Cantering back up the path, Carmen threw the cards and letters behind her and they fell in her wake, barely meeting the ground with a dull thump before she leapt onto the porch. The creased and weathered stone magnified her clattering hoof beats so that they rang through the hall of her home, echoing crisply. The front door had creaked open while she stood at the mailbox, in defiance of the tarnished brass lock it bore, and it whined as she flung it back with such force that it swung into the wall behind, adding to the din.
Having overturned a crooked hall-table, she now clattered noisily through the hall, checking doors to the right and left; all were open, and revealed empty, simple, but cosy rooms. Lyra’s crying was sounding closer, but still muffled.
“Ra? Ra, where are you?” she gasped out.
The last door, at the end of the hall; the dining room. Lyra was curled on the hearth stones cradling her hoof and sobbing, with a curious contraption which was obviously broken on the floor beside her. The door to the adjoining terrace was very firmly shut.
Carmen scooped her up and plopped her back down on the large teak table in the centre of the room, taking care not to step on the twisted device which she surmised was of Lyra’s making. As she hastily retrieved the first-aid box she kept in a nearby chest for just such eventualities, she felt her racing heart and her gasps for breath begin to grow calm.
“So, what were you trying to do this time?” she asked in a deliberately light and casual tone, turning back to grasp Lyra’s foreleg and rotating it around to see a shallow gash along the upper of the inside. Dark beads of blood were slowly squeezing themselves out of the wound, contrasting strongly with her beautiful, minty green skin.
“I was...trying to close the door.” Lyra hiccupped, looking carefully away from her leg, which was being washed with a damp cloth in preparation for dressing, and staring instead mangled metal on the stone floor.
“Well, you certainly succeeded in that, Ra.” Carmen said, letting a smile creep in to her voice.
“But why not simply pull it shut? Why not ask me for help?” She knew the answer; Lyra was an independent little filly, but combined with an almost uncanny ability for crafting with her bare hooves, that made for a very interesting parenting experience.
Carmen wouldn’t be surprised if she would go on to earn her cutie mark in such a field; in fact, she expected it to occur. The wound clean, she was now unwinding a thick roll of white bandage, stained from previous use on wounds much more serious than this.
“I wanted to close it using the handle, like a big pony. So I stood on the table, and stretched, but I wasn’t long enough. So I-” muttered Lyra, eyes on the strange pile of squashed metal, while Carmen bandaged her leg.
“So you made this”, prompted Carmen, pinning the bandages in place and walking over to the device and picking it up. It looked like a fork, some fishing wire, two nails and a long strip of scrap metal had been hastily cobbled together to form some sort of... extra hoof? The fork and nails at the end made rough prongs that she could see would have been intended to hook around the terrace door’s handle. There was blood on one of the nails.
“I found some things, and made a Hoof-Extenderer-With-Attached-Poky-Bits, and I stood on the table. I could reach it, but when I tried to pull it back, I lost my balance, and the Poky Bits poked me.”
Carmen suppressed an internal sigh: it was typical of her daughter. Ingenious, creative, but at the same time, so poorly thought out.
“I’m glad that you‘re okay, Lyra, but that wasn’t very safe. You hurt yourself, but it could have been a lot worse. What if you’d landed badly? You could have broken something; you could get an infection from that metal you used- really, Lyra, was it from the back garden?”
Lyra’s head drooped lower and lower up on the table, her hoof scuffing at a raised point on the unvarnished surface.
“But...” there was a change in the timbre of Carmen’s voice. Lyra looked up to find her smiling with pride at her daughter.
“It was a clever piece of machinery. The hooks were a good idea, although I can see that gouge in the door now, and it’s good that you wanted to solve the problem yourself. That shows ‘moral character’. ”
She booped her daughter’s nose and looked her in the eyes.
“Next time Lyra, tell me if you have a problem, and we’ll solve it together, just so that I know that you’re safe. I’ll tell you what- tomorrow is Celestia’s day, so you won’t have school: let’s go to the forge and pick up some metal for your next experiment. We’ll clean this one and keep it as a prototype, so we can build you another, better Hoof-Extendy-Whatsit.”
“With-Poky-Bits, Mama.”
“We couldn’t possibly forget the poky bits, Ra. The poky bits make it great.”, intoned Carmen solemnly, looking down at the face of her daughter, which was radiant at the prospect of working on a project together.
Before her resolve- and her heart- broke, she placed the Hoof-Thingummy on the mantel, making a mental note to clean up the resultant blood-stains, swung Ra onto her back and trotted to the kitchen.
“Now, who wants muffins?”
...
Later, in the cosy, warm and aromatic kitchen, gobbling up muffins and animatedly countering a proposition that Lyra was definitely old enough to weld, so please, please, could she, Carmen felt more content, more at home than she ever had in Ponyville before.
And that terrified her.
Nothing had ever been, nothing could ever be as important as the Princess's will, because the Princess was Equestria, and Equestria was her realm. Her duty had been a part of her life for so long, and even with so many years in the shadows it was as strong and uncompromising as iron. She must leave.
Nothing was greater than Equestria, and nothing could interfere with her duty. Not love for a partner. Not even love for a daughter.
And she knew the Princess would never have taken summoning her lightly.
After all, it takes a grave matter indeed to force the dead to walk again amongst the living. I am now the only option.