//------------------------------// // A return to the boneyard // Story: A Hearth's Warming Tale // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// “Am I in trouble?” At the moment, this was the only question that mattered, and Lime Tart asked it with great hesitation, as if by mentioning it she might invite catastrophe. She had to go and be with Stargazer in a short while, and she feared that she might not be allowed to go. It was so important to go—he needed her, and truth be told, she craved the experience, as it defined her as a good pony.  Right now, the distinction between good and bad seemed a bit blurry.  Before her mother could respond, Lime Tart said, “I know I should’ve told you.”  “But you didn’t,” her mother replied.  The unicorn filly nodded. “Yep. I didn’t do that.” She thought about making excuses, but then thought better of it. There was no sense in making things worse by blabbing out a bunch of things that her mother might use against her. For now, at least for the moment, silence was her ally. Her mother knew what had happened, and why. Perhaps her mother would be fair. Yes, there seemed to be a good chance of that, especially after this morning when she and her mother connected.  “It seems to me that there’s some trust issues,” Blonde Roux said to her daughter. “That makes sense. I had to come down on you pretty hard during your bad spell. Bubelah, there is a big difference between getting into trouble and having trouble happen to you. When troubles happen to you, you always come to me. No matter what. I’m on your side.”  “He won’t fight back,” Lime Tart said to her mother, hoping that she might explain things. “Stargazer never fights back. No matter how I picked on him, or what I did to him, he never fought back. I couldn’t let something happen… not in the cemetery. She was gonna hurt him. Bad. What should I have done?”  “Bubelah, you did the right thing. But you did the wrong thing not telling me.”  Lime Tart didn’t dare say anything. Right now felt precarious. Dangerous. She was somewhat relieved that her mother had said that she’d done right, but she’d also done something wrong—and she couldn’t deny that it was wrong. Making excuses or whining about it probably wouldn’t help matters. Next time, if something like this happened, she would tell her mother about it. But that was next time. For now, the spectre of punishment loomed like a dark shadow.  “I’m scared, Bubelah.”  “You’re scared?” This greatly puzzled Lime Tart, who failed to understand her mother’s fear. “About what?”  “I’m worried that if we tussle about this, if I punish you, you won’t come to me in the future for help if you need it.” With a turn of her head, Blonde Roux cast her distant gaze upon the pile of pots and pans in the sink. “My mother warned me about this… about a time when I could be your mother or I could be your friend. This feels like that time. As your mother, as a unicorn, it is my duty to make sure you know certain things.”  “Other ponies are scared of our magic.”  “Yes, Bubelah. And jealous. A single act done in anger can leave behind a lifetime of suspicion, fear, and doubt. We have to hold back, even when it feels very unfair.” Ears sagging, she prepared to wash dishes and clean up the kitchen, which was a real mess. “As your friend, I am proud of you for what you did. Treacle needed a good scare. She’s a strong one, that filly. Too strong. One of these days, somepony is going to get hurt. Maybe now that she’s had a good scare, that won’t happen, but I doubt it.”  Lime Tart certainly didn’t expect this. Not at all. She didn’t expect this much complexity about the issue. Her mother was proud—said so even—and even though a bad thing had been done, something good might potentially come out of it. Was that the lesson? What was she supposed to learn from this? Clearly, she had some thinking to do. And maybe a chat with her friend because he was smarter than her about stuff like this.  “Earth ponies are strong, and that’s fine. Pegasus ponies fly, and we’re fine with that. Unicorns and magic?” The older unicorn sighed and looked over at the younger. “You’ll find that other ponies aren’t so accepting of what makes us ‘us’, Bubelah. We ponies are fearful of what we don’t understand, and magic is not understood. You used your magic to deal with an angry simpleton. There’s going to be repercussions. Or maybe there won’t be. Maybe things will work out. Maybe Treacle is so deserving that other ponies will look past this. No matter what happens, there’s a good chance that life won’t be the same, Bubelah.”  “So I’m in trouble, probably, but not with you?”  “So smart. So smart. What did I do to get such a smart daughter? A curse and a blessing. Oy vey, this kitchen, it’s a mess. Bubelah, it is almost one o’clock. There’s some cookies in waxed paper on the table, all tied up with twine. Take those with you. Do good. Keep your head held high, Bubelah.”  “Mom… thanks.”  “I honestly don’t know what my own mother would want me to do in this situation,” Blonde Roux remarked as she turned both faucets to get hot water flowing. “Would she be my mother, or my friend? The one Hearth’s Warming when I really could have used her advice, fate conspires to keep us apart. Oy vey! This kitchen isn’t going to clean itself. We still have more baking to do. Ugh, so much work to make a miracle happen.”    Lime Tart was barely out the back door when her father’s shadow fell over her. She recognised the swoop, that distinctive curve of his mane. When she turned around, she saw that he was wearing his hat, scarf, and vest. It wasn’t hard to figure things out—he was coming with her, and this posed as a problem. Stargazer’s grief was private, and she wasn’t sure how he might feel about intruders. Even worse, she doubted that he would say anything even if this bothered him.  “Closed up early,” her father said while he pranced about in the freshly fallen snow. “We ran out of crackers, so it was time to close. No more disappointed customers whining about crackers. We sell a lot of crackers, Tarty. Your mom needs a factory kitchen so we can be rich.”  Then, without warning, he began to fumble around in an attempt to fix her blanket coat collar. With his wings out, shielding and obscuring the view, he landed a surprise smooch right on her cold snoot. She giggled, was embarrassed, and would have ran away, but at the moment, she just didn’t feel like it. Hopefully, he wouldn’t do anything embarrassing in front of Stargazer, because that would be, well, whatever was beyond super-embarrassing.  “Sorry, Tarty. I’m coming with you. As your father, it is my job to make your life awkward under the guise of keeping you safe. So I’m coming on your date—”  “Daddy, no!” she squeaked. “It’s not a date. We’re not dating. That’s gross. Don’t say that.”  “Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” He stood up, gave his wings a shake to get the snow off of them, and then was visibly dismayed when more flakes replaced those shaken off. “Lead the way, Tarty.”  What choice did she have? In a way, she was relieved that her father was tagging along. Stargazer needed a father, and she could share hers. At the moment, she had all manner of worries, fears, and doubts. Maybe her father could help sort those out. A cold wind blew and whipped her mane away from her face while it also tugged upon her tail.  “We meet up at Tradeway Lane and Farmer’s Hedge Row Street,” she said to her father. “He’ll be waiting. Or we’ll be waiting. Depends on who gets there first.”  “Sounds a plan, Tarty. Let’s go.”    When she saw Stargazer, her heart skipped several beats. He stood beneath the black wrought iron street lamp, wearing his too-small coat that was coming apart at the seams. A bright blue knitted cap with a royal purple pom-pom covered his ears; it looked brand new and Lime Tart found herself thankful for the kindness of others. Somepony had given him a hat, but he still needed a new coat, and maybe a scarf.  “Star,” she breathlessly said as she drew near. “You have a new hat!”  “Mrs. Beryl gave it to me when she stopped by for tea,” he replied. “It’s incredibly warm. I’m happy to have it.”  “It matches your colours,” Lime Tart said as she bounded through the snow, which crunched underhoof. “Oh, that’s so sweet. Somepony did something nice for you.” Almost breathless, she halted when she reached him, and then remembered her father was right behind her. Awkward.  “Mister Pie,” Stargazer said.  “Stargazer… how are you doing? Have you been reading those scary books?”  The colt nodded, but had nothing to say.  “That story that you read to Tarty—” “Daddy, no!”  “—it scared her so bad—” Flustered, Lime Tart began to prance in place as she repeated her previous protest, “Daddy, no!”  “—that she couldn’t sleep in her own bed like a big filly—”  “A filly could just die of embarrassment, you know!”  “—she came into our room at just a little past eleven—” Lower lip protruding, Lime Tart fumed in her father’s general direction.  “—and she begged her mother to let her sleep in our bed. Just what did you read to her, anyhow?”  “Oh, f—”  “Tarty!”  “—arts.”  “Oh good, you learned from the last time you said that word, young lady.”  