“I just don’t know what to do about it, y’know?” Ellie stretched out on Maud’s bed, arms crossed behind her head, though she could not spread herself as widely as she would have liked. “I mean, it’s just so awkward when it’s just the two of us. Like, should I be starting conversations with her? What would we even have to talk about? Plus, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Maud said from several paces away, not looking up from her microscope at her desk. “When I started dating Mudbriar, my sister didn’t get along with him, either. She put in the effort, which was nice. But even if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t have changed anything.” She paused to grab a pencil with her mouth and wrote something on her notepad. “Not everypony in your life has to be friends with each other,” she continued.
“Yeah, but that’s different!” Ellie propped herself up with her arms to look at Maud. “Pinkie’s a grown mare.”
That made Maud look up and turn her head to give Ellie an expressionless look.
“Okay, Pinkie is Pinkie,” Ellie admitted. “But at least she lives by herself and can make her own decisions. Rarity is Sweetie Belle’s legal guardian or something, and has to live with her. So what, does that make me, her new stepmom? I’m not ready for that kind of responsibility!”
“I doubt that’s what either of them wants.” Maud said flatly, turning back to her rock slides. “She’ll just end up thinking of you as a second older sister.”
“Yeah, that would be nice.” Ellie let her gaze wander. “If it ever stops being so awkward between us…”
“As an older sister, I can say that it never stops being awkward.”
Ellie chuckled. “Yeah, maybe.” Then, she groaned. “Either way, I couldn’t take one more second in that place while Rarity’s on her business trip.” She flopped back down onto her spot on the bed and closed her eyes, letting the soothing background noise of the waterfalls fill the silence. She smiled. “Thanks for letting me hang out here,” she said without opening her eyes. “It’s a really relaxing spot.”
“Yeah, I’d say!” Starlight Glimmer concurred from next to her, similarly splayed out on Maud’s bed, except she was taking up more than her fair share of space. “You wouldn’t believe how much of a mess the School of Friendship is now! It’s so nice just not being on campus for a bit.” She was still wearing her blazer from work, not having had time to change. Or rather, to just take it off, since ponies don’t normally wear clothes. “Becoming headmare sounded great when it would be continuing to deal with the same students I saw as student counselor, but a whole new class of students, and their parents…“ Starlight groaned. “The parents!”
“Oh, they’re not so bad!” differed another voice, also on the bed. “The Great and Powerful Student Counselor loves this new class of students!”
“Of course you do! You don’t have to deal with the parents! I even forbade it after what you said to Grampa Gruff!” Starlight groaned again.
“Yeah, but at least your thing is a part of a larger responsibility,” shrugged Ellie. “I made this very bad decision for no good reason. I mean, moving in with someone I just started dating right away?” Ellie shook her head in disappointment with herself. “I’ve been professionally gay for like, a decade at this point, but even this is too lesbian for me.”
“It still strikes Trixie as strange how your world has a special word for something so ordinary as mares being attracted to each other,” commented the Great and Powerful Student Counselor.
Maud interjected. “Technically, we do have a word like that. Marelover. Technically it refers to stallions who are exclusively attracted to mares as well, but colloquially it refers to mares.“ She paused again to change slides with her teeth, and continued while adjusting her microscope with her hooves. “But Trixie’s right, you talk about ‘lesbians’ like you are another species with your own distinct courtship rituals. That would be strange for us, since most ponies are open to both to some degree. Like me.”
Ellie was intrigued by that. She noticed Starlight being intrigued by that as well. That made her way, way more intrigued by that.
“Yeah,” Ellie chuckled. “I mean, most of those courtship rituals center around Home Depot, but still…” Ellie could see the look on the ponies’ faces they always made when she made a human reference they could not possibly pick up. She tried to change the subject.
“You know, it’s funny! When I first met you and Trixie I actually assumed you two were dating, with the familiar way she kept pushing your buttons. And I knew that Maud was dating Mudbriar, but with how you two got along, I thought that you might have at least been exes or something.” Ellie laughed. “I mean, that’s probably just me reading too much into things, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right!” Starlight laughed nervously. “We’re all just really close friends, that’s all!” The last word was more a nervous squeak than an utterance. “Right, girls?”
There was an awkward pause. Starlight sat up to look at Trixie, who avoided her gaze, and Maud, who was still looking through her microscope.
“Right, girls?”
There was another stretch of silence, until Maud broke it with her monotone.
“I actually did have feelings for you once,” she confessed, not even looking up from her microscope.
“Wait, what!?” Starlight exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes. Ever since that first day we spent together. We flew kites. We shared how we see the world with each other. Talking with you was so easy, we did it for hours. It was nice. Even though Pinkie was there, it was the best date I had ever been on. You even laughed at my jokes.1 ” Maud turned her head to look at her.
“You have a very pretty laugh. It’s even prettier than emerald bismuth, and that is the prettiest rock. I should know. I have a thorough ranking system.”
“But… But…” Starlight was upset. “You thought it was a wonderful date too? But then you decided to not move to Ponyville?”
