//------------------------------//
// In Her Garden 
// Story: In Her Garden 
// by Mischievous Blue 
//------------------------------//


In Her Garden
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose
that makes your rose so important”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery-

Rose fiddled with the rose in front of her. She gently pushed it to one side, but that made one side of her garden look like it had more flowers. She pushed it to the other side. Now that same side looked too empty. She needed something else, maybe some daisies, or a lily or two. She sighed. She really didn’t like asking her two friends for favors without returning them. But this was an emergency. Maybe.
She turned to head back inside to get her saddlebags when there was a rustle off to her left. She spun to face the noise, but didn’t see anything. She shrugged and walked inside, grabbed her bags, and left. The flowers rustled again and gave a small whimper.
Rose walked through Ponyville, dreading getting to Daisy’s botanist shop. She had said it several times and she didn’t mind saying it again: She hated charity. She hated being in debt to someone who didn’t want anything back. She would give up half her garden to rid herself of that feeling. But no point in postponing the inevitable. She knocked on Daisy’s door.
The top hatch opened and a pink pony with a bushy key lime mane looked out and down at the light yellow mare with the two tone red mane. Daisy smiled smugly at Rose, knowing what Rose needed and loving the feeling that it caused seeing her in discomfort for this request.
“Hi Rose. Need more daisies for that garden of yours?” Daisy asked, knowing full well what the answer was.
Rose just mumbled an affirmative and walked past Daisy as her friend opened the lower hatch and held it open for her to pass. Inside was a huge assortment of daisies, in every color imaginable. Red, blue, yellow, orange, green, pink, pale purple, you name it, she had it. Rose knew which color she needed without even looking at the large selection. She was sure she spent more time here than at home in her garden. The thought made her feel even worse.
“Do you need a bag for those?” Daisy asked, pushing a dozen pale pink flowers toward Rose. Rose shook her head, and picked up the flowers in her mouth, flicked a bit at Daisy, and left.
Once back home, Rose sighed in relief and the flowers fell to the floor. She picked them back up and carried them out to her garden. She looked to where she had heard the noise earlier, but the flora was silent and unmoving. She turned back to the flowerbed she was tending to and proceeded to plant the daisies to fill in that empty space.
After an hour of digging up soil, setting the flowers in the small valley of dirt, patting the earth back around the frail flowers, and watering all the flowers, Rose was exhausted. Sure, she did this often, but she was getting older. Her friends reminded her that she was only in her early 30’s, but she felt older than that. Some days, she felt like Granny Smith of the Apple family, who lived at Sweet Apple Acres across town. She stood up and stretched her back, feeling every vertebrae pop. She went back inside, washed her hooves, ate a small dinner, and fell asleep on her couch.
Several hours later Rose woke up the sound of shuffling in her garden. It was summer so she had left the door leading to her garden open so a cool breeze could pass through. She sat bolt upright and looked at the flower tops through the small window in the room. They were shaking and swaying violently. Somepony or something was in her flowerbed without her knowledge or consent.
She jumped to her hooves, being as quiet as she could, and ran to her room to retrieve her old baseball bat. She didn’t play baseball much, but she kept the bat in case she had the urge to play or something was in her garden. She quietly walked downstairs and the plants were still shaking. Whatever in there was about to get the hay knocked out of them.
She approached the door, looked carefully around the frame, and saw nothing that would cause her plants distress. But then she saw something, a little patch of brown that didn’t belong. She didn’t buy dirt or fertilizer in that shade and dirt in Equestria was never that dark. She stepped a little bit closer to examine the patch. It seemed to be a living thing, not a plant, and it was too big to be a bird. She reached out a shaking hoof, touched it and jumped back.
The shaking stopped almost immediately. Rose stepped a little bit closer. She saw something turn in her direction. It appeared to be a pair of eyes. They stared at her, unblinking, as she did the same. Then, very slowly, the figure moved toward Rose, out of the flowers, and Rose was staring at a small, dark brown filly. From the mud and dirt covering her, it didn’t seem that her coat was brown, but after not showering for Celestia knows how long, her coat had accumulated a fair amount of dirt, mud, and filth.
“Who are you? And what are you doing in my flowerbed?” Rose asked, but the little filly just looked at her with large turquoise eyes.
Rose sighed, figuring that she wasn’t going to get an answer out of this little culprit for a while. She walked over to the filly, who cowered against the side of Rose’s house, and bucked the dirty filly onto her back. She walked into the house, bat all but forgotten.
Hours and several rose-scented bottles of shampoo later, Rose looked down at the little golden filly dripping on her bath mat. It amazed her that a filly with such a luscious color coat could get dirty enough to blot it out. She handed a towel to the golden filly, and the little pony eagerly started drying off her hair and body.
“I want to ask you a few questions,” Rose started, and the little filly looked up with the towel wrapped around her mane. “What’s your name, and why were you hiding in my garden?”
The filly took a couple seconds to respond. “My name is Ticket. What’s yours?”
Rose replied, “I’m Roseluck, but most ponies just call me Rose.”
Ticket looked around the bathroom, and that’s when Rose noticed the wings. And the horn. An Alicorn! Rose thought with amazement. And a filly Alicorn at that!
She was able to get herself together and continued her interrogation. “So why were you in my garden?”
Once again, Ticket seemed to get really nervous when this question was directed at her.
“Ticket, please answer me.”
The gold filly sighed and said, “Fine. I was hiding in your flowers because….I ran away from home and didn’t want to be found.”
Rose was shocked. She didn’t imagine that Alicorn fillies had any problems, much less that they would be so bad that they would run away from home.
“You know what? Do you want something to drink or eat? I think we have a lot of talking to do.”

