Finally I've found that I belong here.
Chapter published 24th Nov 2013
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Late December AC 1216
The delicate chime of a fine china cup reuniting with its saucer rang around the small kitchen of Bon Bon’s cottage as the confectioner set down her now empty cup.
“It feels like the end of era, you know?” The cream coloured mare said as she glanced over to her companion.
“Hmm?” the minty unicorn seated beside her replied. Or rather non-replied, in that often annoyingly non-committal way of hers.
“I guess this makes it all official then.” the earth pony continued, taking in the sorry sight of what was left of the small cake they had been sharing. Partaking in tea and cake - what a splendid way to share an afternoon with a friend.
“I guess it does.” Lyra agreed, gently setting her own tea cup down onto its saucer. While her telekinesis would allow her to swing the cup around the room with ease, whenever it was just her and Bon Bon together the unicorn would restrict herself to using only her hooves in deference to her earth pony friend.
“Is that the last of them?” Bon Bon asked, motioning to the set of saddlebags sitting by the front door - the dirty old fabric, its original pink and white colouring now just a faded memory, showed years of extensive use and loving repair. Resting at the side of the ancient baggage sat a trio of harps of various sizes and ages.
“Yes, that’ll be everything moved out.” Lyra was finding it hard to look her friend in the eye, instead staring intently at the tea leaves scattered around the bottom of her cup with an intensity that would make Madame Pinkie proud.
Reaching across the table, Bon Bon placed a single forehoof across her friends pair, crossed as they were at the ankle.
“You couldn’t leave them here forever you know,” the earth pony said gently, “You know where you belong, so it’s time to take the plunge and do it for real. You’ve been pretty much living with your herd full time for months now, it’s time to take the last of your things and make a statement.”
Lyra nodded her agreement, but said nothing for the moment.
“I know, you’re right,” the unicorn said eventually, “I should have cleared out my stuff a long time ago. I mean, I’ve been herding for over a year now. If it wasn’t going to work out we’d have known by now, right? I just liked having some of my stuff still here I guess. It made me feel like, I don’t know, maybe that part of me still lived here.”
Bon Bon patted her friend’s forehoof. “What was it auntie Sakura used to say about crossing rivers?” she asked.
“‘Pony that refuses to put all four hooves on same side of stream never going to get across...’“ the unicorn quoted in response.
“‘...And eventually just fall in’.” Bon Bon finished. “Look, I know when you're nervous. Even now I’m probably the only pony in Ponyville that can tell how you're really feeling.”
Turning to look at her, enigmatic smile number seventeen firmly in place, Lyra caught the earth pony’s eye.
“And don’t try giving me those enigmatic looks, my dear,” Bon Bon added, “how long we been friends now? I know you, Lyra Heartstrings, or as much as any pony can.”
Lyra turned her attention back to her cup, toying with the fine china with her magic. Her enigmatic expression had about as much effect on the crockery as it had on her friend.
“You don’t know everything,” the unicorn sighed, “there’s a lot about me you don’t know. I... erm, there’s some things I never told you. About, well about what happened to me just before we met--”
Before she could say any more, the minty mare found a cream hoof covering her mouth, cutting off her words before they were even formed.
“I know all I need to, and that’s enough.” Bon Bon took her hoof back. “I know that when we first met you were the most lost and alone I’ve ever seen any pony in my life. I’ve never seen a soul as low as you were that day. I said to myself there and then that no pony should ever be that down, especially on their birthday. I don’t need to know what or who you were, I just need to know who you are... and that’s the best friend a girl could have ever asked for.”
Reaching across the table with her other forehoof, Bon Bon took both of Lyra’s hooves in her own and held them tight.
“But what I also mean is; I know you, Lyra. You can plaster on as many masks as you like, and you might even fool the rest of the town, but I know when you're happy, I know when you're sad and I know when you're upset. But most importantly, I know when you're scared, and you’re scared right now. You always cross your ankles in front of you when you’re not sure of yourself. Believe me, you’ve picked the right herd, Lyra... and in return they picked you. It’s the right choice, we both know it.”
“But...” the minty mare started, just to be cut off.
