//------------------------------//
// Like A Shattering Mountain 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
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Starlight and Fluffy kept working at the backyard, but they soon ran into a problem where they had picked up a lot of branches and debris, but had nowhere to put them. "I don't know what that stallion expects us to do," Fluffy muttered, looking at a pile she had been building. "This would make a great bonfire, if we had a fire pit."

"A bonfire?" Starlight looked at their progress, half of the yard a little clearer and the other half stacked up with everything they had moved. Maybe they could... She sat down on the steps to their back porch, studying the yard. There was still an urge in her heart to fix it, but it was hard to work on that when she didn't have a way to make progress.

Fluffy took a break too, and an awkward silence developed. It was clear that Starlight's new friend was still thinking about her magic. Starlight was thinking about it too. Using her powers wasn't second-nature; she could go for weeks aboard the airship resting her horn and not using them at all. So if not using them and keeping ponies from knowing about them was what it took for her to be normal...

But that answer didn't sit well in her mind at all. Aside from the fact that she'd inevitably make a mistake and use them, whether because she cared too much about something she needed them to do or she simply forgot that a mundane spell was impressive around here, pretending to be normal and being normal weren't the same things. If she was constantly hiding who she was and what she could do, when would she ever be at ease? The tension she felt around other ponies who weren't her closest family would never let up. She could live like that, but never sustainably. And she was already worn so thin, she didn't want to do it a moment longer.

Starlight gave up, glancing at Fluffy. "If you want to ask about my magic, go ahead."

Fluffy worked her jaw. "Uhh... What do you want me to ask? It's neat, but it looks like it makes you feel awkward, and, um..." Her eyes lit with an unhappy realization. "Oh. When you were traveling... were ponies being mean to you because you were strong and they thought it made you different?"

"The opposite," Starlight replied, looking down. "I picked a lot of fights with creatures who were doing bad things because I was strong enough to do something about it."

Fluffy tilted her head. "That's a bad thing? I thought everyone wants to be a hero."

Here they were again, at a topic Starlight had no idea how to explain. "Being a hero is lonely," she said. "Sometimes ponies are stupid and don't realize you're helping them. Other times they're too excited and won't leave you alone. Sometimes they don't realize because you don't tell them because you're afraid they won't leave you alone. But I don't want a fan club. And I don't like having to constantly fight to keep the things I care about safe. I feel like I can never rest when I'm doing it."

Fluffy stared with a mixture of curiosity and concern. "What were you fighting? I can't think of anything around here you'd have to protect ponies from with magic, even if you were really good at it. Are there bandits? My uncle on the caravan teams says most of the bigger trading towns have militias to keep those away from the roads and seas, but they still carry weapons to keep themselves safe."

Starlight wondered what fighting bandits would even be like. Armed, ragged ponies who didn't have enough and tried to take what they needed by force, or did have enough but were used to their ways and took what they wanted instead? They didn't sound like something that would give her a whole lot of trouble.

"Starlight?" Fluffy prodded, having received no answer.

"Oh! Right." Starlight blinked back to reality. "I fought... well... anyone who didn't like us, mostly." She didn't particularly want to talk about windigoes, or Crystal, or Gazelle. The latter two were far too recent for comfort, and telling Fluffy she had battled ancient monsters that only existed in storybooks would either do the wrong thing for her image, or else stretch her friend's suspension of disbelief too far and damage her credibility. "A lot of ponies didn't like us for one reason or another."

Fluffy frowned. "Why not?"

"Because some ponies aren't nice. Or are afraid of ponies who are different from them." Starlight's mind drifted to Riverfall, where she was chased out by Hemlock's mob for reasons she couldn't even remember, to Ironridge, where she had the misfortune of being caught in Gerardo's politically-charged delivery, to Stormhoof, where Valey was shunned for being a sarosian, to Izvaldi, where the local chancellor just happened to be a mad scientist, and to Kinmari, where everyone was entirely too nice. "There are a lot of reasons. Maybe we just got unlucky."

"Well, that's weird," Fluffy commented. "If you're helping, they should like you. And I think your magic is cool. Even if you don't like it."

