//------------------------------// // Midnight Meetings // Story: Our Equestria // by Nonagon //------------------------------// Peachy Pie lay in her bed and stared at the wall. Sunny Days slept soundly above her; she was older, so she got the top bunk of the bed they shared. Peachy was tempted to climb up and join her, as she’d sometimes used to do before the accident in the park, but she couldn’t seem to muster the nerve. The ladder was just that little bit too far away, the upper bunk too high. Everything seemed a little larger-than-life right now.   One third of Ponyville. She’d heard the statistic being passed around throughout the day, but she still had no idea what to do with it. How many houses was that? How many ponies? The most ponies she’d ever seen had been during one of their many annual gatherings at the town hall; was that all of Ponyville, or only part of it? If she gathered the spirits of all their victims in one place, what would that crowd look like? How high had the cost of their little romp across town been?   But no matter who she asked, nopony seemed willing to discuss exact numbers with her. She guessed that these were things that fillies her age weren’t supposed to think about. Death, it seemed, was an off-limits subject.   Instead, her unwilling mind focused on the few facts they did know. They’d made a tally, her and the other six who’d arrived in the cockpit, of what had been lost among their little group alone. The results had been echoing through her ever since. Twist had lost her father. Piña Colada had lost her mother; Berry Pinch, by extension, had lost her grandmother. Apple Bloom’s family was fine, but her brother was in the hospital after somehow shifting most of a house off of a trapped couple. Snails and Archer had both lost their homes. Snips... Snips had lost everything. Lost. As if it could be recovered. As if everypony were just out there hiding somewhere, waiting to be found. And these were just the losses they knew about, collected from Apple Bloom’s reconnaissance and gossip around town.   Diamond Tiara’s family had lost their daughter. Painful as it was, Peachy Pie hadn’t let them leave that out. Soon, she knew, her own family was going to lose her.   How was she supposed to respond to that? How was anypony supposed to respond to that?   She looked down. She hated how much light there was at night. No matter how thick the curtains were, moonlight always spilled into the room around the edges, so that within a matter of minutes her eyes had adjusted and she could see almost as clearly as if it was daytime. This was a problem that grown-ups never seemed to understand, no matter how many times she explained it: she couldn’t sleep at night because it wasn’t dark. Even her parents, who were supposed to be some of the smartest ponies in town, had only answered her complaints with faint smiles and nods and then replaced her curtains with a set half a shade darker, further cementing in her mind the fact that they never really listened to her at all.   Her room tormented her with ghostly light from all sides. Unwilling, she rolled over and let her eyes be swept over it yet another time. Every detail that she would normally pass over without a thought now grabbed at her, incessantly dragging her back to reality; every poster, every scuff on the rug, every logo and drawing that she and her sister had pinned to their twin posterboards in the far corners of the room. (She and Sunny were going to be famous one day, they’d agreed; they’d just yet to decide on how.) She had so many stories. She had so much life in her. How could a pony with so many stories just stop?   She’d pretended to be sick last night. She’d gone straight to bed as soon as she got home, still pale and trembling, and her parents had believed her without even looking. It was the only way she’d been able to hide the mark that glared up at her even through the night-time haze.   Printed on her flank, cruelly covering up her three cute little peaches, was a large white circle with a pattern of wavy lines running across it.   With another shiver, Peachy Pie looked up. She wondered if, if she told her the truth, Sunny Days would hang one of her sheets off the side of the bed and let her turn the lower bunk into a fort.   Restlessness shook her. The ladder loomed again, at once so inviting and so terrifying.   “How long?” she’d asked. These had been the only words she’d cared to direct at Cicada after she’d managed to stop screaming.   The mouse had performed another of his half-bob shrugs. “Depends when your opponent arrives. Could be as long as a few weeks. Could be as short as a few seconds. No way of knowing.”   No way of knowing. Dread gnawed at her incessantly, like a second hunger just behind her stomach. If she fell asleep now, would she wake up on the dreaded bench in the cockpit? If she didn’t tell her sister now, would she ever get a chance to again?   