A Town's Story

by RoMS

9. Surrender

Luster pinched her lips. “That was…”

“More personal than I expected,” Mare admitted.

Sweetie Belle chuckled, a wide smile on her lips. She coughed it up and looked at her neighbors. “It was quite a ride, huh?”

Mare blew air against her cheeks. Cheerilee nodded, eyes wide.

Pinkie chortled. “I’d forgotten I gave you that letter, Mare.”

“You never sent them?” Luster asked.

“Celestia gave them back to us a couple of years after it was over,” Mare said. “She did keep them. And I? I just… I just put them in a box in the attic. I didn’t want to discuss it at the time.” She looked at Luster intently. “I don’t know if I still want to.”

Luster took a short breath. She knew it was about it, in some sense. She, Luster Dawn, had to be the pony, the angry, petty little pony who came over and stirred up those memories. Well, no time like the present. “Weren’t there any celebrations when it was all over?”

Cheerilee stretched and yawned, brushing her hoof against her muzzle before speaking. “There were, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that —” She hesitated “— it was hard celebrating in a small committee when it all went and was done. Ponyville had emptied itself. And the few parts that hadn’t been swallowed felt deader than a ghost town.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve ever been to the South?” Sweetie Belle asked, to which Luster shook her head. “There are a few ghost towns down there. The buildings are old, creaky, bleached by the sun without windows and constantly swept by dusty winds. You can see, smell, and feel the age.” With her magic, she reached for her cold cup of tea. She turned to the trio of Ponyvillians. “Ponyville was different, I guess. Ponies were leaving left and right, leaving everything behind. It wasn’t a gradual process.”

Pinkie hummed her approval, and offered to continue that trail of thoughts. Sweetie Belle nodded. “Well, ya know. Buildings were pristine, well painted, and everything. From the outskirts of the town, you’d have not believed it was nearly empty. Well, if you tuned out the monsterous black hole looming over the town like a menacing ground-bound blimp ready to burst into flames! Anyways. If you didn’t find the lack of ponies weird, the issue would have become clear at sundown. Not a single light in any window. It was dead! Like everypony had disappeared. Packed up and left.”

“Which they did,” Cheerilee confirmed.

There’d been no one to celebrate when the Wall was gone. Luster wondered how sudden the resolution had been. Quick enough to leave everypony on their flanks, she thought. “How many were left there?” she asked.

“Not many,” Cheerilee said.

“I technically wasn’t there to see it,” Sweetie Belle said.

“Not many,” Mare echoed her wife.

“Barely enough to eat a normal-sized cake!” Pinkie offered. Eyes looked at her. “Can you believe it?”

Luster sighed. It was her turn to grab what was left of her cold tea. She downed it in one gulp. “And you didn’t leave, Miss Mare, Cheerilee? Pinkie?”

Mare sputtered, offended, a hoof on her chest. “How could I? I was the Mayor. I– I couldn’t. A captain sinks with her ship. Or waits for all of the passengers to leave first.”

And some wouldn’t leave. Luster got that. Cheerilee fell silent and looked down. She’d resigned from her teacher position to stay… A heavy sigh visibly weighted on her chest. She suddenly laughed, a grim chortle flying past her teeth. She threw her head back in exasperation and gave a set of fully cocked eyebrows to her wife and grinned.

“You were such a mule. Still are.”

“Language,” Pinkie whispered.

Sweetie Belle laughed while Luster grimaced.

“How come!?” Mare protested. “You decided to stand by my side!”

“Only because I didn’t want to leave you.” Cheerilee shook her head, giving away a half growl. “If I’d been more assertive, I’d have chained you up and dragged you out of town.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course, I didn’t.” Cheerilee threw her hooves up. “I loved you even though we’d broken up. You… You.” She raled. “It felt like you were more attached to bloody walls than you were to me. It hurt!”

“I’m sorry,” Mare whispered, shoulders slouched.

Cheerilee held her muzzle up and hugged her wife tight. “I know you are, but you can be pretty stupid sometimes.”

“I know. I know.”

“Ahem.” Eyes reverted to Luster. “Sorry to interrupt, but when did you two get back together?”

“Oh, soon enough,” Mare answered.

“How soon enough?”

“We did so around a bottle of wine,” Cheerilee said, a quick smirk on her face as she and Mare exchanged a glance.

“More than one,” Mare corrected. “If I recall correctly.”

“Tell them I’m an alcoholic while you’re at it, sweetheart.”

“You and I both.”

“Yeah.”

They sighed at once, threw a glance at each other before turning to Pinkie Pie, lips puckered, a shadow lingering on their faces.

“I don’t,” Pinkie whispered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What do you mean?” Luster asked.

