The Strange Case of Dinky Hooves' Cutie Mark Curiosity

by Fluttercheer

Chapter 16: Ancient Truth

Like on many afternoons, Twilight was sitting in her castle library, nose stuck in a book, and her mind caught in the book's content. It was peaceful, satisfying, serene..... Until a loud, thrusting knock on the door brought her mind back to reality.

It took the bookworm some time to stop reading, she just wanted to finish this sentence, then the next three, as she was right at the end of a chapter. And why not reading the first three sentences of the next one, too, the title hinted at something so exciting..... With a sigh, Twilight retracted her eyes from the letters. Using all her mental strength, she forced herself to shut the book in front of her. Not without putting a bookmark in, though.....

Groaning a bit, she got up from the armchair she was sitting in. After stretching her limbs for a little bit – she had been reading for hours without moving much so her muscles had started to hurt – she finally trotted to the door. Pulling it open right after the latest knock had ceased, she found herself looking in the faces of Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Dinky Hooves. They looked at her and each of them was wearing a different expression; Scootaloo's eyes were adorned with deep worry and she was biting her lip, Apple Bloom had the stern expression a pony could only wear if something was at stake, Sweetie Belle's eyes darted nervously from side to side and, finally, Dinky looked completely terrified. It wouldn't have needed a genius to figure out that something happened, something serious.

Twilight felt her senses reacting alarmed immediately. “What is wrong, girls?” she asked, her heart starting to pump. Inside her skull, her brain was already rushing through several dangerous scenarios, ranging from Tirek having managed to escape from his prison again to another difficult situation with the unpredictable yaks that would require her to mediate as a diplomat. She did not come far with her thoughts before Apple Bloom shot out her response.

“Twilight, we need ta talk!” Not awaiting Twilight's response, she rushed inside the library, quickly followed by her two friends and their client. It happened in just a split-second, but Twilight noticed that Dinky was shivering all over her body. The left side of her flank was covered by her tail, but Twilight could have sworn she saw light flashing up on it. Closing the door with her magic, she turned around to them, frowning.

“Okay, girls, what disaster happened? Tell me and–”

Apple Bloom cut her off. “We know what's wrong with Dinky's cutie mark, it's Starlight Glimmer who messes with it!” The tone in her voice brought out the urgency much more than the words she spoke.

Twilight raised an eyebrow, the alarm in her mind starting to fade. “Starlight Glimmer?” she asked, her voice doubtful. “We haven't heard anything of her since we chased her out of her village and that was more than two months ago. And didn't you say Dinky was born with this condition? It really doesn't look like Starlight Glimmer was experimenting with her cutie mark.”

Apple Bloom frowned, but didn't intend to give up. “And what's with this then?” She turned at Dinky. “Show her, Dinky.”

Reluctantly, Dinky moved her tail away from her flank, eyeing Twilight in the process. Immediately, the large room got much brighter. Squinting, Twilight shielded her eyes.

Apple Bloom turned to face her again. “She's getting' a cutie mark every second now! And it wasn't much better before..... Ya said Starlight Glimmer replaces a cutie mark with an equal sign and Dinky here constantly gets a cutie mark replaced with another one! Does this really not look like Starlight Glimmer's hoofprint to ya, Twilight?”

Behind her right foreleg that she was holding protectively in front of her face, Twilight frowned deepy. Yet, she stayed calm. As Dinky had covered her flank again, she put her leg back on the ground and proceeded to answer Apple Bloom's question.

“You are right. I'm not denying there are similarities. But Dinky has alternating cutie marks since her birth. And Starlight Glimmer definitely ran her village for not more than a few years, so it really is unlikely that she brought this over Dinky.”

“Ya sure, huh?” Apple Bloom squinted at Twilight. She began to lose her patience.

“Yes. All of the villagers were medically supervised for two weeks after they got freed, by Princess Celestia's order. If Starlight Glimmer would have brainwashed them for ten years straight, the mental damage would have been much higher. They have recovered very quickly, so it can't have been that long.” Twilight's voice was secure, but Apple Bloom countered her, still.

“And who says she wasn't tryin' ta prepare her plan for a much longer time, Twilight? Maybe she experimented with Dinky since before she was born, ta figure out how ta develop a spell that that takes cutie marks away. It wouldn't have been hard for her ta reach Ponyville if it's true.”

