//------------------------------// // 10. The Last Meal // Story: A Town's Story // by RoMS //------------------------------// “To the end of Ponyville, Mayor?” “To its end and whatever comes after, Hun.” I hiccuped. “To the empty shops, the broken clocks, and us, broken mares — roadside witnesses.” She looked at me, cross-eyed. "To everything." We clinked our champagne flutes and she downed hers. I stayed still at first, studying my yellowed, distorted reflection in the glass instead — a grayed beige coat and black glasses that didn’t hide the flaccid bags under my eyes. I followed a bubble as it fizzed its way to the top, then the fruity drink was gone. In a sense, the Wall was at least good at one thing. It was a neat trash can.  I threw the empty bottle, and poof it went, down the otherworldly gullet. Like the rest of it. The town. The ponies. My life. At least I had Cheerilee by my side, and about five other bottles of the finest champagne we could get our hooves on. I popped another cork and refilled our glasses once more. This intimate party couldn’t stop there. The show had to go on. “Where did you find them?” Cheerilee asked, admiring the beverage with a hint of a cross eye. “Oh, you know, mayoral privilege,” I said, swishing the content of my flute from side to side. I only caught her pressing look after a while. “Oh, come on, you damn well know. I just opened the Town Hall's safe.” “So, you stole them?” I’d thrown the accounting books into the void too. So I was safe there. What a bad Mayor I’d become. I pinched my lips together, eyes wide. I quickly cleared my throat and fixated on my drink. Anything to avoid Cheerilee’s furrowed brows. “Don’t you think it’s weird we call them glasses?” “Stop avoiding the topic, you thief...”  She laughed and returned my stare, and silence followed. I squirmed, my withers cold against the plaid cover we’d laid out over the ice. With the Wall mere hoofsteps away, occupying a prominent place at the foot of the slope we sat upon, I could do nothing but close my eyes. To avoid hers and the nearby ghastly sight.  Only after a moment did I reopen myself to the world, the starry sky above me, and the abandoned snow-covered houses at our back. There was no escape from the feeling of her piercing eyes. They mirrored the lamplight while her ears twitched at each crackle of the small fire we’d managed to start.  I wanted to kiss her but she had to ask her questions, that sly teacher.  “What do you mean?” she finally said. “Well, you know…” I motioned my free hoof in vague circles, “flutes are made of crystals, right? So why call them glasses?” That earned me a guffaw and a raised eyebrow. Cheerilee wiped a smirk off her face, along with the glistening champagne moisture on her lips. “You know crystal glasses aren’t really made of actual crystal, May’? It’s just branding.” She gave me another look and pointed at my drink. “That’s lead glass.” “There’s lead in my glassware!?” I protested, staring dubiously at my champagne. She hummed positively and I downed the glass in one gulp. “Better put the champagne in me than in there touching that thing then.” “I think you’re drunk. And I doubt it’s your glassware either.” “I am.” I chuckled. “But I feel good. For once. Also I am just borrowing those bottles. I'm no thief.” "Yeah, nah. You’re just another corrupt politician now." We shared a wicked smile, toasted to our demise, and sipped some more alcohol. Only after a while spent staring at the Wall, standing massive before us did she speak again, "You stole that book too, didn’t you?"  I frowned and looked down at the large pockets of my winter coat. The deepest one weighed against my side with the heavy leather book that filled it past its brim. I pulled it out and set it front of Cheerilee to read by the lamplight. "No," I said, quite unsure how to explain, "Ditzy, bless her heart for still being here, came by yesterday with a mare in tow. That mare gave me this book. She was from Canterlot, working with Mister Sunburst on his theories about the Wall.” “What was her name?” I cleared my throat and rubbed my cold muzzle. “Sunset Shimmer.” “No way!” I leaned back at the outburst. She quickly flicked the book cover open and revealed the inner inlay and the cursive inscription of the owner’s name. And the name of who had gifted it.  