//------------------------------//
// 5 The Betrayal 
// Story: Numbers Are Ponies Too 
// by Telofy 
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“Unless your cutie mark gives you the ability to lay magic healing eggs, there’s nothing you can do for me now. Your classmates, however, they count on you.”
Amber would have stayed with her brother, but he would not allow it. Finally, she conceded that his logic was sound and left the hospital. On the way out she peeked into the room where she had lain for over three weeks while the hospital in Ponyville was rebuilt.
She trotted toward the castle. By this time Little Cedar may have already thrown in the towel—if she was still to do so on this timeline—and Cheerilee may be panicking with no cast for the most central role.
Amber would have liked to enjoy the euphoria that this new and so much more auspicious cutie mark bestowed, but her brother’s accident overshadowed the occasion even though he took it least seriously of them all.
On her way to the castle, new feelings started to gush into the already heterodox potpourri. It was obvious that her cutie mark was connected to her epiphany. She had an ability, her foreknowledge, that distinguished her from most ponies, made her special. Now she understood that it was also an obligation. It allowed her to wield great power, but now she also felt its weight of responsibility.
She should record her memories of accidents in some fashion, record everything that she remembered about them. Her memory was surely above average, but Damask would have been a much better choice for the job. She reminded herself that the universe did not choose, and Fleur had her own unrelated, purity-ridden motives. This was her job and hers alone.
When Amber arrived, lost in thought, her class had the stage and was in the middle of rehearsing the scene at the bridge. She was hours late. Cheerilee scowled at her. 
“What’s it this time? Another ‘contingency’?”
Amber squatted next to her. “Yeah.”
Little Cedar was on stage. Light coat and red mane and tail had always made her Amber’s mirror image, only with wings instead of the horn. Her gift for aerial navigation, evident in her compass cutie mark, was another distinguishing feature. She knew her lines well enough, but then she only had three in this scene. Evidently she had not left for Cloudsdale as Amber had expected.
Amber disapproved of her own feelings toward Little Cedar. After the epiphany, the whole question of whether she got her role back, her scheming and conniving for the spot in the limelight, and the play itself seemed even more childish to her than before. Her feelings, however, did not reflect this reality. She still yearned to act in front of the princess and scores of royals. The only thing that held outright envy at bay was the fact that Amber herself had brought this situation upon herself so many years earlier, a situation Little Cedar hated as much as Amber did.
After a little while, Cheerilee broke the silence again. “Congratulations on your cutie mark,” she said in a strikingly even tone. “In retrospect, how was your life before you got it?”
Amber pondered that. “Pointless.”
“Preparatory. You know, your cutie mark is sort of like a black belt in life, or in your particular life that is. A first dan of sorts.”
“You’re reminding me that it’s only the start of whatever journey it signifies?”
“Of course.”
When the scene was over and her class yielded to the next, the students began to notice Amber’s new cutie mark too, but no pony was surprised to find an amber rose, so the inspections were short enough. At least the questions about what she had been doing when it appeared and what she thought it meant kept Amber’s mind off the performance and the role she yearned to play.
Noon came, and Cheerilee remained steadfast in her casting decision. If Amber did not get to play for the princess, she at least wanted to use the opportunity to talk to her.
The atmosphere was subtly different from that the previous afternoon. Only a limited number of ponies had been invited, most of them royalty and the parents or guardians of the actors, so the main aisle remained open and everypony stood in orderly rows. The front rows were reserved for the princess and her attendants, and chairs were brought in for them.
Twelve classes would present their performances and Ponyville’s was among the first. A few minutes before the first play was set to start, Princess Celestia slipped into the hall rather inconspicuously and sat down. Amber walked over to her and bowed.
“Your Highness, I hope our play will not offend. We have taken great care to represent the events that have taken place in Ponyville as accurately and respectfully as our humble skills allowed.”
“Then you must be one of the fillies from Ponyville. Your teacher, Cheerilee I believe, submitted the premise a few months ago for approval,” Celestia replied. “I’m sure it will be delightful.
