//------------------------------// // Don't Worry, Be Happy // Story: Once Upon a Harvest Moon // by miss-cyan //------------------------------// “Moony! C’mon now, I done woke you up twice already!” Honey’s voice called to her. “Shake a leg, lazy bones!” She was more awake with her friend’s well-intentioned reminder, but her eyes were still shut. The world was too bright and heavy for morning Harvest. But Honey could be very serious when it came to making sure everypony was doing what they were supposed to. She would not get another wake-up call, only her mattress being roughly overturned and rolling onto the floor. She’d learned that one the hard way. “…’mup.” She mumbled, trying to put a hoof on the floor beside her bed. The plush rug met her and she carefully pulled herself out of bed, still unable to open her eyes. “You ain’t a mornin’ pony in the slightest.” Honey laughed. “You want I should start a pot of coffee?” “…Yes’m.” she yawned, shaking her whole body like she was soaked from head to hoof. It helped shake away the sleepies. She had acquired a taste for the stuff since moving into the dormitory house six months ago. With all her homework and the group projects they were assigned from time to time, a pot of coffee was almost always being brewed. Harvest took a quick moment to brush out her mane in the mirror before heading downstairs. Her levitation had grown a lot stronger in her year as Cadence’s apprentice and she had gotten more used to using her magic for everyday tasks. She had also grown a little taller, still a runt but she looked more like a growing filly than a little foal. Breakfast was a simple affair most mornings for Harvest, as she was too tired to really appreciate anything she ate. She had learned a rather useful hot press spell that made short work of toast, and the occasional grilled cheese. She was still fairly unskilled in most magical areas, but the domestic spells were her top priority. Nothing cut into valuable study time than it being her turn to dust the house from top to bottom. She’d never really appreciated her schooling until becoming one of Cadence’s students. Sure, her grades were decent enough, and the average marks were enough to keep her parents happy so she never really put any extra time into it. But here, her teachers asked for perfection, and the least Harvest owed them for the opportunity was to give every assignment her best shot. Plus, it was a little embarrassing at first being the farthest behind in her studies compared to her friends. It shamed her beyond belief when she got called on and had no clue what the answer could be, and when she was one of only four students, she got called on a lot. “Good morning.” Aura smiled to her friends, cheery as ever. She was a morning pony, like Honey. Harvest greeted her around a mouthful of toast, too tired to be embarrassed by her actions. “Are you excited Moony?” Aura asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Harvest was drawing a blank. She paused, mid nibble, as she wracked her brain for why she would be excited. “She ain’t all there yet, Aura.” Honey entered with Lit Wick in tow, also not a morning pony. “You’re gonna hafta remind her or wait ‘til the coffee kicks in.” “Oh, right. It’s hard to read her when she’s so out of it.” Aura giggled, and the sound made Harvest smile all dopey around her toast. “Moony, today’s your first solo therapy session with a patient. A whole year’s hard work is finally going to pay off for you! You won’t be supervised or anything! Aren’t you excited?” she asked again. Harvest’s mind was still in need of a serious jumpstart, but all of this was sounding familiar. She finished off the toast, smiling with tired eyes. “’m nervous…” she sighed, stirring some sugar into her coffee. “The first solo session can be a bit…intimidating.” Aura admitted, shrugging as she took a sip of her own coffee. “But, as long as you do your best and remember your lessons, everything will be okay, okay?” “’kay…” she yawned again. Lit Wick’s head hit the dining table with a hard thump and Honey scolded the once-again sleeping colt. But he was already out cold. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ♦ ◯ ♦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Her very first solo patient was an earth pony mare named Peony. She sat in a plush chair opposite her and held a clipboard in her magic, ready to write down what she learned. Peony was a pale yellow with a long, chestnut mane and tail, with amber eyes hesitating to meet her own. “I knew you were supposed to be young but…” she looked Harvest over with concern. “I’m not sure how comfortable I am with this.” “I understand your concern.” Harvest offered a small smile. “I am trained for this kind of thing though. I’m here to help you, Miss Peony. Please, don’t be afraid to hold anything back.” She still looked unsure, but it wasn’t an outright refusal to talk, so Harvest took what she could get for now. “Why don’t you start by telling me a little bit about