Chapter 5
Meet The Parents
I started to look around slowly, taking everything in. The color theme seemed to be sky blue and white. Two of my most favorite colors. Even though I had a fear of heights, I've always loved the sky. It represented the thought of Heaven to me if I could ever get there. It represented peace even while I was alive. There were also plenty of roses, lavender, and daffodils, three of my favorite flowers.
As I was taking everything in, I spotted a couple of late arrivals to the funeral and immediately bristled when I realized who they were. My parents, Rain Drops, a pegasus and Corn Field, an earth pony.
To my surprise, Pinkie Pie interrupted the speech one of the ponies was giving as soon as she'd noticed them as well.
"YOU! You two are NOT welcome here! Leave!" Pinkie shouted at them angrily. I'd never seen her so angry before. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen her angry at all, but right now she looked furious.
"Excuse me?" My mother said indignantly. "We have the right to attend our own daughter's funeral!"
All eyes were on Pinkie as she jumped down from the stage and stomped up to my parents. "Considering the fact that she disowned you both for ABUSING her I don't think you do!" Her announcement made everypony gasp.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." My mother scoffed, though my father looked slightly worried.
"I asked her once. Why didn't she ever go see her family? Why didn't they ever visit her? She told me EVERYTHING! I asked her why she didn't press charges and she said because you were too good at lying and she wasn't sure she had enough proof. Also she said going through a trial and trying to testify against you would stress her out way too much! So instead she just moved out and cut you out of her life!" Pinkie Pie pawed the ground with her right front hoof aggressively.
"Oh please. We loved our daughter but she was such a drama queen. Always exaggerating everything." My mother tossed her head.
Pinkie's eyes narrowed. "Oh? So what she told me about bringing a newborn kitten home that she'd found that it's mother had abandoned, and your husband yelled at her for trying to help it wasn't true? Then when you got home later you told her it smelled bad and made her put it outside in the cold when night fell and by morning it was dead? Despite the fact that she kept getting up all night and going outside to try to keep caring for it?"
My mother was excellent at lying, but my father blanched. I jumped as Fluttershy's cry of fury and anguish echoed through the whole cemetery.
"YOU WHAT?!" Fluttershy rarely got angry, but when she did, ponies tended to take cover. Even my mother backed up nervously when Fluttershy raced over and glared at them. "How could you DO such a horrible thing?! To both of them! If you didn't want the kitten you could have taken it to someone else to take care of it! Instead you deliberately let it die! Performing both animal cruelty and psychological torment on your own foal! You two should be ASHAMED!"
"I... we... um..." My father stammered.
"Oh please. It was dying anyway, which is why it smelled like that." My mother humphed.
"What about all the times you hit her?" Pinkie growled.
"I never-" My mother started to say but Pinkie interrupted her.
"Don't LIE to me! You HIT her! You'd slap her face! You would also grab her leg hard enough to leave bruises! You'd punish her when she didn't deserve it and if she tried to stand up for herself you'd just punish her even more!"
This time it was Applejack who joined them and got in my parents face. "No good parents would EVER treat their little filly like that! You two should be locked up!"
"And you!" Pinkie switched her glare to my father. "Every time you went shopping for clothes you said that everything she liked didn't look good on her or made her look fat! So she'd finally give up and let YOU choose all her clothes! Not to mention all the clothes you chose for her were plain, old fashioned, and out of date! She hated those clothes!"
Now Rarity joined the group. "How could you say such mean things to your daughter and force her to wear such atrocities! It was a crime against her and against fashion!"
"You both rarely let her go over to other foals houses, and you discouraged her from bringing anyone to your home. You kept her isolated! It's no wonder she didn't know much about how to interact with other ponies!" Pinkie Pie continued her accusations. "You acted like most fun things were wrong and being an only foal it meant her only entertainment was playing with toys by herself and reading books!"
It was Rainbow Dash's turn as she jumped to the air and flew over. "You two sound like the worst parents ever!" She grabbed a rain cloud and kicked it to make it start raining over them.
"You have no proof of any of this!" My mother sputtered as she moved her wet mane out of her face.
"Well I plan on looking for proof." Twilight Sparkle leaped off the stage and came over, scowling deeply. "Now that your daughter is no longer alive to have to worry about being stressed out by the inquiry."
"Check with the bank and the places they shopped at first." Pinkie Pie told her. "Rain Drops kept stealing her disability money and used almost all of it for herself until Meadowlark moved out on her own."
