“Sweetie Belle?”
Sweetie Belle looked away from the classroom window. Ms. Cheerilee and her classmates stared at her. The classroom was still decorated for Nightmare Night. Orange streamers arced across the walls, and black paper spiders hung from the ceiling on string webs. “Sweetie Belle,” Ms. Cheerilee repeated. “You've been staring out that window for quite some time. Is everything alright?”
Sweetie Belle glanced out the window one more time, to the dead tree swaying in the distance. “Yes, Ms. Cheerilee. I’m just a little tired.”
•••
Sweetie Belle wandered alone after class, crunching autumn leaves beneath her hooves. The sky, dark and gray, already threatened the arrival of night, and the laughter of children surrounded her. Sweetie Belle’s classmates had gathered in clumps around the red schoolhouse with sacks of candy at their sides. They laughed, talked about their adventures the night before, and above all they traded. Candies of all sorts exchanged hooves, and the more enterprising ponies shouted their offers from atop the playground equipment. For the time being, the playground had been converted into a candy trading market.
The days after Nightmare Night were always like this. Young ponies loved to trade things. The specific commodity changed constantly. Sometimes it was marbles, sometimes trading cards. For one alarming week, it was snake eggs. Now, with the sudden influx Nightmare Night provided, the foals fell into their yearly tradition of trading candy. Unlike transactions involving bits or poker chips, it was all in good fun and hard to hurt anypony. Just a game to be played for those who had candy to trade.
Sweetie Belle sat beneath a tree and shivered at the cold air. Some distance away from the schoolhouse, the older ponies of Ponyville busied themselves with wrapping up Nightmare Night. They pulled down the cardboard bats and ghosts from the roofs and swept at stray candy wrappers with their tails. Another Nightmare Night had come and gone. Pretty soon Hearths Warming Eve would arrive, and then the new year. Sweetie Belle sighed. She wouldn't have another chance at trick-or-treating in a while.
“Hey, Sweetie Belle!” a voice teased.
Sweetie Belle looked up, and saw Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon approaching her. Silver Spoon dragged a wagon behind her piled high with all sorts of candies: Gummy Snakes, Butter Pieces, Sour Ponies, and exotic varieties wrapped in gold foil. Silver Spoon dropped the wagon handle from her mouth and gasped for breath. Diamond Tiara peered down at Sweetie Belle.“Where’s your candy?” Diamond Tiara said, grinning.
Sweetie Belle stood up. “What’s it to you?”
“I heard you were sick in bed. You must be so disappointed to have missed out.” Diamond Tiara unwrapped a candy from the wagon and popped it into her mouth. “I wouldn't know how that feels. Daddy bought me all the candy I wanted.”
“Just leave me alone, Diamond Tiara.”
“Maybe, like, she’ll give you some candy if you do favors for her or something,” Silver Spoon said between gasps. “Like lugging this wagon around.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Diamond Tiara said. She looked at Sweetie Belle. “Like my uncle says, the ponies with will always have, and the ponies without never will. You never fit in, do you, Sweetie Belle? Still no cutie mark, and, now, no candy!” Sweetie Belle lowered her eyes. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon arched their necks and laughed.
“Hey, leave her alone!” Scootaloo shouted. She and Apple Bloom rushed to Sweetie Belle’s side, each gripping a bucket of candy in their mouths. They set their buckets down on the grass and stepped in front of Sweetie Belle. Diamond Tiara glared at them.
“Yeah, it’s not her fault she was sick!” Apple Bloom returned Diamond Tiara’s glare back to her.
Diamond Tiara turned her nose away. “I guess you’re right. Come on Silver Spoon, let’s go. Catch you later, Sweetie Belle. Maybe we can trade candy sometime… not!”
“Don’t listen to them, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo said after Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were some distance away. “They’re just trying to mess with you.”
“And besides, we’ll share our candy with you!” Apple Bloom added.
