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// Stay Where I Can See You 
// Story: Sweet Nothings 
// by Golden Tassel 
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The lights were back on inside the diner, and Chrysanthemum had already put the candles away by the time I returned from repairing the generator. She and Starry were busy trading, so I set the tools down on the counter and sat quietly next to Starry, watching them barter over the assorted salvage that Starry had apparently collected in her bags. In the end, Starry offloaded her collected scraps for a couple bottles of scotch, a few gallons of water, and a supply of ammunition.

I watched as Chrysanthemum lifted the items she had accepted in trade with her chartreuse aura and quickly sorted them into each of a few bins she had behind the counter. Curious, I asked, "What are you going to do with all that? Does it have some value to you?"

"Well, they're not really worth anything to me," she explained. "But they're worth something to somepony. There are some traveling merchants who come through here every so often, and I trade things like these to them for food, water, ammo, and other supplies to keep the town alive. They carry it off with them, and, presumably, somewhere along their routes, they meet somepony that actually needs this crap." Everything had a place in the wasteland, apparently. Even the seemingly useless pieces of garbage. Chrys levitated out a pair of saddlebags loaded down with more water and a couple dozen of those packaged food rations that Starry had shared with me. "Thanks for getting the generator running again. Here's your payment, as agreed. I'm throwing in the bags since you don't have any and you'll need it to carry this much around. If you ever want more work, you know where you can come," she said with a wry smile and a wink.

"Thanks. I'll, um, keep that in mind," I said clearing my throat. Starry and Chrysanthemum shared a brief laugh, which I tried to ignore. Something else she'd said had caught my attention, however.

"What did you mean about 'keeping the town alive'?" I asked.

"There's no real source of food or water around here. If it weren't for me and this diner, there'd be nopony here," Chrys explained.

"You mean you built this town?"

Chrysanthemum laughed. "No. I only inherited the diner after Mum passed on. That wasn't her real name, by the way, just what everypony called her on account of the diner's sign: a tradition I don't intend to continue." She stressed that point with a glare. "And she only moved into it as a place for herself. But when she started renting rooms for traveling merchants, it became a regular stop for them. Soon other wanderers started putting up their own shacks nearby; there are a few city and factory ruins in the area, and they made their livings by bringing that stuff back here to trade to Mum who'd trade to the merchants." She smiled. "Mum took me in when I was just a little filly, orphaned and wandering alone. I didn't even have my cutie mark yet—not 'til after I started setting up dates between the townsfolk." She let out a wistful sigh, looking around the diner slowly. "That's when it became a real community, y'know."

I glanced around at the empty diner. "So where is everyone?"

"Well, I know it doesn't look like much now, but that's only because they're all out scavenging. Just you wait 'til they all come back with their hauls. You'll see how alive this place really is. Especially when one of the traders come through," Chrys answered with a cheerful smile. "But what about you, hon? You look like you've been having a pretty rough time on your way here. You need a warm bed to sleep in? I know you don't have anything to trade for it aside from the food and water I just gave you, and I ain't about to go and start taking that back; wouldn't be fair." She leaned across the counter at me and batted her eyes. "Maybe we can find some alternative payment."

"Day can share my room for now," said Starry after she finished off her drink.

"Ooh! Sounds like fun. I know you two will make a perfect couple!" Chrysanthemum snickered.

My ears blushing, I slid out of my seat and followed after Starry. She didn't respond to Chrysanthemum, and only headed for the door at the back of the diner and started up the stairs that it led to.

"Don't worry about being too noisy! I'm a heavy sleeper!" Chrysanthemum called after us. I tried my best to ignore her and hurried after Starry.

At the top of the stairs was a short hallway with a couple doors on either side. Starry went to the door right by the landing. I noticed that the door had a half-dozen extra locks installed on it. A quick glance over the other doors in the hallway revealed Starry's room to be the only one so thoroughly secured.

"Don't worry about Chrys," she said quietly while she started unlocking the door.

"Huh?"

"What she said about us as a couple. She's been trying to set me up with somepony since I first got here." Starry stifled a short laugh. "She's a nice mare, but she moves fast. You don't have to take her too seriously, though." She finished unlocking the door and led me inside.

Starry slipped off her saddlebags and tossed them onto the bed in the far corner, then unfastened her rifle harness and let it drop to the floor. Meanwhile, I stood still in the doorway, my jaw slacked as I just let my eyes wander around the room. Virtually every inch of every wall was covered with various documents—notes, blueprints, maps, and the like. Some things were marked or highlighted and had barely-legible notes scrawled alongside them. Strings of different colors ran between the pins that held up each document, creating a network of connections that spanned all across the room as if to parody the web a spider might weave if she were in the midst of a fever dream, or psychedelic nightmare, or both. I couldn't make sense of any of it. My eyes were drawn in every direction at once with no obvious starting point. I almost felt dizzy trying to take it all in.

