//------------------------------//
// 4 - Hollow 
// Story: The Hollow Pony 
// by Type_Writer 
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After Pinkie apologized for everything, profusely, she headed off somewhere, but she told me to stop by somewhere named “Sugarcube Corner;” there was a party going on, and everypony really needed it. There was always a party there, and everypony was always invited. I agreed to come, and then we made our separate ways.

While she started trotting off one way, I began to follow the general direction that Applejack and her guards had gone. For a while, I considered some attempt at heroics, to save those two Hollows, but I was unarmed and unarmored. All that would accomplish would be to get me thrown out alongside them. Instead, I noticed they also seemed to be heading towards that grand, gleaming castle I had spotted earlier through the fog, and I still wanted to investigate that. At least, as much as I could, if they were guarding it.

I stayed what I hoped was a safe distance behind the guards and Applejack, at least until they seemed to be heading past and away from the castle. I broke off there and turned towards the gleaming landmark itself, and spent most of the walk looking at the buildings around it. Occasionally I glanced upwards over the rooftops to make sure I was still going the right way.

I distinctly noticed that the further away I got from the town square, the fewer ponies I saw. At first, I wrote it off, for surely Applejack had spooked them, but by the third street in a row without a soul to be seen, I started to feel distinctly lonely once more. The undead burg also seemed to get more built-up around this end, transitioning suddenly from thatched rooftops and small, one or two-story cottages, into flat cobblestone streets and brick buildings. It was still a mix of small storefronts and cozy houses, and no building was higher than three stories at most, but the air smelled different here. While the thatched-roof buildings had begun to decay, these brick buildings had remained, and only trace scents of rot could be found. And that was… unsettling, somehow, as if this part of town was too clean. It felt artificial.

I was maybe a block or two away from the base of the castle itself, and while it had become considerably easier to see through the fog, I could only see the top half from here. I needed to get higher, above these taller buildings. A nearby apartment block seemed to be one floor higher than the ones surrounding it, and I approached the door, tentatively giving the wood a few knocks with my hoof.

Nopony ever responded. Eventually, I peered through the darkened windows, and saw sunlight in the very back of the building; a door, left open. I decided to try the door just to see if it was unlocked, it was, but still refused to open. Confused, I pushed at it, and the door squeaked loudly. It seemed the ambient moisture in the air had caused the door to expand in the frame, and eventually I had to slam my shoulder against it a few times to shove it open wide enough to squeeze through.

It felt like I broke my shoulder in the process. I limped painfully through the building as I regretted my actions, as surely somepony had to have heard the thumps and squeaks as well.

I found my answer almost instantly, and it barely avoided finding me. I was about to step into the pool of sunlight that filtered through the back door, when a shadow passed in front of it. I froze, then pressed myself against the wall, suddenly thankful that Rockhoof had removed my armor. I may have been much less durable, but I also didn’t clank and rattle when I moved, any more.

“Noooise?” A voice snarled through the doorway. It was a growling, guttural voice, nearly bereft of any Equinity. “Holl… Hollow? I smell…”

There was the sound of sniffing, and I prayed I was downwind of the voice’s source.

“Smells… ragh.” There was a growl that sounded almost dismissive.

A second voice responded to the growl. They were guttural as well, but less so, as if the pony merely had a sore throat. “Don’t smell anything. The wind probably just knocked something over. Come on, let’s get back to our patrol.”

There was only another growl in response, but the shadow stepped out of the light, and I heard the clicking of hooves on cobblestones as the two voices walked away. If I breathed, I would’ve released a breath in relief, but I settled for sliding off of the wall. The old, moldy wallpaper stuck to me as I pulled away, and the old paper fluttered to the floor as I shook it off.

I could see a staircase leading upwards in the dim light, but I wanted to peek around the corner at the open doorway, just to be safe. I was surprised when I did; the door hadn’t been left open, like I assumed, but it had been smashed open. The door itself lay flat on the floor, the brass knob tossed into a nearby corner. This house had been invaded at some point, it seemed.

