Daphne didn’t bother planning funerals for either her mother or her little sister. It wasn’t like anyone cared. Least of all Steven or Liana.
Hard. Why was everything so hard? It all felt painful, and truthfully, part of her didn’t know why. What about all this did she just not get? Daphne didn’t know, but she desperately wished she did get it. It’d make her feel a lot less hopeless and angry and sad if she understood Equestria Online. Or maybe just Equestria.
But she didn’t, and so fumed and paced around her room as the world quickly changed and collapsed around her. Her father, her mother, and her little sister were all gone now. It’d be up to her alone to take care of her little siblings.
She knew she wasn’t up for the job.
Custody wasn’t a difficult thing to get. Daphne was eighteen now, going on nineteen in several months. A job was a more difficult thing to acquire. Her father might have had an expensive life insurance policy, but her mother didn’t. Estate taxes, combined with subsisting off of the life insurance for almost a year before her mother and sister did the unthinkable, meant there was less money there than before. Any investments that might have been set up a year ago went down the toilet, and inflation was going crazy, what with the sudden deaths of millions of people in America.
There was still a decent chunk there to work with, but it was more like a larger than normal emergency fund now than it was savings as was planned. Would she even be able to count on the bank to hold it for her if things kept getting worse? She wondered how weird it would be to pull it all out in cash now while things were stable. She couldn’t know how long the stability would last. The cracks were forming.
The stability persisted though. After a few weeks of searching, she found a position in a warehouse, loading and unloading merchandise onto trucks. It wasn’t fun work; it was both boring and exhausting to her. But it made money, and paid well, considering the increasing importance of the job as the days went on. There might have been less people to buy things, but there were also less people to load and ship important food and equipment.
She even made friends with some of the people there who despised Equestria Online, just as she was coming to do. They talked about eventually wanting to move farther east, to places like North Dakota and Texas once things started getting really bad. As if things weren’t already bad. It seemed like a good plan anyway, although she didn’t know how great it would be to work on a farm or in an oil field. Steven and Liana certainly wouldn’t like it. It was a good idea though.
Daphne wondered if her siblings even noticed, and if they did, if they cared. Why did she have to care so much? It’d be so much easier to get over it and give into the fantasy everything she heard about was. How great would it be to pretend a place better than heaven existed in real life? A place she could go to and live with her family in, where she would never have to think about anything ever again?
She was unable to pretend though, much as she wanted to.
It was around when she started working when she finally heard familiar voices coming from her siblings’ PonyPads. She had to force herself to close her eyes tight and head up to her bedroom, lest she start bawling right there. It was getting very hard to mask all the sadness she felt, if she was masking it at all before.
The two of them told her about it when she came back down to cook dinner for them.
“Apparently Olivia’s already about to turn nine in a few weeks,” her little sister said. “She’s already in third grade.”
“That’s great,” Daphne sighed, a hand on cheek to hold her head up. She couldn’t make her voice seem emotionless anymore. “I’m glad for her.”
“And apparently Mom met some of Dad’s friends?” she continued. “She said you’d probably like them if you met them. Also they all still wanna talk to you. Probably more than they do us.”
Daphne didn’t say anything this time. She only let out a long breath and closed her eyes. What was she supposed to say? Everyone already knew how she felt. She really, really wanted to just ‘get it’.
“I guess you’re never gonna try and talk to them again, are you?” Steven asked.
“I’ll let you use my PonyPad if you want,” Liana offered, extending it out to her as Daphne finally got up and picked through the cabinet for something to feed them. “We can eat dinner later.”
Daphne shook her head silently, then brushed some of her hair out of her face. How long had it been since she’d cut her hair? The thought of asking her mother if she wanted to go to a hairstylist soon was close to being called out, until she remembered that her mother wasn’t around anymore.
“Are you okay, Daffie?” the girl started again. “Because you’ve been nothing but depressed lately.”
“And you’re not?” Daphne asked back. “How am I supposed to be anything but?” Hardly anything outside of something melancholy and depressive sounding entered her voice.
“No?” Liana shrugged. Before she could ask why not, her little sister continued, “Probably for the same reason why you seemed happier when you actually talked to Dad.”
“Yeah? Well that was before… everything.” Daphne rested her chin in her hand, and closed her eyes again for a long moment. Everything she wanted to tell the two of them probably wouldn’t matter anyway.
She told them anyway. “We have to stick together,” she said without opening her eyes. “We can’t die like them.” Why was she the one who had to tell this to them? It took only one second to remember how empty the house was these days.
The two only stared back silently, offering no reply as she got out food for dinner. “And you really shouldn’t be using those things anymore either,” she continued. “Celestia’s gonna get to you like she got to Olivia. And then…”
And then she’d be alone. How could her own mother just abandon them like this? Even if Equestria was real, how could she leave them alone like this? She barely even tried to convince them. Her mother just up and left. Wasn’t that proof enough that she thought what she was doing was suicide? Daphne shivered and breathed deeply.