“As it happens, I will make a casual visit to Ponyville tomorrow. I just hope they’re not making a great spectacle out of it again,” Celestia said and smiled. “Who do you play?”
“I’m Twilight Sparkle. In today’s performance, however, a friend of mine will fill the role.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing the real Twilight tomorrow. You know her, I trust, Ponyville being the small town it is?”
“I do. She has often lent me books.” To Amber, she was mostly the princess now, but she remembered how she had thought of Twilight at the time. “I don’t know her very well beyond that.”
The spotlights bathed the stage in light to indicate that the play was about to start. Amber excused herself and left for the hallway that doubled as backstage area. She somehow remembered this “casual visit” Celestia had mentioned, but she could not quite put her hoof to it.
Backstage she was being expected. Little Cedar stood to the right of two ponies oddly dressed for the season—dressed at all that is. All three were pegasi, and all three beamed at Amber, who responded with an askance scowl. They stood in the order of their shoulder height.
“You must be Amber,” the tallest pegasus said. After a nodded confirmation from Little Cedar she continued, “We are Little Cedar’s parents”—at which Amber mused that their names must be Big Cedar and Average-Sized Cedar—“and we just learned that she has been accepted into a prestigious aerial navigation program of her Cloudsdale school. She has been on the waiting list of three years. Now a student didn’t show up in time, and she gets to take their place. Unfortunately, we’ll have to leave for the Crystal Mountains right away to be there by dawn.” She looked at her partner to continue.
“Cheerilee tells us that you were eager to take the role anyway, so this should not be a problem for you. We apologize, however, for the short notice,” she said.
Now Amber smiled mildly. “Even if there were no second cast for Little Cedar’s role, you would not allow for this chance to pass her by, would you?”
“No. It is her true calling,” said the pegasus who had spoken first. Neither of the others contradicted her.
“What her cutie mark is telling her,” Amber said in a dreamy voice, then more firmly, “I’ll gladly accept.” So that’s what happened last time. Mystery solved.
They did not even leave Little Cedar the time to say goodbye to the rest of the class. With a hurried thank you they rose and flew off, even still within the building.
Amber decided to go through her lines a few more times before the final performance.

These royals were jolly fellows! Amber was surprised to find that some of them knew the lyrics of the little ditty Cheerilee had worked into the play and accompanied at least the slow passages. She thought she even heard some stallions with impressive falsettos.
After that scene, the students quickly plunged the stage into what darkness the slightly filtered daylight allowed. The cone of the flashlight on the map indicated a spot deep in the Everfree Forest. They removed several tripods with paper foliage that had represented trees and rolled a band of blue across the center of the stage toward the audience. A river.
Or in fact two rivers, because they were in the lucky position to be able to use the same setup for two scenes. The cone of light moved slightly to the south, where the first of the rivers cut through the green.
This scene was entirely Wind Turner’s. He was the little colt of the enigmatic Turner family, but his demeanor was everything but enigmatic. He was a born entertainer, outgoing and unself-conscious, and while he was too nearsighted to see the audience, he could hear their roaring laughter over his performance.
The circle of light moved southeast. The second river scene had Amber speaking again. “There it is, the ruin that holds the Elements of Harmony. We made it!” This time, she knew she got it right, verbatim. A moment later she added “We're almost there. Whoa!” She had to pretend to almost fall into a narrow band of cloth. Nothing easier than that.
Noi had drawn the real Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark over her own. Just as her understudy, she was an earth pony, but the cutie mark made clear whom she represented. The coming minute would belong to her, and Amber had time to wonder about her last few lines. “The ruin that holds The Elements of Harmony.” For the second time that day, she was reminded of the ruined Ponyville she returned to when she woke up from coma. The amulets had probably been in a safe somewhere in Canterlot already, but the six ponies lived and Ponyville and helped rebuild it after… What exactly had happened? It was Amber’s turn again.
“Rainbow, what's taking so long? Oh no. Rainbow! Don't listen to them.” She charged her voice with so much urgency that she could hear sharply indrawn breaths throughout the audience.
Oh, right, the parasprites. For a moment, she was glad. Another mystery solved.