It was hard to see through the door itself; the darkness of the room and how bright the sun was outside made for a harsh juxtaposition, and I had to stare out for a while before I could see clearly. I couldn’t see much even then, but what I could see seemed to consist of another large square with a fountain, smashed to rubble, in the center. Sets of lightly-armored militia ponies staggered around the perimeter in patrols of two. Wherever I was, it was good I had stopped here. I didn’t think I’d be allowed to just wander into an area they so tightly controlled.

I turned away from the sunlight, and for a moment, I was taken aback by how absolute the darkness within the building seemed to be. I was blind, stumbling through the shadow, and even the light through the door seemed to disappear when I turned back to find my bearings. In fact, all light had disappeared, and I began to feel distinctly unsettled. It was as if I was staring into my cutie mark, or that strange bag again. It was that same sort of dark, the same feeling of total void, absolute… and hungry.

I began to hear whispers. Indistinct voices, voices I didn’t recognize, and I couldn’t understand the words. Some of them were Equuish, I’m fairly sure, but spoken so quietly, or from so far away that I just barely couldn’t make sense of them. I spun and twisted, looking around for anything, but all was Abyss, crushing me. It was like pressure from all sides had forced me down. I was underwater, I was drowning. But there was no water to drown in.

What eventually shook me out of it was the downwards pressure itself. I realized I could still feel the floor, could still feel the old, moldy carpet beneath my hooves. I shuffled over the surface, afraid to lift my hooves for fear they’d never touch the floor again, and eventually they found the molding where the floor connected to the wall. I tried to lean against it for stability, but I nearly stumbled—there was nothing there, except for what my hooves touched. So I used my grounding to shuffle along the wall, slowly, carefully, until I reached a corner, a step.

Slowly, laboriously, I began to blindly ascend the staircase. It only took a few steps before light pierced the veil, and I was blind no more. Something… all-encompassing slid down my withers, but when I jerked away and spun around, nothing was there. Nothing had ever been there. The room was dimly lit by the sunlight that came down the staircase and the ambient light from the broken door below once more.

I couldn’t stop shivering, no matter how much I tried. Some residual feeling of a cold presence, or maybe simple disgust. It had been like I was drowning in my own black ichor. I felt like throwing up, like the clumps in my throat were trying to escape out of my mouth. My cutie mark itched, like I'd never felt before. I didn’t even know for sure what I had stumbled into, if it was a place, or some sort of creature… Or some sort of emanation of a creature…

I stumbled backwards up the stairs, eyes still scanning below, but nothing came for me. I was alone in a dark, abandoned building. Like I always had been.

I couldn’t limp up the rest of the stairs fast enough. I scrambled around the darkened landings of each floor as I passed them, headed for the roof. I would be in the sunlight there, and the sunlight would keep me safe. I knew it, on a level I couldn't explain. I didn’t care who heard me galloping up the old wooden stairs. They could try to chase me through that if they were so desperate.

When I burst through the door at the top of the building, I felt as though I had galloped up a hundred flights of stairs, but the building was only three stories, plus the roof. My chest burned, my bones ached, and my mouth was numb. But I had reached the sunlight, as dim as it was through the smoke and the fog, and I collapsed onto the gravel of the flat roof and simply basked in it for a long while.

Something… It was difficult to describe. Something receded, at the touch of the sunlight. Something that had crawled under my flesh, through my veins. But it crawled no longer as the sun hit; it withered and died, and I felt even the pain of my exertion fading somewhat as I lay before the sun.

When I felt... clean again, somehow, I staggered to my hooves. Bits of gravel had gotten stuck to my flesh when I had fallen, and I brushed them off easily enough. I didn’t need to walk to the edge of the roof to get the view that I needed; the castle was big enough that I could see almost all of it from any part of the roof. I sat more-or-less in the middle of the wide roof, and looked up.

And continued looking up.

If I had thought the town’s sudden shift towards cobble streets and glass storefronts had been a jarring, this castle didn’t seem to fit any architecture that I knew. The exterior seemed to be a façade of glass, or crystal, or at least I assumed it was a façade. Surely, it couldn’t have been made entirely out of whatever that was? That would’ve suffocated an army of glassblowers, or would’ve crippled a legion of carvers. How could such a large building gleam like that? The surface was entirely uniform, with not a seam or crack of shift in color to be seen, aside from the where one section joined another. All of it, seemingly, was crafted from bright purple crystal that reflected the glittering light of the sunset through the foggy skies, and illuminated the streets below in rainbow patterns.

