//------------------------------//
// I'm Here For You 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

"Eylista, huh?" Valey rubbed the top of her head. "Gonna be honest, not ringing any bells. Not even anything like I feel I maybe should remember it, but don't. Just sounds like a weird word."

"I don't know what it means either," Starlight said, holding still. "It's just what something called me when I was inside the moon glass looking for you. And it was written on part of the meteor that someone put back together that fell near my old home."

Valey stared into the distance in thought, the moon much higher than when they had started.

"My old parents told me I was adopted when I was very little," Starlight continued. "I never knew who my real mother and father were. Maybe they didn't exist at all."

"Eh. Having biological parents is overrated." Valey shrugged. "Actually, I wouldn't know, but that just means I'm right there with ya. If Nyala and me had parents back in Icereach, she never mentioned them."

"You could ask her," Starlight suggested.

Valey exhaled. "I could... but if they weren't around, what are the odds it's a happy story? It wouldn't really matter to me, but she's been pretty quiet ever since... uhh... I dunno what she was like while I was gone, but definitely since I've been back. I want her to enjoy herself too."

"Everyone was quiet while you were gone," Starlight answered. "We just existed. A lot."

"Just existed, huh?" Valey leaned back. "Well, I know for a fact some of you picked up the slack, or you wouldn't even have existed after a while. Can't blame you, though. You had that stuff with being super strong on your mind thanks to saving everyone from Crystal, and were grayed out too, weren't you?"

"The Nightmare Modules?" Starlight looked away. "I was. I think it helped make it hurt less, but I don't know. It definitely didn't feel like I could do anything but exist."

Valey pursed her lips. "Mind magic is bad for you, kiddo. I dunno what it's like to have those things in your head, but we both saw what they did to Chauncey, right?"

Starlight sighed. "My head feels messed up enough already without magic."

"You ever wish you could just blame your problems on magic anyway?" Valey asked. "Being from space? Something tampering with your head? Bananas... Right before we left, I was almost wondering if our ship itself was cursed to make us feel worse. But it doesn't matter, because even if there was some circumstance like that and we could beat up something evil and make it leave us alone, we'd still have to live with everything. You'd still have to deal with being so strong that mistakes could have consequences. Even if there was some external problem we could solve, we'd still have to deal with ourselves. Because being scared of stuff like that...? It sounds like something that could happen to anyone."

Starlight lifted her eyes.

"I met a girl," Valey went on. "Today, one of the students. She cared real hard about some stuff that's ridiculously silly, and I honestly might have laughed at it just a little. You were there. And she was as normal as ponies get. She still cared. We're gonna have problems like this no matter who we are."

"Where are you going with this?" Starlight asked.

"...Beats me." Valey sat back down. "It's something I've thought from time to time. I'll get to thinking about my problems like they're things I can punch, because that's what I'm best at. Hey, Valey, what if this friend who betrayed you and is trying to make it up, or this other friend who loves you but tells you to be something you're afraid of, or whatever other stuff you don't know how to deal with could just be fixed with a whack pow kaboom? I get to daydreaming about a better life and it just goes nowhere. I dunno, I'm just trying to be relatable."

Starlight hesitated. "But you think there really is magic involved in how I feel. The Nightmare Modules."

Valey lifted a hoof and found herself with nothing to say. "I... Uh... yeah. I..." She fumbled for words for a moment.

"I think I get it," Starlight cut her off. "You want me to know it's important not to have things messing with me, but not to think that fixing those things will make everything better."

Valey grinned in relief. "There, see? You get it." She paused. "Do you ever do that thing and wish you could blame all your problems on magic?"

"No," Starlight said. "Not really. It happens too often. Remember how bad Maple was feeling in the Earth District until we found out it was because she was carrying a windigo heart in her cutie mark?"

"Say wha...?" Valey blinked slowly.

"Didn't you hear about that?" Starlight asked, tilting her head. "We talked about it when we were all sharing stories in Riverfall."

Valey slowly paled. "Bananas, I knew it... Ugh...!"

"What?" Starlight sat up and leaned closer in concern. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah... Just feeling dumb." Valey groaned and leaned back. "Ever since we learned how windigo hearts can act as harmony batteries for Sparky's ship, I literally forgot all about all the bad stuff I knew they could do from Icereach. I even told you about this, didn't I? All the rumors that they could make ponies fight over keeping them?"

