Love Letters Written on the Back of a Star Chart

by Dawn Stripes

At Midnight

This was the point at which I pushed my seat from the table and made an excuse to rise.

“I need a little air,” I believe I said, most likely with the addition of a stammer. “Too, uh—too much to drink?”

Lyra inspected my retreat. I’m convinced she was looking out for me, because after a thorough look at my topped-off cup, she moved quickly to clear her throat. “That’s a good idea,” she declared. “You look a little pale yourself, Tom. Tom?”

Tom sat back in his chair with a crusty exhale. On multiple surreptitious nods from me, Lyra bit down on his hand to lead him from the table. Tom let her walk him outside. A break genuinely would be good for everyone, now that I thought about it. When Tom got a couple drinks into his system he had a tendency to become morose, and sometimes there was no telling what he would say.

The last I saw before walking outside, Dave was staying to keep company with Fluttershy. After downing most of the remaining pretzels, he kicked his feet up and attempted to engage her in a lively debate about which planet had the best pop music. I don’t think it worked, but I appreciated his sentiment in trying.

Obviously, I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol. I’d become quite skilled at that over the years. The trick was to say yes when someone offered me a glass, and just hold onto it for the rest of the evening.

But I still stumbled a little as I crossed the curb, and shook a bit while straddling the divider of the silent road. The only lights were from the brights of cars in the Little Pony’s parking lot.

What I needed more than anything was time to think. A part of me, I suppose, would always be that bookish unicorn who needed to run away from every life experience in order to analyze it. And there was a lot to think about these days, when I was getting to know this world and its muted colors.

What I hadn’t expected, for instance, was that it would teach me so much about my own friends. I thought I’d known everything there was to know about Fluttershy. By the sun, I thought I’d known Lyra. I could have merrily proceeded with my whole life without any idea of how happy this world would make her.

I was receiving letters, these days, from fillies, old friends from school I hadn’t heard of in ages. They wanted me to take them here. And while there weren’t nearly enough positions in the foreign service to accommodate everypony, I had to admit there were few better places for a young mare to run off to. Earth was dangerous, romantic, and filled with seeds of the future. Who wouldn’t want to be in the thick of the action? We had discovered an alternate dimension populated with advanced beings. Friendly ones, too, despite their occasional selfishness. Everything was getting ready to change.

So much change couldn’t help but force a pony to reflect on the progress of her own life. Tonight had been particularly provoking. Before coming to Ponyville, I’d have to say I was far too shy to do anything but imagine meeting a colt. And after…after. I guess I just never got around to it. Love had been around, but it was like one of those research projects that I never quite allocated the time for.

That’s not to say I never noticed stallions. A certain well-worn magazine—which was probably still lying under my old bed in Canterlot, come to think of it—could attest to that. But life was full of surprises, and when you lived in Ponyville, too many of them were monsters threatening to destroy life as you knew it. Dating just…didn’t seem important.

But when would it come? I wandered parked cars and billboards, pacing without straying too far. What would it be like? What would he be like? Or even she? And would the importance I placed on my friends get in the way?

It sounded like the kind of question that would make a good letter to Celestia. But I must admit I made a face even thinking about asking her about such a subject. It was revolting to think about Celestia anywhere near talk about stallions. To imagine her having the daydreams I sometimes had—I could have vomited.

Maybe—no, in all probability—it was because I still thought of Celestia as my mother. Heh. How about that? I never would have admitted that to myself as a foal. I must have been growing up.

But now I couldn’t help but wonder. Over thousands of years, had Celestia ever had a special somepony? I was rather confident that there hadn’t. Not that I had any rational backing for such an intuition. If there’d been anyone during my lifetime, I surely would have known about it. But when dealing with her whole span of millennia, I was forced to conclude that the statistics were strongly against me.

On second thought, there was one thing. Celestia didn’t have any family. If she’d ever borne a child, it was inconceivable that she would abandon them. There would be a whole Celestial lineage. The absence of any such evidence left me certain she had never—er—played around with stallions. Unless alicorns didn’t bear children like normal ponies. There was a scary thought.

