"This is Smarty Pants. She was mine when I was your age.
And now I want to give her to you! "
Miss Batsy has lived a really long time, so she has a bunch of stories. Sometimes she tells me them.
When I once asked her about where she came from, she laughed and said she came from a big cave deep underground, under all the buildings and roads and rocks that I knew about and far away from any city I had heard of before, and that it was sometimes dangerous and sometimes boring but usually not really different from other places she has taken me to. She said that it wasn't too different then a tunnel we once went through, but it was made of real rock and it went deeper and further underground than the tunnels.
She also said that they weren't all made by ponies but by other things, like ground-worms and dragons and bigger things that ponies normally didn't see, and when you got deeper in the lower tunnels and caves you might have a chance that you could see something that ponies weren't supposed to see. She told me that she lived really far away, where it never snowed and it's all hills and sand and rocks, but someday she might take me there, if I wanted too.
I would want to see those caves and tunnels, because they sound cool, but sometimes her stories scare me a little. She once told me that she only spent a few years in her home, but she didn't have a mom or a dad and she had to fend for herself, so ponies didn't like her much. She said that it was because ponies like her have a system where a filly is probably only to get what their parents have, so she had almost nothing because her parents went away into one of the deep caverns. She sometimes tried to go down there, but there were things that would eat ponies if they could down there, and sometimes other ponies like her who didn't like other ponies like her.
When I asked Miss Batsy what she thought happened to her parents, she shook her head and said she didn't know. She didn't frown or smile or anything, so I don't know if she was still sad about it or not. But I don't think she was, because her story finished with the Princess of The Moon returning and her going to the city called Canterlot to be a Royal Guard, and when she said that she smiled bigger than she normally did and looked at me like something good just happened.
She hasn't gotten to the rest of that story though, because sometimes she leaves for so long sometimes she doesn't remember where she left off, so I let her tell parts of the story she already told me so she doesn't feel too bad about it.
When I asked her where my momma went after she got hurt, she just smiled and told me that ponies all eventually end up in this big cave when they die, but it was big enough that it had it's own clouds and trees and light, where everything shined without a sun and everypony was happy, because no one could get hurt or get sick in that cave. She even said you could touch the stars if you wanted too, stars held up on the roof of the cave, coming out from the top like crystals.
I'm not sure if I would want to touch a star, though. Miss Batsy said that stars outside that cave, in the real world, are really far away from where we are, and I wouldn't want to touch one if I wasn't in that big cave. When I asked her why, she just smiled and sighed and patted my head and said that I would know when I'm older.
She usually doesn't say that, 'when I'm older', but when she does it makes me feel really upset. She said that when I tried reading a book I found on a high shelf about fish that was written by somepony who grew up in the place where Griffons came from, and it had pictures of how to remove all the bones from the fish so it's safe to eat. She didn't like the fact I was reading something like that, but I don't know why. It isn't like I hadn't ever seen a dead fish before. Or a dead pony.
Sometimes that got to me, too. She would act upset if I tried to poke one of her friends when she sometimes visited them. Usually she doesn't act like how mama acted, all serious and stuff, but sometimes she got really serious all-of-a-sudden, which scares me sometimes because I don't know when she might stop being happy. Usually it's when I say or do something she doesn't think I should be saying or doing, like poking one of her friends.
All her friends were dead ponies anyway; she was a dead pony too, but she said she was a different kind of dead pony then the other dead ponies. I thought she meant that like how she explained to me the differences between a earth pony and a unicorn was, but when I told her that she just laughed and laughed and told me that it was more of a difference between a earth pony and a donkey, which I still don't get, because donkey's aren't really like earth ponies at all.
Once, I found a big book about monsters, and I found something called a vampire. It was a pony that could grow bat wings and turn invisible and drink blood and do all sorts of neat things, and it sounded a lot like Miss Batsy, so I asked her about it. She just frowned at me and said that she would tell me when I was older.
