"I think we got it all well in hoof now," Crumble Pie assured Prideheart. "You dig in."
After their lightning tour of teaching on the wall, where Prideheart had given the fastest combat advice he had ever shared to crowds as large as they could have gathered, the gray mare had carted him off the wall and aside. The rest of the town was still swept up in arranging their defense, though there was precious little more to do. Mainly they double-checked and triple-checked all they could over and over again, reassuring each other as best as they were able that they were ready, though there was nothing that ever would have made them feel truly ready enough for their fate. Many quiet, grim conversations when back and forth between ponies who were once neighbors in homes but now were neighbors on the wall of their last defense.
Sometime yesterday, on the short stretch of road between town and wall, a long row of tables had been set up. As the townsponies had gotten to work on their wall other ponies had covered the tables with plates of dried fruits, fresh vegetables, some hastily sliced breads, and even a bowl of oat dip; whatever could have been grabbed in a pinch: food for peckish workers, if hardly a feast. Plenty had been left behind after the prior day's marathon wall-building session, but once the terrible truth had come out this morning Crumble Pie had ordered the tables' stock refreshed. From all her years of leading quarry work, it was a firm belief of the gray mare's that:
"I know a pony can't labor right on an empty stomach. I suppose the same is probably true of fighting. So go on, sir. Eat up."
It would have been the mightiest lie for Prideheart to have denied his raving stomach, but he still held himself up like a soldier and shook his head.
"So long as more preparations are to be made, I will not-"
"Oh, nonsense," Crumble Pie tenderly rebuffed him. "We can handle what's left, don't worry. You pack something away; I thought it was an avalanche when your tummy started growling!"
Said stomach took the opportunity to loudly agree with her.
The cloaked stallion opened his mouth to protest again but Crumble Pie needed only her leaderly stare to shut him down. He swallowed his veto.
"... Very well. But on first sight of-"
"Trust me, you'll hear when they're coming. Get your last nibbles in now while you can, cause if they drag you down to Tartarus then I don't expect you'll be tasting much more than brimstone for the rest of your days."
The gray mare capped her humor with a small smile and then bowed to Prideheart. She made a half-turn about, ready to return to her duties, but she paused to add, "And... thank you, sir. See you up on that wall in a little."
"You are fair of heart, sound of mind, and strong of will, Madame Pie," he said, holding back some awe but otherwise truly humbled.
"Aw, now you're just flirting!"
It was little moment made just right, and her spirits buoyed. She only took a few paces away from the tableside before she loudly called out for Hailstone.
"Yeah, Crumble Pie?" the pegasus whizzed into place before the gray mare, only briefly looking past her to show the cloaked stallion some masked disdain.
"You get those blasting charges out yet?"
"I got'em. Left'em by the bridge for you."
"Good. Let's set them up now then. Eight charges, so I figure we'll set two up by-"
"Oh," a minor hiccup came to Hailstone and she informed her boss loosely, "there were only seven charges. Guess the mayor miscounted or something."
However Crumble Pie immediately found the discrepancy a bit more troubling.
"You could find a diamond in a slag heap more easily than she gets her stocks wrong," the mare said.
Prideheart, busy behind them with a carrot in his mouth, overheard their exchange and released a smug grunt. It pleased him to not end that the pegasus had again shown her poor ability at tallying things, be they heckhounds or explosives.
"Nopony asked you!" Hailstone snipped at him.
"Ah, let him eat," Crumble Pie quickly made peace, and she invited her winged friend along, "Come on. Somepony probably picked it up and moved it on accident somehow. It must be here. I'll help you look for it."
The mares didn't tarry and were gone in moments, leaving the stallion alone to his battle of hunger.
Prideheart found it frustrating how he had to actively to restrain himself from overeating, lest his final defeat come from a stomachache. Every bite of food he tackled only encouraged his long-starving stomach to demand more of him.
You can fit bigger portions into that muzzle!, it ordered.
Try a whole loaf of cornbread!, it begged.
Stop chewing so slowly!, it snarled.
Scoop some of those figs off that plate; no, not two—two dozen!
He had never in his life felt more subservient to the ordinary whims of his body. But at the same time he felt he had never indulged in such a royal feast despite its simplicity, for to the weary a full belly was always a triumphant banquet. Only his valiant fortitude saved him from choking on whole platefuls of food scarfed down too quickly. He instead paced himself by happily sampling across the buffet of flavors, some of which he hadn't tasted in decades.
The variety were simple pleasures, and they so distracted him that he didn't immediately notice the approach of somepony who was coming to join him. Crumbs dribbled onto his cloak like a spritzing waterfall, and it was in a pause to shake himself clean that he finally spotted Scrolldozer nearing the tables. A heavy and nervous weight was pulling on the father.
Doubtless, Prideheart assumed, the pony wasn't coming for the food.
The cloaked stallion did his best to ignore Scrolldozer and continue eating, though he rapidly adopted some less ravenous-looking behaviors, nibbling much more calmly and quietly. There was little he wanted to do with the father, though the coldness he showed wasn't a complete reflection of disdain. It was also, in part, out of lonely expedience: Crumble Pie had fully accepted the disfigured pony, but all of the other townponies had still been avoiding any interactions with him unless absolutely necessary.
Surely Scrolldozer felt the same, Prideheart imagined, and likely the father himself was lamenting that he had some reason to speak with the unwanted stallion. If anything the father's feelings might have been the most furious of all. Of the few things Scrolldozer could have even wanted to have discussed, Prideheart could only think of one.
And he refused to waste words with such an insufficient parent.
Upon arrival at the tables no initial greeting came from Scrolldozer. He placed himself an awkward distance from Prideheart where he inspected several of the food plates with only the flimsiest pretense of interest. Again and again he turned to look towards the other stallion, trying to solicit a conversation without having to actually say anything to open it. Over time he wiggled himself closer, pretending to jump from plate to plate down the tables, and he sat down just out of leg's reach from the cloaked pony. But he still didn't speak, hoping vainly that the other pony might begin the exchange himself, even with something as rudimentary as a foul-tempered 'What?'.
But still Prideheart gave nothing except his cold, silent feasting. With no choice left, Scrolldozer gathered together the will to entomb his reluctance, summoning it bit by bit like dropping pebbles of weak confidence into a tiny pile. When at last he brought out his voice it was very submissive and laced with more than a dash of regret.
"I... feel I should apologize. For before, I mean. When I... sort of... erupted on you in the street."