From Twilight Sparkle to Sunset Shimmer~ I scratched the bridge of my muzzle and threw Cheerilee a quizzical look. “You know her?” “You have no idea how many times poor Sweetie Belle talked about that, and I quote, ‘weird pony from the mirror’ and her magic diary.” She sighed. " Poor Sweetie Belle…” Then her face scrunched as she glared at the strange book. “I thought that weird mirror was in Twilight's castle, though." “Do you mean the… dimensional mirror? I don’t really know what it’s called. Wait, wasn’t it in the Friendship Castle’s basement?” She nodded. Questions rose in my mind. And they hurt. I worked my jaw as I fought against the champagne-induced daze. "Well, uh, I don’t know, sorry. That’s unicorn stuff. But she's Twilight's friend so… I’m sure she found another way to come over to this forsaken place." After a brief moment of thinking, a confused look flashed over Cheerilee’s face. "Why did she give it to you?" she said only to grimace. "I mean, you know... it's not like we're important ponies in the greater scheme of things, right? Why you..." She motioned her hoof, "and not Rarity or somepony else." "Actually, Sunset has been sharing the book with everypony in turn. I wasn’t at the top of her list." I sighed, not really knowing why. Or rather, I did — Cheerilee and I were only side characters in a story that was happening elsewhere, Canterlot for some, and inside the Wall for others in all likelihood. "She's been passing the book from pony to pony. You know… Well, I’m telling you now. Miss Shimmer’s been staying in Equestria for some time. A gap year off from her life on the other side of whatever mirror she found." Cheerilee waved her empty glass at me and I served another round of drinks.  “You’ve ever seen yourself?” Cheerilee asked, fumbling over her next words to clear up her question. “Yourself from beyond the mirror, I mean." “I would be lying if I wasn't skeptical of seeing another me living in another world with, uhm, claws, hands? Fingers? But… No. But I saw two Twilights, though. At once! That surely counts for something." Cheerilee burst out laughing, "Talk about an apocalyptic scene. Twice the number of villain magnets." I laughed along as I lazily swished my champagne, playing with the eye-catching cloudy tears of alcohol that hugged and seeped against the inside of the glass. It was a good batch. "She, eh, I mean Miss Sunset, she told me to try it out," I said, pointing at the book. "She's cast spells on it, wrote down messages, stuff I don't much get, really. But she got nothing out of it. I guess she's waiting for somepony to stumble, make a mistake, and... have the book react?" “Try what?” “Well, talking to Twilight, of course.” Earning nothing but another look of confusion, I poked at the book. “Twilight’s has her own book in her castle, behind the Wall. Whatever you write in this one comes up in the other. It’s like sending letters, just more… unicorn-y.” Cheerilee flipped her way through the book, squinting to read under the fire’s flickering light. I didn’t have to look down myself. I’d read it through and through. And what had first been a journal had turned into a swath of questions, pleas, and complaints in the final few pages. And, of course, a striking absence of any answer. Cheerilee downed her drink, laid the flute by her side, and picked the hefty book up in her hooves. She gave it a shake, turned it upside down as if expecting something would come tumbling out. Well, besides some photos and scrapbook dried flowers of course. Her face turned doubtful at first, then deeply resigned. I just shook my head. “It’s supposed to glow if anything happens,” I said. Cheerilee studied on the book’s adorned cover, its red and golden sun that caught the meagre firelight. Until she dropped it back against my flank, sending my glass spilling over my coat. I was too far gone to care. I waved the bottle next to the fire, backlighting it and seeing that it was empty, and so I threw it at the Wall. And sorely missed. It slipped out of my hoof and thumped into the snow, dinging against the hard soil underneath. It didn’t break as it bounced its way down the snowy slope and both Cheerilee and I watched it roll till it settled at the edge of the cleared-out path that contoured the Wall, and the riverbed beneath. That was a terrible shot. Cheerilee coughed in her hoof. “So what do you…”  Her words died behind her teeth. A frown crossed her face, her eyes locked onto something behind me. I turned around. A lamp was swaying, its handle firmly grasped through a thick scarf in a pony’s mouth. I squinted and caught a glimpse of blue eyes and a pink coat. Pinkie was digging her way forward through a thick layer of snow, a bit further away down the slope. I followed her hooftraces back to the long row of empty houses a stone’s throw away. She stumbled a couple of times before she finally reached the shoveled path below us that ran along the Wall.  Once she’d stepped fully on the way, she dusted the snow that hugged her legs and looked up. Her head lifted high and her body was rigid, she seized the gigantic black monster a few feet away.  She secured her lamp at her hoof to tighten the scarf around her face. She tied it once, twice, then a grunt escaped her lips and she pulled it off her head. Her slick mane cascaded over her face, glistened with the orange tint of her light. She brushed her smooth mane back behind her ears and rolled the scarf around her neck, adding layers till only her eyes and forehead were visible.  Seeming satisfied, she bowed down to bite through the scarf on the handle of her lamp.  