Friendship Was Magic

by SparklingTwilight

But, There Are Sequels!

Chapter Title: But, There Are Sequels!

"When I was an actor, I spoke like an actor, I thought like an actor, I reasoned like an actor. When I became a Princess, I put aside childish things^{(Note 0)}. Like nursery rhymes. And children's television shows..." - Princess Twilight Sparkle.

"This is not a happy story," Bon Bon wheezed.

"Then don't read it," Lyra responded. "Donate it to the library or make more paper birds or use it for wiping. We've almost exhausted our hygienic paper stockpile!"

"It's your turn to buy."

"I... don't want to go. You know that." She paused. "Quit asking."

Bon Bon grunted, "Neither do I, Lyra-dear, but it's your turn."

Shivering, Lyra continued in a chilling deadpan: "Who's to say whether we remember that right? Memory is malleable. Porous even. Like a sponge. We're out of sponges too." Her face darkened. "Maybe you planted an incorrect seed of a memory? Like a yeerk." ^{(Note: 1 in Author's Notes.)}

"Not again..." Bon Bon sighed, quietly to herself.

"Made me question my sanity. Make me think night is day. Like you did last week about that roach--"

"There was no roach! We don't need more poison! And if we did--it would be your turn to buy."

"--Or when you fooled that wererabbit when you were undercover."

"That was a long time ago," Bon Bon, former secret agent protector of Equestria--a gig she held before trying her luck in acting and in representing actors, and before she opened her famous, though now lamentably defunct side-hustle sweets shop which ended up earning her more than her acting and actors' agent gigs--growled as she reached into a chocolate bar-stuffed tureen.

"Likewise, likewise... it was so long ago when... I... I must have bought that hygienic paper!"

"I bought it," Bon Bon declared. "You were having a panic attack crying about Roseluck and were dizzy and probably deranged sick with--"

Lyra cried out. Then she teared up. "I don't wanna hear about that! No pony wants to! It's done! Over!"

"We've had this conversation." Bon Bon took a breath. "At least this the first part of it... too often. Every time you need to go outside."

"You never go!" Lyra shrieked. "It's round and round like a carousel." She paused. "Not you... in the analogy I mean--"

Bon Bon rolled her eyes.

"I miss carousels."

"We have everything we need. I provisioned us with a stockpile of paper reaching up to the rafters," she gestured to a part of the room that held only a few desolate insect-nibbled rolls and the wreckage of paper birds. "Canned food filling the music room. I got it done. No reason to go outside. Nem. We have options. Dicsérd a napot." Bon Bon chewed on her chocolate. Ridged bittersweet dark chocolate. Then she popped another lump--pillowy caramelized white--to join it.

Lyra sniffed. "I remember... I remember... But seriously... you always slip into Celestia's secret agent argot when you're being bossy-mean." ^{(Note: 2 in Author's Notes.)}

Bon Bon hung her head. "I'm... trying to convince myself," she whispered.

Lyra limply beat her hooves against the wall for emphasis--barely a clop. "No. Praise the sun indeed. We will get through this isolation!"

Bon Bon shifted in the creaking loveseat, her rump hanging a bit over its side, unable to squeeze the bursting cushioning farther back to properly support her lengthwise position.

Lyra brightened: "And we wouldn't have gotten enough supplies without our prepper list!"

"Sure... your extraordinarily detailed scrawls--extending in weird non-linear directions with even weirder..."

"Weirder?"

Bon Bon held up a hoof. "I'll admit Lyra-dear: although they were near-indecipherably scribbled on napkins and those surplus calculating paper spools you 'upcycled',"^{(Note: Reference Image)}, they were strangely accurate... and astute... directions about alternative locations."

"--T'was the only way we could get in excess of what Princess--former Princess Celestia permitted!"

"Yeah. That shady cow dealer... who might... no, she almost certainly was, diverting from the herd, Angel Bunny trading hygienic paper for carrots, and the veterinarian's ivermectin labeled with a portrait of a dog. Weird as usual..."

