Strawberry Sunrise choked back a derisive laugh as she smoothed the last wrinkle out of her tablecloth. “You mean always? Or just right now?”
“Straaaawbs,” Redheart whined, throwing herself melodramatically across the table. “I really like this mare!”
“You barely know this mare.”
“But I—”
“Sometimes I think that cutie mark of yours has less to do with nursing and more to do with being the world’s most hopeless romantic,” Strawberry quipped. She shooed Redheart off her stand, and she glumly withdrew. “How is Blossomforth any different from Sparkler? Or Star Hunter? Or—who was the bowler?”
“Pinny Lane?”
“No…”
“Allie Way?”
“No, the stallion.”
Redheart sighed wearily. “Walter?”
“Walter!” Strawberry snickered at the name as she set out her first pint of fresh-picked fruits. “Oh, Walter. Y’know, you never thanked me for that.”
“For what?”
“For stopping you from dating a third pro-bowler. As if the first two weren’t enough,” Strawberry said simply, angling her next pint just so in the early-morning sunshine. “And what a stupid name. Walter. What in the hay were his parents thinking?”
“Strawbs, can we focus?” Redheart pressed. “Blossomforth is different. I can just feel it!”
“So ask her out.”
“But what if she doesn’t like me back?”
“So don’t ask her out.”
“But what if she does and she’s just waiting for me to make the first move?”
“So ask her out.”
“But—”
“Red.” Strawberry grabbed her friend by the shoulders. “She’s not going to just fall in your lap! You have to do something. Stuff doesn’t happen just ‘cause you want it to.”
Redheart rolled her eyes. “Sure. You would say that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Strawberry asked.
“You’re kidding.”
Strawberry shook her head.
Redheart rolled her eyes and gestured grandly to Strawberry’s market stall.
It was fairly simple, even as far as the Ponyville farmer’s market went. Strawberry never had more than a few pints of strawberries available for sale—her backyard was only so big, after all—and those pints were never accompanied by any other goods of any kind. No jam, no juice, no flavored lemonade. Certainly no other produce. What could possibly be sold alongside the sheer perfection of Strawberry’s strawberries without looking like a consolation prize?
The real kicker, however, was the chalkboard sign leaning against the front left leg:
STRAWBERRIES FOR SALE
Fresh and delicious!
Perfect for baking
Limited wish-granting capabilities
12 bits/pint
Strawberry spluttered something incoherent. “That’s a sales tactic, Redheart.”
“Sure it is.”
“It’s cute!”
“Is it?”
“Look. You’re a nurse. You wouldn’t know about business-type stuff like that,” Strawberry said, waving her friend off. “It’s okay. You’re smart in other ways.”
Redheart arched a brow. “Well, I may only be a nurse,” she said, “but I certainly know a cover-your-plot move when I see one. ‘Limited wish-granting capabilities’?”
“What?” Strawberry shrugged. “They are limited—Limited to make-believe fantasy worlds.”
Redheart snorted.
"So what? It makes ponies laugh, and then suddenly they're willing to pay a few extra bits," Strawberry said with a superior smile. "Everyone wins."
"I'm just glad you're not in the pharmaceutical business," Redheart grumbled coyly.
“Whatever. The customers love it,” Strawberry said with a wave of her hoof as she took her seat behind her stall. “Speaking of customers, if you're going to insist on chattering about Blossomforth, could you at least sit behind the stall?"
Redheart sighed and shook her head. "I should go. I've got a shift starting soon, and I need some breakfast or I’ll keel right over," she said. "Do you want me to pick you up anything at Café Hay? Maybe some time-traveling orange slices?"
"Hilarious."
Redheart only giggled in response. "Later!"
"Bye, Red."
And so began another slow, quiet day behind the stall.
The market wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t exactly loud, either, but it had that pleasant bustling quality of a warm bookstore on a cold winter day; customers chattering happily, farmers and bakers and candle-makers counting change, a busker or two playing gentle guitar and softly crooning familiar songs…
But that all happened at the other end of the market. Down here, Strawberry rarely sold a pint. She was more expensive, but not for any reason the average buyer could discern. Sure, her friends sometimes stopped by and picked some up, but that was more of a pity purchase than anything.
And that was fine. Probably deserved, honestly. Where did Strawberry get off charging twelve bits a pint, anyway?
It was something to do. But one something frequently turned into another: kicking back in the shade, reading a good book, and covertly listening in on the gossip that flew between tents. It was in this way that, despite Strawberry Sunrise’s frequently unpleasant demeanor, she knew more about most folks in Ponyville than they seemed to know about themselves. On this particular day, Strawberry Sunrise was half-enjoying a paperback teen drama and half-listening to Lily Valley’s latest lament when an old friend approached her table.
“Hiya, Strawberry!”
She winced and tried to finish the paragraph, but failed to even finish the sentence she’d been reading before the visitor piped up a second time:
“Hey, you got cotton in your ears or something?” the mare said with a hint of laughter. “Strawbs!”
Strawberry peered over the top of her novel at the overly-cheerful customer, though she recognized the familiar raspy voice. “Dust Devil!” She did her best to smile, but it felt like it came out more of a snarl. “Um… didn’t you buy some strawberries last week?”
