A Touch of Generosity
“La di da di da di dum…”
A bored Silver Spoon whiled away the hours in her cell, strapped to the centre of the room. She didn’t know how long she had been there, nor did she know how long she had to wait. Octavia had come by a couple times in the past day or so to gloat or to play music, but otherwise, she was left alone. Even Battrap had moved on to other duties.
She enjoyed the music, a fine piece of entertainment she could latch on to so she could avoid becoming a victim of Stockhoof Syndrome. Octavia wasn’t a bad captor. In fact, she had even cracked a glass of wine and talked with Silver casually once. She brought Silver a book or two to read and a battered couch to sleep on. Octavia had improved the quality of the meals she was served. Heck, she had even allowed Silver supervised walks through her prison to get some exercise.
This didn’t feel like a kidnapping anymore. Instead, it was an extended vacation from dealing with life. Silver hated to admit it, but she was actually beginning to enjoy it here… at least, until she had tried to make a run for it last night. Had she been aware just how much of a labyrinth Octavia’s basement was, she would have certainly taken more walks than just the one to try to escape. Battrap had returned for just that one time and made Silver see the error of her ways.
Silver sighed. “I have to get out of here.”
Just then, the door creaked open. A brown cloak stepped in. It was too small to be Big Macintosh. When the voice spoke, however, she knew who it was. The mare levitated a second brown cloak and a key from someplace obscured by the wall.
“Come with me. Don’t say anything.”
The mare unlocked Silver’s chains with the key. As the shackles fell off, Silver rubbed her fetlocks to get the feeling back into her hooves. Rarity draped the second brown cloak over her shoulders.
“A nice mare like you shouldn’t be in these dungeons,” Rarity snapped as they exited the cell. A quick lock later, they trotted down to another door. “Neither should she. Do not be deceived by Octavia’s lies. She’s the sweetest snake I’ve ever worked for, and I used to design fabulous dresses. Do you know how many-” she unlocked the rusted lock of the door with a grunt “-wolves there are in fashion? Too many to count. That’s how I learned to play her game. But this? No. This is beneath her. Rather, this should be beneath her. Whatever her reason, it is no longer. However, she did not need to drag such a nice mare as yourself into this mess. She did not need to harm my friends. Octavia’s pushed me too far for the last time. I’m freeing you two tonight.”
Silver remained silent as commanded.
“Now, let’s tuck her underneath your cloak…” Silver felt a draft, then a warm, heavy, bony weight on her back before the cloak once again settled over her “…and head out.”
“What about you?” Silver asked, straining to keep up under the weight of the body on her back.
Rarity sniffled. “They already killed Sweetie Belle for our little interaction earlier. What else can she take from me but my life? At least I can save Apple Bloom and you.”
Silver gasped. “Apple Bloom?! That’s who was in her prison with me?”
Rarity nodded, cold as stone, as she glided up to a door. She cracked it open. The moonlight caressed their faces and shone down over the city of Canterlot.
“Keep to the shadows,” Rarity warned as she hoofed over a small satchel. “Here’re some bits for the journey. Make your way out of town and head on hoof to a small town called Appleloosa. Connect with a pony named Sunrise there. She can hide you for a while and maybe even get you in contact with your ship.”
“Thank you, Miss Rarity,” Silver said. “What about you?”
Rarity flinched and bit her lower lip. She shuddered and quickly hid her face.
“R-Rarity?” Silver asked, suddenly concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“I hope you kill the bitch,” Rarity seethed through tears. “It’s too late for me.”
“What… what do you mean?” Silver asked, panic rising. “What’s going to happen to you?”
Rarity went silent. As her tears fell, she raised a hoof. Silver Spoon gasped in shock.
“Y-you’re…!!”
“I died… fighting for her life,” Rarity said. Tears started dripping off her face. “I s-swore th… th-that her death would mean something, that I would rescue her best friend and her childhood enemy. Before she was killed, she told me to promise…” The words caught in her throat. “t-to Pinkie Promise that I would save Apple Bloom and you. I don’t know how she knew you would be captured, Silver, but she did. She mentioned you by name. Even had a message for you.”
Rarity’s final tears hit the floor, and her final words echoed in spirit.
“She said, ‘Silver, watch your father’.”
Thunder sounded. Silver didn’t know what shocked her more: that she had just seen a ghost, or that she had just heard something about her father that shook her to the core. What did she mean? Why would she say that?
An airy voice seeped into her mind. “Watch your father.”
Sweetie Belle?
Silver swivelled her head rapidly in all directions. She never saw anything to indicate another presence, but she felt something in the wind. As the rain came down in the dark of night, she looked back, towards the limp body under her cloak.
Thank you, Rarity, and you too, Sweetie Belle. The rest is on me.
She adjusted the weight on her back and disappeared into the shadows of Canterlot. For the first few minutes, she felt like a ninja, darting from shadow to shadow and carefully pacing out her next opportunity. By the fifth minute, however, the eerily quiet city, normally hustling and bustling with life, had her on edge. Even this late at night, Canterlot’s streets would be patrolled by at least one or two of Luna’s guards, a street sweeper team, a group of late-night revellers, and even the occasional romantic couples’ outing. Tonight, the only sign of life Silver had spotted was tumbleweed blowing on the wind. A tumbleweed in Canterlot.
A chill went down Silver’s spine as she found herself at Five Corners – a roundabout with five roads branching off in all directions. Having been born in Ponyville, and with embarrassingly few trips to the nation’s capital under her belt despite her father’s status, she was a pegasus underground: lost, bewildered, terrified. She checked all the intersections and realized she would have to make a run for it in the hopes of not being seen, if any guards were even out. She hadn’t seen a single one.
