Lime Tart told them everything. She spared no detail. While she told her tale of what had happened with every relevant detail that she could remember, her mother served tea. A whirlwind of activity went from place to place in the kitchen, as work still had to be done, but Blonde Roux gave Mrs. Crumpledumpling all of the attention she could spare. Cakes, treats, and pastries would burn if not attended, and somehow, Blonde Roux stayed on top of it all.
The fact that she did it so effortlessly was impressive.
Calmly, the forthright filly told them of how Stargazer made a daily visit to his father’s grave, and how she went with him. It bothered him that snow covered his father’s grave, so she removed it so that Stargazer might feel a little better. When she reached the part of Treacle’s arrival, she became quite animated and began to wave her forelegs around. And of course she spoke of her own actions, and how she used her magic to scare off Treacle, but she made it clear that no real harm was done, and that she certainly hadn’t hurt Upside-Down Cake, because she would never, ever do that. At least, she hoped she wouldn’t.
Upside-Down Cake never said a word.
Not a peep.
Absolutely nothing was said, not a sound was made.
The distraught pegasus filly that sat across the table could barely be seen. She sat with her face downcast, her blacked eye turned away from the others. Occasionally, her ear above her injured eye twitched, and she would grimace from pain—but she made not a sound, not a single whimper escaped her. She was a pitiful sight and Lime Tart’s heart ached for her former-friend.
When her tale was finished, Lime Tart fell silent, and waited for the adults to have their say.
“How dare you!” Mrs. Crumpledumpling said to her daughter. “How dare you! How did it come to this anyhow? I thought I raised you better. You started trouble in a graveyard! With that weird little colt that’s grieving for his father. And you still won’t tell me how your face ended up like that. I know for certain that Lime Tart didn’t do that, which leads me to conclude that Treacle must have done it, and I can guess why, too!”
Upside-Down Cake flinched and turned away from her mother.
Meanwhile, Lime Tart wanted to tell Mrs. Crumpledumpling that Stargazer wasn’t weird, but she held her tongue. Right now was no time for sass. This was serious. She was almost overcome with the need to go over and comfort her former-friend, because she couldn’t stand the sight of Upside-Down Cake’s suffering. For now, she would hold her tongue, but when this was over, maybe, just maybe, she might mention to Mrs. Crumpledumpling that Stargazer wasn’t the weirdo she believed him to be.
“Did Treacle do this to you just to get Lime Tart in trouble?” Every inhale that Mrs. Crumpledumpling took was heavy and every exhale that came out of her nostrils was almost a snort. She was scary, the very model of maternal fury, and her wings twitched against her sides. “You tell me, Downy. I’m not fooling around with you!”
Still silent, Upside-Down Cake curled up into a miserable ball.
“I am so sick of this, Missy! Sick to death!” These words were spat out and Upside-Down Cake shuddered with every word spoken by her mother. “If you don’t tell me what happened, there will be no Hearth’s Warming this year! You’ll spend it in your room—no, not your room, you have too much stuff in there! I’ll lock you in the closet and there will be no Hearth’s—”
“No, you can’t do that!” Lime Tart blurted out quite suddenly.
A sheet pan of cookies almost fell to the floor.
Every adult in the room turned to look at little Lime Tart, and her mouth went dry. She wanted to slide off of her chair and hide beneath the table, but that would do no good. This was bad. Real bad. Without thinking, she’d run her mouth and told an adult that they couldn’t do something. Her father seemed surprised, or maybe it was shock. As for her mother, her expression was unreadable, but Lime Tart figured that there was a lecture in her immediate future. But Mrs. Crumpledumpling… the fury of a thousand storms could be seen in her eyes, but she was silent.
“Um”—scared almost to death, her heart pounding like a hammer against her ribs, little Lime Tart nervously smacked her lips, a habit that she’d never fully broke—“you can’t call off Hearth’s Warming. It’s even more important now because of the fighting.” Terrified, she licked her lips, felt the need to hiccup, and feared that she might just blow chunks. “What if Hearth’s Warming never happened because of the Founders fighting? Equestria wouldn’t exist.”
