//------------------------------// // 15. That We Depart, We Impact // Story: A Town's Story // by RoMS //------------------------------// “So, that’s it? You didn’t even save the day.” “What do you mean ‘that’s it’?” Mare asked, not without a firm but playful stomp against the grass. “I never promised we would be epic heroes in this story. Those only exist in books, dear.” Luster squinted. She liked her epic stories. How dared this old mare drag her great heroic literature so low!? And what about the Elements of harmony? “So,” Mare continued, “yeah, it all turned to white.” Cheerilee snickered in her hoof. “You’re underselling it, hun.” “Come on,” Luster groused nearly throwing her hooves in the hair in protest, “don’t make me squirm and beg for the rest of the story. Alright you were no heroes and you only survived because of some water. Speaking of, your story isn’t really water-tight, I'm afraid.” Pinkie laughed, so did Cheerilee. “Well,” Mare grumbled, “it’s been a long time. Details can get… fuzzy.” Luster dragged her hoof through her mane. After a few short breaths and a tense sigh, she asked again, “So, what happened when the Wall disappeared?”  “It all went crashing down,” Cheerilee offered playfully. Luster deadpanned. “The most surprising thing,” Mare said, “was the silence. The storm and the din inside the Wall had been shaking the Castle itself since we'd popped in. But when it all, well, disappeared in an instant — that whole mess — there was only a deep silence... I’d thought I’d gone deaf.” “You’re exaggerating a bit,” Pinkie said. “Me, called out by the Pinkie Pie for exaggerating?” Mare laughed. “Well, maybe.” “How was it?” Luster pressed. “Quite noisy,” Sweetie Belle offered. “Like, bad noisy or–” “Happy noisy.” Sweetie Belle smiled. “Twilight and Starlight erupted with joy the moment the spell broke and the gaping portal in the room faded. The ordeal for them was over.” “I recall they passed out on the floor,” Pinkie countered, “and we had to drag them onto the room's crystal desk so they wouldn’t drown in the stinking muck.” “Come on, Pinkie,” Sweetie Belle whispered disapprovingly, lips half-closed. "I’m trying to paint a good picture of her teacher." “I thought I taught you not to lie,” Cheerilee said. “Canterlot taught me differently.” Cheerilee rolled her eyes. At the same time, Luster coughed into her hoof. “With all this time shenanigans around that portal, how long did it last for them inside the Wall? And anyway, what were they trying to achieve?” "Wormholes!" Pinkie blurted out. "But we have teleportation..." Luster said. “For them, it was an hour. At most,” Mare said and nodded as she caught onto Luster’s disbelieving look. “They were happy that the cavalry had come so quickly. Still when the two woke up, they told us how surprised they were that it was us and not...” She raised her eyebrows in exasperation and waved her hoof, "a better rescue party, let's say. Yeah, they weren't really mincing their words. But you know, exhaustion and all." “Twilight quickly caught on to the fact that something was wrong when she saw our faces, though,” Sweetie Belle continued. “Then she recalled that I’d said something about ‘three months.’ Then, there was silence.” “You could literally hear Twilight’s heart thumping in her chest, faster and faster!” Pinkie said. “I’ve never seen her turn so white. Like a sheet of paper, or a ghost! Totally scared out of her wits. When we walked down the marble stairs of the castle, down the hall, and out the bent-open gates… you should have seen her face. She was all slow and skittish. Like a puppy who knew she'd did a very bad.” Luster could only imagine: Stepping outside, the wind blasting at their faces, rising in a twister where once a blueish dome had stood. Clouds and storm whisked away, while a few lightning bolts still flashed here and there. What the Wall had taken was now free to wander, and through the parting grey, a blue sky shone down with the light of the sun. A great clearing that laid bare the destruction that had befallen Ponyville. Twilight's town in ruins. Luster hummed apprehensively, “what season was it?” “Summer,” Cheerilee said. “Like for Sweetie Belle, months had passed. In our case, seven.” “My Ponyville was completely empty,” Mare said. “Not even birdsongs.” “It was spooky!” Sweetie Belle and Pinkie hooted together, waving their hooves in ominous unison.  “And there was a lot of mud and water. Like, a lot,” Sweetie Belle instantly added. “With the river flowing into the Wall for months, and the…” Mare turned to Sweetie Belle who shrugged before gazing back at Luster, “I really don’t know how unicorns would call it… time or space warping? Anyway, this bedlam destroyed a lot of houses, and buried the rest under a thick layer of mud.” “But at least,” Cheerille said with a smile, “nature and normalcy had finally come back to us.” “What about Twilight and Starlight?” Luster asked avidly. “We walked out in silence," Cheerilee said. "And only after a minute or two of blank staring, Twilight finally asked how long it had been.” “She totes knew the answer, mind you,” Pinkie said with a laugh that barely covered the tinge of sadness at the back of her throat. “Cheerilee, Mare, and I still had our soaked winter coats on when we’d barged in her lab. Twilight can do a one plus two using category theory. But, you know her. Double-taking everything.” By their own words. They had quickly emerged from the Friendship Castle, and witnessed further the destruction wrought onto the town. Luster had expected descriptions of devastation, but Mare and Cheerilee had painted an even grimmer picture. Banality. Mud. Water. Abandonment. Dead plants peeking through a thick layer of cacking brown that already began to crack under the summer sky. The empty houses and their shattered windows showed no sign of life while they vomited liters after liters of water. “You could make out the edge of the Wall by where plants had shifted in color,” Cheerilee said. “Maybe as far as one mile out of Ponyville’s limits. The Wall had eaten a lot while we were gone.” “Seven months right?” Luster asked. “Ten to eleven in total,” Mare said. “And there was absolutely nopony,” Pinkie added, waving her hooves again. “Not a single Welcome Back party! Nothing planned. Nopony had expected the Wall to just, well, vanish.” “They abandoned the town as a lost cause?” Luster asked, teetering forward to better hear them. “Actually no,” Mare dispelled. “That’s the interesting part.” Luster frowned. “What do you mean?” “We did meet ponies,” she said. “Two guards.”  Luster’s frown creased further.  "They were totally out of it," Cheerilee commented with a playful smile.  "Flabbergasted," Pinkie added. "Did... Did ponies volunteer to go inside the Wall in the following months? After you?" Luster deduced. “A few Royal Guards, yes,” Sweetie Belle said with a chuckle. “And those two, the first we met, you couldn't even make out their shining gold armor under the mud.” "They saw us before we did,” Cheerilee specified. “They ran to us like mad ponies. I recall one slid off past us in his hurry." “Ah, yeah!” Pinkie exclaimed. Silence settled on the hillside and Luster looked away at the green grass, gently flowing in the wind, the town, and the ponies she could see through the windows or walking through the streets. It was hard to imagine that ten years prior, this had all been different. She couldn’t hold her sigh. “Something’s wrong?” Pinkie asked. “I don’t know, really,” Luster said, pouting. She looked up at Mare. "And it just ended like that?"  Mare laughed dryly. "Of course not, dear. Whenever ponies like Twilight went on an adventure or caused some adventures to come crashing into our little town, they always left behind one big mess. A mess for us all to clean." Luster looked down and nodded. “How long did it take to rebuild Ponyville?” “Roughly a year,” Mare said with a content shrug. “Twilight helped of course. Then she went on to actively take over the throne’s responsibilities. I resigned from my mayoral position soon afterwards.” Cheerilee chuckled and glanced at Mare, reaching for her shoulder and giving it a pat. “it kinda broke us, really.” “It sure did. I was due for a long…” She looked at Luster with a corked eyebrow, “uneventful retirement.” “You alone did,” Cheerilee said, chuckling. “I just went back to the school.” “Privilege of old age, hun.” “So now you’re glad to be old?” Cheerilee retorted, smirking. “And so Ponyville was normal again?” Luster asked, puckering her lips. “What about the ponies that left?” “They came back, of course,” Sweetie Belle said with a broad smile. “Ponyville is unique.” “Wait, really?” Luster shook her head. Of course, they’d come back. She wouldn’t be here otherwise. “I mean… Why? Ho– How did you manage it?” “It was easy,” Mare huffed. “I did nothing.” “Trouble finds Ponyville, but Ponyvillians rise above it,” Cheerilee said. “But Sweet Apple Acres?” Luster asked. “That’s what Applejack’s farm is called, right?” “Replanted!” “The School?”  “Restored and staffed.” “And…” “Everything was fine in the end,” Sweetie Belle interjected, a smile on her lips. “It… It just took time.” Silence flushed back in between the group as a cool breeze flew over their heads. The evening was upon the town. “It’s getting late,” Sweetie Belle said, standing up. “Gotta get back to Apple Bloom.” “Sleeping at the Barn?” Pinkie asked. Sweetie Belle stood still for a second, then magicked a quick kapow! hoof symbol with a spark of her magic. She bid her good-bye and ran off into the streets of Ponyville. And like that, she was gone. “It’s getting late indeed,” Cheerilee said, turning to Luster. “You’re welcome to stay with us, Luster.” “Am I?” “Of course, you are,” Mare said with a smile. “And anyway, did you plan for an overnight stay...?” “I didn’t plan for any stay at all.” Mare closed her eyes and smiled, giving a near imperceptible nod. “Of course. Well, Cheerilee and I have to go grab some groceries again, so catch you at the house.” She fished out a key and gave it to Luster. “Don’t lose it.” And so, only Luster and Pinkie remained. “Are you okay, Luster?” Pinkie asked after a while, a sad drawl in her voice. “You don’t look very happy.” “I’m not. Maybe… I– I don’t know.” Luster threw her hooves up and made a frustrated little noise. “I expected something else really. A story with heroes. A clear resolution. Something, well, interesting.” She motioned at everything around her. “Instead I got an unsatisfying story that sounds too much like it's trying to teach me some kind of lesson. So much for something that turned out fine and dandy in the end. This, AH, this doesn’t feel like an actual punishment. Instead, just, just like some kind of bizarre lesson.” Pinkie guffawed. “Twilight wouldn’t do something without a good reason, trust me on that. Like we said, she does like her to-do lists.” “She is sounding as cryptic as Celestia right now.” Pinkie laughed. “Well, you don’t get the job without picking on some of the quirks along the way, right?” Luster stared at Pinkie through thin-slit eyelids. “And did I pick some up from Twilight?” “You? Nah,” Pinkie said, waving her off. “You just were born with them.” Luster crossed her legs and her shoulders drooped.  “I’m sorry,” Pinkie said, repressing a laugh. “It’s just… You really act like her when she first arrived in town.” “No, it’s fine,” Luster said. “I deserve it. I wasn’t really kind to Mare and Cheerilee when I met them today. I really need to apologize.” “You’re leaaaarrrnnniiiing,” Pinkie wooed gently into Luster’s ear.  Luster swatted at her laughing mug like she was an annoying fly. She grumbled. “It’s just that, again, I feel cheated out of a punishment. Must sound weird, right?” “Eh.” Pinkie shrugged. “It happens.” She put her hoof on Luster’s shoulder. “Sometimes you get more than you wished for, or a gift you didn’t quite expect. And you know what you can’t do with weird gifts, right?” Luster shook her head. “Refuse them.” “How can I refuse something I don’t even really understand?” “By keeping them close to your heart.” Luster wished she could roll her eyes all the way back inside their sockets. She knew she couldn’t expect to always get something on the first try. She was really good at that, though. But, truly, some lessons did need a little extra work. But usually she had guidelines for those. This homework, this field trip, it was something else.  “Come on,” Pinkie said. “It’s gonna be night soon. You must be starving, and I know a nice little place. We can crash for tea at Mare and Cheery's house later.” And then, right on command, Luster’s stomach growled loudly. She turned around and smiled back at Pinkie. “Thanks, Pinkie,” she said. “You think we can invite Mare and Cheerilee? I really need to apologize to them.” “Sure!” Luster nodded, looking back at the hillside, the stump, the riverbed, and the towering castle far beyond the houses, lightly sparkling in the dusk. “Can I catch up with you, Pinkie? I need five minutes.” “Alright-y.” As Pinkie trotted away, Luster rummaged through her bag for Twilight's missive to Mare. After she’d retrieved the now-crumpled envelope, she opened it, and took out the letter.  She sat down on the green and for a time ran her hoof through it, feeling the rugged blades of grass against her coat. She looked about, at the town, the lights in the windows, and their reflection in the river. She listened to the sounds of distant music and laughter. It was hard to think that such an event like the Wall had happened here. No traces of it visibly remained. On any wall, any window, any house. It was all in the minds of the ponies that had the misfortune of living it. Maybe it was about that after all. That lesson. With yet another of her long-winded sighs, Luster unfolded the letter and went down to the post-scriptum. “That was one terribly long lesson, Teacher Twilight.”