The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

The Bigger Mare

The rain hadn't stopped as Starlight and her friends crossed the final distance back to the Immortal Dream. Starlight walked at Valey's side, a faintly-luminescent crystal umbrella protecting both of them from her back. Shinespark covered Glimmer with a shield of telekinesis, and Maple and Amber looked like they were enjoying the rain, Amber even making a point to splash in puddles along the road.

Starlight's horn felt different than before. She knew her meeting with the Ironridge harmonic flame had changed her: while the initial aftereffects were hazy in her mind, it left her with a small, permanent well of power that let her horn function like a normal unicorn's before her own, broken magic kicked in. Now, she felt like it was swirling comfortably, like something in her horn was spinning, and she had enough power to cast one spell with the full force of the tree's might before seeing what she was left with. Maybe the amount she could do in a day before she started hurting herself would increase? Or maybe the flames had already done everything for her they could. But she didn't think that was very likely. Her crystal umbrella had been far easier to shape than usual, as if the crystal had conformed directly to her intentions rather than requiring the usual full focus it took to make specialized shapes. Something had changed. She could feel it in her core.

"And so Celestia snuck around like that for no reason. Can you believe it? They didn't even find that hole in the bathroom floor until there was a clog and an overflow months later and water started leaking. Bananas, these goddesses like to play games with themselves," Valey was rambling, clearly enjoying the fresh air. "So what did you wish for, anyway?"

Starlight bit her lip. "It's a secret."

"Aww, come on," Valey pouted. "That's what you said last time. Fine, though. If you really don't wanna say..."

They reached the ship deck, the gangplank already extended. It was still late afternoon, so no one felt like turning in for the night, but everyone was tired nonetheless. Words were exchanged: now that the power was back on, maybe they would get everyone together to go into the city for dinner. Absolutely everyone, Nyala not excluded. Meltdown had been briefed about Valey's wish and offered to take Navarre securely from them, so a permanent guard would no longer be necessary. But that still left them with several hours, and now Starlight had to decide who to talk to first.

"You still want to ask me about these?" Glimmer whispered as the others stepped inside, clutching the sealed folder to her chest and protecting it from rain.

"You're willing to tell me?" Starlight blinked. "You usually don't like doing that."

Glimmer shrugged. "In this case, I've had a change of heart. The flame can't communicate to me directly, but anything with a soul can feel some emotional resonance from that place. I stayed down there a while longer, and it got some things through to me about your talk."

"Oh." Starlight wasn't sure how to feel about that. "Well, okay."

Glimmer scanned with her ears, standing under Starlight's umbrella. "No one is around?"

"It doesn't look like it."

Glimmer took a breath, then started in a low voice. "These are documents relating to a contract between the Empire and a faction in Varsidel. It's a weapons contract. The manufacturing is done in Varsidel, for Varsidel, but the Empire provides the designs. What was going to go out to them involved some technology from Indus."

Starlight folded her ears. "More? It feels like everything down there is related to that place."

"It is." Glimmer nodded. "That's where Garsheeva keeps every bit that she has, along with the generator the Equestrians built to power the mountains. Either way, there's nothing about this you need to know. This is my project and my concern. I just thought you might like to know."

Starlight frowned. "If you're really me, how come you need a tree to tell you how I feel about it when you keep telling me I don't need to know things?"

"I'm fallible." Glimmer shrugged. "Also, you just needed a tree to tell you how you felt about yourself."

Starlight worked her jaw, but Glimmer's logic felt flawless. "So... does that mean you never went down there and learned how you were feeling? In your time?"

Glimmer bit her lip, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

"Bad question. Sorry."

Starlight looked down, realizing she must have touched on an uncomfortable subject. Of course, if Glimmer's life had been bad enough that she had done something to the world that was worth traveling back through time to undo... places where she might have it better would be very painful subjects. What had happened in Glimmer's world? Maybe she had saved Valey from the explosion herself, and then not had her horn and been unable to communicate with the flame or the generator in the palace... or maybe her world would have been completely different. Glimmer had told her she helped reconstitute her after she used the harmony extractor to kill windigoes in Ironridge. If she hadn't had someone of her own who could have done that, she would have died, so her world couldn't even have included that...