===

Rose sat in a chair with Ticket on her lap while the Alicorn told her about her life. How she was treated like an everyday earth pony, how she was teased at school because she was different, and how she would never go back, not ever in a bajillion years! Rose noticed that Ticket’s hooves that were holding a cup of apple cider were trembling. She must have told me everything, Rose thought.
“Well, I think I can help you with most, if not all of these problems. Sit right here.” Rose got up and pointed to the spot that she had been sitting. Ticket moved to the spot and sat. Rose turned to side so the filly could see her entire length. “Do you see a difference between us?”
Ticket nodded. “You don’t have wings or a horn.”
“Exactly!” Rose exclaimed. “I’m just an ‘everyday earth pony’, but I don’t mind because that’s who I am. We were made the way we were for a reason.”
She walked back over to the chair. “You said you were made fun of because you’re different?”
Ticket nodded.
"Well, you tell them that at least your daddy doesn’t work in the salt mines all day. Your daddy helped create a beautiful Alicorn that unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies can’t relate to.”
A small smile started to show on Ticket’s face.
“You see, we’re all different, but that shouldn’t be the reason why we’re excluded from the things we enjoy doing. We’re all special, no matter what punk tells us otherwise. They’re the ones who can’t stand being who they are. They’re the ones who wish they could be an Alicorn, so they take it out on you to make you wish you weren’t one. But know this, Ticket: The spot for Alicorn in Equestria is only saved for the sweetest little ponies out there.”
Ticket had tears running down her cheeks and onto the chair. Rose tilted her chin so the filly was looking at her.
“As a friend of mine once said: ‘Evil only appears to happen to the good, because the ones who fell to evil became evil themselves. Those who didn’t fall to evil were strong enough to erase the darkness from their hearts and let their light shine through.’ Needless to say, it helps me get along a little better in this world. And I think with a little love, you could become the good and let your golden light push those bullies back.”
Ticket nodded, sniffling. She liked that quote, even though she had never heard it before. She played it over and over in her head, and each time seemed to give her more strength. She stood up and hopped down from the chair.
“I think I now have what I need to go back to school with my head held high. But before I do that, I have one last thing to do,” and she rushed over to Rose and gave her a big hug. She then let go and raced out the door.
The doorbell rang, splitting the silence like a cannon. A very distressed mare walked to the door and opened it. She didn’t realize anyone was there until an unmistakable voice said from just below her line of vision, “Hi Mom. I’m back.”