CE 1203
They arrived, in groups, pairs, or by themselves; all linked together and all terribly alone.
Many lived close enough to walk to the farm, while others had immediately packed and taken the train, carriage, wagon, or skyship after receiving their black-bordered letters. They all brought food, in barrels and baskets, presenting it to the stallion of the house with their condolences. In happier times, the farm would have provided for them; now, they provided for it.
They set themselves to work: Apple Strudel organizing the foodstuffs, putting some in the cellar, others in the pantry, and sending the rest to Apple Brown Betty, who had commandeered the kitchen. This part they knew how to do; the chores occupying their minds and limbs and keeping the horror and grief at bay.
They all knew each other, though the old remembered some ponies that the young would never meet. They had watched the stallion of the house grow up, a sturdy colt now as large as other stallions but not quite done growing, who had taken up his father's yoke nonetheless. His grandmother stood behind him as they were greeted, a new wrinkle joining the many others surrounding her flinty eyes. Some of them murmured their concerns about the financial state of the farm as they presented their gifts. “We'll make it,” the two replied. Braeburn offered to stay on for a bit as a farmhand, and was warmly accepted. Peachy Sweet offered to buy the farm, and was coldly rejected.
Then they had all arrived, and it was time to consider the departed.
For an hour, there was no wall of work, no distraction, only them and their future. Two boxes lay open, and one by one they passed them, saying goodbye to ponies that could no longer hear them, trying to pour their grief, horror, regret, and despair into those boxes. Then the lids of the boxes were carefully closed, the boxes carefully lowered into the earth, and the graves carefully filled with dirt. Two saplings were planted. They all agreed how terrible it was, for two to be taken so young.
Then they departed as they came. Braeburn lingered, waiting until the rest of the family had left, then he went to the house to start supper. The four survivors stood on the hill, grown cold without the heat of the crowd's bodies. Granny Smith shivered.
This was the first of her children that Granny Smith had buried. She had lost count of how many funerals she had attended before this one.
Big Mac had been to one funeral before; his other grandmother. There, many had said that she had lived a full life. It had seemed impolite to disagree, so he hadn't. He was both glad and sad that no comments like that had been said today. Granny Smith was not worried about him; he would make it.
This was Applejack's first funeral. She had put on a brave face, but even Braeburn staying had barely consoled her. Now that they were alone, she began to cry. Mac, crying himself, comforted her with a leg over her withers. Granny Smith worried about her.
Applebloom was not yet old enough to understand. Granny Smith knew that she would have to be told, again and again, that her parents would not be coming back. She would have only the faintest of memories of them; besides the tears the answer would cause, there was little reason to worry about her.
Applejack finished crying, and looked up at Granny Smith. “Why aren't you crying?” she asked.
The old mare looked down at the filly. “The same reason you aren't, sweet filly. I ran out of tears.” She looked at the farmhouse, a welcoming light shining from its windows. “Their spirits have fled, and their bodies aren't going anywhere. Let's go eat dinner now." They didn’t move, and she continued, "You can visit them tomorrow, but remember always: they live on inside you, not in this hill. We have a lot of work to do with them gone, but we can make it. We will make it.”
“I wish they hadn't gone,” Big Mac said softly.
Granny Smith fixed him with a sharp look. “Wishing won't make it so. We've got to make the best of what we've got, and do what we need to do.” She took a deep, ragged breath. “But for what little it is worth, I wish it too, Big Mac. Oh, how I wish it too.”
3169947 Thanks for the comments! :D Some responses:
I wasn't intending it to be. I'm leaving open the ability of Spike to receive letters from other sources (even if Princess Celestia is the only one that can send them to Spike, there may be others that send letters to Twilight through the PC-Spike system). As well, in my mind, Twilight is allergic to ambiguity and would ask that question, even if every previous letter Spike has received was from the Princess.
I was hoping for the circling daydream effect, where Twilight keeps thinking about something because it's fun for her to think about it. Considering revising it.
From what I can see, a cellar is a subclass of basements, distinguished primarily by functionality and connotationally by temperature. I'm not seeing anything about the number of doors except for that old houses in the US primarily had one external cellar door.
The professor was mistaken about the propriety of the theorem, and statements rarely come helpfully labeled as "believed true and actually true" and "believed true but actually false."
It's a reference to the Eagle and Child, which also strikes me as a pretty creepy name. (This reminds me, actually, I was going to put a lot of the references into the author's notes, but never got around to it. Not sure if I should now.)
Those should be em dashes; fixing now.
:D
Yes, for the second question, at least. I'm honestly not sure if that whitespace there was deliberate or accidential, but I think at present I like it more than I dislike it.
3170893 Thanks for the additional comments! :D
Hmm. I had intended that to be Rainbow's point of view; I could make that more obvious by replacing it with: "Saturday was her father's day off from his duties as a Royal Guard, and so that was the day White Lightning would take Rainbow Dash to the local racetrack."
(In general, I care less about PoV than other things, and so as you've noticed will break it to make a joke or share information I think ought to get shared. I get the impression that breaking it is better than passing up on the opportunity or spending the time twisting it to fit PoV, but could be convinced otherwise.)
My intention there was to have the reader show up to a bored/anxious Night Light waiting at the door, rather than have them show up with Night Light and then see him grow bored. I'm not sure it makes a significant difference, and if it seems grammatically odd I could change it.
Agreed that this goal is worth thinking about. Not sure how to taskify it. What's the next small action for punching up a chapter? (Putting my boxing gloves on? :P)
I've got an answer for this that I think makes some sense, but I suspect it's better to reveal it when it's plot appropriate than do an exposition dump.
Fellwing isn't that old, but his story is part of the aforementioned exposition dump being worked into the story when appropriate.
One of the troubles I'm having with the Luna chapters is that Luna is basically running on untrustworthy hardware. It's easy to convey that by being mysterious / confusing, but unfortunately that requires being confusing! I hope it's helping that Luna generally notices when she's behaving oddly, even if she doesn't know how to fix it yet.