Desert Water

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 2: A Night and a Day

With a slight squeak, Diamond Tiara suddenly bolted awake. She looked around the darkened room quickly, trying to find the source of the noise that had pulled her back so suddenly from the verge of sleep. Then, though the moonlit window, she saw it. For a moment, her mind rushed as she thought she saw a claw reaching in through her window- -but then as her eyes adjusted, she saw that it was just a branch of one of the overnutriated cholla trees outside scratching deep grooves into the glass of the window, its branch motivated only by the stiff desert wind.

Diamond Tiara moaned and buried herself back under her pile of blankets. She mentally reiterated the conclusion that she had come to the moment the sun had gone down: deserts were stupid. Not only were they dusty, dirty, empty, and awe-inspiringly boring, but they did not work logically. Deserts were supposed to be hot. That was what all the books said, what everypony knew and learned in school- -and yet, somehow, all the heat had left as soon as the sun had set. Even though it was June, it felt like the middle of winter, as though Luna hated the desert as much as Celestia loved it and had cursed it with moonlit winter.

In addition, the wind had picked up like the air was trying to chase the sun into the west. It howled past the outside of the house, distorted by the hills and by the shape of the house into a mournful wail that sometimes sounded almost like voices. Diamond Tiara crushed her pillow around her ears trying to muffle that sound, and curled beneath her pile of blankets trying to keep warm in the otherwise unheated house.

Confounding the problem was that she was on a foreign, lumpy bed that had been slept in by who-knew-who. Diamond Tiara had done her best to pick out a good room, but she was rapidly finding that she did not like the one she had chosen. As always, she had to test several before finding a good one. The one advantage of this house was that the choices were virtually endless. There were literally hundreds of rooms. Diamond Tiara silently swore that as soon as she found the way into the higher parts of the house, she would get one out of reach of any tree branch. Perhaps she would even stake out her own tower in the central keep.

Thinking about that, though, just brought back the familiar dizzy cognitive dissonance that came from recognizing multiple homes. Her home was in Ponyville, but there were others waiting for her in other places. They had possessions that were kept only there: other jewelry, other clothes, even other toothbrushes that she only ever saw when there, all that were just waiting for her thousands of miles apart.

The thought made her queasy, and she tried to calm herself. Insomnia was something that she had learned to deal with from a young age, a result of a childhood far more stressful than any common child could even hope to understand. So, to try to go to sleep against the wailing desert and the cold, she did the one thing that she found always helped her go to sleep: she imagined her ideal coltfriend.

The process of thoughts was routine, and almost always the same. She always started with a unicorn. He would be white- -all the fanciest and wealthiest unicorn colts were white- -and he would be tall but not overly muscular, aristocratic and noble, smiling with old-money refinement. Diamond Tiara had never touched a unicorn’s horn before, but she imagined that it was hard, like bone, and slightly sharp. That meant that when the unicorn colt bent down- -he was always slightly taller than her- -he would have to turn his head to kiss her.

The fantasy would then progress onward to a Pegasus. He would be a dashing rogue, quick in flight and with a mischievous smile. Diamond Tiara knew that only adult Pegasi had large wings, but in her fantasy, her coltfriend was always quite well endowed, to the point that when he hugged her his soft feathered wings would wrap around them both, sealing them in a darkened sanctuary shared only by the both of them.

Of course, on a logical level, she knew that neither was an actual, viable possibility. Her parents would never permit her to date a unicorn, even if he was nobly born. Their distrust of the aristocracy- -something that was in their every action but something that they would never admit- -was far too great. A Pegasus was even worse; the scandal would be devastating to her family if she was even seen associating too closely with a race that was considered at best spendthrift and at worst criminal. Diamond Tiara did not even have the courage to imagine herself with a bat pony. That, and she was not entirely sure what bat colts looked like.

So, the fantasy went the same way it always did. In her mind’s eye, she found herself in the grasp of a tall and rugged earth colt. She had developed the fantasy to the point where she knew that he was the scion of a wealthy but rural logging family deep within the snowy heart of northern Syrupland. Between the point in the fantasy where he hoof-built a fire in the fireplace of their cottage against the cold of the beautiful and silent nighttime snow and the point where he would lay her down cushions of the finest silk and begin hoof-feeding her extremely expensive maple candies one by one, Diamond Tiara finally drifted off into sleep with a smile on her face.

