Honey Muffin stumbled sharply as her hoof struck a rock, her eyes suddenly flying open. She might as well have kept them closed; the trees still looked the same, it was just the rocks underhoof that changed, tripping her in the darkness of pre-dawn. "I'm okay, I'm okay!" She protested blearily, taking a moment to gather her legs under herself.
Bright Eyes glanced back at her, ears flicking forward to listen as the other filly trotted behind her, trying to catch up. She'd woken up Honey Muffin only a little while ago, and it had been even darker than it was now. She had her route to complete, after all, and she couldn't finish it stuck out in the middle of the forest. Neither rain not sleet nor hail nor emotional suffering would stop the mail! She could hardly leave Honey Muffin behind, sleeping or not, but she was beginning to rethink her strategy of bringing her along. She was falling asleep even as she stumbled behind her, doing her best to keep up even though she was bone-tired. Cold, too, but she wouldn't admit it, even when Bright Eyes noticed her shivering. Trying to be brave, perhaps, so Bright Eyes wouldn't worry.
Bright considered this for a moment, then came to a halt, waiting for Honey Muffin to catch up. "Grab on."
"Grab - what? Pfhaw!" She sputtered as a yellow tail abruptly slapped her in the face. "Why'd you do that?"
"You were supposed to grab it." Bright Eyes said simply, backing a little closer to Honey Muffin, not trusting her to stay upright long enough to get to her. "You grab onto my tail, and I'll lead you around the obstacles."
Honey Muffin stared down at her yellow tail for a few moments, debating it, then leaned forward to grab a hold. She might have protested longer if she wasn't so bone-tired. After spending most of the previous night gallivanting around the forest, her legs were dead weight, aching dully as she stumbled along behind her roommate. She didn't even have the brightness of day to keep her awake; in the ever-present gloom of the Everfree Forest, it was nigh-impossible to tell when her eyes were open or shut.
It was easier to follow behind Bright Eyes now that she had something to hang onto, so she stumbled after her a little less violently, angling gently to one side of the path to avoid a fallen tree that she only noticed as they passed it. As her eyes drifted over the fallen trunk, something in the periphery of her vision caught her attention, making her drop Bright Eyes' tail.
"Hey! That's the - the thing! I saw it yesterday!" She called, turning to trot towards it, stumbling and weaving through the underbrush. "C'mon!"
It was only a few moments to stumble her way over to the circle of glowing stones, gleaming out at her from the darkness like a beacon. She turned to smile at Bright Eyes proudly, despite her exhaustion, as the pegasus caught up to her. "I found it last night when I was looking for you. Maybe we could take one of the little stones on the edge, you know, for our Winter Wishes tree?"
"That would be nice. I think Mom would like that."
Mom? What did her mother have anything to do with that? Honey Muffin looked between the somber Bright Eyes and the glowing stones blearily, trying to put the pieces together, despite the early hour and her aching limbs. What did Bright's mother have to do with a pony-sized circle of glowing stones? Bright Eyes' mom was dead, she didn't -
"Oh Celestia. Bright Eyes, I'm so - I didn't - your mom -?"
"Loved glowbugs." Bright Eyes murmured, smiling faintly as she gazed down at the stones before them. She stood in place for a moment, her peaceful expression at odds with the tension in Honey Muffin's face, and moved forward. She knelt in front of the stones, her knees resting against the glowing rock, before she lowered herself to lay her cheek against the cairn. "She and I hunted down these stones and put them all through the garden, so we could see glowbugs whenever we wanted." She spoke softly, and Honey Muffin had to edge a little closer to hear her.
"She called me her little glowbug when I was little. She joked about it, said Celestia had misheard 'Bug' for 'Bub' and gave me bubbles for my symbol instead of buggles." She smiled gently, and let her eyes close as she nuzzled against the rock. She was quiet for several moments before speaking again, her voice as small and fragile as a child's. "I miss her."
Honey watched for a moment, eyes dark with shared pain, before she knelt beside her, pressing her shoulder against hers in a gentle motion of support. "She sounds like she really loved you."
"She did. And I loved her, too." Bright Eyes sniffled, but when she opened her eyes, she was smiling, gazing at Honey Muffin instead of the rocks. She was quiet for a moment before she spoke, usually a sign that she was going to come up with something strange, like 'Watch out for the muffin trolley' or 'Today I upped the down motion.' But instead of any of those things, she said, "I think she would have liked you," and before Honey could reply, she bent down to tug at a medium-sized stone on the edge of the cairn, freeing it from the earth.
"For our garden." She explained simply, and a moment later Honey Muffin reached out to help her lift the stone into her mailbag, storing the glowing cargo safely away.
Slowly, as the oppressive darkness began to lift over the Everfree Forest, so too did the silence between the two mares, broken at first by tentative questions that soon grew into a steady stream of conversation. Although they had been living together for months, neither had mentioned their families in any great detail; now Honey Muffin regaled Bright Eyes with the infamous Winter Wishes That Almost Wasn't, a tale she remembered fondly from her childhood involving way too many candles on the Winter Wishes tree, and in turn Bright Eyes described how her mother had once filled the entire house with dragonflies in a misguided attempt at conservation.
Before either of them expected it, they found themselves at the edge of the Everfree, looking out at Ponyville as the morning dawned over it, bright and new and more welcoming than anything Honey had ever seen in her whole life. They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the quiet of the town without the streets filled with bustling ponies, before Bright Eyes broke the silence.
"I should get to the post office, I don't want to be late." She said with a determined little nod, and Honey Muffin could almost picture the next plaque for 'Best Mailpony' reflected in Bright's eyes. Her determination faded a little as she looked Honey over, bedraggled and run ragged by the forest. "Are you going to be able to get home okay?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine. You deliver the mail, I'll see you when you're done." Honey Muffin smiled at her, giving her tail an (she hoped) energetic little swish.
Bright Eyes lifted off, hovering in place for a moment as she eyed her, struggling to see her out of both eyes at once. Abruptly, she fluttered close to nuzzle her cheek, careful not to bump into her too violently, her warm nose sparking a flood of warmth across Honey Muffin's face. For whatever reason, the first thought that drifted through her mind wasn't I'm being nuzzled by Bright Eyes, but She certainly has improved her depth perception. "Thank you for coming to find me, Honey. I'm not mad at you anymore."
Honey Muffin smiled, more brightly than she meant to, and gave her mane a shy little toss as Bright Eyes pulled away. "You should go, I don't want you to be late to work," she insisted gently, one hoof pawing the earth as Bright Eyes smiled down at her, her misaligned eyes warm and trusting. Honey Muffin somehow felt warmer and more trustworthy, just by that look alone.
"Right!" Bright Eyes nodded, and kicked into the air, somersaulting once before she took off at top speed, disappearing in a serpentine blur of blue and yellow. "See you soon, Honey!"
Honey Muffin made the rest of the way home with a bounce in her step, despite the leaden exhaustion that still weighed down her limbs. Even as she collapsed into her bed, too tired to care about the dirt that got tracked onto her sheets, Bright Eyes' words still rung in her ears. The last thing she saw before she fell asleep was her smile, brilliant and fairly glowing with happiness. Glow-Bug, indeed.