The actual structure itself… It resembled a treehouse, in the strangest way. As if somepony had plucked a castle, foundations and all, and dropped it into the branches of a great crystal tree. All of the mass was so much higher than the town that surrounded it, and it was suspended with ease in branches whose height rivaled even that of the building I was sitting on. The entire mass of the castle tapered impossibly downwards into a single tree trunk, formed out of perfect geometric angles, and towards the base, where a single set of double doors, grand as they might be, seemed to be the only entrance inside.

And yet, even the width of those nearly took up the entirety of the trunk’s space; surely there couldn’t be some sort of narrow staircase leading all the way up into the castle proper? Nor a ladder, which were already difficult for ponies to navigate. How would they move furnishings into the building? What about food? Looking back up at the castle portion, I couldn’t see a crane or any sort of loading dock. Perhaps there was an airship dock on the side facing away from me, and in the name of security, everything went through there? Surely I couldn’t be looking at a purely secondary entrance!

And yet, looking back up at the castle section, I did notice something odd. I looked away, then back, and yet my confusion only grew. The castle… seemed to be changing whenever I looked away. The entire layout of the structure shifted. Rooms grew and shrunk, towers relocated, disappeared and reappeared, and even the branches of the tree seemed to twist and bend to impossibly support whatever illusion was surely going in front of my eyes.

This whole structure seemed impossible. It was made of materials that made no sense, the architecture was as though it had been designed by a foal that couldn’t decide whether they wanted to live in a castle or a treehouse, and the building itself seemed to constantly be in flux, never in the same position twice. What creation of Discord was this? Whatever it was, it was unsettling to look at, but most of all confusing. Desperate for some sense of normalcy, my eyes shifted back downwards, to the city surrounding it.

I only somewhat found that normalcy. While the city square seemed normal enough at a glance, it had clearly been built afterwards, and the castle itself had been given a wide berth—out of respect, or the same distaste I felt now? The oldest-looking structure seemed to be a garrison just to the right of the castle’s base, and in fact placed so close that a path wrapped around that base specifically leading to a bridge, which crossed a shallow decorative pond before the front doors of the garrison. Sadly, it had been drained, though it gave me the impression that the building had not always been as such. Perhaps the steel battlements and reinforcements had been added after the fact? But why retrofit a building, as opposed to simply building one from the ground up? They’d certainly had little problem with the extensive walls surrounding the burg.

The rest of the square finally felt familiar, at least in layout. It was an attractive mix of apartments, restaurants, and storefronts. From what I could read of the signs, they seemed to be selling a wide variety, though a pattern quickly emerged. Ink, paper and scrolls, quills and sofas (I had to re-read that sign a few times, and even then I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes) as well as other furnishings, such as beds and chairs, or tables and desks. The restaurants seemed to be mostly light fare, and the fanciest one I could see was a gourmet coffee shop. A pizza bakery sat next to an ice cream parlor, and a fast food diner and a grocery store had only a pottery store separating them. What an odd confluence of industries.

It looked like it had been a bustling square, back when ponies still lived here. Now, it was firmly locked down by the Fort Ponyville Militia—the Hollows that Applejack commanded, and who seemed to be running the defensive side of the town. I recognized their armor as the same loose design that I had seen in my mad dash along the wall, and they seemed to be holding this square with no less the same amount of focus. I could see several patrols, exactly like the one I had barely avoided, all circling the square and peeking into the darkened storefronts. Permanent guard posts had been set up to block off alleys, or whole wagons had simply been crammed into the spaces and set alight to form actual barricades. There were several gaps in the buildings large enough to let wagons through comfortably, and I assumed those to be the streets. The only one I could clearly see had the largest guard post of all set up there, with sandbags and some sort of mounted gun, sweeping the street. Whatever weapon that was, it looked hoof-cranked; if the rusted metal it was made of could even still function.

