RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

Dec. 19-May. 20 - When The End Came To Town - 4

I opened my eyes to her side of the bed, empty and cold. With the shutters closed, the walls across the room caught the light of the alarm clock. Not seven in the morning.

Barely visible stains taunted me from their high ground on my ceiling, reminders of the rains that had raged over Ponyville last summer. Though I lingered watching for a while, I still found the fortitude to drag the bedsheets over my head.

Not even her smell remained.

Hesitation was strong but my choice was made after a single breath.

I had to start on with the day. I crawled out from under the covers and welcomed the autumn’s cold bite on my fur. We’d forgotten to close the window.

“Good morning, Mayor,” I whispered to my reflection in the nearby mirror, left standing on the ground at an angle against the wall. What a mess of gray hair. Dissatisfaction scratching under the surface. “Let’s get ready for this marvelous day.”

Straighten up. Two push-ups. Brush those teeth and put the coffee pot on the kitchen fire. Sip it, eat some hay, and brush those teeth again. Don’t forget to smooth that mane and wipe your glasses. You got to be on par for the day.

Once you put your coat on, head out. That’s the good old routine Mayor Mare had always known.

Little activity buzzed in Ponyville’s streets as I locked my door. I reached the town square in a jiffy. Only a few dead leaves welcomed me on the Town Hall’s staircase. Walking to the building’s gate, I quickly made a crisp red-and-yellow purée of them.

I fetched the hefty golden key around my neck, only to pause. Before sliding it in the lock, I turned around to survey the plaza. Not a soul to see and greet.

My study turned into mindless wonder of the many closed-up shops and dark houses. I shook my head and closed myself to the world. Air rushed through my nostrils, biting with the morning cold. Those mornings... Ponyville didn’t smell like bread anymore.

I slid the key in the lock, turned it, and swallowed hard, pushing down the heavy weight that lurked down my throat.

Meagre sunlight dashed through the unlocked gate and chased away the darkness nesting in the main hall. Three months had passed since the last town gathering and dust had coated carpets and benches. Clean-up would have to be called someday soon. But since there was no planned gathering before the end of the year, I hadn’t bothered draining the town’s limited coffers. I couldn’t fancy a misplaced aesthetic pleasure.

I closed the town hall door behind me and hurried upstairs. I knew this place like the back of my hoof and so didn’t need to pull back the large curtains obscuring the windows. Easily enough, I locked myself in my rickety office.

And what a tidy mess it was. Paper piles and gutted reams stacked over and against each other in a haphazard display of provincial bureaucracy. Yellow and blue post-its covered everything — to-dos, key notes, and other mentions I dared not remember by rote for longer than a day marked the whole.

I’d not even sat at my desk that Ditzy was already knocking on my window. She was always on time. I waved my hoof at her and trotted to the pane’s small sliding lock.

“Hello, Miss,” I greeted as I let her in. Hoping you’re having a wonderful day.”

“Sort of, Mayor. Sorry for being brusque but I’ve got to help somepony move this morning.” She hoofed around her worn-out satchel and cleared her throat. “Quite a few letters for you today.”

“Moving in, I hope?” I asked with a half-forced grin as three letters slid my way.

Ditzy’s eyes briefly focused on me. Her smile came and went, replaced by a grim chuckle — to be honest, a parody of a huff. “Always optimistic, Mayor. That’s why we still vote for you.”

My mouth opened slightly. I bit my lips rather than talk. Fleeing her feeble smile, I stared at her satchel, and the fact it missed the symbol of the Ponyville Postal Service. “Thanks for being here, Ditzy.”

“Sure do. Whatever I can to help, Mayor. What would be a town without a post office, right?”

And like so, she and her short-lived smile flew past me through the window. The crack of a forehead against one of the building’s colonnades and a “ouch” followed suit.

I drank the heavy silence in before I found the courage to settle back into my comfy reclining chair. The three letters lined on my desk waited for me.

The first one bore Father’s name.

The second one was serious, official even. The interlaced sun and moon of the Equestrial regal seal adorned its front. I licked my lips and slid my father’s missive to the side.

I muttered a half-assed laugh as I held the royal letter. Its paper envelope was smooth and, even accounting for the content, heavy. A wise pony once told me you could tell a nation’s wealth by the quality of the mundane things a Crown would waste its bits on. With its splurge on such a hefty caliper, the Canterlot Postal showcased the depth of its coffers.

I turned over the envelope to read the address. Written instead of printed — a rare occurrence. A well-sharpened quill had carved deep in the paper and the light blue ink had happily seeped in.

It wasn’t an address. I stiffened at the name and its lack of any preceding title.

Celestia.

