Mothering, Someday

by Impossible Numbers

Golden Mane, Golden Harvest, Golden Heart

By the time Velvet stopped rubbing her own muzzle, she realized she’d just bumped the kitchen door into someone standing right behind it. Gently, she eased the door open.

A filly lay in a heap, rubbing her own muzzle in turn.

“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” Velvet hurried forwards to help her up. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

Then Velvet spotted the unicorn horn and the mass of blond straw that passed for a mane. Unlike Amethyst, who’d at least tamed her unkempt mane into something curvy and presentable, this was a ruffled mess that bounced a lot.

It had ample opportunity: the filly at once hopped up, fresh as a daisy and never mind the slight bruise blooming on the tip of the nose.

“Nope!” she said. “Takes more than that to stop me.” Then a sly smirk, far too adult in its leeriness to end up on a face so young, was revealed like a forbidden treat. “I was eavesdropping on you.”

Velvet looked at a face that might offer blackmail at any second, then back at Amethyst, who was pointedly pouring the tea. Thankfully, she could hear Derpy’s off-key humming in the next room. So one less witness. Somehow, that didn’t comfort her much.

“Ah,” said Velvet. “You… you were, were you?”

“I know who you are.”

“Dinky,” warned Amethyst without leaving the tea things, “I’ve told you about eavesdropping before.”

Sisterly fury rallied to the call in Dinky’s eyebrows. “I didn’t mean anything by it! You took her aside without telling anyone why! I couldn’t help myself!” The familiar sly smug oiled back into place. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell, Miss –” she coughed “– Twilight –” she coughed again “– Velvet.”

“Erm,” said Velvet. Being helpless in the face of youth was not something new to her – Twilight, and all – but usually it was because of raw power. Whereas Dinky had mastered the other kind at such an early age.

Then Dinky giggled and her facial muscles relaxed into a more innocent stare as her own mind caught up with something more fun.

“You’re Twilight Sparkle’s mom…”

Velvet wanted to throw something. What’s the point of defusing the bomb of secrecy if it just gets relit a second later? Was everyone she met going to figure her out? Blow her wide open?

“You’re Twilight… Sparkle’s… mom.”

“Shh!” hissed Velvet, listening for Derpy’s tuneless humming. “Don’t say it out loud!”

Dinky hissed it back instead: “You’re Twilight Sparkle’s mom oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh you’re Twilight Sparkle’s mooooooooooooooooooom!”

Velvet froze in the headlights of that stare. “And,” she said gamely, “you’re… Dinky, right?”

The dinky thing started to go “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee…” like a sizzling fuse.

“Er…” said Velvet, wondering if looking away or staring back was the more dangerous option.

“Dinky,” muttered Amethyst sharply; tea things tinkled. “She’s not a carnival attraction. She’s a guest.”

Sense knocked into Dinky’s wide eyes. And just like that, she transformed: her legs and back stiffened, and she brought a ladylike hoof to her mouth to cough and clear her throat.

Then her composure collapsed.

“I’m so sorry,” went Dinky’s mouth on full automatic, “I can’t help it, this is so amazing. I love Princess Twilight Sparkle, she’s so… so… amazing!” She shot forwards, initially to whisper in Velvet’s ear, mostly to get closer to such greatness. “I used to visit Twilight’s Golden Oak Library all the time. She told me to take out all kinds of books, and I loved them, I really did. I was so sad when it blew up, but she says she’s building another library in her castle, and now I get to go borrow books in a princess’s castle!”

Dinky managed to scream in an undertone, thus balancing whatever burst out of her chest with the need to not let it go into the next room and reach Derpy’s ears, or the ears of anyone six miles away.

Despite the blackmail condition still hanging over her head, Velvet found herself smiling. Unicorn fillies and a passion for books awoke a few hitherto-dormant motherly instincts.

“You didn’t, by any chance, ever build a book fort, did you?” said Velvet.

Something else she learned quickly about Dinky: the filly liked getting close. She reared up and pressed herself against Velvet’s chest as though about to clamber up to her face.

“In the pre-classical unicorn design!” she boasted.

“Historically accurate, I see,” recited Velvet from memory.

“And with a stepladder for siege weapons.”

“Huh. Twilight always used the homemade automatic book sorter for that.”

Excitement threatened to blow within little eyes. “No… Did Twilight build book forts too!?”

“You saying you’re a bookworm, little lady?” said Velvet, who against all restraint found herself sharing Dinky’s growing excitement like an addictive cake; her own mouth had to restrain itself from reaching each ear.

“Haha, you betcha! Wait here, I’ll show you what I’m reading!”

