• Published 23rd Jun 2017
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The Olden World - Czar_Yoshi



Equestrian culture loves cutie marks. Filly Starlight Glimmer hates them and never wants one. So, she leaves Equestria.

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Shards, Scattered And Found

Starlight remembered what her house looked like right before she saw it. The house she saw didn't really look like what she remembered.

The two floors were still there, the top one smaller than the bottom one, creating a space where she could sneak out a window and sit on the roof and watch the stars at night, or hang out with Sunburst. The red wood shingles were the same, though someone had fixed the one that was knocked loose the one time she slipped and nearly fell. But the window through which she had once exited was empty, and no lights shone in her old room beyond.

Once, they had kept a hedge, though only to the sides of the house rather than around the front yard. It was a cramped hedge, but Starlight had found a hole and burrowed her way into a hollow inside, making it a secret base barely big enough for one, and stashed small amounts of snacks there for days when she felt like sneaking outside to read, or spying on the neighbors during their very unremarkable cookouts and other outdoor routines. Now, the hole she once used was completely grown over, the hedge around it poorly pruned, because no one had crawled into it in far too long.

A long time ago, her mother had used the front windowsill to cool desserts in that evening hour between baking them and dinner. It was a time when little fillies should have been playing outside, and little Starlight spent precious minutes of her time eyeing that windowsill. There was a time when she could touch the bottom if she stood on her hind legs and reared up all the way, and then a time when she could scrape the bottom of the pie tins and cake pans with the tip of her horn, until the proud day when she could nudge the desserts with her horn without her forehooves leaving the ground. It had been a game, how scared she could make her parents that she was going to steal them without actually going all the way. It had become such a tradition that she had a record of her height, once, from the scratches her horn left in the paint. But now those scratches were painted over. The whole house was painted, actually, but the rest of the paint had never been hers.

...She paused, looking at the windowsill again. Was it just her, or was it eye level with her now?

Maybe she had grown in the months she had been away. Maybe she had not only grown then, but during the months before she fled where she didn't do much of anything. Or maybe it was an illusion because the windowsill was all the way across the yard. The past always looked smaller from a distance, after all.

"Well?" Fishy said, stepping up to the sidewalk and stopping. "Here we are. What do you think, honey? Has it changed?"

Starlight stared at the house for a moment longer before she knew her answer. "Not as much as I have."

Maple put a quiet hoof on her shoulder.

Behind them, Valey waited patiently. "You wanna check it out?"

"Okay..." Starlight was too busy remembering to consider what she wanted, but at Valey's request, she stepped forward down the path to the porch.

There was a segment of the sidewalk where someone had left things a tiny bit uneven, creating a spot where careless ponies could trip. Starlight didn't even remember it was there until she went out of her way to avoid it.

The woodwork creaked faintly as she stepped up to the door, partly a familiar creak, but one that had changed over time. "It's locked," Fishy called behind her. "I suppose we'll have to-"

Starlight shrugged, lit her horn and teleported.


Inside the foyer, there was a small amount of dust, but not as much as she expected. Little enough that she could ignore it in favor of what really mattered. What really mattered were things like the shoe rack, where her father once kept wading boots for fishing at the northern lake, and her mother kept polished horseshoes that made a special click when she walked. It was also a rack where some of the nails holding the sides on had started to come undone, after the day she tripped over the door while running inside too fast and caught the rack while knocking it over somehow. No one had fixed that, she saw. It was still loose when she rocked it a little with a hoof.

Voices were behind her, and she absently unlocked the door so that the others could enter. She didn't pay them any heed, though, drifting into the rest of the house like a ghost.

Past the foyer was a wide-open hallway, the living room to the right, the kitchen and dining room to the left, and closets and a staircase straight ahead. Though the hall ran side to side, it was both broad and deep enough to be the best spot in the house, where she could run from end to end pretending to be something or racing her imagination, and where she could spread out all her toys before being told to clean them up again at night. Was the floor still dented where she had bludgeoned it with a bowling pin to see what would happen? Yes, it was. Was there still dried glue on the ceiling from when she had tried to hide her father's spatula and test her telekinesis at the same time? It seemed no one had ever gotten it all the way off.