"Not! Angel will get you anything for carrots: everypony knows this. And like I've said lotsatimes before, our bovine connection insisted she hadn't stolen anything--"

"Doesn't mean she didn't have a partner..." Bon Bon trailed off.

"And, I'll admit, since we're admitting and it's fair: you really do remember everything!"

"Fine, Lyra-dear."

"So, my ideas weren't weird: they were useful."

"Weirdly useful. Come on, Lyra-dear! Let me keep some grounding in sanity! You're eccentric and it's cute--still, I suppose--but we don't meet any ponies for reality-comparison and I need to ascertain what's truth and what's false and what's lies and what's not. I'm in too deep with you here--"

"Like you're deep undercover," Lyra's expression darkened.

"No! Too deep down a rabbit hole--the saying is. This isn't--I'm not putting on a face, Lyra-dear."

"Uh-huh," Lyra wrinkled her muzzle.

"Rabbit hole... I need some reality," Bon Bon huffed. "It's so dizzying distinguishing what's normal and what's not and I'm so tired..."

"That attitude's actually what's weird." Lyra raised an eyebrow and filled one side of her cheeks with a full inflation.

"Back to the point..., Lyra-dear. Don't go squirrel on me now. Although, I'm no longer sure I was working towards a point worth stating."

Lyra let out her inflated cheek with a jolly mocking brrrppptttt. "You weren't. If you had, you'd have remembered."

Bon Bon grimaced. "Fine. The point is: I can't help having a stiffer memory than your holey-cheese one concerning the issue of whose turn it is and whose turn it certainly is not!" She gestured a hoof to her chest. "Also, what you're constantly rambling about is tiresomely predictable." She made a warped face. "And it's disgusting. When we don't like a book--use it as wiping paper. Don't like our bills--wiping paper. Don't like your newest musical composition--wiping paper--though I'm pretty sure that's just talk... you haven't been flushing or else it'd jam..." she trailed off, took a deep breath after muscling through her mess of words, then exhaled heavily through her nostrils.

"...I know," Lyra, the musician, frowned, addressing only part of Bon Bon's question. "It's just we've been running really low. Especially since you broke the bidet. I've been using the sink...."

"I really don't want to hear about... the sink?" Bon Bon coughed. "Foul!... I drink from that! Why not the shower!"

Lyra mumbled, "the shower was...is our special place..."

"The outdoor backyard spigot would be far better...", Bon Bon brainstormed. "No pony is likely to see since the Flower sisters' house has been abandoned..."

"It's so cold outside...." Lyra wiped her tears and, pressing against a wall for support, stumbled over to the loveseat. "Bon Bon." She paused. "Why did the magic end?"

The problems started several years ago.

It was a time of happiness. Sunshine. Lollipops. And ponies.

Earth Ponies, Pegasus Ponies, and Unicorns embraced and worked together.

And free trade flowed.

And ponies got rich and let other ponies do whatever they wanted--no matter how weird they thought what went on in private might be.

But children grew up.

And toy sales were down.

And the actors demanded more compensation.

"They should have paid us what... we were worth," Bon Bon said. "There was enough for everypony. We all could have made hay."

"Bon Bon, you were--are a good agent... but you pushed too far." Lyra bit her lip, teasing it even redder than it already was from many prior worries, probably exacerbated by her lack of nutrients.

"Fewer speaking roles for established actors," Bon Bon grumbled. "They stopped caring about our lives. Our story didn't matter. Just the marketing. And the toys. Too many actors. Mane Six. Cutie Mark Crusaders. Fine. Starlight's villagers. More background ponies crowding the shots. Equiponimorphic tribes of the movie.^(Note3) Then those 'Young Six'. Foreigners undercutting salaries..." Bon Bon shook her head.

"Yona's actually a naturalized citizen--" Lyra tapped a hoof and wobbled as she related random semi-relevant facts. She reached out and braced herself against the ash-burned loveseat that barely held Bon Bon's butt. "Although her husband, Sandbar, the one most ponies think is an Equestrian, is actually a foreigner. His father, who did the mare's share of raising him, is a Yakutian. They moved but never naturalized. Yona, however, born in YakYakistan actually...." she trailed off, catching Bon Bon's glazed-over look. "And it doesn't really matter, right, Bon Bon? We're all out of work just the same."