“Oh, I was there when Mare and Cheerilee made up,” Pinkie said. “I just… wasn’t in the right headspace, you know? It comes and goes, those dark moments.” She chuckled grimly. “We did drink a lot that night.”

Luster quirked a brow at Sweetie Belle, who shrugged back. She was clueless too, and the slight hint of a grimace told Luster enough. Sweetie Belle was wary of what had transpired while she’d been trapped inside. Had she never looked into the events? It seemed a bit contrived. But Luster didn’t really know how ponies worked. Ponies were weird, above all else, illogical, irrational, and furthermore, emotional.

She was too and Luster hated that. She had flaws, but she wasn’t ready to admit them, publicly. Actually… she was harsh and judgemental. She had even apologized to Mare. Once. Baby steps, Luster. Baby steps.

As the quatuor of mares argued on where to resume their story, Luster pondered the Wall, about what had happened inside that blob. It sounded possibly cool, eerie, even dangerous!

Sweetie Belle didn’t look like the battle-hardened mare, though. And given her sister, she likely wasn’t the adventuring type either. So, yeah, Luster wanted to get to the point where Sweetie Belle was going to talk about what she’d seen inside the Wall. But she had to deal with the rest of the story first.

Still...

The lack of scars or any distinguishing mark on Sweetie Belle’s alabaster coat sure made Luster suspicious. Scars weren’t always physical. She knew that. But she couldn’t shed the suspicion that she would be disappointed. Teacher Twilight was going to receive a strongly worded letter if even that story turned out to be boring.

She held back her sigh, a hoof to her muzzle.

“Let’s get out,” Mare offered. “I have a place in mind.”

“Oh, come on,” Luster said. “This might be boring, but I want to hear the end of it now.”

“Sunk cost and all,” Sweetie Belle remarked with a smirk.

Luster offered a shrug back, alongside a faint grimace.

“The cicadas have stopped singing. It must be cool enough to get a quick late afternoon stroll,” Mare said, smiling at Cheerilee and Pinkie as she snagged Teacher Twilight’s letter. “I’m sure getting some air will help clear our minds.”

Pinkie jumped off the sofa and chirped a ‘let’s go’ before locking her leg around Sweetie’s neck and dragging her out to the hallway.

“Follow me!” she shrilled, a gagged Belle in tow.

Luster deadpanned at her hosts. “Does she know where you want to go?”

“Pah!” Cheerilee exclaimed with a wave of her hoof. “It’s Pinkie Pie we’re talking about.”

Right.

The sun had abated, along with the cicadas as Mare had hinted, and while hues of ocres filled the sky, now covered with a few high wisps of clouds, a renewed activity filled the streets. Bars had put out open tables and a stream of ponies were going out to enjoy a drink.

Mare and Cheerilee waved and smiled while Sweetie Belle and Pinkie Pie rushed to shake hooves. Known faces abounded for sure, but none that Luster could recognize. She wasn’t expecting any Canterlot denizens.

Of course, there were the student bunches, with the agitation and excitation that Luster always avoided in Canterlot. But when in Canterlot, she would only see unicorns. In Ponyville, however, there were a flurry of species to behold. Griffons, yaks, dragons even, hippogriffs. She hadn’t seen them on the way in.

“I guess classes are out,” Luster offered to whoever would hear her.

“Yes!” Mare said. “Students are really the light of this town. As I told you, the world comes to us. After five o’clock, of course.”

A young yak tried to sit at a restaurant’s table and crushed the unsuspecting chair. Laughter flew while a waiter commandeered another for a stronger replacement.

Ponies and other creatures were happy, Luster realized. And it was genuine, without the restrained demeanour everypony had in Canterlot. She frowned, racking her brain for the right word to describe this town. She was absolutely sure that Teacher Twilight would ask her about her impressions. Ah, she had the right word.

Frivolity.

“Here we are,” Cheerilee said, earning a yes from her wife.

“Where are we?” Luster asked.

“Well, here,” Mare said, a hoof held out to show a low steep that led to the river that cut through the town.

A lonely stump rested at the foot of the steep. A beaten-path espoused it as it ran the length of the river. The stream was calm and near silent as no rocks impeded its path. The river felt very much artificial to Luster. Like it had been rerouted to that location a long, long time ago.

But she digressed and watched Pinkie Pie break rank to walk down to the stump. She poked at it, a pout on her face. She looked down at the dust that traced the path, kicked a few rocks and turned over as if to catch something. A sight. A long gone memory.

To Luster, there was nothing but calm waters that snaked between two ranges of houses, only cutting under a couple of bridges.

“Is there something important to see here?” Luster asked her hosts. “I only see houses, a stump, and the river.”

“Actually no,” Mare said, and Luster’s shoulders drooped.

“So why–”

“But that’s where it happened,” Mare cut with a smile.

Luster frowned. “What did?”

“When it all came down together.”