Twilight nodded to Pinkie before looking back to my parents. "I Twilight Sparkle, as your Princess, order you to remain in Ponyville until we get all of this sorted out. Due to the nature of this crime I shall be writing to Princess Celestia about it as soon as the funeral is over. Now I believe that Pinkie Pie told you that you aren't welcome here, so please leave."
My mother started to cry. "Please! We tried to be good parents! We did the best we could!"
"Stop it." Pinkie said firmly. "Meadowlark told me all about how you two know how to fake tears and crying to get everypony to feel sorry for you or to make them believe that Meadowlark was a liar. You fake cry, yet she told me that when she cried when she was a filly you'd yell at her so she learned to cry too quietly to be heard or to just hold it in. Your fake tears won't help you now!"
My mother glared at Pinkie and opened her mouth but before she could say anything she was bombarded by shouts from other ponies at the funeral.
"Foal abusers!"
"Animal murderers!"
"Thieves!"
"Liars!"
"Scum!"
Some of the ponies grabbed food off of a table that was probably being saved for the reception after the funeral and started throwing it at them. My mother let out a cry of frustration and she and my father beat a hasty retreat. Rainbow Dash followed them, keeping the rain cloud over them the whole way.
Twilight looked at Pinkie. "We can talk later. I want you to tell me everything that Meadowlark told you. No foal abuser is going to get away with it if I can possibly help it."
Pinkie Pie nodded and my breath whooshed out as I abruptly sat down. After a moment the smile returned to my face. Even if my parents didn't get found guilty, they were outcasts in this town now. I wouldn't be surprised if they were forced to have to move elsewhere, and if this story got out to enough newspapers in Equestria they'd have a hard time finding themselves welcomed anywhere. Finally... after all these years, justice was being served. It felt so, so, good.
I heard a sniffle and looked at Giggles to see tears rolling down her face. "Did your parents really do all those horrible things to you?" I'd only given them a vague idea about how I was treated, not wanting to go into details at the time.
"That and more." I nodded. "They sometimes broke or threw away my things when they were mad at me. Half the time when they punished me I didn't even know if I'd done anything wrong or not. I think sometimes they just did it because they were mad about something else so they took it out on me."
"That's awful. I'm glad that they're finally getting what they deserve." Autumn looked highly indignant.
"Me too. I'm glad Pinkie waited to tell anyone though. I meant what I said about not wanting to go through all that stress. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it." I sighed.
"You are an amazing pony Meadowlark, even if you don't know it." Autumn said softly. "Despite the terrible way you were treated by your parents, and despite the bad examples they set for you and the bad influences they had to have been on you, somehow you overcame it. Despite all of that, you became a GOOD pony. Many ponies would have grown up and become just as cruel as they are, because that's what they saw growing up and that's how they were taught to be."
"I learned what NOT to do from watching them. They made me feel so badly... I never wanted to make other ponies feel like that. I knew how they treated me was wrong. My mother was far worse than my father though. My father has a lot of health issues so he'd be the one to stay home and take care of me while my mother worked. So at least I got a break when she wasn't home." I told them.
"Nopony should ever have to look forward to getting a break from their mother so they can avoid her abuse." Autumn shook her head angrily. "I hope Rainbow Dash puts that rain cloud over their house and keeps it there!"
I shrugged. "My mother's special talent is with rain clouds so even if she does I doubt it'll stay there. At least when my mother is home anyway. Though I do like that idea."
Giggles hugged me. "We will do everything we can to get you to Heaven. You've been through so much, yet you're such a nice pony. You deserve to get there."
I hugged her back. "Thank you. I just wish that there was some way for me to get a message to Pinkie. To let her know that I'm all right and that I appreciate everything that she's done for me."
Autumn looked thoughtful at that. "Well... there IS one way, but it's not fool proof."
I looked at her hopefully. "What?"
"You can enter her dream when she's asleep when you're here in ghost form. You'd be able to talk to her. But it'll be a dream, and she might not remember it when she wakes up. Even if she does remember, she might think it was just a dream and nothing more." Autumn explained to me looking serious.
"I still want to try. I guess we'll just have to wait around until Pinkie goes to bed tonight." I said thoughtfully before looking back to the funeral. Ponies had started making speeches again. Not just about me, but about life and death in general. I liked how they'd done this. The colors were peaceful and I appreciated how they treated my situation with respect. Nothing was too flashy or over dramatic. Some ponies were crying yes, but even Rarity, who tended to wail and grab her couch for situations like this, was staying calm.
I realized then that me being at my own funeral after I died was a cliché, but I was still glad I got to be here. Honestly the circumstances of my whole life and death have been so ridiculous sometimes I feel like someone is just messing around with me for their own amusement.