Much to her ever-growing terror, Lime Tart’s words were met with profound silence.
“We’ll get windigos,” she somehow managed to say in the squeakiest of voices.
A teeny, tiny urp escaped her as her guts gurgled. This was the scariest moment of her life—she could think of nothing scarier. But Hearth’s Warming was important and she had to save it somehow. Not just for Stargazer, but it seemed that her former-friend was also in need of rescue. Adults had a terrible power if they could stop Hearth’s Warming from happening somehow, and Lime Tart wasn’t sure what she could do to stand against it, but she had to try.
Mindful of the steaming teacups, Lime Tart scrambled up onto the table, and then navigated an obstacle course of food and drink. For a moment, she had to veer on two legs, her left ones, but she miraculously kept her balance. After she lept through the steam of a cooling fruitcake, she found herself at the far end of the long preparation table. Upside-Down Cake was still huddled in her chair, all curled up into a tight, miserable ball.
“Did Treacle do this to you just to get me into trouble after what I did?” Foreleg extended, Lime Tart reached out—not for her former-friend, but her friend. Then, her head turned around so that she could look at Mrs. Crumpledumpling. “I don’t think you listened to me. Upside-Down Cake ran away when the trouble started. She ran away. She ran away. Maybe if you listened, she’d talk to you.”
Before Mrs. Crumpledumpling could respond, Lime Tart turned to face her friend once more. “Tell me what happened, please? Please? Pretty please, with sugar on top? Pretty please, all tied up with a bow?”
Tears began to trickle down Upside-Down Cake’s cheeks.
“We can still be friends,” Lime Tart said to her friend as she pushed through her own fear. “After all that has happened, we can still be friends. I’ll help you stay out of trouble. Together, we can ditch Treacle, and she can’t boss us around no more.”
A low, shuddering moan could be heard from Upside-Down Cake.
Heart still pounding, Lime Tart gestured with her extended leg and tried to coax her friend to respond. A whirlwind of pots and pans flew around the kitchen, but she failed to notice them. There was only Upside-Down Cake, and she was suffering. Just like Stargazer suffered. Lime Tart was keenly aware of the suffering of others, and had been ever since her constellation of Equuleus had appeared, though she herself had not yet made this connection.
She was unaware of the power of her purpose, even as it manifested…
“Stargazer will also be your friend.”
“I don’t have a telescope to share so he’ll be nice to me.” It was the first words said by Upside-Down Cake, mumbled through quivering lips.
“Is that what you think?” asked Lime Tart. “That he’s only my friend because I won the telescope?” She sucked in a deep breath so hard that it made her lungs hurt. If she had to overcome Upside-Down Cake’s pettiness, she would. If that is what it took to save Hearth’s Warming, then that is what she would do. It hurt more than a little and dragged her mind back to the time when she too, was petty and awful.
“We’re not friends because of the telescope, we’re friends because I stopped being a jerk.” Once more, she waggled her foreleg in an attempt to lure her friend into sitting up. “And he’ll be your friend, if you let him. He’s not like how we were, he’s nice. And good. And he’s taught me how to be a good pony without telling me anything. All I have to do is try to act like he does. Give him a chance. Give me a chance. Now quit being a dum-dum and tell me what happened.”
“Why would he be my friend after all I’ve done?”
This was no easy question to answer, and Lime Tart thought of all the rotten things she’d done. All the mean words said. The time she used her magic to raise the edge of the mud-mat just enough so that he tripped and fell down. All of the class had laughed, and she, Lime Tart, had laughed the loudest. She’d teased him for his awful lunches, and because he was poor. A hot, terrible fury rose up inside of her, and then like a candle, suddenly blew out. Heat was replaced with cold shame, and she rather felt like crying.
Overcome with emotion, she could no longer wait for Upside-Down Cake to come around. A surge of magic allowed her to lift her friend up from her chair, and she gently plopped the pegasus filly down upon the table beside her. Upside-Down Cake was frozen with fear, terrified, and for good reason: Lime Tart had used her magic to shoot icicles at Treacle. More shame hollowed out Lime Tart’s insides, and she wished that she was a better pony.
