to look at Juniper. "The world moved on and found someone else. Where are they now? No one knows, and no one cares except for tabloids. But they, at least, had their fifteen minutes. You, though? You have way too much trend potential for it to be wasting away here like a kale salad left out in the sun."

As Juniper digested Vignette's words, memories surfaced. Memories of the mall they were about to enter, and of herself 'trending', just as Vignette had suggested—except for all the wrong reasons.

She crossed her arms. "I... I like it here," she said, softly and pouting. "Just me and my friends. I don't want anything else."

"Oooh, it's nice to hear the 'f' word," Vignette said. "You'll have to tell me more inside. And your movie ambitions? Next you'll be telling me you live on a studio lot after all." Vignette chuckled.

Juniper fell silent.

Vignette raised her eyebrows. "Wow. Things have changed."