I turned the letter over twice, searching for an absent urgent mention. Reluctantly, I put it away squarely over father’s. I hesitated, mind you, but I set it aside nonetheless. It didn’t matter how hard I wanted to open it.

The last letter bore a red wax seal imprinted with the herald of Filthy Rich’s lawyer. Strangely, the name on the letter wasn’t his.

I studied it for a long time, unsure of what to do with it.

I took Celestia’s letter in my hoof and brought it to my muzzle. And smelled it. And laughed. At myself mostly, was I expecting perfumed letters? Maybe… I just noted my office’s old dusty smell overtaking any other scent.

I let a breath I didn’t know I held out, and my decision was made. The princess could still wait.

I retrieved a small dragon claw from my drawer. Some ponies would have raised eyebrows at such a strange letter opener, but it was a gift from a great, adventurous friend who partook in action archeology — let’s not think about that too much, it’s a can of worm all of itself.

I slid the opener under the lawyer’s wax seal and snipped it clean. It sat free on my desk, without a single crack, ready to join my decades-old mayoral collection of seals. I was proud of that collection, as boring as it sounded. Each seal had a small story to it, or rather behind it.

I unfolded the lawyer’s letter and scoured its content, quickly reading through each paragraph’s first and last lines. If Celestia’s letter was heavy, this one’s message carried its own weight in the measure of words. I reached the salutation part, and sank deeper into my seat.

“It’s a marvelous day, Mayor. You just have to accept it.”

Stillness and silence soon became unbearable. I brushed my mane back, pulled myself from the comfort of my inaction, and sprung to the door. The letter fell and scraped against the floor, but I didn’t turn back. I hurried out to the streets.

I had an important visit to make.

It wasn’t ten yet and it sure was already a wonderful morning. As it always was in Ponyville. Routinely so. With its beautiful chirping birds, clouds, houses… And especially beautiful roses, currently getting snipped by a workaholic cream pony with a fitting cutie mark.

She sure loved cutting those roses. Maybe a bit too much…

“Good morning, Miss Roseluck,” I uttered when I entered the garden by her shop. The gate slammed closed behind me, nearly covering the heavy clang of secateurs dropping on the tiled pathway beyond two lines of shaven vines. "Sorry for startling you, Miss. Hoping you’re having a great, sunny day!”

“I am not,” Roseluck gibbed, still hidden low behind her mangled rose bushes.

As she straightened up, her eyes went first to the sky then to me.

“How are you doing?” I asked with a stretched out smile.

First to look away, she arched forward to bite at something around her hooves where I couldn’t see. She grunted through gritted teeth, likely steeling her jaw, and sent her garden gloves barrel over my head.

Only to land on the workbench by the gate behind me.

“I can only guess you’ve received my letter, Mayor?” she said as I turned back to her. “I mean, the lawyer’s.”

“I’ve… Yes, I did.” I gulped and readjusted my glasses up my muzzle. “I wanted to speak with you about it. I–”

“My choice’s final, Mayor,” she cut, brushing a lock of her mane behind her twitching ear. Her pained smile snipped my plea in its bud. “Just… Just know I’m angry. I know you’re here to ask me to reconsider. But... I won’t. And if you open your mouth, you’re going to anger me even more.”

“Nothing wrong in trying, right?” I mumbled.

Her eyes locked onto mine again and she chuckled, ending with a shake of her head.

“I’m angry, but not at you,” she said. “I’m just sorry.”

Her lips were pinched shut as I stepped towards her. Right there and then I wished I could have bargained, or just voiced a sliver of how much I understood her. We fared the same boat. But my pride and hope stood in the way like a bulwark against a reality I wasn’t ready to contend with. I knew Roseluck had come to accept it, and I hadn’t. I was the captain of a ship. It didn’t matter where the wind blew.

That thought was a bit arrogant, I admitted. But I wouldn’t let my town go without a fight.

As silence drew out between the two of us, I took a tentative final step and slipped in her hoof reach. She smelled of dirt, roses, and sap.

“Are you… really sure about it?” I muttered, avoiding her deep green eyes by studying some of the mangled olive sprouts still standing in her garden.

A shudder crawled along my spine as I lingered on what lay beyond Roseluck. The Wall, that unfathomable darkness, had grown larger again and engulfed a ridge of her garden hedge.

“I mean,” I continued, “I feel like if there is any time to address the proverbial elephant in the room, it might be now.”

I had to force those words through my teeth.

“Please, don’t make this harder for me, Mayor. I–”

“Good morning everypony!” Pinkie shrilled.

Subtle, she was not.

