As I opened the door to my apartment, I checked the clock. Twenty-six minutes. I beat my estimate. I froze as I saw my dress blue uniform lying on a chair. Windflow was standing next to it with fire in her eyes.
“You lied to me. You’re a cop.” Her horn was glowing. I’m sure she was too young to know any attack spells. I hoped she was too young. I glanced around for the nearest source of cover.
“I didn’t lie to you.” She widened her stance, head down. “First, you never asked what I did. Second, I was a cop, but I’m not anymore. I just haven’t gotten rid of the formal uniform yet.” Her eyes flicked to the uniform and back. “It’s just for show and fancy events.” As a detective, I never wore a uniform on the street. But we all had our dress blues for formal events. Unfortunately, most of the time, formal meant the funeral for a fallen brother. I don’t know why I still had the uniform. It was almost like I wanted to remind myself about my time on the force, and how badly it had ended.
The glow around her horn faded. I breathed a small sigh of relief. But to be non-threatening, I remained by the door and sat down.
She mirrored me and plopped down too. “So, why aren’t you a cop anymore?”
I thought for a moment and decided to not be patronizing. I wouldn’t be specific, but I wouldn’t insult her with “it’s complicated”. “I arrested a pony. He was guilty, but some other powerful ponies didn’t like that I had arrested him. They said I couldn’t be a cop anymore.”
“What type of cop were you?”
“I was a detective.”
She tilted her head. “I’ve heard of them. There are different types. What did you do?”
“Mostly, we’d solve puzzles. Like why is a little filly sitting in the rain, alone, late at night. Sometimes we’d try to find somepony, like a little filly’s lost father.”
“So you’re not a cop anymore, but you’re still a detective?”
I slowly nodded. “Yeah, I guess today, I am.”
“Are you going to find my daddy?” There was a hint of desperation in her voice.
I smiled softly. “I’ve already started to do that, kid.”
She stared at me for a long time, then nodded once. “Okay. You promised to take me to see the journal when you got back.”
I stood up. “I did. But first I think you should put that back where you got it.” I pointed at the uniform. “It’s not nice to go through other pony’s stuff, you know.”
The uniform floated up and followed her as she galloped into my room. A moment later, her head poked out the doorway.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. We’ll just agree to not do that anymore.” She nodded. I gave her a little grin. “So, you ready to go?”
She broke into a smile and trotted over.
We walked most of the way to the museum in silence. The air was clear and the streets clean from the previous night’s rain. It was a pleasant day for a stroll. I didn’t know the first thing about making small talk with a filly, and I hadn’t established enough trust to ask any more personal questions. That would, hopefully, come later. Still, she seemed content, looking at the sights as we made our way through the streets of Canterlot.
We entered the museum and walked to the reception desk located in the center of a great hall. The walls were lined with statues and paintings of ponies long gone. Perhaps they were important. Perhaps they were just lucky that a likeness of them survived the passing of centuries to be on display in a museum. Either way, I doubt anypony remembers them now. There was a pretty mare behind the desk who greeted us with a large smile, “Good morning. Can I help you find something?”
“I hope so. We’re here to see a journal from a thousand years ago--”
“Oh, the Windflower exhibit. It’s really very interesting.” I glanced down at the filly who looked up at me with a smug smile. The mare also glanced down. “My, don’t you look a lot like Windflower. Anyway, it’s on the second floor, room 203. As you enter the room, it’s on your right.” She lifted her right leg. “I’m sorry, but the third floor is closed. We had a break-in the other night, and it’s still off-limits.”
“That’s fine, we’re really just here to see the journal.” I smiled at the mare as we turned to head up the stairs.
We found the room and the display as promised. The centerpiece was a big wooden display case with the journal lying open behind the glass. There was a painting on the wall above the case. It showed a small filly standing on one side of a stream, with an older unicorn stallion in a cape watching her from the other side.
The filly pointed at the picture. “See, that’s Windflower, who I’m named after. That’s the wizard who teached her everything she knew about magic and stuff.”
I smirked at her. “Umm, that would be taught.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “You sound like Miss Peach.”
