//------------------------------// // Jun.-Jul. 20 - When The End Came To Town 1.2 // Story: RoMS' Extravaganza // by RoMS //------------------------------// Luster Dawn wasn’t the type of gifted unicorns who should’ve felt stuck staring at a door. But there she was. And she was miffed. It wasn’t even the most beautiful of doors. Heck, it was, mildly put, a downright mediocre one in the old sense of the term. A laminated wooden plank, likely made of oak from the nearby farm. Once a vibrant red, it was now a few years late for a paint job. And yet she stared, pestering under her breath for being sent there. Why there even? A small town lost in the Equestrian countryside with a dirt road and a once-a-day train for only contacts with the outside world. Ponyville.  A town where ponies enjoyed the Dolce Vita, lulled to the sounds of cicadas and harangs of rare street vendors, and humbugged to the litany of village smalltalk. But not a place where she, Luster Dawn, would learn! Could learn... Well… She bit her lip and rubbed her face, applying a light smear of dust picked up by her hoof. She was being too harsh. As always. That was a repressed shard of anger talking, not the Princess of Magic’s prized student. Ponyville wasn’t a tramp’s town. It was a town, but not just a town.  The School of Friendship was stuck right outside the gate — in parlance — and the Crystal Castle stood towering over it all, a museum to Princess Twilight’s past feats.  But that was it.  Ponyville was past-tense. Once the place where Princess Twilight lived, it was now an imprint of its past. A slow moving, routine-bitten landmark. All happened in Canterlot now, as it should be.  And so being sent on a tour of a past life was an errand Luster cursed about. Such a waste of her many talents. “Bad thoughts, Luster,” she whispered under her breath, tapping her forehead with the back of her hoof. “Remember what Teacher Twilight said. Breath in, breath out. There’s always more than meets the eye.” Her magic fiddled inside her backpack and produced a rolled-up letter stamped with Princess Twilight’s regal seal. She read the address yet another time. Then she looked up at the door, the name on a small brass plate, its lock, and the handle — fashioned for an earth pony. What did she have to learn from an earth p– “Thoughts, Luster. Thoughts,” she grumbled under her breath. “So, are you going to knock or what?” The commanding voice snapped Luster out of her wits. Stumbling to make way, her leg slipped off the wooden patio’s stairs and down she went into the flowers that adorned each side of the door. Laughter followed. A kind one. “Sorry,” Luster sputtered, frantic to dig herself out of the plants, her elbows sunken deep in the freshly-watered mushy ground beneath. A bordeaux mare stood by the stairs with a grocery bag slung over her shoulders. The well-manicured hoof covering her face hid a wide smirk. Enough was enough. Zenith sparks lit Luster’s horn and ripped her out of the flower bushes. Two quick and precise moves at an airborne right angle and there she was, enwrapped in translucent gold and gracefully standing two steps away from the mare. That would showcase her magic! But not enough of a firework to mask the heat warming her cheeks. “I am so sorry, young lady,” the mare said, shaking her head while Luster ground her teeth. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that, but you were fairly spellbound by —” She eyed the door “— I don’t really know, to be honest.” Of course she didn’t know. She wasn’t Luster being stuck there in front of a purplish middle-aged mare with three smiley-face flower thingies for a cutie mark. Luster closed her eyes, inhaled, relaxed. Bad thoughts again. One of her  hindlegs drumming against the ground, Luster dusted the dirt and petals off herself and magicked away the few compost stains that peppered her backpack like scout badges. Done with grooming, she fetched Teacher Twilight’s letter off the gravel path at the bottom of the patio. Be amiable, be humble. Yeah, right... Luster cleared her throat. “Name’s Luster Dawn, Mam,” Luster started, extending the letter to the Ponyville resident and fellow Equestrian. “I am Princess Twilight’s student. Just out here to deliver a letter to Miss Mayor Mare.” Biting her lower lip, she sifted air through her teeth. “Which I suppose is you since you know, you’re here, next to the door of the house where Miss Mayor Mare lives. So was I told, at least. And you got a grocery bag with vegetables on your back. So! You definitely must live here. Anyway... Teacher Twilight asked me to ask her, and I really mean you, a simple– single question. A really innocuous one for such a tedious trip to this place, really. I mean… Eh, what I mean is that, I’ll be out of your and this town’s manes in a jiffy once it’s done and–” Luster closed her eyes and let out a long-winded sigh. “I’m being awkward as Tartarus again, am I?” “Again?” The mare chuckled. “That I’d not know. But if it’s your self-assessment, I can definitely say it’s a trait you likely got from your teacher. Pegasi of a feather and other whatnots, am I right? You’ll grow out of it, I’m sure... Someday.”  