The smile quickly faded as the nightmares began. It was always the same one: she would arrive at school and halfway notice that the other students were laughing at her, making fun of her behind her back. Even Silver Spoon would be joining in. Then, all at once to her absolute horror, she would realize that she had forgotten her tiara. The other students were laughing because she had come to school naked.

On this particular day, like every day in the dream, Cheerilee would ask Diamond Tiara to come to the front of the room and give a presentation. The topic always varied slightly; today, it was on why the Rich family was influential and important. Diamond Tiara would then be compelled to walk to the front of the room and stand there, trying to give a presentation that she had not rehearsed and had somehow forgotten while the other students jeered and pointed at her humiliation.

At that point, the dream usually progressed to her suddenly beginning to lose teeth, but this time it changed. Diamond Tiara found herself in a different location, far outside of the schoolhouse. It was a place she had never been before, at least not that she could remember.

She was outdoors, standing in the middle of a lush, green forest. Before her ran a powerful and cool waterfall, descending from an unseen source high above and rushing downward in a haze of droplets and mist over the moist rocks behind it. The water landed in a pool surrounded by mossy rocks, and became immensely still before flowing down a narrow, bubbling creek.

The humiliation and fear of the earlier part of the dream vanished, replaced by two sensations. The first was one of overwhelming peace; the second was one of overwhelming thirst. Diamond Tiara felt her mouth salivating, craving the touch of water, the sweet taste of that cold spring. She knew that she was not supposed to drink water off the ground, but it looked so clear and so delicious, like liquid diamonds.

She stepped forward, and as she did, others appeared. They were ponies, but they appeared suddenly from the mist. Diamond Tiara recognized none of them, in part because she could not see their faces. Even with them standing close to her, they seemed distorted and gray. At their presence, she stopped, and she watched them walking toward the water. She knew that they were thirsty too, but as they got closer to that water, Diamond Tiara began to feel afraid again. Not the kind of fear that she had felt in the dream of the schoolhouse, but a different type, one far sharper. She did not know why she was afraid, but she knew that if they drank from that water, something terrible would happen.

“Don’t believe him,” said a calm, distant female voice. Diamond Tiara looked around, trying to see where it had come from, but she could not tell. It seemed to have come from all the ghostly, translucent ponies- -and none of them, as though it came from something that remained in the mist that she could not see.

“Believe- -believe who?” she asked the ether.

“What he says is lies,” said the voice, calmly, sounding so sad. “Do not trust him. Do not listen.”

“Listen to what? I don’t understand!”

All of the ghostly ponies stopped for a moment, and then slowly turned. All at once they were all staring at her, into her- -and she could still not see any of their faces clearly.

“Diamond Tiara,” they all said in unison- -in one voice. “Please, Diamond Tiara. We love you. Let us have the water…”

Then a second voice shattered the peace of the dream. A far louder voice that seemed to shake the stream and the forest apart, dispelling the illusion and causing the dream to decay back into the mist that had borne it.

“GET OUT.”

Diamond Tiara shot out of bed, falling off the side of the unfamiliar mattress and crying out weakly as the blankets entangled her. For a moment, she was absolutely terrified, believing that she had seen something. She could not remember exactly what the creature who had spoke in the second voice had looked like, but she had seen it- -and knew that it was monstrous.

Then, as she realized where she was, she remembered that it was just a dream. She leaned backward on the floor, and noticed that she was sweating heavily. Light was pouring in through the window, and the room had gone from frigid cold to desert heat once again.

“Buuuuuck,” swore Diamond Tiara slowly, now being forced to face the reality at hand.

By the time Diamond Tiara had stumbled downstairs into the kitchen, Silver Spoon was ready for her. As Diamond Tiara sat down on a chair and put her head against a knife-scarred table, Silver Spoon grasped the pot of freshly brewed coffee with her teeth and expertly poured it into a mug. She set it in front of her friend and added a few drops of the finest cream and just the right amount of raw sugar, stirring the mixture with a small spoon just enough to combine the ingredients but not enough to homogenize the cream, leaving it swirling through the properly aerated coffee.