As much as I wanted to know more about the mysterious crystal castle that loomed above this whole square of the burg, I resigned myself to letting it go for now. No amount of curiosity was worth running afoul of this many guards at once, and especially unarmed and unarmored. Maybe if they let me join their militia, I would be allowed closer, or Pinkie worked out some sort of deal, but we still barely knew each other. I didn’t even truly know myself; how could Pinkie vouch for me against Applejack, who seemed unstable and irrational at best?

With a shake of my head, I decided to leave, though that brought my attention back to the doorway from whence I had emerged. I was in no rush to pass back through… whatever strange phenomenon I had encountered on my way up here. Instead, my vision turned to the edge of the building, and I found my hooves drifting in that direction, just to see how far the drop was.

The answer was “further than I was comfortable with.” While I knew it wouldn’t kill me, or rather, that the fall would not kill me permanently, being stuck crawling over the cobblestones with broken legs sounded incredibly unpleasant. For a brief moment, I entertained the fantasy of pitching forward, and intentionally nose-diving into the ground roughly four stories below. While it would certainly get me down there, and I would only feel the impact for only but a moment before I was killed and regenerating, the idea of the ground rushing towards my face made the atrophied muscles of my back twitch unpleasantly. Something instinctual rebelled at the concept—pegasus instincts were trained to avoid impacts with objects so solid. My conscious mind was inclined to agree.

Instead, I followed the edge of the roof to the building adjacent. They had been built as a single unit, likely sharing a wall, so I would be able to drop down from this roof onto that one. I turned and let my hinds dangle off, hooking my fores onto the edge of the roof before letting myself fall. My only injuries amounted to small scrapes and dark bruises—my legs collapsed on impact, but my fears of broken bones were unfounded. Instead, I was simply too weak to land properly, and I staggered a bit as I stood up, shaking my head.

The next drop, from this roof to the street, was only very slightly less daunting than the four-story drop had been. Still, I could improve my odds a little bit, going off of what I had learned from my previous drop. First, I spotted a space where a decorative garden had once been planted, and the fallow dirt was better to land on than hard cobblestones. Second, when I landed this time, I anticipated my legs going out from under me. Again, I dangled my hinds backwards and dropped off, and this time I tried to tuck my head in and roll onto my back.

My success was… mixed. Though I avoided smacking my head into the stones or breaking my legs, I fell sideways, and my hind hip certainly felt as though it had broken. In addition, a fresh layer of scuffs and bruises marked my body, and I spent a great deal of time groaning and clutching my withers as best I could, trying to stifle the pain. I knew it wasn’t broken, because I was able to stand and walk with some difficulty eventually. I left the building behind, and limped with one of my front and back legs each all the way back to the center of town.

It was slow-going, and I took long enough to stagger there that my legs genuinely felt as though they had healed somewhat by the time I actually arrived. Perhaps I had cracked the bone? In any case, I was only limping about as much as I usually did from my general aches and pains by the time I passed back through the town square.

Pinkie’s directions were actually surprisingly easy to follow; I had expected to be struggling to read faded street signs, or ask hollowed townsponies for directions, but her instructions had almost all been visual. Follow the street that had the abandoned wagon parked on the right, looking from town hall, then keep going until I saw the collapsed building, follow the alley on the right side of that, and then go through to the street on the other side, and I was practically there.

Even if I wasn’t able to follow those instructions, I would have heard the music. I had vague memories of music, little tunes I could hum a few bars of, and that hollowed lyre player from before had been pleasant to listen to. But I’d never have expected I would ever hear actual music being played from a record player again. It was a slow tune, but upbeat, and I couldn’t help but smile as I approached, even if I couldn’t hear the lyrics.

Sugarcube Corner was pleasantly bizarre. After seeing so many malformed scaffolds and walls made of scavenged scrap wood, or the sheer alien strangeness of the crystal castle, simply seeing a building that still looked weird in a fun way was a relief. The whole building seemed designed to emulate a gingerbread house, complete with chocolate shingles, frosting-white rain gutters, and a strange addition that sat in the middle of the roof that was decorated like a cupcake. That must have been an additional bedroom, added after the original construction.

