Apple Bloom and I sat on a bench, long after the train from Hooflyn had chugged away. We shared caramel corn from a bag from the depot concession and a bottle of root beer. I could tell that she thought I was worried. Her enthusiasm had sobered from her jumping and initial hug, to a glance at my golden scissor cutie mark, to her quietly offering to get us a snack and saying little more as we crunched in companionable silence.
Truth of it was, I wasn't worried. I was sick. "I think I got the wrong cutie mark."
Apple Bloom coughed out some kernels, but managed to say, "Sweetie Belle thought with all your fiddling with your hair, it had ta be a hairdressing cutie mark. What with you not answering our letter, I figured that weren't it."
The brown glass bottle made a hollow sound as I pushed it around on the bench, not looking at her. "I gotta unicorn's cutie mark."
I could hear the laughter backing up in her muzzle and trying to escape as a snort. She eventually took deep breaths until the fit passed.
I looked into her orange eyes. "Seriously. I'm probably adopted, not that I could ask for a better mom, dad, or big sis. Some unicorns are born without a horn but still have magic, and sometimes Earth pony strength. They're called epiequines."
"There's a big word."
"Trust me, I've read about it; it means 'both horses'. Beats earticorn, a bad word from when they didn't treat it scientific-like and tried to change a pony to physically match their type."
"But you got Apple family freckles—right thar on your cheeks!"
"There's plenty of fillies and colts with freckles in the borough. Doesn't mean I'm not adopted."
Apple Bloom met my gaze. I looked away, remembering how badly I hurt her and her friends by bullying them. But then they'd gone and helped me, made me proud of myself regardless of being a blank flank. I sighed. "I'm here because of the letter you sent me describing your nightmare about getting the wrong cutie mark. I'm sure mine's some sort of nightmare, too."
"Don't know about you, but I'm awake now." She grinned as if she meant it as some sorta joke.
I hadn't. "I could wake up from it, if I chose— You're still taking lessons from Princess Twilight? I so think your cutie mark will be that apple potion beaker you described."
"Uh-huh." She took a sip from the bottle and wiggled her nose from the bubbles. "Waking up from a nightmare? Maybe you need to talk to Applejack. She can set anythin' straight. And this unicorn thing? And adopted? Have ya talked to your big sister?"
I shook my head. "It would only scare her. It certainly would Mom. And I don't wanna really be told I'm adopted, even if I'm sure I am. It'd make it too real."
"I'm scared for you, Babs. If you're wanting to know about my nightmare, it was just me making myself crazy, worryin' myself to de-straction that I might get the wrong cutie mark. Sounds like you're making yourself crazy, too, for no good reason. This unicorn thing…"
I looked around. The wood plank platform lay empty. The other side of the tracks led into bushes and trees. I glanced around. At the ticket window, a stallion with a trimmed beard put a clock sign up and pulled down a red roller shade. A bird sung, but I heard nopony else. I ate a few bites of popcorn, not sure of myself even after all the thinking I had done about the difference between bad dreams and what had happened to me. I felt a breeze muss my bangs, which I had to blow out of my eyes. It felt like sharing a secret, and as it approached my lips, my heart started racing. Now or never.
My jaw worked. I shut it. Opened it. Then, "Look at this."
I concentrated, closing my eyes tightly. It was like a geometry problem in a school book, putting together the proof, making it all logical, and plugging in the numbers. I'd never been good at arithmetic, and I'd envied unicorns for all their mathematical prowess, but then suddenly two months ago numbers started making sense, had rock-solid meaning where they'd previously always been slippery slimy fish swimming through my thoughts.
A spinning ethereal sphere materialized out of the numbers in my mind, a purplish time axis stuck through its poles. I turned my hoof upward and added the numbers necessary to translate the sphere's position from the inside of my skull. An insubstantial crystal ball the size of a jawbreaker candy separated from my forehead and glided to hover above my clod-hopper horseshoe.