Prideheart couldn't believe his ears. There were many contempt-worthy failures he laid at the father's hooves with respect to Bookworm, but having been indignant over what had essentially been his daughter's foalnapping was not one of those grievances.
"No wrath of yours was undeserved," the cloaked pony plainly stated, though he would not grant Scrolldozer a direct stare. Only the ruined half of his face he kept visible to the other pony. "My mistake I will claim freely: to make wagers with the life of another's foal in such stupidity is a crime despicable."
"I'm not disagreeing with that or anything," Scrolldozer said. "But that doesn't mean going off on you was the right thing to do. Especially because Bookworm had already come back safe. And also because—I mean, if everything she said about what happened out there really is true—then because you-... you stood between her and those things. You saved her."
Prideheart's jaw tightened, not from any of the food he had just swallowed. He ground his teeth in frustration, but quite explicitly the anger wasn't aimed at the father.
"Only from a danger made by my own designs," he moaned.
Scrolldozer ignored every opening he was being given to attack, and he instead spoke mildly, "That doesn't matter now. All that matters is that she's on her way to Mule's Head and she's safe."
Though the father looked down the road to the east, there was nothing to see. Over the bridge and behind the bending landscape the caravan had disappeared many minutes ago. The sight of the empty road made him smile, and cry.
"Her mother will have to take care of her now," he shook his head. "I hope Mercy is at last ready to take on Bookworm. I-... I hope I did enough."
Prideheart finally looked straight at the father, but only to shoot a sour leer.
"Your filly has chafed under your ill-handled authority."
But again the cloaked stallion was surprised by the other pony who raised no resistance nor protested even one word. The father's spirit crumpled along with his head, shouldering the accusation readily and without a threadlike shred of disagreement.
"I know..."
Scrolldozer wiped some tears from his eyes, though he only wound up smearing them over his snout. He gave up and let the mess be, caring little about the unkempt state of his muzzle. Already he was too beaten down by shame to feel any further disgrace.
Away from the tables there was still the light commotions of ponies scrambling here and there, but near them was an nigh-absolute silence that only grew more uncomfortable as the moments passed. The only noises were coming from Scrolldozer but they weren't any words at all; merely quiet drops of grief. Prideheart started to grow suspicious of himself.
It was that sound. That familiar sound.
Of a wounded father.
Suddenly the cloaked pony straightened himself up. His chin he held high, sure with experience, and he shrunk his old eye with a squint of aged wisdom. Like a master he tried to instruct the father.
"Guidance is the sustenance of growth, and all foals seek it instinctively. When away, she has craved your presence so that she might have such guidance; so she said to me. But she has also in time learned to indulge the freedoms she has found away from you, and with some speed for her age she has found her own voice. Now upon your many returns she, like a foal, has still felt that need to call to you, but she has found herself lost still because you have not heeded her older spirit. In trying to control her path as if her body and her soul were the same – in failing to respect that freedom which she has been taught by your slackness, whether through action or inaction – she now resents your chains."
"I know...," the father admitted again, buried by the sheer weight of the other pony's words. He took them as implicit truth, without question. "It's so hard, to be a good parent. Every day I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Bookworm's so much more than me; I hardly know how to handle it. I try to make the right decisions. I try to do everything right for her. I try to be what she needs from a father. I've-... I-..."
He reconsidered his current position and corrected himself.
"I tried to be a good parent."
"What good is it to throw your head down and wallow in your laments?" scolded the cloaked pony, though again there was far less edge in his attack than expected. More and more he was becoming uncertain of himself. "If you are not enough then become more. Whatever the darkness, stand before it and resist it! Save nothing for yourself. Everything she is owed by you, for she is yours. Will you understand? She—is—yours."
There still came no hard volume to Prideheart. He only mumbled grimly, his words never finding a distinct target between him and the father.
"... And she is lonely; your daughter. She... knows only parents who have abandoned her."
"A-A-Abandoned?! I-Is that w-what she said about-...?"
Again and again Scrolldozer believed every awful accusation which came his way, not even trying to block them. No, he waited for them with an open embrace. Even those monstrous allegations that he had never in his life pondered over. Even those failures he never would have thought anypony could have been guilty of. Even the ones against which he had been assured his better qualities overcame, soundly guaranteed to him by the ponies he trusted the most.
Somewhere unrecognized by reality he had already long ago found all of the personal evils that existed swirling in the darkness, and he had claimed every one of them for himself.
But even at that most horrible bottom; even at his very worst...
"... I never-... I never would-..."
All his many swelling tears and overrunning gasps got in his way, and his statement went unfinished.
Especially compared to the breaking Scrolldozer, Prideheart seemed stoic, but regardless the older pony questioned which of them was more fractured and marred.
It was that sound again. The intimate sounds of the father, slipping through Prideheart's every crack. Small and suffering, each noise seemed to hit the outwardly unresponsive stallion and echo twice as silently from him.
Prideheart's supposed 'advice' had been of the same spirit as what he had so passionately delivered to Bookworm yesterday, but now already there was such an emptiness to it. Now, they hadn't seemed like his own words at all. Lashing with his ferocious whip against the absent and accused father had been so easy before, but it was exceptionally different to stand before him and do the same now.
Holding up his shining shield against threats awful and unimaginable had been so easy in words, but it had been exceptionally different to have stood before a dragon and done the same.
This was not how things should have turned out.
"... To each foal is given two parents," Prideheart spoke up, driven to words by the unbearable sound of Scrolldozer's sadness, though the cloaked pony was himself treading somewhere ill at ease, "yet here... the filly feels she has none. A father often far, buried under rocks. And... a mother, farther still, hunting uses for her miserable magic."
He tried to snarl. He tried to get angry.
But he only asked in honest sadness, "... How came it so?"
Scrolldozer blinked and rubbed his eyes hard enough to really rip out the thick mess of tears caught there. The daze of surprise was even strong enough to bring back his steady breathing.
He had genuinely not anticipated to have been asked such a thing. It wasn't that his marriage was some secret, or some treasure so personal that no others could have been allowed a glimpse of it. Many times in fact he had gone over the details of his life with other ponies, especially when he had first moved to Stony Nook. But the need for such retellings of his history had faded over the years in that small and intimate town, such that for somepony to again desire to hear it was like the rush of an old memory waking up after so many dormant years, triggered by an incidental sight or sound. It was doubly perplexing that the somepony who wanted to hear it was this odd outsider and that the time he chose for it was the last hour of Stony Nook.