Oh no! That started the day before Celestia’s “casual” visit! Ponyville might already be under attack! They might have already infested a dozen homes, and a day later they will be gobbling up Sweet Apple Acers, Town Hall, and her parents’ place!
But she may be able to forestall the invasion right where it started with the single parasprite Fluttershy had found. That may have happened during the early afternoon of the day.
If it is already too late for that, she may still be able to mediate between Pinkie Pie and the other five who seemed to have had trouble communicating. She knew where the school kept the instruments. There was so much she could do to prevent the disaster! It’s also what my cutie mark is telling me—my true calling.
“See? I’d never leave my friends hangin’,” Rainbow Dash told her. It was the end of the scene. But what if you have to choose between your friends on this stage and your friends in Ponyville? Amber remembered a newspaper article she had read about the event. And the friends you have yet to meet in Fillydelphia!
One thing was for certain, just as Rainbow Dash just told off the Shadow Bolts out of loyalty to her friends, Amber would not forfeit any of her friends for her own ambitions either. The rest of the equation was simple enough too. A ruined play or two ruined towns? She felt awful about what she had to do.
The stage required some reorganization to represent the interior of the castle. The river had to go, and five boulders had to be arranged in a circle. One jump and Amber was off the stage, a second and she stood in front of Cheerilee.
“You know all my lines, right? You’re the new Twilight!” She did not wait for Cheerilee to reply. Her teacher would be able to tell from Amber’s voice that she was dead serious.
Seconds later, Amber slipped backstage. “Juniper, you got yourself an assistant, right?”
“I wanted to be involved in some fashion at least.” It was Featherweight who answered. He still sounded sick.
“Cool, you take over. Juniper, we’ll need two carpets. Direction: south-west to Ponyville. Time of departure: right now. I’ll explain when we’re airborne.”
Juniper looked shocked for a moment, then scrambled to find two carpets among the heaps of props.
Seconds later the play resumed and they levitated the rugs out to the backstage area. Amber caught a glimpse of Cheerilee on the stage. She could not see how the audience reacted to the unexplained transformation.
“Whatcha doin’?” A colt had followed them out.
“We have to leave for Ponyville, urgently,” Amber said. She tried to recall his name. He was the understudy of Noi and had played Rainbow Dash in their first public performance in Ponyville.
“On carpets, awesome! I saw a large lenticular cloud above the mountain this morning, probably due to moist winds from the eastern sea, so you need to be careful not to get into the leeward turbulences but you can also use the wind to travel faster for a while, then correct your path at the last moment.” He looked from one unicorn to the other. “Actually, can I come with you? I’m preternaturally bored, and flying sounds awesome. I’ve never done that before.” It seemed like a statement of the obvious to Amber until she reflected on her own wingless nature.
“You’ll go with Juniper. She’s better at this. Let’s go!” Oh, right, September was his name!
Amber knew that she had not used a flying carpet in over eight years, but she had not expected to be so clumsy. Juniper’s carpet glowed with her golden aura, straightened, and  lifted into the air with one swift and controlled motion, Amber’s lift-off equaled it only in swiftness. The carpet would have crashed her into the ceiling had she not released her magic at the last moment. Then carpet and pony were in free fall.
Juniper shot up and headed directly for the falling ball of Amber and carpet. Right before they made contact, she converted her upward momentum into a downward one roughly half of Amber’s and caught her softly. Then they were blind-sighted as Amber’s carpet enveloped them. Juniper remembered their height and speed and landed them blindly. The whole ordeal took only seconds.
September spit out Juniper’s tail and danced on her carpet. “Woohoo! That was fun!”
Amber jumped back on her carpet. “I’ll try again!”
This time she managed to lift the carpet more carefully. The way to the southern gate lead around a few more corners and through narrower hallways. Accordingly, Juniper chose a slow pace and Ambr matched it.
“Why do you have to hover a carpet?” September asked. “Can’t you just hover yourselves?”
Explaining the intricacies of carpet flight was Juniper’s forte. Her inofficial lessons often included a theoretical portion. “It is possible to hover yourself directly, but this sort of recursive application of magic, a levitation applied to your own whole body, is of a level of skill beyond the ken of most unicorns.