The smell of the beverage seemed to draw Diamond Tiara to it, and she looked up. “Coffee…” she said, taking the handle of the mug in her hoof and sipping the brew.

“I know you don’t function in the morning without it,” said Silver Spoon, returning the pot to its warming station for Diamond Tiara’s father when he came downstairs.

“Oh, Silver Spoon,” said Diamond Tiara, drinking more of the expensive coffee, “what would I do without you?”

“Probably bump into walls for a few hours.”

Silver Spoon filled her own cup with tea and sat down across from Diamond Tiara. They both looked out the large window in the center of the kitchen. They were on the ground floor, and just outside was a large courtyard bordered on all sides by tall structures that definitely seemed to be the parts of a former sanitarium. In the center was an overgrown and unkempt mess of threatening plants overgrowing a field of headstones.

“Well that’s just great,” muttered Diamond Tiara. “I have to wake up in a cemetery…I really hate this place.”

“It’s not so bad,” said Silver Spoon. “I think it’s peaceful. Scone?” She slid a plate of freshly prepared triangular cookies to Diamond Tiara

Diamond Tiara looked at the cookies. “How long have you been awake, Silver Spoon?”

“About four hours,” replied the much more alert gray filly.

“And how do you even know how to make scones?”

Silver Spoon shrugged. “When your parents are never around, sometimes you pick some things up.”

Diamond Tiara looked into her coffee. As forceful and involved in her life as her own parents were, Silver Spoon’s were not. Silver Platter and Tea Spoon were known worldwide as socialites and spent their time traveling all over Equestria. At the moment, they were on yet another romantic vacation to the south of Prance, and once again, like always, they had refused to take their daughter with them.

“I wish I was in the south of Prance,” mumbled Diamond Tiara, drinking more of her coffee. “Instead I’m stuck here in this ugly, stinky house that can’t even decide what season it is. It just isn’t fair.” She picked up a scone and munched it. Silver Spoon had put in too much baking soda, making it bitter like pretzel dough, but it was okay. “I wonder what all the other kids are doing for summer break…”

“Well,” said Silver Spoon, leaning back, “let’s see…” She lifted her hoof as though she were counting on it. “Rainbow Dash got Scootaloo a summer internship at the rainbow factory, Applebloom is working on her family’s farm, Sweetie Belle is with her family looking at colleges- -”

“Colleges? She’s like, twelve!”

“I know, but she just got her cutie mark, so it doesn’t hurt to start looking early. Her parents are apparently really into the idea, and I hear she already got offered a scholarship.”

“Finishing school just to go to more school? Eew, no. I’m glad were rich enough to not have to do that.”

“You can say that again.”

“But how do you even know any of this?”

“Because I talk to them sometimes. And I listen. I know what almost everypony’s doing for the break.”

“Like what?”

“Well…Pip is at a junior leadership conference in Canterlot, Featherweight is taking boxing lessons from Red Glove, Dinky and her sister are traveling ‘abroad’ with the ‘fez-wearing Shriner’, Snips and Snails are…what day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

“Ah. Probably in the hospital by now. Or being whipped by Trixie to pull another wheelless cart. You know, to be honest, I think they enjoy it.”

“Dimwit weirdos,” said Diamond Tiara, taking another scone. Before she could ask what Twist and Gourmand were doing, her parents came through the door, both smiling and laughing.

“You seem happy,” said Diamond Tiara, annoyed that they were and she was not.

“Oh, yes,” said Filthy Rich. “We had some…rousing business discussions before bed last night. On the topic of interest accruement on trust funds and diversification of mutual fund augments.”

“Trust funds?” said Diamond Tiara. “Do I really need another?”

“Oh, not for you, dear,” said Filthy. “For your son. So that we can send him to the very best business school in all of Equestria.”

“Oh,” said Diamond Tiara, her spirit dropping even further. “Daddy, can we please not talk about your grandson? I’m, like, twelve.”

“Already? I did I miss a birthday?”

