Lily's Letter

by Miller Minus

IV - Her Decision

We stumbled in through the window—me before her—but recovered quickly and trotted into the great hall. We walked towards the middle—a single bench between us. There were thirty rows total, all neatly arranged throughout the hall, and split down the middle by a long white carpet. The backs of the benches were covered in ribbons and streamers and Hearth's Warming lights of red, green, and yellow. Lily's white-and-pink form and her blue-and-yellow dress fit the scene honestly well.

The benches faced the throne, or at least where it was supposed to be. It had indeed been moved—replaced by a white wooden arch covered in flowers that I couldn't identify even if I named all the flowers I knew. In front of the arch was a podium at the end of the carpet, and at the top of a small set of stairs. Next to the podium was something that looked like an artist's easel. Its canvas was covered in a blue piece of fabric lined with gold rope.

I marvelled at the setup and said, "It's a funeral."

"What? No! Are you kidding?"

"What is it then?"

"Look!" She gestured widely to the flower arrangements all over the room. "It's a wedding!" she said, almost elating at the fact.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Oh... well, same thing, right?"

She scoffed at first, but transitioned into a laugh. "I mean, in a way, if you want to be a jerk about it."

"In a way! Lily, there might as well be two coffins up there. Seriously, go check!"

Lily rolled her eyes and strolled up the carpet; she had a skip in her step.

"I've heard of this crap," I said. "It's a wedding for the nobles. They pay an irresponsible amount of money to the castle in order to host their wedding in the royal throne room." I flicked a decoration, and it jingled at me. "And I guess there's a holiday-themed package."

"Oh, yeah? It costs that much?"

"Of course! I mean, if it keeps our taxes down then I'm not complaining, but... You know what the best part is?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I couldn't possibly."

"I read somewhere... that the more extravagant the wedding, the more likely the bride and groom are buying a one way ticket to Splitsville."

Her eyes fell half-closed. "Still reading your editorials, I see."

"Of course! Only the ones I agree with, though."

Lily rolled her eyes again and got up behind the podium.

I continued: "But it makes sense, right? Nobles don't want to marry somepony, they just want to get married. And invite all their friends and their enemies so they can rub it in all their faces. It's a farce!"

Lily spotted a little black microphone sticking out of the wood. She eyed it like it was a large spider. She tapped on it, but no sounds boomed from anywhere. She exhaled and wiped her brow.

Next, she cleared her throat and raised her chin. "Please be seated," she said in a fake, but flawless, noble accent.

I put on a noble frown—the kind everypony else puts on when they've just smelled something gross—and took a seat at the front bench. I crossed my hindlegs and stuck my chin up as high as it could go. My spine screamed. Whose idea was benches for a pony anyways?

"We are gathered here today," Lily announced, "to mourn the passing of two young ponies. Their names, uh..."

"Mr. and Mrs. Groom," I suggested in my own fake accent.

Lily nodded. "Mr. and Mrs. Groom, who both met their unfortunate end on a pier in Manehattan, when Mr. Groom proposed a tragic arrangement of mutually assured destruction to Mrs. Groom, who foolishly accepted."

I clapped. "Keep going!"

Lily cleared her throat again. The smile on her face wouldn't stop blooming. "Please join me in a moment of silence for their former lives, as they move on to another world."

"A world of vapid conversations, false smiles, and arguments over which Manedarin place to order from!"

Lily's eyes fluttered closed. "Could the gentlecolt in the front row please refrain from interrupting?"

I held up my hooves. "Apologies, madame! Please, continuez!"

She did: "We will never forget them as they sent their funeral invitations to all their friends... and their enemies, and spent all of their money on a ceremony that would mean more than the marriage itself."

"Hear, hear!"

We both fell over laughing. Looking back, though, it wasn't that funny. I'd heard somepony say once, that love was falling over laughing together for no reason. I thought about it, but I didn't believe it. After all, it was a sign of insanity, too.

She picked herself up first, and I watched her wipe a tear from her eye, rolling both of them as she flung it into the carpet.

"I'm so glad you invited me," I said.

"Oh, I know... It's been far too long."

The question from the tower suddenly burst forth, and I couldn't stop it. "Why did we drift apart, anyways?"

"…I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."

"Really? I can't get it off my mind. I mean it's not like we're incompatible. We're a house on fire here." I glanced at all the wooden benches and decorations. "Speaking of fire…"

"No, c'mon, that's too crazy even for us."

I approached the front bench and placed a hoof on a corner. "I know, I know... but I still wanna rough it up a bit."

"...What?"