I looked between the painting and the filly. “I have to admit, you do look almost like her twin sister. Even your eye color is the same.” Perhaps they were related, although after a thousand years, it would be hard to be sure.
We spent some time looking at the other artifacts in the display. There were mixing bowls, containers full of chemicals, and a case with a half-dozen paper wrapped balls labeled as smoke bombs. Most appeared to be reproductions or artifacts much newer than a millennium. The information indicated that the original Windflower was more of an alchemist than a wizard. The filly insisted I read every display sign to her, some more than once. She wasn’t just looking with idle curiosity. She was studying everything as if committing it to memory.
I was particularly interested in another display case. It contained a letter with the royal seal and signed by Princess Celestia. She confirmed Windflower’s participation in stopping the attack on the castle by the New Lunar Republic as described in the journal. Hmm, I bet that would be an interesting read. That’s when I saw a sign that said copies of the journal were available in the gift shop. I glanced down at the filly. She’d like that. Getting it for her could help put her more at ease for future questions.
“I need to go downstairs for a bit. Are you okay to stay here a little longer?”
Without breaking her gaze on what she was studying, she slowly responded, “Uh-huh.”
I trotted down the stairs and over to the gift shop. It looked pretty typical. Lots of posters on the walls. One was a print of the painting I’d seen upstairs. Bookshelves full of books to buy. Rows of shelves full of reproductions and other trinkets to waste bits on. I found the mare on duty. “The sign upstairs said you have Windflower’s journal available?”
“Absolutely.” She walked towards a display, and I followed. "We have small booklets that contain all the text from the journal. We also have these very attractive reproductions of the journal. They’re as historically accurate as we can make them.” She took one off the shelf and opened it.
“Just the booklet for today. Thanks.”
I was heading back up to the second floor when the filly appeared at the top of the stairs. “You all done?” I called up. She nodded and trotted down the stairs.
“Thanks for bringing me here. It was fun.” She was smiling. It was good to see her happy. I’d done what I promised by bringing her here. That’s where trust starts.
We left the museum and wandered around aimlessly, eventually ending up in a park we happened upon. She chattered on and on, almost non-stop, about her namesake and all the things she’d learned today. Of course I knew it all since I’d read the displays to her, but I let her talk because she was finally starting to open up to me. We were establishing a rapport. The beginning of this relationship was critical to questions I was going to have to ask her soon.
We stopped at a café for lunch. As we ate, I decided to ask about something I’d noticed earlier. “That’s a nice bracelet you wear on your leg. Did you make that?” The bracelet was made from a braided cord strung with a repeating set of three beads, each a different shape and color.
She smiled and held up her leg. “Yes, it’s a friendship bracelet. The beads are my colors.” I realized she was right. Light blue-green, red, and violet, repeated around the bracelet. “I made one for daddy just like it, but his is bigger. Sometimes he wears it at home. He says he always keeps it in his saddlebag to remind him of his best friend.” She flashed a big grin.
She looked at her bracelet as her smile faded. “I miss my daddy.” She glanced up at me. “You’re a detective. You find things. Are you going to find my daddy?”
“I’m certainly going to try,” I assured her.
After lunch we returned to the apartment. I set my saddlebag next to the door and took a seat on the couch. As usual she sat at the other end, facing me.
“So, Windflower… I said I’d try to help find your dad?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I need some more information to do that. I need to ask you a few questions. Nothing hard. And once we’re done, I have a little surprise for you.”
That got her attention as her eyes went wide. “What is it?”
I lifted my legs. “Oh, now, I can’t say yet. That’s why it’s a surprise. We need to talk about your dad a little first. Okay?”
She nodded slowly.
“First, can you tell me what color he is?”
Her eyes drifted down to her foreleg. “He’s a blue unicorn, sort of like me, only a bit darker.” Her gaze returned to me. “His mane is green, a little like your eyes.”
“That’s great. And what’s his cutie mark?”
She raised a hoof to her chin. “This month, it’s three yellow stars.”
I tiled my head. “What do you mean by this month?”
