As the days passed, Stellar recovered slowly. While Crunchy remained friendly to her, the others remained skeptical of her intentions and behavior mainly because of Sour and his tellings of insanity and fear. Ironically, the rats were the only ones who would approach the filly. In fact, they seemed more intent in ambushing her from all angles and tickle her or act like clowns. Apple found it peculiar that they would behave this way when they never did it before. At best, they would be friendly and nuzzle you with their little pink noses, but that was it. Of course, there was always that hissing one, but that was a minor inconvenience at best.
Her leg was still broken, but the filly tried her best to use it. She was still horrified by what happened a few days ago, but she tried her best to fit in. Unfortunately, no pony wanted her near them no matter how hard she tried to be nice. It always came to awkward smiles, irritated glares, and the other foals walking away in a huff and leaving the filly all alone in her dark and damp corner of these smelly pits.
Luckily for Shadowrette, there was another scavenging mission that was going to start in the late hours of the morning. A group of foals was readying to go topside, and Apple was briefing them. Several of them were wearing hooded coats to protect themselves from the torrential rain outside. The tiny filly limped towards the group that had gathered in front of the junk pile in front of the sewer entrance, intent on being heard out. The other saw her, and their once proud stature returned to normal, although their faces inherited the appearance of disgust and anger.
"What's she doing here?"
"Go 'way."
Apple turned around, looking around at his level, then looked under his left foreleg.
"Stellar? What are you doing here? You haven't healed up enough to be able to walk normally."
"I...I want to help out with gathering food."
"We don't need y--"
"Shut up," Crunchy interrupted. "I can't let you go up there on your own."
"But the others will be there to help me."
Crunchy turned his head and looked at the foals with skepticism.
"I can't abide by that decision."
"But I just want to help. I feel like I'm doing something wrong." the filly leaned closer to Apple. "Plus, I want them to be my friends," she whispered.
The stallion looked at the ceiling for a moment, thinking about his choices and the impacts they might have. He understand what she wanted, and he sighed. There was an equal amount of risk and reward in this endeavor. It was preferable to aim for the reward.
"Fine. Grab a brown bag over there in the corner then group with the others."
"What? You can't be serious?" one of the foals complained.
"I am very serious. Now, you either come back with her or you don't come back at all. Got it? And she better not have any wounds other than the ones she said leaving these sewers or else--"
Apple was interrupted by the sound of violent hissing behind him. The mean rat was standing on an arc built around a tunnel opening. It was looking directly at the foals. The stallion slowly turned around and looked at the rat who did the same to him. Another hiss ensued right before the rodent quickly scampered away into a crevice in the wall.
"Or...else you'll have to deal with the rats. Yes! There we go! A fitting punishment." The stallion smiled as each of the foals cringed. "Good. Now, let me tell you what you...where are you?" Apple asked in confusion.
Stellar had walked into the group rather discreetly and was wearing both a black coat and was carrying a bag. Apple chuckled internally watching the young filly try her best to hide low.
"Right, well, I've already told you the safe measures. Stellar, I want you to watch them all and follow what they do above. As for why I want you all to get out today and not next week is because this week it's that celebration for the one who saved the Crystal Kingdom from Sombra. There are banquets and games in his honor, and the whole city is having enormous celebrations and is selling tons of food. That's why your bags are bigger. There's still a portion of you dedicated to getting some medicine for us all, but the rest of you will be trying to get food. The guards are everywhere today, so you'll have to be extra careful. Alright? Alright. Go!"
The group ran outside, through the murk, and up the hill. However, Stellar did not do this. She simply stared at the waters and shivered.
"Go ahead, Stellar. You did say you wanted to help the others, didn't you?"
"But--"
"Now isn't the time to chicken out. Go. You'll be fine."
The filly nodded and gulped. A single hoof splashed into the brown liquid, then another, and another. Slowly but surely, the filly was walking through the gunk and found herself above the hill and looking at the celebration. She heard them when she was little but never imagined it was something like this. There were hundreds upon thousands of market stalls in the streets, and an even bigger number of ponies and decorations. The head of some green and purple looking thing was plastered everywhere as balloons, tapestries hanging off the walls, as toys, even as a little flag on the strings above the streets. There was a pink and white stallion that were also portrayed, but less so the green and purple thing. Stellar still didn't know who these were. Evidently enough, this city was much more colorful and packed then the filly once thought. Much to her dismay, she witnessed several instances of foal smiling happily with their parents. A pit of darkness, regret, and sorrow filled her at this precise moment.
"Hey! Hurry up!" one of the sewer foals shouted.
The filly quickly regained her senses and scurried hurriedly to the others. She was in a group of three other foals, each with their own colored raincoat and brown bag. They were standing near a
"We don't want to be kept from dinner, so you have to stay with us," a colt ordered.