“We do bad things, but that doesn’t make us bad ponies,” she whispered to her friend. “Together, we can still do good. I’m trying to do good right now and it’s super-hard. For all I know, I’m in a lot of trouble after what I did, because I didn’t tell my mom and dad what happened when I came home. It’s what we don’t say that gets us in trouble.”
“If I tell you, I’ll lose my only friend,” the pegasus filly whispered beneath her breath.
“Treacle is not your friend,” said Lime Tart in return.
“I’m scared…”
“I was too… but I had a friend to help me get through the rough patch.”
Upside-Down Cake began to sniffle and she leaned against Lime Tart. Then, she collapsed against the fantastically green unicorn, and a great, heaving, shuddering escaped her. She clung to Lime Tart, her barrel heaving, and her wings slapped against her sides. The adults—silent—watched and waited with bated breath. Every pie, every pastry, every fruited cake bore mute witness to this inspired act of friendship.
“She yelled at me for running away.” At the end of her sentence, Upside-Down Cake shivered and then clung tight to Lime Tart. “You know how Treacle is. She hollered at me and called me a coward and she said awful things. You know how she is… you know… she got me distracted and then she jumped me and pushed me down into the snow, and she held my face down in the snow and I thought I was gonna drown because I couldn’t breathe.”
A long, body-wracking shudder almost knocked the wind out of Upside-Down Cake.
“Just when I thought I was gonna die, she let me up out of the snow. My eyes were full of stars and my head was hurting, and I couldn’t seem to suck in any wind. It was awful. She white-washed me just like she was gonna do to Stargazer. But she wasn’t done with me. She smashed me in the face with a big hunk of frozen slush and then she kicked me and I fell down and she started kicking me even more and she just screamed at me and then she was calm.”
The pegasus filly sucked in a deep breath, and then said, “You know how she is. She was calm and not mad and she got quiet and while I was crying, she told me that we were going to frame you and say that you did this to me and she told me that if I did anything to mess this up, that she would catch me alone sometime… and you know how she is.”
It was true: Lime Tart knew exactly how Treacle could be. Rage one moment, calm the next, and menacing when it suited her. She gave Upside-Down Cake a careful squeeze and then just held her. It felt good to hold her, felt right. The two fillies, a Tart and a Cake, consoled one another amidst a table laden with treats that also bore their namesakes. Lime Tart found that she had a strength that she didn’t know existed, because she wasn’t crying right now. More than anything else, she was relieved.
It was like when her mother pulled a sliver out of her frog: the worst was over.
“I’m so mad that I’m having hot-flashes—”
“Take a deep breath, Dumpling.”
“Blondie, no… I can’t… these hot flashes are burning me up inside. I’m gonna kill her—”
“No, you’re not.” Blonde Roux’s voice was especially firm—almost as firm as a much-regifted fruitcake, given one year after another in an endless chain of generous benevolence.
“I can’t believe this,” Mrs. Crumpledumpling said. “I can’t believe that Treacle would do that. Her parents are such good ponies. Good parents. How can this happen? Are they bad parents? Am I a bad parent? Is this my fault somehow? What do I do, Blondie?”
“Calm down, quiet down, and let the girls have their moment,” was Blonde Roux’s quiet reply.
“I stay so busy”—Mrs. Crumpledumpling was almost stammering now—“I had to skip work just to deal with this. My boss will be breathing down my neck now. I thought foals would be foals and that this would sort itself out. But this… this goes beyond the pale.” Almost panting, she began to frantically fan herself with her wing.
“I don’t mean to say I told you so—”
“But you’re going to anyway, Blondie.”
“—but I told you that this would only get worse and this was not something they would grow out of.” Scowling, with intense furrows above her brows, Blonde Roux lifted up a teacup, took a sip, grimaced, and then had another slurp of hot tea.
Lime Tart ignored the adults and focused on her newly-recovered friend.