Lyra squeezed herself next to Bon Bon's head, nearly dumping her on the floor, but she shoved herself in, seated in that weird unique way, straight up and down on her rump and tail, with all the below bones squeezed tight, like a treat-seeking eager dog... which Bon Bon figured was... probably not a side-effect of the dog-dose ivermectin--Lyra'd been sitting like that ever since Bon Bon'd known her. Although, since she had known exactly where to get the goods and she'd never owned a canine... perhaps Lyra had always been using the dog doses whenever she got worms.... But probably not.

Bon Bon growled. And she brought a cigarette to her mouth. "Quiet. Gonna lose some weight."

"And technically," Lyra was in her own world. "You and I are foreigners to each other... of a type. You're an Earth Pony with your strong... perhaps on occasion stereotypically stubborn earthy ways allegedly due to historical intermingling with the donkeys--though we've explored how ridiculous that stereotype was ad nauseum, right?"

Bon Bon, looking up at Lyra, rolled her eyes. "Profiling is broadly fine. In some situations. Necessary, at least."

Lyra cocked her head. It was a well-worn dispute but perhaps some new opinion had developed. It hadn't.

Bon Bon shook her head. "But sure, ponies--creatures--are individuals. I'm not stupid."

"And I'm a Unicorn with my magical horn." Lyra sparked it. "And, according to 'popular' earth pony studies," she made air quotes with her hooves, "this means I am inherently doomed to have 'eccentricities'..."

Bon Bon guffawed.

"And it wasn't too long ago, geologically speaking, that our intermingling was considered bad. Ponies thought descendants would be weaker in both tribes' powers. "Evolutionary throwbacks" like donkeys and mules. But even that's weird because donkeys have earth pony-adjacent magic! Nopony's studied it well and the donkeys don't see fit to share much secrets but I've been watching Matilda and Cranky Doodle and--have you seen how much they can carry and keep going no matter what? And Cranky Doodle saved those Crazy Mark Crusader fillies from that mine collapse even though they didn't realize it and left him hanging there pinched by the stones until I slipped in and magicked a crate over to shore up a bit of the--" Lyra shook with zest.

Bon Bon yawned. So many days with just the two of them had meandered down multitudinous retrod paths.

Lyra recalled the FIRST time Bon Bon's sharp ears stiffened at that tale--when the earth mare had gone Unicornistic.... Lyra paused in her muddled thoughts. That expression did elide tribal stereotypes: weird. Maybe there was a synonym that wouldn't make ponies think those things? But DID all ponies think those things when they heard that word? Was it really necessary to change it? She was rambling in her thoughts and, with great effort, managed to return to the point. Lyra had lightly assured Bon Bon she had been completely unharmed by the adventure, but she soon found herself pinned, delving into excruciating detail under harsh directed lighting. Then she was bound--but not dangerously so--the rope was edible... though unreachable by her mouth. And, though Bon Bon had been incensed and scary and (briefly) bossy-mean, they'd made up and made good memories. But, over the course of the past few years, after Bon Bon had heard Lyra reference the story and thrilling interrogation-debrief casually about one hundred and seven times (figuratively...Lyra couldn't remember the precise count, though Bon Bon probably did), Bon Bon had increasingly signaled that she found references to the tale overly-boring. Sensing a signal: Lyra re-calibrated.

"And-And-And at one point, when populations were really low and our tribes almost died out when those windigoes were wending about, or maybe the windigoes came after the fighting... ponies, according to that history book, weren't pleased with two mares... or stallions... living together in an exclusive relationship when... according to the book... they could have 'at least' in a copacetic communitarian herd have had a chance to be producing--" Lyra flushed red.

Bon Bon lit a match. Flicker flicker, orange and red.

"Oh..." Lyra stumbled out of the loveseat and crawled away. "The fumes..." Plume of gray.

