//------------------------------//
// I'll leave them folded neat and tidy 
// Story: Ghosting 
// by KorenCZ11 
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    “I just don’t understand why we have to go through all this,” Haze grumbled. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, explain it to me and then talk to Mom about this?”

    I dismissed Haze wholesale. “No, no. This is your mother we’re dealing with here. If it’s not dramatic and over the top, it’s just not going to be enough for her. Act as well as you can; your genuine reaction to the story, especially from her, is what will do the trick.”

    That said, we had put an inordinate amount of work into this. Dash’s inability to keep away from Haze during the school day was such a well known fact that the admins agreed to let us borrow the auditorium to make this happen. Nice of them, but another dart in the heart all the same. I’ve been ignoring this for far too long.

    “I-I hate to put more nails in this coffin, but that’s essentially how it’s always been with Rainbow,” Fluttershy added as she started on the backdrop. “There was a time when we, um… played a fairly mean trick on her to get her to stop being a nuisance with her ‘heroing’ around town back when we were teenagers. It took about a week of us more or less publicly shaming her before she finally toned it down.”

    Sighing, Haze rubbed at his temple. “Oh, Mom…”

    Discord snapped another backdrop in place, still not quite satisfied by the ‘VFX’ that went along with his magic-holographic display. “Yes, yes, tis’ a pity your mother has a hero complex and would do anything and everything within her power for you. What a troubled life you live, Haze boy.”

    That’s a hell of a blow. If Haze had been feeling bad before about all this, now he was just distraught.

    “You made me a promise!” Fluttershy groaned, irritated.

    “A promise I have kept. You said inappropriate jokes and tricks. That was neither inappropriate nor a joke or trick. Better yet, that was a fact with which I feel the boy has not yet reconciled. Ungrateful young ponies are a dime a dozen. Why, it’d be terrible of me not to correct misconceptions in the spawn of our friends, would it not?” Shaking his bicorns, he waved a claw and dispersed the backdrop entirely. “Bah, this simply isn’t coming out right. Can we not just turn the stage into the scene itself? It would be so much easier to make the real thing instead of some illusion.”

    Fluttershy was quick to console Haze, treating him not unlike one of her own. A caring wing around his shoulder, a tender hoof through his mane, she then glared at her husband. “I also asked you to be aware of the effect the things you say has on ponies! We’re here to help, not to make him feel worse.” Then, turning away from Haze, she coughed into her hoof. “And, um, no, that would only make it harder to get through to Dash. Real lava would turn on her danger sensors, and, well…”

    Discord apathetically held a paw out and turned to me. “You see what I have to put up with? She asks me for opposites simultaneously. Had I not so much power at my disposal, she’d be entirely impossible.”

    “This is the absolute state of husbandry. You know, in Umanese, the words for husband and prisoner are only different by a letter and sound nearly the same.”

    “Well, perhaps they’re better for more than just electronics, animations and hilariously long novel titles.”

    Fallacy chimed in, “Shujin soretomo shuujin, dayone?”

    The boys, Prism and Fallacy, and the girls, Amity and Magnanimity (or Maggy for Dashes who have trouble pronouncing the word) had come down from the cat walk and were joining Discord and I in the auditorium seats. “Goddess, Fal, you’re such a weeb,” said Amity and Prism. His older sister probably meant it as an insult, but the boys call each other weebs all the time, if only because one of their favorite pastimes is watching sports anime together. Which, eventually, turned into whatever show piqued their interest this month. Luckily for them, Fluttershy has an awe-inspiring collection, her being the original veteran weeb.

    “Ami, you know I don’t like it when you use that word,” nagged said veteran.

    Discord snapped a gloved hand into existence and poked the draconic hybrid in the snout. “And I don’t like it when you use that first one. Mind your words, girl.”