I once asked one of her nicer dead friends, a big once-a-pony named Goreshod, who always wore heavy clothing with bits of metal in it and had a big hole where his nose should be, if Miss Batsy was a vampony. He just laughed and laughed, at that, like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard, but Miss Batsy just shook her head at him and made him leave where we were staying. I didn't get why she did that, but she shook her head and told me to not say stuff like that ever again.
Miss Batsy told me a strange story once, when she had drank a little of that horrible beer stuff that comes in cans in sets of twelve that I'm not supposed to drink, after I asked her to tell me why the ponies outside of the place with the boats all look so busy when ponies who came from outside the town, and why I couldn't go there when everypony helped a few other ponies into a big wagon with big safety bars on the sides.
She said that there's a big city in the south, where it's all sand and dust and steel and rust, where a bunch of ponies try and make a place from more than a hundred years ago work by making other ponies try and fix the machines. She said that that cart was being pulled by the ponies who work for the ponies who would want that city to work, and that I was too little to be put in that wagon. I asked why the ponies wouldn't want to work for the ponies who pulled the cart, and she said that the ponies who worked for the ponies who pulled the cart get hurt if they don't work.
When I asked why the ponies wouldn't want to help make the place work, she got really quiet and flew off to a place where I couldn't reach her, like she only did when she was either really tired or really upset at me.
I don't know what made her leave.
I was thinking about stories before I drank the blue-colored potion Miss Blueberry gave me, which she said would make me feel better after my head started to hurt, but when I started to get tired she gave me the fuzzy robe she got from Miss Glory and let me go to sleep. It was easy, because it was nice outside and the missing wall in the room made it so that it wasn't too warm, so I layed down near one of the side-walls so if I rolled when I was asleep I wouldn't fall outside. I learned that from trying to sleep on shelving. Hard.
When I woke up, though, I figured that I must have been asleep for a long time, because it was really dark outside and both Miss Blueberry and Mr. Watchful were asleep. Miss Blueberry had brought in a mattress to sleep on, and looked kind of sad because her hair was almost everywhere except on the back of her head, so she kind of looked like she had a lumpy head that made her horn look really tiny. It just sort of stuck out of her hair, like it wasn't supposed to be there.
I almost didn't see Mr. Watchful at first, but I soon realized that the big shape in the middle of the room that kept breathing was him. I felt kind of sad for him too, because it was cold and he was sleeping on the floor, but he already had a big grey blanket covering half of him, so I just tried the throw the one blanket I did have over him. But, I wasn't tall enough to toss it over him, and for a few seconds I thought he was going to wake up because he had a blanket over his head, his horns making it look like he had a tent over his face, but after I waited a few moments he didn't do anything, which I was happy about.
But, because I was awake, I was bored and not ready to go asleep yet, so I found some of the clothes I got from Miss Glory, just the white furry hat with the tuft on top of it and the scarf, and walked outside the room, because I wanted to explore this place because it looked cool.
I had never been in a place so tall before, anyway. The docking place was the tallest place I had been in my life, and that was all empty and it was just usually me and Miss Batsy, but this place was filled with ponies, but also it wasn't all wet like the docking place, so there wasn't any chance that I could trip and break my neck, like one pony did after Miss Batsy pushed him down a set of stairs.
That was another reason, too, because apparently the ponies who lived here were nice, unlike the ponies who lived in Watershed. Sometimes ponies from Watershed came over to the docking bay sometimes, and Miss Batsy usually scared them away or killed them so they wouldn't see me. But this was a place where she said that was good, and even though it got attacked by a bunch of ponies, and one really nice pony got shot in front of me and I got bits of him in my face.
I liked him, that Temperance pony. I thought I was going to enjoy knowing him, like Miss Blueberry and Mr. Watchful, but then somepony killed him.
It took me a while to walk down the staircase when I found it, because it was dark and cold and I didn't want to trip and the stairs were made for bigger ponies anyway.