Luster bashfully blew her cheeks out at the remark and the mare laughed again. That motherly, unalarmed amusement with a smidge of concern only her teacher gave her in Canterlot. Luster Dawn didn’t come here to get lectured! That, she was certain. But there she was, getting tut-tutted by a stranger.  Small towns couldn’t give her the change of scenery she’d not even asked for. “And sorry to disappoint,” the mare continued as she extended her hoof, “but I’m not Madame Mare — and it’s just Mare these days, young lady. It’s been a couple of years since she’s retired. Name’s Cheerilee by the way, and I am her wife.” Luster’s agoraphobic horror of earth pony fashions kicked in when Cheerilee helped herself and reached for her hoof, and vigorously shook it. The greeting steadfastly wrapped up and sent on its proverbial way, Cheerilee stepped by Luster’s side, opened the door and, letting it sway open, invited her in.  “Mare!” Cheerilee called as Luster’s ears picked up a low music coming from the back of the house. “It’s me! We’ve got a surprise visit.” The music cut out and a sturdy albeit aged voice rose from beyond one doorframe or another. “Come on in, I was just finishing making tea. Is it Lady Belle? She was visiting her friend Miss Bloom at the Apple farm.” “‘Fraid not,” Cheerilee replied as she unshouldered the grocery bag before turning to Luster, “no offense.” Luster munched on the lining of her cheeks as she stepped into a house cluttered with books. Well… ‘cluttered.’ It was comfy and bookish and smelled of old paper like a second-hoof bookstore hidden behind an unremarkable door in a sidestreet in cold, cold Yak-Yakistan. Luster did like her very specific examples. She squinted at the desk by the left side of the door. While it housed many horseshoes and bags underneath, its countertop was sunk below a heap of hoof-written papers, strung about and haphazard. “You’re a teacher?” Luster asked, looking more closely at what seemed to be a flurry of hoof and claw-written essays. “You’ve got a keen eye,” she said with a nod. “I’m Ponyville’s elementary school teacher, but I also give lectures at the Friendship School.”  Luster raised an eyebrow, but took care not to show it to her host. Friendship really was an elementary thing in the end, i.e. beneath Luster’s concern.  As Cheerilee counted her vegetables, Luster dropped her bag under the desk, taking care that it didn’t touch the heap that already inhabited the space. She only kept the letter, held snatched in her magic. “I think I can spot a yak in your cohort,” Luster noted as she looked closer at the pile of essays and picked up the shortest one she’d ever read. ‘Boring,’ it said. “Grading, any teacher’s own homework,” Cheerilee replied without looking. “Director Glimmer had the bad idea to let students pick a topic this year. Again.” As curiosity piqued Luster, Cheerilee clicked her tongue and motioned her hoof. “Anyway, let me introduce you to Mare. So you can deliver your letter and your question. Then you’ll be on your merry way out of this little town. It sure must not seem like much to an outsider’s eyes, especially to a Canterlot student.” “Do I look that bored and impatient to leave?” Luster asked after a quick sigh. Yet again the bad thoughts popped at the seams. Ready to burst like a dam of negative impressions, she could only roll her eyes at herself. Which she did. “Kind of? I’m just very good at reading students. Twenty years teaching and going strong at detecting boredom, you know.” Luster nodded and followed the teacher into a large living room littered, walls and ground alike, with artifacts, paintings, widgets, gadgets and items that would be more at home in a cabinet of curiosity. Or a plain museum. A zebra’s mask, a gold dagger suspended on a wall, a Saddle Arabian lance darkened at the tip next to a dead chimney. Were they using it for poking embers!? So many things there had come from across the world and, lined up for anypony to see, now collected a thin layer of dust. Books, grimoires, legal deeds, and dusty boxes. An eclectic bric à brac only old ponies could gather and collect. And still, to Luster’s eyes, these embodied so many eye-catching histories, hinted at so many far cultures. She wanted to know more. But she doubted the couple had their own in-house curator.  Such a waste. Luster! Yes, tough thoughts, bad thoughts… But wasn’t she right? Could they appreciate what they owned? Thoughts, Luster. Silence.  She forced a smile on her lips, and mapped her many questions in her head. Then, she realised she’d stopped in the middle of the doorframe leading to this oversized and over-encumbered place. “Oh my… you’ve travelled a lot,” Luster stated, her voice shaken with bemusement. A quick laugh answered back. Mare’s. “More like the world has often come to us,” she said. “For better, and especially worse.” Beige withers back-trotted through an open door frame on the opposite side of the befuddling living room. Its owner, an old mare with a mane grey like oxidized silver, held a tray in her teeth. Steam followed after her, tracing the air from the three large ceramic cups. Luster bit her lips, her magic crumpling the letter and snapping the seal that had held it shut till then. She was going to get stuck at a granny’s house because of Teacher Twilight. She hated the thought. Fuming. So much annoyance for a mere letter and question. Her eyes darted left and right for an exit. But there was no envisageable escape. Instead, she only had more questions for each item that stared back at her, and each question led to further more.  