Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady, metronomic precision invaded my thoughts. I wished the nurse had put the machine on silent when she had left, but the mare had been preoccupied with a chart when she had left me alone. At least she had remembered the paper and pen.
I really shouldn’t have used my magic, but my hoof was none too steady anymore, and I had never gotten the knack of forming letters with a pen between my teeth. What use had a unicorn for her lips?
I stared at the blank page, pen hovering above the top left corner.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Dear Sapphire,
Was that how a mother should address her daughter? Did she think of me as her mother anymore?
It has been a long time since we last spoke. Do you think of me? I can’t blame you if you don’t. It’s only lately that I’ve grown to appreciate just what was missing from my life, and I wish that I could take back all that’s come between us since
My pen wobbled on the last loop of the e, trailing into a droop as the memory came, as it often did, with a tired ache behind my eyes.
you left.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Three simple words was all it took. Three words to make her leave my life forever. All it took was three words and an accident. I hadn’t meant to hit her. I hadn’t meant to let my anger at her fester. But I had.
And my sweet Sapphire had left.
The sheet of paper under my hoof shook.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
These words are so difficult to write. I should have worked harder to mend our relationship. I should have let you vent your anger at me without responding. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to make you stop… doing what you do. I’m afraid that it’s only now that I feel like all that anger, all the fretting that you were in show business just to spite me… It was all meaningless. If I’d only left it alone, and let you work it out.
What else was there to say?
I love you, Sapphire. My little jewel. I hope you don’t hate me anymore.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Sincerely,
Distant Shores
Love,
I stared at the crossed out salutation, the automatic end to every letter I had ever written until now, at the started correction, my pen teetering on the tail of the comma. I grimaced, and shook my head.
When would I get it right?
The letter crumpled in my aura, and I tossed it with the others in the waste basket.
“Wait!”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“If you’re not Showstopper, go away!” The migraine that always followed the dream ripped away at my eyes, pounded in my ears, and set every hair of my coat on edge against the bedding. “Ugh…” Even that small utterance dug away at the bridge of my muzzle and left my teeth buzzing.
“It’s me,” Showstopper whispered into the silence that followed. “I’ve got some headache powder, and you’ve got a package. Sorry I didn’t stop the mailpony in time.”
“Thank you… Just stop that noise. Please.” The compress slipped as I let the tension fade again, and I shoved it back in place before the light from outside could get to me. I wished, for a moment, that I’d had the pleasure of actually indulging in enough drink to bring this on. There might have still been some around, if I had, to drown the throbbing ache and the fading splinters of a dream I could barely remember. “What time is it?”
“It’s a bright and beautiful morning.” Her hooves sounded like jackhammers on the thick carpeting inside the wagon. “Nice breeze from the inland, too.”
“You are entirely too chipper. Tone it down or I’ll have you dock your pay.”
“Ha ha. Here you are, Ms. Grumpy Pants.” The clink of a glass and the pouring of water heralded the drink as she held the rim to my lips. It tasted terrible, but I drank it down and lay back.
“And the package?”
“Must be one of the packages still catching up to us. It’s from Canterlot, one of those ‘to the care of things,’ and marked urgent, response requested from a week ago.”
I pushed the cloth up higher and cracked an eye at Showstopper. In the faint light, her pale, sandy coat looked almost orange, and the dim flicker of light from her horn cast odd shadows over the slim lines of her aristocratic face. “From who?”
“Just says Offices of Case and Law. It’s not very hefty.” Showstopper’s horn flared brighter as she lifted it to demonstrate. “Maybe a few pounds.” Crinkling followed. “But it’s all paper.”
“Can you open it, please? I had another… dream last night. Every time, and I get a migraine. Blasted mare can’t even let me sleep.” I pulled the towel back down and laid a foreleg over it, intending that it wasn’t going to come off until the ache went away. “I just want her out of my head.”
“Mm. You didn’t say anything about the dreams being the source of the migraines. Is it the same one?”
I rolled my head up and down on the pillow. Even my mane hurt. “She kept on trying to tell me she was sorry. Just like every other time.”
Showstopper’s snort sounded ambiguous against the flaring of spots in my vision. “They say dreams are lessons we haven’t learned yet. Go see her, Sapphire. You need to.”
“I know, I know. I will. I promise. It’s just… Celestia, the times I tried to make up with her over the years, and that stubborn mare just keeps throwing it back at me.” My head pounded at me, berating me for making so much noise. “And now she can’t even let me sleep.” At the very least, my mother’s dream self could have offered some headache powder.
The sound of packaging being opened and twine being snipped crackled like the rustle of a wire brush against my ear.
I waited, sinking down into blissful, silent darkness.
Showstopper’s indrawn breath brought me back.
“Oh. Oh, dear. Sapphy…” Her voice caught.
“What? Is it something from the producers? Something from the Princess?”
“It’s your mother.” The papers rustled more. I forced myself to lay still, waiting to hear that she’d sent another letter, this one pleading. “She, um… this is a…”
“Just say it… what’s she want me to do now?”
“Nothing.” She paused again, taking a deep breath. “She… she passed away. Two weeks ago.”
I jerked upright, the towel falling to my chest, and caught her eyes as she looked up from scanning the paper. Her eyes were wide and there was a shimmer of tears in them already.
