Little Equestria
Mag Mell’s din proved better than any alarm clock, Silver Mint had come to realize. Strict laws kept the noise level down between two and before the dawn, but nothing could stop goblins slamming doors, throwing parties, and loudly arguing with one another through the thin floors of the apartment. Red-eyed, she stared up at the ceiling and lifted her forehooves, miming in time with the shouting upstairs.
“You bitch, you forgot to start the coffee again!” She wagged her right hoof aggressively.
Her left hoof bobbed. “I’m not the one who forgot to pick some up from the store, like you were supposed to! I had to help the kids with their homework, I cleaned every square inch of this place, and I had to cook dinner!”
“Your mother warned me about you! I should have listened to her, I should have-!” Her hooves pressed together as the two voices faded, and, when the thumping started, she sighed and rolled out of bed.
The mirror propped on the dresser revealed an exhausted pony, her silvery mane sticking up in all directions. Grabbing a brush in her argent magic, she sought to tame it as best she could, and leaned forward to peck the photo of her family beneath the archway of Canterlot Castle. “Miss you, Mom, Dad, Spear.”
Her phone on the stand buzzed, reminding her that she hadn’t filled out her voting form for the Little Equestria election and asking if she wanted to watch a video on the items up for referendum, but she swiped it away with a sigh. Another e-mail popped in from work, and she quickly determined that it was a phish - nice try, replacing the i with an l in "Elation" - and found messages from her social networks, asking where she’d been. Again, she swept through all of them, until her phone was nice and bare, a black mirror reflecting her face back at her. She tucked it into the pocket of her day harness and slid on her saddlebags.
Finally, she grabbed the amulet near the window, where it caught the sun’s first rays on its bronze face, and slid it over her neck before throwing open the window and blinking away spots.
Were it not for the distinctly alien architecture of Mag Mell, the layers of almost chaotic architectural styles and influences, she might have thought she was looking down on a side street in Manehattan. There were goblins there, and she had the misfortune of living beneath a family of them, but it was colorful equines that filled the street for the most part, laughing and chatting with one another as they greeted the day. Come dawn in Equestria, most ponies would be abed, but Mag Mell ran to its own clock, and Little Equestria moved to its beat. Above, the last stars of Yggdrasil faded with the morning sun. An electric railcar pulled out of a building, heading towards the spires of downtown.
After getting breakfast from a pegasus hopping between open windows, Silver Mint made her way down, munching on a sandwich. Foals jumped and played in the street, spending a warm summer Saturday in the sun, while teens peddled homemade ice cream and lemonade on a corner. Stallions and mares flirted under the awnings of a cafe, and a group of young adults wandered around with AR glasses wrapped around their faces, searching for monsters only they could see.
Silver Mint didn’t know why they bothered - there were monsters aplenty in the real world if you knew how to look.
Her hooves took her to a long colonnade, its smooth stones turned golden by the rising sun, and looked out over the bay. Mag Mell sprawled from the Statuary Hill, where the edifices of the four original Arcana Kings stood, and the wide Winter Wall to the beach houses on the bay and all the way over to the Wand Palace on the far side. There her eyes settled and burned.
Tearing them away, she kept walking. It took her most of the day to get to the bazaar in the Sword Quarter the the head of the bay, where ships from all nations stood at anchor. Here, she slid on a pair of noise-canceling headphones, if only so her ears wouldn’t ring like the first time she’d come here and been shouted at by a beak-faced hawker with the voice of a klaxon, and pushed through the mass of goblins and more. A shop caught her eye, and she walked over to look over a series of knives. Some of them were strapped to attach to hooves like the Night Guard blades, and she tried a pair on.
“All goblin steel,” the woman behind the booth said, a smiling Adapan with sea-green hair and smooth skin. Related to humans, the seagoing Adapan people had funny ears and webbed fingers. “I’ve got some pieces from my last trip to Niefelheim, if you’d like to see something really interesting.”