“He says he gets bored with the same mark all the time, so he changes it.”
“He changes his cutie mark?” There aren’t many reasons to change your cutie mark with dye or magic. One is to trick someone into thinking you have a skill you don’t. That’s probably a prelude to fraud. The other would be to hide from somepony. Perhaps the law. So a fraudster or a criminal? Yeah, I was sort of jumping to conclusions, but I didn't like where this was going.
“How tall is your daddy?”
She hopped off the couch and walked to the middle of the room. “C’mere.” She pointed at the floor in front of her. I stood up and walked over. “Sit down.” I did so. Then she reared up and grabbed me in a big hug. I tensed a little, but held my position. I could feel her legs moving around behind my neck. After a few moments she dropped down and stepped back.
“You’re a little taller than he is, and thicker.” She nodded once for emphasis.
The light went on. That was brilliant. She couldn’t describe him with measurements or weight. But she knew what he felt like in a hug. And she could describe him in relative terms. I needed to remember this trick when dealing with kids... not that I ever planned to again.
So a little shorter than me. And I’m thicker? Okay, he’s a unicorn, and I’m an earth pony. I’d have a heavier build, so yeah, I’m thicker. We both went back to the couch and resumed our practiced positions.
“That was a very imaginative way to describe your dad. There may be a hint of detective in you too.” She smiled at that. “Now, how did you end up lost, in an alley, in the rain? Were you with your daddy when you got lost? What happened?”
“We were going home after dinner when three ponies stepped out and blocked our way. My daddy whispered to me to run. He’d taught me how to run away before. How to change directions, use corners, double back, stuff like that.”
What was this pony into that he took the time to teach his daughter escape and evasion techniques? Who teaches that stuff to a little filly? Was he expecting an attack? Or perhaps a foalnapping? Was the filly the target? What if she’d been the one foalnapped as an infant? What if he wasn’t actually her dad, and the other ponies were doing a recovery? So many questions. And most of them had associated bad implications.
“I started running as fast as I could. I heard one of them yell, ‘Get the filly!’.” She was starting to tear up. “I heard my daddy yell, ‘No!’. I looked back as I turned a corner and saw them fighting.” She was starting to tremble, and her ears went down. “I was so scared. I ran and ran. I got lost. I was tired and hungry. It started to rain, so I found a place to hide. I hoped my daddy would come find me.”
She was quiet for a bit with her head down. “Did I mess up? Am I gonna get yelled at?”
“Oh, no, not at all. You ran when your dad told you to. And it sounds like you also did just what he taught you to do. He would be so proud of you.”
She looked up at me. “Ya think so?”
“Absolutely. You did not mess up. You did it just right.” I reached out to her. “You wanna hug?” She flew at me, and I held on tight. I had no idea what I was doing, but it seemed to be working.
“If I did it right, why didn’t he come find me?” Her voice was muffled with her face in my neck. Her whole body trembled as I held her.
I tilted my head to rest atop hers. “I don’t know, kid.” I squeezed her just a little tighter.
I'm not sure how long we sat, but her trembling stopped, and her breathing slowed. After a while, she let go and sat up. She wiped her eyes and asked, “You said you had a surprise?”
“Yes, I do. And you’ve done such a great job with my really hard questions, that now is the time.” I walked to the door, grabbed my saddlebag, and pulled out the booklet. Her eyes went wide as she immediately recognized the picture on the cover. She knew exactly what it was. I have no idea how kids do it, but she flipped an emotional switch, and suddenly she was a totally different filly.
She hopped off the couch and jumped up and down, powered by excitement and pure joy. “Can you read to me from the journal now, please? I want to hear about Windflower. Please, daddy, please?”
She froze, eyes wide. The next reaction was sudden and profound as she flipped another switch. She took several steps backwards, dropped her ears, squeezed her eyes shut, and lowered her head almost to the floor. She started to tremble. I winced inside. I knew exactly what this meant. Instantly I had a huge knot in the pit of my stomach. My entire relationship with this foal depended on the next few moments. I dropped the booklet on the table and took a couple steps closer to her.