"That's why I warned you." Wave away.

Lyra left the room. It took her a while, but she managed to drag herself along the wall to depart, more or less in dignity, though probably regretting her geometrically bizarre seating arrangement.

And Bon Bon did wait, frowning as her essentially-skeletal wife retreated. She'd tried to make her eat. But Lyra had dissented--rather, she assented to eat anything but nutrition. Lyra had chewed on rubber and sawdust--and been sick. Bon Bon force-fed her actual food--leftover shop candies. But she vomited the tincture up. Bon Bon blinked, watching Lyra struggle to depart. And Bon Bon tapped an armrest. And Lyra was gone.

The match moved to the paper pressed betwixt the earth mare's quivering lips. Black burning down, match dying--dead.

Bon Bon lit up.

And Derpy's solicitors were really good.

She "just didn't know what went wrong", but her solicitors were certain whose fault it was. The Law Offices of Flim and Flam brokered a settlement for a lot of bits.

But other pegasi started having close calls and "accidents" and herds of well-coutured lawyers--Gladmane Barristers, Inc.: A Gladmane Company, Svengallop, P.C., and of course Flim and Flam, along with many others, descended on studio back lots.

Rich Ponies with Ideas^TM thought they could make tons more money with a reboot--its actors would sign ironclad contracts absolving the company from any liability whatsoever for any potentially dangerous mishaps that could feasibly occur at or near or driving to or from or above or below the studio.

A reboot would be a clean start, unpoisoned by the necessity for contract renegotiation and the presence of toxic suits.

So they blew it all up.

Twilight Sparkle's utopia of friendship would come crashing down.

Cheaper actors.

Fresh toys to sell.

It would be so much easier. How many Rainbow Dashes did one foal need? Lots of Pinkie Pies, though: thankfully. Those sales had bought at least one more season by themselves. The mirror pool idea, executives agreed: because any executive who didn't agree would have been fired for incompetence, had been a great-an amazingly unique idea--but there was only one Rainbow Dash. ^{(Technically two, but nopony remembered the Chrysalis-grown copy. That episode had been a cow pie all-the-way throughout).}

If only they--the marketers, the Rich Ponies With Ideas^TM that is--could have been more creative, then still more money would have been made.

The Young Six weren't marketable. They were a huge mistake. Despite panglossian predictions of ponies like Lyra: tribalism prevailed. Ponies wanted to see Ponies: not Yaks and Dragons and whatever that disturbingly gaudy bug-like thing was (obviously a neo-changeling, but we're describing matters with the voice of the unwashed masses now) and the toy manufacturers couldn't figure out how to create something waterproof that wouldn't mold so the hippo-pony or whatever^{(Note: hippogriff)} wasn't sold either since it obviously was going to be thrown in the water no matter what they did and some Gladmane or other would sue them for creating an attractive nuisance even if they labeled it infloatable or something.^{(Note: an intentional neologism.)}

Filthy Rich contracted with kirins for an ersatz 'hippo' pony design on the sly (with anti-mold technology!), but even that didn't sell well and ended up in the bargain bin--which was probably a blessing since some of them randomly burst into flame every third quarter of each moon--not a huge problem when the toy was submerged but several shops burned down. Kirin ingenuity was unsurpassed... but even though they periodically announced that they had solved "the issue", they had an enduring vexatious problem whereby their innate fire magic got scattered into whatever they infused with their talent, ultimately leading to tchotchkes sparking and everything burning everything down, which is why kirin-crafted goods were officially banned in Equestria.

Apple Bloom, rather, the spoiled rotten actress who played her, had an assistant procure one of those knock offs--a tchotchke not too expensive and it didn't look as cheap as it was--for her oft-forgotten co-star and headmare of the Cutie Mark Crusader Fan Clubs across Equestria (that's how she got her eponymous cameos, though her surname was shifted from the Prench dialect meaning 'Bean Field' to the Ponish equivalent "Seed" for show purposes): Babs Benefiel.

The studio burned down.

And friendship was gone.