Her hooves moved on their own. She rolled off the bed and landed soundlessly on the floor. The ladder loomed closer and closer. All at once, Sunny Days’ snoring stopped.   Peachy Pie froze. The silence dragged on for close to a minute; she heard no movement from above. She stayed standing, her breath coming in shaky bursts, until her nerves finally failed. “I’m sorry, sis,” she whispered. Pretending it was where she’d been heading all along, she crept to the door and slipped silently outside.   This wasn’t the first time that Peachy Pie had crept around in the night. She knew where the floors creaked, but this was the first time she tried to avoid those spots. Steadying herself against every noise, she made her way down to the front door and tied on all four of her roller skates, then wheeled her way out the front door.   The night air was cool, but not cold. The distant noise of construction and deconstruction had been going on all evening, but now that it was close to midnight it sounded like everypony had finally gone to bed. Without so much as a glance behind her, she kicked off the doorstep and started to glide down the street, picking up speed. Freedom. Tornado Bolt had explained this feeling of physical liberation to her once, after one of her training flights about a year back. It wasn’t the right word, but it was the closest one they had. In the air, her pegasus friend had explained, she felt like she could do anything. An invisible wall she’d never realized was there would drop away, and it would take everything else with it. You couldn’t be sad when you were going fast; you couldn’t feel tired, or angry, or even happy, only the exhilaration of speed. Flight was the cure to fix all wounds. It was, both literally and figuratively, what kept her going. Peachy Pie knew that her pegasus friend had needed this revelation more than most ponies her age. Right now, however, she clung to it herself. The still air began to skim over her face as she found a hill and streaked down it, half-closing her eyes against the stinging wind. True to form, her mind was forced to let go of everything else to concentrate on movement. Albeit on wheels, she flew. Time sped up and slowed down without pattern. The world blurred as she rocketed down streets and around corners, spinning or alternately lifting up hooves when she felt her mind wasn’t being given enough to do. She carried on through a circuit of Ponyville that she’d been perfecting ever since she’d picked up the hobby, whirling through tighter and tighter passages without ever losing speed. It was only when something unfamiliar loomed up in front of her that she realized the flaw in this plan: she was heading right for Ponyville’s destroyed sector. She had two choices: she could skate on into a nightmarish landscape of almost certain injury or death, or she could stop moving. A small path had been cleared at the edge of the street, just wide enough for a stretcher to be carried through. Peachy Pie sped down this and entered a world of rubble. Collapsed houses flowed onto the road from both sides, spilling uneven hills of wood and plaster ahead and forcing the narrow path to wind between them. The ground was suddenly not nearly as even as it had been; the moonlight, which earlier had seemed as bright as day, barely illuminated the obstacles ahead. Far from being kept calm, Peachy Pie’s mind went into overdrive. She veered sharply left as the first crumbling wall loomed up, then hopped over a collapsed beam, nearly tripping over the gravelly powder on the other side. A hundred different dangers assaulted her senses and she spun away all but on instinct. It got easier, in time. Around the third twist in the obstacle course of Equus’ making, she stopped letting fear fight her actions and gave in completely to momentum. She twirled at every corner, carrying herself around bends that would have been impassable otherwise, and carried herself gracefully over the smaller debris that stood in her way. At some point she passed the crumbling mess where she knew Archer’s house had once been, but she made herself tune it out. She tuned out everything. Nothing could touch her as she danced through Ponyville’s remains, making familiar something as alien and heart-wrecking as death itself. And then, all of a sudden, something did. A different kind of obstacle made its way down the path in the opposite direction, emerging from behind a pile with almost equal speed to her own. Peachy Pie sped on for another half-second, her brain not fully registering what was coming, before she leaned back and tried to will herself to a stop. The two ponies shared a gasp before colliding with one another, inadvertently wrapping themselves around one another as the larger of the pair was bowled over. They tumbled over twice before the grown mare snapped out her wings and flapped hard, drawing them to a halt just before they crashed into the glittering remains of a smashed windowpane. Despite having had the wind more thoroughly knocked out of her, it was the larger pony who recovered and managed to speak first. “Oh