“No, thanks,” Silver Mint muttered, putting the blades down carefully. “I’m sorry, I think I’m looking for something more subtle.”
Quickly, she wandered inside a store filled with firearms, her eyes wandering over them. A varg, a great wolf with an intelligent face, looked at her questioningly and she blushed and showed herself out. She bounced around the market until she glimpsed a blanket in a small tent set up in an alley, covered with little odds and ends that made her horn tingle with the touch of enchantment. Among them was a small silver bottle, marked with a pony’s skull. Glancing around, she slid her earphones off and walked over, lifting it up with her hoof to check for a label.
“Tidy little selection, innit?” a voice asked near her ear, and she shrieked and jumped a full foot into the air.
Turning, panting, she put the bottle down carefully and stared at the little girl who’d startled her. Wearing a rough cloak of undyed brown, she smiled with a mouth full of slightly sharp teeth and a mane of blond hair. Her ears stuck out, twitching like a cat’s, and a tail teased at the bottom of her cloak. Most striking of all about her, though, were the eyes - a beautiful, piercing green.
A second, dark-haired catgirl watched quietly from the shadows in the back.
“I guess,” Silver Mint muttered, looking them over. They were all surpassing rare to her eye, which was saying something for a mare who worked with rare coins for a living. She picked up a little piercework metal sphere. “This blocks sound, right? How much?”
“Ach!” The girl tapped the bottom of her hoof, bouncing it into the air before snatching it with her hand and making it disappear with a flick of her wrist. “Sorry about that. That one ain’t for sale. Very sentimental. Everything else you see is, though, and right tidy they are.” She eyed her critically. “You’ve got a bit of an appreciation for oddities, I see. I’m not sure what a nice horse like yourself would want with a jar of poison, though.”
Silver’s mouth dried out and she shifted her hooves, starting out of the tent. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
The girl caught up with her. “Hold up! You ain’t wastin’ nothing, trust me. I’m just curious is all.”
Scrunching her face up, Silver stared down at the girl. “It’s personal.”
“Ain’t it always. You aren’t looking to kill yourself, are you?”
“What?" Silver sputtered. "No! Of course not!”
“So it’s someone else you want to kill, then, is it?" she said, just a little louder. People were starting to turn and look. “Right tidy bit of murder.” Silver stared at the girl in disbelief, unable to find the words to respond.
“C’mon. Let me buy you a drink,” the girl said, taking the harness with her hand and guiding her. Mutely, Silver acquiesced, and they found their way to a Sword court bar past some arches, where smoke lingered near the white plaster ceiling. The place reminded her of a movie she’d seen, an Equestrian remake of some human film set during a time of war, in a saloon filled with refugees.
“Aren’t you a little young to be ordering alcohol?” Silver Mint asked, a little numb as she settled into a seat across a small table. A little smoky, amber oil lamp glowed between them.
“Not in Mag Mell, I’m not! Don’t worry - I don’t drink. You, though, look like you need one.” She slipped off and returned a few moments later with a pair of drinks, one clearly orange juice, the other some fruity red cocktail that smelled surprisingly sharp as she pushed it to Silver Mint’s side.
“I don’t really drink, either, I just…” Silver stared down at the glass and kicked it back, her eyes welling up for a moment as it burned in her throat. Warmth filled her limbs, working out from her gut. “I don’t know what I’m doing. This was stupid.”
“We all do stupid things that we regret sometimes,” the girl said, leaning back and watching her. “I’m sure you were thinkin’ something when you were looking at those guns and knives, though.”
Silver stared at her, eyes wide.
“I watch people,” the girl smiled. “Seriously, it’s all right, you can tell me. I promise I won’t judge.”
“I’m not going to talk about... about that in public!”
“No one’s going to listen in here.” She nodded towards the room, where the other patrons were close together, talking quietly amongst themselves. They could not be less interested in Silver Mint’s conversation if they tried.
“Nor anywhere!”