But the tale was still solid in Scrolldozer's bones after all those years of quiet rest.
"That's-... well, you see, her mother and I-... Hm... Sir, it's-... it's actually a little bit of a story to understand it all. Or maybe I just don't think it would sound right if I gave you the short version of it..."
The father went silent and his gaze drifted towards the great wall. From beyond it came the exaggerated, burning roars of the heckhounds thundering over, snarling with fire. At least, if only in his terrified imagination.
Only after he had become a father had he discovered one of the simplest sources of calm in his worrisome life: sitting besides the bed of his daughter and reading stories to set her to sleep.
He had never before thought of himself as a gifted storyteller (in fact, he still did not!) but in swift time he had come to treasure the ordinary act of it. Not just for how soothing the softness of it was, but for the absolute joy of watching a beloved face go slowly from a bright smile to beautiful sleep. Not just for how charitable it was in giving away something that only needed a true heart to do, but for how that gift had always been received as if he had given over a whole kingdom. And most of all, not just for his love of his daughter...
But for those moments in the early night with her on her bed and him with a book besides her...
... They had been the moments where Bookworm had loved him the most.
Now she was gone; departed forever down the road away from Stony Nook for her own safety. There hadn't been any time to have told his daughter one last story; no time for one last exchange of love to have calmed him.
But maybe – with the last few minutes he had left before the horrors of his imagination tore free from fantasy and became excruciatingly real – he could tell just one more story to this outsider trusted by Bookworm. One more story so that in the coming final moments his heart might hold steady. One more story to reexperience the good things that had found a home in his soul.
"Alright..."
Scrolldozer's resigned sigh was warm; pleasant and sad like one of summer's last sunsets.
"Let me start way, way back..."
“I was born out in Sacremello. It's a city with a little bit of everything, so I was pretty quick to figure out what my special talent was. Even as a pint-sized colt I was spending time in the quarries just outside of town, feeling through the earth with my magic and yanking out boulders five times my size. From that, well, I pretty much grew straight up into working there once I came of age.
It was a real simple existence back then, but you wouldn't have heard me complain; not once. I was perfectly happy with my life of getting up at dawn, working away on those stones, and dropping into some good sleep at nightfall. I wanted to spend the rest of my days exactly like that. I mean, to make the most of their cutie mark: what more could anypony ask for, right?
But I was a young idiot. You see, sir, there's a difference between being happy and being content. I hadn't known it, but I wasn't happy; I was only content with my life. Now, content folk will always tell you that they're happy, but that's because they don't know any better. They in honest fact can't know any better. And... being content isn't a bad thing at all; don't begrudge ponies of that.
But if it's real happiness you're after then you have to have the lesson knocked into your head: you're only content, and you need to get out there and chase that happiness.
So, the first time I ever got a hint of that lesson was the day I first saw her in town.”
No terrors impeded the stallion. No waking dreams of fiery heckhounds shook him out of his story. He was somewhere else entirely.
Before his very eyes he saw again everything exactly as he had written down in his memory, detail for painstakingly-recorded detail: an angel had appeared suddenly from out of some impossible place built of pure beauty, her very ponyhood a wealthy inheritance of breathtaking perfection siphoned from whatever paradise realm she had formerly belonged to.
"Mercy Mild...," he had so much reverence for the name that he would have laid down his life just for another chance to have said it again. "Of course I didn't know her name at the time. I only saw her passing through town... but oh! As soon as I did...!"
“Sir... you have to understand: everypony sometimes looks at another pony and calls them beautiful, or gets flustered and nervous and shaky at just how pretty they are, or even sometimes gets a warm feeling in their chest that they're beyond certain is love. But... until you've actually felt love at first sight for real, oh not even a thousand of those other little moments all piled together could compare! They're a candle to the sun!
It comes as a single instant that lasts forever, where the world can't be real anymore but somehow it is! And in that blink of infinity everything vanishes except that other pony, and for years your heart screams at you through its every beat. It says that you need to find the biggest possible mountain and rip it out of the ground for them, because only that is a sizable enough gesture to show how badly you want to lay on the ground before them and kiss their hooves!
Your heart also tells you – if you listen really closely – that you're going to tear that mountain up out of the earth, because nothing that small could stand in the way of your big feelings.
I don't even remember where the rest of that day went. I was a slack-jawed mess for all of lunch and the guys had to haul me away back to the quarry, but I couldn't lift another stone for the rest of my shift. For the first time in my life there wasn't a rock on my mind. Every second was spent picturing her again, and feeling the agony of not having been bold enough to have run right back into town and talked to her.
But my shyness won out. Or maybe I just wasn't thinking about time because she made everything feel so timeless. I waited two whole days before I genuinely started to look around town for her.
... And I couldn't find her.
I discovered why pretty quickly: she wasn't from Sacremello. She had just been visiting and had already left.
I had blown my chance.
The next day I went back to work, dragging my nose on the ground. Everypony knew something was up, and they all started ribbing me because they thought I was just having some silly crush. I fought with them of course; denying it and everything. 'I was an adult!' 'I would have known if I was in love!' Really though, I was at that young age where, with your fresh adult responsibilities, you think that you have real maturity and wisdom but actually you couldn't be further from the truth. I eventually tried to tell myself that they were right; that I had just had a dumb crush on some girl I had seen only once.”
Despite how the story seemed to be sliding towards a somber end, Scrolldozer smiled. He smiled large.
“But my little phase of lying to myself didn't last. I suppose there's some value in being young and stupid enough to believe in impossible things.
I declared to the others that she was my one true love, forever and ever, yadda-yadda; the same true but empty words all young fools use. And everypony laughed...
... until I sold or gave away everything I couldn't take with me and bought a one-way train ticket to Canterlot. That's where she had come from, and that's where I was going! I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life content! I was going to chase happiness!
Without a second thought I left rocks and stones behind and rode that train, and for the very first time I saw what the world looked like outside my little bubble of Sacremello. It really put me in a place that made me feel very lost, and small, and confused.
I mean, I had no plan. I didn't know how I was going to survive in Canterlot. I didn't know how I was going to find her. I only knew that I had to find Mercy and tell her that she was the most beautiful creature to have ever caught the attention of the sun and moon, for surely they rose and set every day just for the sake of seeing her.”