Sweetie Belle’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“For sure—Hey, Twist!” Scootaloo switched her sentence at the sight of a familiar pony walking nearby. With her bucket of candy in her mouth, Scootaloo galloped up to the pony. “I got those Caramel Delights you were looking for. I told you I could get them! How does three Sour Bombs apiece sound?”
Twist flinched at the offer. “I’m sorry, Scootaloo,” she lisped. “Snicker Doodle found the pony who was hoarding all the Caramel Delights and traded a brand new scooter for the whole batch. Caramel Delights are all over the market now. They’re not worth half a Peppermint Drop.”
Scootaloo sat on the grass and frowned. “You know, I traded all my Fruity Ranchers for those. I’m so in the red it hurts.”
Apple Bloom draped a loving foreleg around Scootaloo’s neck. “Don’t worry, Scootaloo, I’ll take those Caramel Delights off your hooves.”
“Hey, Sweetie Belle, where are you going?” Scootaloo noticed Sweetie Belle had slunk away with her head low.
“I’m going home,” Sweetie Belle said without turning back.
•••
Sweetie Belle’s mane was still wet from showering when she entered her bedroom for the night. She shivered. Her bedroom window had been left open. Sweetie Belle navigated the dark room by moonlight and popped her head out the open window. Despite the chill, she let her forelegs hang over the windowsill and remained there a while. Snippets of her parents' conversation floated up from the kitchen downstairs.
Sweetie Belle loved the night-time view outside her bedroom window—something she missed dearly while staying at her sister's boutique—where rolling fields stretched out beneath the moon. In the distance the Ponyville cemetery was visible, and beyond that the Everfree Forest. On most nights Sweetie Belle would sing lullabies out her window to lift her spirits before sleep. But tonight she was in no mood. Instead she said quietly, “I wish I had candy,” then shut the window and went to bed.
Later, when the moon hung high in the sky, Sweetie Belle slowly opened her eyes. She sat up in her bed and looked at the clock hanging on the wall. Even though her room glowed blue in the moonlight, Sweetie Belle could not make out the clock hooves. It had to be late—an ungodly hour, as no noise reached Sweetie Belle’s ears. Only a night-time silence. Her parent’s conversation must have died long ago.
Something was wrong. Sweetie Belle leaned against the headboard and listened. It took a moment for her to hear it: the noise that crept beneath the silence, so quiet it could hardly be heard at all. But it was there. A droning buzz—some kind of static. Sweetie Belle rubbed her ears, but not only did the static remain, it became louder. And it continued to grow louder, until a new sound emerged from the static like a creature lurching from the depths of a swamp.
Hoofsteps. Slow and deliberate, and not just one but many. Sweetie Belle listened to the footsteps with wide eyes as they plodded up the stairs, into the hall, and paused in front of her bedroom door. “Hello?” Sweetie Belle whispered. She pulled her blankets close to her.
There was silence again, until the doorknob rattled and the door opened wide. Sweetie Belle ducked beneath the covers. After a moment, she peeked, then jolted upright and screamed. She closed her eyes and screamed and screamed. Sweetie Belle’s parents galloped into the room and activated the bedroom lights. Sweetie Belle brought a foreleg to shield her eyes
“Sweetie Belle, what’s wrong?” Her mother asked. The plump pink unicorn darted her eyes across the room, her sleeping mask pushed up to her horn.
“Ponies! There are ponies in the hall!”
Sweetie Belle’s father, a burly white unicorn, went out into the hall and turned on the light. He poked his head in the doorway. “There’s nothing here, Sweetie.”
The moon was low in the sky when Sweetie Belle finally slept again. A dream, her parents had said. Only a dream. But even then, with her mother beside her, it took a while for sleep to return to Sweetie Belle. The next morning Sweetie Belle woke with a yawn. Bleary eyed, she stretched her arm out to hug her mother, only to be met with an empty bedside. “Mom?” Sweetie Belle called. She turned the other way, and gasped.
