The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Daughter Talk

Starlight reached the library, the ship's middle-floor room between the forward staircases and the cabin hall. She paused, standing in the entrance, having little idea of where to go next, but still nothing to do. Below, she heard the slide of a well-oiled door and two sets of hoofsteps, likely belonging to her mother and White Chocolate... but they shortly stopped, and only snippets of murmured voices reached her ears.

Her horn glowed softly teal atop her forehead. Once, she remembered, she had kept it going as a light source for what must have been weeks, trudging through the caves in the mountains that separated Equestria from the northern world, all without wearing herself out to the point of fainting. Acting as a dim lamp took very little energy, and even with the new limits on what she could safely do without hurting herself, she felt she could keep it going forever.

Crossing the mountains... all to avoid getting a cutie mark. Or telling herself that, when the real reason was that she hated her life in Equestria. Which was understandable in hindsight, since she had forbidden herself from enjoying things to avoid winding up with that mark... It all felt so far away. She imagined reaching a hoof out, as if she could touch her past, to tell the wet, bedraggled, exhausted filly what she knew now... only that required her to understand what it was she had learned. That there were things in life more important than not getting cutie marks, perhaps. And that was it.

She sighed. Every part of her still felt tired and wound up, even after her conversation with Maple and how long she had slept. She needed something, and whatever it was was more important than everything she had once counted as a goal. She could get a cutie mark then and there, and... what? What would it matter? Unless it was with a piece of moon glass, she doubted it would change who she was, since otherwise no one would have bothered with the distinction that moon glass did do that. She and Maple would still need each other. Jamjars would probably be jealous, but that wasn't unusual.

Scanning the library again, Starlight took in just how many books there really were. For a time, she had forbidden herself from reading anything, since books were how Sunburst had gotten his cutie mark and going out the same way was the worst fate her past, Equestrian self could imagine. She had enjoyed them, too. But she needed something to do, and if it really no longer mattered...

Reverently, she stepped up to a bookshelf, dusting her aura along the neatly-aligned spines. Someone had taken great pains to build this library as lovingly as possible, she observed. Her eyes traced the titles, some written plainly and others in obscure fonts that looked almost like different languages. This seemed to be a section about history and geography.

Starlight paced slowly along the wall, looking for something fictional. If she was going to read for fun - and not from the explorer Sosa's ancient journal, which was probably there somewhere - she wanted it to be made-up. Something that would make their adventures in Ironridge seem silly or fantastic, like a story themselves. Surely Shinespark liked storybooks, right? Maybe something about...

Her eyes settled on one, with a simple, unassuming spine and a title that merely read 'The Adventures of Horseshoe Hoof'. Whatever that was about, it would do nicely. She strengthened her aura, pinching the edges of the book and sliding it out from the shelf like she was removing the lid from a box containing a long-ago-abandoned part of her life. The cover floated open with barely a creak, and when the musty scent of well-loved pages reached her nostrils, the sensation became all the more acute. Starlight stopped and touched the book to her cheek, keeping it there for a second before turning to find a spot to read.

The room had two plush reading chairs placed right next to each other, both empty in the teal light of her horn. She chose one at random and hopped in, trancelike, starting to circle and make herself comfortable when something brushed her flank-

"I know you like me," Jamjars said with a smirk, "but don't you think sharing a chair is a little much for this point in our relationship when there's another right over there?"

Only self-control and a quick hoof to the mouth saved Starlight from screaming. Instead, she froze, watching as Jamjars' orange eyes opened inches from her face. The other filly's horn flashed, her normally-good camouflage spell completely impenetrable in the dark, and it melted away to reveal her perched lazily against the side of the chair, one foreleg hanging off the side. Starlight was standing directly over her, and had she sat down then and there, the two of them would have been cuddling.

Carefully, Starlight allowed her mouth to move, mindful that most of White Chocolate's children were actually sleeping nearby. "What are you doing?"

"Enjoying this chair." Jamjars shrugged. "If you don't want this to be awkward, there's a perfectly good other one right there."

"I was going to read this..." Starlight muttered, climbing down and pacing to the other chair, her tail flicking in annoyance.

"Have fun." Jamjars lowered her head, looking as if she had been half-asleep and wanting to still be there. "If it's any good, save it for me."

Starlight almost opened it then and there, but paused to see if the silence would endure... and her curiosity won out over self-preservation. "You're not going to bother me about it? You're just going to leave me alone?"

"Why would I?" Jamjars mumbled from her chair, dangling foreleg and raspberry-red mane the only things visible from Starlight's angle. "We both have what we want, right? I've finally got some room to myself, and get to go somewhere and do something real. You got out of Ironridge, and don't tell me you liked it there. And there's no one around who doesn't take me seriously I need to deal with."