“Several.”

“Oh, well. Things have been busy. But you really should consider it. The earlier you start, the longer he has to learn from me before I retire.”

“But no colt is going to want you if you keep eating those,” said Spoiled Rich, pushing the plate of scones away. “You know what we say about sweets.”

Diamond Tiara sighed and rolled her eyes. “ ‘If you eat cake like Celestia, you will never look as good as Cadence.’”

“That’s right. You are already far too chubby. Consider at least trying to stick to the diet we paid so much to have prepared for you.” She picked up a scone and took a bite, and then grimaced. “And leave baking to the lower class. These are terrible.”

Diamond Tiara saw Silver Spoon’s formerly cheerful expression sink. Neither of them said anything, though. Silver Spoon was simply too polite, and it was too early and too hot for Diamond Tiara to get into an argument that she could not possibly win.

“Sir,” said Driving Glove, appearing behind them. He looked tired, but was in full uniform with his hair slicked back beneath his driving cap and around his horn. “I’ve repaired the engine, and your bags are loaded.”

“Excellent,” said Filthy Rich, pouring himself a cup of coffee and taking it black. “Have the car ready. We will be there in a few minutes.”

“Are we leaving already?” said Diamond Tiara, excitedly.

“We are,” said Spoiled Rich. “But you two are staying right here.”

Diamond Tiara’s excitement imploded. “WHAT?”

“I told you yesterday, Diamond,” said her father. “We have urgent business in Los Pegasus. There has been a hitch in one of the development deals, and I still have to negotiate a merger…”

“Not to mention that there are several very important charity balls that we simply must attend,” said Spoiled Rich, as if bragging to the uneducated and unsophisticated “other” that seemed to lurk invisible in the shadows as well as simultaneously reminding her husband.

“You’re going to leave us ALONE?” cried Diamond Tiara. “HERE?”

“That sounds like a really, really bad idea,” added Silver Spoon.

“Don’t worry,” sighed Spoiled Rich. “We have sent for a crew of servants to staff this place, and to prepare it for the contractors. They are taking our secondary car, and they should be here within a few hours.”

“So we have to stay here?”

“It isn’t so bad,” said Filthy Rich. “Why, when I was a colt, I would have loved to explore a house this big, filled with so much…history!”

Diamond Tiara grumbled. She knew that there was no changing her parents mind about going, and about leaving her behind. The plans had already been made, and going with them would probably result in nothing more waiting in a hotel or attending another long, boring party.

“Well,” she said. “At least we can go see the nearby village.”

Spoiled and Filthy Rich both looked at each other, then at Diamond Tiara. “Diamond,” said Filthy, “there is no nearby village.”

“But Silver Spoon and I saw a pony out in the desert yesterday.”

“When?”

“Just as the sun was going down.”

“Well,” said Filthy. “It must have been a mirage. There’s no inhabited towns within over one hundred miles of this house.”

“But…we saw it!”

“No, you didn’t,” corrected Spoiled Rich. “This land belongs to us. I assure you, there are no dirty yokels wandering it.”

The hot, bright sun beat down overhead with an almost physical force. The dry rocks and gravel below seemed to react by releasing a kind of liquid, a vapor of pure heat that rippled upward toward the cloudless blue sky. Diamond Tiara’s could feel that intense dry heat filling her with every single breath. She wondered how anything could survive out here.

The dust had barely cleared from her parents’ car driving off into the distance several hours ago. Or, perhaps, it was new dust, pulled up from its rest by the winds that swirled across the sand, the ones that Diamond Tiara would grow into howling wind once the sun went back below the mountainous horizon.

“Wow,” said Silver Spoon, already out of breath from the weight of her saddlebags. “It’s hotter than Sweetie Belle’s sister out here.”

“Eew. Don’t be gross,” snapped Diamond Tiara. The heat was making her even crankier than normal, but being inside that house had been worse. There was simply nothing to do, not even anything to read and nothing to look at aside from old junk and faded paintings.

Silver Spoon shrugged. “I call ‘em like I see ‘em.” Then, removing her glasses and wiping her eyes, “why are we out here again?”