Starlight trotted for the staircase, memories floating like dust moats to the left and right, but her second-story room calling to her most of all. The stairs had tiny lips where their floors extended a little further than their backs, and she found herself tapping the fronts of her hind legs against them as she climbed. It was an old, pointless habit she remembered herself having, one she got into purely because she liked the way it felt. The Immortal Dream had the same type of staircase, but she never remembered doing it there.

The stairs had a landing where they turned to the right. When Starlight was waking up and coming down the stairs in a hurry, that turn had been a challenge to be surmounted, the wall an obstacle she had slammed into on more than one unlucky occasion. She could almost feel her nose hurting and her head spinning, just by looking at it, but she could also remember the scent of springtime and the voice of a friend calling her through the door. The memory built itself up on either end, everything she had seen assembling like the crumbs of a dropped cookie into something she really wanted, but had been told she couldn't have.

Before this, she would hear the calls through her window. She would pry the window up with her muzzle and lean out, hooves on the windowsill and mane in the wind.

After this, she would hit the sidewalk running and slow to a jog. Stories would be swapped: what did you do last night? Plans would be made: what do you want to do today? The weather would be sunny, inviting adventure and exploration, or cloudy or rainy, begging for elaborate hiding and muttered, serious conversation.

It was a hundred memories in one, all made from common thread, like a sliced rope in Starlight's heart. She stared at the wall, at a tiny corner near the ground she was certain her parents had never noticed where she carved with tiny text, DUMB WALL, and touched the inscription lightly with her nose, for the first time feeling like breath just wouldn't come.

Her friends weren't following. She could hear them. This was for her.

At the top of the stairs was another landing, with a window and an alcove that was supposed to hold a coffee table and two chairs for reading by the sunlight. It was empty, but that just made it look like the time her parents had pulled it apart themselves for cleaning. Starlight stared at the empty, white walls, with their perfect corners and undisturbed window and no furnishings whatsoever, reeling from the memory of staring at exactly the same thing, years ago. She had never seen her house that bare, back then. It fascinated her like a blank sheet of paper, room that was ready for and had no purpose other than decorating. Her parents hadn't been happy when she decorated it. In retrospect, it had maybe been the second best blanket fort she ever made.

The upstairs also held her parents' bedroom, which was long and narrow and not a place she often went, with a good view in the evening and heavy blinds to keep the sun out in the mornings so her mother could sleep in. She hadn't visited it much, but had at least been there enough to know what it should feel like.

Now, the blinds had been taken down, which was just wrong. They were still there, though, laying stacked at the bases of the windows. Starlight frowned, lit her horn and fixed them, drew them open and nodded, satisfied with her work. Things were a little bit more how they should be.

There was also a bathroom, one with rose-colored tiles and two doors, so it could be accessed from the hallway or her parents' room. That brought back memories of bath time, because she was never allowed to use it. Her parents always made her use the downstairs one, because this one was nicer and they didn't want her splashing and getting it wet. She had always told them maybe she would be more excited about bath time if they let her use the big, fancy bath. They never listened.

But they weren't there to stop her now, were they?

Starlight nosed open the door and slipped inside, feeling naughty enough that she closed the door behind her so no one could see she was here. Funny how she hadn't cared a drop for her parent's rules last time she was here, and suddenly she did care now that she was the only one who could.

She lit her horn, no windows in this room to let in natural light. But her teal didn't look good on pink. With a bit of searching, she found the light switch, having never previously seen where it was, and then the room was hers.

It was big. It was rosy. Its abundant porcelain was cool to the touch, and it still smelled faintly of roses, left over from the soap her parents only stocked in this bathroom. That was her mother's smell.

Somewhere in Starlight's mind, a version of her bounced around, climbing and exploring the room and rubbing against the cool tiles and giggling at her trespass and discovery. It wasn't a memory. Starlight had never done this. It was a Starlight that should never have been allowed to die.