How was it for Celestia high on her throne, or in the ecstatic reaches of her incarnate star? Was it lonely, to look down from such a lofty height by herself? Was it cold for her in the sun?

That couldn’t be right. I was as close to Celestia as anypony, and never once had she even smelled lonely. Just the opposite. But did that mean she had someone?

Lyra summoned me back to reality, and I cantered out of the street. She wanted me help shambling down the front porch steps with Tom. They were leaning against each other, but doing it carefully enough. They were probably fine, but to be safe rather than sorry, I accompanied them to the parking lot.

Lyra lit her horn and nudged Tom to his lime-green car—I still don’t know models, so I couldn’t have said what kind it was. But there was enough space in the trunk for her to sit him on the fender and lean him up against the back seat.

“There we go…nice and easy.” After popping the trunk, she levitated Tom’s upper torso, settling him against a folded lawn chair and a pile of Aldi bags. She reared back and hopped in to join him.

I felt fine standing, so I didn’t try to squeeze in with them. It was just as well. After kicking a few bag aside for a place to nestle, Lyra picked up Tom’s hand and began to lick it over, lapping up all the salt left behind by sweat and pretzels.

So I rather quickly made the decision to join Tom in looking up at the sky. There weren’t any stars to see, not through the rainclouds. Even if it had been a clear night the sky would have been blank this close to the city. But it was the thought that counted.

I’m happy to say Lyra wasn’t afraid to give him a talking-to. “You behaved rather shamefully in there,” she said in between licks. “As if Luke’s life was incomplete without a rutting, honestly. What with what you’re always saying about keeping a good image, I expected better from you.”

Tom folded one arm grumpily, though I noted he didn’t tear the other one out of her mouth. “S’not it,” he protested blurrily. “Not what I meant. You know that. They’re not together.”

“Mm-hmm.” Lyra sounded quite unconvinced. “Yes, that’s clearly it. You were just worried about their relationship—which seems fine, thank you very much. Not about a little tail for your friend.”

“Pah!” Barking suddenly, Tom extricated both his forelimbs. “You think that’s what men are all about. Popular misconception!”

“Oh?” Lyra had been nestling into his ribcage. But now she performed a maneuver that made me wince just watching, rolling onto her back and sitting human-style. To complete the picture, she even crossed her forelegs. “I can’t wait to hear this. Share the big secret, then. What do men really want?”

Tom languished for a moment, peering through the hood of his trunk as if trying to see stars through the light pollution. I was looking around for a good excuse to step away this whole time, but I judged I couldn’t leave innocuously for another minute or two, and besides, I wasn’t quite certain I was supposed to leave them alone together.

“What a man wants is a girl to need him.”

“Fantastic. Thank you so much.”

“No, really. What else is a man good for? Raping? Looting? Killing people? You know, if you didn’t have men around, you’d have almost none of that.”

“We’d be out a few other things too—”

“Tom!” I stomped, flush with indignance. “Now, you stop right there! Just because your society may have a few issues with how it raises its boys does not mean that men are inherently bad.”

I could tell, to my relief, that Lyra was also at least a little uncomfortable to hear him talking down the rougher sex. “She’s right, you know.”

Tom thumped the fender, causing her to skitter back. “Well, you asked me what men wanted, not what theoretical men wanted. And I know it sounds bad. But that’s how it is. It’s not about getting tail. It’s about knowing there’s someone who actually needs them around.”

He tried to sit up a bit, unconsciously curling his arm around Lyra’s head and pulling her close. “So no matter how disillusioned he becomes with his pretense of a career…no matter how far he falls…he’s still someone’s hero. What he wants is to know this world needs him for something, even if it’s just making one person a little happier.”

I put a hoof on his leg, looking at him tenderly. But Lyra, utterly unflustered, merely extricated herself from his grip. “You’re drunk, human. Go home.”

He flopped back in a cloud of lint and shopping bags. “Yeah. Could be. S’probably just sex.”

I suddenly remembered aloud that Fluttershy had wanted to ask me something, since I considered it an acceptable time to beat a retreat. I dove back into the bar. Maybe I needed to have a drink after all. Maybe I needed to make up a story, and tell it, and become drunk on that.