“Because I want to be.” There was more to it than that, though. There was even more than the boredom. She believed that her parents were wrong. She knew what she had seen, and knew that there must be a village somewhere.

“Oh,” said Silver Spoon. The two of them momentarily scanned the blue horizon. Then, suddenly, Silver Spoon pointed into the air. “Oh! Look over there!”

Diamond Tiara looked up into the air and saw a circle of large black birds drifting high above the desert. As she watched, they all suddenly descended to something out of her line of sight.

“Buzzards?” she said. “Really?”

“What’s wrong with buzzards?”

“They’re probably eating some gross dead thing.” Diamond Tiara stuck out her tongue in disgust.

“I know,” said Silver Spoon, smiling widely. “Isn’t that cool?”

“How is anything about that cool? It’s disgusting!”

“No, it’s called carrion, and it’s a natural and important part of the ecosystem,” said Silver Spoon, somewhat defensively. “Besides, vultures are really cool. Did you know that they are one of Fluttershy’s favorite birds? But don’t tell that to Hummingway!”

“What- - how to you even know that?”

“Fluttershy and I are both part of the Ponyville Nature Gardening Society. We meet on alternating Saturdays.”

“Why did I not know that?”

“Because you never ask,” snapped Silver Spoon. She turned back to the birds and smiled. “Did you know that every fall, Fluttershy knits all her buzzard friends adorable little caps for their bald little heads? They look so cute!”

Diamond Tiara shivered at the thought of a wheezing, glaring buzzard wearing a tiny knit cap. She did not much care for Fluttershy. The yellow Pegasus produced a continuous air of timidness, which to Diamond Tiara was the antithesis of strength. At the same time, there was something inside all that kindness and compassion that Diamond Tiara did not trust. The idea of a pony living alone with a horde of animals in a cottage at the end of town- -a cottage that nopony knew the origin of- -rubbed her the wrong way.

“Come on!” cried Silver Spoon, trotting across the sand toward where the buzzards had landed. “And try to find a good poking stick!”

“I’m not going to look for a stick,” muttered Diamond Tiara to herself. Then, calling after Silver Spoon. “Whatever it was, it probably died of boredom!”

Then, slowly- -and with far less morbid excitement- -Diamond Tiara followed after her friend. She understood that death was an intrinsic part of life, and that vultures eating dead things was entirely natural- -but it was still gross. It was part of the natural world that she would rather not see, something that should be handled behind the scenes, like how washing dishes or cleaning bathrooms was done by some unseen servant.

Eventually, she caught up with Silver Spoon. The pair found themselves in the center of a wide, circular ring of desert. On all sides, it was surrounded by the lush growth of thick, green cacti, all lined up in a perfect circle. Much to Diamond Tiara’s relieve, there was no dead thing to see. In fact, there were not even vultures. The only sign that the birds had ever even been there was a number of black feathers strewn throughout the circle.

“Darn,” said Silver Spoon, dropping her poking stick. She looked around the circle. “I wonder where they went?”

“Who cares,” said Diamond Tiara. “Just a bunch of smelly asthmatic birds.”

“Well, I still would have liked to…hey…”

“What?”

Silver Spoon walked toward the edge of the circle, staring up at one of the numerous bright green succulents that lined the edge. The particular one she was focusing on was almost three times as tall as she was and round, with a pair of needle-clad arms stretching upward toward the sky. To Diamond Tiara, it looked just like any of the other abundant cactuses in the desert, just another boring part of the scenery to remind her that she was nowhere near anything. To Silver Spoon, however, it was apparently interesting.

“That’s weird,” said Silver Spoon, taking a book out of her saddlebags and opening it.

“No, it’s a cactus,” said Diamond Tiara. “There’s like, a billion of them around here.”

“But the saguaro is only native to the Sonora Desert. What would one possibly be doing so far from home?”

“Maybe it isn’t a senoro.”

“Saguaro,” corrected Silver Spoon. “And it is.”

“How would you even know? Your special talent isn’t for identifying plants, its for…” Diamond Tiara stopped, because she did not actually know what Silver Spoon’s talent was. She had never given it much thought.