Apple Bloom jumped up and gasped, hooves clattering on the wood bench. She looked at the crystal, looked at me, then looked at the crystal. Inside I could see a foggy scene of her and me on the bench, a split-open red-striped bag of popcorn before us, and an empty root beer bottle. In it, my eyes were closed, concentrating as I had been a moment ago.
"Well, that's certainly magical. What is it?" She waved a hoof through it, but it might as well have been a ghost.
"It's a bead on the thread of time."
"What can you do with it?"
"If I stop thinking about it, it will eventually fade away."
"Or…?"
I stood and took a deep breath, then started walking toward Sweet Apple Acres. By the time I had walked down the stairs, Apple Bloom had trashed the rest of our snack and trotted beside me on the dirt path. I had put the bead away. I saw the new friendship castle looming over the town of Ponyville. I changed directions toward it and proceeded to tell her what had happened.
I had gotten my cutie mark sitting in a geometry class. Think about how embarrassing it would be, looking reading a book and having an epiphany of mathematics, only to have your biggest bully, a black-maned colt with a racetrack cutie mark say, "Whoa! Babcock! How lame is scissors?"
Though I didn't grasp the significance of the moment until much later, beyond my cutie mark appearing, I would never forget the instant the numbers started making sense for me. I might never forget, because if I closed my eyes I still had the bead—my first bead—showing me, in class, staring at my geometry text.
It was few weeks later—with a growing pile of exams and homework marked 100—that I learned the truth about my cutie mark.
My borough in Hooflyn isn't all smiles and friendship like Ponyville, and that isn't just because of the toughs that roam the streets and alleyways. A blank flank as old as me didn't have many friends, and I didn't make any after the event, either, because I hadn't been able to explain what my cutie mark meant. Most days, I navigated the congested streets and the subways alone. You had to watch yourself for some pony drivers would just assume run you over as spit at you.
That day, I had been crossing Colonel Purple Dart Square park, a block-size lawn with benches and a goldfish pond, sandwiched between four streets of traffic. Office ponies and mares with strollers trotted the sidewalks and visited hay fry carts. I noticed one taxi weaving through traffic, honking his horn. I'd been beeped just minutes before. Set on edge, my heart beating rapidly, I found some calm in calculating angles in the park as I watched the miscreant dodge recklessly.
The taxi turned a corner against a light. The greasy-maned beige pony clipped a moving van pulled by a team of four. That broke his harness. He fell aside as his cab skidded, hit a curb, flipped, and went careening along the sidewalk, smashing carts and sending broken ponies and prams into the air.
Like that. Three seconds; over. Then crying. Shouting. Screaming. A pair of coppers galloped up a minute later to give first aid. Soon after came the wail of ambulances.
I stood there, frozen, so shocked that when a pink mare stopped to ask if I were okay, I couldn't answer and she eventually walked away, shaking her head.
That's when I noticed a bead in my head and floated it out to see it with my real eyes. In it, I saw the image of a yellow and black-checked wagon weaving by trollies and around carts, and oblivious ponies walking by the storefronts full of clothes and appliances, all of it on the opposite side of the park from the carnage about to occur.
The scene was from a minute before.
I instantly hated what I saw, and I hated myself. Intuition had said something bad was about to happen, and I had done nothing.
I would never forget the wet broken sounds of ponies being struck, nor their screams. Not ever.
I wished it never happened.
That was the first time I cut a bead from the thread of time. It exploded in a flash of vapor.
I found myself transposed half-way back along the diagonal path that wove through the park. Returned were the sounds of the traffic and the ponies shouting and talking over it, the foals playing, and food sellers hawking their street delicacies.
I looked. The disaster had disappeared; everything back as it was.
Shocked, I turned and found the same mad cabby rushing maniacally through traffic—and found myself running the numbers again through my head while trying to fathom it all…
"No, no, no!" I shouted. I found myself trotting, then galloping as the stallion dashed madly down the cross street. I made it to the corner, screaming, "Run, run! There's going to be an accident!"