    Amity rolled her eyes and stuck her forked tongue out. “Always on eggshells with you two. Why is it okay for Prism to use that word?” The eldest of the chaos children was the least pony-like while also being the most normal… if one can call them that. She was, as far as one could tell, a typical teenage girl of her age, save the part where she has: dragon horns, carnivore teeth, a pointed snout, a forked tongue, one dragon arm, a bat wing, a pony wing, two three-toed hind-legs, a single pony hoof, and a long scaly tail. Her flying has always been awkward thanks to the mismatched wings, but once Dash got a hold of her, she set her flying well. Discord, to this day, has still not let that go and brings it up every now and again when he’s feeling petty.

    Amity, in spite of having so much of her mother’s face, is unquestionably Discord’s daughter, but without so much humor. Very sharp, very biting, often rigid and quick to judge, but deep down holds a core of sweetness she’s always regarded as weakness in herself. She makes an effort to meet ponies and make friends, but she could count on her claws her true friends. The question is if she realizes who those ponies are. Discord often laments that she is just like his first son and thanks the Goddess every day that she has no magic. Equestria doesn’t need another liberator.

    “Unlike you,” Fluttershy answered, “Prism means it endearingly. Please be nice.”

    She groaned, “Yes ma’am,” and then sat down next to her father.

    “B-besides,” Maggy offered, “being a weeb doesn’t make him a bad pony. Being himself does.” She could hardly finish without letting the giggles out.

    Putting himself in a bright yellow ninja outfit with a bone mask, Discord spun his claw unnaturally and launched it at the ‘coil-pony,’ as we like to call her. “Get over here!” He took hold of her by the neck, and pulled her down to his lap as his claw retracted. Little white gloves began attacking both girls relentlessly, forcing even the stone-cold Amity to fall to laughter. “You girls are just so mean! I can’t imagine where you get that from.”

    “D-Daddy, please!” they protested, Amity writhing and Maggy twisting and curling herself into pretzel knots.

    The youngest of the chaos children was more snake than pony, but not so much in appearance. A gazelle horn, a ram’s horn, matching bat wings, pony legs, and an excessively long tail. She was beyond flexible and could quite literally bend over backwards. When they were teaching her how to fly, Discord just held on to her tail while creating wind to use her like a kite. She’s still very quick-witted and sharp like her sister, but with more sweetness than anything else. Her teeth are a bit strange, though, and the single fang sticking out of her mouth often causes her tongue to trip, making her stutter at random. She’s the most ‘cohesive’ mix of her parents out of the three, which makes her the most dangerous to deal with. She very easily appears innocent and can outcharm a charmer, but she’s also very cunning. ‘Daddy’s little abomination’ indeed.

    Discord released the girls, and the moment they regained their breathing, Amity grunted and turned away from her father, blushing, while Maggy coiled around and hugged him.

    Prism and Fallacy glided down and sat next to me. “You know, I think I have just the thing to improve you, my dear sisters.”

    He clicked his hooves together, and all at once, the girls were muzzled. 

Satisfied with the job done to the lights, Fluttershy turned around just in time to see this. She sighed, floating down to join us. “We haven’t even been at this for an hour. Can’t you get along for once? Please?”

    Taking Maggy by the head, Discord observed the muzzle. “Hold on now, I think the boy has a point here…” The girls were so used to pranks like this, they didn’t even bother struggling against the contraptions.

    “Discord.”

    The muzzles were dispersed. Many things had been said in that one word.

    Placated, Fluttershy sat on the other side of Amity and went about fixing her mane, much to Amity’s displeasure. “The lights are ready. Are you done with the backdrop yet?”

    He sighed, snapping the previous backdrop back into existence. The scene was a cliff next to a castle inside a volcano, a boiling pool of lava covering the stage floor. If one looked into the ground from Haze’s vantage point on the stage, it would look like the lava is far below, and the castle would have more details since, ‘you’re closer to it,’ as sense of space goes. Orange smoke drifted out and over the floor, and dark ash clouds thundered above, without getting in the way of the lights.