Starlight stared, a hint of a memory of tunnels in the Flame District surfacing in her mind that had long been buried beneath memories of frantic escapes, falling dams, blindness and live windigoes. "You did..."

"And we even got a reminder from Hemlock," Valey continued. "Amber told us she found out one of the hearts from the windigoes you killed fell in the river and washed down to Riverfall where he picked it up, remember? Who knows whatever else they could do to ponies around them, because he was crazy, but we've just been keeping a pile of those things on our ship. And I doubt anyone looked twice at them."

Starlight's ears slowly fell.

"Yep." Valey slumped.

"You think the windigo hearts we've been using for power haven't been good for us?" Starlight asked, leaving nothing off the table.

"Bananas, girl, literally the day before we got on that submarine I was scratching my head wondering how a group of upstanding guards who would give their lives to defend foreign strangers transformed into petty clowns who would strand us all to spite some griffon and then cried about their misconduct afterward." Valey threw up her forehooves in exasperation and flopped flat on her back. "We've got problems. Everyone on our crew has big ones, except maybe Birdo because he doesn't care where he goes next. But how much do you wanna bet we've been stabbing ourselves in the hooves anyway?"

Starlight swallowed.

"It makes too much sense!" Valey complained. "Have you noticed how much happier everyone is since we got here? I mean, I know we haven't had evil leaders or goons breathing down our backs, and it's cozy and we're well-taken care of, but still."

Starlight's eyes shadowed. "So once the ship gets here, we can find the hearts and throw them in the sea, since it's not like it will be flying again soon anyway. And then we feel good about ourselves for solving the problem, right? Instead of feeling less cool because we didn't stop it from happening in the first place?" Her voice carried a hint of challenge to it.

Valey froze mid-complaint, still laying on her back. Slowly, she grinned, only the side of her muzzle visible from Starlight's angle. "You're good."

Starlight blinked in confusion.

"Lemme tell you a secret," Valey said, reaching a hoof and trying to find her without looking down. "I? Am one of the biggest messes on the crew. I'm convinced that right now, I'm just caught in a happy spiral or something, where I don't care and that makes me do dumb stuff which makes me happy which makes me do more dumb stuff, or something. For all I know I'm clinging desperately to the good times while they last, enjoying them as hard as I can, and in months or weeks or even tomorrow it'll be right back to the emotional grindstone for me. But if you can gently poke some sense into me when I do silly stuff like that, then I can watch your back, too. Sound fair and square?"

Starlight crawled up beside her and met her hoof. "You already have been," she sighed. "Thank you for talking with me."

"Feeling better?" Valey guessed, flat on her back and staring at the sky as she aimlessly rubbed one of Starlight's ears.

"Less alone," Starlight replied. "...So what do we do about the windigo hearts?"

Valey shrugged. "Leave them on the ship at a dock somewhere, for now. Let our friends come hang out on this sweet island with us. See how they do. And if things are looking up for them too, we sit back, see that our friends are happy and there's nothing we need to do, and feel fantastic."

Starlight sniffled.

"You need to smile more," Valey remarked. "Someday, I wanna see your smile."

"Probably..."

Valey shrugged, letting it drop. "So. Being space sisters, or whatever you wanna call it. I think we got a little distracted..."

"What else is there to talk about?" Starlight asked. "I saw it written on a piece of the meteor."

Valey chewed her lip. "You... feeling up to telling me anything more about what happened when you were finding me? It's sounded like that was a big nail in the coffin with how you're feeling lately, and you haven't been super talkative about it."

"Everyone was reliving their memories," Starlight murmured, her voice darkening. "Their strongest ones, ones they still had even without their bodies. I saw ponies getting married. I saw Navarre the day he got his grant to go to Icereach. I saw Senescey with her sisters on the day their mother died. I saw Gwendolyn on the day she met me. I saw Chrysalis getting chased by Gazelle and her stepfather, and she killed them each and every time they appeared. And it was raining ash like in my visions, because my strongest memory is of the time a vision told me I was going to destroy the world. That was when I couldn't hide from it anymore."

"Bananas, that's rough." Valey stared at the sky. "And, uh... What was I doing? Did it tell you anything about who I was before...?" She swallowed and stopped. "Nah. Forget it. If it did, it's not important."

"I don't know," Starlight truthfully said. "I didn't find you reliving a memory. I found you in a machine that existed because Chrysalis wanted it to. I think. I don't remember how it worked, but you weren't stuck in a loop. You couldn't remember this world like me and her, but your memories of that place didn't reset every few minutes."