My mouth watered for the first time that I could truly remember since I first had woken from my undeath. Clearly, I was not alone in feeling this; the building was covered in small notches and chunks taken out of it. Whole rows of shingles were missing, and one of those cream-white gutters hung off the roof by a single screw. At first, I thought the building had been attacked, receiving superficial damage, but I realized what they truly were after a few moments of staring. The entire building was covered in bite marks and chunks torn out by teeth.

That merchant from before—hadn’t she said something about not having seen carrots in a very long time? And for all the time I’d spent in Ponyville, and all of the fires I’d seen Hollows huddling around… not once had I seen a single cooking pot, or smelled anything being baked. Had everypony forgotten, or was it truly because there was simply nothing left to eat? I even glanced back down the street, which was nothing more than bare earth hardened by the hooves of thousands of ponies, but I could only see the barest patches of yellow or graying grass. Not even while I was out on the road had any plants seemed to be alive. Those trees had stubbornly clung on for as long as they could, but even they were long-dead.

With a sad shake of my head, I wondered how long Equestria had been without food. Surely without plants that could grow in this light or this fog, it had to have started fairly soon. For once, I was glad I was so hollowed—I couldn’t feel even the barest craving for sustenance. I barely felt as if I needed to drink water, and even that seemed to mostly be for the sake of rinsing out my throat. If I were perpetually starving, I think I would have gone Hollow already.

The door of the bakery was left propped open, and I could see shapes moving inside. For once, I did not fear them, nor feel a sense of caution. I trusted Pinkie. My eyes were drawn to the wall beside the door, where a short row of sheathed swords seemed to have been left outside. Maybe she actually banned bringing them inside at all? I did raise my eyebrow at what seemed to be a massive rock that tapered down to a handle, which was wrapped with leather to aid the wielder’s grip. What behemoth of a pony could even wield a giant rock as a weapon? Unless it was left there purely as a joke, a playful parody of the swords beside it.

Stepping inside, I found myself in a warm bakery filled with townsponies in various states of hollowing. Some were seated around tables, a few of them slowly danced to the music, even more were seated in little circles on the floor, and a few more sat by the counter as if it were a bar, tended by Pinkie Pie herself. The exuberant mare’s face lit up as I came in, and beckoned me over with a wave of her hoof. “Holly! You came, you remembered!”

I nodded as I trotted over to the counter. A stool between a gray mare wearing a strange set of armor and a hollow pegasus teenager was available, and I sat there as Pinkie leaned over the counter to give me a gentle hug. Her heat was still incredible, like a boiling kettle had pressed itself against my shoulder in affection, but I didn’t mind. I hugged her back just as tightly. She vibrated happily against me, then pulled away and stood on her hinds, using both her forehooves to point at the ponies to either side of me.

“Holly, this is Maud, my sister, and that’s Pound Cake over there, he owns Sugarcube Corner and keeps me safe. I keep him safe from Applejack though, so it evens out!” The stallion chuckled tiredly, and gently hoof-bumped me. Maud gave me a slow hoof-bump in turn, and her armor ground against itself as she moved.

“Anyhoo, I’m really glad you showed up! The more the merrier, yanno? And it’s always good to have more ponies hanging around to keep the party going.”

Her face scrunched up in frustration. “Sometimes it’s kinda hard to get the spark you need to relight the party after Applejack goes on another one of her meany-pants crusades. I hope Lyra and Bon-Bon are okay out there, maybe they’ll head towards Canterlot.” After a moment, she shook her head. “Gah, sorry, didn’t wanna bring the mood down, I’m sure they’re fine! How about you and Maudie talk? I’m gonna go check on everypony and also I need to swap the record.”

She disappeared under the counter, and Pound Cake gave me a respectful nod as he stood up and trotted over to the record player. Pinkie appeared from around the corner, holding a wooden milk crate filled with record sleeves, and started sifting through them. She looked like she was looking for a specific one, so she’d probably be at that for a little bit. In the meantime, I turned back to the mare beside me. “S-so… You’re P-Pinkie’s sis-sister?”

Almost her whole body seemed to be encased in what must have been fairly thick stone; if I assumed she was actually the same height as me, then it had to have been nearly a full hoof-width of rock she wore everywhere but her head. I also noticed a similarly-stony helmet sitting on the counter in front of her, with holes carved out of the front to see through. Next to it was a frothy mug of water, that she sipped from occasionally.