Luster was, irremediably and for the next few hours, doomed to withstand the boredom of older ponies’ talk.  Damn her teacher.  She must have been laughing while sipping coffee and tea in her high tower.  Cheerilee’s chuckle rose by Luster’s side. While she’d been lost in thoughts, the Ponyville teacher had had the time to go and drop her grocery bag somewhere. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to keep you for supper. Unless you want to, of course,” she whispered in Luster’s ear. “And Mare doesn’t bite.”  Luster didn’t have to turn around, she could feel Cheerilee’s amused smile beaming at her back, scorching like Celestia’s sunlight. Luster took a long breath of the tea-smelling air, and let it comb out of her half-closed lips. It was going to be a long, boring, annoying, wasteful afternoon. And she was hungry. Admitting defeat, Luster dropped her behind like an anvil on a set of cushions, hoping the sound of crushed feathers would hide the growling in her belly.  But for naught, Mare left the tray and tea on the nearby coffee table, smiled, and evaded Luster’s stare to go into the kitchen, from where she came back with a box of dried butter crackers. Luster closed her eyes, then rolled them. She could hear Twilight laughing from Canterlot at the thought of  this ordeal.  What a weird test, Luster thought, looking down at the damaged letter and the red mark of where the seal had hugged the paper up until moments ago. She shook her head, opened her eyes wide, cursed her hastiness, and finally glanced at Mare and Cheerilee who now sat next to each other on a sofa on the other side of the living room. Purple against creme white, they contrasted each other. An odd couple, but a couple nonetheless. She took a deep breath and finally spoke.  “Thank you for inviting me in,” Luster said, breaking out a quick smile. “I’m…” She drummed her hooves against the fluffy carpet that covered a laminated parquet. “Well, to be frank, I didn’t expect this when Teacher Twilight sent me here.” “She really is awkward like her,” Mare noted to Cheerilee with a smile. Cheerilee turned to meet her eyes. And simply nodded. “She does take after her.” Luster shuffled on her haunches. She’d been quite judgemental. She still was. She deserved this, in a sense. If you judge others harshly, others will do too. That was what Teacher Twilight had told her many times. Luster loved being right. But she hated being right about being wrong.  She frowned. They didn’t call Teacher Twilight ‘Princess.’ “You know Teacher Twilight?” Luster asked.  “We do, actually,” Mare said with a smile. “She wrecked my town far too many times for me to count, and forget. I’ve forgiven her as many times as necessary. It won’t stop her Highness from sending flowers on the monthly, though.” “Ponyville’s not your town,” Luster said aloud, more to herself than to Mare. Tapping a hoof on her lip, she turned to Cheerilee. “Didn’t you say I had to drop the Mayor mention?” Cheerilee burst out laughing, and held a hoof on Mare’s shoulder. The former mayor was giving her wife a raised eyebrow, and the hint of a smile. “I’m being blunt again. Stupid,” Luster groaned.  She’d smacked her forehead, then reached for a steaming hot cup of tea. Sipping the green brew would keep her silent.  Cheerilee and Mare reached out for their own cups and each took turns to grab a biscuit in the metal box. Luster followed, picking not one but two in her golden magic.  “So, what brought you here?” Mare asked over her cup, the steam fogging the edges of her black-rimmed glasses. She pointed at the letter by Luster’s side. Luster carried the letter over the two mares in her magic. Cheerilee grabbed it and unfurled the paper open for her and Mare to read. “I see,” Cheerilee muttered, her eyes darting from left to right. She then looked at her wife. Mare didn’t answer, or even looked at Cheerilee. She merely nodded, her eyes narrowed to a slit, and rubbing her chin. After a while, she hummed to herself. Luster hadn’t read the content of the letter. It was sealed and even she knew not to break open correspondence. Well, she glanced at the living room’s entrance and spotted the remains of the seal she’d cracked open. Her horn glowed a shimmer of light and she dragged the evidence to her side and out of sight. Cleaning after oneself, that she’d learn from evading her teacher too many times, and failing.  “You mentioned a question?” Cheerilee asked. Luster started, her magic dropping her aloft tea cup, only to catch it before it struck the carpet. “Yes… Yes! Definitely,” Luster said. “I mean, I don’t know if it is related to the letter’s content, but…”  Luster recalled Teacher Twilight’s face when she tasked her to go to Ponyville. Uncertainty, painful memories, an unsure smile… regrets? Luster had rarely seen her teacher show those emotions. Her Highness Twilight, Princess of Magic and Regent of the Equestrian Crown, was a talented rulemaker, but even she had done stuff in the past that she wasn’t proud of. And this, Luster guessed, was why she’d been sent there. “Teacher Twilight told me you had to teach me a lesson.” As she earned two questioning stares, she clapped her forehead again. Stupid. “I mean, she didn’t tell it like that. She said you have a valuable experience to teach me, Miss Mare.” Luster motioned her hoof. “You were a mayor for years! In a sense, you’ve successfully managed a place, no matter how small, eh… I don’t mean Ponyville is small as in small. Not at all… I, uh… It is small compared to Canterlot but it’s still a place… A– I’m going to shut up.” Mare and Cheerilee chuckled and Luster tried to make herself small, hoping her spine could turtle up and she would disappear inside her own fleshy shell. What a terrible mental image, Luster… “You think Twilight wants me to tell you about town shenanigans?” Mare asked, putting the letter to her lap. “I guess?” Luster replied with a shrug. “Why else would Teacher Twilight send me here?” Cheerilee and Mare shared a glance, and Luster saw the unsureness in their following half-smiles. For what reason would have Teacher Twilight sent her here if not for some local state-crafting stories from two aging earth pony mares? Thoughts, Luster! Thoughts. But really, Luster couldn’t understand why.  The two mares each took a singular, coordinated deep breath.  A heavy lump dropped down Luster’s throat.  Why else? “To tell you of her biggest failure,” Mare said, offering the royal letter back. Her horn lit up to retrieve the missive, Luster was doubtful. What was she talking about? Teacher Twilight made mistakes from time to time, sure. Even princesses could be clumsy. But failures? Nah. Njet! No. That was not possible. “You’ve got such a look on your face, Luster,” Pinkie Pie said, peeping out from behind the sofa.  What. Luster jumped. “What?” Cheerilee and Mare echoed, rolling back to catch Pinkie Pie jumping over the sofa’s headrest and sliding down to sit at the rightmost side of the sofa. What!?  “Surprise!” Pinkie burst, legs wide.  “How?” Luster babbled. “Aren’t you supposed to be… not here?” “Ah, flabbergast!” Pinkie retorted, waving her hoof. One or two candies hopped out of her mane. “I had a hunch, ya know! And I was in Fillydelphia with Cheese and Lil’ Cheese. But you know, my eyelids fluttered and my tail shivered. You —” She pointed at Cheerilee and Mare “— were going to talk about me.” “Wait. Wait a minute,” Luster interrupted, dragging her hooves to her temples. Though she knew Pinkie Pie through her Teacher Twilight, she rubbed them vigorously. “You know when somepony is talking about you?” “Will.” Luster so wanted that power.  “You were going to talk about the Wall, right?” Pinkie asked her two town compatriots.  Mare didn’t say a word, but she nodded. “You didn’t even read the letter,” Cheerilee said with a smile, more of a statement rather than a surprise. “Even after all these years, your doozies haven’t blunted even a zilch. Never change, Pinkie.” Luster growled. “What is this Wall you’re talking about?” “It’s an event that happened in Ponyville about ten years ago,” Mare said. She cleared her throat. “It was right after Twilight’s coronation, but not before Celestia and Luna properly handed power out to her.” “It took about two years, right?” Luster asked. “It did,” Cheerilee said. “But do you know why?” Mare asked. Luster stayed mute. She didn’t know. Why would she know? Teacher Twilight took things slow. It was her trademark: being cautious.  “Something happened in Ponyville?” Luster offered through pinched lips. “It did,” Cheerilee confirmed. “Something that nearly destroyed Ponyville.” Luster doubted that. She’d have heard about it…  Or would she? Ponyville was small, remote, if not isolated. She’d pestered about it. Ponyville was past-tense. Equestria was evolving fast, everchanging, ever moving forward. Why would anypony mention an event that only concerned the here, Ponyville, and the then. Luster nodded, then rolled her eyes — and she sure took her time. “Alright, I guess it’s lecture time.” Luster was expecting a story, a retelling, but Cheerilee and Mare’s faces darkened. Pinkie Pie twisted slightly, though she never let her smile drop. A low sense of unease settled in Luster’s guts as the three adults shared quick glances. They talked in silence in common understanding.  Something had happened. Something dire. And Luster’s haunches tightened.  What did Teacher Twilight send her on to learn? Cheerilee and Mare turned to Pinkie Pie, and her ear-to-ear smile.  “You call dibs?” They asked. “Sure do.” She laughed.  Luster leaned forward. She expected a story from her teacher’s great friend. What had happened ten years ago that had so darkened the faces of those two mares? What could a pony call the Princess of Magic’s greatest mistake? Luster leaned further, mouth agape, a leg fluttering in anticipation at Pinkie Pie’s growing smile. And after a few seconds of silence that stretched on like molass, Pinkie finally spoke. “There’s never enough sweets.”