When Stargazer began to chuckle, Lime Tart hated him just a little bit for laughing at her misfortune, but she was also grateful to hear the sounds of his happiness. It wasn’t often that one got a chance to hear it, so it was a rare, treasured thing that was truly special. Why, Stargazer was almost smiling. He had to be in high spirits after getting a new hat. But his sorry coat bothered her, and Lime Tart desperately wanted to do something about it.  She put it on her Hearth’s Warming Miracle checklist.  “There’s a lot of snow,” her father said matter-of-factly. “I mean, it is really coming down.”  “And nopony clears the road to the cemetery,” Stargazer said to Pigeon Pie. “The snow will be deeper than I am tall.”  “And you go out there every day, no matter how much snow there is?” asked Pigeon Pie.  “Yep.” The earth pony colt nodded at the pegasus.  Lime Tart heard the concern in her father’s voice when he asked, “Just how far is that?”  “It’s about three miles,” was Stargazer’s response. “When they planned the city, they placed the cemetery far enough out that the city could expand without having to move the graveyard. Rainbow Falls was an experiment in city planning.”  “Just how do you know this stuff, Stargazer?” Pigeon Pie asked while he held his wing over the colt’s head to keep the snow at bay.  “I read my father’s books,” the colt replied. “If I read what he read, I can know what he knew, and that makes everything hurt a little less.”  “Well, Stargazer, how about we fly instead of a long walk, trudging through snow and slush?” Pigeon Pie was now dusted with quite a bit of snow because he stood still, and the brilliant white stood out in sharp contrast against his sooty grey-blue and blue-grey. “In fact, how about I fly you out there every day, because walking six miles back and forth is nuts in this sort of weather.”  “This is because of what happened.” Squinting a bit, Stargazer peered up at Pigeon Pie, and Lime Tart felt her heart flutter in a weird way. “Is Lime in trouble?”  “What? No. At least I don’t think so. She better not be.” Pigeon Pie snorted, waved his wings about, and made a futile effort to shoo the snow away. “It never snowed in Applewood. How do ponies live in this stuff? It gets everywhere!”  Unable to stop herself, Lime Tart giggled because of her father’s current bit of silliness.  While her father made a valiant effort to shoo the swirling flakes of snow away, Lime Tart stuck her tongue out so that she might catch a few of the falling fluffy flakes. Most of the snowflakes were fine, but every now and then, due to the nature of the rainbows that the town was named after, one might find an extraordinarily spicy snowflake on one’s tongue.  “Do we have to fly?” asked Stargazer.  Pigeon Pie was busy trying to swat and swipe at snowflakes with his wings, and it took him a moment before he replied, “Yes. That would be for the best, I think.”  “Not too high?”  “Afraid of heights, Stargazer?”  “No,” the colt replied. “Not at all. I just don’t like falling and that sudden splat at the end.”  “Ew.” Disturbed by the sudden mental image of a just-splatted Stargazer, Lime Tart shivered.  “Falling scares me,” the colt confessed. “Sometimes, I’ll be peeping through the telescope, and I’ll get all dizzy and lightheaded, and I have this scary bit of time where I worry about falling into space.”  “He does,” Lime Tart said to her father. “I’ve been there when it happens. He gets all sweaty and gross.”  “I do not.”  “You do too.”  “Do not.”  “Do too.”  “Do not.”  “Do too.”  “Do not, infinity.”  “Do too, infinity plus eleven!”  “Are you two always like this?” asked Pigeon Pie, who interrupted the exchange.  To which Stargazer replied, “Yes.”  While at the same time, Lime Tart said, “No.”  “I get the feeling I should hang out with you foals more often.”  “Really?” Stargazer’s response was unusually animated and Lime Tart took note.  “Would you like for me to spend more time with you and Tarty?”  “If you would have said ‘Lime’ it would have rhymed,” the colt replied.  This gave Pigeon Pie reason to pause, and after a moment lost in thought, he nodded and then said, “So it would have. Alright then, all aboard. I promise to keep it low and slow, just off the ground. If you do fall, and I’m not saying that you will, but if you do, you’ll fall into the deep snow and won’t get hurt.  “You want to hang out with me?” asked Stargazer. “Even though I’m weird?”  “I need to show you my doll collection, kid.” At this moment, Pigeon Pie puffed out with an impressive display of pegasus pride. “Rainbow Falls is full of a bunch of squares. Weird is just a different state of normal, kid. You’re not weird, you’re just different. In another place, you’d be an academic and the ponies of Rainbow Falls would be dimwitted dullards.”  “My father was weird.” Stargazer seemed impossibly solemn and his large eyes were soulful.  “Tell me all about him while we fly to the cemetery.” Annoyed, Pigeon Pie still swatted and slashed with his wings at the flakes falling all around him. “Spring can’t come soon enough!”    The cemetery was buried in snow like a grave covered in dirt. Not a headstone was visible and no traces remained of their previous visit. Everything was clean, white, and pristine. When Pigeon Pie landed, the snow was almost belly deep for him, and Lime Tart knew that when she lept off her father’s back, she would be in over head. More snow swirled, as if winter attempted to bury those lost.  Stargazer wasted no time; he wiggled free of Lime Tart’s embrace, slipped off of Pigeon Pie’s back, and then vanished into the loose powder. Just like that, he was gone, save for the royal purple pom-pom on his hat, which was still visible. There was a muffled cry from Stargazer, and then Pigeon Pie began to dig the colt out with his wings.  While all of this happened, Lime Tart was stricken with a terrible, horrible, awful realisation: as winter progressed, and more snow fell, these daily trips to the cemetery would become impossible. Stargazer was literally in over his head, and if she and he had come here on their own, they would have struggled every inch of the way. She was glad that her father had come. Maybe it was more than keeping her safe from Treacle, maybe he knew. Her father was pretty smart after all.  She was smart, too, and chose to stay upon her father’s back.  A hard wind blew; it was cold, bitter, and caused stinging tears to blur Lime Tart’s vision. The creeping grey advanced and threatened to blot out what little sunshine there was. What if the storm had blown in and she and Stargazer were caught in it? Though she kept her thoughts to herself, she now had some very real worries and understood that this was dangerous. Did her parents think her brave? For surely they had to be aware of these dangers, all the bad things that might happen. How did her parents even let her go out at all without worrying and panicking? She sympathised with her parents now, and had a glimmer of insight into what they endured.  Dragged out of the snow, Stargazer clambered up onto Pigeon Pie’s back, and got snow everywhere. Lime Tart tried to dust him off, but it did no good. Her attempt to sweep away the snow almost pushed the colt right off her father’s back and into the devouring white. He shivered, he coughed, and then Stargazer returned to his usual stoic state of being.  “I thought it’d be this bad,” Pigeon Pie said to nopony in particular. The slicked back swoop of his mane was messy now, dusted with flakes and windblown. His feathers were dishevelled from digging in the snow to rescue Stargazer. Yet, he still radiated a sort of cool defiance, and stood unflinching in the wind. “Where’s this grave at? I can’t tell where anything is. I hope I don’t bang my legs on a tombstone.”  Stargazer shivered, shuddered, and then asked, “I have to say goodbye, don’t I?”  “Yeah kid, I’m sorry. I really am.”  “I said it once. I don’t know if I can do it again.”  It wasn’t just the fierce wind that caused Lime Tart’s eyes to flood with tears.  “Why can’t the winter just leave me alone?” asked Stargazer. “It’s like I can’t have my father at all. Why is life so unfair?” “I’m sorry, kid. This is just how it is. Come spring thaw, we’ll come to pay a visit, but from the looks of things, we might not make it back for a while.”  “It’s over there, in that corner.” Sniffling, Stargazer pointed with his hoof. “I know just where it is.”  Unable to bear it, Lime Tart buried her face into the back of Stargazer’s neck, and held him. He was cold to the touch and his thin, tattered coat did nothing to stop the cold from piercing his skin. She felt him lean back into her, and she tried to wrap some of her blanket coat around him, but it was awkward and didn’t quite work out as she had planned—which is to say it really didn’t work out at all.  “First the manticore, and now winter,” the dejected colt murmured. “I hate winter, and I hate Hearth’s Warming.”  The words were like an icicle driven though Lime Tart’s tender heart, but she said nothing. Right now, words would do no good. Instead, she squeezed him, and hoped that her father wouldn’t break a leg trying to navigate through the unseen, hidden dangers of tombstones hidden in the snow. If something did happen to her father, they might end up stuck out here, and that would be terrible beyond words. Of all the awful things that could happen, that would be just about the worst.  “Over here.”  