yourself.” She offered, and the mare looked down to her hooves. She sighed, straightening up and giving off a composed impression. “I’m a waitress, though I have a couple of temp jobs I do from home when money gets tight. Mostly paperwork. My special talent is mathematics, though ponies don’t really see an earth pony as being naturally good with numbers so nopony trusts my math at first.” “You’re good with numbers?” Harvest asked, impressed by the mare. She eyed her cutie mark, an abacus with rainbow colored beads. “You must be a very helpful asset at your jobs.” “I’m…certainly the one ponies come to, I suppose.” She shrugged, and Harvest noticed that she didn’t take the bait for a compliment. She wasn’t being humble either. She seems unconvinced of her own talent. “May I ask what brings you here today?” Peony paused, looking out the window. Her hooves pressed into the couch under her uncertainly, and Harvest waited patiently for an answer. “I used to be normal…” she sighed, rubbing at her eyes. “I think that’s the most aggravating part of this…I can remember how I used to be but I can’t go back.” Peony sat foreword in the chair, looking very collected. It made Harvest pause, and she wrote down a note without looking. “I have a routine.” She said simply. “I get up at the same time every day and eat the same breakfast. I shower for exactly twelve minutes and brush my mane. I leave for work at exactly the same time and it’s always early so I can prepare for the day.” “I take my lunch break and eat the same lunch, and when I go home I eat dinner, but what it is depends on the day of the week. I read the same books and I drink a cup of decaffeinated tea before bed. On Sundays I shop for the same groceries. On the third of every month I get my mane and tail trimmed the same way. My life is very predictable.” “And this is causing you distress?” Harvest asked. “No, I don’t mind my routine.” She shrugged. “It’s very calming. The problem is deviation. I do these things no matter the circumstances. If there is bad, feral weather I will go where I need to be, even if it’s hazardous. If I get sick, it causes me a lot of anxiety to stay home. My boss at work appreciates my nature, if only because it makes me a dependable employee. If something happens to threaten the routine, it causes me to…shut down.” Harvest listened intently, taking more notes. “There was once an…incident at work.” She said, more unsure. “One of the mares I used to work with got a nasty cut from a carving knife. I was the closest to her at the time but I just…didn’t react. I was doing my job. I left to serve tables without a word. The other ponies in the kitchen ended up helping her, and I was a bit of an outcast for a while.” “Were you concerned for her?” Harvest asked, wondering about the mare in front of her. “Of course.” She nodded, her tone a bit flat. “It was terrifying and I worried for her safety. But…stopping to help her would have…” “Thrown off your routine?” Harvest offered. “Yes.” She sighed. “And it just keeps going with things like that. I’m terrified of doing anything that will bring change. I never look for a new job because that would mean going to interviews which would interrupt things. I never accept invitations for social events for the same reason. Ponies have stopped trying. And I can’t even think of having a special somepony. Imagining changing my routine for another pony, even in the slightest makes my coat itch in the worst way. Even if it would make me happy, doing any of it, the thought of change is too much. Being here in the Crystal Empire is…excruciating. It took me six months to work up the nerve to seek treatment. I couldn’t break my routine for a traditional therapist. My boss even let me take something of a…sabbatical. I think he’s concerned for me and wants to help, even if it’s just to reward me for working there for so long without a vacation. I took his advice to write to Princess Cadence to seek treatment and she responded. I figured that if anypony could help me, it would be her. That’s how I finally convinced myself to make the trip.” Harvest considered what she had learned, reading over her notes. “Thank you for sharing that, Peony.” She said, putting down her clipboard. “I think we should go through your life a little. You said you weren’t always like this?” And for a good chunk of their session, Harvest walked through Peony’s life with her. She had been a normal filly, reminding Harvest a lot of herself. She had wanted the things most fillies did and had even been a normal teenager. She got good grades, socialized with friends, even went on dates. But then, Harvest heard something she wasn’t expecting. “Then when I was about fifteen, my father passed away.” Her heart leapt, surprised and saddened. She stopped the mare with a raised hoof. “I’m so sorry, Peony.” She said, and she meant it. “That must have been so hard.” She couldn’t even imagine a world without her Papa. The time away from him this past year was hard enough, even with