"Thanks," Starlight muttered. "I don't want to hide it, or be weird, or be popular, or anything. I just want to be normal. And I have a lot better of an idea of what that means than when I used to not want a cutie mark."

Fluffy bit her lip. "Do you think you'll get a cutie mark now?"

"Probably." Starlight shrugged. "Most ponies do, right? I don't know what I want one in."

"Well, you're pretty good at magic," Fluffy pointed out. "But you don't seem to enjoy it. And my cutie mark was in something I enjoyed, not the thing I was best at. Though I am pretty good at it."

Starlight glanced at the pillow on Fluffy's flanks, a moderate yet far from infinite contrast with her obvious talents and passions in drawing and decorating. "I don't enjoy a lot of things anymore. Maybe I won't get one for a while after all."

Fluffy curled her lip. "You used to make a big point of not enjoying anything or doing anything that could get you your mark." Her ears fell. "You're not still doing that, are you?"

"No." Starlight shook her head. "Not on purpose."

When had her troubles really started, even? Had she transitioned straight from hating cutie marks to... wherever she was now? There had to be at least some good times in there somewhere. Even if she had spent her early days in the north getting ran out of Riverfall and harried in Ironridge, she was still hale enough to stay determined and keep on hoping that the next place would be better. What had finally broken her and pushed her over the edge to where she was now, too tired and burnt out to enjoy the good times when they did come around? At the start of her journey, what she was finding here in Sires Hollow was exactly what she wanted. And she was clearly over at least some of the problems she had left because of, if what Fluffy said was true.

...Thinking back, Starlight realized she had a pretty good idea of exactly when it was: the day she had gone to a doctor in Stormhoof to get her horn looked at, and was subsequently knocked out, foalnapped, woke up in Stanza's dungeon in Gyre, voluntarily used a Nightmare Module for the first time, and met Glimmer. There were high odds that was the turning point in her life.

"You look like you just remembered something bad," Fluffy pointed out, biting her lip.

"A day that wasn't my favorite," Starlight sighed. Ignoring the fact that she had been attacked and betrayed without warning by an adult who was supposed to be helping her, which she knew wasn't how the world was supposed to work, Glimmer and the Nightmare Modules had made her life so much more complicated... She still wished she could go back and blast that doctor, though odds were he was dead by now for one reason or another. "It was a long time ago."

"...Maybe we should go back inside?" Fluffy suggested. "This doesn't seem to be making you super happy. Besides, I've got tree dust in my fur now."

"Alright." Starlight got to her hooves, not commenting that this wasn't much different from usual.





"Huh," the stallion who had suggested Starlight and Fluffy clean up the backyard said, surveying the debris. "Well, maybe this wasn't the right task for you. I hope you had fun though, right?"

Fluffy shrugged broadly. "I sure did. You should have told us where to put the sticks, though!"

The stallion scratched his head. "I am going to have to figure that out for myself. Maybe you should get cleaned up though, aye? I think we have finished with the washroom on the second floor."

"Sounds perfect to me," Fluffy announced, accepting this as a dismissal from duty. "Come on, Starlight! Let's go get cleaned up and think about what we want to do next."

Starlight followed along. The second-floor bathroom? That was where... well, whatever. She hadn't had any issues being overwhelmed by memories since Maple and her friends started working on the house. She would be perfectly fine.

They marched up the stairs, the workers seemingly being done hauling heavy things up them for now. The old reading alcove was now populated by a small vanity... Starlight frowned. What was that doing here? That wasn't what this spot was for. Maybe she should have been around to remind ponies how this place was supposed to be.

"Hey, they opened your crates!" Fluffy cried out, sticking her head into Starlight's room. "Your whole bed was in there? Wow, it looks like the frame folds up... Nice of them to take it out for us."

Starlight wasn't particularly interested in what they had done to her room, noting her old parents' room now had a bed set up for Maple. But she looked over Fluffy's shoulder anyway, noting her old desk and bed were back... Had they always been that small and well-used? Maybe she really had grown bigger over the last half year. Either that, or her ideas of what a desk and bed should be had grown.