I remembered the way downstairs from earlier, but in the dark it was a little weird. I thought I was pretty good in moving in the dark, because Miss Batsy said I was good at it and she could see in the dark, so that's something. But, it was dark enough that I couldn't see anything a few feet away from me and sometimes I heard a weird noise that I wasn't sure where it came from or what it could have come from, but I didn't scream or yell or anything because I knew there wasn't anything here that could hurt me besides another pony, with a gun.
Miss Batsy didn't want me near guns, and I understood why. They were noisy and loud and they hurt ponies. Miss Blueberry had a weird gun that wasn't really a gun and Mr. Gabriel had a big gun, but Miss Blueberry was nice and Mr. Gabriel was nice too. Miss Batsy said that I would probably need to learn how to learn how to use a gun, but what I would really want is one of her hoof-claw-gauntlet thingies that made sparks when she wanted them too. She doesn't let me play with them, but she told me that she wouldn't let me play with a gun either. I wouldn't want to play with a gun, because guns kill ponies, like Temperance.
My legs were a little sore after walking down all the way to the first floor, so I sat down for a few moments so I didn't get too tired and would have to go back upstairs so I would rest. I could've stopped for a few moments one or two floors ago, where there was a few lightbulbs hanging on the ceiling, but I had heard ponies walking around in a few rooms and I didn't want to run into a pony I didn't want to see.
Also, the carpet on the first floor wasn't as dirty as the ones on the upper floors. That doesn't make sense to me, but I wasn't going to complain, because that wasn't a big deal.
With the scattered light bulbs set between the bundles of wire on the ceiling, I saw well enough that I wasn't afraid to walk at a normal pace. I did like here. It wasn't too hot or cold, and even the walls were sort of fuzzy, and the weird smells and mildew were all up where ponies didn't live. It was nice.
But I could also say that about Miss Glory's house, and Miss Glory had a funny mouth too, so maybe this place was just reminding me that there was a place a bit like this one but also had lots of food that wasn't from two hundred years ago.
Also, in Miss Glory's house, ponies didn't get shot or dismembered and left to die. I think.
The first floor, I first thought, was empty. Even with all the lights on and stuff, there wasn't any pony around, even at the desk where there was a pony before. It was all empty and really quiet, even though there was probably dozens of ponies here and a few had to not be upstairs. There were those ponies who attacked this place, and the ponies who were in the lobby before they attacked it.
All the glass from the smashed windows seemed to have been cleaned up, though, which was nice.
The lobby didn't even look like there was a big fight earlier, because there was just a few bullet holes in the walls and there wasn't any blood or stuff like that. It looked kinda nice, even, because there were a few soft lights scattered around the room that gave the whole place a shady look. It was a little cold, because the windows were gone and there wasn't any heating, but I always would want to be a little cold then a little hot, because you can't bundle up in clothing to keep away the heat.
I thought against going over to where the couches were, and I couldn't get past the gate near the desk that would let me go behind it, so I sat around the middle of the room for a few moments and wondered if I should just go back upstairs and pretend to be asleep until I really was asleep, like I normally did. But, I eventually just decided that I was already downstairs and there wasn't much to do there besides waiting for Mr. Watchful and Miss Blueberry to wake up.
I guess I could listen to one of those tapes Miss Glory gave me, but I didn't want to go through them too fast. I liked them a lot. The one I got to listen to was about something called a Celestia, who was apparently a pony that wasn't like other ponies. The tape said that she had lived for a very long time and had a wing and a horn, and was also a princess, but was also called a Alicorn. Which was kind of silly, because I had seen a chart in a book once that said that the horn a unicorn has is called a alicorn too.
But anyway, this Celestia pony ruled for a really long time, but after a while she decided to stop being the ruler after a while and let her sister try to do it. I guess the sister didn't do a really good job, because the tape said that ten years had passed since the zebra war started, and I knew that the war lasted twenty years from another book I had read. I guess the sister wasn't a really good ruler then, because ten years after her sister let her rule over everything the zebras launched their bombs and the ponies launched theirs.
