The owner of the Lady Gay Saloon strode confidently down the main street of Dry Gulp, satisfied with the progress she had made since arriving in such a destitute state seven years ago. The renovation of the establishment was going well and with it completed, she would soon have enough to keep herself and her children fed—well, her remaining children.
Of course, not a day went by that she didn't remember how much she lost. Only a hoof-full of her children had lived through that disaster. And it was only through the compassion and generosity of the town that she and the other survivors lived.
Dry Gulp, it seemed, was truly a land of Second Chances. And to think, she had once tried to wipe it off the face of the planet just twenty years earlier. It was a very sobering irony, indeed.
Despite the hardships that ponies here faced every day, life went on. Life, dreams, and perseverance. And above all, hope. That was the other, harsher, irony. This place had everything her kin needed to survive—just not enough of it, had she come here with all of her children before the disaster which ended up bringing her here—but for her remaining children, it was enough.
Not enjoying the morose thoughts, she continued on her route to the Long Tree, to meet with her partner. True, it was too early in the day for Filly Rustler to be up and about, given the hours the Long Tree kept. But she was patient. While her partner would continue to sleep, she planned to prepare the storeroom's stock for the saloon's noontime opening. Then they would have words.
So, coming up on the closed doors of the saloon was no surprise. The sign in the shuttered window indicating it was closed for repairs, however, was startling.
Her children working here last night reported the last pony in the Long Tree when they left had been one of the town drunks, a former train engineer named Tumbleweed—and no bar fights had broken out.
So why the "repairs"?
Stepping up to the doors, she tried her key, but the doors were already unlocked. So, she opened them and stepped through the swinging inner panel doors. And stopped, flabbergasted.
Inside, Filly, the town doctor, the marshal, and the drunk from last night were busy cleaning up the floor space and cutting off sections of the bar that had obviously taken a major hit—a hit that had evidently done considerable damage to the shelves which were in line with whatever destructive force that had demolished the bar.
"Filly?" she politely inquired. Questions. SO many questions clearly voiced in that one word she spoke.
"Morning," Filly Rustler flatly greeted in return, setting her broom to lean on the bar before walking toward her.
Oh, buck! It's her! Filly instantly thought, seeing the figure standing in the threshold. She was dreading this meeting with her partner, especially with an unconscious Celestia sleeping upstairs in a locked room.
"Can we talk?" she coolly asked. More like demanded.
"Of-of course," Filly nervously responded. "I'll be right back, guys," she said to the other three.
They slowly ambled down the street. Filly was alone with her thoughts and concerns. Her partner—who knew what sort of schemes she was planning?
"I know we don't often see eye-to-eye, Filly Rustler," her partner finally stated after having walked a couple buildings down. "Please understand. I have no desire to cause you or the Marshal any problems. Just be aware, you and the Marshal are quite—shall I say?—quite popular with our customers. Even more than a certain purple unicorn or a certain pink alicorn, for which I always give discounts for so that I can always enjoy seeing them getting some good poundings—if only all that were real," she wistfully sighed.
Filly wasn't sure how to respond.
What she said just now was another of those random dribbles of information about her past. Individually, they were meaningless to anypony hearing them. And even together, with what had been revealed over time, they painted a picture that was frustratingly too incomplete to even make a guess about.
So, Filly did the wisest thing she could and didn't respond. Instead, she waited for her partner to reveal more of what this was about.
"But you and the Marshal," she began again, "you two have something special between you. I assure you that neither I nor my children will ever use that against you."
Filly was now completely confused. Yes, the matter they were discussing was a sore spot that she had against her partner. But it now seemed she was willing to talk about it. And do so on Filly's terms, which only puzzled her further.
"What are you saying?" Filly had to inquire.
Her partner suddenly stopped and turned her head, looking between the buildings to stare at the hill to their northwest, and suddenly Filly had an inkling what the matter was. She was staring up at Hoof Hill Cemetery, where most of her kin had been buried after their spectacular and sudden arrival on that day seven years ago.
"They're all dead—because—because I killed them," she whispered.
"You killed them!?" Filly exclaimed, horrified. She was suddenly worried if she needed to run back and get Mack to help with this. "YOU!?"
"No. Not like that," she sadly replied. "But it might as well have been by my hoof."
"I was desperate," she said after a while, resuming her tale and their walk. "As a result, I was unwise in how I deployed them. My plan almost worked, but in the end, it cost us. It cost us all. And so, here we are."
"What happened?" Filly asked.
"You know those two I always give a discount for?" she responded with a smirk. Filly, honestly, didn't really want to know the story about them, given what she had seen of her partner's attitude about them.
"Let's just say I underestimated them and paid a heavy price for it," she stated, clearly finished with that tale.
"But, back to you and the Marshal," she continued. "With the obvious relationship you have with each other, it makes you rather popular. It's something other ponies really want to have a bit of. Believe me, it's just business," she explained.
"I guess I can't fault that," Filly said, sighing. "I used to engage in a lot of that, myself years ago. I just didn't want to do it anymore after taking ownership of the Long Tree."
"Understandable," she responded with a nod. "So—about the repairs, back there?" she asked.
"Just an accident," Filly replied.
"Really?" she asked, looking at her with arched eyebrows.