“Levitating a carpet beneath your hooves is greatly easier, although it is different from other levitation magic in that you can’t feel the progress with your magical proprioception—you know, the sense for the position of your own magical aura—because it always remains at a constant distance to you.
“I usually recommend that they imagine levitating the earth away from them. That’s not actually the case, but it helps them. Then some unicorns have problems not to get confused about up and down. It takes some practice. Maybe you can learn it too.”
“Earth ponies are not known for their flying skills,” September said.
“Neither are unicorns,” Juniper countered.
“There are a lot of jobs in the weather patrol that don’t involve cloud kicking. I’ve been hoping to join the planning teams when I’m older, but those are traditionally jobs for pegasi too.”
“Buck tradition. The average colt your age wouldn’t know what a lenticular cloud is, even a pegasus. It’s your brains they’ll need in the Weather Patrol, not your wings.”
Amber sensed that her young self must have seemed embarrassingly immature to Juniper. To distract herself, Amber started to experiment with her speed. She liked speed.
With one burst she doubled it, slanting the carpet forward for a second so not to be swept off. Then she whizzed around the two, three, four corners to the entrance. She knew that Juniper could easily catch up to her but prudently chose not to.
Amber was lucky that the gate was open. Braking her carpet down from this speed would have been possible yet highly unhealthy.
Outside, Juniper caught up to her at once. September stared in amazement at their height, their speed, but mostly the cloud formations that seemed to whisper to him.
He pointed. “You see the tapering of the lenticular cloud? That’s the leeward side. We have to stay away from that.” He thought for a moment while they soared over the roofs of Canterlot. “Head slightly north of Ponyville, this direction,” he pointed again, “so the wind can drive us a little or we can match its speed, so we can talk.”
Juniper followed his instructions and accelerated in her uniquely smooth way. Amber followed with one burst of acceleration that knocked her legs out from under her as it pressed her against the slanted carpet. They cleared Canterlot and the plateau, and were gliding above a mile of nothingness.
Amber was still fighting with nausea when Juniper swerved to her side. “You alright? You used to be better at this two weeks ago.” She was worried, not teasing. “Remember to increase your speed in small increments.”
“You didn’t speed up in increments,” September told Juniper.
“That’s true. I accelerated at a constant rate over several seconds, but I haven’t been able to teach that to anyone else yet. There are other carpet flyers who have mastered it, but none in Ponyville unfortunately. I’ve never met them.
“All unicorns learn to levitate things at some point, and moving something at a constant speed comes naturally to them too, but there’s something about acceleration that makes it more abstract to them. It’s one step further removed in a way. It’s hard for them to take that extra step in their imagination.
“What they do is that they tilt their carpet forward and at the same moment command it to a higher speed. It complies within a fraction of a second. If the increase was too great, though, the pony gets slammed into the carpet.”
September was satisfied with that explanation.
“Oh, and what are we doing here anyway?” Juniper added.
Amber had recovered and sat comfortably on her carpet. “We have a few minutes till we reach Ponyville, so I guess I’ll use them to tell you my eight-year-long tale.”
It was closer to an executive summary of her time travel, her faux epiphany that she was sent back to fix Fleur’s or her own perceived mistakes, and her real epiphany that it was up to her alone to choose her purpose in life, starting with using her eight years of foreknowledge to avert every catastrophe she could. She concluded with the bit about the parasprites that were about to gobble up their home town, when it came into view. A tiny splotch at the rim of the Everfree.
September paid attention to wind and clouds and birds, and had not spoken throughout Amber’s explanation. Now he looked at her. “Wouldn’t it be better to send the royal guard rather than trying this alone?”
Amber cocked her head. “I haven’t thought about that. A bit late now. Besides, I have a plan. Let’s just hope we aren’t too late already.”