    “I suppose. The lightning is too orderly and the smoke is too regular to be a real volcano. You’ve also forbidden me from filling the room with brimstone and sulfur vapor or adding the proper amount of heat to the lava’s surface, so this is as good as you’re getting.”

    “That is more than enough.” She flew up to his face and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Discord.”

    “You, my dearest—” he took her forehooves in both claws “—are utterly impossible.” 

And he kissed her right back. It was long, it was passionate, and it made everypony under twenty very uncomfortable. For my part, I was just glad to see what a healthy relationship they had. He’s always said she was the one who made his dead heart beat again. Before he knew what to do with himself, he was twisting in knots over her affection. A second chance to get it right this time, a real shot at that family life he could never have had in his own time.

    When they finally broke, Fluttershy was flushed beet red, and she slowly sank to her seat. “C-come now, we’re in public…”

    Discord motioned to the empty auditorium. “Um, no, I don’t believe we are. Perhaps if that black-lunged fool of a mare had joined us, I’d have been more cautious, but seeing as it is just us here…”

    “That’s no way to talk about Soarin’s mother! ‘Please be nice’ applies to all of you, not just the kids!”

    Discord had not reacted so well to Mom’s story either. He has… a unique history with mares, and very much values the quality of a good mother. Since mine was about the opposite of that, he had some choice words for her when we’d asked them to help out with my scheme earlier in the week. A very strange and strained conversation occurred between them, again going back to the Dark Canter thing, and Mom decided it would be best if this all played out while she wasn’t around. Instead, I introduced her to the Pies before we arrived today, and Pinkie and Cheese offered to take a look at her car. With any luck, she can just make the trip to the house on her own when all this gets resolved, when it’s time for her to meet Dash.

    “Nicer words than I would’ve used,” I then coughed into my hoof.

    “Oh, Soarin,” Fluttershy muttered.

     “Haze, buddy, is this good? Are you ready?”

    My youngest was busy inspecting the ‘backdrop,’ trying to put his hoof through the floor where it appeared to lead into a pit of lava. When it just ‘clocked’ against the wood of the stage, he rubbed at his forehead, half amazed and half confused. “This is super trippy. It’s worse than my VR games.” Discord seemed rather satisfied with that, then Haze focused on me from the brightness of the stage. “Uh, yeah, as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

    Which was good, since we’d really gone all out for this performance. In part, this was me pushing Haze toward his cutiemark since I think I’ve got that figured out. He was very much into the writing and designing of this little play we’d made for Dash, just not so keen on actually getting her involved. I don’t know how he managed to hide it from us, but apparently he has a performance in the last week before Winter Break here in a few weeks and he’s been dreading the day Dash found out about it. Which, totally fair, it would be an incredible display of self-restraint if Dash didn’t embarrass him during the play.

    The biggest hurdle here was getting Discord to help out. Haze wanted to make all these crazy props for his volcano scene when he came up with it a few days ago, but there was no way we’d get all of that done before Dash came back. Everything needed to be just so, and the only… ‘pony’ we know with the magic to do it was, of course, dear uncle Discord. All it really took was a nudge from Fluttershy and Fallacy to move him, so it actually turned out to be much simpler than I’d imagined. He did put the condition on it that he’d meet ‘the speaker of forbidden words’ before hoof, but I’ve already been over how that went.

    Taking my phone in hoof, I made the call to my wife. It did not ring even once.

    “Hello?”

    Wherever she was, it was fairly windy. If she’s not over Ponyville, she’s in transit at least.

    “Hey, Dash. How far out are you?”

    “Oh, I’m like, about to land at the house. I had my phone in hoof when you called. Are you here? None of the lights are on.”

    “Uh, no, we’re at the school auditorium, actually. Haze wanted your help with a project he—”

    “He does!? I’ll be right there!”

    And Dash hung up. And here I’d been prepared to tell her what we were doing. I let the phone fall back on its lanyard and said, “Mom’s inbound.”

