Cammie

by Jarvy Jared

4 - Ponyville Badlands

A few hours later, the train came to a stop at a withered, wooden station that hadn’t been painted or polished in uncountable years. The wood was flayed by the sun, exposing a white inner lining that reminded Chamomile of how bark peels in old pine trees. With a satisfied hiss, the train’s brakes activated, and steam rose out from under.

There were ponies at the station, clothed in workers’ overalls and caps, and when Chamomile disembarked, she noted that the majority were earth ponies. They had the weather-beaten, rugged, perpetually exhausted look of laborers—shoulders hunched forward, the rims of their eyes darkened—yet, upon seeing the new arrivals, they greeted them with enthusiasm, even kindness. This was the attitude of ponies who had not had visitors in years, it seemed. One of them, who bore a smile similar to the one Polar Blast had shown them, approached her and said brightly, “Welcome to the Ponyville Badlands, miss!”

“Badlands” was perhaps the most apt way of putting it. Compared to the lush landscapes they’d spent the last several hours traveling across, this place was as dead as dry. Crumbling heaps of sand were spread across a mostly flat terrain, so light that even the briefest of winds and words swept them up into temporary dust devils. The ground was the color of rust, with a few patches of sallow ferns dehydrated beyond measure. An unmerciful sun—it was hard to believe this was the same one that’d greeted them kindly when they’d departed—baked the air into a suffocating concoction so thick, it was like breathing in an invisible gel. Combined with the dust and general dryness, it was enough to cause Chamomile to cough uncontrollably.

Gaea came to her side. “Are you okay?”

Chamomile nodded, then turned away to cough. “Yeah,” she croaked. “Just dry. Water. I have a bottle in my bag—”

She was trying to undo the flap to her bag, but Gaea was quicker. She opened it and took out the bottle, uncapped it, then tipped it into her mouth before Chamomile could protest. The gesture was so simple, yet seemed also so intimate.

“Thank you,” Chamomile said after a few gulps. She already felt much better, but also felt something else. It wasn’t exactly a foreign feeling—it seemed an echo, a memory, of itself, from another time.

“You’re welcome,” Gaea said. She moved out of Chamomile’s gaze and nodded behind them. “We’d better move. The others are getting off.”

Leaving the platform once it grew more crowded allowed Chamomile to see more of the Badlands. Cottages with slanted, angular roofs were arranged in neat rows and columns, their windows and doorways boarded up, and separated by patches of ancient paths that snaked themselves between the buildings. The remains of some benches stuck out of the dirt like grave markers. There were other buildings, but the sun had beaten them beyond recognition—one could have been a store, another could have been a restaurant, and one, based on the fact that its only feature was a series of thin wooden frames, might have been a greenhouse with all its windows shattered. Everything was in that general state of disrepair which comes when time passes unannounced and unobstructed. Hinges and signboards creaked and groaned in a weak wind, and any words or lettering that might have announced the business had been lost to the elements.

Ponies had lived here, Chamomile realized. It was an obvious conclusion, but making it felt momentous, in a way that she couldn’t quite explain. Perhaps it was the fact that, in understanding it, she understood that what she saw was a testament to a past long forgotten, buried quite literally under the sands of time. She glanced from one building to another and found herself wondering who had lived there—a family, a couple, a single pony? Who had set up what could have been a fruit stand? Who had constructed the circle of fragmented stone which might have been a fountain? What about the large building in the center, a tall, wooden structure with dark oak beams, rectangular spaces for windows, and a caved-in roof—what function had it once served?

That latter building she initially thought was abandoned, but as she and Gaea continued to watch, she realized it was actually inhabited by various workers. Miners, construction workers, engineers, and more streamed in and out. A hall, Chamomile decided; this was some sort of town hall. Outside of it, more ponies loitered, carrying with them hard hats, shovels, pickaxes, and other equipment. More of those tools showed up when one turned their gaze through the center of the Badlands.

“What are they working on?” Gaea asked aloud.

“By the looks of it, excavation,” someone said.

They both started. Like a navy mist, Clip Styles had materialized without warning, and he regarded the land before them with, contrary to his normally dry demeanor, extraordinary, if restrained, interest.

“Excavation?” Chamomile said. “So something’s buried here?”

“It would seem so,” Clip said. He pointed outward. “This whole place must be like an archaeological dig site. Look at those tents, those flag markers, the equipment.” He frowned, lowering his hoof and tracing a small circle in the dirt. “Still… it doesn’t look like they’ve been at it for long.”