The constant questioning by the young filly caught Twilight off-guard, she had not expected so much resistance over something that should be clear. Lifting a hoof to her chin, Twilight began to overthink Apple Bloom's words. She couldn't deny that her theory made sense. As unlikely as it seemed to her, there was a chance.

“And then there are the nightmares!” Apple Bloom interrupted Twilight's thought process.

Twilight put her hoof down, eyeing the filly with curiosity now. “Nightmares?”

“Well, more than a nightmare, actually,” Apple Bloom added. The emphasis she used turned Twilight's curiosity into confusion. Once more, Apple Bloom turned around to Dinky. “Tell her about the nightmares.” She nodded in encouragement and with a smile, noticing Dinky's increasing uncomfortableness.

Still reluctant, Dinky went over everything; the horrifying dreams she had for many years, the mare in them, the feeling that her cutie mark would get taken by the mare..... All in all, it came down to one conclusion, that Starlight Glimmer had made nightly visits to Ponyville, to use Dinky as a test subject for developing a cutie mark removal spell. And it was exactly the conclusion Twilight came to, as well.

“Fine.....” Twilight adressed Apple Bloom again. “I concede your point. Although I'm still not completely convinced, there might be something to it.”

“So, ya will help us doin' some research in Starlight Glimmer's old village?” Apple Bloom asked, being ahead of Twilight. At her side, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, who had been quiet so far and let Apple Bloom do the talking, smiled and did a relieved cheer, feeling they had won Twilight over. Only Dinky kept her terrified expression.

“That's the plan,” Twilight responsed, now motivated to get to the bottom of this. While she spoke, she already wrote a note for Spike, then quickly hovered a saddlebag in front of her. She filled it with some things she might need, including some scrolls, a quill and an ink bottle and left it on the table. She turned around to the four fillies. “Let's go!” she commanded. “This needs investigating!”

The way to the train station passed uneventfully, safe for a few moments where Dinky needed encouragement to go on. The closer they got to the train station, the more nervous the unicorn filly became.

As they had boarded the train, the four fillies and the mare sat down in an otherwise empty wagon. Twilight wanted to get over everything again on the hours the train would need to reach the rock desert in the north and she rather did want to have more ears than theirs listening in on the conversation.

As the train had reached its destination and Twilight had heard the whole story again, followed by intensive thinking for the rest of the train ride, Twilight headed out of the train full of zeal, now even more convinced to bring light to this mystery. The four fillies she accompanied could barely keep up with her on their way through the gray, depressing landscape. An hour later, they finally arrived in Starlight Glimmer's former village. Greeted by Double Diamond right when entering the village, Twilight immediately came to the reason for their visit.

Stoically and stern, Double Diamond listened to Twilight's words. A frown appeared on the forehead of the white stallion and it became deeper and deeper the more Twilight progressed in her retelling of the events. Occasionally, he glanced at Dinky, which added empathy to his expression before it returned to being stern when he looked back at Twilight. As he was in the picture about everything, he nodded understandingly. Double Diamond turned around, then waved at them, a signal to follow him.

“Starlight hasn't returned to us since we chased her out,” he spoke while they trotted through the tiny village to the house ahead of them. “And we haven't entered her house ever since and not touched or removed anything. If she left any notes behind that can help you, they are still there.”

Something in Double Diamond's voice, the way how he pronounced Starlight's name and the choice of certain words, gave Twilight an unsettling feeling. Looking back at the small procession of fillies behind her, she found it confirmed that they felt the same.

“Why did you never enter it?” she asked the stallion, following her feeling. “I know that all of you have their own houses, but maybe you could use hers for something else? It would make an excellent town library.”

Double Diamond turned around at her, now wearing a frown again. “We wouldn't,” he said. “Starlight's not gone for long and she might return one day. None of us would mind if she would come back and we want that she finds her house exactly the way she left it.”

There was a weird conviction in his voice and it confirmed Twilight's bad feeling. She decided to not address her concern, but it was clear to her that there was still a lot of work to do here.

Naturally, it did not take long until they had arrived at Starlight's old house. It even felt silly that Double Diamond was leading them there, with how small their village was. In front of the house, Double Diamond just pointed at it from a few hoofsteps distance, but did not do any attempts to enter it.

“We're there,” he said, looking at the four fillies who accompanied Twilight. “If you need anything, just come to my house and knock on the door.” He turned and pointed at a house that was located right in the middle of the row to their right.