    Haze frowned. “And so goes my hopes Grandma talked any sense into her.”

    I shrugged. “Cheer up already! Don’t be a downer; I’m a hundred percent sure this is going to work. Just follow your script sincerely, and it’ll go like I said.”

    Sighing in defeat, Haze let his haunches fall to the not-volcano cliff he stood on. “If you say so.”

    I do say so, but explaining it to Haze would defeat the purpose: 

The first step was to get his creativity spinning. Sure, he went all the way with it and wrote a whole three-act play, but what was important was the scene where the villain forces the heroine to make a choice. As the heroine is an ersatz Dash, she must choose between the life of a baby or a city. Any sort of reason to compel her one way or another is fine, and the choice that the play hinges on should be whatever Dash decides.

    Naturally, Haze opted to set the rest of the play based on the heroine choosing to save the baby before her, and in the style of the old masterworks, the city was to be sacrificed for the choice and the heroine has to live on with the baby knowing that this life she saved was at the cost of all those souls in the fallen city. The details involve an evil wizard and a definitely-not Daring Do style protagonist, because who else would he make his hero? For every time Dash has read, forced me to read, and then reread the Daring Do series, she’s read them again to the kids as bedtime stories, regardless of how inappropriate they were at the time. ‘What? Come on, Daring Do and the Temple of Serpents is totally a good bedtime story!’ And she wonders why Prism is afraid of reptiles.

    Haze, however, being his mother’s son, loves those books possibly even more than she does, and definitely in a more… male way, too . Never again will I walk in his room without knocking on the door first.

    My own traumatic experiences aside, we didn’t wait for more than a couple minutes for Dash to arrive. Hooves in the hallway:

    Takka-takka-takka—

    SLAM!

    “I’m here!”

    Discord clicked a stopwatch. “Would you look at that? Eight minutes and fifty-three seconds. Did you break any sound barriers on the way here?”

    Dash stared blankly at the draconequus. She scanned him and the rest of us, finally stopping on me. “Uh… hey guys. What are all of you doing here?”

    I made eye contact with Haze and nodded toward his mother. He groaned quietly, took a quick breath, then stood up to answer her. “I asked for their help. Somepony had to get up to the lights to mess with those, and Mr. Discord is like the only special effects guy anypony could ever want.”

    Swooning, he waved a handkerchief at Haze. “Oh, you flatterer, you.”

    Finally, Dash took notice of the stage. She paused stiff, trying to keep her wings from unfurling. “Th-that’s, uh… not real lava, is it?”

    Windy must’ve said something. She wouldn’t have kept her cool this long before. Though, maybe it helps, seeing Fluttershy here with us. Can’t have the monster without his master.

    “No, no, I was told that wasn’t allowed,” Discord answered, still irritated about it.

    She cooled off a bit, but made a quick trot to the stage to join Haze, probably to check the effects herself too. She is rightfully mistrustful of Discord, but she could at least give him the credit to not put our kids in danger. Maybe. Perhaps I am too used to him.

    “I… see.” Dash said, tapping the floor in the same manner Haze did earlier. “How’s everypony doing? Ami, Fal, Maggy, Shy, Discord. It’s been a few weeks, right?”

    “Um…” Fluttershy coughed into her hoof. “Your birthday was a few weeks ago, yes.”

    “And Maggy and I see you, like, every day,” Amity added, which was doubly true for Amity since she was in physics as well as the girls flier class. Janky though it may be, Amity has stronger wings than ponies as a whole. Given her performance, she might as well be in the boys class, but that would be uncomfortable for a number of reasons.

    Dash scratched at her cheek. “Yeah. So, uh, what’s all this about, anyways?”

    I made a pushing motion with my hoof for Haze, and finally, he spoke up. “Well, Mom, I…” He sighed, had to start over. “I wrote a play over the week and I’m kinda stuck on how I wanted this to go. I set it up like a Daring Do book, and since you know them about as well as I do, I figured you could help me out with the next scene.”

