Rosy Bliss didn’t come to until much later in the afternoon. When she did wake up, she found herself in her bed, with her father anxiously seated beside her. Brunet Smoke stood next to Carbon Skies and Clean Sweep sat at the other side of the bed. She gave a relieved smile when Bliss looked at her.
‘Thank Celestia! My dear, you really had brought on the lot of us the worst fear imaginable!’ said Brunet Smoke.
‘Oh goodness, my little Rose,’ cried Carbon Skies, ‘are you alright?’
Rosy Bliss slowly nodded but didn’t say a word. It wasn’t as though she was incapable of speaking. She was still feeling a little dizzy and couldn’t help but notice a faint throbbing sensation coming from the back of her head. It made her wonder if that happened when she fell.
Even though she made a response, it seemed that everyone else, least of all Carbon Skies, didn’t appear to be reassured. So, Bliss shuffled her body a little to prop herself upright against her pillows and bedhead and gave them a vocal reply. Her voice came out very husky so she tried clearing her throat.
‘Shall I pour you some water, miss?’ said Clean Sweep.
‘Yes, please.’ Bliss replied weakly, her voice still coarse.
A crystal clear jug of water and empty glass was already set at the bedside table on the side Clean Sweep sat by. The maid poured some water from the jug into the glass and carefully handed it to Rosy Bliss. After she had taken three or four gulps, Bliss put the glass back down herself and tried clearing her throat again.
‘I’m feeling much better, thank you.’ Bliss finally said, softly. She thought it was best for her to still keep her voice down at the moment.
‘It certainly is a relief to see you recover, milady. You really had Iron Wall in a state when he saw you wandering around the assembly line.’
Iron Wall… Bliss remembered. She could remember how he was there, cradling the little colt… just after…
‘Could you leave us just for a moment, please?’ Carbon Skies asked softly as he turned to Brunet Smoke. Without even looking eye-to-eye at Carbon Skies, whose head hung low, Brunet Smoke seemed to understand perfectly.
‘Very well.’ He gave a nod and made a quick glance to Clean Sweep. The two walked out of the room together, leaving Rosy Bliss alone with her father.
The two of them sat in complete silence for what felt like hours before Carbon Skies feebly extended a forehoof to place onto one of Rosy Bliss’. ‘Rose?’ He murmured, unable to think of anything else to say. However, he didn’t seem to get any response as Bliss continued to gaze vacantly at the wall opposite to her bed. Carbon Skies would slowly repeat his daughter’s name, the coarseness of his voice sounding increasingly fragile each time.
Even though she seemed fully awake, Rosy Bliss still found herself in a haze. The moment Brunet Smoke mentioned Iron Wall, she felt as if her whole body had suddenly shut down all other functions to focus purely on the cogs rampantly spinning in her mind. She thought back on when Brunet Smoke said that the children at the mill needed her, how excited the amber-eyed colt was when she promised him a story of her own, that colt who is now…
‘Oh god!’ Bliss suddenly cried out, her body curled forward as if in agonising pain.
At once, both her and her father were reduced to tears. They closed in on each other as Carbon Skies gently lay his daughter’s forehead against his shoulder. Through a broken voice, he repeatedly whispered, ‘I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…’
They remained still for almost half an hour, quietly weeping together.
‘You mean she ran away?!’ Scootaloo shouted out among the class of foals.
‘Shhhh!’ There was an irate security guard nearby while Scootaloo’s voice still echoed lightly around the room.
‘Well, yes Scootaloo,’ Cheerilee replied, ‘I suppose you could say she did…’
‘But why did she leave? Didn’t she know that the foals at the mill needed her there?’ asked another foal.
‘To be honest, it’s hard to say. But in all likelihood, at the time, she didn’t fully realise why she was so important to the working foals. Nopony can ever know what was really going on in her mind’
‘So what do you think, Miss Cheerilee?’ asked Apple Bloom.
The question caught Cheerilee a little by surprise. It certainly showed that the foals were really interested in her story. In any case, she was much obliged in giving them an answer. ‘To put it simply, I think Rosy Bliss was scared. After all, until the incident, she lived a very sheltered life. She may have not expected it was possible that the foals to ever really in any danger working there. It has been known that Rosy Bliss grew to strongly object to having foals work in the mills and factories. However, to every other Pony, not only was it considered normal for members of poorer families to work at a young age, it was pretty much expected. I think Rosy Bliss was scared because she felt that she was alone in how she felt.’
‘Hang on a minute!’ Another, less patient foal shouted out and the security guard appeared once again from the corridor.
‘Shhh!’
‘You still haven’t explained where the Storyloom came from! Who made it? Carbon Skies didn’t make it, and I’m guessing Rosy Bliss didn’t either. So who did?’
Cheerilee gave a disapproving glare to the shouting foal. She then quickly recomposed herself and continued, ‘The truth is even though Rosy Bliss was important to the invention of the Storyloom, its inventor was actually a Pony who never really was directly a part of her life.’
‘Who was that Pony?’ asked Sweetie Belle.
‘You didn’t have to ask, she’s going to tell us anyway…’ said Scootaloo before she and Sweetie Belle were both nudged by Apple Bloom, who then motioned them to keep quiet.
‘The Storyloom’s inventor was a strange, shy but very clever Pony who actually worked alongside Bliss’ father. He was none other than one of the mill’s key engineers, Clock Work.’
‘He’s very fond of you, you know.’ said Carbon Skies, slowly rising from his bed.