No matter how far away we were, we still heard the sigh that escaped her lips. She’d not seen us yet. Or care to.  She turned around and walked the length of the bent pathway till she reached the section below us and she passed by, not looking up. Then she reached the half-buried stump of a tree. We’d cut it down before the Wall could engulf its branches. Her chest rose and fell as she stopped to study the dead wood. She only glanced away to look at the Wall. “Hey, Pinkie!” Cheerilee called, startling the mare who stumbled back butt-first into a heap of snow. She looked around and up the slope until her eyes settled on our little late-night apéritif. She seized us with her pinprick eyes that gleamed in the lamplight. Behind her scarf, and with her teeth locked around the handle, they never creased with the hint of a smile. Only after a while did she nod back. “Come here!” Cheerilee boomed, motioning with her hoof. Pinkie took a step forwards but stopped. “Come on!”  Pinkie had never hesitated in joining a group before. But then, she had just done so. Securing her lamp between her teeth, she stepped off the track and into the snow, and traced her way up towards us. Each step crunched and fell through the thin, rigid layer of frost that draped the snow. Like crushing through scum-dried sand. After a quick struggle, she was up by our side. “Hello Mayor Mare. Hello Cheerilee. What… What are you two doing here?” she mumbled once her lamp dug into the snow perimeter of our firepit. She stood still, not setting a hoof on our wool cover. Instead, she looked us over until she locked onto the remaining champagne bottles, still stacked and full by my side, ready for consumption. “Ah.” “Want some?” I asked. “We’re celebrating.” “I don’t–” “How’re you doing?” Cheerilee cut off, pushing our trash to leave a spot open on the plaid cover. She tapped the fabric, inviting Pinkie to sit. “I’m– I’m fine,” she said, pushing away my offered glass of champagne. “Just a bit down, you know?” She untightened her scarf and brushed her mane back as she sat up. Her rump thumped against the plaid sheet. Or rather, it dropped. Pinkie sunk with the plaid cover through the cracked cover of ice beneath.. She slumped on her back as both Cheerilee and I stared, caught off-guard. She flayed. We gasped. And she rolled over, tearing the cover from under us. We all ate the snow. Good Celestia, we laughed. We laughed loudly, Cheerilee and I. Only Cheerilee and I, though.  At first.  Pinkie heaved and her eyes welled as we dragged her up and out of the hole she’d sunk herself into. But she was heavy and, with a few drinks in Cheerilee and I, she slipped out from our grasp. Pinkie dropped back into her snug butt-cave, Cheerilee stumbled after, and I with her.  We lay atop each other. I heard giggles, laughs finally escaping Pinkie’s snow-matted face. Her chest was cracking up and down, her pale face smiling. And though the fire’s orange light painted stark the dark bags tugging under her eyes, I saw a sliver of happiness. Still laughing, we helped each other up.  It lasted for a bit, if not a while. After some time, and once we’d calmed down, Pinkie and I exchanged a look and a timid, closed-lipped smile. She swallowed and her attention drifted to Cheerilee, who promptly cleared her throat. My way. “What are you doing here?” my beautiful teacher asked. “It’s not like there’s much to do around here anymore.” “I could ask you the same thing, ya know?” Pinkie retorted, a shrill dying at the back of her throat. She held a hoof to her mouth, letting it go in a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t raise my voice. I... I just wanted to be alone for a while.”  Cheerilee and I nodded and we invited her to sit by our sides. Insistent enough, we set a glass in her hooves and she gulped its contents in a single draw. “She gave you the journal too, eh?” Pinkie said, reaching out for the book discarded by my legs. She opened it, scurried a few pages, and snapped it shut. A frisson ran down her spine and she dropped it. "Something's wrong, Pinkie?" I asked, a hoof on her shoulder. "No, yes. Maybe? I don't really know. Every time I touch that book, it feels… weird. Like–" "Like a doozie?" Cheerilee offered, maybe hopeful. "Not really, I've not had one of those since last summer." She tapped her lips, pondering what she was about to say. "It's like a hole, if you get me?"  