Silver Spoon sighed and held up the book that she was reading. The cover showed a slightly off-color photograph of an extremely large orange pony with a wide hat and a pair of glasses in a style that had been out of date for almost forty years. All around him were potted cacti of various shapes and sizes, and he was posing with one lovingly perched in one of his cloven hooves.

“Cacti and Succulents,” said Diamond Tiara, reading the title, “A Guide to Identification, Horticulture, and ‘Practical Applications’, by Spiny V. Volume 17.” Diamond Tiara looked past the book at Silver Spoon, who was smiling broadly. “Why do you even have that?”

“Because I have an interest in gardening,” said Silver Spoon haughtily. Then her serious expression was overwhelmed with a mischievous grin. Then she released a fangirl squeal and hugged the book tightly. “And because Spiny V. is such a HUNK!”

“EEW! Silver! He’s like, a gazillion years old! And doesn’t he have, like, forty kids?”

“I know,” sighed Silver Spoon. “He’s so paternal!” Her eyes widened suddenly. “I just realized! Darn it! He teaches at one of the universities that Sweetie Belle is visiting! I should have asked her to get me an autograph!”

Diamond Tiara just shook her head. Some ponies worshiped rock stars or athletes. For Silver Spoon, apparently, it was botanists. Silver Spoon continued to talk, babbling rapidly about something concerning the difference between old and new world cacti, but Diamond Tiara had stopped listening. Instead, she suddenly felt strange. As if something were watching her.

She looked around the circle, and realized that she really did not like the plants that formed the border. Something was wrong about how perfect that circle was, as if there was no way it could have formed naturally.

“Silver Spoon, I don’t like this,” she said, suddenly, surprised by the nervous creaking in her own voice. “Let’s go.”

“But the cactus…”

“No. We need to go. NOW.” Diamond Tiara grabbed Silver Spoon’s hoof and pulled her somewhat sharply out of the cactus grove. As she did, the wind picked up and the black feathers of the buzzards blew into the air, sticking to the long white spines of the cacti. For a moment, the wind sounded like a long, sad call of a distant voice.

The density of the cactus plants began to thin as Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon passed away form the circle and climbed a nearby hill. Diamond Tiara began to feel better, but something was still off. Something was watching her, somewhere.

“Diamond Tiara, where are we going?” asked Silver Spoon, still being almost dragged.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Away from there.”

“Okay, but where?”

“Silver,” said Diamond Tiara, letting go of her friend. “Do you feel like you are being watched right now?”

Silver Spoon’s expression became more serious. “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t tell from where.”

“Neither can I, but I can feel it too.”

Silver Spoon’s eyes widened and started to flash across the sparsely planted desert. “Do you think it could be…”

“I do. He’s here.”

They both looked around the desert. Neither of them could see anything that remotely resembled a pony apart from a few oddly shaped tree-like plants. Then Diamond Tiara’s eyes stopped at something in the distance.

“Do you see that?” she asked.

“What?” Silver Spoon nearly jumped. “Is it- -”

“No,” said Diamond Tiara, shielding her eyes. Then she smiled. “I think I see a town over there.”

Distances were strange in the desert. The town had seemed so close, but it had taken almost a half hour to reach there. By the time Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had reached it, the sun was already almost a quarter of its course from setting and they had drank all the water that Silver Spoon was carrying. Both were thirsty, and both were nervous.

Unlike Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon seemed adverse to visiting the village. She had been continually looking to the horizons, her eyes flicking about, and she had not stopped talking.

“But what if…what if they’re all a bunch of hillbillies? What if they tie us up in a shed and force us to listen to show tunes?”

“Well, it didn’t happen the last time we went to Sweet Apple Acres, so I don’t think it will happen now.”

They both laughed, even though Diamond Tiara knew that what she had said was mean. The Apple family were course and rustic, but they were all really nice- -and Big Macintosh was not unpleasant to look at.

“But seriously,” said Diamond Tiara. “Ponies don’t do that sort of thing. Not to rich fillies like us.”

“Yeah…I guess you’re right.”