“Hearth’s Warming is important”—the precocious unicorn filly did her level best to sound grown-up about this—“not because we’re good ponies, but because we’re bad ponies. It’s all about getting what we don’t deserve. The Founders were jerks. The unicorns and the pegasus ponies bullied the earth ponies, and they were all mean to each other. None of them deserved a second chance, but they got it anyway. I don’t deserve a second chance, and you don’t either, but we’ve got one, so we’d better make the most of it.”
“I don’t know how to be good—”
“That’s no excuse, Upside-Down Cake. I don’t know how to be good either, but I’m still trying to save Hearth’s Warming. For two ponies now.” With a bit of a sharp but gentle yank, Lime Tart pulled her friend closer and made an expansive, sweeping gesture with her other foreleg. “Yeah, that’s gonna be my thing now. When I’m not looking at the stars, I’m gonna be saving Hearth’s Warming. Because somepony has gotta.”
“Why are you doing this? I was mean to you and Stargazer. I said bad things. Awful things. Tribalist things, even. I don’t understand. Why be nice to me at all? Why be my friend?”
“Because Stargazer was my friend, and is my friend, and I don’t deserve it.” For a short time, Lime Tart pressed her lips together and allowed herself a moment of self-pity. “He has to remember some of the awful things I did. You just don’t forget some things. Plus, I think that Twilight Sparkle would want me to save my friends if possible.”
“Would you save Treacle?”
“If she wanted to turn things around,” Lime Tart replied, “maybe.”
Her barrel hitching, Upside-Down Cake began to cry. It was the sort of weakness that Treacle despised and would have never allowed. Though her legs were short and rather stubby, Lime Tart wrapped her friend in a protective, supportive embrace. Static crackled between them, and little Lime Tart worried that she would be stricken with The Frizz. It was hazardous, offering much-needed hugs, but this was a risk that she had no choice but to take.
“I feel like a bad mother right now, I do—”
“Oh, Dumpling, stop it. Oy vey. Give it a rest, will you?” Blonde Roux huffed, rolled her eyes, and put a plate of teacakes down in front of Mrs. Crumpledumpling.
“Blondie, how do you do it?”
“I dunno.” Shrugging her withers, Blonde Roux began to pull things out of the oven. “If you must know, I don’t focus on punishment. I suppose I try to encourage my little Bubelah to do good, and I only mention punishment if I absolutely must. You on the other hoof, you spend a lot of time threatening Downy. So much shouting and yelling, and yelling and shouting, and oy vey, what do you expect her to learn from you?”
“Do I bully my daughter?” asked Mrs. Crumpledumpling.
“You want me to answer that?” Turning about, Blonde Roux gave her friend a pointed, meaningful stare. “I try not to impose myself too much on others, which is why I haven’t said anything.”
“Things have gotten out of hoof though.” The pegasus mare heaved a stricken sigh. “They’ve been out of hoof for a while. Maybe something should have been said sooner. Not that I’m blaming you, Blondie… I’m not. But Lime seems to have sorted herself out while Downy just got worse.”
“You threaten, you shout, and you punish… but inconsistently—”
“There’s just not enough time in the day, Blondie. What do you expect me to do?”
“You need to sort that out, Dumpling.”
“I guess I do.” Mrs. Crumpledumpling slumped over the table and then began to dab at her eyes with the primary knuckles of her wings.
“Threatening, shouting, and punishing is no substitute for showing and teaching.” There was a crash as Blonde Roux tossed dirty baking pans into the sink and she sat down once more at the preparation table. “I’ll help you if I can. Just ask.”
“Something has to be done with Treacle.”
“Maybe so, Dumpling, but right now, you need to look after your own. Every minute you spend sorting out Treacle is a minute not spent with your daughter, and she needs you right now. That shiner looks like it hurts.”
“Something has to be done though. She tried to frame your daughter, and hurt my daughter to do it.”
“Easier said than done. Her father owns the trade market, which is the lifeblood of Rainbow Falls.” Blonde Roux’s voice lost all of its pleasant, characteristic warmth. “He’s a bit of a bully himself.”