my goodness! Are you all right? I’m so sorry...” Peachy Pie just whimpered at first. She slowly wriggled out of the mare’s grip and looked up, her head still spinning. The other victim in the crash had been, as she’d predicted from the silhouette and her touch, the animal caretaker called Fluttershy; she had an unbelievable softness to her, the kind that seemed to extend deep into her, all the way down to her bones. It was only slowly that Peachy realized she’d been asked a question. Experimentally, she twitched each of her legs, then her neck; nothing seemed broken. “I’m fine,” she lied; her head ached and she could feel a cut bubbling up behind her ear, but she didn’t want this pony to spend too long checking her over. The last thing she needed was for this to get back to her parents... or for anypony to notice her new cutie mark. “Oh, thank goodness,” Fluttershy sighed. She smiled, even though she seemed to have come out of the encounter worse; her mane was covered in splinters and dust, and several light scratches ran down her flank. “I’m sorry I wasn’t looking where I was going. My friend Twilight called a meeting, so I was trying to take a shortcut... Oh, I hope I’m not late...” “It’s fine,” Peachy Pie reassured her. “Thank you for watching out for me. You should get going.” “Um... okay.” Fluttershy meekly started to move, then hesitated. “You know, if you’re going to go fast, you should really be wearing a helmet,” she said. “Do your parents know you’re out here?” Uh-oh. Thinking fast, Peachy Pie put all her bits on a single lie. “I... don’t have parents any more,” she whimpered, tearing up a little. This did the job magnificently. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Fluttershy gasped, clasping a hoof over her mouth. “Is there... is there anything I can do?” “No. There’s nothing anypony can do.” She skated a little ways away, ignoring a twinge as one of her knees suddenly really hurt. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should get back... back to the farm. My friends might be wondering where I am.” “Okay.” Fluttershy leaned closer, wearing a smile that gushed sympathy and kindness. “Is it all right if I walk you there?” “No, it’s fine,” Peachy Pie said quickly. “I promise not to go fast again. You should hurry to your meeting. It might be important.” “Oh... okay.” With surprising meekness, the mare backed away and started to trot in her original direction. “Stay safe, okay?” she called back as she left. “You too!” Peachy Pie yelled back with a laugh. She waited until Fluttershy was out of sight before turning and starting to skate away. She immediately cried out in pain when she tried to put weight on her front left leg; her knee felt like it was being smashed by a rock. Whimpering through the pain, she lifted this up and skated away on her three good legs. Speed was still of the essence. She had a meeting to catch. Now that she had a destination in mind, it didn’t take long to clear Ponyville’s wrecked area and loop towards the library. She quickly caught up with Fluttershy, who had slowed down greatly to avoid crashing into any more late-night orphans, and stayed a short ways behind her the rest of the way. Fluttershy seemed to have no fear of being followed, so the trip ran without a hitch. They eventually came to the library, the only building in what seemed all of Ponyville that still had its lights on, and Peachy came to a halt across the street as Fluttershy approached the resident Princess’ home and knocked. After a moment the door was answered, not by Twilight, but by her small, purple assistant. Traitor. Peachy Pie glared at the little dragon, although she couldn’t find it in herself to fully blame him. His life was on the line too, just like the rest of them. As Fluttershy entered and the door started to close, she skated forward and perked up her ears, trying to catch as much of the conversation inside as she could. Just as she came to a halt in front, preparing to press her ear against the wood, the door creaked open again. Spike stuck his head out, and their eyes met. They froze in place for several seconds. In the background could be heard several voices, at once familiar but always, up until now, distant. “Hi hi, Flutter- wow! What happened? Were you attacked by an iguanaphant?” “Um...” “Pinkie, what the heck is an iguanaphant?” “Ooh, that’s a great story! See, a long, long time ago, there lived this teeny tiny...” Tuning the voices of Equestria’s heroes out, Peachy Pie gulped and silently shook her head. To her horror, Spike was breaking into a nervous smile. With a creak, he opened the door a little wider and beckoned her inside. A scream all but bursting from her, Peachy Pie turned and skated frantically away. Spike stayed in the doorway a little longer, watching with disappointment. From behind him, Twilight Sparkle spoke. “Who was that, Spike?” Spike withdrew his head. He glanced guiltily once more at the road, then shut the door. “Nopony,” he answered. “Must have been the wind.”