•••
“All the Caramel Delights have disappeared from the market,” Twist said in her usual lisp. “It’s really weird. Now they’re worth six times what they were yesterday.”
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom sat on the grass opposite from Twist. School had let out not long ago, and once again the playground had been converted into a bustling exchange. The shouts of ponies hawking their offers rose above the market racket. A strong wind snaked its way through the playground, animating the autumn leaves and sending many young candy brokers scurrying to protect their goods.
“Is that so?” Apple Bloom smiled. “I still have all the Caramel Delights Scootaloo gave me yesterday! That means…” She sprung to her hooves and danced. “I’m rich! I’m rich!” Apple Bloom looked at Scootaloo. “No backsies.”
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Great.”
“Speaking of great, look who’s coming,” Apple Bloom said under her breath. She directed her friends’ attention to Silver Spoon, who approached the trio alone.
“Do any of you, like, have any Milky Bars?” Silver Spoon said, joining the conversation. “Diamond Tiara has got this major craving for some, and I can’t find any.”
Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Twist each searched their stashes and came up empty hooved. “No,” Twist said. “I don’t think I’ve seen any Milky Bars today.”
“Like, tell me about it.”
“Where’s Diamond Tiara?” Scootaloo asked.
“Oh, you know, she’s around. Like, she sent me to find Milky Bars, but looks like that isn't happening.”
“What’s going on over there?” Twist said. She pointed a hoof across the playground. A thick circle of ponies had gathered in front of the schoolhouse. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom stood and half-hurriedly approached the crowd to see what the fuss was about, leaving Twist to deal with Silver Spoon.
Squeezing past the thicket of noisy ponies proved difficult. Whispering apologies, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom forced their way through the crowd, and a trail of discontent and nasty looks followed them. They heard a familiar voice shouting overhead as they struggled with the crowd. “Name your offers! You won’t find these kind of deals anywhere else on the playground!” The voice shouted.
A rather obese pony stood as the final obstacle to reaching the crowd center. Shrugging, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom ducked beneath the pony. “Hey!” he said, but Scootaloo and Apple Bloom paid no mind, because once they emerged from the folds of fat they saw Sweetie Belle commanding the center of the crowd.
Buckets filled to the brim with candy orbited around Sweetie Belle as she rushed about. Ponies held up clumps of candy, and Sweetie Belle swung around completing trade after trade at a furious pace. All the while she barked, “I've got Caramel Delights, Crazy Dipsticks, Milky Bars, Manehatten Licorice Bits, Cola Fizzles, Taffybites, mini Nutchunk Bars, Everlasting Teethrotters, grape flavored gumballs, gum flavored grapeballs…”
“Sweetie Belle!” Apple Bloom shouted. “Where’d you get all that candy?”
“Well, if it isn't some of my favorite ponies!” Sweetie Belle galloped up to Scootaloo and Apple Bloom. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t want you two worrying about anything anymore. The three of us are going straight to the top. No more candy corn for us!”
A sudden hush overtook the crowd. Glancing around, Sweetie Belle spotted the tip of a wiry tiara working its way through the crowd like the fin of an approaching shark. Ponies at the edge of the crowd parted, and Diamond Tiara emerged. Silver Spoon followed shortly after pulling the wagon piled with candy. She let the handle fall from her mouth and collapsed to the ground.
“Look who’s made it big,” Diamond Tiara said, studying the buckets of candy floating around Sweetie Belle.
Sweetie Belle stepped forward. She stood firm and locked eyes with Diamond Tiara. The crowd remained silent.
“I see you have Milky Bars,” Diamond Tiara said. “I’ll give you one Go-Go Pop apiece for each of them.”
“Four Go-Go Pops,” Sweetie Belle countered. The crowd gasped.
Diamond Tiara remained unfazed. “One Go-Go Pop,” she repeated.
“One Go-Go Pop, a chocolate bit.” Sweetie Belle smirked. “…and your tiara.”