“What do we teach our foals?” asked Mrs. Crumpledumpling. “Things didn’t turn out as I intended. My boss, Mr. Lucre, he’s really good friends with Mr. Dough—”
“Lucky Lucre isn’t friends at all with Dinero Dough.” These words were spat out by Blonde Roux, who rather looked an awful lot like an irate mother hen, even though she had no wings. “Lucky is a scrawny little pencil neck that does everything Dinero tells him to do. It’s more bullying, plain and simple. Dinero runs the Tax & Trade Office, not Lucky. Dumpling, as awful as it is, you have to recognise that there is a problem.”
Lime Tart, who held her blubbering friend, heard quite an earful. She listened to every word said and gained awareness of a much-larger problem. The problem, from the sounds of it. It seemed as though the schoolyard only got bigger and more dangerous as one grew older. All kinds of new worries crept into her mind, and she had to struggle to contain them all. Growing up was scary and this just made everything worse in ways she couldn’t begin to conceive.
Worst of all, she feared that Stargazer wouldn’t get a fair shake at life.
Then, much to her own relief, she thought of her father. He liked to play with dolls. Her father turned out fine, at least she thought so—but what did she know, anyhow? She loved her father more than words could say. He was quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, he made the funniest of faces. When he gave her a bath, he never once got soap in her eyes, at least not that she could remember. Just a while ago, she’d heard him stutter from fear and stress, and she didn’t think she would ever forget that awful sound.
Her father had been bullied…
But he turned out fine, due mostly to her mother.
With a slight turn of her head, Lime Tart glanced at her mother out of the corner of her eye. She was his confidence. Lime Tart found herself wondering what he was to her, because surely they completed each other somehow. Her mother wasn’t quite as careful as her father. When her mother bathed her, the sting of soap in the eye was a very real possibility. Her mother was loud sometimes—too loud—but she was also a lot of fun while her father was quiet.
“I’m cancelling the Hearth’s Warming party for work,” Mrs. Crumpledumpling announced. “But I’ll still take my orders, Blondie. I think a nice quiet holiday at home is needed. With my daughter. If they want to have a bash, they can. And they can pay for it. I’m not covering the cost this year. I’ve done it every year and nopony else has ever offered to contribute anything. Nothing. Not a—”
“Bupkis,” said Blonde Roux.
“Yeah that. Bupkis.” Glowering, Mrs. Crumpledumpling hunched over her steaming teacup.
“We just sold out of crackers,” Pigeon Pie shouted from the lobby.
“Strong cracker sales are a sure sign somepony is cutting them some cheese,” Blonde Roux hollered back at her husband.
This exchange (or some variation thereof) was almost a daily occurrence and it brought Lime Tart some much-needed comfort. Upside-Down Cake managed a half-hearted giggle, even as her many tears fell. As for Mrs. Crumpledumpling, she seemed far too upset to be amused, and her scowl intensified in all the worst ways. Lime Tart allowed herself to feel a little better, because if her parents could crack horrible jokes, then surely things were on an upswing.
“Downy, how does a nice holiday at home sound? No parties. No guests. No company. Just us. We can play board games and drink cocoa. Would you like that?”
When Upside-Down Cake responded, her voice was especially raspy. “I’d like that a lot, Mom.”
“I’m sorry, Downy.”
“For what, Mom?”
“For shouting. For being mean. For threatening to take away Hearth’s Warming. Look at you, Downy. You have that shiner. I should be smothering you like a chick in a nest. What sort of mother am I? And your father… sheesh… your father. When I tell him that there will be no parties at home this year, he’s going to… well, I expect lots of swearing and shouting and maybe even some fighting. I’m sorry, Downy.”
“Troubles at home, Dumpling?” asked Blonde Roux.
“Hubby depends on these parties to help him climb the social ladder. It’s part of his strategy to get promoted at work. Things are stressful right now. The bank has been going through some aggressive downsizing. I’m frustrated with my own job and sometimes, Hubby and I bang heads together.”
“Sounds rough, Dumpling.”
“It is, Blondie. It is.”