“No. No ‘buts’, Lyra. Do I need to know anymore than to know you’re my friend? To know you're the most wonderful, fantastic, exceptional pony a herd could ask for?” The earth pony gave the unicorn’s hooves a good squeeze, “I have been, and always will be, your friend, Lyra Heartstrings, and it’s been an honour to have been your roommate for all these years.”
“We’ve been through a lot haven’t we, you and I?” Lyra asked, answering Bon Bon’s squeeze with one of her own.
“Of course,” Bon Bon replied, “I mean, you managed to win my old tribalist of a mother over, and I never thought any unicorn would ever do that. Then there was us moving to Canterlot together for all those years. Remember that pokey little apartment we had halfway between the Music Conservatory and the Confectioner’s College? I swear your harps took up more and more space with every passing week that we were there.”
A sly smile spread across the earth pony’s face as a memory from their time in Canterlot came to mind.
“Do you remember that time just after mom died, when that stuck up mare in my maître pâtissier class tried making fun of my voice during my final exams?” she asked, “You Still Way’d her unconscious all the way from the viewing gallery without anypony even seeing you so much as twitch.”
It took a second, but a matching smile soon spread across the unicorn’s face.
“Oh yes, she ended up passed out face-down in a pyramid of choux à la crème. I’d forgotten all about that.” Lyra admitted.
“I’ll never understand your habit of forgetting stuff like that,” Bon Bon laughed, “while the rest of us are there thinking something’s awesome, there’s you treating it like it’s just another day at the office.”
“Well one thing I do remember,” the unicorn added quickly, “is bringing a guy home one day to see if you fancied trying your hoof at courting him too just to find out you were already... well I’m not sure I can call what you two doing ‘courting’... but it certainly was-”
”Hey,” Bon Bon interrupted, “I honestly had no idea you’d gone for the same guy as me, and he’s the one that’d been keeping that particular bit of news to himself. Anyway, I didn’t see you complaining twenty minutes later... well, maybe when we all broke your bed you did, but at the time you certainly didn’t seem to care that much.”
“Okay, fair enough.” Lyra conceded, “Hey, what was his name again?”
“You know,” Bon Bon said after making a big show of scratching her head whilst rolling her eyes about as if searching her memory, “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Liar!” It was now Lyra’s turn to laugh, “You know exactly what his name was. And I’m betting you also know the full story of why he turned up at our door with the biggest bunch of flowers I’ve ever seen and a grovelling apology the day after he broke my heart.”
“Honey, I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.” the confectioner batted her eyelids, trying - and failing miserably - to put on a convincing air of complete innocence.
“Well, thank you anyway.” Lyra leant forward and planted a kiss in the middle of her friend’s forehead. “Even if I don’t remember his name, I do remember that those flowers were delicious.”
The two of them laughed, falling forward into each other’s arms as they hugged each other tightly, neither of them knowing, nor caring, which of them had initiated the move.
“You know,” Lyra finally said as she broke the embrace, “I always thought it’d be just the two of us, growing old disgracefully together in this old house, shouting at the neighbours’ kids from a pair of rocking chairs out on the porch.”
“Ha,” Bon Bon laughed, “speak for yourself. I’ve got my eye on one of the mares from Dusty Joe’s construction crew so I was gunna have to throw you out some day anyway.”
The look on Lyra’s face as her jaw dropped was, in Bon Bon’s opinion anyway, priceless.
“Gotcha!” the earth pony slapped her friend on the shoulder, “but you’ve gotta go someday my girl. You’ve somewhere else you should be now, somewhere else you belong, and it’s not here with me any more.”
For the next few minutes they remained seated at the table, just as they were, holding hooves in comfortable silence like the pair of old friends that they were.
Eventually Bon Bon broke the silence.
“Now come on,” she said, rising from the table and making towards the front door, “I’ll help you carry your stuff.”
“No, that’s okay. I think I should go alone.” The grandmaster looked up from the floor to catch the confectioner’s eye, looking to her friend much like a young filly leaving the safety and security of her family for the first time. “Just... make sure you wave me off, okay?”