An opportunity to easily cancel the series while collecting insurance and proceeding with a small lawsuit against Apple Bloom, a more lucrative one against the purveyor, Filthy Rich, and an extremely lucrative one against the manufacturing kirins--assuming they would ever pay out. Arguments by an avocado-maned advocate had been advanced that since the kirins were a sovereign entity, they couldn't be pulled into an Equestrian court. It created quite a headache for Equestrian head-of-state Celestia, which she was glad to pass off to movie-star slash politician Twilight Sparkle who was replacing her after vacillating ponies decided that what they really needed to guide them wasn't a politician with hundreds of years of experience but somepony who played her replacement on television.

The Rich Ponies with Ideas^TM were really excited about having crafted reality or at least predicted it and they were all champing at their bits⁴ for some big kickbacks. But Twilight Sparkle--she'd legally changed her name to her award-winning character's--hadn't played polo with them, as the expression goes. Their new ruler hadn't been as big into friendship--at least the tit-for-tat kind--as she had appeared to be on the tiny television screens. Three of those big-shot ponies ended up in jail for tax fraud during the dark days as Twilight sought more sugary alfalfa ^{(Note: The expression is equivalent to "red meat")} for her electorate to show them that indeed she was independent and could deliver some visible signs of progress in-between spa dates and midnight mescaline madcap marzipan soirées with one of the hellion Pinkie Pies and her even-less reputable friends.

Still--at the moment--visions of bits danced like sugar cubes in the executive's heads.

It was October 2019.

Bon Bon's sweets shop was still selling... it hadn't burned down. But the crowds had thinned. Most sales were to gawkers at the damaged lot. And Lyra was still playing when she fancied, and hanging out with her Flower friends.

Then the PonyPox came.

The show had held off the doom, we later learned.

"And I had to surrender my concession," Bon Bon frowned. "Most of our money came from selling sweets to the Pinkie Pies, the Twilight Sparkles, Fluttershy, Applejack, the Pinkie Pies."

"She had a lot of stunt doubles," Lyra reminisced, stumbling over to Bon Bon's side.

"Can you turn me over?"

"I'll get the lever," Lyra went out. Bon Bon itched really bad. Lyra was gone a long time... Too long. Bon Bon wheezed and rolled to the door, reached it and pushed it open a muzzle wide. Outside, in the cold, Lyra had collapsed, her too-thin frame rising and falling slightly--rib cage protruding, teeth chattering. "Bonnie... I'm. Tired."

Roseluck, one of the Flower sisters who, eponymously, sold flowers, had died of a cough. Then her sister Daisy couldn't breathe. And she was gone. "But the house isn't sold because the third one's still alive...and... what's her name?"

"Lilly of the Valley"

"Oh yeah. She liked the taffy. She's in long-term care?"

Lyra made a sound.

The sickness spread through Ponyville.

Bon Bon sniffed and rubbed Lyra's swollen ankle; then she placed some ice on it.

"I think I'll get better," Lyra whimpered.

Bon Bon offered her some hay. "You need to eat something."

"It hurts so much when I'm worried," she glanced at her stomach.

"You've been worried ever since we sheltered."

"And you keep eating."

Thus Bon Bon's trouble in rising from the loveseat.

"We should have gone on walks..."

"Too dangerous," Lyra gulped. Bon Bon stuck a spoon in her mouth. Lyra actually chewed--the hay and chocolate melange scooped into the spoon, not the spoon itself.

"Reruns of the show used to make us happy."

"But you kept screaming and throwing chocolate."

"...It was--I kept thinking about the bad end. No show. No store. I get so mad."

"So, we didn't," Lyra swallowed some food, "watch the friendship lessons. We just... sort of bickered," she observed.

"It's tiring... doing nothing."

"So tired."

Lyra ate and got a smidgen better. But life couldn't go on like this. The show's replacement generation of actors was debuting next week. And, more importantly, LyraBon's supplies would soon give out.

Without the show, there wasn't as much friendship. And the PonyPox was the first wind from the windigoes--the creatures of cold and hate or indifference that ravaged the Equestria of old.