"Weird," Valey whispered. "That's real weird."

Starlight shrugged. "That's what I have to say about it."

"Well." Valey swished her tail. "What I've got to say, just so you don't forget, is that this is cool. If you do have a weird history with moon glass, it means you're not alone, and think about how I feel. Being... this... has been so isolating, I lived my entire life in Ironridge with no closeness to anyone. I spend a million years with you and all the rest of our friends trying to get over that, and just now, when my life is already looking up and I'm feeling good for a change? You stroll up and tell me I'm not the only one of my kind. Bananas, I can't even tell you how many... You know what?" She sat up. "Forget it. This says it better instead."

Valey buried Starlight in a crushing hug, just managing to keep it loose enough for Starlight to breathe. "I love you, kiddo," Valey mumbled around her. "And I'll always have your back. Don't you forget it."

"You think this is that much of a good thing?" Starlight sniffed.

"It is to me," Valey promised, slackening off. "I'm still no longer convinced this meteor is even bad, but even if it is, it means we get to deal with that together. But it's not gonna come to that."

"Do you want to learn more about it?" Starlight asked.

Valey blinked and frowned. "Wha...?"

"Do you?" Starlight pressed. "You keep changing your mind. One minute you say you're happy not knowing and the next you say we face whatever comes together. Do you want to know more about us and this meteor?"

Valey sat back again with a thunk. "I literally dunno. Maybe it's smart. Maybe it isn't. I've got some living to do, personally. Do you want to?"

"I don't know either," Starlight sighed. "Everyone who really knows things keeps telling me I'll be happier if I stop being curious and I stop learning about how the world works. But even when I try to do that, I do things like find meteors in museums and get scared and panic. And the more I know, the closer I am to becoming the thing I saw in the altar." Her mind flickered back to the visage of her light-strewn self, with butterfly wings made of glowing, turning runic ribbons of energy. "The time where I need to stop, or let the visions come true. But you say if I'm feeling better, it'll be okay, because the danger is if I just stop caring. So maybe if we tried to find out on our own terms...?"

Valey pursed her lips and nodded. "Sounds like you've got a plan you're considering?"

Starlight nodded back. "There was a name on the meteor display. It said someone called Doctor Caballeron donated it. If he put it together, maybe he would have done research into what it means. I don't know where in the world he'd be, but if that other doctor remembers where he got this..."

"Oh!" Valey's eyes suddenly sparked with understanding. "No, we're actually in luck. I think that Sea Star chick mentioned he works here! And that they might have wanted to talk to me anyway..." She slowly regarded Starlight. "Honest question, here. You wanna come with? We can go looking for them tomorrow. But they're expecting only me, so if you didn't want to stick your neck out..."

"I'm coming," Starlight firmly said.

"Cool." Valey lightly punched her shoulder. "Sounds like we've got a plan."

Above, the moon had moved even further through the sky.

Valey yawned. "I bet Maple's asleep by now. Who knows about Felicity? How are you feeling?"

Starlight hesitated, feeling both exhausted and not all that tired after her recent ordeal. "I don't know. Could we talk about one more thing before we go back?"

"Sure, kiddo. What's on your mind?" Valey nyup-nyupped, rearranging herself to keep listening.

Starlight took a breath. "I don't know what happened to me when I got scared and ran."

Valey narrowed her eyes in concern. "Well, I heard someone found you passed out, and came as fast as I could. And then Gazelle was doing something."

"I felt bad," Starlight admitted, shivering at the memory. "Really bad. It was like I was thinking, and the harder I thought, it made me think even harder, and I couldn't stop. It was like I was too scared to move."

Valey wrinkled her nose. "But you're at least sort of composed now, right?"

Starlight nodded. "Gazelle did something, and I didn't see what. But it felt like my thoughts and feelings all drained away."

"What?" Valey's voice had an edge to it.

Starlight met her eyes hesitantly. "I don't know. It didn't feel good at all. But it also helped. I was able to think and move around and defend myself without getting paralyzed by what I was thinking about. Even though it still doesn't feel very good to think about..."

"And did he explain himself?" Valey pressed. "Did he say what he did?"

"I don't know," Starlight insisted. "He didn't sound sane. He kept changing how he was talking, but I think he thought I was his sister. He said he did something on purpose."