Before she could protest, I put all my weight into the bench and watched it tip over backwards. I stepped back and sneered, anticipating the sound of smothered bells against the stony floor.

But it never came. A coat of pink magic swept over it at the crucial moment, tipping it back to where it was.

I looked back at Lily's glowing horn. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"What are you doing?" she shot back. "This is somepony's wedding."

"It—... It's a noble's wedding. Who cares? They can pay for the damages. Besides, you know as well as I do that love isn't real."

She shook her head in revulsion. "Speak for yourself."

"What?" I laughed. "Okay, I will. Love is nothing more than a chemical reaction experienced by two ponies whose lives are so boring they mistake a primal instinct for a turning point in their aforementioned boring lives."

Lily's frown turned into a scowl—her make-up creased unattractively.

I kept going: "And they act on that instinct because they've reached the critical stage in their lives where they're finally too old to hold out for something that doesn't exist, so they placebo themselves into thinking they've found it, and in the utmost haste—!" I gestured to the entire room. "They tie the knot before they can change their minds. That's what love is. Don't you agree?"

Lily looked down at her hooves and kicked an imaginary rock. "No. I used to, but... not anymore."

"Then what was that eulogy about?"

"I was... kidding around, playing along, I don't know..."

A silence hung between us like somepony separating two friends from an ensuing fight. I expected some kind of rebuttal. Her take on the whole thing. But when nothing came, I figured she didn't have anything. Seeing her saddened without any sort of retort started to make me angry.

I chalked it up to reunion jitters, but that was something I had made up to keep me calm. "Alright, whatever," I said to the floor. "I should get going anyways."

"Beauty sleep?" Lily barely joked.

"Yeah, exactly... This was fun, though."

Without looking, she made a half-hearted sound of agreement.

I panicked. "We should do this again sometime," I suggested, swallowing harshly.

Her mouth opened a crack. "...Really?" she said.

"Yeah, we should... I don't want to drift apart again. I missed talking to you."

She didn't respond.

"So, how about..."

An empty schedule appeared in my mind, like my brain was making fun of me.

"…how about tomorrow?"

Without breaking eye contact, she said, "I'm tied up tomorrow."

"Right, right... Oh, right! That was in your letter. So... when are you free?"

She bit her lower lip.

"…Lily?"

"You don't understand."

"...What don't I understand?" I couldn't help but leak venom into my voice. "Lily?"

Her mouth shuddered. "I'm tied up tomorrow... Onward."

I squinted. "What do you mean...?"

She didn't answer. I looked left and right, as if there was an answer hidden in the empty benches.

In fact, there was.

A dark, bubbling pit of anger formed inside me. I trudged past Lily towards the podium and the easel. I think she heard me growl.

"Streak, wait, don't..."

I got to the easel and flung off the velvet covering.

---

CELEBRATING THE MARRIAGE OF:

Fancy Pants

&

Fleur-De-Lis

---

I stared at the poster a second and tilted my head. I recognized the first name in a searing hot flash of bad memories, but the second one was foreign to me—literally. My stomach felt like it was being pulled in two directions as I tried to make sense of what I was looking at. And when the agonizing truth dawned on me, my whole body felt the pull.

I turned back to Lily, who was staring blankly to the side.

"…Fleur-De-Lis?"

"…It means Lily Flower," she explained. "It's my cutie mark, actually."

"But it's not your name."

"I had it changed. It was…"

She gestured to the poster.

"…his idea."

Something boiled in my chest—something that had been simmering my whole life. I pointed a hoof accusingly at her. "You're a joke," I said.

She wrinkled her nose. I was expecting her to cry, but she didn't. "Thanks for ruining the big reveal," she muttered. "I was going to tell you."

"After everything he put you through. Put us through. You just couldn't resist the money, huh?"

"He's… changed," she answered, as if that was even possible. As if that was even an acceptable answer.

She kept going: "You should really meet him. I think you'd get along." A contrite smile appeared on her face. "He kind of gets along with everyone."

The image she wanted to conjure in my head—of that smarmy stallion being anything other than cruel—wouldn't appear.

I changed the subject. "So why bring me here, huh? Was it just to rub it in? Just to show me how much better than me you've become?"

"No…"

"Because here I thought you just wanted to see me again!"

"I did! Didn't you read the letter? I said I wanted to say hello!"

"You wanted to say GOODBYE!"

I slammed my hooves on the podium, pushing it with all my strength until it tipped forward. But of course, the pink magic appeared and tipped it back to where it was with a long, hollow thud.

She stared at me like the teachers did at magic school. Like they all knew better than me.

"We can still... hang out sometime," she said, contradicting herself.