“So you’re just going to bottle murderous feelings up until they explode? That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“No, I…” Silver took another drink and buried her face in her hooves, groaning. “Fine. I do want to kill someone. Or, not kill. Maybe hurt, a lot, and I want them to know why they’re hurting or dying and... it’s just not fair.”
The girl turned silent, listening as Silver poured out her feelings to the table. “I could never sneak a gun or a knife or poison past security. Even if I saw her out and about, I’d never stand a chance. It’s not fair that she should be so powerful, not after everything she’s done. It’s sick that she just... she just gets a pat on the back for everything she did, a ‘try harder next time,’ and a god-damned palace to boot.”
The girl said nothing, her face a blank slate.
“I know Equestrians are supposed to be forgiving. Didn’t we forgive Princess Luna, and Discord? But neither of them hurt people like she did. Neither of them killed people. It wasn’t even Princess Luna’s fault, and I know a lot of people who would like to see Discord turned back into stone forever - myself included! - but every time this happens, all Celestia cares about is fixing the villain.”
She sniffed, rubbing her nose. “Doesn’t she care about the victims? What about their feelings? Don’t we deserve to know that we’re safe?”
“I think you deserve that," the girl murmured.
“I don’t, though, I don’t feel safe, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I came here to work, but all I can think about is the mountain, the monsters racing through the streets of Canterlot.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I worship Celestia. Not literally, that’s stupid, but... I love her more than almost anything except my family. She’s so bright and beautiful. Even when she stepped down from direct rule, it filled me with joy, because it was like mother giving you the keys to the car and trusting you to drive yourself. She’d always be there at home waiting for you, ready to hear everything you had to say and give advice if you needed it.”
The little girl didn’t answer.
“She violated her,” Mint said softly. “Amelia violated someone... someone so important to all of us. She hurt so many people, and there’s nothing I can do.”
They sat in silence for a while. The little girl never said anything, letting Silver Mint finish her drink and think.
“I just wish…”
“Yeah?” the girl prodded gently.
“I wish I could talk to her.” Silver’s eyes welled up. “I want her to know how much she hurt me and everyone I know.”
There was a shuffle, and the girl pushed her glass away. “Imagine you were talking to her right now. Imagine she was here, listening to you, letting you say your peace - what would you say?”
Trembling, Silver pulled her hooves under herself on the seat, staring at the flame. “I’d say that she’s a monster. I don’t think she’s paid enough for what she’s done. I wish she’d be forced to sit down and listen to all the pain she put us through. I know she’s done good things since then, that she turned Mag Mell around, that she’s supported Equestria tirelessly, but she’s never answered for anything. If she really cares about any of that, I... I want to hear her say sorry. Not anyone speaking on behalf of her, I... I want to hear it from her. I want to look into her eyes and see that she’s sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
Silver Mint blinked away her tears and stared up at the little girl, uncomprehending.
Their eyes met, and her own bright green were filled with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Silver Mint. I wish I could take it back - well, sort of. Trying to take it all back is how I hurt you in the first place. I tried to take everything back, to make the hurt never exist in the first place, but that was stupid, and I was wrong, and everything I did to get there was wrong, too. I’m sorry, and, because just saying sorry really, truly isn’t enough, I’ve spent the last fifteen years working my ass off to try and fix things and make it up in some way. I keep an eye out for people like you when I can, people who are hurting and alone - I never thought I’d run into someone I’d hurt, though I guess that’s technically everyone when I think about it.
“I... I didn’t think anyone would care to hear if I was sorry, not anyone beyond the people I’ve already apologized to. Rainbow Dash certainly doesn’t want to hear it from me. The Sword King did, but she only cares about what I do. Celestia forgave me so fucking quickly that I never really had a chance to process it. More importantly? I never... I still haven’t forgiven myself, and maybe I never will.”
Horror drained the color from Silver Mint’s cheeks, and she found herself paralyzed as the little goblin girl changed, filling out into a creme alicorn mare with a golden mane blowing in its own wind, her eyes sad, her cheeks wet as tears spilled down them.