Valey slowly exhaled. "You think he used magic on you?"

"Yes," Starlight said. "He had to."

"Alright." Valey sat up. "I'm going to have to ask a professional on that. Maybe get her to take a look at you, because that sounds serious. And fortunately and unfortunately, our friendly local professional is both in the house, thinks she owes me a gigantic favor, and I kinda owe her a big talk myself before I accept any more favors from her. You think you'll be alright if we head back and I chat her up about you in the morning?"

Starlight slowly nodded. "If I don't freak out and get paralyzed again."

Valey paused, then sighed. "You're scared of feeling the way you felt back there?"

"Yes," Starlight whispered. "I don't even know why it happened. All I did was see a silly meteor. So what if I'm not a normal pony and came from space? I already knew I wasn't normal, and you came from moon glass and were good. Maybe getting startled is normal, but I shouldn't have freaked out like that! What happens if it happens again and I can't move when I need to protect my friends?"

Valey took a breath. "Yeah, we can work on that. I'm probably gonna have to ask Felicity too, because I don't know how to answer that. But you know what I do know?" She grabbed Starlight's shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes. "You were the kid who was blind and magicless and went in to fight Herman when it was just the two of us and I wanted to bail. You had no power whatsoever and were still the first to take action, and I wouldn't have messed him up if it wasn't for you. You were also the kid who made Crystal shove off, when any other kid in existence would have been wailing and hiding in terror if there was an evil monster murdering their friends like a lawnmower. Bananas, most adults would have done that. I don't know why you passed out, but I do know it isn't like you, and when you need to, you can always rely on yourself to come through in a pinch."

"...I'll try." Starlight swallowed and nodded.

"Doesn't mean I'm not gonna try and get you help," Valey promised. "Just hang on and get a good night's sleep tonight. And hey, this school has to have someone who knows a thing or two about feelings and can help you more than I can as well. We can do this, okay? Just don't worry and let me handle things just for tonight."

"Okay," Starlight murmured.

"Good." Valey stood up fully. "Now... I've got some planning to do. Gonna have a busy day tomorrow, I think. And if I can, I'm gonna get you to come with me while we go screw around with some students, just to have fun and let off steam. If I take you back to our friends, you think you'll be good to sleep?"

Starlight closed her eyes. "Thank you..."

"Heh." Valey smiled fondly at her, scooping her onto her back. "Hey, forget saving lives, you brought me back from the dead. I'm just trying to show you what that means to me."





Valey entered the Laughter dormitories by shadow sneaking through a window, in a maneuver she was certain countless batponies had performed throughout the ages. She had scouted this place out when she was here before, and knew herself to be entering the first and second-year mares' dorm: the currently empty floor where Maple and Felicity had been offered spare beds.

It didn't take long at all to find her friends, Maple resting carefully with respect for her ribs and Felicity swaddled in the least-dainty, most-comfortable pile of blankets and pillows she had ever seen. Taking care not to make the floor creak with her hoofsteps, she alighted beside Maple's bed.

"Still awake, Ironflanks?" Valey whispered.

She was greeted by a sleepy snuffle. Maple looked vaguely worried by her dream.

"Guess not. Last stop, kiddo." Valey set Starlight down and patted her. "Be real careful, but... I bet you'd both feel real good waking up next to each other in the morning."

Starlight gingerly climbed in, knowing exactly how to move without disturbing the bed. She avoided Maple's barrel, laying near her forelegs instead, and Maple's frown slowly turned to a smile as she noticed the filly in her sleep.

"...Heh," Valey whispered, staring at the scene with a tiny, residual tear.

Valey faded into the shadows, but stayed there, standing and watching. It wasn't hard to tell when Starlight was sleeping. The filly's tension drained as well, her shoulders visibly flatter as her muscles relaxed. Hopefully she didn't have nightmares, but there was nothing more Valey could do.

After half an hour, once she was sure Starlight was sound asleep, Valey finally budged. She took the long way, silent as a ghost, pacing past both mares' beds a number of times, making sure the thoughts of her conversation with Starlight were put firmly on hold in her mind. For this, she'd need her focus.

Eventually, she stopped at Felicity's bed. The older batpony slumbered, looking utterly and blissfully content on the surface, but as Valey stood there, little things began to stand out, like the way the two pillows she had chosen to hug against herself were yellow and blue...

"Yeah," Valey breathed, "we need to have a talk."