That frightened her even more.
Where were the guards? Where were the ponies? Even the street walkers and other ponies of the night had vacated. No drunks. No beggars.
Nothing.
Silver looked across at the four pathways she could take, licking her lips and gritting her teeth. Something was horribly wrong here. She hesitated slightly, wanted to stay, wanted to find out what happened. She looked back down the path she had taken, nibbling on a lip. She hopped from one hoof to another. She glanced quickly between all four paths.
She saw the way out!
A tiny gate on the horizon appeared on the second path to her left. She recognized it as the gateway that led to the train station. She could follow the tracks and get out of this dump! Hay, if she wanted, she could find the hoof path from there and walk a safer road. She knew at least that much.
Just before she dashed for the hills, she hesitated and looked around at the empty streets, pausing for a second as if to reconsider investigating the abandoned capital. Curiosity nearly got the better of her until the weight on her back shuffled ever so slightly. Silver remembered she had another reason to move on – Sweetie Belle’s friend had to be preserved, and she couldn’t be assured of Apple Bloom’s safety in Canterlot, not while Octavia was around.
She took a look at the city one more time, still of two minds about the whole ordeal, and blasted out of town as fast as the weight on her back and the legs under her body would let her.
When Mac and I find each other, we’ll head back to Canterlot and set things right, she asserted. This city is sick. This country is sick. We have to help it.
For one hour, Silver Spoon and her companion descended wordlessly along the tracks heading down from Canterlot to Ponyville. She puzzled over the silence of the capital. She wondered why Sweetie Belle would give her that kind of warning about her dad. Surely she couldn’t have implied that Baggin’ was in with Octavia. No, that was preposterous. It must be related to his health. Daddy hadn’t been feeling right for a year now. There had been a few overnight stays at Ponyville hospital, a couple of work trips where he had been away for a day or two longer than he had said, but nothing odd beyond that. He had his normal ten-hour job, eight to six every day, and other than business trips was always prompt about returning home to his wife, the legendary business tycoon Silver Belle, and their child.
No, Silver concluded, there was no reason her father could even be associated with Octavia, not if he wanted her mother’s name to remain in good standing.
Satisfied in her conclusion, she moved on to the topic of Canterlot’s abandonment. Everything she had thought of, like a massive town-wide vacation, a zombie outbreak, even a simple structural collapse emergency, was ruled out by the mere fact they only lasted for four hours at the longest. The one pony she had seen flying away from Canterlot, a little white pegasus colt with a silver mane by the name of December Glow about half a mile back, had merely climbed up into the mountains on a dare. She had gleaned from him that Octavia was calling herself a princess and wearing the crown worn by Princess Luna.
Blasphemy, Silver had seethed.
The colt had not asked what she was carrying. Instead, he had simply requested that they walk together down the mountain. Since then, they had walked in silence, the colt glancing occasionally at the unnatural lumps on her back. December was not normally an intrusive pony, but this was almost too much. With his rose quartz eyes, he continually scanned the older mare’s back, trying to burn a hole through her head.
“December, what do you want?” Silver asked.
The colt looked away and blushed. “I-I just want to know what’s on your back…”
Up until now, the colt had sounded more like Pipsqueak did when he was little. Barely more than a whisper, the soft, high pitch made Silver Spoon HNNNNG! inside. This was his actual, natural voice. She quickly hid her face, pinched it into a wide smile and held back an audible squeak. She turned back and quickly regained her somber, thoughtful posture as she cleared her throat.
“I’m trying to get her to a hospital.”
December gasped. “Oh no! What happened? Who is she?”
Silver grimaced. “An old friend. We grew up together in Ponyville.”
“Nopony nice ever came from Ponyville,” the colt sneered. “You’re lying.”
Silver looked to the horizon where the town sat, now in plain view. If only she could get word to Big Mac… “It was better when I was a filly.”
`When was that? A hundred years ago?”
Silver had to hold back an instinct to slap the kid upside the head for two reasons: she was beyond violence, and she had to prove his assumption wrong. She had to show December she was a decent pony. After a calming, deep breath, she gave a plastic smile.
“Only about ten or so, actually. I was your age at the time. Actually, the pony I’m carrying helped me a lot.” Silver sighed, pushing through the strain. “I wasn’t a nice pony back then. I always hung around with a filly that picked on others for fun. She and I were particularly nasty to these three specific ponies. After a while, I began to grow sick of it. I wrote a journal to help me get over my bullying issues. I tried talking to counsellors. I even tried psychics. None of them helped. It wasn’t until this pony and her friend, a unicorn named Sweetie Belle, broke through my hard shell. They bridged the gap between bully and friendship, and for that I owe her a lot.”
She slowed. “T-that’s why… why… augh!”
Silver collapsed under the weight of her friend, her legs finally giving out. December gasped.
“I’ll run back to the village and get somepony!”
“I’ll get us into that cave over there.”
The colt charged off. Silver Spoon lay there, underneath the barely conscious form of her friend. With the last of her strength, she shuffled herself into a little sheltered alcove and pulled Apple Bloom in with her. She settled the blanket overtop their bodies and huddled in tight. Her stomach growled, but, as she bade farewell to the day, she ignored the call. She had nothing to eat anyway. Instead, Silver looked at Apple Bloom and prayed.
Celestia, please keep her alive.