“Yes.” Maud said flatly. “Rocks are my career. It would have been foalish to make such a decision based on one date instead, no matter how amazing it was. But I did end up deciding to live adjacent to Ponyville, and not because of rocks. It was because of Pinkie. And you.“
“But…” Starlight squeaked. “You said that you didn’t want to start talking about our feelings right after!”
“That’s because I prefer to let things develop naturally.” Maud said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me yet, but I have a hard time expressing my feelings in a way other ponies understand. I didn’t want to ruin what we could have had.” Maud blinked. “I thought that you felt the same way. I also thought I was giving you a pretty big hint by inviting you to help me decorate this place the first time I moved in. Even Pinkie figured it out when she excused herself so we could be alone.1 Next to the bed you’re on right now.”
“I—” Starlight squeaked.
“I waited a long time for you to make a move, but you never did. I slowly lost hope. Then I was very sad. I even wrote a poem about my feelings.” Maud blinked. “The poem was about rocks, like all my poems, but the ‘rhodonite shot through with streaks of amethyst and amazonite’ was obviously supposed to represent you. I even read it to you once, remember?”
The look on Starlight’s face indicated that she did not.
“It was very petty of me. But it hurt even more when you didn’t pick up on it.” Maud paused to consider. “Rhodonite is pink like your coat color, and amethyst and amazonite are purple and teal, matching your mane.” She returned to her microscope. “Maybe you didn’t know that.”
Starlight could not even manage words at this point.
“She’s not the only one, you know,” piped up the nasal voice of Trixie. Starlight turned to face the blue unicorn, eyes still wide.
“Remember that trip to Saddle Arabia we went on? I dropped so many hints, going on and on about how small and cozy the wagon is. How difficult it would be to find space for both of us to sleep. How we’d be out in the wilderness with nopony around for days at a time. And what did you do?”
“I…”
“You kept going on about inns we could stop by!” Trixie spat out, venomously. “You even traded my wagon for a bigger one without my permission! I don’t know what hurt more, how you rejected Trixie so casually or how you tried to get rid of her oldest friend!” She stopped. “Well, okay, the wagon hurt more, but still!”
“But… but… We fought the whole time! About everything! Snoring, what to eat, who drank the last cup of juice…”
“Yeah, we did!” Trixie agreed. “It was actually pretty hot! I kept waiting for you to turn it into something more but you just didn’t!”
“But… but…” Starlight blubbered. “Why didn’t either of you SAY anything!?!?”
Maud gave her an expressionless, silent look. She sighed.
“Starlight. Before we had that date, you nearly destroyed all of Equestria after mastering an impossible time travel spell. Before that, you used the rock I told you about to take over an entire village just because you had your feelings hurt as a foal. I just figured that if you were interested, you would have done something.“
“Yeah, same here!” Trixie agreed. “And on top of that, the Great and Powerful Trrrixie is always the court-ed, never the court-er!”
“But you were the one who asked Sunburst out!” Starlight protested.
“Starly, have you ever met that nerd? He was never going to make the first move!”
“But I—”
“By the way, I am almost over how much you hurt me with the way you fobbed me off on him.” Trixie hmphed. “Sure, the Great and Powerful Trrrixie Lulamoon isn’t good enough to be Starlight’s marefriend, so here’s her foalhood friend fresh from the Crystal Empire! If it hadn’t turned out so great, I would still be mad!”
“But I— That’s not what I— I didn’t—” Starlight squeezed her temples with her hooves. Her mind was breaking.
“By the way, I had assumed the reason you never pursued me was because you had feelings for Trixie.” Maud paused. “But I grew up with three sisters. I know how sharing works. In fact.” She gave a very rare, very slight smile, then twisted the knife. “It might have been kind of nice.”
Trixie twisted it further. “And the Great and Powerful Trrrixie certainly doesn’t think of herself as below having two marefriends.”
Starlight was catatonic. Staring out into space, blubbering the words “But I—” over and over again.
“But I— But I— But I—”
Ellie came over to give her a hug, patting her reassuringly on the withers.
“Aw, Starlight! You have no idea how much sympathy I have for you right now. Me and my friends back home got into things like this all the time!”
“But I— Maud— AND Trixie— Both!— At the same time!—”
“Yeah, I guess none of us ever whiffed it this badly.“
“But the closest thing I have to a marefriend is a HOUSEPLANT!” She practically sobbed. “I’m so… lonely…”
“There, there,” Ellie said in a soft voice, continuing to pat her. “It’ll be all right, Starly. I mean, sure, you let two available, interested, amazing, and very attractive potential marefriends just slip by you…” Ellie could see Trixie raise an eyebrow at that. ”But you can take it as an object lesson. There will be other chances, with other mares that you haven’t met, and when the next opportunity comes, you can be sure to take it! Except that you probably won’t get two opportunities like that at the same time again. Boy howdy, that only happens once!“
Starlight groaned as if in pain. Ellie should have regretted causing her more distress like that, but for some reason, it was kind of fun?
“Hey, can I take back my apology for calling you ‘discount Twilight’ the first time we met? For some reason this feels exactly like something she’d do.”
Starlight said nothing. Ellie knew she had to stop. But the Imp of the Perverse egged her on to do one more.
“It’s too bad you swore off that time travel stuff forever, huh?”
Starlight screamed.