A pink whirlwind tore her way through the opposite hedge, jumping over a bonsai tucked in between two dried-up cacti. Leaving us no time to breathe, two legs found their way around Roseluck’s neck and mine. My hooves scraped against the garden tiles till I ended head to head with her and Pinkie lording over us.

“Why the grumpy face, Rosy?” she asked the garden mare, punctuating her words with a giggle and a boop. “Not something I can’t do anything about, though! I’m sure we can find the right thing to stretch a proper smile on those sorry cheeks of ya.”

“Rosy...?” Roseluck hissed.

“Yes, exactly!” Pinkie chirped, with a smile and a roll of eyes. “No need to be so gloomy.”

Roseluck grunted, slipped out of the embrace, and struck the ground. Starting Pinkie, she swiped the garden scissors lying at her hooves with a swift kick. They somersaulted to her flank, and a swing of her withers sent them flying to the workbench where they joined her gloves.

“So what can I do for you, Rosy?” Pinkie asked after a pause and a boisterous gotcha. “It just hurts me to see everypony sad these days and–”

“Stop!” Roseluck closed her eyes, and she took a deep breath. “You, Mayor, everypony, stop.”

The veins of her neck pulsed. Her full body shook from head to hoof. Her lips pursed back between her teeth; she was seething seeth. Meanwhile, words faltered at the tip of my tongue. I failed to step in, and she was first to break the silence.

“What about the Wall that’s eating my fence?” she snarled at Pinkie. “Can you do anything about it?”

The proverbial elephant in the room. What had replaced Twilight’s castle had been a hungry beast, growing so far over the last few months that it now covered a quarter of Ponyville.

The Wall, that cold, black blob loomed over us all now. I hated it; everypony did. It’d taken too much away already and I knew well who would be the next departee. She stood in front of me.

Roseluck’s hoof struck a tile and she pointed past Pinkie at a section of garden fence, gone overnight, swallowed whole by the dark. The smooth blackness had finally spilled in her garden and Roseluck’s rows of roses ended in its grasp.

Everything touched had browned and died. And the close enough bushes lay unmoving with a layer of frost for a shroud.

“That…” Roseluck hiccuped, “will eat everything. All I’ve worked for. Don’t you two get that!?”

Her rump hit the pavement floor, slamming dust off the ground. A muffled, angry sob followed.

“Oh come on, Rosy.” Pinkie rushed to her side and comforted, “It’s mean and big, and... hungry. But it’s just a very dark party balloon, really.”

“A very deadly one,” Roseluck muttered. “It will leave nothing. Not even a trace of my work will remain.”

Pain twisted my heart at her sigh and I looked away at the hundreds of petals and buds and burgeons covering the ground. Each rose Roseluck had tediously grown lay beheaded, left to rot.

Roseluck hunched forward and held her face in her hoof. “It’s been three months.”

“We’ll find a solution,” Pinkie whispered.

The garden had no smell at all. Like the town.

“I’ve found mine.”

Pinkie hugged the garden mare tight and lay her cheek against her neck. Roseluck hesitated, but gave in and returned the favour. Her tears stained Pinkie’s coat.

“I pinkie promise,” Pinkie said.

I swallowed the recurring knot in my throat and mustered the courage to step in. “Somepony will help,” I said.

“Twilight’s gone,” Roseluck heaved.

She was right.

The princess was gone, and so was Miss Starlight Glimmer. Everypony guessed they had been inside the castle when the Wall appeared. Forked tongues spread further rumors.

Her friends had worked hard to dispel the allegations.

“Any party balloon wants to be big, Rosy,” Pinkie said, She wiped Roseluck’s tears. “We just need to find a way to pop it. Right…?”

Pinkie’s smile had lost its shine. Gone was her brightest smile, or even her sincerest. Now, she only had a smile. Most of the town denizens were like Ponyville’s accounting books. I could read them, and I could point out the fake entries. Seeing Pinkie then sent my heart tumbling. I held a hoof to my chest.

“Come on, Rosy, we’ll find a solution,” Pinkie muttered again, brushing Roseluck’s shoulder as welled-up tears carved their way down her cheeks again.

“It gets bigger everyday, Pinkie. It’s never going to stop,” Roseluck stuttered, tapping the tip of her hoof at a few uprooted flowers lying in heap at the foot of a clay pot. “I’m… I’m leaving. There’s nothing left for me in Ponyville.”

“It’s like a hungry hippo. It’s gonna be full at some point,” Pinkie said. “The Wall... It sounds really scary, I know. But you know the song, Rosy. Giggle at the ghosties. That’s what we do here in Ponyv–”

“Shut up,” Roseluck breathed. “Please. Let me have a choice.”