Before Chamomile could ask how he knew that, somepony behind them chuckled. “You’re definitely on the money there.”

All three turned to see Zipp Storm. She smirked at them.

“Ah, Princess—” Clip paused, then cleared his throat. “Right. Zipp. I was hoping I’d run into you out here.”

“Well, when a train stops and ponies get out…”

“That’s actually what I wanted to ask you about. Why have we stopped? I was under the impression we’d be continuing north.”

“You remind me of a friend of mine. He likes to ask questions.” Zipp never lost her smirk. “But that’s a fair one. The simplest reason is that we need to refuel the train. Traveling north might take longer than we expect and it’s better to have a full engine left over than an empty one by the time we arrive.”

“Why here, though?”

“It’s a central hub. You know how far apart all the cities are, right? There’s some talk about rebuilding this place into a sort-of waystation.”

“But I thought the workers were here to excavate,” Gaea said.

“They are. Afterwards comes the rebuilding.”

Zipp walked around the group so that she could get in front of them to demonstrate her point. “These workers have been here for two, three weeks max,” she said, pointing at the town hall. “And from what I know, they’ll be here another two or three more before they’ve uncovered anything.”

“What are they looking for?” Chamomile asked.

“Old stuff. Artifacts, storage chests, documents.”

“That’s not entirely very specific,” said Clip.

Zipp shrugged. “On that point, we’d both agree. Sadly, Sunny isn’t sure of what exactly to look for in the first place.”

“Sunny?” Gaea asked.

“Yeah, her. Sunny Starscout. Earth pony, orange coat, reunited the three tribes, helped bring magic back?” Zipp looked at Gaea. “Thought you’d be familiar with her.”

“I… wouldn’t say I know her personally.”

Clip said, “Would I be right, then, in assuming that this Sunny was the one who commissioned this archaeological expedition?”

“You say that like she’s funding it herself,” Zipp replied, snorting. “But she did ask for it. And after some moaning and groaning, ponies got curious. They found some old maps and compared them to the ones Sunny had. After some time, they found this place. The first railways were built in order to transport them here, as a matter of fact.”

“What do you know about this place?” Clip asked.

“Not a whole lot. But it looks agrarian, right? I’d imagine ancient Equestria wouldn’t be as technologically reliant as we are—or as my sister is,” she suddenly mumbled, before continuing: “but this place seems like a small, cozy town. Or what used to be one, at any rate.”

She flicked a wing westward. “Over that way they found a large stretch of land. Lotta hills, lotta strange markings in the ground. It was probably some sort of farm—the largest one nearest to this place. Probably supplied most, if not all the food this town ever needed.”

“Abandoned, I presume?”

“It and every other place. It’s the strangest thing.”

“But they don’t know what they’re looking for?” Chamomile said, calling attention back to the matter of the excavators. “At all?”

Zipp shook her head. “Like I said. Sunny isn’t sure. All she has is her father’s notes, but…” She looked down, and her voice became measurably quiet. “I guess even he wasn’t sure what he could find. All that she knows is that there’s something here that might help us answer what happened to this place—if not also, what happened to Equestria that led to… well, you know.” She placed three of her wingtips together, then deliberately pulled them apart, looking between them all to see if they understood.

Chamomile looked at the Badlands, at all the decrepit and decaying houses. She began to notice another facet of the place: while there were indeed sounds—hammers and pickaxes swinging and hitting stuff, ponies talking, the occasional hum of some industrial equipment—these were only of work. There was nothing to suggest life was here, the kind of life one could settle down in after a long day. “Ponies used to live here,” she said quietly.

Zipp nodded. “That’s what all the signs point to. And of course, nopony lives here anymore.”

“The question,” murmured Clip, “is why.”

“Wanna hear a theory?” Zipp suddenly offered. They looked at her, and she seemed to become self-conscious. “Well, it’s not much of one, just… an observation.”

“What is it?” asked Clip. Chamomile had half a mind to think he might pull out a notebook and start scribbling.

“Well… you’ve seen the places outside of here, right?”

“On the train, yes.”

“What did they all have in common? Or, I should say, what did they have that this place doesn’t?”

Clip and Chamomile looked at each other, perplexed, but it was Gaea who softly answered, “Vegetation.”

“Right. Vegetation. Ponies, no matter what tribe, still need food to grow. If you can’t have that…”

“You migrate elsewhere,” Clip said. He sounded, however, not too impressed. “That’s fairly obvious, though.”

