• 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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Gracefully Hollow And Falling

The western mountains' shadow reached down, sweeping across Sires Hollow as the evening wore on, like someone had pulled out a plug and left all the light to flow away into the eastern sea. It was the same phenomenon Shinespark and Valey would have witnessed day after day, living in Ironridge, and they shared stories about places they had watched the sunset mountain shadow from with Amber as they worked to prepare a party.

Minute by minute, it rose across the town, climbing the crag that separated the valley from the sea, until that crag's peak gleamed all the brighter in the dying light, highlighted by the contrast with the world around it. Gerardo surmised it was often cloudy in a place like this. It seemed the weather was blessing them. And finally, when the glowing peak pierced the second-floor windows like a beacon, Maple and Starlight decided it was time to come down.

"Are you feeling better?" Maple gently prodded, watching as Starlight got to her hooves.

"Sort of. Good enough." Starlight wasn't feeling bad, really, but she was far from good, either. Empty was the only way to describe it. She suspected she was in shock, and her brain would start again later... but had reached the point where she was bored, laying on the bed, and that was a signal it was time to do something else.

Her legs worked, at least, almost carrying her to the door of their own accord. Her eyes were dry, but she felt like a ghost. Or more specifically, the opposite of a ghost: if ghosts were dead and didn't know what to do without a life, she suddenly found herself with a life she didn't know what to do with.

"Starlight!" Valey yelped as Starlight reached the staircase landing, caught hovering around the hallway and hanging colorful streamers. "Uhh... surprise?" She grinned, a wave of half-finished decorations behind her, but the grin faded into serious concern. "Hey... You doing better?"

Starlight shrugged. "Good enough that I'd rather be out here than hiding."

"Starlight?" Shinespark poked her head out of the kitchen. "You did come down? We hope you're alright..."

"I hope so too," Maple announced, appearing behind Starlight on the stairs. "And I'm optimistic. What's all this?"

"A sendoff party, of course." Gerardo appeared from another room with a quick bow. "That's what we were already hoping for, wasn't it? In lieu of your sudden absence, we opted to carry on the preparations ourselves. What do you think?"

"Wow," Maple said, wandering around. "You really did try to pick up the slack. How long were we even up there?"

Long enough, in Starlight's book. Most of the decorations were hoof-made, out of ordinary supplies like paper, loud and bright and less there to be pretty than to say that someone cared enough to take the time to make them. They were the kind of decorations she would have had fun making before Sunburst left, and found frivolous and pointless afterward. But here, from the other side of a journey through the north, she saw the message instead of the decorations. It was a message she wanted to hear.

It also reminded her that she'd be losing these ponies tomorrow morning, but she was out of tears for the evening. Just another sensation of falling, she supposed, like her grounding had been cut away.

Starlight was falling. Her friends, her life on the Dream, her fear of the gray visions and her own power, everything she defined herself by was being taken away, and there was nothing around her, not even ground. When you were falling, the wind shredded in your ears and even your screams were left behind, but you were technically untouched and fine. You only got hurt when you hit something, like the bottom, and whatever there was to hit was out of her hooves. This might have felt fine, a brief moment of serenity, but she was at the mercy of the world around her.

She needed something to grab onto. But everything felt so distant, like it was rushing by, and even the comforting care of her friends was a floor that was fading as they prepared to leave. At least as long as she didn't hit the bottom, for now she would be fine.

"...Where's Fluffy Fleece?" she asked, her brain kicking in and trying to imitate normalcy while her soul was in free-fall.

"I took her back home quite a while ago," Gerardo replied with a shake of his head. "It hardly seemed fair to either of you to keep her around when... Well, you know. She was rather worried for you."

"Yeah, what happened?" Valey pressed. "Bananas, we're worried about you too, you know. And this is the second time this has happened today. Kinda giving some bad reminders of that stuff with your Artifice back on Kinmari..."

Starlight shook her head. "This time was different. I just realized the other me might have been lying about my gray future visions."

Valey raised an eyebrow. "Wait, isn't that the whole reason we went to the crystal palace at Kinmari? I thought we already suspected she was a fraud. I did, at least."

Starlight sighed. Whatever she had made herself forget at the flame of honesty, she had no way of knowing how or whether it fit in with her new epiphany. For all she knew, it could even line up perfectly. But it wasn't worth thinking about. That would only tempt her to second-guess her forgotten reasoning, and if there was one thing she needed to get back, it was her trust in herself. She had to trust her reasoning for forgetting. There was no way around it.

"Uhh, Starlight?" Valey tilted her head.

"Oh! Sorry." This had to be the dozenth time Starlight had gotten called out today for having her head in the clouds... "Well, I still wanted to trust her, and we don't know what happened there."