Landing had always been a challenge for Amber because she had to decelerate in time, so she would neither be crushed by the bursts of deceleration nor by the ultimate deceleration that the ground affords. Now, however, as Amber experimented with her carpet, she noticed that she could in fact gain glimpses of this higher level of abstraction that was home to acceleration and deceleration. It was a feeling just like the one, months after her coma, when she suddenly gained the ability to funnel her remaining magical trickle in just the right way to produce whole sentences again with her quill. Her grasp on it was tenuous and would require much more practice, but then as now, her discovery made her giddy and proud. She had to show it to Juniper at once. The landing was an ideal opportunity.
First they only changed their trajectory southeast and down toward the town, but soon they would have to brake to sail down into one of the streets or squares at a comfortable speed. As they veered left, they were hit by the wind whose speed and direction they had matched, and Amber could feel why the Cedar parents had worn jackets. She shivered.
“Let’s land close to Sugarcube Corner,” Amber shouted over the noise of the wind in her ears.
When Amber could just make out the ponies in the streets, Juniper started to fall behind, slowly at first, then more rapidly. She had begun to gracefully slow down. Now it was Amber’s turn to show what she had learned.
She had to concentrate very consciously to regain the control over her levitational magic that she had grazed minutes before, concentrate on an activity that was completely unconscious to most unicorns. She was already countering a constant acceleration, that of the earth. Now she just had to replicate the same kind of force in a different direction while maintaining the first.
The weight on her legs told her that it was working, but she wanted visual confirmation. The ground was too far away for her to use as reference point, and she dared not look around lest she lose her concentration. Come on, Juniper can move freely on her carpet too. Try it!
She turned her head just in time to see Juniper right behind her and closing. Juniper banked hard to her left, Amber reversed her thrust.
They missed each other by a hoof’s width, but Amber accelerated too hard. Her hooves lost friction, and she tumbled to the stern of her rug before she could react and slope it upward.
Her hind legs were already hanging over the abyss and she wished for claws for the first time in her life, when something forced her magical aura off the carpet as well. She was too preoccupied to fight back.
A moment later the bow of the carpet dove back underneath itself and caught Amber from below on its underside. Then she regained her magical hold of it.
Juniper hovered next to her. “I think you just accelerated at a more or less controlled rate. Congrats! Hardly anyone can do that.” She seemed completely collected. Only September’s firm bite to her tail betrayed the dramatic carpet acrobatics moments earlier.
“Did you just fly two carpets at once? How…?” Amber started at her.
Juniper just shrugged and nodded in the direction of her cutie mark.
“Let’s not waste any more time up here!” September had released his bite to speak.
Without another comment, both carpets dove toward Ponyville.
Amber used her new trick again to brake before they set down. This time she took care to keep Juniper and September in front of her and at a safe distance.
Ponyville had not been devoured yet.
Sugarcube Corner was open, and Mr. Cake welcomed them.
“Hey Carrot, is Pinkie Pie in?” Amber asked.
“One moment.” He vanished into their kitchen. Moments later Pinkie Pie bounced toward them.
“Pinkie Pie,” Amber began, “I don’t have enough time to explain the how and why of everything, but you have to trust me. We need your help.”
“Lemme guess! You want to buy prosthetic hands!”
“What, no.”
“Okay! Adorevil little creatures are about to overrun the town, and you need me to assemble my one-pony band and fly with those fillies to Fillydelphia to save the day!”
Amber was a little confused each time this happened. “Precisely. September here has some crazy meteorology knowledge and can guide you. Juniper is probably the best carpet flyer alive. You’ll be in good hooves.”
“Let’s …,” Pinkie Pie started.
“One more thing. I’ll need your party cannon.”
“It’s right here!” Although the cannon was about the same size as the whole pony, Pinkie Pie shook it out of her mane with one practiced motion. “Now let’s go!”
Amber turned to Juniper and September. “Pinkie Pie will have to collect some supplies before you leave—you have my permission as, uh, student to pillage the school’s stash of instruments—and Fillydelphia is to the east, so you’ll have to fight the wind all the way. The town may already be full with the creatures by the time you arrive. I hope that I can prevent that here.”
“Not necessarily,” September said, “I saw a few stratocumulus castellanus that hardly moved. We might escape the wind to a higher altitude, but we’ll need warm clothes.”
