The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

West Side

Starlight sat with a stoic frown on her face, refusing to look at anything but the taunting, sparkling city. What had happened to her? She had been so sure something was unfair in Equestria, she crossed an uncrossable mountain range to get away from it. In Riverfall, three days and an entire lifetime away, she had been upset by the ponies' attention, to the extreme where she remembered crystalling them... but crossing mountains aside, she was an outsider and they hadn't seen nor heard from the outside world in nearly as long as she had been alive. Of course they had been curious... right? She had been special, and it was stupid to deny it.

Now, she had done something unheard of again, something nopony else could or even would do. This time, she was getting exactly the reaction she had wanted in Riverfall... and just as her struggle for normalcy there had been fruitless against the collective hope and curiosity of the society, she was under no delusions there was anything she could do to convince the likes of that Stone District couple how much danger Ironridge had been in, let alone that she had stopped it, or how. Anyone who did notice things didn't add up would probably just ascribe an outside cause. Maybe they'd think they were saved by the yaks' religion, or something.

And it wasn't fair. Starlight felt a single tear slip from her cheek, watched it drop over the railing and fall two stories to the street below, narrowly missing a pony's back and splattering against the dusty brown cobblestones. The road was the same color as Maple's coat, Starlight realized.

She wanted to go back to the ship. To return and tell Maple how she felt, all of it, and see if her mother could make any sense of why nothing felt fair, ever. Because she couldn't: she tried to imagine the stately couple fawning over her instead and commenting on how wonderful it was they had a skilled and special filly like her to save them from certain doom, and the same part of her heart clenched that had driven her to leave Riverfall with Maple in the first place. It wasn't that she had made a mistake, at least. What bothered her was that she still wanted whatever had driven her across the mountains just as much as she had then... only she no longer knew what it was.

"Hey, uhh..." She noticed Valey looking sideways at her. "You okay? Because you're looking kinda miserable right now."

"Sort of," Starlight murmured, nearly grunted. She couldn't elaborate.

"Just wondering." Valey shrugged. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I've got a lot of stuff bottled up from last night I told myself I could deal with once the explosions stopped... Putting staying alive before staying sane, you know? But now that we're actually there, I seriously have no idea how to unpack myself. I feel like a suitcase. Just waiting for... I dunno."

Starlight could relate, but didn't say anything. She imagined Maple could too; the mare had said as much even before Copsewood and the Water District and everything on that third day.

"Barely even feels real, trashing Herman like that," she continued, looking out beside Starlight, the breeze teasing the remaining tuft of her awkwardly-chopped mane. "I get where you were coming from, yelling at Fire not to drag us into anything more or make all that more complicated. Feels like I could stroll right back to Defense Force headquarters, forge a few names on some papers to keep the bureaucrats annoyed, fly out to the Earth District to steal some bananas..." She rubbed her stomach. "Mmm, I could really go for some bananas right now."

Starlight still wasn't hungry. She imagined she would be eventually, but whatever the flame had done in reconstituting her body, it hadn't left her famished.

"Any reason you wanted to go here in the first place?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "It's a nice view, and all. But there's also not much here. It's kinda... quiet."

"That's the point," Starlight mumbled, though she didn't mind the batpony's talking. "I just wanted somewhere to think, and thought this would feel far enough away."

Valey bit her lip. "Oh, uh, whoops. That probably means I should stop talking, right?"

Starlight shrugged.

Slightly concerned, Valey leaned around to look closer at her. "Thinking not doing you much good, huh?"

"Not really," Starlight admitted, stepping back from the railing and shaking her head with a groan. Her heart hurt, and all she was doing was making herself realize that answers she thought were good enough had a long way to go before being complete.

"Yeah, same for me." Valey reclined against the railing, nodding her head. "Thinking alone never gets me anywhere, either. Hey, wanna go to the Earth District and steal some bananas?"

Starlight glanced at Hestia, who looked slightly hesitant but didn't object. "Okay," she decided. "Sure."

---

With a flash of light, Starlight and Valey appeared in a dusty clearing surrounded by jade foliage, Hestia standing patiently nearby and the sunlight already striking their backs.

Starlight's eyes turned towards the mountains, realizing that their shadow no longer covered them. "Where are we? In the western part of Ironridge?"

"Yeah, this is further west in the Earth District than I think you guys have been," Valey commented, swaying on her legs to take weight off her burnt hoof. "Right outside a town called Mosstower. You know how the southeastern Stone District is mostly a bunch of miners, Defense Force and establishments catering to tourists and immigrants from the skyport, so Blueleaf winds up with all the economic dropouts who can't afford to live up top any more? Mosstower is sort of the same, only since the western Stone District is mostly dedicated to farming, the skillsets carry over. You get miners and mechanics moving down, they don't know what to do with themselves, but here it's not that hard to go from farming wheat and potatoes and stuff to harvesting pineapples. Makes the income distribution a lot evener."

"So what you're saying is," Starlight droned, "the ponies are happier and less bad things happen?"

Valey grinned. "Hey, there's a reason the Defense Force was based way over on the east side. A lot of ponies here even live in Mosstower but commute to the Stone District to work the farms there, so they can save room for terraces up top by not building houses. Honestly, it's a lot like it was before all this airship stuff happened, since farms are boring for tourists and all the Sosans lived closer to Sosa."

"Great." Starlight hung her head. "So all we needed to do to have an actually nice adventure like Maple wanted was go to the west side of the city. I didn't even think there was anything out here! Why didn't anyone tell us!?"

"First off, because most of what's out here is farms and farmers, and to the east side, that pretty much is nothing." Valey poked her in the shoulder, staring at her with serious eyes. "And second... hey. If Birdo had just bumbled on into the Defense Force without you guys, you wanna know what would have happened? Ironridge would probably be a giant iceberg right now, and I'd either be buried with it or a corpse courtesy of those mercenaries. Seriously. I might have a few issues to deal with about who and what I am, but I like being alive. So if you're wishing stuff had gone differently... Well, I, for one, could be a lot more torn up about it." She turned away, and added, "Literally."

Starlight blinked. "...Valey? We're friends, right?"

"Given that I let you talk me out of bailing in the atrium and into putting my life on the line for a city that's been pretty garbage for both of us..." Valey stretched, taking another step towards the fruit trees growing just off the road. "We sure better be."

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