I worked through the tension in my legs, swallowed the acrid taste in my mouth, and ignored the apprehension in my chest. “There is no way for you to reconsider?”

Pinkie threw me a pleading glance.

“I’d not have bothered a lawyer with legalities if I weren’t,” Roseluck said. “They cost money.”

“Come on, Rosy–” Pinkie mumbled.

“I’ve declared bankruptcy.” Roseluck wrangled herself out of Pinkie’s embrace, her features twisting as she eyed us both. She pinched her lips and sighed. “I made my choice, okay? And Pinkie, please stop calling me that. I’m no filly.”

“But we’re your friends, right? I got to try,” Her strained voice died in a whimper. Her composure came back after a couple of seconds. “You have to see the bright side of things! Look, you’re cutting all your roses. You must have got a massive order from Canterlot or something.”

Roseluck studied the mess she’d made of her garden. She chuckled — a dark, rumbling laughter that never got past her teeth.

“I appreciate the attempt, Pinkie, but we’re not really friends,” she said, baring her teeth through her discomfort. “Acquaintances, maybe. But friends? I don’t know.”

Pinkie faltered, the words landing with such strength her cheery expression melted away in surprise, shame, and hurt. I too felt the gut punch.

“Ros– Roseluck,” Pinkie bargained, setting her knees to the ground. “I don’t want another Quills and Sofas… or like what happened to Timeturner’s shop. You have to stay open, for us all. We need you as much as you need… us?”

“It’s not your choice to make. It’s mine, and I’m leaving. With that bankruptcy, I’m hoping to turn a new chapter,” Roseluck stated. “Wonderful things end sometimes, Pinkie...”

Her unblinking, reddened eyes locked on mine, and she gave me her best close-lipped smile. Sad but honest and real. Her chest rose in a staccato and her breath came out in heaves.

“You have to recognize it,” she continued never looking away from me, “and, sometimes, those beautiful things happen to be whole towns. A party always ends.”

I clenched my jaw, barely nodded, and broke away from her staring to hug Pinkie. The party pony’s sobs, Ponyville’s saddest sound to my ears, rattled my core, left thorns in my throat, and brought my soul to a silent scream.

This was the terrible result of something Equestria couldn’t fight yet. If at all. As a mayor, I could only reckon the burning resentment in my chest, a heated hatred for the Wall and my dread for the future of the place I’d cherished and loved.

“It is final,” I told Roseluck over Pinkie’s shoulder. More a statement than a question.

Roseluck nodded with confidence and sympathy painting her face. “Yes. Thank you for the precious help all these years, Mayor. I am... sorry for Ponyville.”

“Stop her...” Pinkie muttered in my ear between two muffled hiccups. “Please.”

Roseluck and I shared a long, difficult look, staying immobile until I granted a silent approval I knew she didn’t need. A personal life-changing choice always impacted everypony around, but I hadn’t come to her garden to hoofcuff her to this place. Those shackles, the one I loved to wear, were only my own.

Roseluck had already cut her ties, cut everything standing in her garden, and thrown the results of her vendetta in a large wilted and withering pile. Scorched earth without a fire. An exit without fanfare.

“You cut everything?” I asked, shedding any ounce of accusation in my tone.

“I’ve seen some ponies touch the Wall,” Roseluck whispered, her eyes glassy, her breath short as she glared daggers at the Wall. “I don’t think plants feel pain but… I’m not going to forget the screams. No living thing deserves touching...” She motioned at it, “that thing.”

I noticed a small bag by Roseluck’s side. Sat behind her hoof and against an empty metal pot that once held geraniums, its flap lay opened. I readjusted my glasses to get a glimpse of the many small pouches tucked inside, each marked with sharpie or stamped with a sticker. Seeds.

“Yeah,” Roseluck mumbled, catching on the object of my curiosity. “Soon, the Wall will have eaten everything. Better harvest the seed and hope to get a clean start somewhere else.” Tears now traced a matted trail across her face. “Snip this life in the bud. Grow some new roots somewhere else, right? I… I hope you will be okay.”

“I–I– I’m sorry,” Pinkie uttered, working her jaw against my shoulder. “I just wanted to cheer you up. A lot of ponies need cheering these days. With… uhm — ” She motioned at the Wall with her hoof. “ — that. Nothing’s been right since it appeared.”

I hugged Pinkie tighter and let her rest her cheek in the bend of my neck.

As Pinkie’s breathing slowed, Roseluck and I exchanged a quick smile. With silence our overwhelming companion, I pinched my lips.

After a while, I cleared my throat, as I always did before addressing my little ponies. A routine ritual to address the day’s issues, to enunciate clearly the town’s charted course. But I had none to offer that day.

“Thank you for all the roses.”