“It is,” Zipp agreed. “But consider this—everywhere else, there’s plants and vegetation, easily. Even the mountains of Zephyr Heights have some exotic specks, and we had our own farms feeding us for a while before we were all reunited. Yet, this place—only this place—is barren. More than that, if you were to go around the perimeter of the Badlands, you’d see that it’s surrounded by vegetation, by life—on all sides. A perfect circle.”

Chamomile realized where Zipp was going. “You mean, this whole place… it’s isolated from everything else.”

“A desert encircled by lush wilderness,” Clip murmured. He sounded amazed. “The opposite of an oasis.”

“Really? A perfect circle?” Gaea said doubtfully. “You’re sure?”

“Measured it myself. Perfectly circular.”

“Where’s the center? That building?” Gaea pointed back to the building out of which streams of ponies were flowing.

“No, though you’d think so, since it’s the tallest thing around.” Zipp’s voice took on one of musing. “In fact, we couldn’t find any building that would be the center, no matter where we looked.”

They looked blankly at her. “How can you not find the center of a perfect circle?” Clip said.

“I didn’t say that. I said we couldn’t find any building. We found the center, all right, but there’s nothing there.”

“Nothing there?”

Zipp grinned “It’d honestly be better if I show you.”

They left the station and traveled through the Ponyville Badlands, passing the workers and cottages and all the other signs of life long ceased. The air grew dryer, but there were water stations set up and several ponies around them. A few nodded to Zipp, handing them cups, but few spoke. They were tired—tired by the heat and by the work.

After a while, Zipp came to a stop. She flicked one of her wings out. “There’s the center.”

Gaea was the first among them to speak. “There’s… nothing here.”

Indeed there wasn’t. All that Chamomile saw was a flat plain. Too flat, in fact. Whereas what they’d just passed had on occasion shown rises and falls—things you’d naturally expect to happen under the burden of time and erosion—this piece of land was just flat. So startling was that feature, it suggested some uncanny hoof had been involved. Judging by the perplexed and troubled expressions borne by her companions, they’d felt that invisible force as well.

“Look at that,” Clip breathed. He took two steps forward and lowered his head into the dirt, seemingly unbothered. “Is that…”

“A weed?” Gaea said, coming up to him. There, growing almost admirably in the middle of all this deserted nothingness, was a thin sallow stalk.

Chamomile looked at Zipp. “I thought you said this place was a desert?”

“It is,” she said, “except for this one spot. And it’s not a weed,” she added. “It’s some sort of root.”

“A root?”

Chamomile looked back at the stalk. Now it looked less like that and more like a thin, needy finger. She tried to imagine what it looked like under the surface. She saw it twisting mightily yet quietly underground, growing thicker where the masses would center together in a large clump, growing out of a central unit…

“There’s another over there,” Gaea said. She stepped a little to the side to reveal a thinner stalk. “Dry, too. Dead, I think.” Raising her head, she scanned the area. “There are a couple more, actually. You can just barely see them peeking out.”

Now that they were pointed out, Chamomile could see them. But they looked so depressingly malnourished that there was hardly any point in calling them roots. Yet something about them obviously intrigued Gaea. She flittered between them, nose to the stalks. Then she did an odd thing. She closed her eyes and walked much slower, tracing a distinct path from one root through the flat plain, as though she was following water to the source.

“What are you doing?” Clip asked.

Gaea looked a little self-conscious. “It’s, uh, a little weird, isn’t it? I’m… following the root system.”

“Without digging it up?”

“I think it was a side-effect of our earth pony magic returning. I can feel the root, feel the shape it takes underground. I’m just following it.”

She did this, finishing one root, then followed another. After that, she frowned, confused by something. She sought out more roots and continued the tracing while everypony else watched. The heat should have been getting to them, and it was, but Chamomile’s curiosity was far stronger than her discomfort.

“Huh,” Gaea said when she was apparently done. She tittered nervously in place, leaning from one side to another, looking down at her hooves. She was in the middle of the plain, now.

“What is it?” Chamomile asked.

“These roots… they’re all connected. It feels like they connect—” She paused, took a step forward, then placed a hoof down. “Right here. And…” She closed her eyes again, furrowing her brow in concentration. When she opened them, they shone with confusion. “They go deeper underground?”

Zipp had not said a word throughout this examination. But now she did speak, nodding. “Yeah. That’s what a lotta our earth ponies said when we found this spot. Whatever had lived in this spot, it had an impressive root system. Very long and very deep.” She then looked a little displeased. “Not exactly the best description I’d heard, though. So it gives us no idea of what actually grew here.”