“I know you’re scared, Silver, but I’m not going to hurt you. If you want, I’ll buy you a ticket out of here and you never need to look on me or my castle ever again. I’m not going to let you kill me - I was over that years ago - but you deserved this at least.”
Sighing, she looked to the shadows, where a second alicorn awaited, a dark mare who offered her a small smile. She got up and trotted over to nuzzle her and tuck in against her shoulder. “I’ll leave, now. I don’t want to cause you any more hurt.”
“Wait,” Silver Mint squeaked, and the powerful mare stopped, arrested in her tracks as though it had been a spell. Here she was, a nobody little unicorn, but when she went up to face the King of Wands she watched the other mare flinch back, unable to meet her eyes. Drawing a deep breath to steady her courage, she turned her face up to meet hers. “You’re right... I don’t forgive you, but... thank you. I don’t know if it made me feel any better. Maybe it did.”
“I can’t give you back your sense of peace,” Amelia said quietly. “I can’t do anything to make you feel better. All I can do is try and fix things the normal way, like everyone else. I don’t know if that means anything to you, but please... try and live your life. I hate the thought that you defined any part of it by what I did.”
“I will try. I will... try to move on from this. I don’t know if I can. I was just a filly, and it’s been a nightmare all my life.”
Amelia shared a glance with the other alicorn, who could have been her twin but for her blue-green eyes and dark coloring. “Well. Luna’s good for that, and so are a few other people I could name. I’m sorry, Silver Mint. I hope things do get better for you.”
It was Silver Mint’s turn to say nothing, and Amelia’s to sigh, nod, and walk away.
“I do, too,” she said at last, mostly to herself, and made her way out. It was dark by the time she got home. She pulled her amulet off her neck, set it on the dresser, and opened it. A few shards of crystal, fallen from the mountain during the fighting, glittered inside. She’d taken them with her to remind her of home, fearing goblinization, but, now that she looked at it, the copper necklace felt like a chain holding her back.
Closing it, she sighed and tugged it in against her barrel. She wasn’t willing to let go of her pain, not yet, but, in spite of herself, she found the tension in her shoulders fading, and laid her head down with the evening sun, where, above the line of the horizon, a green star glinted through her window.
That night, she slept more soundly than she had since she was just a little filly nestled under her mother’s wing.
Stats
Page generated in 0.024 seconds
Total duration
992 users online
2,263,034 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
More Pirene! Colour me excited!
Glad to see this get a proper posting. Hopefully the other blog stories will follow. Keep the the great work!
This is great! It's Christmas in April baby!
Very happy to see your snippets get a proper story to call home. Thank you for providing one.
8122915
Plus some unique ones.
>Pirene Shorts
But she's wearing Pirene pants.
8122923
Wait until tomorrow, too :D
8123578
So, Amelia finally grew up. Took her long enough.
8123594
She went from age eight to "a lot" in the course of a couple days. She grew up pretty fast, all things considered, and will never have that childhood ever again. The Amelia you see here is the Amelia you see at the end of the main story.
It really took her no time at all to grow up, and that's something she'll never, ever get back.
It's great to see you're still writing about this universe, in blog snippets or otherwise. I really did fall in love with this universe you've created, so I'm excited to see what other stories you still have up your sleeve to share with us.
I also find it neat that you're re-using the old cover art from the main story for this one, now.
8124297
It was the only proper choice :D
Glad to see you cleaned this up and published it. :D
8124566
Me too!
Plus, new one and more coming!
Not all better. But, you know. A bit nicer.
Shorter than I anticipated and it feels forced... but the attitide shown here is exactly what I was hoping to have seen in the main story. Genuine feeling, sorrow, and openness about her numerous crimes, THIS is what I was asking for. I am going to go back and read the main story again. I do not remember her becoming an Alicorn at all. Perhaps I read a really early version where it was not included.