Almost idly as he continued telling his tale Scrolldozer's magic began to rearrange some of the items on table, making it into a puppet show of sorts. The biggest loaf became a mountainous castle. Houses of parsnips, sweet potatoes, and turnips lined the streets. Cauliflowers sprung up as trees and gardens only here and there. And crowds of shriveled fruits flooded the busy streets of Canterlot while going about their daily business. It was all overwhelming to the fresh-eyed dried apricot from out of town who was seeing it for the first time.
Some of the same sensation of being frightened and overwhelmed came back to Scrolldozer, and the sense of wonder in his tale began to be slowly squeezed out by all the pressures he had faced.
“I had never seen anything like Canterlot before. So many ponies in one place! Right there at the train station all my doubts caught up to me, chastising me for what I had done, and I thought about immediately buying a ticket to run back home. What a fool I had been to have gone out there!
But if I had been a fool to go then I would have been twice a fool to have given up and left! Or so I told myself in order to find the courage to step into the city.
Thanks to everything I had sold back home I had a chunk of bits with me; hardly wealthy, but enough to get going. I rented the cheapest apartment I could find in the city. (Not an easy feat in Canterlot. There, 'cheap' is relative.) After that I set out right away, looking for Mercy.
I'm not really a detective though; not at all. I mean, stone is the only thing I really know and am any good at. It didn't help me at all either that I still didn't know her name, only what she looked like. I got nowhere in picking up her trail.
A hard reality started to set it: the rate my search was going wasn't outpacing how fast that rent and some food was eating through my funds. It wouldn't have been long before I ran dry. And as poorly as I was doing trying to find her, certainly a homeless, starving pony would only have done worse. So, I started exchanging 'looking for her' with 'looking for work.'
That didn't go so well, either. I said it before: I know stone, and that's about it. But they don't quarry much stone out in Canterlot. They import. As a fallback I can do some construction, but again I only do well with natural rock. That's not the major style out there; it's all blocks and bricks, and artisan wood, and-... well, the point is there wasn't a labor shortage so nopony was going to hire me for those jobs over the plenty of better professionals available.
So what did I find? I wound washing dishes at night for some seedy dive. It was enough to get me by... if you count the second job I took making deliveries during the day. Sometimes I even did the quick odd job to make up the bits for any remaining expenses. Altogether they paid a pittance, but they were the best work I could do.
And so, weary from constantly working jobs I was honestly pretty terrible at, I kept up my search for Mercy wherever I could. I looked while running around making deliveries; I took different routes home every night from washing dishes, just in case I might have stumbled upon a clue. For weeks I hardly found the time to sleep while I searched high and low for her.
And then in a stroke of blind luck – good or bad; take your pick – I finally found my first big lead. A devastating lead:
She wasn't in Canterlot. She hadn't been for a long, long while.”
The plot twist had the father laughing, though only in that drab way which sees the tragedies of the past as the sad comedies of the present.
“You see, I found out that she worked for a group called The Red Crossbreed. They were founded I don't know how many years back, and their stated mission is to selflessly care for the injured, infirmed, and chronically ill. They were named for some unknown pony who tended to those who were hurt after a crisis against a monster named Tirek long, long ago. The mysterious pony had never spoken her name; she simply provided healing and comfort to those that had needed it and then disappeared without ever having sought a word of thanks for her noble deed.
That's the spirit The Red Crossbreed has adopted. They're a volunteer-run charity, taking care of ill ponies wherever they can with whatever donated time and resources they've got. Mercy follows that spirit too, but... she can't do it halfway. She's one of their few full-time dedicated healers. Now, they don't have the funds to give her much. All they really can do is pay for her train tickets, set her up in cramped little places in each town, and feed her scraps with the leftover budget. But she takes it. She takes it for that chance to provide comfort to hurt ponies who need it.
I only loved her more, hearing about all that.
Anyway, that explained my problem. The headquarters for The Red Crossbreed is in Canterlot, but as a healer Mercy of course spent so little time there. She was always out traveling all over Equestria to help other ponies with her healing magic; curing where she can, but most often she just provides the best relief she's able to for ponies who have terrible, painful, incurable conditions. That's how their operation ran: she'd ride into town, stay two or three or four days to do her duty, and then move on to the next town. That was her life. That was why she was in Sacremello so briefly. That was why it was so hard to find her in Canterlot: she was always out on long tours; nopony there really knew her that well.
And, I learned, she wasn't due back for several more weeks. In fact in a whole year she barely stays in Canterlot for more than a few dozen days total. In other words, my whole effort to set myself up there and look for her had been a colossal waste of time.
That very night I sat wrapped in a shredded blanket in my cold apartment (you wouldn't believe how the price jumps if you want something as nice as a hearth or a tiny furnace) and I seriously thought of throwing in the towel. I was miserable, the goal posts were moving farther away, and it was still all for a mare that I had never even talked to and had only seen once! I thought it over, hard. If I quit my jobs and dumped everything then I would have had enough bits for a single train ticket. One. One to get me back to Sacremello. Back to a content life.
The next morning came and I packed all my nothing, sold the rest, and went to the train station. I had just enough for one ticket, which I bought.
To Fillydelphia.
I had learned three things from The Red Crossbreed: how Mercy lived her life, the schedule of her tour, and her name. Sometime in the next few days she was going to arrive in Fillydelphia. Repeating her name to myself, I got on that train. I again threw myself out into the wild unknown to chase after happiness.
You see, sitting in that cold apartment I had realized it: Mercy was just like me, working hard and earning little, living an austere life. I did that because I was after happiness, but she did it because... she was like I had been in Sacremello: content.
And that meant my goal wasn't impossible! If I could only show her that there was something more than being content... If I could get that one chance to speak to her about happiness.”
Canterlot cleared from the table.
“I arrived in Fillydelphia. For two days I stayed right there in the train station, living off the water of the public fountain, as I watched ponies depart from every last train that rolled in.
And then suddenly... there she was again!
It all happened in a moment! She stepped out onto the station platform, just as magnificent and beautiful as I had remembered; no!—even more so! The world stopped spinning, the clouds stopped rolling through the sky, every mountain bowed down before her, and every river parted to let her pass! All the hardships I had faced became so small in an instant! Absolutely everything I had suffered, and more, had been worth getting to that moment of finding her! Of seeing her again!
She wandered through the crowd from the train. She politely staggered off the station platform. And she went out into the city.
All without me saying a darn thing to her.