I stamped a hoof to shut her up. "Not goodbye to me! To yourself! Everything you said up there? About how you're dying? You may have been kidding, but it's all true."

She uttered something I didn't hear.

"This is the end up here. You're not living after a wedding, not really. It's the end of yourself."

She closed her eyes and muttered to herself, like a prayer, "And the start of a new me."

"A FAKE you!" I blurted, my voice cracking at the crucial moment. "A pointless, directionless husk of yourself! You'll be walking small talk!"

She opened her eyes and sniffed loudly. She waited there like a child accepting punishment.

So I kept it going. "And you're marrying into nobility no less," I seethed. "That isn't you! How are you gonna—?"

"He's signed me up for classes."

"He's making you take CLASSES?!"

"I ASKED him to!" There was the first tear, and the few that followed. She angrily wiped her face, smearing her makeup. "Would you lay off him?! We aren't in… school… anymore."

All the anger drained from her face—replaced with overwhelming tiredness. Somewhere behind that makeup, that dress, and those eyelashes, a decision had been made, but I didn't know what it was. I just knew it involved me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You should go."

Before I could answer, the pair of tall stone doors at the opposite end of the hall burst open. Lily and I froze. A single guard stood in the doorway, perplexed at what he saw, because he saw me first. He threw words like 'criminal', 'brigand', and 'scum' at me just by looking, and I felt like I was shrinking. But then he noticed Lily, and he relaxed.

"Oh," he spoke in a deep voice. "You're here early, Ms. Fleur. This a friend of yours?"

Lily picked her head up to greet the stallion with a smile. "Yes… just an old friend." Her noble accent was back. It was effortless to her. "In fact, he was just leaving."

"Oh, okay." The guard frowned and scratched his chin. "He, uh… probably shouldn't be here anyways," he murmured himself.

Lily held up a hoof to her snout. "Oh, goodness, I didn't realize. I apologize if I've caused any trouble." All she was missing was a dainty kerchief. "In that case, would you mind escorting him out yourself?"

The guard smiled casually. "That's quite alright, Ms. Fleur. Probably better if I do, yes."

"Oh, and by the way…" Lily cantered down the aisle and retrieved the key ring from her dress, dangling it in front of the guard's face. "We found these behind the podium, sir. Do you recognize them?"

The guard's mouth dropped open, and he nearly choked. "…Uh… Nope! Can't say I do, ma'am. Tell you what, though, ummmmmm, why don't I hold onto these…"

He took the keys in his own magic and stored them in a small rectangular compartment in the flank of his armor, which, quite obviously, had an identical set already inside. He turned back, blushing.

"…and I'll find out who's lost them."

Lily patted the guard on his chest plate. "Thank you kindly, sir. Streak?"

I stared back and forth at the two of them. I felt like an audience to a play—an amateur one, where the characters didn't act like real ponies because the actors were trying too hard.

Lily cleared her throat to grab my attention. "It was nice seeing you again," she said flatly. "I'm truly glad you came."

She meant that. I knew Lily; she was always sincere, except for the past few hours, it seemed, and especially these last few minutes. So when she said something so sincere it was like seeing an explosion in a field of wheat.

I didn't respond, because I didn't know how to mimic that sincerity.

Comments

[PresentPerfect]

When she said it was a wedding, I was starting to wonder if this wasn't set before the changeling invasion. What a reveal nevertheless!

[Hap]

Was the very end of this chapter the first time the main characters gender was mentioned?

The dialogue, the emotions, every interaction, seemed to be between mares. This changes the subtext of every word that has come before, and undermines all of the character building you've done up to this point.

I will second 8774386 that the setup and reveal were both well done.

[Miller Minus]

9005313
It sounded like it was between two mares?

[Hap]

9005384
It absolutely did. I would have described the main character as "catty," right up until the word "him" about 300 words from the end of the story that reveals Streak to be a stallion.

[Ice Star]

I like the sudden drama, the reveal, and the spontaneous element to this little every day adventure. I do, however, feel I was misled by the tags, because using the 'other' tag in place of a certain' unicorn's didn't feel like it was actually hiding anything when I could have gone into this and simply assumed I was reading about two OCs, for example, with only a slight tag change and the mystery would still be intact. It also doesn't help potential fans of the character find this story.

9005313 No, Streak was mentioned as male before, as I recall. Though, I'm not sure what led you think that he was female. Without the mentions of him being a stallion, I'm sure most people would have read the character either way, but it doesn't change the story to have their sex be reversed.

[Moosetasm]

8774386
Yeah, I went there with it too. But that it was their wedding? Took me by surprise.