Yet as the reassuring weight vanished and Dinky hurried to the foot of the stairs, someone knocked on the front door.

“I’LL GET IT!”

Barely a thought ricocheted off Dinky’s legs before she bounced forwards and flung the door wide open, briefly blinding Velvet with the shine.

From the kitchen – Velvet propped the door open and stepped aside to hold it ready for closing – a tray clinked on the sideboard. Amethyst marched through, twisting to wind her way around Velvet in the narrow hall. By then, Dinky was shrieking, “IT’S CARROT TOP, MOM, AMMY, IT’S CARROT TOP!”

“I HEAR YOU!” shouted Derpy back.

Someone at the door said, “That’s Golden Harvest, Dinky. Not Carrot Top. Hello again, Ammy. I take it Derpy’s home early?”

“My pleasure,” said Amethyst. “We’re making tea, if you want.”

“Love to. The usual, please, Ammy.”

Velvet hurried to open the door again as Amethyst marched past, then she let it swing shut. So too did the newcomer at the front door; the sunlight sidled back outside to give them some privacy.

“You’re here to stay this time?” piped up Dinky, hopping around the new earth mare who ambled down the hall.

“Yes, I happened to pass Lyra on the way here. If Derpy’s found time for lunch with a complete stranger, then she’s found time to come home early.”

The voice wasn’t peeved – much too pleasant and polite for that – but there lurked just on the edge of the words the suggestion that peevishness was a valid backup plan. Velvet watched the mass of orange curls and slightly worn face approach her, and caught a glimpse of the cutie mark tailing all that. Three carrots. Not hard to imagine. The mare was so orange she practically looked carrot-made.

“Ah, and this must be the new unicorn she’s found,” said the earth mare. She managed to grow a smile.

Velvet’s smile reached back from her childhood. Out in the Vanhoover countryside where she’d called the hedgerows her walls, the fields her rooms, and the waving crops her gardens, farmers were as kin even to unicorns who, by all rights, “should” have treated them like dirt. Not Velvet’s mother, though. Nor Velvet herself. That smile remembered warm pies, and earthy jokes, and so many birthdays of a family that didn’t need blood to call her “kinsfolk”.

“You must be… Golden Harvest?” she said, and she earned a near-bow of a nod for her effort. “Derpy’s been talking about you.”

“Uh oh,” said Golden Harvest.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Velvet focused on the bags under Golden Harvest’s eyes, and thought, Works all day until she drops. That familiar story. “It was all good stuff. Better than even she believed, I’ll bet.”

Whereupon Derpy flung herself out of the living room and landed like a far-too-big Alsatian on Velvet’s back. Velvet squeaked slightly under the weight.

“She’s my new friend!” Derpy announced happily.

“Of course,” said Golden Harvest, and to Velvet’s not-altogether-unpleasant surprise, the carrot farmer gave her a welcome embrace, likely a local way of saying hi. “Well, any friend of Derpy’s is a friend of mine, even if she is new in town.” A dark thought crossed her face as she let go. “You haven’t met a pony called Pinkie Pie yet, have you?”

Pinkie Pie… Another name off Twilight Sparkle’s letters. “Can’t say that I have?”

“Aha. Lucky for you. Just a friendly warning: she will find out you’re here, sooner or later. And then… Do you like parties?”

“Sure. All the fun and excitement and so many ponies to talk to –”

“Good. You’d have been in trouble if you’d said no. It’s not a word Pinkie hears the first thousand times.” Another weak smile made a bid for levity.

“I’ll bear that in mind, Miss… um…?”

“Please, call me Golden Harvest.”

“I call her Carrot Top,” whispered Dinky in her ear.

“Not Carrot Top. I’ve told you –”

“Velvet.” Velvet offered a diplomatic hoof.

Golden Harvest stared at it for a moment, then shrugged and shook it. “I didn’t know Derpy had any unicorn relatives.” She paused to look up thoughtfully. “Ammy and Dinky notwithstanding, of course, though –”

“Oh, no, I’m just visiting my girl in town. Derpy happened to bump into me and invited me to a drink before I could see my daughter. I was early anyway.”

Puzzlement added to the work wrinkles threatening Golden Harvest’s face, and Velvet held her breath. She only had to look Golden Harvest in the eye to tell she measured closer to Amethyst’s intellect than Derpy’s.

The words “So who –?” formed on Golden Harvest’s lips.

It was Dinky who jumped between them. “Where’s No Identity?”

Blinking, Golden Harvest took a moment to yank the new vegetable out of her brain. “Oh, you mean Odd Job?”

“I mean No Identity.”

