Three Hundred and Fifty

by Void Chicken

Old Friendships

The train glided noiselessly over the tracks in the late morning sun. Three foals watched the landscape blur past outside.

"Thanks for paying for the trip, Spot Light," Apple Crisp said. "I don't have the money to run across Equestria on a whim."

"I wouldn't have minded paying for Sweetie too," he replied.

"No, Mom has the bits for this. I just had to tell her why I wanted to go."

"Must be one heck of a reason," Apple Crisp said, waving at the train car, "to be allowed to get on a train unsupervised. What about you, Spot Light? What'd you tell your parents?"

"They don't have any of their 'get-togethers' today. They don't care what I do when they don't need me." He didn't take his eyes off the window. "What about yours?"

"They don't know!" Apple Crisp responded joyfully. "Speaking of not knowing, where exactly are we going, Sweetie Belle?"

"I told you: Ponyville. There's something I have to show you. Something that explains why I sing." She watched the scenery slow as the train approached the station.

"You couldn't just tell us?"

"I could, but I have to see it too. If it's there."

The train glided to a stop. The Sweet Apple Acres magiponic farm loomed outside the window.

"Come on," Sweetie Belle said, walking out. "It's this way."

"I hope it's not the farm," Apple Crisp said. "Those buildings stink of fruit."

---

"The Cutie Mark Crusaders complex?" Spot Light asked. "What was wrong with the one in Canterlot?"

Sweetie Belle walked past the sign. "The Canterlot complex didn't have it."

He walked in front of her. "Have what?"

"The reason I sing."

Apple Crisp moved to her side. "I don't get it. I'll just follow you around. But we'd better not be going to every Cutie Mark Crusaders complex in Equestria looking for whatever it is."

"We won't. If it isn't here, it isn't anywhere."

The Ponyville complex was similarly built to its Canterlot counterpart. The complex was smaller, though, and lacked sports facilities or the large amphitheatre. It did have its own magiponic building, with a dedicated aqueduct.

Sweetie Belle led the other two around, weaving a convoluted path among the buildings. "Come on, Apple Bloom," she said quietly. "You had to have left something. Where did you put it?"

Spot Light tilted his head. "Um, who's Apple—"

"There it is!" She pointed at a gleaming brass statue, at an intersection near the administrative buildings. The three foals ran to it.

The statue was of a unicorn filly, life-size, rearing up with a smile on her face. Spot Light looked from the statue to Sweetie Belle. "She looks just like you."

"She is me. Look at the inscription." She read the text embossed on the base:

"But," Spot Light said, still comparing the brass Sweetie Belle to the flesh and blood one, "how can this be you? This looks like some kind of memorial."

"So you're dead?" Apple Crisp asked.

"No," Sweetie Belle answered. "I'm not dead. Even if I should be. Do you remember when I said I was a time traveller from the past? I was telling the truth. My heart was failing, and the doctors said it was incurable. My Mom found a way to take me to this time so I could be healed, but something broke and it can't be fixed, so I can't go back. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and I... we founded the Cutie Mark Crusaders. My Mom, Twilight—she isn't my real mother. She's a... I mean she was a good friend of my big sister's."

The foals stood in silence before Spot Light spoke up. "You know," he said, "when my parents take me to their little gatherings, I hear the rich ponies talk about her. I heard that she just appeared out of nowhere one day and the Princess made her High Magician on the spot. If they knew each other from the past... yeah. Yeah, I could see her being from the past. And with that statue, I could see you going with her."

Apple Crisp looked at the memorial. "So you showed us this so we'd believe you? All right, if you and Spot Light both say so, I can buy it. So you sing because you're from the past, huh?"

Sweetie Belle touched the statue's hoof with her own. "It's more than that. When I was in the hospital back then, I felt so weak. I could barely lift my head. I was going to die. I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. The only thing I could do was lay there, and wait. I had to wait to die. I've never been so scared in my whole life.