Out of all the ponies on the ship, Jamjars was the one Starlight could predict the least. She folded her hooves and scrunched her eyes, then ultimately sighed.

"Thanks for coming back for me when you got this airship, by the way," Jamjars added. "I knew you'd do it. Must be nice to be an important enough pony that you can decide those things, though. And you got Mom and all my siblings, too. I wouldn't have done that. I think you're too nice. It's part of why I'm jealous of you."

"...How come you're being nice?" Starlight asked, growing suspicious. "Really. Is there something you want?"

Jamjars shrugged, which manifested as a rolling cascade in her mountainous mane. "Of course I want something. I told you all about it while we were walking to Grand Acorn, remember? It's your fault if you forgot. But if my last answer isn't good enough for you, I'm not teasing you because you're not being a killjoy like in the basement and are doing stuff that benefits both of us. Also because there's no one watching."

"Because no one's watching?" Starlight frowned. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Obviously," Jamjars huffed, as if she was explaining things to a foal half Starlight's age, "you have to act different depending on who's watching you. Or at least I do. Like with that weird bat. I have appearances to maintain, and if I look nice and friendly, ponies whom I want to leave me alone won't do what I want. And then they'll realize I'm not nice and friendly, and get all mad at me for it even though it was their fault for not taking me seriously in the first place. But you're strong, so you can take it if I have to make an example of you once in a while."

Starlight shook her head in confusion, slowly recalling just how much trouble she had had getting the Riverfall mares to understand her and her points of view. Every time Jamjars explained herself, things seemed coherent, but she couldn't wrap her head around the whole, like there were dozens of individual rules that together formed something she couldn't see. Was this how the Riverfall mares had felt about her? Part of her wanted to be curious and patient. The other part of her didn't want to get bothered about who she liked and knew she lacked a way to make Jamjars leave her alone.

"So what's the world like?" Jamjars asked. "I'm inviting you to brag, here, by the way, so you better enjoy it. But where are we going? I've lived my life in a hole in the ground with nothing to do but tease Snow and yell at Mom for having more foals she can't care for. What are we going to do? What do we get to do? And what are we not supposed to do that we can do anyway?"

Deciding she wasn't going to get to read the book after all, Starlight sighed and relented. "We're going to Riverfall," she explained. "Me and Maple are staying there, and so's White Chocolate, which probably means you are as well. There are lots of mares who are very curious and will probably bug us for stories about Ironridge, but are also mostly nice, so please be nice to them too. It rains a lot, just like Ironridge, but doesn't get too hot either, at least when I was there. I don't know how much there is to do, but unicorns are rare there, so everyone thinks magic is impressive and useful. If you want to be popular, just be nice and it shouldn't be hard."

"Hmmph." Jamjars rolled onto her back in the chair, letting her mane spill out onto the floor. "I'm more interested in things to do, but that's nice. What do ponies do that they don't want you to know about? Stuff that would be fun to spy on? You know... secrets."

Starlight truthfully didn't know. The only secrets she had ever learned in Riverfall were Arambai's, and given how he treated everything like a secret, she couldn't tell how secretive those had truly been. Then again, she had conditioned herself to find nothing interesting back in Equestria, so she was probably bad at spotting things that were actually interesting.

That brought her train of thought back to the book she held. "Do you mind if I read this?" she asked. "Riverfall can't be that far away. We got here from there in one night by boat and upriver."

"Sure." Jamjars closed her eyes, all four legs poking into the air as she reclined. "If you're going to be staying up, watch me while I sleep to make sure that bat doesn't mess with me. We've reached an understanding, but I don't trust her."

Starlight didn't start reading, keeping her eyes instead on Jamjars. A minute passed, and Jamjars' eyes flew open... and when she saw Starlight still watching, she smirked and went to sleep for real. Starlight mentally rolled her eyes; she knew there would be a test. Maybe she was figuring out Jamjars after all.

Eventually, Jamjars' stolen poster from the Spirit hideout slipped out of her mane, bouncing once and rolling away on the floor. When she continued to slumber, her yellow coat and upright legs shifting in time with her breathing, Starlight decided enough was enough. Why she didn't just camouflage herself again, she didn't know. It didn't require the filly's horn to be alight, so it should have worked while she was sleeping.

She opened the book... and rapidly shut it, ears twitching as Jamjars opened her mouth and began to snore.

Fine. She would go somewhere else, then. Starlight got up, floating the book alongside her, picked a random direction and started to trot.

Comments

[Quinch]

Jamjars was striking me as a perpetual hassle for anyone she crossed paths with, but now I'm starting to think she's actual trouble.

[sploopy slooder]

jellyjugs the miniature psychopath. shes a weiiiirrrrd little gremlin child, thats for sure.