“Besides,” said Diamond Tiara, now finally close enough to the town to see it closely. “I don’t think we’re going to find anypony here…”

They walked past the border into the town, and it was immediately apparent that Diamond Tiara’s initial assessment had been correct. Although there were buildings, it looked like the town had been abandoned for at least a century. All the structures that were still standing were devoid of paint, their wood cracked and crumbling from disrepair. The roofs of most of the buildings had long since collapsed, and there was not a single window that still held glass.

The streets were empty and silent, save for the piles of dust that had blown against the buildings and the remnants of collapsed and decayed carts.

“Great,” said Diamond Tiara. “It’s a ghost town.”

“Wow,” said Silver Spoon, holding Diamond Tiara closely. “It sure is creepy.”

“It’s just a bunch of old buildings. Look.” Diamond Tiara gestured all around. “Nopony’s here. Nopony’s been here for, like, ever. We walked all the way out here for nothing.”

“Yeah. And now we’re out of water…”

Diamond Tiara looked around the town. It essentially consisted of a main street of flat-faced and uninspired buildings, but at the cul-de-sac edge beneath the broken clock tower, she saw the remnants of a well.

“Might be some water in there,” she said, starting toward it.

“Diamond, no!” said Silver Spoon. “It’s probably dirty!”

“It’s a well. We pay fifty bits a bottle for water that comes out of the same kind of thing.”

“But that water’s from Prance! Not a hole in the desert! Diamond, don’t drink things out of holes!”

“Eh,” said Diamond Tiara dismissively. She really was not that thirsty; mostly, she was just bored. She walked all the way to this dirty, dusty failed version of Appleloosa and figured that she might as well try to do something, even if was just trying to use a crumbling well.

The well was made of stone, with a wooden lid that had collapsed over its opening. Diamond Tiara pushed away the wood- -being dry, it was surprisingly light- -and looked into the well. With the angle that the sun was at, she could not see the bottom. It was just a deep black pit.

Beside it, there was a rope. Diamond Tiara picked up the dried, stiff bundle of fiber in her teeth and pulled on it. There was definitely a weight on the other side.

Slowly, she pulled up the heavy mass on the far end of the rope, pulling it from the impenetrable darkness where it had been stored for so long. Sounds came from the well: clinking and clicking, echoing upward from below as if the stone cylinder was trying to resist being disturbed after its long slumber.

Eventually, though, a bucket emerged. Diamond Tiara took it down and set it between herself and Silver Spoon. Both of them leaned in and looked at the contents.

Silver Spoon immediately screamed. She jumped back and pointed a shaking hoof at the bucket.

“B- -blood!” she cried. “It’s- -it’s filled with blood!”

Diamond Tiara looked closer. Then she sighed. “It isn’t blood,” she said. She tilted the bucket toward Silver Spoon, allowing the small portion of water to flow and reveal the grains of reddish substance that were floating in it. “Look. The bucket rusted and turned the water red.”

“Oh,” said Silver Spoon, only calming down slightly. “Well…it’s still really gross.”

Diamond Tiara looked closely at the water, and saw that it was infested with hundreds of tiny filamentous worms. She made face of disgust and kicked the bucket over. “Eew! It is gross! No way I’m drinking that!”

She let the water fall onto the desert floor, where it was quickly pulled into the parched earth. Almost as soon as it fell, something caught Diamond Tiara’s eye, and she was glad that Silver Spoon had not seen it. Something as large as a pony dressed all in frayed and worn cloth had just crossed the street. It had moved so quickly that Diamond Tiara had not seen it clearly, but she had defiantly seen it- -and it was barely forty feet away from them.

“Silver,” she said, slowly. “When we saw that pony yesterday…what did he look like?”

“He was too far away to see,” said Silver Spoon. “But I think he was wearing clothes. Really frayed, old ones.”

Diamond Tiara watched wide eyed as she now saw the figure move slowly and clearly across a dark alley between two buildings, moving through the shadows in their direction. There was a creak from one of the nearby buildings as it entered, and Silver Spoon turned toward the sound. Then she saw just how pale Diamond Tiara was, and how wide her eyes were.

“Diamond?” she said, slowly and shaking. “What did you just see?”

“A pony,” admitted Diamond Tiara. “Dressed all in rags.”