“Long and deep…”

Gaea was quiet, thinking. So was Chamomile. She stared at the flat earth. Indeed, it was a vague description, but something about it felt significant. She thought about the roots. Long and deep… an impressive root system stretching underground… sprouting up through the center…

You know, this garden… it could use something. Something to spruce it up. Like a…

“A tree.”

Both she and Gaea had spoken at the same time. They spun around, surprised. Zipp and Clip were just the same.

But the revelation quickly overcame any thoughts on coincidence. “A tree?” Zipp said. There was excitement brewing in her voice. “You’re sure about that?”

Gaea hesitated, looking at Chamomile. She nodded. “I… We are,” Gaea said. “I mean, I’m not sure of Chamomile's experience with plant life, but I know enough to recognize a tree root system. It fits.” Gaea sounded impressed, which caused some fuzzy feeling to well up in Chamomile’s heart. A sudden thought came to her: I should tell her about my garden.

“And it would make sense,” Clip said, “given the surface area. If a massive tree had once lived here, that could explain why this land is so flat.”

“A tree could have made it that way?”

“Not quite, but if that tree was the center of Ponyville—as it’s now reasonable to conclude—and if ponies had lived here, then they would have had to go past this tree, wouldn’t they? And it’d be easier to walk on flat land, artificially flattened land, than anything hilly or with extra terrain.”

“A tree in the middle of Ponyville.” Zipp had a manic gleam in her eye, followed quickly by an annoyed snort. “Darn it all, if only Sunny was here to hear this!”

Chamomile looked at her. “That mean something to her?”

“It’s something I remember her reading about from her dad’s notes. There used to be this ancient tree growing here… I can’t remember the significance of it,” she confessed, looking helpless; then she steeled herself and raised her head, and her smile returned like the sun. “But it was in there, and it was significant. Gaea, Chamomile, if what you say is true, this could be yet another connection to ancient Equestria. This could be another clue as to why everything changed, why the tribes separated, why magic was lost!”

Her excitement was contagious—even Clip was smiling. Zipp looked like she was tempted to hug them.

“I’ll have to let Sunny know as soon as possible,” she said. “But thank you. She’ll appreciate this, I’m sure of it.”

“Us?” Gaea flushed, then hid a little behind her mane. “Oh, we didn’t… I didn’t… it was nothing, really.”

“It’s something,” Zipp insisted. She touched her shoulder to get Gaea to look at her. “It may be small, but that’s still important to somepony.”

Then she stepped back and glanced at the sun. “Noon. And a hot one, at that.”

“It’s been a hot one since we got here,” Clip pointed out. He appeared not to understand why she laughed at his remark, why Gaea tittered and why even Chamomile smiled.

“Fair enough, professor. You guys hungry?” She searched their faces and found her answer. “Come on, then. Since we’ve got to wait a while for the train to refuel, we may as well try to enjoy ourselves, too. The food’s better than the heat, believe me.”

---

Chamomile was only a little surprised to see Astral hanging out just outside of the tent, smiling. Compared to the arid landscape that surrounded them, he stood out like a sore, green hoof.

She tried to ignore him, or at least to avoid looking at him. She was in line for the food to grab a plate. Gaea and Clip were somewhere ahead of her, and she was at the back, alone. Astral didn’t say anything, but he seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

To ignore him, she looked at what was inside the tent. Long tables had been set up in rows that seemed vaguely reminiscent of the rows of barren houses just beyond. It should have been sweltering since there were so many ponies, but the workers had hooked up several industrial-grade fans that provided some airflow, though they were about as noisy as the workers themselves. Many who’d been on the train had also come in, and they’d looked a bit like shriveled fish, mouths agape and gasping for water, expressions which were humorous to the workers; they nevertheless provided them with water, cold towels, and gruff yet friendly words which kept spirits high. There was something admirable about seeing this, Chamomile supposed. Workers toiling in the dead heat but not dying from it, suffering only in their bodies but not their minds.

“There’s something admirable about this, isn’t there?” Astral said.

She tried to mask her surprise—surprise not just at hearing him speak, but at hearing him mimic her thoughts—by looking at his hooves. There was no shadow under him.

“I don’t suppose you’d mind if I stepped under for a bit?” Astral continued. “It’s rather hot. Didn’t have a chance to rest, unfortunately. That train runs rather fast.”

“It’s a train,” she said out the side of her mouth. “Of course it’s fast.”

“Well, you can’t blame me for being surprised. It’s my first time seeing one.”