We both shook our heads. "Go on," Cheerilee said with a broad smile. Pinkie looked down at her empty glass and I offered to refill it. She gladly accepted. "I mean, ah! It's weird. It feels like nothing is right about this book. It's not a doozie. It's like… the opposite of a doozie. Like my guts are telling me something is supposed to happen, but it just doesn't. Like it's delayed or whatever, whatever should happen is, uhm, held back in a sense — You get me?" “Not really,” I said, picking up the book. I flicked through the last few pages again, dragging one of the lamps to my side to get a better view of the writing. "I can't really say, Pinkie," Cheerilee mused after a short silence. "I'm just an earth pony, this whole shenanigan sure flies way above my head." "I'm an earth pony too." "Yeah, I know,” Cheerilee said with a giggle. “But you're Pinkie, you're different... and special. No offense." Pinkie chortled and sipped her glass. "None taken." "Held back, what do you mean?" I finally asked as I flipped back and forth with the last scribbled page the following blank one. "Do you mean Twilight could be calling out for us, through the book, but it doesn’t go through?" Pinkie hummed, and tightened the scarf around her neck. "I don't know. Maybe? Maybe it's just the Wall. It takes but doesn’t give back? Or I'm just tired and sad and alone... Everypony's finally gone to Canterlot. Fluttershy, Applejack, Rarity, and... and..."  As her eyes welled up, Cheerilee took the party pony in her legs and dragged her against her chest in a tight hug. "There, there." "I miss Rainbow Dash's pranks.” Pinkie sniffled. “Since the accident with Sweetie Belle, she's taken Scootaloo in. And she's way serious about it, about her, about helping the filly out. And..." She wiped the snot off her face with a loose end of her scarf, and pressed her ears against the cup of Cheerilee's neck. "There's no laughter anymore,” she said between two muffled sobs. “Only ponies being serious. All because of that damned Wall. It stole everything and now the world’s just so cold." "Today's the first day of Spring," I said, swallowing the knot in my throat. "Did you know that?" "Y– Yeah." Cheerilee and I shared a smile, hers motherly, mine likely unsure. I was really bad at allegories.  "Well," I continued, "Sun'll be back soon, and with it warmth." "Winter Wrap Up will be late without Twilight," Pinkie countered. "Maybe," I said, scratching my chin. "But it will still come." “I’m still so… peeved at that book?” Pinkie said pensively. Her eyes darted at the discarded culprit. Keeping Pinkie in a tight hug, away from reaching the book, Cheerilee leaned aside and picked it up instead. She glanced at it over Pinkie’s shoulder, and threw it on the ground. “Then it’s a bad book, wouldn’t you agree?” she asked. “Uhm, maybe?” Pinkie replied with a frown. “Wait, why would a book be bad? It’s done nothing…” Her eyes squinched harder and she glowered at it. “Yeah, it’s bad because it’s done nothing!” Pinkie gave it a gentle kick with her hoof, Cheerilee was quick to imitate. And I… passed more champagne-filled flutes around as we drank. And drank. And threw bottles at the silent beast, the guest of honor of this now late night party. And though we were cold, hungry, and alone in its looming shadow, the moon long disappeared behind it, we still celebrated. At some point we’d lit the dead tree trunk on fire — don’t ask me how. Where once an overlooked venerable tree had stood, now was a bursting orange and yellow pyre, with the acrid smoke of wet wood, the ice congealed in its cracks melting and seeping like blood through open scars. And we waltzed around it.  Was it defiance against the Wall? Earnest, yes, but we were drunk. And drunkenness was the only thing left to appreciate. There was nothing else remaining in Ponyville. A teacher. A prankster. A mayor. All crumbling under a year of hardships, sacrifices, and protracted hopes that had amounted to absolutely nothing.  And yet we danced. Or stumbled rather. Drunk like sailors through a timid storm we shambled and rumbled and squandered the last smiles we could spare. Fits of dizziness would send us rolling in the snow, sometimes catching each other as we were about to fall into the monster’s gullet. I kissed Cherrilee. I mean, we kissed a lot, I think. And at some point, my head turning, I fell back against the snowy slope, pierced my way through the thin layer of ice, and dragged Cheerilee with me. Oh, we laughed. And cried. We cried a lot. “It’s funny.” I coughed up snow after my chest stopped hurting. “I know,” Cheerilee said. “No, no,” I grumbled, shaking my head as if it would have been that easy to cast away the alcoholic daze. “The book. I think I’ve got a weird idea.” I threw a glance over at Pinkie whose laughter and joy at us embracing died instantly at the mention of the hintless item. “What do you mean?” Cheerilee asked, pushing herself off of me and dragging me out of the snow. I hiccuped, feeling the champagne heavy in my stomach. “The book might be glowing. No, no. I can see it on your faces. Bear with me.” I coughed up and cleared my throat. “The Wall has swallowed everything we’ve thrown into it, everything that’s touched it. And we’ve assumed that it takes but never gives back, right?” Pinkie gave me a cross-eye, rubbed her hoof over her face and frowned back. “What do you mean?” I glanced up at Cheerilee and gave my broadest smile. “The hypothe-uh-sis is that the book glows when something is being written in it. But it stops when nopony is, right?” “I still