I don't know; I couldn't have! I had probably thought for weeks of what I had wanted to say, but anything that had been perfect yesterday was garbage today! I couldn't have just gone up there and introduced myself! She would have thought I was crazy! I looked like a mess; some bitless vagrant; which was technically true; and that's not the pony you want to hear has chased you all the way to Fillydelphia because they saw you once in Sacremello!
She wouldn't have accepted such an introduction from me! She was content already! She thought she was happy! And seeing the wretch I was wasn't going to change her mind and get her to chase me; get her to want true happiness.
Disheartened, I quietly followed her into town at a distant. I watched her do her work. I saw how much she cared about those she healed as she gave them a modicum of comfort in their painful lives. And as I watched I started to think that her magic was only half the solace she gave to them. Her endless love – her ability to care about them so completely – brought them a kind of peace they couldn't find elsewhere.
I was so inspired. I resolved not to give up. I determined that I would keep following her.
So that was how a down-to-earth little pony like me, who only knows stones, stumbled my way into becoming a world traveler. From town to town, village to village, city to city, I went after her. Sometimes even riding in the same train she was! Though of course I kept myself hidden and never spoke to her.
It wasn't exactly an easy life. If I thought surviving in Canterlot had been rough... hoo boy! Let me tell you, sir: three or four days in a town is not a lot of time to find any kind of decent work, even in places that have it! I did anything I had to do just to scrounge up a few bits to catch the next train and keep up with her; to get food so I wouldn't pass out from hunger; to have places to sleep that weren't puddles in the road. Some days meant no food. Some nights meant covering over with a newspaper and sleeping in the wind. And, I'm ashamed to admit, sometimes getting to the next town in time meant sneaking aboard a train without paying.”
Scrolldozer's magic wandered the lonely apricot about, taking it from plate to plate, tray to tray, corner to corner, all in pursuit of the only other moving fruit which kept just a step ahead: fittingly enough, a bright red date.
“The first time I at last contacted her was the third city in. I wasn't ready to speak with her face-to-face; I was so sure that she would have thought I had rocks for brains. So I came up with a different plan.
I worked up a few extra bits and bought a huge bouquet of flowers, tagging it with a little note that didn't have my name but just said that she was the most beautiful pony in any corner of Equestria. A gift. Maybe, I thought, if I get her to dream of wanting something a little more than just being content... then I could approach her. I left the bouquet in secret at the place she was staying at.
I gnawed my hooves off worrying over the move. But when she got to her place that night and found it...! Oh! I had yet to see her smile like that! Why did the world need rainbows, and waterfalls, and sunsets when it had her smile? Again everything I had gone through became so small; so worth it.
I was so relieved, not to mention encouraged! Much later on, after all of this, Mercy told me that she really had been deeply flattered by the surprise gesture because she had never in her life had somepony try to romance her; I couldn't believe it!
Motivated all over again, I spent on flowers, or chocolates, or other silly little gifts whenever I could over the next few towns. Every time, I left them somewhere she would find them, with a note attached about how if Princess Celestia learned to spin all the galaxies in heaven at once it still wouldn't have been as mesmerizingly beautiful as her. I still didn't tag them with my name, though. I don't know why; it's not like she knew who I was. Anyway, at first it all worked like I had hoped. Every delivery that I saw her pick up, she seemed so thrilled to think about how somepony adored her.
But it all changed pretty quickly. It didn't take her long to piece together that all these unsigned gifts were coming from just one pony, and yet she was getting them town after town after town. In my own love-riddled head I'm sure I thought I was worming my way closer to her, and that blinded me to the fact that she was really beginning to think that something... um... quite different was going on.”
Scrolldozer paused. He set aside the apricot and the date. The things left to be said were too important to be spoken of with dried fruits. The rest he would deliver looking Prideheart straight in the eye.
The cloaked stallion had through all the story made no interrupting remarks. Indeed, he had seemed both enraptured and inattentive, showing little in the way of any reactions. Clandestine thoughts had caused short glances aside, but little more. Sometimes his long and slow breathing had been disturbed by held breaths, but little more. Once or twice he had rubbed his thigh or his shoulder uncomfortably, but little more.
Yet he had always been listening. His ears had never folded or wavered.
“My gifts became more desperately grand. I worked harder and more furiously to pull in the extra bits needed to get larger bouquets and bigger boxes of chocolate. All in a panicked effort to reverse that change I was seeing her in.
But then, before I ever expected it, it happened.
She confronted me.
Like usual I had snuck to her lodging's door to leave behind my secret gift, but when I went to place it she ambushed me. She had been waiting for me, and not to tell me anything I had wanted to hear.
Oh, she was so angry, sir. 'Who was I?' 'What did I want?' 'Why was I following her around?' You know: the questions I should have been expecting her to have asked. Chasing after her – spying on her like the creepy villain I had been – I had only ever seen the sweetest and most caring mare. But could she ever burn when she was upset, oh. Hearing her tear into me like that, and seeing the distrustful leer in her eyes; all as part of my first face-to-face meeting with her—and she didn't even know my name!—it really ripped me apart.
Yet behind all that anger there was a measure of calm. She had control no matter how strong and furious she was, like a roaring river surging but always keeping its course. And in reply to her demanding questions I meekly introduced myself and told her the truth: I had been following her and leaving the gifts because she was the most beautiful mare in all the world and I was in love with her.
As I'm sure you can imagine, she... didn't quite believe me. I saw it in her face. Much later, after we had come together, I once asked her about what she felt that night and she told me the same thing: that of all the excuses she had imagined I might have given, that hadn't been one of them.
Thinking about it... maybe it wasn't that she didn't believe me, but that she couldn't have believed me. She was content, after all. But there had been a moment there where her stern composure had slipped and she scrambled to put it back together again; a cloudy moment where for an instant the happy sun had peeked through.
Still angry, but absolutely fair, she told me that she was very flattered but not interested, and to go away and leave her alone.
Needless to say, it broke my heart. I held myself together only long enough to drag myself out of her sight. And once I was alone I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until I could have turned a quarry into a lake.”
The shattered spirit of his story-self wasn't reflected at all in the Scrolldozer who recounted the events. He was awfully serious, but fully courageous. It was an appearance quite foreign for the frightened father.
“Again I was at a crossroads. I could either obey the mare I said I loved, or I could ignore her feelings and pursue her more. Not that I had ever had her permission to have pursued her to begin with...