“Yes. I’m Pinkie’s older sister. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Holly.” The mare herself was a paradox; visually she was only a little hollowed and still had her original eyes, albeit with a lot more wrinkles than normal, and a distinct sunkenness around them. But they were half-lidded, and she spoke as though she were incredibly tired, or had no emotion beyond them. I had actually met more expressive ferals and comatose Hollows on the way here. 

If Pinkie hadn’t told me herself, I wouldn’t have believed her. I waited for a few seconds, waiting for her to continue the conversation, but Maud seemed content to sit there and look at the party. Eventually, I noticed the faintest hint of movement; she seemed to be moving her head up and down, only a hair back and forth. Was she… bobbing her head to the music in microscopic amounts?

“I...uh…” I rasped awkwardly, as she looked back at me. “Interest- interesting arm-armor… you’re w-wearing...”

She nodded, just the slightest of movements. “It’s okay to stare. Or touch the surface. I made it myself. I’m very proud of it.”

With a nod, I gently ran my hoof over the rough surface of her shoulder. It was shaped in sloping plates at the joints, to protect them from strikes, but surely it was incredibly brittle? Not to mention heavy? “Wha-what… is it m-made of?”

“Mostly basalt, which is a very solid core. There’s a protective layer of granite protecting it from weathering from rain, and polished quartz crystals keep the interior from damaging my fur.” She stated this so matter-of-factly that it took me a second to respond.

“I...it’s act-actually m-made of st-tone? Not... m-metal?”

Maud shrugged, and her shoulders ground against her collar with a spark. “Metal is just stone that’s been purified and forged to fit a pony. I can work stone with my hooves, so I made my own armor.” After a moment, her eyebrow raised, just a fraction. “Yes. It’s very heavy.”

Okay, now I believed she was Pinkie’s sister. It also reminded me of the strange weapon outside. I pointed with my hoof at the door. “Did.. Did you c-carve that… big st-stone out there t-too?”

“Big stone?” She blinked at me. “Oh. You mean Avalanche. No.”

“Av...avalanche?” I asked. Had she just found a stone that worked perfectly as a club, or-

“That’s her name. It’s the tooth of a dragon. They’re very hard to carve.”

She said it as though it was the most perfectly normal knowledge in the world, and yet it was one of the strangest things I had heard in my new unlife. And that included the concept that we were all cursed undead with embers for functioning eyes. “How… d-did you g-get a drag...dragon t-tooth?”

She took a sip of her drink. “I killed a dragon. Then I pulled out one of the corner fangs. I wanted to study their bones.” For once, her eyes lit up a little, or at least her eyelids seemed to raise. “Dragons mostly eat gems and ore for nutrients, so their scales, bones and teeth look like stone. But they’re actually some form of organic compound that’s incredibly heat resistant and absorbs impacts. It also conducts electricity really well, but that works against them. It’s very fascinating.” Her eyelids drooped down to their normal position, as the topic wandered away from their biology… or geology, it seemed. “I was studying them, but then we won the war. So we didn’t have any more left to study. I was very sad.”

“...about not hav-having any more dr-dragons to st-study?”

“No. I was very sad during the war. I wish we didn’t have to fight them.” The only part of her expression that changed was that she looked slightly downwards towards her drink. “I think they’re extinct now. They were very mysterious creatures, and some were even my friends, before the war. They retrieved fresh Igneous stone from inside the caldera of volcanoes, where I couldn’t go.”

Slowly, I nodded. “D… Do you kn-know R-Rockhoof?” He was a veteran too, after all.

Again, she nodded very slightly. “After the war, at one of Pinkie’s parties. We’re very good friends. I find raw ore for him, because he’s always running out.” She looked back at me. “Have you seen any rock formations with diverse cleavage or rust-colored patches outside of town? I’m not allowed to go into the caves nearby anymore, according to Applejack.”

I’d barely seen anything through the fog. It was possible that I might've seen some patches along the riverside near where I woke up, and while I knew Maud could handle herself out there, I didn’t want to send her out in that direction for nothing. I told her all this, and she shrugged.