    Raising a brow, Dash tilted her head. “Oh, really? I didn’t know you were into plays. And writing too, huh? Alright, sure, lemme see it.”

    A note: Dash has also tried her hoof at writing. However, unlike Haze, who likes all kinds of books and has made an effort to read many things, Dash only reads what she likes and what A.K. Yearling puts out. I know books she’d like, such as the MHI series or the Grimnoire series or the Another Kingdom series, but she just won’t take recommendations. Can’t sit still long enough to read things, and half the time, she won’t even read her favorite books now that audiobooks are a thing. Needless to say, it is a miracle Dash can read at all, let alone write anything.

    Haze took the script he’d prepared ahead of time, passed it to his mother, and she scanned over the first few pages. “Not bad, not bad at all… Yeah, I can see…” 

And her smile fell flat. She flipped to the next page. Then the next page, lips curving further downward. She hit the last page, then closed the booklet.

    She stared directly at her youngest, silent for a long moment. “Haze, buddy, I don’t know if I’m the right—”

    “No, no, you are! You’re the only pony who could help me with this,” he said, courage growing in his voice. Now that he could see how his words were affecting her, he was less concerned about what she might do and what she would really say. He wants to see it now: her reaction.

    He led her to the other side of the stage at the base of the volcano’s edge, where the rising rock jutted out of the stage. “Look, why don’t we try acting it out? You just say Rain Whip’s lines, and I’ll be the bad guy. Uh, don’t read any of the extra text out loud though, just everything with Rain Whip’s name by it, okay?”

    Dash scratched at her mane. “Haze, I’ve been in a play before, I know how this works. I just—”

    He grabbed her hoof, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “No, really, Mom. It has to be you.”

    Dash sighed, entirely resigned. “Okay, fine. She’s just Daring Do, right? That’s who I’m pretending to be?”

    Haze trotted up the cliff to the other side of the stage. “Something like that. Just act however you would. That should be fine.”

    He cleared his throat, then turned to the audience. Fallacy clapped his hooves, and the lights all turned to focus on Haze.

    “Rain Whip’s arduous journey has finally given her the opportunity to corner the black wizard, Shadow Canter, at the edge of Mount Kazan in the Miyako Islands. With nowhere left to run, he turns to face his opponent. Surely, this is the end for him, but as Rain Whip knows, Canter always has another trick up his sleeve…”

    Discord leaned down to me and whispered, “You might have him change that name. If the Princesses ever come to see this, it would make things… uncomfortable.”

    Good ol’ Mom, opening up a damn can of worms.

    Fallacy clapped again, and the lights shifted. Diffused orange and red light spread across the stage, with soft white spots falling over the actors. Raising himself to full height, Haze—er, Shadow Canter turned around to face Rain Whip.

    “It’s over, Canter! There’s nowhere left for you to run to!” Quickly, Dash looked back down at her script. “You’ve got no medallion, no allies, and no monsters to help you. I’ll bring you back to justice in Equestria, with or without the body bag!”

    Totally in character, Haze stroked his chin, looking down contemptuously at ‘Rain Whip.’ “Rain Whip, Rain Whip, Rain Whip,” he began in the deepest voice he could make. “Surely, we know each other better by now. Have you forgotten the time we spent together in Odori Prison? Or perhaps those moments we shared in the wastes of Kycillia? There are plenty of places to run, and there will be no killing of either of us. But I have no need of running. I’m exactly where I mean to be.”

    Gotta give the little guy props; he didn’t even look at his script.

    ‘Rain Whip’ took a few steps closer. “Don’t play games with me, Canter!”

    Discord leaned to whisper again. “Oh Goddess, I’m getting war flashbacks. That is the exact same tone of voice Celestia used over a thousand years ago. Rainbow is quite good at this, too.”