Diamond Tiara too a step back and tried to suppress a look of shock. “Two Go-Go Pops apiece and that’s it. Take it or leave it,” she said. Her voice was firm. “You won't get another offer so generous.”
“No trade.” Sweetie Belle turned away. She could feel Diamond Tiara’s glare burning into the back of her skull. “You’re the one who came to me, after all. I don’t need your Go-Go Pops.”
“Fine.” Gasps and whispers rose from the crowd. Diamond Tiara had taken off her tiara. “Okay, one Go-Go Pop, one chocolate bit apiece… and my tiara.” When Sweetie Belle turned back around, Diamond Tiara didn't hesitate to lock eyes with her again. “You’re lucky you’re the only pony in town with Milky Bars.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Sweetie Belle said as she and Diamond Tiara completed the transaction. Sweetie Belle plopped the sparkling tiara above her horn. “It’s just good business.”
The poisonous look on Diamond Tiara’s could have made a basilisk sick, but it only tickled Sweetie Belle. Frustrated, Diamond Tiara stomped off without saying another word. Silver Spoon followed, still straining to pull the candy-loaded wagon. Sweetie Belle watched them go with a smile on her face.
•••
Diamond Tiara sat up in her bed. Her heart pounded in the darkness of her bedroom. She had been asleep, dreaming some strange dream, when something had stirred her. Diamond Tiara perked her ears. She thought she had heard something in the night, a fleeting sound, but no. She could hear nothing now.
Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Diamond Tiara scanned her bedroom. The intricately carved furniture, black shapes in the dark, remained as they had been. Her collection of stuffed animals stood watch with eyes of buttons and black plastic.
Diamond Tiara shifted and looked to the window. The silk shades billowed in a light breeze, letting in the sight of a high moon and starry sky. Her butler must have left the window open. Diamond Tiara reached out and shut the window, then sank back into her bed. Randolph would need a talking to in the morning.
She didn't notice the empty wagon beneath the window.
•••
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom sat beneath a tree by the playground with empty buckets at their sides. From the west the autumn wind blew and kicked at the leaves. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom ignored the wind and listened.
There were no shouts of candy offers on the playground today. There was no trading or munching or even a wrapper in sight. The young ponies of the playground huddled together in small groups, their eyes overcast and some near tears. They cast distrustful looks to the other groups, and sometimes to each other. One subject was the common thread; a subject that hung over the playground like a black cloud and was repeated over and over in quiet whispers.
“The candy snatchers….”
“…the candy snatchers.”
“…the candy snatchers…”
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom looked at each other and frowned. After exchanging some words, the two got up and left for the apple orchards. Sweetie Belle hadn't been in school that day, and they had their suspicions on where she might be. As they cantered up the gangway to their treehouse, their suspicions were confirmed. Sweetie Belle’s voice wafted out of the clubhouse, singing the bittersweet notes of a lullaby to somepony unknown. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom glanced at each other again before opening the clubhouse door.
“Hey, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo and Apple Bloom said together as they entered the clubhouse. They were greeted with a radically altered interior. All the old club furniture was gone, stored away to make room for candy. Lots of it. An entire mountain range of valleys and hills of candy stretched around the room, leaving only a small clearing in the center.
Sweetie Belle sat alone behind a heavy oak desk lodged haphazardly on top of a highest candy hill in the room. Diamond Tiara’s tiara rested above her horn. She stopped singing and eyed her two friends. “What can I do for you?” Sweetie Belle said after a moment.
“You haven’t had any, uh, problems with missing candy, have you?” Scootaloo felt ridiculous asking the question.
“No. At least, I don’t think I’m missing any. Keeping track of all this candy isn't easy.”
Apple Bloom plucked up a Fruity Rancher with her tongue and began unwrapping it. “How’d you get all this candy, anyway—”
“Hey, no eating the product!” Sweetie Belle slammed her hooves on her desk, her horn glowing. She pulled the Fruity Rancher away with her magic and set it on her desk. “It’s for trading only!”