Everyone probably wanted to ask what changed. If Starlight had been them, she would have. But her friends seemed to pick up that the how and the why were a little less important than the fact that she had been through a frankly unreasonable amount and if she wanted to say that anything set her off, she was more than entitled to it.

Starlight had no idea how she felt about that. She really did have a perfect excuse to be upset, didn't she?

She wished she had an acceptable target to take something out on. She wished she could take anything out period without ruining her horn and crippling herself for weeks while it wore off. But neither of those were the case, and so she would have to just ignore that excuse, or be upset in ways that were less destructive to herself and the things around her. If it weren't for the repercussions, though, it would have felt very good to find a mountain nobody cared about and let loose everything she had against its slopes. As strong as she was, mountains were plenty big. They could handle it.

"Well," Maple interrupted, breaking the silence, "Starlight, if you'll be fine, I think I need to get to work on dinner. It's a little late, but I'm sure I can still make something worth remembering."

"Actually, uhh..." Valey chuckled, glancing to Shinespark and Gerardo. "We kinda started something ourselves. Sorta. Amber's off looking for ingredients. It'd be great if you pitched in, but we thought we should have something with a little effort from all of us."

Maple arched her back as she walked into the kitchen, stretching. "Well, then let's get cooking."


Starlight found herself not particularly useful for cooking, and now without a friend to tag along with while the adults did their thing. It brought a new realization to mind: with Fluffy around, it was that much easier to find something to do. However she had survived the endless voyages on the Immortal Dream without dying of boredom, she would never know, but it probably had something to do with not enjoying much of anything.

Now, though, her taste had apparently been whetted, because Starlight's hooves itched with a tiny urge to do something, like an itch behind an ear that wasn't bad enough to scratch. That still didn't mean she knew what to do with herself, but her feeling of falling hadn't abated. There was some sort of block in her mind protecting her from the reality of her friends' departure, maybe by making her feel like it had already happened, but whatever the reason she felt empty and the space in her head felt empty and she needed to hold something close. Preferably something that could keep her busy.

Her wandering carried her back to the rose-tile bathroom, though this time her reaction wasn't severe. Rather than feeling like an intruder, it felt like she wasn't there at all, like the room was in the present but she was the one stuck in time. How could she not belong if she wasn't even present? She could do anything, and the room might not notice at all.

...She wished she was better at revelry. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to lock herself away and do something utterly self-indulgent and without care for anything else. Throwing aside her cares for a moment sounded fun. But the problem was she had no indulgences this act could be. And whatever revelation she had gained that made that one single, strained laugh possible was now as far away as the moon, and she couldn't even grasp where it had started.

Starlight frowned. Thinking about not doing things wasn't the same as doing something, which was what she wanted. Even though she didn't know how to go about that at all... Think, Starlight. What would Memory Starlight do? What would Fluffy do? Even if her heart wasn't in it, this wasn't an act. It was what she wanted to do.

Fluffy probably would have tracked her attention back onto decorating Starlight's room. Memory Starlight probably would have curiously agreed, watching with interest as the other filly was in her element. So that was what Starlight did, stepping back from the bathroom to her room and looking at the opened crates and her loosely-arranged desk and bedframe.

...Her desk wasn't empty. It held Fluffy's sketchbook, along with a note on the cover.

Dear Starlight, it read, in the perfect format of a foal who had been taught to write letters to distant relatives and never realized you could break from the conventional opening if you didn't need its formality, I hope you feel better soon. Here is the sketchbook I put designs for my own room in. You should read it! Maybe it will inspire you or help you feel better. I hope I see you soon. Your friend, Fluffy Fleece.

Fluffy was worried?

Well, of course she was. But something about a pony she would get to stay with caring about her made her feel... a whole lot worse, because it reminded her that her friends were leaving but it hadn't happened yet and here she was being a ghost and not knowing how to follow their example and make some happy last memories and Starlight thumped her head on the desk to cut off her train of thought right there.

Something else about the note made her feel good. Her friends cared for her, and she would miss them, but maybe there was a future for her beyond them for her to seize.

That wasn't the nicest feeling either. She didn't want to betray them, downplay their worth or their importance to her. They were the ponies for whom she had fought windigoes and Crystal, after all. But a guilty, jealous corner of herself that cared more about her own needs than them was relieved, because it was a ray of light, at least, for her.

She didn't want that part to feel guilty. She wished she could feel good about her own victories, whether from luck or from anything she had done. And the worst part was, she didn't know if that guilt was born of a straight moral compass, or something else she had been telling herself that she shouldn't have been listening to.

Starlight wasn't just falling, she was without direction. She needed someone she could look to, because no amount of trust or mistrust in herself would make her any more perfect. But still, there was a big difference between falling and having hit the bottom.

Maybe it would be worth the gamble to trust in the world to provide.

With nothing better to do, Starlight sat down, put her hooves on the desk and her chin on her hooves, flipped open the sketchbook and started reading.

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