Still, he waited, and eventually, with a small sigh, she nodded. He stepped under the tent, the shade darkening his coat yet making it seem richer.

“Hello,” he said, smiling at her. “I think this is the first time we spoke, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer. The line advanced up a little.

“Sorry. I know this is rather inconvenient.”

Strange is more like.

“Yeah, I guess strange would be more appropriate.”

She glanced at him, and he smiled, apologetically. It was so much like Astral, she almost believed it was him. “Sorry, again,” he said. “Can’t help but hear your thoughts.”

Then he coughed. “But boy, is it hot here.”

“Maybe you should go back to the grove,” she said, keeping her voice quiet so that nopony else could hear her speak. It was not unkind how she said it. She simply was stating a clear suggestion. “It’d be cooler there.”

“I’d need a ride, and I don’t think they let ponies like me on trains anymore. Probably need a ticket.”

“But you can’t handle heat?”

“I’m not that good, dear.”

Chamomile smiled—then, remembering what was next to her, forced that smile away. “So you intend on sticking around?”

“Frankly I’m not sure I have much say in the matter.”

“I find that hard to believe. You’re here, now, aren’t you? Didn’t you decide that?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Hard, or just not something you want to admit?”

Astral frowned. “I get the feeling I ought to be asking you that.”

She was silent.

The line continued to move. She looked to where Clip and Gaea were. They were talking. Animatedly, it seemed.

“Is it just me, or are they a little different than before?” Astral asked.

“How would you know? You never met them before.”

“Neither have you. But you would agree, right?”

She would, she supposed. She reflected on the conversation in the car. Gaea hadn’t been much willing to speak about anything unless prompted, and Clip even less so. But there they were, talking, pleasantly. She wondered if the thrill of discovery had something to do with it.

“A unicorn and an earth pony talking,” Astral continued to muse. “Never thought I’d live to see the day. Well.” He paused, then chuckled self-consciously. “Poor choice of words. My bad.”

“To be fair, I didn’t think I’d see it, either. I don’t think any of us had.”

“Must be nice.”

“It… is.”

“Are they nice?”

“You ask a lot of questions for a hallucination,” she said, looking back at him. No point in hiding behind pretense; better to address the delusion head on.

“You answer a lot of them for somepony who thinks I’m a hallucination.”

“You say that as if…”

She trailed off. Astral cocked his head, then lifted a hoof and waved it in the air. He brought it down and dug the tip through the dirt. To Chamomile’s surprise, the dirt particles also moved, leaving a hoofprint-sized imprint on the surface.

“That’s not…”

“So, tell me about them,” Astral interrupted. “That unicorn, what’s his name?”

For some reason, she chose to entertain the conversation a little bit longer, in spite of her misgivings. She told him about Clip, then about Gaea—then she realized, almost to her annoyance, that she knew very little about both of them. The best that she could drum up in terms of description was the memory of how they’d behaved on the car—for not even the memory of that night on the train seemed substantial enough.

Yet Astral didn’t appear bothered by this limited information. He nodded to each one of Chamomile’s statements, as though they were universally right—which, she supposed, might have been the case, if he was a hallucination, born out of her heat-addled mind, meaning he would naturally agree with everything his creator thought and concluded.

Every now and then, she’d look down at the dirt. It remained displaced.

The line continued to move. They were growing closer to the food. Astral appeared no closer to leaving, and Chamomile wondered if he intended to stay for the rest of their time in the Badlands. Just as she was about to ask him, though, he said, “Didn’t you come with one other pony?”

“We did. A pegasus.” She quickly described him, then said, “Why does that matter?”

“Well, it’s the oddest thing. I don’t see anypony by that description anywhere in here, do you?”

She almost rebuked him, then paused. Had she seen Polar? In fact, had she even seen him get off the train? But he must have—they were told explicitly that nopony could be onboard while they refueled.

She turned around and scanned the tent. Ponies of various shapes, colors, and sizes swam and idled in the blazing heat—unicorns, pegasi, earth ponies all mingling together. She looked for that brush of white which would have indicated Polar’s presence; she strained her ears, wondering if she could hear his upbeat, excited voice. But it was to no avail. There was no pegasus of that description anywhere in the tent, not in line, nor in any of the groups that had sprung up and clung together.

“That is strange,” she said, turning back to Astral. “No, I don’t see him—”

Her voice cut out. Astral, without so much as a whisper goodbye, was gone. The dirt on which he’d been standing was also mysteriously back to its undisturbed state.

