7 March, Y.C. 970
Ponyville
“Jackie!” came a bright voice from a corner booth. “Over here!”
The copper pony started, as much from the recognition as the enthusiasm. She threaded her way through tables and chairs to cross the room; the bistro was mostly empty in the midafternoon, but come evening it would be packed with ponies from the army’s support staff out on a few hours’ leave.
“Margaret,” acknowledged Jackie after a moment, sitting opposite her.
“I’m glad you got my message,” said the tan pony, catching the server’s attention and waving a hoof at the hay smoothie in front of her. “I wasn’t sure it would get to you in time.”
“It did,” said Jackie, hesitating a bit. “I’m surprised to see you back in town, though.”
“Hey, can’t I drop in and say hi to my Ponyville friends every once in a while?”
Jackie was silent. The server came over and deposited a matching tall glass of smoothie in front of her. She absently nodded her thanks and turned an expressionless face back to Margaret, who held her slightly hopeful expression for a few seconds longer before sighing.
“Look, I just wanted to say hi.”
“You said as much in the letter,” said Jackie, taking a sip from the glass. The smoothies weren’t as good now as before rationing hit the town’s suppliers, but the one in front of her was still decent. “I’m sorry, but you have to understand this is a bit strange. The last time I saw you was two months ago, and it wasn’t exactly under the greatest of circumstances.”
“That’s true.” Margaret laughed sheepishly. “I guess I see you all the time, in a way. Know those recruitment posters outside? We’ve got a lot of those in Canterlot.”
“I bet,” said Jackie with a trace of bitterness.
Fight For Her!, the posters said, the image stylized but unmistakable: a reddish orange pony being carried out of wreckage. Copper ponies were common enough, though, so she could still walk the streets in peace. More importantly, the papers had reported that she was a unicorn, meaning that anyone looking for her would look for a horn, and that she was dead, meaning that no one was looking for her in the first place.
And that suited her just fine. Her mane had grown back out, red curls long enough to cover the scars; on a windy day, a hat sufficed. She worked on the farm, helping Agnes keep things running and preparing for the spring thaw and planting. Some days, she imagined herself staying in Ponyville, putting down roots. She treasured those moments of imagination for as long as they lasted, because reality always came back to hit her.
Jackie missed Dag.
“…use the photo for the campaign,” Margaret was saying. “I convinced her to tone it down a bit, but it worked well with the northeastern focus groups.”
“Convinced her…” Jackie repeated before stopping short. “You have pull with the Princess?”
“No no,” she said quickly. “With Aspia — with the Secrepony of Defense. It was her plan.”
Jackie blinked. Margaret was younger than her; she might know what she was doing, but she couldn’t be more than a few years out of university. She had rubbed elbows at enough of Dag’s professional meet-and-greets to know what somepony with influence looked like. For a start, they usually had a grey mane.
“You have pull with Aspia McNamare.”
“She’s,” started Margaret, rubbing her neck before squeezing the words out, “she’s my mother.”
“She’s your —”
Margaret hissed her to silence before anyone else in the bistro paid them enough attention to look over.
“Well,” said Jackie, leaning back, “that does explain a lot.”
“You think just anypony can walk into the hospital with a fancy-looking piece of paper and mess around in the records room?” Margaret grinned. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thank you,” she said, with genuine warmth.
Margaret bowed her head slightly before taking a moment to glance around the room. “Which brings me to the actual reason I’m here,” she said in a quieter tone. “The mayor.”
Jackie nodded gravely. As Equestria’s front lines had pushed out from the ill-fated Remaregen bridge, Mayor Maher had lead a team of volunteers to pull injured ponies back from the riverbanks and into the tent city that had sprouted up around the hospital. They had only gone out when the military gave them an all-clear, but that was a relative term at best, given the minefield of unexploded ordnance and occasional fresh artillery strikes from a rogue Blackacrean battery. The mayor’s team had just reached the other side of the river when the shells fell….
Frankly, Maher had been lucky. He only left a leg in that crater, and a hindleg at that. Judging by the other ponies from that ill-fated expedition Jackie had seen from the recovery wards, others left behind forehooves, wings, swaths of skin; about half of them hadn’t made it out at all.
They had rushed the mayor through to the hospital, of course. Even a purely objective triage team bent the rules when the pony was a mayor; he had been under the knife to stabilize and sew up the limb in under twenty minutes. He had lost a lot of blood, but that wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle; his type was D, common enough, and the hospital had long lists of donors for all eight types.
None of this was publicly disclosed, of course; Jackie happened to be in the right ward at the right time, and years of living with a diplomat had trained her to keep an ear to the ground. Figuratively speaking — she was in a neck brace for two weeks after surgery. After the first few hours since the mayor and his expedition was brought back in, the nursing staff had clammed up; all she knew was that the mayor was in an intensive care unit. Officially, he was recovering fine. Unofficially, if someone from Canterlot was here….
“Is he…?”
“No,” said Margaret quickly. “He’s stable. And, well, that’s all I can say about that.”
“Ah.”
For a moment, there was silence, punctuated only by the faint clink of dishware filtering in from the kitchen.
“Mayor Maher is stepping down from an active role in the administration of the Ponyville region,” said Margaret, finding it uncomfortably easy to slip into her mother’s speech patterns. “The Princess intends to temporarily reassign the obligations of the Ponyville mayoralty.”
“And you’re here to scout the land,” said Jackie, smoothly connecting the dots, “to figure out who’s best for the job.”
“Something like that,” she shrugged. “Problem is, I’ve got work to take care of back in Canterlot, and I can’t stay here for too long.”
“I’d like to help you, but I’m not sure what I can do,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not from around here either, and I spend most of my time out at the farm. If you want the inside scoop on what’s going on in Ponyville, go find a secrepony in the town hall. Or go to the army’s command post.” She snorted. “They run everything else around here.”
“I plan on it,” agreed Margaret. “And I know you don’t know much more than I do. But — look, I need to learn this town, or at least get the two-bit tour, in four days or less. And I’d rather not do it alone.”
“A weekend on the town?” Jackie smiled broadly. It had been a long, long time. Diplomatic service entailed seeing a lot of new and interesting places in a short amount of time; she was already compiling a mental list of things to check out and ponies to talk to, even in just the few moments since the thought occurred to her. The last time she had done this was with Dag, and usually they —
Jackie clamped off the thought. That wasn’t her life anymore. She was a new pony, as much as she might not like it. And she owed it, in large part, to Margaret. This was the least she could do.
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Great!” said Margaret, sounding very much relieved. “It’s good to have someone to count on out here.” She finished off her smoothie and rubbed her hooves together. “Where do we start?”