Apple Bloom shrank back. “Trading?” she said, hurt. “With who? Nopony else in Ponyville has any candy!”
“There’s other towns.” Sweetie Belle said, looking out a window.
Footsteps outside the clubhouse perked the three ponies' attention. The clubhouse door slammed open, and Diamond Tiara stepped inside, followed by Silver Spoon. “Sweetie Belle!” Diamond Tiara screamed. “I know you took my candy! Where is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t do this, I know it was you! You’re the only pony in town with candy!”
Sweetie Belle feigned shock. “Really? That’s awful. But I got all this candy from fair trades and honest suppliers.”
“Yeah? I bet those suppliers were asleep, too.” Diamond Tiara's gaze traveled up to the tiara sitting on Sweetie Belle’s head. “And give me back my tiara!”
“Nope, no backsies,” Sweetie Belle said. “It’s not my fault you can’t keep track of your candy.”
Diamond Tiara’s face became red and her body shook. Sweetie Belle imagined smoke billowing from her ears. “You’ll get yours, Sweetie Belle!” Diamond Tiara mustered.
“No, I already have mine,” Sweetie Belle’s features became dead serious. She waved her hoof at the mountains of candy. ”Can’t you see? When are you going to get yours? Oh wait, didn't your uncle say, 'The ponies with will always have, and the ponies without never will?' You two,” Sweetie Belle pointed at Scootaloo and Apple Bloom. “Get these ponies out of my clubhouse.”
“We’re not your servants, Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo shouted.
“Yeah, we’re your friends,” Apple Bloom added. “I mean, I thought we were.” Sweetie Belle ignored them.
“It doesn't matter, we’re leaving,” Diamond Tiara said. “Just wait, Sweetie Belle. You’ll be back at the bottom where you belong.” She and Silver Spoon left the clubhouse in a huff. Through a window, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom watched them leave.
•••
The shadows cast on the Cutie Mark Crusader treehouse danced and stretched as the sun ticked across the sky. When night finally settled in, blanketing the clearing in darkness, two silhouettes peeked out from behind a smaller apple tree not far away. Communicating entirely in hoof signals and nods, the two shadows slinked towards the treehouse gangway. They kept their snouts close to the damp grass and moved with careful deliberation.
The two shadows froze at the sight of approaching light, then galloped past the gangway and around to the other side of the tree. Two unicorn colts in blue uniforms rounded into the clearing. Lanterns clung to their magic, and milky beams of light crisscrossed across the grass. Finding the clearing empty, the two colts paused their watch in front of the gangway.
“How much did you say she was paying us?” one of them asked. He lowered his lantern.
“One Malt Whopper,” the other answered with a grimace.
“That’s not very much.”
“Well, in this economy, you work for what you can get.”
The colts moved on, their conversation fading further into the orchard. The two silhouettes crept out from behind the tree and up into the clubhouse. Inside the clubhouse, the mountains of candy rose like black monuments in the darkness. “Hurry,” came a whisper, and the two silhouettes started to shovel candy into large bags carried on their backs. In a fraction of a second the clubhouse lanterns fired up and assaulted the room with blinding light. The intruders covered their eyes with their hooves and screamed, their eyes burning behind the wool ski masks they wore.
“I knew it!” a voice screamed, and the two intruders understood what had happened. “I just knew it!" Sweetie Belle glowered at them, her hooves on her desk. Lollipop shards and chocolate smeared her mouth, and the desk was littered with wrappers. Her wild, red eyes studied the two ponies, who were clothed from snout to tail in black. “You two just can’t leave me alone! Even when I finally have something, something of my own, you’re not happy. You want to take it all away. But I’m not going to let you pick on me anymore!” Sweetie Belle’s horn glowed. “Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon!”