letters and occasional visits. Her Mama too. The thought of losing either of them almost made her cry in front of Peony. But she kept herself in check. “It was.” Peony nodded, and her face did show more emotion than Harvest had seen so far. “It left my mother and I alone and it did…change things. The grieving was too much to handle at my age…I became a lot more isolated. I lost my friends because I couldn’t stand being happy without him, and they tried to give me space. And after I graduated secondary school…we lost touch. Nothing was the same after that.” Harvest considered her words. Then things clicked. “Is that about the time your routine started?” she asked, with a strong feeling to the answer. Peony looked down at her hooves, and Harvest could practically see her mind working. “Yes.” She answered breathlessly. She looked up at her young counselor, her eyes betraying her pain. “It was.” Harvest didn’t want to drudge up these sad memories, but she had a job to do. She had a responsibility to Peony to help her, even if it was painful and reopened old wounds. She was sure she knew how to help her patient. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ♦ ◯ ♦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Harvest wasn’t sure how traditional it was to have an out-of-office appointment with your counselor, but Princess Cadence had given her a lot of leeway so far. She had to hope that everything would work out and try her best. About a week after their first session, she was walking alongside the mare through the city, whose steps were careful and methodical. She could practically feel the anxiety rolling off of Peony. “How are you feeling?” she asked. “…Everything is so…unfamiliar.” She shut her eyes and she breathed deeply through her nose. “I’ve never traveled before. It’s hard to make a new routine when there are so many variables.” “You don’t seem too bad, on the outside.” She noted. For all of Peony’s anxieties about things, her emotions had rarely shown through so far. “Would you tell me what you’re thinking?” Peony looked around subtly, still taking deep breaths. “I’m wondering if the other employees at the restaurant are following the protocols set in place. And I checked the lock on my apartment door six times before I left but I’m wondering if it was really locked or if I can’t remember correctly…” she droned, her mouth in a tight, stressed line. “And I’m worried that the groceries I’ll buy at the local market here will taste different than the ones I buy back home. And if I go out to eat, what if I can’t decide what to order in a timely fashion and I end up picking something unfamiliar and hating it but eating it anyway so I don’t waste any more time…” Harvest could see the muscles in Peony’s legs and back clenching and unclenching as she spoke, wondering if it was an unconscious action. She had so much pent up nervous energy. “Would it make you feel better if somepony else was making these decisions for you?” Harvest asked, keeping her voice level and calming. “Mmmm…” Peony thought hard to herself, her ears twitching. “No, I don’t think so. Too many new things to consider. But I’d be open to suggestions, as long as they’re detailed.” “Why don’t we stop somewhere for lunch and we can work on some of these things?” she offered, hoping a change of scenery would lighten the mood. “We can go somewhere I know so things aren’t so unpredictable.” “…I can do that.” Peony nodded, and the words were like music to her ears. A nice, controlled environment would help ease the mare’s nerves. For now. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ♦ ◯ ♦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Harvest had watched her first patient through their day out, noting to herself all the things that set off Peony’s anxieties. She was tense most of the time but being so far removed from her usual patterns was bound to do that to such a nervous mare. But Harvest did notice certain things that brought out more obvious reactions. She had no troubles interacting with ponies on the street, returning random greetings with a hello and a genuine smile. She never interacted with anypony for very long, but nothing seems forced or hesitant about her exchanges. When asked to make a decision on anything, she froze. She stood, mind racing and showed obvious signs of hesitation and mild panic. Like her mind was racing between every possible outcome of every decision she could make. Whether it was how she wanted her life to go, or something as simple as choosing what kind of sandwich to order. “If I may make a suggestion?” Peony visibly relaxed, nodding her head stiffly. “My friend Lit Wick enjoys the chickpea salad sandwich with the dipping sauce.” Harvest suggested after Peony had been staring at the overhead menu for almost ten minutes. They stood off to the side as not to be in anypony’s way. “And I’m a big fan of their grilled, spicy cauliflower sandwich.” She still thought about it for a minute more, before stepping up to the