It was suddenly hard to imagine Glimmer wasn't an entirely different pony. Instinctively, Starlight put a hoof over her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Well, look at you," Glimmer replied with an interested smile, mood completely vanished. "Thanks, but yes, I am. Listen..." She took a deep breath. "There are a lot of things that simply aren't safe for me to tell you, because they could steer you towards a future I want to prevent. And I'm sorry that I have to dance around so much. I don't know if you would appreciate a reassuring lie more than no answer or a misleading truth, but I need you to trust me. And in return... I'll try to tell you what I can when it's safe. Deal?"

"You're really certain you can't just stop being mysterious and tell me every secret you have?" Starlight's brow creased. "It doesn't help me learn to live with things when you say there's something I can't know, because that means if I did know, I couldn't learn to live with it. It's like you're telling me to do things you don't even believe are possible, and then expecting me to do them all on my own."

"...Yes," Glimmer replied. "I am."

Starlight felt like she had been punched. "Why!?"

"That's the kind of thing I think it would be better not to tell you," Glimmer answered, not letting Starlight see her eyes. "Are you glad I said it anyway? Or would you prefer me to have answered that with silence?"

Starlight indignantly stuck out her lip, still feeling hurt. "I'd like it if that wasn't true in the first place!"

"And how do you propose to change what is truth?" Glimmer countered. "The same way you'd like to change the world so your friends are never in danger and you can be happy because there's nothing to make you anything else?"

"No." Starlight stomped a hoof. "That's not about the world. That's about what you believe I can do! You don't have to lie to have some faith in me! If you don't have any hope for me, why are you even trying to help me at all!?"

Glimmer cringed. "Starlight, stop! I didn't say I had no hope. Just that I was asking you to do the impossible, and given who you are, is that so much to ask? Because you've done it before. Multiple times!"

Starlight did stop, the weight of too little trust on her shoulders replaced with expectations that were equally heavy. "But I..."

"I messed up. I'm sorry." Glimmer hung her head. "I got too involved. When I first started following you, I had a plan to get involved as little as absolutely possible so that I could steer you in one particular direction at one particular time. And the more I talked to you, the more I started to care, and the more I started to wonder if I could be your friend and have you trust me when it matters instead of doing things another way. I abandoned my plan and tried to help you when I didn't need to. I trusted being your friend would work and sacrificed my horn and all of my power for your sake. But I know too much and you're never able to be at peace with that. This should have worked. We should have been able to be friends, but the world is broken. The whole world, Starlight. And... I'm... failing. Please, Starlight."

Starlight's ears fell in fear. "If things are so dangerous, why can't you trust me to be able to help you?"

"Do you want to set aside your own happiness for the good of the world?" Glimmer didn't look up.

"You're not giving me much of a choice," Starlight replied. "Because I'm not happy right now, and you say the world is why you're doing it."

"If you knew everything I do, it wouldn't make you any happier," Glimmer whispered.

"I don't care about knowing things!" Starlight stomped again. "It's not about what I know! It's that you keep telling me I need to learn to deal with problems instead of preventing them from happening, but you're preventing them for me instead of teaching me how to deal with them!"

"...I don't know how to answer, Starlight," Glimmer replied. "I'm sorry."

Starlight's lip trembled. "I'm sorry too. I want friends. I need help. But I'm not strong enough..."

"I wish I could promise you more." Glimmer raised her head. "But even if we have a hard time trusting each other, can we be friends?"

Starlight looked her over. Glimmer's hoof was outstretched, her unseeing eyes pointing just to the side of Starlight's actual face. She could say no. She didn't want to be the bigger mare. She wanted to just be small. Refusing was tempting, with how her heart was feeling. And Glimmer clearly felt like she had messed up too. But if there was any justice in the world...

She reached out and hugged her.

Maybe someday, someone would do to her the same.

Comments

[Boopers]

I'm really wondering... does Glimmer have a cutie mark?

[ponepony]

derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/8/10/2114060.png

It's not the same context, but here's Starlight hugging Glimmer.

[Venlinelle]

Maybe someday, someone would do to her the same.

Someday, on a cloud above a sonic rainboom <3