“Good. We’ll meet again right here. Take care of each other and good luck!” With that, Amber grabbed the party cannon in her magic and galloped toward the edge of the Everfree Forest.

“Then suddenly this filly, Amber Rose, jumped out of the bushes where she had lain in hiding motionlessly for half an hour. ‘Fluttershy! Stand back!’ she commanded.
“I jumped back, I fluttered, I scrambled, I almost fell. Then she stood over me—actually, uhm, I think I’m the taller one but, uhm… She stood over me with fiery mane and fiery tail, her eyes burning with determination.
“That’s when the little creature, a voracious parasprite, tried to escape, but the filly caught it in the auburn grip of her magic and shoved it down the barrel of her cannon—uhm, can I maybe say ‘party cannon’? It sounds less, uhm, threatening?
“A second later she shot it far out into the forest, together with all the usual streamers and confetti, never to be seen again.
“Don’t you think it’s a little, uhm, overly dramatic?” Fluttershy asked and put down the slip of paper with the report Amber had asked her to recite for the Foal Free Press.
Amber bit her lip. “Actually, scrap that.” She took the slip out of Fluttershy’s hooves and hovered it into a waste bin. “Old Amber would’ve wanted to be celebrated in the papers, but that’s not what my cutie mark is telling me.” Amber saw that Fluttershy was inspecting the yellow rose, uncomprehending. “It’s telling me to help ponies because I can, nothing more. Just tell it as it happened, including our silly chase of that thing if you like.”
“Okay. I’m much more comfortable with that.” Fluttershy breathed a sigh of relief.
“But you can still mention my name, alright?”

Amber had been waiting at Sugarcube Corner for a few hours and felt well nourished when she saw the carpet closing. First it was just a dot against the darkening sky, then she could make out Juniper, who stood at the bow, her horn aglow. She stood very rigidly, Amber noticed.
The carpet swooped into the street, landed softly in front of the bakery, and Juniper collapsed at once. She was huddled in a blanket in addition to her jacket, but the whole bundle shivered violently. Pinkie Pie wanted to get her to Nurse Redheart immediately.
“No, just a cold,” Juniper whispered. “Need to get to Canterlot. My parents. Amber, you need to fly us.”
Amber and September assured Pinkie Pie that they would seek medical attention right away when they arrived, and Pinkie volunteered to return the instruments to the school. Then they took off.
Juniper did not feel like speaking, so Amber had no idea whether she had a headache or nausea in addition to obvious chills and fever. Still, she took care to launch as softly as possible. She wanted to ask about Fillydelphia, the parasprites, what happened to Juniper, but first they had to get airborne.
The wind was pushing against them from starboard bow, and the further Amber accelerated, the harder it became for them to hear each other. They were cold too. Juniper was drifting in and out of sleep, hardly conscious of the maelstrom around her. Even September seemed a little drowsy.
“Try putting up a protective field,” he shouted at Amber. She barely understood him. “Juniper did it on the flight to Fillydelphia!”
Control the carpet, which moved so heavily with three ponies on it, and a magical field at the same time? Juniper has done it!
It took Amber countless attempts. Always the spell threatened to disrupt her focus on the flight and she had to abort to secure her hold on the carpet. This time Juniper could not catch them if she messed up.
She kept the parameters of the flight as simple as possible. Constant speed, slightly slanted against the wind. Darkness had descended in full when, after many more attempts, she managed to erect a simple shield on just the windward side. It looked as if it might collapse any moment. Once it was in place it took little attention to maintain. For now they were safe from most of the wind and noise, and Amber could ask the questions she had been burning to ask.
“September, what happened in Fillydelphia? Did you get rid of all the parasprites? Why is Juniper sick?”
He put his hoof over the shaking bundle of cloth and pony. “Juniper put up a shield much like yours, but all around her carpet. That helped a lot when we rose through the surface current. We hardly noticed any of the storm around us. But then we reached a region of windshear and crazy turbulences. The shield kept the wind out, but from the inside we could’ve easily fallen through it when one of those gusts whirled us around or pushed us down.