don’t get it,” Pinkie said. “Me either, hun,” Cheerilee said. “Well, what if the Wall gave back actually, but very slowly?” I offered. “The book wouldn’t glow. I mean. We wouldn’t see it glow, but it would be, at an infinitely small level. Right?” “I still don’t get it,” Cheerilee said, as Pinkie’s eyes grew to the size of saucers. “Remember when Timeturner had to close up shop because all the clocks stopped working properly?” Cheerilee nodded — not just the clocks, anything refined. “What if it’s because the Wall doesn’t simply eat things… but messes with whatever time is?” She squinted. “What if time is going slowly inside the Wall and that’s why we’ve not seen any answers? What if the book is glowing right now?” I said, trying to keep myself from burping. “But we can’t see it because the message’s taking months to write?” “That…” Cheerilee’s squint grew creases. Pinkie ran back up the slop and screamed as she rushed back to us with the book under her legpit. "Here!"  We scoured the contents of the book, looking for any hint of a message. Cover page, middle, back page, everywhere. Until we saw it. Pinkie rammed her hoof against a random page where four tiny scribbles could have been missed. Scribbles was the right word. A reversed four? An F? L? And a seven? Side-by-side. Then it dawned on me that whoever was writing was writing letters at the same time. Four letters, four pens. Only a unicorn could do that. HELP "Help," Cheerilee echoed my thought, then gasped. "Somepony is writing this, right now!" The hypothesis had been right. The book was shining, albeit at a glacial pace. Though the Wall was good at taking, it couldn't hold everything back. Somepony was asking for help. A unicorn. I turned to the Wall and studied it, working the rusty and drunken gears in my head to wrap my brain around the implications. Either it merely retained information and trickled it out, or time… Time was of the utmost importance. "Oh, no, Twily," Pinkie muttered, eyes locked on the book. "You've played with another time spell, haven’t you...?" I gulped down, my mind struggling to assess the best course of action. I reeled, fell to the side, and emptied my stomach. "I'm too old for this," I gurgled, looking away as Cheerilee rushed to my side and propped me up to my wobbly hooves. "What do we do now?" she said. "Pinkie!" I called and she snapped the book close. I looked at her tail, not shaking, her mane, not waving, her ears, unflopping. "I'm going in." None of her physical features started doozying, and I smiled. I had a chartered course. But... "I need somepony to stay back," I said, "to inform Celestia about this." "I'm not leaving you," Cheerilee protested. "I'm saving my friends too," Pinkie agreed. "Okay, okay," I muttered, pressing my hooves into my temples. "Think, think." Time was of the essence. If it flew slower inside the Wall we had all the time in the world outside of it, if it didn't and the Wall was just retaining information, delaying the cries for help emitted from within, it was likely already too late. I ran. Not in the Wall's direction but towards the edge of the village. Towards one of the last houses I knew was inhabited. Pinkie and Cheerilee rushed behind me, screaming my name, I trudged my way through the snow and the late winter sleet that had started falling. Forward, forward, forward to that house, and its last occupant. Diligent, timely, unexpendable. It was the early morning now, and the window curtains of the first floor let out a slit of a light. And so, I punched at the door, my pastern shooting with hot pain at the blow. Scrambling and crashing sounds rose inside as I drummed at the wood and hooves quickly trotted to the door. "Ditzy," I called out. "It's Mayor Mare. Open up! Please!" I fell in as the former postmare opened the door.  It all happened quickly. Pinkie, Cheerilee and I shared our suspicions about the Wall. The book. What could be happening inside. Timeturner’s clocks. She called us crazy, but in the end nodded along to our request.  She stretched out her wings. Pinkie provided papers from her mane. Cheerilee found pens in her heavy winter coat. I wrote the letter. "This is for Celestia and no one else," I begged, still fighting to catch my breath. "I'm sorry for being brusque, but this is urgent." Ditzy read the missive quickly her eyes growing wide. "You know this is crazy talk, Mayor," she told me with an early morning deadpan. I looked to my pockets for the book, but it wasn't there. I hissed air through my teeth, ready to swear about forgetting the book back at the Wall. Until Pinkie presented it to me, with a smile. "Look," I said, showing the last page and the half finished message. "Somepony is writing to us, for us." "And this writing...," Cheerilee said after she gave another look to it. We all turned to her. My love sniffled, rubbing a cheek now covered with tears. Sadness was fighting back the rushing happiness, and was losing. "I know who’s writing it."