Miss Batsy once told me that there was once two sisters, and they controlled the sun and moon, which were apparently two big balls in the sky that you used to be able to see a long time ago. One was named Celestia and the other was named Luna, and Miss Batsy said that she used to be one of the Luna pony's guards. My momma used to talk about them, but only when she was angry at another pony and usually said a few bad words along with their names.
I guess the story about the sisters was nice, anyway, but sometimes I didn't know when the real stories started and the fake ones did. It all sounded a little weird, honestly.
After a while of sitting around on the floor, I decided to go outside.
While the ponies in the hotel cleaned up really good inside it, they didn't do a good job outside it. The road was covered in glass and bullet casings and I think I stepped in something sticky and cold that I didn't want to think about too hard about. There was new marks on the road now that wasn't there when I was walking on it, and I could see the big boxy shape of the wagon thing that the ponies brought with them, which was so big I thought that there was a new building just sitting off to the side of the road that wasn't there before.
I decided to be a brave filly and climbed on top of the bigger piles of rubble, one of the one's that was already there when I was outside the hotel last time. It was a big pile on the far end of the street, framing one end of it so ponies couldn't go past it unless they went through the gap of the middle. I knew it had pieces of rusty metal in it from when I first saw it, so I took careful steps and made sure I was only climbing on big solid pieces of concrete, which wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.
It took a minute or two, and my hooves hurt and I would need to wash a scratch I got on my right hoof really good, so it didn't get infected and need to get chopped off, but I managed to get on top of the rubble-wall. There wasn't much on the other side of the wall other then more rubble and more of the street.
But, I didn't climb on top of a really big wall made of rock and spiky bits to see what's on the other side.
I wanted a better look at the sky.
I always liked stars. Miss Batsy said that they all had names, and she could tell me all of them. Sometimes she did that when we were going places, to pass the time. Some of them had stories about them.
Miss Batsy once told me that some zebras thought the stars were evil. The zebras also helped blow up the world, so maybe they are just a little silly. Miss Batsy told me not to judge, though, because it's not good to judge things you don't know about. She also said that she grew up being told that the stars were little gems and that the world was all one big cavern anyway, and it wasn't like she believed that now, so she told me that even smart ponies can be ignorant about some things.
I really didn't care about the stories, though. I just liked them because they were pretty.
They were all glittery and some twinkled every so often, and they were all different sizes and some were a slightly different color than the rest. And they would always be like they are. Ponies couldn't blow up the stars, or zebras, or even dragons. The stars aren't like buildings, or books, or ponies. Some buildings I have seen in old photos had to have been pretty when ponies built them, but all the one's I'v seen are old and rusty. Books get all yellowed even if you keep really good care of them, and when you don't they can get wet and moldy. And ponies...
A lot of the posters and pictures I have seen usually had really happy ponies on them. Even the ones that were really old and crinkly had nice, happy ponies on them. Usually there was a family, with a mom and dad and two foals, and they weren't dirty or had cuts and bruises on them. I didn't think ponies looked like that anymore, before I met Miss Nightcore.
But the stars would always look pretty, anyway. I thought that was kind of nice, that even when I was grown and had my cutie mark, or when I was old and probably dead, the stars would always look the same.
That was a nice thing, I thought. Something that everypony could see and enjoy no matter who they were; the night sky. My momma said that, once.
I miss my momma a lot, but she once told me that when ponies die, they become stars. I don't think that's true, but I think I want it to be, so that I could pretend that she's watching me.
I'm not very good about pretending things, though.
Even if she can't see me, I don't have to pretend that the stars aren't pretty. You can't deny they don't exist.
Thats nice, I think. Stars are honest. They are just pretty lights in the night that twinkle and make the sky more than a big dark space. They don't have something else, because they are already good.
...
I miss my momma. I think, when Miss Batsy comes back, I'll call her Umbra from now on. My momma called me a strong filly, and she wanted me to do my best in the world.
I love Miss Batsy too, but I think, one day, when I'm all grown up, I'm going to have to kill her.