After a last hug, Lyra moved to the door, levitating her trusty old saddlebags onto her back while Bon Bon packaged what was left of their cake - the frosting striped mint green and white down one half, blue and pink down the other - before attaching the small box to the one of Lyra’s harps with a piece of brightly coloured ribbon.
As Bon Bon opened the front door, Lyra levitated her trio of harps, carefully floating each of the instruments out of the doorway like some kind of surreal marching band before making her own way outside.
“And Lyra...“ Bon Bon called after her, “Happy birthday.”
“Same to you, Bonnie,“ Lyra said as she threw a rather smug - and not at all enigmatic - smile back over her shoulder, “You're still older than me though.”
“Only by about three hours, and don’t you forget it.” Bon Bon laughed. “Tea and birthday cake again next year?”
Lyra nodded once, then turned and began to make her way down the cobbled street. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” she called as she walked away.
The unicorn’s form made it to the end of the street and turned the corner, the earth pony waving at her the whole time, trying without success to stop the tears that were rolling down her cheeks.
For her, this truly was the end of an era and Bonnie was really going to miss that crazy mare.
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As the town library came into view Lyra stopped for a moment to compose herself. Sliding mask after mask into place, the unicorn found it hard the quell the tears that came to her eyes.
For almost a decade now Bonnie had been the one constant which Lyra had charted her own life by, the rock from which she had anchored herself. Her music, her path along the Still Way, her position with the Royal guard - they all paled in comparison against everything the earth pony had meant to her, everything she had been to her, over the years.
But now it was time to take that last step, to finally let go completely, to leave her safety net behind and make her way without her.
Resuming her slow walk down Clydesdale Lane, her instruments bobbing along in the air behind her, she finally reached the library. Pausing to take in strangeness of what it had become over this last month, she was again taken by how much had changed in such a short space of time.
Attached to the west side of the library by a short covered walkway was Lero’s old house, its raised ceilings and higher windows making it stand out against the rest of the nearby buildings.
Attached directly to the opposite side of Lero’s old house was the cottage that had not so long ago belonged to Scootaloo’s mother. Many of the points at which the two buildings now connected had either had walls removed or internal doors installed to convert the pair of buildings into one larger home, fit now for the herd of four which resided within.
The library plus the two-in-one house took up the last three plots on the north side of the western end of Clydesdale Lane. Turning to look across the road at the three final plots on the other side street, she could see what had once been Quickfix’s workshop at the very end of the street. The old workshop’s sign had now been swapped out with a large hoof-painted replacement - courtesy of Lero’s apprentice handymare - which was fastened securely above its large doors, proclaiming it to be the business establishment of one “Mr Handy & Associates”.
To the immediate east of the workshop was the empty lot that the herd kept purposely vacant for whatever endeavours might require a large open space - of which there were surprisingly many.
Finally, in the plot immediately to the east of the empty lot, was what used to be Rainbow Dash’s cloud house. The now permanently grounded amalgam of clouds and wood currently serving as the home of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, or the ‘Crusader Herd’ as they were generally known these days.
It may have taken a whole lot of bending-of-rules, calling-in-of-favours and repeated assurances that two element bearers, a Still Way grandmaster, and a former viceroy would keep a close eye on them, but the three teenagers now had a place of their own. If only they could manage to keep themselves out of trouble for more than five minutes... which, even with all the best will in the world, didn’t seem very likely.
Turning in place, the mint green unicorn took in the view once again. Less than a month ago the only buildings at this end of the lane had been the library and Rosehip’s cottage. But now Rosehip’s home was happily settled into Lero’s old plot in Zweibrucker Street and instead these three new buildings - or four if you still counted the recently enlarged house as two rather than one - clustered around the old treehouse.
“The only real constant is change,” Lyra heard her old sensei say to her from deep within her memories, “You can’t escape it, you can only move with the dance or be crushed underhoof. The choice is yours”.
Shaking herself from her reverie, Lyra reached out with her telekinesis to open the door to the house that Herd Lero called home, knowing full well that there’d be two mares and a stallion waiting for her there - waiting to ask about her day, eager to tell her about theirs, excited to plan the rest of their days together.
There were going to be a lot of days... they’d need a lot of plans.
Stepping inside, she was home.