"What . . . what is all this?" I asked as Starry ushered me inside so she could close the door and lock it.

"I'm . . . looking for someone. Someone very important to me." Starry paused and took a long sip from her flask. "I'm looking for my son. He went missing a few years ago." She looked around at the walls with all her notes and maps strung across them. "This is all the work I've done to try to find him."

"What happened to him?" I asked as I approached one wall and looked over the notes there. Many lines had been scratched out and rewritten several times with layers of corrections written in a dozen different inks. I couldn't make sense of anything written on it, but I assumed that Starry could read it. I couldn't find a single scrap of paper on the wall that hadn't been similarly covered over in corrections.

"I don't know," Starry answered solemnly. "I just woke up one day and . . . and he was just . . . gone." She was quiet and took another drink from her flask. "I think he was kidnapped. Possibly to be sold into slavery somewhere, but he must have escaped because when I picked up his trail, it turned away from all the known slaver settlements."

I turned my attention to one of the maps. It was a very old map, depicting great cities which no longer existed. Starry had traced out a long, meandering path that ran from one end of the map to the other. Here too she had layered corrections on top of corrections on top of notes until most of it had become unreadable.

"Shouldn't he have gone back home after he escaped?" I asked while trying to make sense of the map.

Starry sighed. "He's lost. It's my fault for never teaching him about the world, so he has no idea where he is or where he's going. But he's been surviving," she said, her voice ending on a note of cheerful hope. She came over to stand next to me and put her hoof on the map, slowly tracing along its lines. "I'll find him. He knows I'm looking for him—he leaves clues for me sometimes."

"What's his name?"

Starry smiled. "Second Chance. He likes to go by just Chance." She let out a small laugh and turned to look at me. "He'd be about your age by now. He's smart—like you. I bet you two would make good friends."

Starry stood there smiling at me silently for a moment before she sighed and took out her flask for another long sip. "After I find Chance, I'll take him back to Precinct with me. You can come too. You'll like it there; it's relatively peaceful, and we could really use a mechanic like you."

My ears perked up at that. "Are you close to finding him?"

"Closer than ever!" Starry said excitedly. She upended her flask to drink the last few drops from it. "But let's not get too eager—I've been close before, many times, but something always happened to make me lose his trail, and then by the time I picked it up again, I find that he's moved on already."

"I want to help," I said.

"Help?"

"You saved my life—and not just by digging me out from the rubble; you gave me food and water, and you helped me find shelter. You brought me here where for the first time since I left the stable, I don't feel afraid for my life. Your son is out there . . . helping you find him is the least I can do."

Starry looked at me silently for a minute before she said, "It's dangerous. You'll be safer if you stay here."

The thought was tempting: I could simply stay at the diner and help Chrysanthemum maintain the place, perhaps even improve it, in exchange for food and a room. But I remembered what Rake had told me.

"I've already been through the worst that could happen to me," I said. "I want to help you find your son."

Starry's gaze became steely. She sighed and returned to her bags. After digging through them for a bit, she came back with something that she held out to me. When I asked what it was, she answered, "It's my backup revolver. Compact, lightweight, bite-grip trigger. Be careful; it's loaded."

I stared at it in her hoof. I had heard about such things in the stable; it was an artifact from when ponies stopped getting along with each other. It was dangerous. "I . . . I can't take this," I said.

"If you're going to come with me, you'll need to be able to defend yourself, and I need to be able to count on you to back me up. It's okay if you're a bad shot—if you can make someone think twice about coming out from behind cover, that can give me time to get around him. If you want to help me, I need you to take this."

I considered that for a moment before nodding and carefully taking the gun for myself.

"Don't be afraid of it. Just remember two things: don't aim at anything you don't intend to shoot, and don't fire unless you're prepared to kill someone. Okay? We'll see about getting you some more ammo and a proper holster for it later. For now, you can keep it in the saddlebags Chrys gave you."

I nodded and stowed it away in my bag, hoping that I wouldn't need to retrieve it anytime soon.

After that, Starry gave me her spare blanket—the same one she'd given me the night before when we took shelter from the rain—and directed me to the upholstered armchair in the corner to sleep in while she took the bed. She collapsed into it with all the grace of a rockslide, and began snoring almost immediately.

The chair was comfortable—more comfortable than anywhere else I had slept in the past . . . however many days it had been since my exile. With Starry's blanket wrapped around me, and with my head on the chair's padded armrest, before I closed my eyes I looked out over at Starry and I whispered:

"Goodnight."