But all the current Starlight could do was stand and stare, ears and tail down and head high, perfectly still, wonder on her face in the mirror and a tiny tear in her eye. That other Starlight in her head was happy. But she was gone... but she could still remember her. She wanted her back.

If she knew what that Starlight would do, why couldn't she make that come true?

She couldn't, though. The Starlight she missed and remembered was like a Starlight in a mirror, and she was so tempted to smash the mirror and reach through and grab her and take her place in a happier, better life as a happier, more complete pony. But she couldn't. She couldn't because that mirror was already broken and she was already the Starlight on the other side, looking back at the real one who should have kept existing all along. And the pieces of that broken mirror were her memories, scattered and found all around this house and village, which she couldn't stop herself from putting back together.

It was too much. Starlight yanked open the bathroom door and ran out, leaving the lights on, instinct carrying her straight for the room she always went to when she truly needed to hide.

Her room was completely barren. Every memory she had made here was packed away and gone.

Starlight choked on a single sob. She wanted it back. She wanted to be that carefree filly again! She lit her horn... Flash!

With a burst of teal, there was her bed. Made from crystal, but perfectly sculpted and positioned, right where it used to be.

It wasn't enough. Starlight looked around... Desk and chair. Flash. Bookcase. Flash. Toy chest in the corner. Flash. Hideous school project hanging unceremoniously from the ceiling like a hunter's trophy? Flash!

But no matter how many things she tried to bring back, the most important things were the ponies. Without them, nothing she could build wouldn't fall apart. After all, that was what started all this in the first place.

Starlight crawled onto her crystal bed next to the window, the paint on the window frame peeling from the times she had tried to affix decals to it using tape, and cried.


Valey and Maple stood quietly on the landing, looking through the half-open door at Starlight as she clung to her crystal bed and wept. "Do I go to her?" Maple whispered, ears flat.

"Bananas," Valey said. "Look at those crystals. She really did never get over this place."

"What do I do, though!?" Maple breathed. "Look at her..."

Valey shrugged. "She needs stuff that just isn't here anymore. Think you're the closest she has."

Maple stepped into the room, crossing quickly over to Starlight now her mind had been made up. "Starlight..."

"I want my old life back," Starlight sniffled. "All of it. I miss it..."

Maple frowned, sitting on the bed beside her and pulling Starlight against her side. "Your parents and Sunburst, or other things, too?"

"Everything."

"Starlight..." Maple sighed, rubbing her back. "Do you want to stay here? Instead of returning to Ironridge? It's one of the options we saved the writ for. So I could use it and stay here with you."

"I want everything back," Starlight repeated. It didn't matter whether or not it was a reasonable demand. She needed to make it. The truth needed to be said.

Maple sat there for a moment. "Fishy says there's maybe two other ponies in the village who can teleport," she eventually told her. "She said Sunburst went to school on far less than that. If we stayed, and you decided something like that was most important to you, we could go that way too. Maybe you could meet again."

Starlight wiped her nose on the crystals. "But the me Sunburst was friends with is gone. I'm s-so different! And I don't miss him nearly as much as I miss that me..."

"You miss who you used to be," Maple whispered. "You want to be that filly again?"

"Yes..." Starlight raised her head. "I miss not caring about anything other than what I did last night and what I would do today! I miss looking forward to waking up so much that I run down the stairs, and I miss laughing! I miss making up things to hide from and I miss having someone to hide with and I miss going to school and exploring the town and watching ponies go fishing and thinking about things that weren't how to stay alive and everything!"

"Oh, Starlight..." Maple exhaled, rocking gently. "We need to stop traveling. You have no roots. You can't put any down without getting them torn away. We can't wait until we build a new town on the land Garsheeva gave us. You need this now."

"I needed it ages ago."

"I know. But we can't turn back time," Maple murmured. "Take the time you need, and then we'll talk to ponies and think of something. But I'd like for us to visit some things you enjoyed that are still here. Sunburst might have been your best friend, but he wasn't the only pony in your life, just like how I have friends beyond Amber and Willow. I promise it'll all be over soon and things can start getting back to normal."

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