She looked at that spot, perturbed. Then, as she had for all her years since, she pushed that perturbation away and shook her head. The heat, she decided. The heat and the hunger—that was what had caused her to see him here. A dead pony doesn’t show up miles from their grave, anyway. And Astral was dead; there was no denying that.

She thought she would be angry with herself, or even a little bit scared, because if her mind could supply such a convincing illusion, that must mean she was truly crazy. And yet, for whatever reason, she felt neither emotion. In their place, there was some calm shoreline of an equally calmer, almost happy emotion.

---

Gaea and Clip sat at the end of one of the long tables. They looked up when they saw Chamomile standing a short distance away. “There you are,” Clip said. “We were just talking about you. You can sit with us.”

He didn’t notice the sudden look that Gaea gave him. Chamomile frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Wha—o-of course!” Gaea stuttered. She recovered with a smile, though, perhaps because of the heat, it looked to Chamomile a bit nervous.

In any case, since there were no free seats available elsewhere, Chamomile sat down. “What do you mean, you were just talking about me?”

A bit of warning unintentionally crept into her voice, which Clip noticed. “Nothing bad, I can assure you,” he said with a wave of his hoof. “We were just talking about how you noticed the tree root system just as Gaea did.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t think of you as an arborist,” he continued.

“I’m not, actually.”

“Really?” Gaea’s nervousness was now replaced with curiosity. “Then, well, how’d you know?”

“It just made sense.” She paused, then sighed. “Actually, I shouldn’t say that. Truthfully it’s because I’ve been growing this tree behind my house for quite some time, and I remembered that its roots were like that—long and stretching deep into the ground.”

“You have a garden of your own?” Gaea asked.

“A little one. I have a few plants here and there.”

“What do you grow?”

“Nothing special. At least, nothing as special as what you might find in a florist’s shop.”

She’d meant the remark to hold some humor in it, but Gaea seemed to regard her with a seriousness better suited for a philosopher. “I’m still interested, anyway.”

After taking a drink of her water, Chamomile decided to tell her. She tried not to dress it up too much, but wondered, as she described the plants and their bushy leaves and how she tried once to figure out the best combo of growing them together, if she was not embellishing the description a bit—and why would she? Was it just because she could, or because Gaea had asked?

Inevitably describing the plants meant she had to describe what they were for. “So you’re a tea maker,” Gaea said. She looked at Clip. “Have you had her tea?”

“Me?” He cringed. “Ah, well… truth be told, I am not really a fan of tea. I don’t think I’ve really been over to that side of Bridlewood.”

“Not everyone is. It’s all right.”

“Is Bridlewood really that big?” Gaea asked.

Chamomile thought about it. She looked at Clip, who shrugged. “The main village is mostly close-knit, but the outskirts make it seem more expansive. We don’t have what you’d call ‘streets’ or ‘neighborhoods,’ if that’s what you mean.”

“You haven’t visited?” Chamomile asked Gaea. She felt foolish afterwards; of course she hadn’t. If she had, she probably would have seen her around.

But Gaea was not put off by the question. “No, though I did start thinking about doing just that once all the tribes started talking again. When we stopped being afraid.”

She added the point almost unnecessarily, but it brought them to a brief moment of silence. Around them the clamor continued. The Ponyville workers and excavators were finishing their meals and preparing to return to work, but many of them stayed behind to continue conversing with the train crew. Chamomile caught a few curious voices asking about what they were doing, and she noted that the recipients to such questions were sure to keep their lips sealed, answering with vague, dismissive responses that at the very least satisfied others’ curiosity. She couldn’t remember if Zipp had sworn them to secrecy, but this seemed an appropriate act; she, and likely the others, had the dim sense that what they had embarked on was so important, they could not tell anyone unless they succeeded. The most anyone could say was that they were there to “lay down tracks.” Supposedly that much would be proven true by the time the train finished refueling.

The lull in conversation ended when Gaea asked Clip, “So what did you do before all this?”

“I cut hair,” he said, sipping his water.

“You’re a barber?”

“I suppose it’d be more accurate now to say, was. You know—since I’m on this job and all.”

“Why’d you decide to take it?”

Chamomile expected some sort of lengthy explanation—at least one that would be full of a dry, self-ironic wit—but what Clip supplied, without a trace of irony, was: “The job pays more than what cutting hair for a whole month does.”

“You’re kidding,” Chamomile said. “You did it for the money?”

“Simplest reason why ponies work.”

“I didn’t take you for someone interested in money.”