“Seems like it’d be better in there than out here,” Steven muttered under his breath as he left the kitchen. Liana only shook her head and went away, too, leaving her alone. She wasn’t going to be able to convince them not to upload, and she knew that. It might not happen now, but sooner or later, those two would go to the Experience Center, and that would be it.
Daphne cried for the second time that day. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. She might never be okay again.
Candle Light played chess and chatted about ponies around town with Soft Step and Careful Calling when the former was stolen away by one of her friends.
It happened every so often, but Candle Light didn’t mind. Neither did Careful Calling, for that matter. She thought it might upset her, although maybe she was okay with it since it gave her a chance to check the mare out, even if she pretended not to.
“When are you gonna ask her out?” Candle Light asked with a knowing grin. “Go put the moves on her!”
Careful Calling wore a bashful smile as her face went red. “M-maybe I will, you don’t know,” she said shyly. Then her smile dropped as she continued, “I’m pretty sure she likes that other mare though, Agile Trace? I don’t really see why; maybe because she tells jokes?”
“So what? You gotta shoot your shot, right? Don’t let her get away! We could do your makeup and find a nice dress so you could ask her on a date.”
If Careful Calling wasn’t frowning before, she was now. “I wish it was that simple. You know how I want her to emigrate here soon? Well, that mare she likes seems bent on making sure nopony in her group ever does, and I don’t know why. That other stallion, too, even though they don’t like each other. And they all just go along with it! What’s up with that?”
“Yeah, that sounds ridiculous. That’s a bit like how my daughter is, but even she’s coming around.” Well, was coming around, at least. The unicorn didn’t know anymore.
“Isn’t one of their friends already here?” she continued. “Renown Composition?”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t think they should emigrate either, apparently. Actually…” Careful Calling looked around as though checking if anypony would overhear their conversation, then continued in a whisper, “I heard that they think she’s been acting weird lately. I haven’t seen her around– I barely talk to her– but that’s what Soft Step told me her friends are saying.”
“It’s probably just the same thing as me,” she said. “I’m not the same pony I was when I first emigrated. I bet that happens to a lot of ponies actually.”
It wasn’t long before Soft Step returned and the three of them laid on their backs at the park, staring up at the sky. It wasn’t overcast today like it usually was, although puffy clouds floated by, occasionally blocking the shining sun. It was an especially good afternoon to spend with her friends before her daughter got out of school. Or maybe Crystal Clear could pick her up today.
Soft Step told them basically what Careful Calling told her, about Renown Composition anyway. Candle Light listened politely. She couldn’t say she particularly cared for the mare and the sort of dynamic she heard she had with Agile Trace and the other stallion, how none of them were being open with each other, but thought it was interesting what she heard anyway. It did make a few ideas spin in her head about how limitless Equestria was and how fine tuned things could be made to be.
“Like, what does she think happened?” Soft Step asked to nopony in particular. “A copy of her was made? She’s been here for a year. She’s probably just been changing.”
“Yeah, that’s what I would think, too,” Careful Calling agreed. Candle Light nodded politely, but didn’t say anything. She was getting caught up in her own thoughts.
At the university in Canterlot she went to with Rising Ranks, they learned about how Celestia could control a pony’s perception of time to give them perspective lives that were longer than that of the Outer Realm. She already knew that, of course. First hoof, too, with her family and how they visited from outside of Equestria.
It did make her think about the other kinds of things Celestia could do though. All Candle Light had to do was think about when she wanted to see her children and they would appear, but what if they didn’t want to see her? Of course, it was just a hypothetical; she doubted Celestia would do something like that in her case, given Night Watcher’s rant at her. But what about her wife? What if she wanted a husband instead, and wouldn’t settle for just anypony else?
It got Candle Light to think about the implications of just how far things could be stretched in the name of satisfaction. It certainly wouldn’t have made her smile ten years ago to consider like it did now. Crystal Clear would be getting exactly what she wanted either way, wouldn’t she? There wouldn’t even be much that needed to change. It might not even require a copy of anypony to pull off, honestly.
Was it strange how fully Candle Light had given herself over to Equestria? If she was on the outside looking in at her family, would her perspective be different?
Then the unicorn pushed the thought fully out of her mind, never to be considered again. She was getting good at doing that.
Not that she needed to. Night Watcher was much too stubborn and unaccepting to be anything but the real thing. Somehow, in spite of three of her children still being out there, Candle Light knew one of them would require her full attention before they ever agreed to emigrate. The only trouble was how.
It was trouble for another day. Right now, she laughed with her friends and stared up at the sky, picking out shapes of animals and other things seen in the clouds.