"So which one's the washroom?" Fluffy asked. "The one at the end of the hall here?"

Starlight nodded, standing behind her. What if she had been wrong? Maybe this room would overwhelm her again. It had always been the place that was her parents' and not hers, that she knew existed but didn't mess with, that had such strong memories of curiosity attached. As the place in her house she knew the least about, the things she did know were all the more strongly associated with it. Rose-pink tile, lingering scents of perfumed soap...

She nearly bumped into Fluffy, who was standing in the open doorway, agape. "You have a bathroom this nice!?"

"Is it really that nice?" Starlight blinked, realizing they had entered. "Um, I guess we do."

With an indelicate slam, Fluffy forced the door shut, hovering up to the mirror and giggling to herself. "Eeeheehee! Heehee! Look at the patterns on these tiles! And all the seams are so seamless! And I've never seen a floor this clean! You almost shouldn't be allowed to walk on this! I had no idea you had a place like this!"

"I didn't." Starlight shrugged. The tiles that made up the walls also formed the floor, ceiling and rim of the bathtub, forming a continuous pattern and look she supposed could make it feel like you had stepped into a different world... She noted that just like she had, Fluffy had closed the door, shutting them in here. "This was my parents'. Not mine."

"Your parents must have really wanted a nice washroom. I guess it makes sense they would have hogged something like this for themselves." Fluffy stared around a little more, then looked back to the mirror, pulled out a brush someone had left on the counter, and started freeing twigs and dust from her coat. "Come on, tell me you think this room is cool. You've probably seen cooler things in your travels, but you have to see that this is a nice washroom."

Starlight's mind was completely stuck. It was nice. Her friend was impressed. It also wasn't supposed to be hers, but the ghosts of her old parents had no power anymore. She was breaking a rule by being here, but it was one that no one was left to enforce, a wall without substance that was more fragile than a fence made from paper. But it was still a rule... but even if her old parents had been here, they hadn't been very good parents to her, and she had ceased to respect them a long time ago. If she would just let herself go, stop being paralyzed, there was a naughty little thrill waiting for her, the same kind as reaching for a forbidden cookie jar. She could feel that thrill, dampened and muted behind a mental block that was there because this room wasn't a memory, it was the present. This was her old house, but now it was her present one again. She wasn't in the past. Memory Starlight wasn't here.

The present Starlight was a filly who tried her best to follow the rules, except when her friends were at stake. She tried her hardest to be nice to everyone, on the hope that someone would reciprocate and her life would be better for it. And so many times, that mindset failed her, even though she knew the opposite couldn't be true, that being bad would never get her satisfaction or friends, but she clung to it because it was all she had. Did trying her hardest to do the right thing really extend to not enjoying sneaking around in her old parents' bathroom when there was nothing they could do to stop her?

It did, and it was such a thin wall. Starlight was tired of trying to be perfect in hopes that it would pay off. Suddenly, Memory Starlight was back, bouncing around and reveling in defiling her parents' sacred place with her presence, which she could do because she didn't have to worry about anything, just like Fluffy. Because she held herself to a lower standard. Because there was nothing she needed a higher standard to achieve. Because she had no need for achievements, because she wanted for nothing.

Starlight screwed up her face. She wanted so badly give up, stop trying, let the world do what it would and kick that mindset in the face. She was messing around with a friend in a place they weren't supposed to be! She wanted to have fun! She wanted to enjoy this! And it was a bathroom. What was the worst that could happen?

Her gray visions were still out there. If Starlight let herself stop caring about being good, what was stopping her from consciously letting something like that happen?

She wanted to scream. Why couldn't there be a middle ground? Why wasn't there a middle ground? Why was it so unsafe to step out and look for one? Why couldn't she just stop altogether and have fun again like she so badly wanted?

...If there wasn't a middle ground, and there wasn't a way for her to protect the world without driving herself insane in the process, and carrying the burdens of walking the right path would ultimately crush her with no reward, maybe she didn't care about the world in the first place.

Something snapped inside Starlight like a shattering mountain made of glass. "Haha. Yeah. It is a nice washroom."