counter. The crystal pony mare behind the counter who had been eyeing the two of them curiously perked up at their approach, asking for their order. “I would like your…grilled spicy cauliflower sandwich with a side the dipping sauce. Please.” She relaxed again, the tension mostly gone from her frame. “Okay miss.” The mare smiled. “Will your sister be ordering off of the children’s menu or is she up for a full-sized meal?” “Oh, she’s not my sister.” Peony answered her plainly. “She’s my therapist.” The mare blinked before nodding, seemingly understanding their dynamic from what she’d seen so far. Peony finished her order and they were soon seated with their identical sandwiches. They ate mostly in silence, but having gotten this far, Harvest moved onto the next phase of her session. “Are you regretting your decision?” she asked suddenly. Peony stopped short of taking another bite, noticeably thrown by the question. “My…” “Your sandwich.” Peony glanced away, her ear twitching a bit. “No, it’s very good.” She finally answered. “The dipping sauce is a bit sweeter than I was expecting but I’m handling it just fine.” Harvest knew that everything would work out today. She had purposely put Peony in a controlled but unfamiliar setting to see how she opened up when she had no power. If she was just uncomfortable enough, how would she show her feelings differently than in the comfort and safety of their usual meeting place. “Peony?” she got the older mare’s attention again. “Tell me a little about your father.” That got the intended reaction. Peony flinched and her whole body went rigid, trying her best to be in control of everything. Her appearance, her emotions, everything. “What did you like to do together?” she offered, carefully studying every detail of her patient. Peony was trying very hard to avoid eye contact with her, her hooves trembling slightly on the table. “Do…do we really have to talk about this here?” she asked, her voice wavering. “Everything’s fine.” She told her simply, not looking away. “Just breathe.” Peony stayed quiet but eventually gave in, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. “My father was…kind. Almost to a fault. He was always the parent that comforted me, even when he was supposed to be punishing me.” “Oh?” “I was well-behaved, for the most part.” She cast her eyes downward. “But I was…overeager and curious at times, and it got me into some trouble from time to time. My mother was the disciplinarian, always trying to show me what I did wrong so that I could learn from it. She loved me…in her own way.” Harvest mentally noted the use of past-tense there but didn’t interrupt. “And my father…he was very soft-spoken, it wasn’t hard to ask for things from him when I was young. As different as they were, they complimented each other as parents.” Peony’s description of her father truly painted a picture. One of a loving parent who had his own faults, at least those that Peony herself could comprehend as a child. He was very dear to her, that much was obvious. “I wish I could’ve had more time with him…” Peony suddenly sniffled, and as pleased as it made Harvest to see her patient opening up, she didn’t want to humiliate her by confronting her any further in public. The ice had been broken, and she knew what she’d have to bring up in their next session to make Peony see how to help herself with her obsessive condition. “Peony, for our next session, I want you think about the times that you’ve deviated from your routine. No matter the cause, I want to know how the changes made you feel before and after.” Peony wiped her eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath and nodding before taking a massive bite of her slightly cold sandwich. Despite the discomfort that still itched away at the back of her mind, she felt lighter. Her senses felt a little sharper for some reason. Colors were richer, smells more noticeable, even the spice in her sandwich was hitting her harder. “This really is good.” She half-laughed to Harvest. “I’m glad I tried something new.” Harvest just smiled, glad that their unusual session had gone as well as it did. Her first patient was turning out to be somepony she could really make a difference with. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ♦ ◯ ♦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ They were walking back towards the Empire’s center together, as Peony’s hotel was close to the castle. Despite how heavy their talk had been just minutes ago, their small talk on the way back was surprisingly light. Peony was even smiling, even if it was small and somewhat unnoticeable to anypony else. “I think we should meet for our next session…In maybe…” Harvest stopped in her tracks. Peony stopped a few steps ahead, looking back to the younger filly. She was looking off in another direction entirely. Her eyes were wide, muscles tense and ears standing up strait, almost straining towards the odd direction. “Harvest?” Peony was thrown by this odd behavior. It wasn’t a normal