“She parried them with lightning speed, and always slanted the carpet just right to keep us and the instruments from falling off. It was pretty rad actually. We were still trying to rise higher where I suspected a slower, more uniform current because of the clouds there. The downdrafts kept pushing us back.
“It took us at least half an hour to get through that layer. We’ve all been sweating blood and water, literally. Well, except the blood part. Especially Juniper was worn out from the concentration. She pulled down the field and let the gentle breeze up there cool us. But it was really cold actually, and then she even doffed her jacket. My mom always warned me against that.
“Anyway, near Fillydelphia the aerial situation was more peaceful. Near the ground it was anything but. The parasprites weren’t eating the houses yet, but the farmers and the vendors in the market were all up in arms. Many unicorns also struggled to hold up fields to keep them out, but other ponies were defenseless unless a unicorn volunteered to help them. Some were trying to shoo them off. It was chaotic.
“Juniper helped with some of the fields, but she was already feeling weak. Meanwhile Pinkie Pie put together her one-pony band, and the rest was routine, or for Pinkie Pie anyway. She lured them into a forest to the south of the city, and then the ancient magic that keeps all the beasts in there must’ve taken hold of them.
“Juniper had already stayed behind during that tour. When we came back, she lay on the carpet half asleep. Somepony had brought her some tea and a blanket.
“When she noticed us, she forced herself erect. With her last ounce of strength brought us up into the air and up to the right speed to sail on the wind. Luckily Ponyville was almost straight west from there, just the direction of the surface current.
“Somehow that last ounce lasted almost a full hour until we reached Ponyville.”
They were almost upon Canterlot. Amber corrected their altitude slightly upward—the city was that high on the mountain—and braked softly. Juniper appeared to be asleep and her shivering had ceased. Amber wanted to keep it that way.
Much slower this time that she had guests on board, Amber steered her carpet through the hallways of the castle. The gate at the back of their hall was fully open now, and ponies were removing chairs and decoration. Only a few of the students were still around, and their parents were chatting with Cheerilee as Amber, Juniper, and September approached.
“You!” Two of the parents were charging toward her when Amber had hardly disembarked. Then they saw Juniper. “June! There you are!”
“Shh, she’s asleep,” Amber whispered to them.
“What have you done to her?” one of them whispered back.
Amber ignored the accusation. “We think she caught a cold. She has been shivering quite badly for a while. Probably fever too. We tried to bring her back here as quick as possible.”
Juniper’s parents took her upon themselves—she only groaned softly in response—and scurried off without another word.
That’s when her own parents noticed the commotion. Her brother must have been still in the hospital, she surmised. It only took a moment until she was hugged by two wings and legs.
When all welcoming hugs had been administered, Amber turned to Cheerilee. “How did the play go after I left?” She could have affected contrition but she found that she would make the same decision again, so such an affectation would have struck her as insincere.
“I’m the Element of Magic now. Quite a promotion for an earth pony.” Then Cheerilee looked more seriously. “You’re not the type to get stage fright. What happened?”
A few of the parents who were still around edged closer.
“I don’t know how secretive I should be about this. Can we talk in private, just you, September, and my parents?”
They found a little cranny in an adjacent hallway where they could sit down. Amber repeated much of what had happened over the last few days, and told Cheerilee about their campaigns in Ponyville and Fillydelphia.
“I understand why you decided that the play was less important. It had been very important to you personally, so it must’ve been a hard decision too. Don’t you think, though, that their struggle with the parasprites and the rebuilding of the town may have also held positive, formative experiences for some ponies, that some ponies may have learned important lessons from them?”
Amber had not considered that but neither did it seem relevant to her. “I can’t allow a definite catastrophe to be visited upon countless ponies just for some hypothetical and probably not even commensurate good it might bring for some of them.”
Cheerilee only nodded. “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to convince your classmates through rational argument. Many of them seemed rather hostile earlier when they talked about you. You better think of a good cover story.”
“In a way I deserve it,” Amber said.
“You could not have known that Little Cedar would be taken out of school.”
“Not that, but I picked her because she had no interest in performing. It was awfully selfish of me, of past me.” Now Amber’s contrition was sincere.