She left on a train to her next destination, but this time I lingered behind. There I was again with my tired bones aching, this time from sorrow as well as exhaustion, and just enough bits in my pocket for one train ticket. I thought very hard about riding my way back to Sacremello. I had chased happiness, and in the end had learned why smarter ponies settle themselves with being content.
So I'm either a very, very stupid pony, or I'm just hopeful enough to latch onto impossible things. I had seen a tiny little light in her! I was so afraid of how blind it was to Mercy's feelings but I resolved to myself: one last chance. If I failed then, I really would declare happiness a dead cause and resign my life to cold stone. I slipped onto the next train after her.
Once at the next town I worked my butt until my tail was milled down to a nub, pulling together all the bits I could. I got another bouquet, just a tiny little bundle of red flowers this time, and I wrote another note. But instead of an overblown attempt at poetry or a messy stew of romantic words I just wrote that I was giving it one more try. I asked her for just one honest chance. I asked that, if she was willing, would she please meet in the evening at the place I was staying at so that I could take her out to dinner. Just once. I even signed my name.
Maybe it would have been more respectful and courteous to have stood before her and asked her, but I was just so afraid after that last confrontation. At least this way what it came down to was that she would either show up or she wouldn't, and if she didn't that I would just head home.
So, after her day's work, Mercy came back to her lodging and found my little bouquet and letter.
Yeah. Yeah, she was not happy.
She did come to my door, and no it wasn't for dinner. She marched there like a whirling tornado, ripping through barns and bridges. I hadn't listened when she had been polite, so she came to tell me off once and for all!
Except when she opened the door to the place I was staying at, she basically found me living in a closet. I couldn't have afforded anything bigger.
There I was, sitting on the bare wooden floor, shivering in my tiny, cold, unheated room. No furnishings; literally the only thing there was a coat hook on the inside of the door which held a crumpled suit I had rented for the evening. On the ground in front of me was a little flower on a clip for her mane that I planned to present to her, and a pile of bits I had been obsessively counting again and again and again and again, praying so hard that they were enough to afford a dinner at one of the nicer places in town.
I was pretty mortified when she showed up before the time I had set, and worse that she was snorting steam.
But she didn't chew me out. She didn't.
In that very moment when she had opened the door, something changed.
For a long, long while after that day I had always liked to believe that when she had seen me there – cramped in a frozen closet, no possessions, gaunt and sickly with my ribs showing under my skin because I hadn't eaten in days, how I had absolutely nothing because I had been spending every last bit on her – when she saw that she finally understood me. She finally understood how I truly felt and she had changed her mind.
But years later I asked her: why? She had come blazing over to rip me apart. Why hadn't she done so?
Why, after opening that door, had she turned around and suddenly said, 'yes'?”
And the stallion started to cry, just a little bit, in complete joy.
"'No,' she told me. 'It wasn't because I had a change of heart after seeing you like that.' She said that once she saw how pathetic I was she—heh—she thought that maybe I was suffering from some strain of the Lovethorn Curse and, you know, she needed to observe me 'a little more closely' so that she could make a proper diagnosis."
Scrolldozer remembered when she had explained all this to him, years after their first date. The face she had worn hadn't been her surer, stronger one. Her shimmering eyes had been shyly diverted away, and her little smile had been barely polite enough to have contained all her overflowing happiness. A hot, red strip of untruth had been painted over her nose.
What a wonderful lie she had told herself. What a silly, triumphant, wonderful lie to have made it all possible.
What an amazing mare, who had also been young and stupid enough to have believed in impossible things.
“And so... she let me take her to dinner.
It wasn't all that much. Just picture it: one of those eateries where they want so badly to be upscale, with their faux-fancy decor built from cheap woods painted to mimic polish, and their vases on the tables filled with plastic flowers covered in dime store perfume. Despite that veneer, the waitstaff and food are all of the same type you would find in a grease bin. There was me on one side of the table in my wrinkly, rented suit; she on the other side in nothing at all since she didn't have a piece of clothing to her name. And all through dinner? Lots of awkward attempts at conversation that never really went anywhere.
In fact, there's only one exchange we had that I really remember well:
I had thought I was blowing the whole thing. I mean, nothing had been going as my romantic dreams had always imagined! I was a mess, rivers of sweat were just seeping into my suit, the restaurant really was such a disappointment, one of the orders came out wrong... ugh... So... I apologized to her if the dinner wasn't meeting her expectations, and I sort of sadly explained that... I had never actually taken another pony on a date before.
"It's fine," she said. Because, you see, sir...
Heh...
... She had never been on a date before either!
After dinner was over I was too nervous to ask her if she had enjoyed it, and certainly I was too afraid to ask if she'd let me see her again. So it was just a very long and awkward moment where we were both standing outside the restaurant, waiting for something to happen.
Finally she spoke up first, and she told me that she had to move on to the next town tomorrow... but...
"... Maybe I'll see you there," she said.
Oh, sir, I was high all night! I didn't get a wink of sleep! Before the sun even came up I was out again, flinging the suit down on the doorstep of the rental place and looking everywhere I could for enough bits to make the next train!
And that? That was the day happiness started.”
In every way Scrolldozer reflected his own words. Nopony who searched would have ever found the thousands of wearisome miles buried in his hooves; the thousands of hours of exhausting labor worn into his body; the many icy nights in the wind which had weathered his bones; the continuous twisted hunger of poverty that had scarred his stomach. All those burdens were dust drifting low in the wind, masked by bright sunshine.
There were smiles he made, and breaths he took, and shivers he released, and tears he shed; all joyous and in appreciation of all the world; strange displays that had long ago grown foreign to Prideheart. The cloaked stallion recognized them only like a muddled face from far in the past.
“Oh, sir! I'm almost frightened that by trying to describe them I'll damage the memories! There is nothing I could say which could reveal how wonderful things were! I'm so sorry! But every moment—! Every—moment! Every moment of those few years was bliss! Every moment proved that being truly happy for that one second was more golden than a hundred lifetimes of being content! Nothing – nothing! – can touch those feelings! Those feelings of the impossible made real!
I love her. And she loves me. That's more magical than all of Equestria.
From town to town I followed her still, working for pitiful bags of bits to keep up the poor life that had brought us together. The days were hers, for her duty of healing hurts, but the evenings were ours. Small dinners, meager outings, sharing warm drinks at coffeehouses open late, quiet hours of speaking to each other softly while sitting together in the cold...; the kinds of unbelievable glories not even queens and kings get to know.
