The front door to her house closed behind Rose. It had been a good day at the shop. Before Twilight Sparkle had moved to Ponyville the flower shop had seen two or three customers a day, four on the outside if it was a holiday. And they had only asked for the bread-and-butter flowers: daisies, sunflowers, anything that could be made into decoration for a salad. But these days there were three really plush restaurants in town and they all got their flowers from Rose’s shop. The bits rolled in. She was a happy pony. She did what she liked best, after all.
But it had cost her too. Rose looked at the piano, she hadn’t touched the keys in months now. She still had a dozen unfinished ideas in the back of her head but there was no way she could write them down now, not until they were done. It was a quirk of hers. Once the song was written down it was, for lack of a better word, dead.
They were like her flowers. She loved them dearly, from the first day when she put a seed or bulb into the earth to the wonderful moment when they opened their first blossoms. But once you cut them they were dead. Oh yes, they still made ponies smile, either by looking or tasting great. But their days were numbered once the pruning shears came into play. Once they turned into a product.
Rose looked at the frames on the wall and the pictures on the shelf. There was the one with her old band back in Manehatten. They had made a record, even sold a few but the great breakthrough had not come. Their music had too much of an edge, the producer had said. That they would have to play more of a happy tune, something that made ponies smile. Nopony bought music to feel bad about the world.
Rose took the picture in her hooves and smiled a nostalgic but sad smile. “We had a good run though, didn’t we?” she asked the silent room. She remembered the run down neighborhood they had lived in for a week or so. Before the landlord had given them a seventy five percent discount on the rent until the repairs were done. That short period had been their most productive time. The music had been an outlet for all the frustration. From the dripping sink and the noisy neighbors to the insecurity of not knowing what your cutie mark meant even six years after getting it. They had cried it all out at the world. It had not been the same after the craftsmen had finished. How could you keep a grudge at the world if everyone was so nice? And once the others found their true callings the band had been done for. Old Gums was a dentist now, Straddle made carriages and the others ... she could hardly remember their voices. But it had been the best time of her live.
Until she had returned to Ponyville, confessed to her parents that she had dropped out of college and wanted to take over the family business. The first day in the shop had finally opened her eyes to what her flower cutie mark really meant, what she was going to do for the rest of her life.
Rose wiped a bit of dust from the picture, then put it back. She walked over to the piano, opened the fall and played a few notes. The instrument had not been tuned and the melody came out wrong and garbled. She sighed. “Goodbye to the jungle.”