"That's why I joined the troupe and decided to sing for the shows. I sing because I can. Because I didn't die in that hospital bed, back then." She looked up at the statue's eternally-smiling face. "I know that Apple Bloom and Scootaloo must have still cared, after I left. Sometimes I like to imagine that they kept the Cutie Mark Crusaders alive and started this whole thing, just so they could help me someday." She sniffled.

Sweetie Belle found herself pulled to the ground by a pair of yellow forelegs wrapped around her. "That's really sweet," Spot Light said.

Apple Crisp added, "They sound like awesome friends. Maybe as awesome as we are. Maybe."

Sweetie Belle smiled. "Thanks. Let's head home before we miss the next train. Let me tell you about the time we tried to take up river rafting. See, Scootaloo's wings were getting better at pushing, so Apple Bloom came up with a plan to get our cutie marks..."

The three foals left the memorial statue.

---

Twilight Sparkle walked through the Canterlot Gardens. It was a bright and sunny day. Every day was a bright and sunny day. Twilight felt that it should have been cloudy, perhaps raining, but the sun shone all the same.

She made her way to the rear of the gardens, through the back gate, past the standing stones, to where the Princess had told her. There, she found it.

A hexagonal platform, with a statue atop each side. Six stone ponies with six familiar faces. Twilight unsteadily approached the stone slab in front of the monument and began to read.

Twilight shakily approached the monument, looking up at her friends' faces. "I'm sorry I didn't visit you all earlier," she told them. "I was planning on seeing you again, but, you know... not like this." She walked to the nearest side of the memorial.

She looked up at Applejack's smiling face. "Oh, Applejack. You were going to show me your new north field, weren't you? You sounded so proud of it. I'm sorry I never got to see it. I should have had more of that cider you wanted me to try, too. I'm sorry, Applejack."

She dragged herself to the next side.

"Fluttershy. You had a new arrival of otter babies. I was looking forward to seeing them. And your bird choir, you had a new song you were teaching them. I'm sure you finished it at some point. I'd give anything to hear it, Fluttershy. I'm sure... it was beautiful."

Legs shaking, she walked to the next.

Twilight couldn't help but chuckle weakly. "You knew just what to put, didn't you, Pinkie Pie? You must have been yourself to the very end." She sniffed, trying her best to follow the epitaph's instructions. "You were going to throw me that big party when I got back, weren't you? I'm sorry I disappointed you, Pinkie."

"I did it, Rarity. I saved Sweetie Belle. She's alive, and she's happy. She even made some new friends. She got her cutie mark, too. Sweetie Belle's going to be a great singer. I bet she'd look stunning in one of your dresses. And I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to be her mother from now on. I know, I know, but she needs a mother more than anything else. Your sister is in good hooves, Rarity. I promise."

Twilight exhaled. "How did you take it, Rainbow? Did you patiently wait by where the apparatus was for me? Did you zoom all over Equestria in the hopes that I simply came back in the wrong place? Did you ever stop to do anything for yourself? I hope you still became a Wonderbolt like you always wanted. And I'm sure you showed them the best flying Equestria's ever seen."

Twilight walked to the final epitaph.

"Sounds like something I'd say," Twilight said. "Of course there has to be six. It has to be complete and organized... just like how Twilight would have wanted it, right?" She looked up at the statue's face, her own face. "If I have a grave here, but nopony knows who I am... then how long has it been since anypony has even been here? Who was the last pony to see you girls? Your children? Your grandchildren? But after them... we've been forgotten, haven't we? Nopony even remembers us. Nopony knows what we did.

"It doesn't even matter if we're forgotten. Being remembered by you is enough. But I just want to see you all, to hear you all, one more time. Just one more time."

Twilight lay down on her own grave. "I miss you all... so much... I tried so hard. I did everything I could. I'm so sorry."

In a forgotten corner of the cemetery, where few ponies ever visited, a unicorn cried.