Then eventually she decided that it was silly we took separate trains or traveled apart, so we started getting our tickets together, riding every train holding hooves. Then, again, she eventually decided that it was such a waste we had separate places to stay in every town. So though The Red Crossbreed understandably could not give any extra money for larger places to accommodate hosting me, we just made due by using the extra bits I was always earning while Mercy worked, and we spent every night from then on in each other's warmth. And then, again, she eventually decided that-... that-...
... that it was senseless that we weren't completely sharing our lives together. We tied that up at a small chapel during our next brief stop in Canterlot.
...
I'm sorry, sir... Please pardon me these few happy tears! I just-...
...
Ah. Alright. And so our perfect life, poor in bits but rich in love, went on day after day and town after town, more fantastic than any dream. It had been so long since I had thought about stones, but I didn't care. Mercy was following the call of her cutie mark, and that I got to share every moment of it with her was more than enough for me.
Love rose above all our problems. There wasn't a thing we had to complain about; not one. We could've spent the rest of our days exactly like that, in a pristine happiness forever...”
To the sky he gazed quietly; proud, hopeful, happy, and free. Until, it seemed, the sky turned away from him. He shut his eyes.
He pulled in a deep, deep breath, and as he slowly exhaled Prideheart saw him change. Piece by piece his shape twisted.
All the vibrant youth ready to take on the impossible bled away. All the shining romance dimmed. All the vigorous fire and dramatic energy cooled. He grew old. His features fell and hardened, developing a rigid crust of permanent worry and melancholy. His transformation took him out of the past and he became again exactly the same tired, meek pony Prideheart had first seen trudge into the tavern the night before last.
"... And then Bookworm came along...," the father said.
“When Mercy first told me that she was pregnant I was ecstatic. Not that I had ever thought once about being a father, no no. Just... that's how things are supposed to go, right? You fall in love, it grows deeper, and then eventually you start a family, right? I thought our love was moving forward; none of the ramifications were on my mind.
But right away I could tell something was wrong for Mercy. She didn't share my joy. Even her reveal of it was so guarded and careful. And – well, she's always been a bit of a withdrawn and personal individual, but – this was something she really needed time to build up the strength to talk about.
Most of all I knew because... she cried. She cried every night, until she fell asleep. And even then in her dreams she cried.
Finally, late one night as I held her, she opened up.
She cried again. She cried into me the most desperate bout of tears I have ever seen. She cried as she told me... how scared she was of being a mother.
How unready.
How unfit.
She cried. And there was no love I had that could ease it.
Sir... Mercy had grown up how we lived: austere, in poverty, and always traveling from place to place without settling. Her parents had been devoted to owning no possessions and wandering the world; reaching every end of it, over mountain and beyond forest. And they hadn't stopped their life just because they had come upon a daughter. She was raised in that.
That's a big reason Mercy became what she did. She had seen as a filly all those ponies around the world who had pains; insufferable, unfixable pains. And she felt for them, since she had come to know an unbearable pain herself. She had been alone; always alone; crippled and cold and alone; never somewhere long enough to grow; to develop; to get close to another pony. So alone that the only fool she had ever allowed near enough to know her was the one who had been so crazy as to have followed her around the world so that he could have known her. The only comforts she had found in her life were me, and providing relief to ponies who felt lasting pains like she did.
She knew from experience that the wandering life wasn't right for a foal. That a foal needed a home. And she-... she-...
... she wept and shredded herself over how she couldn't turn away from that life. How she couldn't abandon her cutie mark. How she couldn't forsake all those injured and ill ponies, even for her own foal.
And 'What kind of mother doesn't love their foal enough to give up her own life?' she sobbed into me. Her foal wasn't born yet and already she was 'the most awful mother who had ever lived.'
Those tears did not stop. I didn't have the words, sir, to plug them up. I didn't have anything. She wailed and she trembled and she grieved until it took everything from her and she fell into nightmares and sleep, still weeping.
But I didn't sleep. I couldn't. I lay awake, feeling her trembling slumber while I thought through all her suffering with my blank mind. And through the dark hours, come morning, I made a decision. A decision not knowing if I was doing the right thing, or the best thing. I decided to do the only thing I could do for her—for-... for them.
I offered to raise the foal by myself.
To go away somewhere that I could find good-paying work I could do well at: stones. Somewhere with work that was stable and would last. Somewhere a foal could grow up around ponies she knew everyday.
I would bear the foal and let Mercy continue uninterrupted the life that she needed.
And that was how a few years ago I found myself crossing that bridge into Stony Nook which you see way over there, a small saddlebag of bits and goods on my side, and basket on my back with a sleeping baby filly.”
Scrolldozer started to fix the spread of food he had disturbed for his performance. One at a time his magic moved items back into their organized places, working slow from a fatigue born not just out of the last terrible twenty-four hours but from all the anxious days of fatherhood that had come before.
No happiness seemed there in him. Nor did he appear content. Only alive.
“I wasn't sure about being so far out in the frontier, but I had heard some pretty serious talk about a booming quarry this way. A good quarry lasts plenty of years, so that would fit the bill for steady and lasting work. I was even less sure when I got here and learned that the quarry was so far outside town. How would I raise Bookworm? This was in the heyday of the old quarry; the one you went to yesterday.
All my fears were put away when I met Crumble Pie. Right away she was understanding, and committed, and helpful. So long as her workponies are dedicated she'd do anything to help them in return. I've... never known a better friend. I chose to set my roots down here and give it a shot.
Not that things have been great. Early on I was able to take Bookworm with me to the quarry, and everypony was very understanding about how much time I spent in the bunkhouse caring for her and not working. But as she got older I couldn't have her wandering an active quarry, and so I had to start leaving her in town with sitters; thank goodness for all the nice folk in Stony Nook; Mrs. Totaler and the others are such a blessing. But that was less time I had to do what I had promised: to raise her myself.
And she grew so fast! Alone with Mercy the days had lasted forever, but with Bookworm... How old was she when she started picking out some of the words on signs? Two? Three? She definitely had gone through her first foal's book when she was three, and they quickly got thicker after that. She has an appetite so much bigger than Stony Nook. She's so much more than me!
You said it, sir. About how... I've given her so much space, and she's found her own freedom; her own voice. That I-... I haven't always been listening to. I've thought many, many times about picking up and going someplace else; somewhere I could be closer to her. But... Crumble Pie, and all the others... they're such good influences for her, and such a help to me with her. Things are already so hard... I'm scared to lose those friends who keep me standing. I didn't make the deliberate choice for her foalhood to be exactly like this; I'd read to her every hour of every day if it would put food in her belly.