    “Games?” ‘Shadow Canter’ continued. “Oh, but I haven’t even shown you the game yet!”

    Rain Whip’s eyes went wide; her step faltered.

    Shadow Canter approached. “You see, Rain Whip, I do have a way out of this. You’ve pursued me again and again like the dogged contender you are, seeking that revenge you long for so much, but there’s one thing you seem to keep forgetting about me.”

    He smiled, then turned his back on her to look out over the boiling volcano. “I don’t play by your rules; I don’t believe in your Goddess; I don’t believe in your souls or spirits or anything that constructs your morality. I believe in myself. I believe in death. I believe in flesh. If it doesn’t give me pleasure, what reason do I have to preserve it? By my will, by that which I desire, I shall attain everything within my grasp. And you?”

    He turned to face her. “You are the good guy. You must play by your society’s rules, and you must do so better than the best to achieve the glory you live for. This chase, these conflicts—they’re nothing more than stimuli to you. Everypony has their rockets to blast off; I’m not one to judge… however, playing with you, making you suffer in the best ways I can imagine? Now that, my dear Rain Whip, is my greatest pleasure.”

    “Canter!” Furious, Rain Whip took to the air, ready to dive-bomb the villain, but she stopped short when he held up a bundle over the lava. 

“Ah-ah-ah!”

    And she froze in mid-air.

    Canter uncovered the bundle, revealing the face of a foal doll. “You… wouldn’t want to wake the baby.”

    She sank back to the ground, real anger, real terror on her face. “Where did you—”

    ‘Canter’ flicked a toilet roll horn on top of his head. “Magic? Obviously. Something small, connected to my own blood like this? Why, apples are harder to teleport than this.”

    “Unhoof him right this instant, Canter!”

    ‘Canter’ laughed. “As hilarious as complying with your request would be, given that the boy is now over about a thousand degrees of seething rock, we couldn’t play my game if I did that. No, there’s something else I’d like to show you first.”

    Keeping the ‘foal’ on one hoof suspended over the lava, Haze flicked his fake horn, then Discord snapped. A magic screen with a view of… Canterlot, maybe? Or, no, this had to be further north. Possibly even by the Crystal… No, is that… Horseshoe Bay? But that can’t be the modern bay; this has to be from hundreds of years ago!

    Haze let his confusion show for a moment, but then turned right back into ‘Shadow Canter’ to face ‘Rain Whip’ again. “Does this view look familiar to you?”

    “Uh…” Dash opened and checked the script again. “It can’t be! Alabaster Bay!?”

    Canter smiled, even more malice shadowing his face than before. “Yes. Alabaster Bay. Rain Whip Sr. lives here, doesn’t she? And we can’t forget about your friends and colleagues, with what few of them a harsh, detestable loner like you has. So desperate to be loved, so desperate to set a shining example, but deep down, you and I are the same, Rain Whip. Neither of us belong in their society.”

    “I really should’ve put up the scene he asked for. This is absolutely too close to memory,” Discord mumbled, though I’m not sure anypony was supposed to hear that.

    “Damn you, Canter, damn you!” Horrified and grinding her teeth, Rain Whip took a step closer, and ’Canter’ took a step back. “Why are you doing this? I gave you chance after chance, and you still won’t change! You took my feelings and threw them away, and now you trample on them, laugh at them, watch them burn with a grin on your face just to torture me! Was there nothing? Did it all mean nothing to you? Canter, please, you don’t have to do this!”

    Maybe the whole stage play thing was more inherited than I thought. I knew everypony liked that Hearth’s Warming play she was in, but we weren’t super close back then and I didn’t see it. I kinda wish I had.

    “Don’t have to?” Canter scoffed. “I don’t ‘have’ to do anything, Rain Whip! I do what I enjoy! Stringing you along was just another fun activity for me to pass the time with. And now? I’m tired of you, and I’m tired of that false life! I’m tired of pretending to be what society wants me to be and not living as the stallion I am! This foal, you... they’re all proofs of a lie I no longer wish to live! So, I will give you a choice. The very last game I intend to play with you, Rain Whip.” 