"Okay."
"You just stay behind and wait for us to come back. We don't want you getting in our way."
"Or turning us into mindless servants," a filly huffed.
"I wouldn't--"
The foal ignored Stellar's attempts at defense and disappeared off into the crowd behind her. She was left to fend for herself in these vast sea of unknown. Her father never prepared her for this. Come to think of it, he never prepared her for anything. The filly did her best to hide away from prying eyes, although her constantly throwing her head downwards when somepony looked at her made a few curious heads turn. Shadowrette was scared. She was all alone in a world she knew nothing about. To her fright, everypony around her started to grow in height, and the world started becoming darker and twisted. It seemed as though everything was towering above her and mocking her with twisted eyes. The filly began to panic and started to scamper backwards, trying to avoid the evil giants. They turned to look at her and began bellowing something in their dark language. It was horrifying. Stellar began to whimper, and her eyes were darting back and forth from giant to giant. Eventually, she bumped into somepony and fell on her back, her hood flopping off. When she got up and rubbed her head, she noticed that the giants all head a hoof to their mouths and seemed to be changing color from their strange, inkish black and copper to a blood red color.
The filly tapped her head and gasped in horror. She wasn't supposed to take it off. Now they knew what she looked like. It was a sprint that Stellar galloped through the unwary crowd, the mass seemingly turning into a blob of red and black, but there was a shadow racing across the floor. That was her salvation, so she followed it all the way through the crowd, scampering through legs and across the minefield. Eventually, she followed the shadow under a tilted table sitting outside a shop and stayed there, hiding behind the plank of wood covering the front of the table. She waited awhile with her forelegs in front of her eyes. The shadows weren't there anymore, so all she needed was a little time to recover from whatever it was she just saw.
Finally, her tiny heart stopped beating so quickly and her mind began to settle down. With just a smidgen of courage, the foal dared peek outside from her cover and looked around her only view out from under the table. No pony had decided to go after her. She was safe. She could put her hood back on and look for some food and...
"Oh no. I dropped the bag," Stellar cried.
With disappointment, Shadowrette climbed out from under the table to have a proper look around and see if the others of her group were around. Unfortunately, she didn't see them, and her ears flopped down as a result. The filly wouldn't let this get her down, though, and she tried her best to muster what little broken courage she had left. With another bit of effort, the filly stood up and looked around. Maybe the table had food on it? A smile on her face, the filly looked at the table, only to have that hopeful emotion slip away. Instead, the table was covered in amazingly designed clocks. The filly didn't know what the clocks were and just found them interesting. There were varieties of pendulum clocks, winch powered wooden clocks, the strange clocks kept in a glass bell, and quite a few others. One did catch her attention more than the others. It was a bell-shaped clock with roman numerals instead of numbers. The metal underneath them was brass whilst the middle of the whole contraption was white. The clock itself was made from silver, just as the hands were. There were designs of oak leaves, chestnuts, walnuts, and pine needles woven all around the face to look like vines had grown all over it and tangled a variety of plants into its growth process. Below the face there was another crafting; A stallion and a mare with their heads locked together to form a heart while a foal stood between them, hugging them both as they hugged it back. This bell simply glimmered in the wet rain, dim sunlight, and Shadowrette's eyes. Stellar did not know why, but she needed this clock. She...felt like it was filling a void within her, so she reached for it as hard as she could.
"Stellar? Stellar?" the group of foals called out.
"Where is she?" a filly asked.
"I don't know," a colt replied.
"Then just leave her. We'll go back and get food. We'll say she left," an irritated colt said.
"No! Crunchy knows us all too well. He'll know we're lying. If we don't come back with her we'll--"
"There she is!" a filly shouted and pointed. "She's trying to take a clock."
The four started galloping towards the filly, trying to tell her to stop, but Stellar couldn't hear them. In fact, she tried so hard to get that clock that she managed to knock it off its hold and catch it just before it crashed onto the ground. The filly checked to see that it had nothing, then she looked and saw the other four staring at her in shock and awe.
"Hey! Look! I got a clock! I know I lost the bag, but we can take this back, no? It could be useful. It's kind of heavy, though. I need some help. Hello?"
"Should've paid for that," a dark ominous voice grumbled behind the filly.
Two gigantic clock hands wrapped around Stellar and the clock, muffling the small filly just long enough for her to mumble something before being pulled into a dark void behind the open door which slammed shut. The foals ran away in terror and screams, but needing to tell Crunchy Apple about what just happened. The clock store remained undisturbed from the events, and the display outside remained perfectly still and undisturbed from the filly's actions. The name of the store twinkled a royal purple in the rain and reflected "Tick Tock Clock Stock" onto the shining ground.