sense of an upset to her routine, this went deeper into her subconscious, that deep, deep down place that she felt as a pony. Like the skittishness she felt when she felt there might be a threat to the herd. Something was very wrong. “Harvest please.” Her muscles were tensing up so hard that she could feel her legs starting to cramp up. But Harvest was steadfast. Her tail whipped in silent agitation as she began to wander in a seemingly random direction. Out of instinctual fear and worry for the filly’s safety, Peony followed her closely. Harvest rounded street corners without a word, her ears swiveling every which way. She pulled herself down narrow back alleys and didn’t pay attention to any of the ponies on the street, narrowly avoiding bumping into anypony. Every once in a while she would pause, look around and start going again, practically stumbling over her hooves to get where she was going. The farther they went, the stranger the Crystal Empire seemed to look. The buildings were older and their architecture was strange to the two non-natives. They began to see a wider variety of creatures. Immigrants to the Empire from all over, they saw diamond dogs and griffins, abyssinians and a minotaur. They even spotted the odd reformed changeling, not usually seen so far from the Crystal Heart. But Peony was the one to really notice these surroundings and creatures. Harvest stopped in her tracks again, Peony nearly bumping into her from behind. Between the strange actions of her young therapist and the increasingly strange setting she found herself in, her anxieties were consuming her. “Harvest?” she spoke up again, hoping she could finally snap the filly out of whatever this was. She was staring down a dark alley, her ears flat and her body starting to shake. “…It hurts.” “What?” she asked, coming around to the filly’s face. “Are you okay? Harvest!” “It hurts…Help.” She said, putting a hoof to her head. “I can’t move…help.” She stepped towards the alley before breaking into a dead sprint, Peony panicking and following after. Peony froze, but Harvest kept on going. The filly ducked down to a severely injured Diamond Dog, their white fur was marred with pooling red, their massive paws limp at their sides. With one unscathed eye, they looked up at Harvest, barely conscious. Peony couldn’t breathe. “Get somepony.” Harvest called to her, eyes wide. “Now!” Peony could breathe again, and she did just as told. She ran off back to the streets to find somepony, anypony who could help. But Harvest knew help wouldn’t come in time. She shushed and soothed the frightened Diamond Dog, knowing deep down it wouldn’t be long now. Her magic was still full of unknowns but she had sensed her pain from miles away. How she had known was completely beyond her. But she let her instincts take over and she did her best to make the Dog’s final moments just a bit less lonely and frightening. “It’s okay…” she said over the Dog’s now ragged breathing. “I’m not going anywhere. You were here alone for a long time, weren’t you? I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” She took one massive, limp paw in her hoof, unprepared for what she’d see. A lone diamond dog looked through the scraps of wood in the alley, hoping to find some that were good for carving. Since coming to the pony lands with her pups, she’d found herself encouraged to explore her creative side. The side of her that was never encouraged in the pack she’d left back in the territories. When she’d realized that one of her two little pups had been more docile, a little slower than his sibling and the other pups in the pack, she’d known that he’d be isolated and her family judged for caring for him. Once they’d realized he was deaf, they were clear in their intentions to basically leave him for dead. She’d heard of the pony lands, and how they were free to be any kind of creature they were. She knew it would be lonely, and her family would be forced to turn their backs on her in order to survive, but for the life of her pups it had to be done. She’d found a particularly good piece of scrap wood when a shadowy figure at the end of the alley, staring down the diamond dog. The details were blurred by pain and the haze of impending death. But it was a pony. Had they witnessed what had happened? Or… “Hello? Pony?” Harvest called out in an unfamiliar voice. Harvest was very soon corrected when she felt a sharp stab in her broad shoulder. She reached up to it with her big white paw, only to recoil when there was a strange sound. Something sharp dragged across her right eye and in seconds she was half-blind. A vicious snarl ripped out of her, directed at the pony in the alley, but when she tried to attack, her legs wouldn’t move. She soon felt the agony of stab after stab to her limbs. She’d already been immobilized, why had the figure gone after her legs? Her muscles were starting to ache and her leg buckled, sending her to the ground. Despite how much it hurt, despite how much she held on for herself, for