Pigeon Pie trudged through the fine powder and Lime Tart wondered if her father’s legs were freezing. They might be. Before she could think about it too much, Stargazer flung himself into the snow once more. Almost holding her breath, Lime Tart knew what she had to do, even though she really, really didn’t want to do it. Shivering in anticipation, she slid off of her father’s back and then was immediately buried in the snow.  The world was white and she could see nothing, but she could feel Stargazer thrashing about in the snow somewhere off to her left. Taking careful aim, she let go a pulse of magic directly in front of her, and much to her satisfaction a huge amount of snow was blasted away. A moment was spent where she reveled in her own power, and she had herself a look around. The snow that she had blasted swirled in the wind and already it fell back down.  It was important to be careful. Tongue out, she zapped the offending fluffy white flakes and caused a second explosion of snow. A surprising amount of the loose powder was dislodged and was blown elsewhere by the wind. Stargazer was digging, his front legs pumping, and his hind legs kicking snow away. His tail rose from from his exposed rump like a flag, and Lime Tart was thankful that she hadn’t explodenated her best friend, because that would ruin Hearth’s Warming.  Again, she took careful aim… and then… pew-pew!  Each blast excavated a considerable amount of snow and shoved it elsewhere.    The headstone marker was free of snow at last and Lime Tart stood close by, huffing and puffing. She watched as Stargazer stood with his hoof firmly planted on the small stone marker, which lay on the ground. It wasn’t much of a marker at all, and if she somehow had money, she would get Stargazer a proper standing tombstone for his father’s grave. Maybe it would make him happy. If it didn’t make him happy, at least he could mope near a proper upright tombstone.  Pigeon Pie stood over the two foals with his wings spread wide, and used them as makeshift umbrellas. Not that it did much good; the wind was really starting to blow now, and the grey had advanced considerably closer. Lime Tart, who had a long morning of growing up, now knew that she valued Stargazer’s happiness over her own. What that meant, she didn’t know, but she knew it was important. It had to be important. Perhaps she might write a letter to Princess Twilight Sparkle, and maybe, just maybe, the princess would write back in return.  “I don’t wanna say goodbye,” the colt whined. “Never wanted to say it then, and I don’t wanna say it now.”  Lime Tart’s father stepped closer, patted the forlorn colt atop his head, and said, “I know how you feel, kid. I do. I’m not just saying that. My mom… she just disappeared one day. I don’t know what happened to her, but she’s gone. Then my dad left. Maybe you and I… maybe you and I should spend a little time together, Stargazer. There’s a lot of hurt and anger that comes with this.”  Turning away, the earth pony colt nodded. “I’m almost always angry and I just hold it in.”  “Well,” Pigeon Pie said, “that won’t do. I did that too, and it caused me problems. It won’t help nothing. Won’t fix nothing. And there isn’t anything that will help this except to wait it out… but it never really goes away. I don’t really miss my father much, he and I didn’t get along, but I miss my mother something awful. Every year around this time, it gets real hard for me, and I don’t know what I’d do without Blonde Roux. She carries me through somehow.”  “So you never got over it?” asked Stargazer.  “Over it?” Pigeon Pie shook some snow off of his wings, licked more snow from his lips, and flicked his ears to free them from the fluffy white buildup. “Kid, you don’t get over something like this. There is no ‘over’. Natural death is one thing… ponies grow old and die. But when somepony you love is taken from you… just taken… because life is being unfair, there’s no getting over that. It doesn’t go away. You might think that you’re over it, but then something happens. You smell something, or you see something, or you hear a song, and then you’re right back to not being over it. At least, that’s how it is for me. I think of my mother all the time. She loved Hearth’s Warming… loved it. She was one of those ponies who was downright annoying about Hearth’s Warming and ugly sweaters and cheesy music… and… and what I wouldn’t give to have her back. I’d wear whatever ugly sweater she gave me.”  “So this is normal?”  “Yeah, it is. Sorry kid.”  “That makes me feel better.”  “Does it?” Pigeon Pie seemed quite surprised by this revelation.  “It does. Thank you. I don’t know what normal is anymore. There’s only my mother… and I think she tells me what she thinks I want to hear to make me feel better.”  “Well, Stargazer, that’s kind of what a mother is supposed to do… make her son feel better.”  “But I get mad about it. So mad that I want to scream at her. But I never do. I just hold it all in.”  “Well, f—”  “Daddy! No! You’re the one that I learned that word from!”  “—arts.” Now thoroughly irked, Pigeon Pie did nothing to hide his scowl. “Kid, you and I, we should have talked sooner.”  “We’ve talked. A lot.”  “No, no… I mean, about this.” There was a monumental struggle taking place, and Lime Tart stood watching her father as it happened. “I guess it just never came up. Or it wasn’t the right time. Or maybe I was selfish, and stupid, and didn’t want to think about my mom, so I didn’t bring it up. I... don’t even know. But from here on out, you and I, we’re going to have some talks. Maybe sort some of this out. Somepony has gotta do something, and I suppose it’s gotta be me.”  “Did somepony help you?” asked Stargazer.  “Well, yeah, actually.” A soft prolonged sigh escaped Pigeon Pie, who made his best effort to keep the annoying snowflakes away from the two foals. “Blonde Roux’s parents. They took me in. Kept the social workers from taking me away, because it would’ve broken Blonde’s heart. They gave me a home. Paid for a counselor… a therapist. I was so embarrassed to get help… thought it made me weak. I was already a weakling, and a sissy, and having to see a head shrinker just made everything feel so much worse.”  “Do I need a therapist?” There was such intensity and emotion in Stargazer’s eyes, and his ears quivered in anticipation of an answer.  “Yeah. Probably. Maybe. Look, I don’t know. But there are no therapists in Rainbow Falls. We’re a small town in the middle of a big wide expanse of nothing. Welcome to Dullsville, population, us.”  All of this was quite overwhelming to Lime Tart, who’d never seen her father act quite like this. Or Stargazer for that matter. They’d connected in some way that she couldn’t quite understand. A connection that she herself could not make. She felt something about all of this, a whole lot of somethings, but she had no clue what all these new feelings were.  “Blonde Roux begged her parents to help me. She said you don’t throw out a perfectly good Pie. Her father laughed. I somehow managed to laugh. Blonde’s mother ‘oy veyed’ a whole bunch.” He fell silent, his ears fell, and Pigeon Pie shook his head from side to side. “I think the time has come to pay it forward.”  Her father could fly. He could fly and go a long way and maybe he could carry Stargazer to see a therapist someplace else. A plan was already forming in Lime Tart’s mind, but she maintained her silence in favour of devious scheming. She thought of the expense, but was not discouraged; a way would be found somehow. There had to be a way. She refused to believe that this was impossible. It was Hearth’s Warming, the season of miracles—and she was Hearth’s Warming’s Helper, who would nudge those miracles along if they got stuck.  With a shuddery sigh, Stargazer looked down at the gravemarker beneath his hoof. The colt sniffled, his ears twitched as snow fell, and his tail swatted at flakes as if they were flies. “Goodbye, Dad. I was hoping to come out here for Hearth’s Warming… I had plans… but I don’t think I’m going to make it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be alone. I don’t want to be alone. I feel so alone now. It’s hard. I wish I knew what to say.”  It took all of her bravery, but Lime Tart dared to intrude upon this private, vulnerable moment. She approached, brushed up against Stargazer’s side, and then leaned against him. “You’re not alone.”  “It feels that way though,” he said in return. “How do I explain it? It’s like… there’s this wall made of sadness and anger, and every day, it just gets taller, and thicker, and it’s already past the point where I don’t know if I can overcome it. The wall is so huge, and I’m so small.”  “Well, you just hang on in there,” she said to him, fully aware of how her father listened. “We’ll get you out. I’ll get an army if I hafta. Whatever it takes. But you hold on. Don’t give up. We’ll tear that wall down. I’ll tear it down.”  “I’ll be waiting.”  At that moment, Lime Tart’s heart blazed with some great internal fire, a raging inferno of impossible heat. But it wasn’t like her moment of hot temper, no. She felt no need to roll in the snow to cool herself off. Why, she was perfectly content to burn from this fire, and she imagined that this must be what Hearthfire felt like. Whatever chill the winter had to offer, whatever cold indifference that life had to give, she knew that she could endure if she could just keep this fire in her heart burning.  And she would.  She would.  “Goodbye, Dad… I guess I’ll see you come spring.”