"Yeah," Filly nervously said.
"I'll send a team over to help with the repairs," she stated in a tone that brokered no resistance. Still, Filly did her best to decline.
"That's really not necessary—" Filly started, but quickly stopped at the sharp glare she received instead.
"I'm sending a team over! They're experts at doing those sorts of repairs!" she snapped, putting an end to the conversation and she spun about to quickly march back up the road.
Sure enough, within an hour, several of her children arrived, armed with a load of carpentry tools and segments of precut two-by-fours. Mack, Doc, Tumbleweed and Filly had just finished trimming off the jagged edges splitting the bar when the team of seven showed up.
Wordlessly, they got busy, essentially pushing the others out of their way, as they began taking measurements and selecting locations for mounting the short two-by-four segments to function as a brace for whatever they were going to fill in the chasm with. They also addressed the hole in the floor from where the alicorn had stomped her fore hoof by cutting out the jagged edges in the floorboards and prepping it for repairs as well as the additional whole that had been kicked into the bar.
After getting their measurements, five of them departed and the others began drilling and setting the lumber pieces in with long wood screws. Then they began giving the entire bar a light sanding over every surface. Once that was completed, the two cleaned up the mess they made as well as the remaining debris left over from where Filly and her friends had worked.
"We'll be back shortly," one of them told Filly as they departed.
"Well, not much left for us to do here," Mack said, sighing. "I'll go wake Cletus for his shift."
"Thanks a bundle, Mack," Filly said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before the marshal left.
"I'll check on our guest, if you don't mind," Doc said. "Then I'll head on back to my office."
"Sure thing, Doc," she said, passing him the key to the room. She also helped him to balance a mug of water for him to take up there to her.
"Well, just you and me, Tumble," Filly said with a sigh. "I'll get you your drink and some salt to go with it." Then she paused as she noticed his vacant stare and half grin on his face. "Anything wrong, Tumble?" she asked.
"What? Oh, nothing, Miss Filly," Tumbleweed said, snapping out of his daze. "It—it just felt good—working like that again. Having a job, I mean," he explained, fully grinning this time.
"It does, indeed," she said, returning the smile.
As Tumbleweed enjoyed his repast, Doc came back down with some disturbing news.
"She took the water just fine," he told her. "But when I asked her about contacting Canterlot to let somepony know she was here, she just looked at me. Blankly."
"Her memories?" Filly asked, quickly catching on to what he was telling her.
"Apparently, they're gone," Doc replied. "All she remembers is that fall, the impact, and then walking. She's got amnesia. She doesn't know what Canterlot is. Or even Equestria, for that matter. She doesn't even remember her name."
The crew her partner had sent over returned with a couple large precut panels of plywood, some shelving, and some hardwood lengths of lumber, also precut for the length of the affected section of the bar, as well as a couple paint cans. Once they settled in, they got busy. As a couple of them aligned the panels in place, one large section for the front façade, another section for the top of the bar, they quickly drilled pilot holes and began screwing in the sections to match the rest of the bar. After that, they got busy sanding down the surface to shave off a thin layer that stuck out just beyond the joined panels to either side.
The other five were busy working with chisels on the hardwood segments. In less than a minute, Filly could tell they were aiming to duplicate the molding at the base and on the upper level of the bar. It was almost hypnotic to watch them work. And in an hour, they were done with assembling the filler for the chasm and other than the mismatch color of the sections it looked like a perfect match.
That was where the paint cans came in. One was a wood stain, the other a can of varnish.
The one team got busy staining the new lumber, and to Filly's surprise, they were very rough with their work, hitting the stained sections with a light sanding before it was dried, painting over it again without wiping it down first, and even a few times, she watched as one of them took some of the ever-present dirt from the floor and mixed it into the work.
While the one group was applying the stain job, two of them worked on the hole in the floor and the smaller one in the bar while the rest did cleanup. In about half-an-hour, the second hole in the bar as well as the floor were also completed and stained to look just like the rest of the saloon. Again, Filly simply couldn't find the spot again, even as she knew where it was supposed to be. They had even duplicated the crack and the flaws from previous imperfect repairs that had been there from before last night.
But she was totally astonished that by the time they were done with the staining, she couldn't tell where the new section was at all. They repeated that process once more, this time attacking the entire bar, not just the newly rebuilt sections.
By then, the stain had dried, and the team began going over the entire bar with a coat of varnish. When they were done, it looked almost as pristine as it had when Filly Rustler first arrive in Dry Gulp over twenty-five years ago. Of course, the bar had been in use for several years before that, but it was looked just as fresh now as it did back then.
"That is simply incredible!" she exclaimed. "It's perfect!"
"Unfortunately, no, it isn't," one of them said as the others were leaving. "There is no way to duplicate the worn pattern of the varnish, so we had to make do with removing the old varnish and drink stains and giving it a fresh coat. Mother would certainly not approve. But at least we were able to match up the age of the wood stain."
"Well, I don't care what your mother may say about it," Filly growled. "I still say you've done a wonderful job! However were you able to get everything to match up so perfectly?"
"Lots of practice," the last one to leave said, giving Filly an unnerving grin. "Unfortunately, you will need to remain closed for another day for the lacquer to fully dry." Then it left.