her pups, she wondered why this pony hadn’t just finished her off. She got the same aura as some of the crueler dogs back in her homeland. This pony didn’t want to kill her. It wanted her to suffer. She snarled again, trying to drag herself further down the alley. If she could reach the street some creature would at least know where she was if not help her. But she felt herself being dragged back by her tail. No matter how deep she dug her claws into the cobblestone under her, the yanking continued. In a last-ditch effort of survival, she lurched back to bite her attacker, but the pony hadn’t moved from their spot. A unicorn. She lurched further back to desperately bite at her tail to escape, but her head was slammed down onto the ground before she could even get near it. She tasted blood in her mouth. Before the pain was too much, she was rolled onto her back by the pony’s magic. The pony continued its assault, too far away to see clearly and too far away to be touched by any of her blood. With the last bits of her consciousness, she snarled at him, refusing to show this pony any sign of her pain. “You’re a monster!” Harvest felt herself cry out in a guttural voice. “There’s no need in this kill for you, only pleasure! Foul, filthy monster!” “Now, now…” the pony called back. Harvest felt her jaws being wrenched open with magic and her tongue grabbed. “There’s no need for that.” Harvest startled back to her own consciousness, tears flowing down her face. She spotted the blood seeping slowly out of the Diamond Dog’s mouth. “I’m sorry you went through all of that Snowy…” she remembered the dog’s name. “I’ll make sure your puppies are taken care of. I promise.” Snowy’s eyes widened at her words, but it was obvious she was struggling to stay alive. She didn’t want to die and leave her puppies alone in this strange new land but holding on was draining everything from her. Some part of her wanted to let go, to stop the suffering. Harvest stayed with her, holding her paw until she finally slipped away. Peony and a duo of crystal guards came back not two minutes after. She spent the next few hours reporting what she’d seen with her magic, but with the limited info on the unicorn from her vision, she wasn’t sure if or how they’d be found. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ♦ ◯ ♦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Aura was the first to meet up with her when she returned, and Harvest worked to clear her mind. When she had told Cadence a while back how muddled the older filly made her mind feel sometimes, Cadence had tried to assure her that there was no shame in feeling this way. Harvest didn’t really understand what the princess meant, but she told her that she’d rather not let Aura sense how uncomfortable she was for no reason. It was against her better judgement, but the Princess was also guilty of guarding herself against Aura’s abilities. She taught her how to mask her emotions, so that they wouldn’t be visible to empaths like Aura. She wasn’t that good at it yet, but if her mind was focused and she wasn’t in any kind of real emotional distress, it usually worked. Aura herself didn’t seemed to mind or notice. Or if she did, she was too polite to mention it. It was a little ridiculous how often she had to use the techniques she was taught lately. “Moony!” she smiled, brushing up against her in her usually friendly way. In the last year, the height difference between the two of them had lessened, but Aura was still tall and lanky compared to the rest of her friends. Even Lit Wick who was growing up more and more lately, getting slightly more masculine-looking, was still a bit shorter than her. “Hi Aura.” She smiled, doing her best to seem as normal as possible. It seemed like it had worked, and they walked together, talking about anything that popped into their heads. It was comfortable, Harvest was no longer the stammering shy filly she’d been just a year ago. She could see Aura for everything she was, not just the pony she seemed to be. Aura was a silly filly who loved the ponies around her and told bad jokes. She was a horrible dancer, her too long legs going every which way they shouldn’t, and she had an almost stereotypical pegasi temper when she was upset, often retreating to a blanket cocoon in her room when she was upset for hours on end. She was anything but the perfect pony Harvest had thought she was when they’d first met. And Harvest couldn’t help but feel so light and airy whenever they were together. “Hello dear friends!” a cheerful, booming voice called from down the hall. Harvest had only seen this happen a few times before, but it was still so…jarring. Lit Wick came running down the hall, skidding the last few gallops and practically crashing into Honey. His mane that always fell in front of his face was swept back, revealing both of his bright yellow eyes. They were full of life and he didn’t have the same tired air about him. “Lit Wick!” Aura smiled. She always seemed happy seeing