The two intruders rushed for the open door, only for Sweetie Belle to slam it shut with her magic before they could escape. Sweetie Belle pulled their masks off, and gasped. Her mouth worked itself silently for a moment, before finally sputtering, “You?” Sweetie Belle recovered quickly. “I should have known you two would try something.”
“Oh, put a sock in it.” Scootaloo said.
“But I’m your friend!”
“That’s what we thought too,” Apple Bloom said. She paced as she spoke, keeping her eye on Sweetie Belle. “But ever since you got all this candy you've become stuck up and just wrong. You’re worse than Diamond Tiara now! At least Diamond Tiara doesn't steal!”
“What are you saying? I didn't steal anything!”
“Are you going to lie to us, too? Everypony knows!” Scootaloo pulled her ski-mask from Sweetie Belles magical grip and tucked it away in her bag. “Diamond Tiara told all the other ponies about the candy you have stashed in here. They’re going to tell their parents sooner or later.”
“We didn't want to help you get away with stealing, but we also didn't want to see you get in trouble. We were going to give the candy back, but it’s not worth it anymore.” Apple Bloom said, turning for the door. “If all this candy means that much to you, keep it. We don’t want any of part of it.”
“And if this is the pony you’re going to be with it, we don’t want any part of you either!” Scootaloo spat. “You can stay up here alone with your precious candy for all we care!”
A door slam, and Sweetie Belle was alone again, looking at where her friends had been. Emotions surged within her. After a moment, she bowed her head, and sighed, finally letting go. The room remained starkly lit by the lanterns, and the moon hung high outside the window like a pale eye. Sweetie Belle studied the wooden swirls in her desk until a noise made itself known.
A familiar noise now—that slow sad drone that worked its way through the silence. For Sweetie Belle, that sound had become the fabric of experience lately. She listened for it in the night when all was quiet. Sometimes she heard it, sometimes not. Perhaps the sound was the fabric of all things—or at least certain things—allowing those things to rise from it the same way life rose from the primordial muck, the same way worms rise from the earth sniffing meat.
They were here now, risen from the earth and savoring the flesh they no longer had. Sweetie Belle looked up from her desk and peered into their eyes—eyes like pits of tar. The drone, that primordial noise, was gone and in its place was the stench of rank dirt.
“I’m sorry.” Sweetie Belle said. “I know you were just trying to help.” She scanned over the crowd that had gathered before her, careful not to neglect a single one. Not to forget a single dead face. “But nopony is happy now. Not me, not my friends, and especially not those ponies you stole from. I know you did it, and I should have said something, but I didn't. I got all caught up in being better than Diamond Tiara, and I forgot what mattered. But we can make things better. Listen to me, and I promise things will go back to the way they were.”
•••
The next morning, many fillies and colts prepared themselves for the day with a smile on their face. On their bedside tables, at the foot of their beds, beside their snouts, on the floor if need be, they each had discovered a pile of candy just for them. A pile of candy—for them to trade or eat or give away as things had been—just for them. But not for everyone. Diamond Tiara sat up in bed that morning to find on the windowsill her tiara—and a single peppermint drop. She frowned.
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom each found a letter besides their candy. “I’m sorry” was all it said.
Sweetie Belle’s mane was still wet when she entered her bedroom that night. It had been a long day. She had met Scootaloo and Apple Bloom in the playground, and together they had gone to the theater to watch Attack of the Giant Snails! Before the show, they had drooled over the assortment of snacks available in the lobby. Nachos, soda, popcorn, ice cream—pretty much everything was there except candy. The soda jerk had no idea where all the candy had gone.
By moonlight, Sweetie Belle navigated her way to the open window. Before she could sleep, there were other friends—other ponies—who wanted to hear from her. Sweetie Belle poked her head out her window, cleared her voice, and sang into the darkness, to the cemetery in the distance where the wind blew the dirt across the graves. Downstairs, Sweetie Belle’s mother and father sat at the kitchen table. Her mother looked at her father. “Don’t you love it when she sings?”