Twilight nodded. “Thank you, Double Diamond, I think we can handle the rest from here on out.”

Double Diamond nodded in response, then he trotted away and towards his house. Although the distance wasn't far, Dinky marched ahead and went right into Starlight's house before Double Diamond had reached the door of his own house.

As her counselors and Twilight entered it, Dinky was already rummaging around in a shelf full of notebooks. Randomly, she pulled one out, opened it and started to read. Her eyes were flying over the sentences and she did not even notice that the others had entered by now as well. Going to work, too, the other four ponies spread out as much as it was possible in the small house and soon were caught up in their own searches.

As they had already suspected, Starlight Glimmer's house was full of information, most about magic, some of scientific nature. A bunch of the notebooks were indeed filled with information about cutie marks, others about powerful spells Starlight Glimmer had been studying, but none of the books they flipped through had anything that could help them.

Only hours after sunset, and after Twilight had unsuccessfully told the fillies to leave so they won't miss school the next day numerous times, attempts that always failed because of Dinky's insistence to stay longer, Sweetie Belle finally called her friends and Dinky over. Her voice sounded excited.

Grouping themselves around the white unicorn, they looked expectantly at her.

Full of adrenaline, Sweetie Belle knocked on the page of the book she had just been reading a few times. “This is it! It's one of Starlight Glimmer's journals and it looks like it explains everything!” she shouted before she calmed herself a bit and started to read out loud what was written on the page.

“Today, my genealogical research came to an end. I was wrong all along. I should have guessed it, how could I possibly be a descendant of the great Starswirl the Bearded? Me of all mares? I was foolish to believe this...

Apparently, Starswirl's bloodline ended a few hundred years ago. Some imbecile unicorn, stupid and reckless, who wandered off into the Everfree Forest to prove its bravery and got killed by timberwolves there before it could have any foals.

Only one of his assistants still has descendants, a unicorn stallion going by the name of Written Script who lives in a countryside town called 'Ponyville'.”

Before Sweetie Belle could continue, Dinky interrupted her with a gasp of surprise. “Written Script? B-But that's my dad!” Eagerly, she ripped the book out of Sweetie Belle's hooves and continued reading herself.

“He conceived two foals with a pegasus mare called 'Derpy Hooves'. They named them Sparkler and Dinky.”

Having reached the end of the page, Dinky hastily flipped to the next one, almost tearing it in the process.

“One of them, the younger one, still carries that curse I read about. The accident Starswirl's assistant had in ancient times, it's still affecting the ponies in his bloodline to this day. Poor filly... It is horrible to have a cutie mark, I can't imagine how much worse it must be to be cursed with multiple cutie marks.

Unfortunately, her curse cannot even help me with my studies. I need something to make cutie marks disappear completely, something that lets them vanish from existence, not something that multiplies them! It's utterly useless for my plans. Unless I find a way to wipe out cutie marks once and for all, the suffering of this filly will always be in vain...”

While reading, Dinky's voice had become quieter and quieter and, having finished the last sentence of the journal entry she was reading, Dinky now dropped the book from her shaking hooves. Her eyes had grown wide, while her mind had been swamped with the realization of how horrible the reality truly was for her. Her mouth was nothing more than a thin line now and her eyes seemed to stare into endless depths only she could see, so much, that she did not even notice the expressions of compassion and sadness of the ponies who were with her.

Dinky stood like this for a moment, completely still, then she turned around on her hooves and stampeded out of the house, a heartbreaking sob leaving her lips. In a tempo nopony would have expected from her, she galloped out of the village, making it almost impossible for Twilight and her three counselors to catch up with her.

Dinky had no idea how she managed to find the way back to the train tracks, with her tear-filled eyes and in the darkness, all she could hear inside her head was the last sentence she read in Starlight Glimmer's journal. It was blocking all of her other thoughts:

Unless I find a way to wipe out cutie marks once and for all, the suffering of this filly will always be in vain...

The words felt like hammer blows on Dinky's mind.

Comments

[Bronycommander]

Oh... That doesn't sound good. But great work as always!

[Fluttercheer]

8582029

Thanks! The last chapter and the finale will come later today!

[Bronycommander]

8582038
Looking forward to see it.

[redmar]

When it comes to dreams like Dinky's nightmares you need Luna's help. She will be able to see who the mare in the dreams is and what happens.