“Dinky, I wish you wouldn’t call her that. She doesn’t like it.”

“She doesn’t like ‘Odd Job’, either. That’s a bad name, and she’s stuck with that one.”

“It’s the one she happened to be born with. Well, it fits, doesn’t it?”

“I heard she wanted to be called Orange Juice.”

“Whatever you want to call her, she’s staying at home. Looking after the farm while I’m gone.”

Dinky groaned, flopping in exasperation. Velvet got the impression she’d gone through the motion hundreds of times before.

“Again!?” sighed Dinky.

“Now, now, I couldn’t ask anyone else to do it. Looking after the farm’s a big responsibility.”

“You never let her go out and have any fun.”

“I would, though. I simply asked her, and she said she was all right with it.”

“All right with it, or ‘all right’ with it as said by the filly who can’t say no?”

“Don’t be like that,” said Golden Harvest, though she too shared the hunted look of most ponies getting an interrogation from a high-pitched voice. “She’s a growing girl. She knows her own mind best.”

“It’s the rest of her that’ll get tired first. And on Mare’s Day too! How could you!?”

Velvet settled in for a very familiar chat fresh from the old Vanhoover country. Unicorns at home always marvelled at the earth pony tendency to trust their foals. Outside the city, though, there ruled the unspoken belief that the kids might as well get a preview of their future and grow to like it.

Although she might be assuming here… “Odd Job? Is she a sister of yours?”

Golden Harvest threw on a smile quickly. “Uh, yes, yes. Younger than me.”

“She’s got no identity,” crowed Dinky with indecent fascination. “If she was here right now, you wouldn’t notice her at all.”

“Thank you, Dinky.”

For a moment, Velvet forgot herself. “And she’s looking after a whole farm?”

“It’s… not that big.” Golden Harvest shuffled where she stood, and Velvet spotted the signs of a farmer caught between pride and guilt. “Er, I’ll just go and sit down. Ammy should be ready soon. My, what a lovely day out! I’m tired on my hooves! Please excuse me!” And she bustled past the three of them.

“Carrot Top’s no match for me,” whispered Dinky smugly. “She’s always too tired.”

That had been something else Velvet noticed too: now she had been up close, she didn’t think Golden Harvest looked all that old. There was a spryness in her step, a firmness of back and suppleness of limb when she moved – as she did when she slipped past into the living room – that wasn’t there when she was just standing still, talking to them.

Especially with a whole bush of a mane full of curls, Golden Harvest actually looked young enough to be Velvet’s daughter. But a sort of “world-weariness field” around her gave the impression she was old enough to have seen farms and towns, nations and empires, mountains and valleys come and go. Most of the old earth mares and stallions had that same heavy-lidded look in the eye.

“That was very mean of you, Dinky,” huffed Derpy.

Dinky mumbled to the floor, “I’m just trying to help, Mom.”

“She’s not ill, is she?” Velvet voiced the concern hovering uncertainly near all this speculation.

Derpy gave her an odd look, which she was uniquely well-qualified to do.

“Nope,” said Dinky, who carried the wisdom of an older mare like a girl wearing mommy’s dress. “Carrot Top – sorry, Mom, Golden Harvest – she works all the time. It’s hard work on a carrot farm. I tried it once. You get dirty.” She beamed proudly at this precocious accomplishment.

“But she’s not doing it on her own?” said Velvet in alarm. Even the proudest farmers knew better than to tend any field without a few farmhooves nearby.

“No,” said Dinky as if Velvet was slow. “She’s doing it with No Identity. Odd Job,” she translated. “Her sister?”

“What about the rest of the famil–?”

“Oh my goodness, I think tea will be ready in a minute,” prattled on Derpy, sliding off Velvet’s back. “Let’s all sit down and have a nice talk about nice things on this nice day while it’s nice. Won’t that be nice?”

“Ooh, right! I was going to get a book!” Dinky hurried off. “Be back in a minute!”

Velvet had to press herself against the wall to let the blue streak shoot past.

The small hooves up the stairs would’ve drowned out the thunder of an elephant stampede. All that effort for a book.

Despite herself, Velvet beamed. Just like young Twilight –

Then she stopped smiling.

This felt too right. A young bookworm unicorn, a farmer as if fresh from the old country: everything reminded her of too much. Too comfortable. Too golden. Too… bright. Deceptively so.

So convincing in its deception, though, and feeling so right, in fact, that – despite herself – she considered not leaving. And the instant she thought that, it all started to feel horribly, crashingly, overwhelmingly wrong.

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Comments

[Malandy]

HUH.

Lol. Odd Job / No Identity.