“That’s okay. I was going that way anyways, and it’s not the only thing I’m looking for. Have you seen any unicorns out there? One is an azure blue, and the other is a heliotrope purple.”

Again, I sadly told her I hadn’t.

“That’s okay. It was unlikely anyways, since Pinkie hadn’t seen them.” Speaking of our mutual friend, Pinkie had set a new record spinning on the player, before she began bouncing from group to group. She talked to each pony by name, asked how they were doing and if they were enjoying themselves and the music, and kept hugging everypony before she left for the next group. Pound Cake orbited around her, watching the crowd, but he was relaxed. He was watching the door more than anything else, and I watched as he scanned the occasional Hollow that stumbled in to find the source of the music.

“Wha...What is he g-guarding her f-from?”

Maud slowly looked at Pound Cake, and then slowly back at her drink. “Bad hollows. The ones that have hollowed out entirely. You can tell them by sight. They slouch over and stumble a lot. They don’t have the instinct to hold up their heads or watch where they walk, like we do.”

Quietly, I swallowed, and made a mental note to work on my posture, as well as my constant stumbling. Anything to keep me from going hollow, or to keep anypony from thinking that I had. “B-but doesn’t… Applej-jack hunt th-them?”

Maud’s eyes turned downwards again. “She does. But she can’t get them all. The old buildings are filled with hollows, and sane ponies sometimes stumble in and hollow out.” She sighed. “And Pinkie will just try to hug them while they’re attacking her. Both Pinkie and Applejack’s hearts are in the right place, but neither method works like they’ve convinced themselves it has. Both methods are also incompatible.”

I sunk down onto my stool slightly. Pinkie was trying so hard to keep everypony’s minds intact. She wanted to be everypony’s friend, so they had a reason to stay, and something to remember. But for some of the really bad hollows here in town, Pinkie was all they could remember any more, and everything else was gone. Was it still a town if nothing was made, if nopony was doing anything except sitting around and waiting to die?

“W...why does she t-try s-so hard…?”

Maud shrugged. “My sister is a good pony. And it keeps her sane, most of all. If Pinkie Pie weren’t here, keeping the fires, I don’t think I’d ever come back. It’s too close to the Everchaos and all the ore has been mined.”

We sat for a little while longer, just watching Pinkie hug Hollow townsponies all over the party. One song ended and she swapped records, only for that record to start to skip. She slid it back into the sleeve and placed another on, and then she was a blur of hugs and energy and impossible warmth all over again.

I closed my eyes and began to zone out slightly. As an experiment, I tried to breathe again, drawing air through my nose to fill my lungs. With it came the ancient scent of baked bread. I hadn’t been able to smell it before without breath, but even now, so long after the last loaf of bread that would ever be baked in this bakery had been, the scent still suffused the shop. It was sugary, delicious, and while I still wasn’t hungry, I did begin to miss bread dearly. As a concept, if nothing else.

I wondered if I’d ever been here, in my previous life. Pinkie Pie seemed so familiar, but then, this seemed as if it had always been a fairly major business. All that told me was that I had perhaps been a frequent visitor to Ponyville, if not a resident. I still wouldn’t know, unless my memory returned, or somepony recognized me.

With a sigh, I released the air I had inhaled, and my lungs remained empty. This was nice. I needed this. But I couldn’t stay here, or I might never leave. I had too many questions for that.

Pinkie saw me getting up, but she was mid-conversation with another group. She gave me a smile and a wave, and I returned both, before giving Maud a nod. “Tell… Tell P-Pinkie that I had… had a g-good t-time.”

The very edges of Maud’s lips turned upwards. Not even the ghost of a smile, just the distant shadow of one. But she was smiling, in her own way. “She already knows. But I’ll tell her anyways. I enjoyed talking to you, Holly.” Gently, I hugged the rough stone surface of Maud’s armor, and then left, waving once more to Pound Cake as well on the way out.

I wasn’t really sure where I was going, but the Town Square seemed as good a place as any to start. It was a high-traffic area, if nothing else, and maybe somepony would actually recognize me there. Just maybe.