He looked at the ‘foal’ with disgust on his lips. “I will drop this… ‘thing’ into the lava, purifying the world of it forever. If you do not save it, the city remains unharmed, so long as I am free to go. But if you do choose to save it, I will set the city ablaze from all the way on the other side of the world, right here and now, for you to watch. I will leave, and you will be here with your foal, just like me, with nowhere to return to.

    “So, what will it be?”

    And here, the script he gave Dash ends. I have to wonder where he got the idea for this from. Maybe a game or something, but it’s almost like he cobbled parts of the Dark Canter story he definitely should not know together and mixed it with the Daring Do books. It’s not bad.

    Provided Dash follows the script she doesn’t know, she of course chooses to save the baby, Canter gets away, and the city burns, leaving Rain Whip crying with her foal as the curtain closes. But given how stubborn she is, how traumatized she was, and how much she loves Haze, she might still resist and—

    “I-I can’t!” She shook her head, hooves creeping up to hide her face. “I can’t, I can’t! Please, Canter, don’t make me choose! I can’t hurt them, I can’t let him die, please, please!”

    Haze frowned. Dash was shaking. She was having a real breakdown here, and now I wonder if this was such a good idea. Still, he continued on as Shadow Canter: “Ugh, how ill-fitting for one who was once so noble. What is this? Crying? Pathetic. Have it your way, I’ll burn them both.”

    Dash jutted up. “You can’t! Please, no, I can’t lose him!”

    “Then, catch.” 

And Haze threw the foal off the stage.

    “Haze!” 

As if time itself slowed down, before the doll left his hoof—before he even registered her calling his name—Dash had launched off the stage and stolen the doll away from him.

    “Shh… Mama’s here. Everything’s gonna be okay. Mama will always be here…”

    She was cradling it, stroking its mane carefully, in some kind of trance, lazily flying away from the stage with the doll.

    “Mom?”

    The trance was broken. She hovered in place, then slowly looked down to see what she was holding. Just a doll, wrapped up in… oh, no wonder she lost it. That would be Haze’s swaddling blanket. 

    The doll and blanket fell to the seats below her, well behind Prism, the Discord family and I. All eyes were trained on her, and no eye was any less astounded than the other.

    “Mom,” Haze called again.

    Slowly, ever so slowly, Dash turned her head just enough to get an eye on him.

    It would be safe to say we all felt bad, especially me for setting this up, but Haze… the poor kid looked like he’d seen a ghost. “It’s… just a…” he lost the words.

    Dash’s face fell to the toy below. “A doll.”

    He stepped off his volcano cliff and into the fake lava on top of the stage. “Why would you… you called my name, didn’t you?”

    Her feathers bristled. She didn’t look back at him. “M-maybe you misheard me. I think I should just go now. Sorry I ruined your play.”

    “No, don’t go anywhere!”

    Dash halted her forward motion.

    “Mom, what the hell was that!? That wasn’t too into character; there wasn’t even anything more on your script! Ponies don’t just lose it like that! Why did you call my name?”

    “Haze, buddy—”

    Anger rising up, Haze hopped off the stage. “Don’t you ‘Haze buddy’ me! You’re not telling me something! What is it, huh? You freak out over every danger, you bother me when you know you shouldn’t, you embarrass me all the time, and you know what? I’m starting to think there’s more to it than you just being weird.” 

He galloped down the aisles until he was in front of the door, facing his mother.

    “What happened?”

    Tears welled up and flowed over Dash’s cheeks. She sank to the ground, picked up the doll, and sobbed quietly, whispering all the while, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” over and over again.

    I have made a mistake.

    “Hey—” I went to whisper to Discord, but he simply held a claw up.

    “I understand.”

    With a snap of his fingers, we were all back in the house.