A second sound poured through the streets, and both of the fillies jumped. Diamond Tiara looked up at a tall building to her right, one that was almost one hundred feet from where she had just seen the figure. For a brief moment, she saw the edge of a black mask looking down from one of the glassless windows.

“What was that?” cried Silver Spoon, holding tightly to Diamond Tiara.

“It’s moving,” said Diamond Tiara. She was more scared than she had ever been in her life, but she forced herself to remain strong and defiant, at least for Silver Spoon’s sake. One of them needed to stay strong, to stay in control.

“It?! What is it?!”

“I don’t know,” said Diamond Tiara. “I don’t know!”

Then, suddenly, something burst out of the base of the clock tower. Diamond Tiara finally saw it clearly: a creature dressed in rags, its face covered with a featureless black mask, its body held close to the ground as it stood in the shadows, watching them from the darkness.

Never before had Diamond Tiara moved so quickly. One moment, she was looking into the dim doorway of a decaying building at an unidentified creature watched back. Then she was screaming, running faster than she ever had, like she was participating in the Running of the Leaves back in Ponyville. Silver Spoon, with tears running down her face, was beside her, running along with her, sprinting across the sand and rocks, leaping and jumping with agility that neither one of them knew that they had.

Had they looked back, though, neither of them would have seen the creature, save for perhaps a flash of dirty, rotting cloth as it descended from the light into the depths of the well. Once again, the town was empty and perfectly silent.
Likewise, neither of them noticed what had happened where the water they had spilled had landed: how the worms in the bucket coalesced into a small green plant, which erupted with tiny, delicate pink flowers- -only to dry into dust in the presence of the intense sunlight.

The door closed with a powerful slam, and Diamond Tiara knocked all the deadbolts that she could reach into the closed position. She and Silver Spoon sat panting against the mirrored floor, looking down at their terrified reflections. The tiredness from their sprint across the desert seemed to hit them all at once, and they were unable to breathe. Diamond Tiara felt nauseous and sick.

“What- -what was that?” cried Silver Spoon.

“I don’t know!” gasped Diamond Tiara. She leaned against the door, half expecting the creature to be pounding on it, trying to get in. Her mind reeled, trying to rationalize what had just happened. “It…it must have been an animal!”

“An animal?! That was NOT an animal!”

“You don’t know that! It could have been!”

“It was wearing CLOTHES!”

“No it wasn’t! We didn’t see that! It was just dark colored!”

“Horse FEATHERS! You saw what I saw, I know you did! That was a pony!”

“No pony could move that fast,” gasped Diamond Tiara. That thought did not make her feel any better. “It…it had to be something else.”

“What if it tries to come back?” cried Silver Spoon. “It’ll get us! We’ll get got!”

“We will not get got!” said Diamond Tiara, standing up and stamping her hoof, taking charge of the situation.

“But we’re all alone here. In this big house…oh Celestia, they’ve left us alone!”

“No, they haven’t!” said Diamond Tiara. “The servants will be here soon, and I don’t care if that thing is a manticore, it’s not going to stand a chance against the ponies that my daddy hires!”

“But what if it followed us? What if it tries to get in?”

“Didn’t you listen to my dad’s really boring story? This place used to be a fort.” She knew that the logic of that made no sense, but she stuck to it, knowing that it made Silver Spoon- -and herself- -feel better.

“You’re right,” said Silver Spoon. “If this place could keep out Nightmare Moon, it can keep out one pony!”

Diamond Tiara chuckled humorlessly. Clearly Silver Spoon had not been listening. It had not been Nightmare Moon that this fort had been designed to keep out one thousand years ago.

“Come on, Silver Spoon,” said Diamond Tiara, reaching out and helping Silver Spoon up. She smiled. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
 

Comments

[Brony1337]

I really like this story! Hey, I have an idea. Could I draw you an new coverart? If yes, I´d like to chat a bit with you (PM). Don´t worry, It´s not much, I just don´t want to trash the comments section.

[Genmaicha]

I really love the characterization of post-redemption Silver Spoon in this fic! You're doing the work G4 did not.

I also love the world building for Ponyville denizens we hear from her.