Lyra turned off the television. Two years, more or less, had passed, since their children's show with its joy and the naivete it brought into their lives about life, love, success, and joy--and all that it did to bring them together. They and the other actors had been wrapped up in the show's collaborative optimism and anything seemed possible, including even a relationship between two performers of different tribes and personalities. The show grew and changed. Twilight Sparkle, the show's neurotic librarian next-door (and actual dyspeptic coffee-fiend-cum-mescaline addict) became a Princess, her friends became adventurers, then teachers and leaders. The show left its roots and Bon Bon and Lyra back in Old Ponyville while everypony else moved on to the shiny expensive latest school sets in New Ponyville.

"Thoughts on the new show?" Lyra asked the one who had held giddy her and gave her some direction.

"Bleh," Bon Bon batted a foreleg at the one who had made her smile and forget her aches and pains: the weirdness wasn't novel any more. She strained her foreleg farther to grab a cigarette from her pack. Her last pack.

"It wasn't terrible. Twilight even had a cameo at the start. And Rarity had a really good scary role--got to show her teeth!"

"It was insulting to them. They were literally ponysonifying the toys that their souls were marketed into."

"Work is work."

"Yeah."

"And Rarity may be cast in the new PonyPox Zombies film as a villain--"Maretainment Today" said nopony figured a children's actor could have such a range--"⁵

"You have that range," Bon Bon spoke as Lyra's agent.

"'s all right..." Lyra trailed off.

There was a long pause. Lyra smiled, wanly. "I want the magic back."

They stared at each other. Bon Bon blinked first and put down her unlit cigarette. "We need to go out."

"The backyard? Bathroom... so cold. I'll fall."

"No. We have to try IT again."

"Oh. Outside," Lyra blinked. "But--we could get sick."

"We're dying here. Lyra-dear. Alone. Unloved...." Bon Bon gulped hard. Then she spoke: "we don't even love each other any more."

"I think we do..."

"Maybe. I don't love myself." Silence. "I need to... I need to open my shop again."

"How will we afford it?"

"I won't."

"This is a bad plan," Lyra shut her eyes.

"I don't have friends. I'm too abrasive--too "bossy-mean". But you do. Did. When you went out. What about Cup Cake? Her bakery? We can work for her--do something. Even part time."

"...Okay." Lyra's eyes remained shut.

"Let's go." Bon Bon shifted and rolled to get herself off the loveseat, filled only by herself. "Through the door."

The PonyPox wasn't the last ill wind.

But, their prognosticating Princess proclaimed it was getting warmer each day. There was less sickness and more and deeper friendship forged from the cold flames of distance and pain.

The door to their abode, once red, now painted black after an avant-garde PonyPox quarantine project decorating decision, loomed menacingly at the end of the room.

"Bonnie..." Lyra stumbled over to Bon Bon, who had, with great effort, stood up, and with greater still--remained standing. "I'm scared."

Bon Bon, though filled with a nauseous feeling, reached out for her wife and held her in her forelegs, bracing her bulk against the loveseat to prevent total collapse.

Lyra whispered: "We could get sick and die."

"Hold on...dear Lyra." Together, they stumbled towards the door. "The magic that... the show... we... had might have ended... but we can keep it going. Maybe friendship can... we... our friends can..." She huffed and puffed with every dragged step.

"Wait."

"I'm not going to stop."

"No. Let's just--let's take it slow."

A pause.

"Okay."

"It's always going to be here... in our hearts. We know what we had. Can't have it... exactly again... but... could re-build. Try harder, get better... stronger."

Bon Bon smiled a wan slight upturn of her mouth. "Fine."

A while later, they creakily wound their way to the exit: the world without their show, without unity, without sanity as former actress Princess Twilight Sparkle proclaimed Wednesdays "Friendsdays" and required everypony to do a "ladybug awake" dance--just like the one from the show--to raise morale, without Bon Bon's shop, and without many of Lyra's friends. But a world that, after they joined it, would have them both.