“I know. Such is the way of the limelight.” She sighed. “But you learned your lesson.” Cheerilee had already turned away when she hesitated and turned back to Amber. “Actually, you learned several lessons, didn’t you? Remember when I said that your cutie mark was like a first dan in your life? Maybe you took another step in that direction today. You weighed your priorities there on the stage and decided to defend our town against the parasprites even though no pony would know to thank you for it. You may even become an anathema to your classmates for almost ruining their play.”
Now it was Amber’s turn to nod in silence.
After a moment of silence, Cheerilee turned to September. “You haven’t said anything. Aren’t your parents waiting for you?”
“Naw, I don’t have a dad anymore, and my mom runs a huge soap business in Manehattan. She only comes to Ponyville on weekends. Some weekends. I’m staying here alone too. I like the solitude though. Lots of time to watch the clouds.” Amber couldn’t tell whether he sincerely liked it; he always had a smile on his face, but at some times it seems more rigid than at others.
“I can walk you home, to the hotel, if you like,” Cheerilee said.
The other parents had gone during their conclave. Outside the castle, the Roses, and Cheerilee and September also wished each other sweet dreams and went their separate ways.
Amber was tired too, but sleep was not on her agenda for this day. When she had had a few hours to spare waiting at Sugarcube Corner, she had made a mental list of catastrophes, calamities, and similar doozies that she remembered had befallen her family and friends. As soon as they reached the hotel, she got to work writing them down.
At one point there had been that series of accidents in Ponyville that this mysterious Mare Do Well alicorn prevented before she vanished again. She could still remember her feats, but there was nothing for Amber to do there.
There was also the time Twilight Sparkle’s dragon got big all of a sudden. She might read up on dragon physiology to see if there’s anything that could be done to prevent that, but the literature on dragons was limited to begin with.
The lightning bolt that struck Town Hall? The roof structure had been awfully ramshackle. It had been a stroke of luck that it collapsed when no pony was inside rather than during a session of the senate. She dismissed that one.
She remembered the time when Twilight Sparkle was visited by her future self and got everyone worried about some impending disaster when all she had tried to tell herself was not to worry. She could warn Twilight, or unwarn her, as it were. Naw, better not mess with time.
For a few more hours, Amber went farther and farther into the future, her past, and jotted down pages of notes. Her recollection was full of holes. Especially dates were hard for her to recall, often even the relative order of different events. Then she remembered the time when Discord wreaked havoc on Equestria. Their house had floated around for a while, so she could not get out.
When she tried to think of any way in that she could prevent or influence this event, it occurred to her that Discord had not just toyed with Ponyville but with much of Equestria. All the catastrophes on her list had imprinted themselves so strongly on her brain because they concerned herself or friends and family, all of them ponies from her home town, ponies she knew personally. This was the first event that broke out of these limited confines.
Amber knew that she had read about countless accidents and a few outright catastrophes in the newspapers throughout the years, but her memory of them was even more hazy. There was not a single such accident that she could recall in sufficient detail to even begin to think about ways to avert it.
It was so fundamentally unjust. The majority of the ponies in her country would have to suffer all their hardships again because their misery had not left enough of an imprint on Amber’s memory, because Amber’s empathy had been too selective.
Amber could not imagine what it would be like to dedicate her coming years to saving her friends from a few falling flower pots while on some far away ends of Equestria dam failures swept away a whole towns. She felt like she was condemning all these other ponies—almost all ponies throughout all of Equestria—as second-class equines just because they had not been lucky enough to be born in her home town.
It would be more just of her to sit back and let all the catastrophes strike again, Amber thought, but it was a justice that served no pony. She cursed her past self for not memorizing all the papers like her brother did. If only she had had some sort of written record on herself when Fleur sent her back. No, I’m not an “if only” pony. I’ll just have to remember harder!
Remembering harder, however, she soon got too drowsy to keep her eyes open. Her parents’ soft snoring mingled into intermittent flashes of dreams she still tried to shake off. Soon she felt the top of the something-dale desk under her head. Dream ponies whispered to her. She thought she should move over to her bed.