“It’s okay, kid. I don’t know a foal who hasn’t accidentally called some grown-up mommy or daddy by mistake. For me it was in foal school. I was distracted with a hard art project involving glue and glitter and accidentally called my teacher mommy when I asked for help. She smiled and helped me as if nothing had happened.”
In a voice that could barely be called a whisper, she asked, “So, you’re not gonna yell at me?”
“Over something so silly, no, never. Does your dad yell at you?”
“No.”
“Your mom?”
She didn’t answer. I walked to the couch and sat down in the middle. I patted the cushion. “Why don’t you come sit next to me. It’s okay, you’re not in any trouble.” She opened her eyes, and after a moment walked over and hopped up. I put a leg around her and pulled her close. She was still trembling. “Can you tell me about your mom?”
“I lived with my mommy after my daddy left. I tried so hard to be good, but I’d mess up. Mommy would yell at me just like she used to yell at daddy. I’d promise to be better, but it was so hard.”
Thinking back to her reaction just now, I asked, “Did she ever hit you?”
There was a long pause. “Sometimes, when I messed up super bad. Later, she’d say she was sorry and sometimes take me out for ice cream. But it wasn’t worth it.”
I realized the deeper meaning to her earlier question about if she’d messed up. It took everything I had to maintain my composure. I was furious. How could anypony, especially a mother, yell or hit such a sweet little filly. There was somepony I wanted to yell at and hit right about now. I was a firm believer in never hitting a mare, but that clearly didn’t apply to this shrew.
I fought to keep my voice even. “So, what happened to your mommy?”
“I always got up before her, and she’d tell me to be quiet so she could sleep. I was doing really good that morning because she didn’t wake up. But it was after lunch time, and I was hungry, so I went in to ask when we could have lunch.” She paused for a moment. She was trembling more, and I could hear it in her voice. “She wouldn’t wake up. I tried and tried. I started yelling and shaking her. The stallion from next door came in. He took me out of her room. Later the police came, and they took me away.”
She stopped talking. I held her tight and stroked her mane with my other hoof. I’d wait, as long as it took. After a while she continued, “They made me wait at the police station for ages. They had some cop sit with me. She tried to be nice, but it didn’t help. I was scared, and no one would tell me anything. Finally, they took me to the lost pony home.”
“The lost pony home? What’s that?”
“You know, where kids who have lost their mommy and daddy go. Where they wait to be ‘dopted.”
I nodded. “Oh, I see.” I now understood her fear of the police.
“They tried to be nice, but I didn’t like it there. I was in a room with a filly who cried every night. After a few days, my daddy came and got me. He said mommy was gone, and I’d live with him now. I knew she was dead. He tried to hide it, but I knew.”
“I’m so sorry.” I hated that I had to ask the next question. “Does your daddy ever hit you?”
For the first time, she looked up at me. “No. Even when I mess up really bad. He makes me help him clean up. But he says I can learn from mistakes so I can do a better job at messing up in the future. Then he laughs.”
I blew out a breath. I felt a huge weight of dread lifted off me. Fortunately, it sounded like she had one parent who was loving and not abusive. And one concern I had was eliminated. The orphanage would not have released her if he wasn’t really her dad. Still, there were so many other questions about him that needed answers. Questions that really worried me.
She dropped her head again. “I loved my mommy, but I like being with my daddy more. I… I don’t cry all the time. Is liking my dad more a bad thing?”
“No, no, no. Absolutely not. I’m sure your mom loved you, she just couldn’t show it. It sounds like your dad can. Wanting to be with your dad doesn’t mean you don’t love your mom. It doesn’t make you a bad filly.”
I noticed she had stopped trembling as she leaned her head against my neck.
“Can you read to me now, please?”
“Perhaps, if you can use your magic to hand me the booklet off the table over there.” I pointed at it.
Her horn glowed, and the booklet floated up and flew across the room, then landed in my upturned hoof. I opened the booklet, and we looked at the illustration of the same painting we’d seen at the museum. I then cleared my throat and started reading...