Well, everybody was paying attention. They stared at me.
I didn't see it, but I heard the collision. I heard the thud of ponies bashing into one another. Whinnies. Wood splintering. A hardness ripping loose. Steel rimmed wheels hitting a curb. Before me, ponies scattered from the food carts and dashed away reflexively.
I saw a shadow pass over me.
I woke in an ambulance, my hips and legs numb, the rest of me in such pain I could not help but cringe. I saw rows of medicines, and a bag of liquid and a tube I guess went into me, but I couldn't move to see; I was strapped down. A yellow unicorn with a shaved mane, wearing a blue uniform, held on to a rail as the wagon bumped and bounded. He smiled, "You're some kinda hero, little filly!"
I levitated out the bead. It showed the park, me staring at the food vendors, and the cab still racing.
The paramedic yelled to the driver, "Walking Tall! She's a unicorn and she's lost her horn—"
I snipped the thread. It flashed and I found myself in the park.
It took five more tries before I could save the people in the park and the four stallions pulling the moving van, and save myself. The cabby, though—
Apple Bloom trotted in front of me, stopping me. She hugged me, crying. "Do you know what you did, Babs?" I felt her tears on my neck. I blew my bangs out of my eyes and looked up at the looming blue crystalline castle, it's prismatic spire throwing rainbow light upon us.
"Yeah," I said, "I let the cabby die. I couldn't save him. Then I didn't want to save him."
"No. Why… you saved dozens of ponies!"
"Less than that, but the same difference. I let the cabbie die. Don't you get it? I might've saved him, too, but I stopped caring." I brought out two beads, of about twenty I kept track of. One was the last bead from the park. The other was me in geometry class, just before the epiphany. I made a cutting motion above the latter bead. "One snip and I begin again. I wake from the nightmare."
Apple Bloom released her hug and stepped back, seeing the beads. She blinked at them, then shook her head. "No, Babs. You'll still remember."
"It's like you with the twittermites destroying the farm, or your family disowning you. You remember the nightmare, but at least your flank is blank. I'll shut my geometry book and gallop from the room. I'll never look a number in the face again. Maybe I'll get even a better cutie mark, next time."
"But, but, but it is a good one. No, it's a great one... You're a hero!"
Hero. It is a word that cuts too deeply into your soul. Apple Bloom just didn't get it. I said, "Not really, if you were listening to me."
"I was. The cabby; I got it; okay? Did you talk to your mother about it? Your big sister?"
I shook my head. "After the last bead, I ran while everypony looked at the crash. Nobody really saw what I did, dodging out of traffic and changing the collision so it stayed in the street. I might've even been blamed for the accident, had I stayed. Nobody'd believe me, no way."
Apple Bloom looked at the beads, then into my eyes. "Don't go doing nothing stupid, now, but keep those out." She circled around me, lowered her head, and butted me in the flank, pushing me forward.
"Hey!"
"Move along, now. I think you need to talk to Twilight right now. Our newly minted princess is pretty darn smart. She was the worst kind of book nerd, but she had to save ponies and Equestria, heck, I don't know how many times! She talks about it sometimes during Twilight Time. It was not easy on her, neither, let me tell you. Not easy at all. I'll bet she can help you make the right decision."
I found myself blinking rapidly. It wasn't tears, really; it was the thought that I wasn't alone. I felt warm all over. Apple Bloom had said I would get the help I needed to make my own decision—from somepony who had had to make the decisions I had made, herself. It was the missing piece I'd come here to find, that piece that might separate the nightmare from reality.
Maybe I could do this.
Nevertheless, I levitated out a new sphere. It showed double-negative speaking Apple Bloom looking into my eyes, telling me "don't go doing nothing stupid", caring for her cousin even though she probably wasn't a blood relation. It had the friendship castle for a backdrop.
The beauty of the scene gave me hope that I might one day cherish the bead for what I saw inside, not for what I could do with it with my special talent.