“It’s fake. Some tabloid jockey looking for a story.” I settled back on the folded-down bed and dragged the towel back into place as her eyes returned to the stack of papers. The shuffling and rustling as she leafed through them dragged like rocks over my ears. “Throw it away.”
“Sapphy, it looks official. There’s a death certificate here, stamped with the Royal seal. Forging that is a felony, and I don’t think a two-bit tabloid would risk it. What would they even do with it?” She ruffled the letter so I could hear it. “It’s even notarized, and it’s written in the letter that she had been in a coma for four weeks, and died without waking.” She rustled a piece of paper. “This is a request to attend a will reading as the sole beneficiary.”
“There’s a lot those ‘two-bit’ tabloids will risk. What’ve they got to lose? Remember that one that tried to smear Princess Twilight?”
“Point, but that was slander, not forgery. Forgery involves jail time.”
A whole parade of agony rampaged through my skull as a troupe of diamond dogs redoubled the thunderous ache hammering away between my eyes. “She’s not dead. She’ll be there at the will reading ready to beg me to let her back in. This is a last-ditch attempt to get me to reconcile, to build up pity so she can beg me to leave this life to stay with her. She hates what I do because it looks bad for her! Her daughter, shaking her rump on stage. Her little jewel! How could I dare embarrass her like that!”
“Your mother isn’t like that! I’ve met her. She’s dowdy and proper, but she was sweet to me.”
“To you!” I flung the towel at Showstopper and sat up into a blinding white haze decorated with pony-shaped spots. “She spent the entire visit prattling on about how nice it would be if I settled down and stopped ‘that whole showbiz thing’ like it wasn’t my life.”
The white haze began to fade. Showstopper stood in the middle of my wagon, a sheaf of papers spread out in front of her, the light from her horn spreading dim shadows across the walls. It was an off day for us, resting after a show before starting off to the next town, and she wasn’t wearing her usual saddlebag full of gifts for the fans.
“You read far more into it than I did.” Her voice was quiet.
“It was there. She never could out and say it… but it was there. I could see it in her eyes, and she always wanted to go on vacation in the middle of a tour. To take some us time to reconnect. Remember that part?” I lay back, damping the still glowing coals in the agonizing forge in my head.
“I do. I think she was trying to get you to spend some actual time with her. What if this isn’t fake? What if she is gone?”
“So, what? I don’t care.” I winced, covering it with my foreleg.
“Sapphire!” Her sharp rebuke stung my ears. “She’s your mother. You’re not so cold to her as that. I know you, so don’t even try to pretend.” Papers shuffled in the silence that followed, and their hard edges trampled painfully through my head as she tapped them into order. She tutted as she found the bottle of F&F’s ‘Guaranteed Miracle Wonder Tonic’ I’d bought at some hoedown, shindig, or hootenanny… whatever they called a party in that part of the country. “It’s the migraine talking. We can talk about this later. Like you promised. Do you want me to get you something stronger?”
“I want some quiet… This stupid tonic didn’t do a Celestia blessed thing.” My hoof groped for the bottle as she dragged it out of reach and glowered at it.
“I tried to tell you it doesn’t work half as well as those two shysters claimed it does.” The continued rustle of papers and the clink of glasses grew louder, cranking up the intensity of the ache sucking at the space behind my brow. “Feeding the local economy, my flank. You just liked their song and dance routine.”
She wasn’t wrong. “Stop that… hurts.”
“I think you need to give her another chance, Sapphire. So what if the letter’s not real? She’s not going to be around forever, and she’s your mother.” A clank and crash of bottles clattering in the waste bin set the miners off.
They slammed home their pile-driver.
I slammed my hoof against the wagon’s side. “She’s never going to die! She’s going to cling to life just to try and make mine miserable.” I threw myself back on the bed, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing the backs of my ankles to them. “Because that’s what she does. Everypony has a place in her world, and if they’re not where she wants them to be, she tries to fix them so they are, and she doesn’t stop until they are.”
I didn’t know if Showstopper left, or simply went quiet. The rustle of paper and the gentle splash and trickle of water answered me. I sighed. “I’m sorry, Showy…” A thousand thoughts, all of them apologies, or things I had said and later apologized for, choked my mind as the powder finally started to work.
“I won’t let her make me miserable anymore. I won’t. I’m happy. I like where I am.”
“I know.”
She was with me in the next moment, her lips on my brow, and a cooler, damp towel pressed down over my eyes. The weight of her body at my side, her warmth nestled close, her breath against my neck… It all pushed back the lingering ache little by little.
My sweet Showstopper laid a lingering kiss on my brow, her warm lips resting just above the towel. Then another, and another to my cheeks. Her head came to rest on my barrel, one foreleg thrown over me like a blanket. It was enough to lay next to her, as we hadn’t in so long.
“We can’t do this, Showy,” I told her after the pain faded enough for me to feel anything else. “I thought we agreed. Not on tour.”
“We did. But as of yesterday’s performance, we’re not on tour anymore.” Her lips on my nose sent a shiver down my spine, and she settled down more heavily. “Besides, you don’t need your manager now. You need me. So, I’m here.”
Any objections I tried to come up with fell away as her breathing slowed to match mine.
I drifted away as her warmth enveloped me, and finally let me rest.
“I love you,” she whispered.
My little jewel.