him like this. “Did you have a good session?” “Absolutely!” he grinned. Harvest still wasn’t used to seeing him like this. A smile for everyday Lit Wick was so rare, something to be treasured. But post-session Lit Wick was almost a completely different pony. “I think I’m really making some progress with my patient!” This was the state he morphed into after treating a patient with depression. He absorbed all the negative energy and gave them temporary relief to view their lives from an unmuddied perspective. He had once described it as “clearing all the storm clouds from their minds”. Funnily enough, taking all those storm clouds into his own mind made him so much sunnier. Even Princess Cadence had trouble explaining how the magic worked. “You up for lunch Wicked?” Honey asked, smiling wryly at him. She knew Sunny Lit Wick didn’t care for that nickname. “I would love to enjoy a meal with my friends, thank you Honey!” He smiled, but it was slightly strained. If one didn’t know the real Lit Wick it wouldn’t be noticeable. Though, it could be argued that just because the gloomy Lit Wick she knew was around more, and she knew him better, didn’t mean there was a “real” him. “It’s different, but nice. In its own way.” Aura smiled, looking at Lit Wick leading the group to the house. “What is?” Harvest asked. “His light.” She blinked slowly, as if willing herself to look away. “Everypony’s light, their aura, is different. It can change with time and circumstance, but when he gets like this, it changes so much I can barely recognize it. But his positive emotions are genuine.” Harvest agreed noncommittally, thinking over this other version of her friend. “You’re nervous about it?” Aura walked closer to her, and Harvest sighed. She lost her focus in her worry. “I’m just worried.” She admitted, looking at Lit Wick and Honey chatting excitedly ahead of them. “Usually she can barely get two words out of him when he’s like this. I worry that he’s…pushing himself. Like all this energy is why he’s so out of it the rest of the time.” “I understand.” Aura nodded, pulling Harvest closer with her wing. It made her feel warm and uncomfortable and she wasn’t entirely sure why. “You’re worried about our friend. But hey, if he was feeling terrible and I knew it, I promise I would let you know, or do something about it myself. Okay?” “Okay.” She smiled up at the taller filly, hoping she was ignoring how nervous she was feeling. Harvest could try to be there for Lit Wick, no matter what side of him was showing. He wasn’t the friend she had met a year ago at the moment, but if this was just another part of him, she had no problem accepting him for who he was. “He wouldn’t be against you just asking him about it.” Aura told her. “It’s not something he keeps secret or that he’s ashamed of.” She paused. “Well…he’ll be embarrassed when it wears off, but you know what I mean.” She walked with Aura all the way to the dorm house under her protective wing, doing her best to keep her mind clear. It was one of the only times she didn’t mind being so short. She was dealing with her own storm clouds at the moment, and if Aura could sense that she wasn’t talking. How was she going to bring this up with her friends? Princess Cadence? Should she have already done it? The Princess had been in her throne room all day doing courtly things, serving her citizens, there was no way either she or Shining Armor had gotten wind of what had gone down that day, or that somepony they knew was involved. In the long run, was this even a professional concern? Or was this more of a worry that she should keep to herself? This was a crime, and she’d already talked to the proper authorities. Told them everything she knew. She was a therapist pony, not some busybody investigative type. Thinking about it realistically, there was nothing more she could do. But she couldn’t get what she’d seen, or sensed, out of her head. Snowy had just slipped away and she’d been the only one to see her, to know how she suffered before she was just…gone. And that unicorn was still out there. “Moony?” She looked up to see all three of her friends staring at her. Aura looked especially pained, she knew. She had to know. Harvest had let her guard down. “Moony…you’re scared. And sad. Like…you’re mourning.” Aura read her, her words making her other friends look on in confusion and concern. “What’s going on?” She tried to keep her composure, but the thought of the poor dog’s face bubbled up to the surface and broke her. She tried to keep the loud sob from escaping but it was a losing battle. Aura wrapped her wings around Harvest and squeezed her tight, swiftly joined by Honey and Lit Wick. Harvest broke down in the middle of the castle courtyard, surrounded by ponies that cared about her. Somepony sent for the princess, she wasn’t sure who. Maybe it would be good to schedule a session with the her. Not as Harvest Moon the therapist pony, or even her student, but as Moony. Just a scared filly who needed somepony to talk to.