She loves those stories so much. You should see her smile when-... Ah. Well...
It hasn't been perfect for Mercy, either. She does what little she can to stay close to Bookworm; making sure we know when she's going to have a week's stay in Canterlot so we can visit, and whenever she's there she spends so much time in the library building lists of books to reserve so they can be mailed to our hungry little reader. It's wonderful to see Mercy, even for so short of a trip... sometimes twice a year if we're lucky. But when we're in Canterlot... after Bookworm has been put to bed... Mercy still cries. Between every visit she sees just how much Bookworm grows, and how much she's missing... and she cries.
She dreams every night about being with Bookworm more. But she can't. She still can't turn away from those hurt ponies. Every time she sees their suffering; every time she sees how much the little bit of relief she gives means to them... She can't abandon them. Even if they are strangers and Bookworm is her daughter.
At least now... she'll get that chance. To be closer to Bookworm. To hold and love her daughter. To see her everyday. Maybe all that freedom I wound up giving Bookworm might work out. Maybe Bookworm is ready to travel the world with her mother...
I hope I-...
I hope I did good enough as a father. For them. I know I didn't do well. But... good enough. Please...”
He finished setting the last plate back in order.
"Anyway, sir," Scrolldozer shook his head, cleaned his eyes, and put away his subdued sorrow for something simpler, "now you know the whole story about how Bookworm got saddled with parents like Mercy and I. I'm sorry if I got a little somber at the end there; I know I shouldn't complain. I had real happiness for a short, glorious sprint, and that's far far more than any content pony touches. All that was asked of me in return was that I sacrifice a little to raise a... beautiful, smart, difficult, incredible, amazing, frightening, lovable filly. And... I tried."
A few echoes of his sadness pounded there way back and he couldn't quite clear them away.
"I tried with everything I had. But my little pony just isn't the same easy thing as being cold and starving while running from town to town."
Prideheart sat still and silent. Here and there the cloaked stallion's mismatched eyes floated to different meaningless targets. And he listened to all the sounds of the father composing himself again; putting his ramshackle bones back into place piece by piece until they just barely held, the same as they always had for years.
Finally, bringing the full weight of his gaze down on the father, with less certainty than ever before, and more for mere confirmation than anything else, Prideheart asked, "... But in spite of any insufficient guardianship to Bookworm... and all the anxiety it has brought to your heart... and all the miles it has pulled you from your fantasia of happiness... you... would not wholly abandon her?"
Immediately Scrolldozer came up in shock, breaking apart all over again. All the charges parental ineptness and evil he accepted without opposition...
... except that single one.
"N-No! N-Never!" he desperately cried. He looked around, not as if his presence among the damned of Stony Nook was some proof of his dedication but to be certain that Bookworm still wasn't there somehow; that she was far gone, and safe. "I would never, ever want her taken away! Not even for all those days with Mercy back!"
It really was fast becoming pointless for him to have wiped his eyes so often, though his tear-soaked foreleg might now have been an able weapon against the heckhounds.
"Please...," he begged again to be believed.
Both of Prideheart's eyes looked into the father, no visible judgment proceeding from his poisonous smog or heroic fire. Everything he saw was inside himself.
Finally the cloaked stallion turned away, looking off to the west. Far over the wall, and beyond. Up the distant Pearl Peaks. And beyond.
"Then...," he said softly but plainly, "... you are not the worst father."
Scrolldozer, for yet another time, brought himself better under control. He scrutinized the other pony's aged profile cut slim over a great many years, and his thinning mane losing its shine to time, and the drab, dirtied cloak hanging low on his slowly-sunken shoulders; and the father puzzled over the remark.
"... Do... you have foals, sir?" he very gently asked.
"... Two."
Prideheart never broke from the mountains.
"... The younger – my son – is at his home. Already he is his own pony, beyond my direct sway. He is strong, and capable yet. I fear the dark about him, but his path may in time turn to light."
A long cold fell before the cloaked stallion's next words, and he couldn't even bear to look at the great peaks anymore. His gaze went to nowhere.
"... The older... my daughter... I-... I know nothing of where she is... I have not-... I have not known..."
Scrolldozer found any utterable 'I'm sorry' to be too crass, no matter how sincere; too ungainly for such a horrible pain, no matter how little of it Prideheart chose to display openly.
"... I'm... sure she's making a difference for somepony... if she took anything from you," was all he eventually said.
Movement and sound came from up on the great wall, and it rapidly spread. Ponies bolted about raising an ever more urgent clamor.
"This is it! Get ready, everypony!" the stallions heard Mayor Desk Job cry.
Crumble Pie came dashing down the road, commanding though also nervous and exasperated, with Hailstone tailing aloft behind her, both returning to the wall.
"Keep it together! Eyes open! Remember your positions; remember to listen!" called the gray mare towards the wall. To the flying pony she more dismally growled, "I can't believe it; who could have taken the eighth charge? Hailstone, there's no more time; just grab the seven and line the bridge as best you can to dust as much of it as possible!"
"Roger!" Hailstone saluted and soared off.
Crumble Pie skid to an abrupt stop when she passed and spied the food tables.
"Sir!"
Past and future were put away in an instant. Prideheart whipped about and began to approach her in a soldierly march. Let him face fire again.
Reluctantly the gray mare turned and invited her dear friend, "Scrolldozer, this is it. Come on..."
He nodded, tried to vent whatever fears he could with a shudder and a sigh, and twisted away from the tables in a weak trot. At least Bookworm was safe.
"Scrolldozer!!"
The desperate scream pulled the whole group eastward down the road to meet the shouting pony madly racing towards them.
Crumble Pie gasped, "Mrs. Totaler, what're you doing back-"
"Scrolldozer!" the old mare wheezed a scream again. Her gallop hobbled and her breathless face was flushed with color from the thousands of strides taken too fast for her nearly five-dozen years. She almost collapsed in front of the others, but even so she stumbled her way right into the father and latched onto him.
"I'm sorry!" she panted hard. "I-I'm, phh, ah, so s-sorry!"
As he helped support her, Scrolldozer's mouth opened to question her. Yet nothing needed to come out. His heart sank, all the way to his hooves, out of him, and deep down into the earth.
After gobbling another rapid breath Mrs. Totaler heaved with indefensible guilt, "She just... vanished!"