“I aim to surprise.”

Chamomile actually laughed a little at that, and even Gaea was grinning. But Clip looked at them, confused. “What? Was that funny?”

“A little.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Maybe I’ll explain when you’re older,” Gaea said between giggles.

He huffed. “Financial compensation is a perfectly valid reason to choose a job, you know.”

“All right, all right. No need to get too huffy. So you cut hair,” Gaea sped along, using the humor of the moment to return to the previous topic near-effortlessly. “You did that before magic came back, then?”

Clip appeared happy, or at least less annoyed, by the prospect of returning to his old job. “I did.”

“Is it any different?”

“It might be a little easier. I can still taste the cobalt from the scissors in my mouth sometimes… but sometimes I think I had a little more…” He searched for the word. “Not quite fun, but it kept things interesting, having to do everything by hoof.”

“Really?” Chamomile said. “You mean, you almost miss not having magic?”

He shrugged. “No, I don’t really think that. But it’s more like I got used to it. I couldn’t have imagined a life with magic in it, since all I grew up in was a magic-less world.” He looked directly at Chamomile. “Could you?”

“I…”

Her mind immediately returned to Juniper. Suddenly she wondered what he was doing, if he was performing well in school, if Penny Point was taking good care of him, if he missed her, if he was okay alone in their little shop. Was there a way for her to send him a message, she wondered. Did the Ponyville Badlands even have a post office?

She suddenly felt dizzy, and the tent seemed to swirl into a mishmash of shapes and colors. In the center of her vision was a stunted green form.

“Chamomile?” Gaea asked.

She came out of her thoughts with a half-strangled gasp, causing them to flinch back in shock. Her face burned.

“Are you feeling all right?” Clip asked.

“I… I’m fine.” She swallowed, feeling her throat dry up. “Sorry. I think the heat just got to me, there.” She coughed. “The air, too.”

“I can go get you some more water,” Clip volunteered, getting up from his seat. “You’re not feeling nauseous or anything else, are you?”

“I’m a little dizzy…”

“Might be mild heat stroke,” Gaea said, also getting up. She cast a worried look over Chamomile. “I’ll see if I can grab some wet towels.”

“I’m sure that isn’t…”

But the two of them had already gone to get help. Chamomile blinked, rather surprised how quickly they’d moved. She was sure she was fine, though. She figured she just needed a little time to cool off… well, that’s what they were now doing for her… but she hadn’t asked, or hadn’t expected them to do so…

“Seems you two have gotten along pretty nicely.”

Still dizzy, Chamomile didn’t turn her head. But she still recognized the voice as belonging to Zipp.

“Don’t you mean, you three?” she replied, looking at her.

Zipp’s grinned seemed only a little embarrassing at the slip-up. “Right, three.” But there was a particular gleam in her eye that suggested she knew and meant what she said.

She was balancing a tray on her wing and gestured with the other at the open spot next to Chamomile—for a moment, Chamomile admired how deftly she managed to perform the act, without upsetting the other side. “Would you mind if I sat with you? At the very least, it’ll keep you from being alone, in case—”

“In case I faint?” She partially observed there was an underlying sarcasm to her statement, so she quickly nodded. “I mean, no, I don’t mind. Go right ahead.”

Zipp slid into the open spot. “You’re not denying what I said.”

“About us three getting along? I mean, yeah, I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

Suddenly she felt like Zipp was the questioning mom, and herself the child who was caught in a lie they did not understand to be one. “If that’s what you think,” she deigned to say, hoping it was safe.

Zipp gave her a curious look. “You say that as though you don’t think you three have gotten along well. But you’re talking, aren’t you?”

“That’s not really much of a requisite for ‘getting along,’ I should think.”

“No, I guess not.” Zipp paused. “Though, a few months ago, talking would have been tantamount to treason.”

She said that last word with an abrupt sound of bitterness that Chamomile wondered if some personal vendetta had been attached. A shadow came across Zipp’s face, aging her into a crone, before Zipp turned back to face her, and the shadow vanished. “It’s good, though. You and Gaea and Clip getting along, as friends.”

Friends.

That word unsettled something in Chamomile. Were they friends? Penny Point was a friend, her best in Bridlewood, but how could Gaea and Clip compare to her? Clip, at least, lived in the same town—they could be friends by proxy. But Gaea…

It crashed into her—the realization that she knew very little about the other mare aside from what had been hinted at. All she knew was that she was a florist, but when Chamomile thought back to how she revealed this on the cart, she was struck by how deflective that confession had been. Was it because she was lying? But why lie about being a florist at all? There was no shame in being one—unless that shame was not for the occupation, but for something else.