‘Pardon?’ Rosy Bliss grunted as she helped her father up from the bedside.
‘Come now, my little Rose, you know who and what I’m talking about. Clock Work, one of my engineers. He has taken quite a liking to you.’
‘Oh yes, him.’ Rosy Bliss let out a brief moan, ‘I am very much aware of that. But don’t get any ideas, father. The poor creature can hardly form a sentence whenever I’m around… and you know how I feel about a stallion like that.’ She spoke in a sarcastic tone, although she meant no harm from it.
‘Keep in mind that I initially didn’t find it at all easy to speak to your mother when I first met her.’ Carbon Skies said with a smile.
‘Yes father, but I think it’s safe to say that you and mother had a mutual interest in one another.’ With that, Bliss made her point clear and Carbon Skies had no intention of pushing further.
‘That is fine, my flower’ he chuckled, ‘you either like him or you don’t. It’s not in my place to tell you how you should feel.’
Even after Carbon Skies got out of bed, the two stood together closely while they talked.
Bliss smiled, ‘Do you think you will be okay on your own for now?’
‘I should manage just fine now, thank you.’
So, Bliss shifted her own weight away, lightly kissed him on the cheek and left the room.
Rosy Bliss was reading while she sat on the bench out in the garden when Beckon Call appeared from the house.
‘Ma’am,’ he called out, ‘another package has arrived, addressed to you.’
Bliss replied ‘You can bring it in over here.’ So Beckon Call stepped forward with a box wrapped in brown parcel paper fastened to his side as it sat in a saddlebag. When he approached the bench, he lifted the box by the string tied around it with his teeth and gently placed it on top of the small pile of books that was beside Bliss. As she thanked him, Beckon Call simply gave her a nod and left.
There was a piece of folded card held between the string and box. She slipped out the card to read it before she even bothered untying the string. She knew all too well who had sent her this. Clock Work.
This wasn’t the first gift he had sent her. They all arrived in the same sized box, wrapped in the same brown paper, lightly mottled with dark splotches that had a strange, greasy feel and smell to them. Definitely machine oil. Rosy Bliss was convinced that the odd little Pony lived in the mill as well as work in it. Not only did the boxes always look the same but they were accompanied with the same message:
My dearest Rose in all of Equestria, please accept this token of affection, which I hope captures the very nature of your fragile beauty.
It all became so familiar to her that she managed to make receiving Clock Work’s parcels something of a ritual. However, when she unfolded the card to read it this time, the message was different:
O shining star in this fog-filled city! When will you ever return?
Even though the message had changed, the present was the same as always. Inside the box was a rose. But nothing at all like any of the roses that grew in the garden around her. This one was crafted from metal. It lacked any colour that felt natural for a flower. The metal’s dark surface made it look as if it had been burnt. The edges made it seem unsafe to hold and it was very cold to the touch. Rosy Bliss always thought to herself that it was such a curious idea. She could not deny the dedication and impressive craftsmanship that was required to create something like it but it seemed so strange to receive something that felt so harsh and unforgiving, and be expected to see how it could ever compliment the words “fragile beauty”.
Even if she wasn’t ever sold on the message, she certainly found it to be a rather sweet gesture… at first. She had addressed this to Clock Work before. She told him that she appreciated how he thought of her but openly stated that the feeling just wasn’t mutual. However, the fact that he seemed to persist with these parcels regardless of what she said was no longer the main reason they annoyed her. They reminded her of the mill, the first thing in the world that she had ever truly wanted to hate.
Even though a month had passed, Rosy Bliss was reluctant to admit that the incident had deterred her from coming back to the mill. However, that was seldom on her mind since her father’s health was in decline.
By now, while Rosy Bliss was still in her early twenties, Carbon Skies was getting close to his sixties. Although that wasn’t terribly old, even for a Pony in that time, he had worked long and hard for a significant part of his life. It was finally taking its toll on him.
Carbon Skies no longer possessed the proud physique that even Rosy Bliss recognised from her childhood but he was hardly thin. Nevertheless, any tasks he had to face throughout the day involving a good amount of strength – for better or for worse, lifting himself out of bed every morning was the most common instance – were of the most difficult and uncomfortable sort. It never necessarily caused him any pain but it was certain that he would no longer be as strong as he once was. Rosy Bliss wouldn’t have felt as bad about it if it weren’t for the fact that her father already seemed to be making arrangements regarding future ownership of his mill.
Even though she never wanted to think about it, she would always be reminded of the mill in some way.
The stained wrapping paper gave off that unpleasant greasy smell, which only seemed to smell worse to her since the incident. Then there were the harsh edges of the leaves and flower of the roses themselves that brought back images of the vicious, sharp metal pieces that remembered seeing click, chatter and hum inside the machines of the mill. Bliss closed her eyes and those noises only grew louder in her head and quickly got to the point of feeling impossible to bear. Suddenly, she stood up, flung the card and rose back into the box and threw it with all her strength into the wall of the house. A dull thud sounded upon collision, followed by a faint clinking when it dropped to the ground.
Rosy Bliss turned away muttering, ‘I will never return to that horrid place!’
As she remained standing in the garden mulling over it all, Rosy Bliss looked up over the fence towards the park. Suddenly, amid the silence of her surroundings, she choked to the point of sobbing, cupping her hooves over her face. She had done nothing to exert herself, yet her breath felt hot and she began to pant heavily.
It was the first time she had ever felt angry.