Her mind then returned to that first night on the train, and the secretive manner in which she’d carried herself. Of course, she was entitled to her secrets, that much was perfectly reasonable. But now Chamomile wondered if the secrets and the shame were somehow connected—if they were not products of the same sequence firing off to make meaning out of the nonsense of living.

Zipp frowned. “Well… you are friends, aren’t you?”

There was a moment of silence that not even the clamor of the tent could penetrate. Chamomile stared at her plate. “I don’t know.”

Saying that seemed foolish. It sounded like something a petulant child might say when asked to explain why they thought hammering nails into the coffee table was a good idea. She half-expected Zipp to keep questioning her on the manner, to turn her thinking around and get her to confess.

Zipp, instead, chuckled. “Yeah, I get that.”

“What?” Chamomile looked at Zipp, and tried to phrase the question more elaborately, but settled only on, “What do you mean?”

Zipp drank her water. She swallowed, frowning slightly, a thin line creasing her forehead. “There was an… incident, a few weeks ago, in Maretime Bay. We were celebrating Maretime Bay Day, but all the ponies—the unicorns, the pegasi, the earth ponies—they were getting into arguments over magic. This was before the earth ponies got theirs, incidentally. Seemed many of them resented the ‘advantages’ the unicorns and pegasi had over them, and how magic could create as many problems as solve them.”

She picked up her fork and twirled it around. “The more that they fought, the more the Unity Crystals went into flux. Magic kept glitching in and out. Unicorns lost control of their levitation, pegasi stopped being able to fly. It caused more chaos and disorder, which made the earth ponies get more upset, which resulted in more fighting, which… Well, you get the picture.” Zipp looked at her. “Did you notice anything happening to your magic a few weeks ago?”

Chamomile thought back. “There was… some fluctuations, now that I think about it. But it wasn’t quite like we were losing our magic.”

“Huh. That confirms one of my hypotheses, then—that the glitching of magic is stronger where the disorder itself was created.” She sighed. “Well, either way, we were this close to losing magic again—so soon after we’d gotten it back.”

“But we didn’t.”

“No, thankfully. We managed to figure that one out, get things under control, make everypony happy. Even restored the earth ponies’ magic, which was great. But…”

Another shadow. And under its effect, Zipp looked like she’d aged a great deal. Suddenly Chamomile remembered she was a princess, which must mean her mother was the queen—was she, also, of this aged complexion, burdened and made old by the knowledge and wisdom accrued over a short timespan?

“Sunny believes that ponies can come together to overcome their differences. Our friendship is living proof of that. So I definitely believe in that, too. But back then, with what happened… well, I’ve seen that unity fall apart. Differences are sure to rise. It’s nice to hope that everypony can overcome their differences, don’t get me wrong, but ponies still have to face those differences head-on. Worst case scenario, we all lose our magic.” She shrugged, lifted her fork, ate her salad, and chewed thoughtfully. “Best case scenario, though…” She gestured with her wing towards Chamomile.

It took a moment for her to recognize what she intuited. “Best case scenario, we become friends anyway?”

“Uniting the tribes was the first step. The smaller ones involve seeing if ponies can be friends without needing magic to fix everything.” She smiled at Chamomile. “I think you and those two others are proof of that. Even if you’re not quite sure of it yet.”

She’d said, “two others,” but Chamomile knew she really meant “friends.”

She looked over to where Gaea and Clip were. Gaea had gone to get towels, a stack of which lay over her back. Clip was levitating a water cup in his magic. They met up in the middle, then began to walk back to the table.

They seem nice.

Astral’s voice was like an earworm to her, but she found she couldn’t disagree. For they were nice. Nice to her and for no other reason, it seemed, than, perhaps, that they thought themselves friends.

Then Chamomile wondered if she should tell Zipp about Astral. It was an absurd, random thought, one that she dismissed almost immediately. But it lingered in her mind either way.

And, in thinking of Astral, she remembered something else. She turned to Zipp. “This might be a long shot, but… is there a post office nearby?”

Comments

[Carbon]

Quite interesting chapter

[New Fossil Studios]

Hearing what Ponyville became after decades of separation brings a certain, nostalgiac feeling to me. More than that, the detail that everything around Ponyville has life while it itself is barren of it is interesting and makes me wonder just what in the world happened for it to get to that state.

Also, calling it now, that circle in the center is the Golden Oak Library.