Dust Devil, a small mare with disheveled, wild hair, beamed. “Sure did!” she announced. “And they granted my wish!”
Strawberry’s mouth hung open, searching for words and coming up empty.
“You know, like… on your sign?” Dust offered, gesturing weakly to the chalkboard.
“Oh!” Strawberry laughed hoarsely. “Right. Funny. You’re very funny, Dust.”
Dust frowned. “Uh… thanks, I guess. But I wasn’t makin’ a joke,” she said. “They really granted my wish!”
Strawberry Sunrise looked down at her book, back up at Dust Devil, then back down at her book. She decided she ought to set the book down for now. “My strawberries grant wishes?” she asked, her voice already tight and brimming with barely-maintained composure.
“Oh, I dunno about wishes,” Dust specified with a loose shrug. “Just my wish.”
“My strawberries granted your wish,” Strawberry repeated, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes'm. That's what I said.”
“How?” The word slipped out of Strawberry’s mouth before she could stuff it into the back of her mind. “I mean, what—how—h-how do you know?”
“'Cause I wished I would get a bonus,” Dust Devil said simply. “And—well, wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I ate the last one of the pint, right as the sun was coming up, I had a bonus check posted through my mail slot!”
Strawberry made an uncertain sound somewhere between a derisive laugh and a disbelieving scoff. “That's not my strawberries,” she said. “That's just good timing.”
“No, no. I wished for it,” Dust corrected. “On the strawberries.”
Strawberry frowned. “Who wishes on strawberries?” she asked with a little nervous laugh. “That's stupid.”
“They were pretty flippin’ awesome. Plus I remembered the bit on your sign,” Dust added, pointing again to the chalkboard. “I figured maybe they had some magic. Guess I was right!”
She just stood there, grinning, sort of rocking back and forth.
Dust Devil had always been a bit odd. Strawberry had known her for a long time, just like she knew nearly everyone else; she was a weather mare, specializing in controlling rogue storms. Her brain had been knocked loose by a freak hurricane years ago, and continued to spiral further out of control with each successful chase.
She had earned a bonus. Definitely. She was willing to throw herself into a tornado nearly every day for little more than peanuts. Strawberry was certainly rooting for her to get a big, fat raise sooner or later. Preferably sooner.
That was all it was… right?
“So, let me get this straight:” Strawberry shimmied in her seat. “You came to the farmer's market to tell me you got a bonus check while you were eating my strawberries?”
Dust Devil hesitated, then nodded, a dopey smile spreading over her face.
Strawberry snorted. “Do you tell every farmer your life story?” She asked. “Did you tell Roma what you had for breakfast? Did—did you tell Golden Harvest about your nightmares?”
Dust frowned. “No, why would I do that?”
A genuine question.
Strawberry sighed and fell into the back of her folding chair. “No reason.”
“I just wanted to tell you they worked! Plus I wanted to get some more,” Dust explained, the hint of a malicious giggle in her voice as she snuck another pint off the table. “You can never have too many wishes, ammirite?”
Strawberry spluttered something else incoherent and wordless. “They didn't grant you a wish! I didn't make them grant wishes, you just—”
“Well, fine,” Dust cut in with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “I guess I'm here to tell you that your strawberries granted my wish, and maybe they’ll grant some more. Could I buy another pint?”
“That depends,” Strawberry grumbled. “Are you gonna wish on 'em?”
“That depends,” Dust echoed. “Do you want the twelve bits or not?”
Strawberry wordlessly accepted Dust Devil’s payment, who smiled and waved as she disappeared back into the crowds.
Strawberry looked down at the pint of fruit in front of her.
They looked good. She would allow herself that. But good didn’t mean great, and even great didn’t mean flippin’ awesome, and even that didn’t mean wish-granting. Almost none of it meant twelve bits, despite her consistent upcharge.
Strawberry Sunrise was nothing if not consistent.
She contemplated popping a strawberry in her mouth and wishing for some more customers, but ultimately decided against it.
“Ha! Strawberry Sunrise. I get it.” Redheart stomped in the dirt as she snickered to herself. “Dust Devil’s pretty funny when you’re on the lookout for it.”
“What’s there to get?” Strawberry asked as she shoved her tablecloth back into her saddlebag.
Redheart paused in her laughter. “She ate your strawberries? At sunrise? And it ‘granted her wish’?” she smirked. “You didn’t pick up on that?”
“Oh, fiddlesticks.” Strawberry ground her teeth. “She was totally pulling my leg, wasn’t she?”
“Duh. Of course she was.”
Strawberry grumbled softly and folded herself back into her seat in a foallike display of pouty frustration. “That just tracks.”
Redheart chuckled softly to herself and took another sip of her coffee. “I noticed you changed your advertisement.”
Strawberry Sunrise made a point of not looking in the direction of her updated signage:
STRAWBERRIES FOR SALE
Delicious fresh
Perfect for baking
Limited wish-granting capabilities*
12 bits/pint
*not guaranteed :)
“The covering of the plot-covering,” Redheart commented dryly. “Always a good sign.”
Strawberry ground her teeth, but chose not to respond.
Sales had not, as Strawberry secretly hoped, seen an uptick since the events of last week. A sneaky little part of her had been excited by the idea that Dust Devil might spread the wish-granting rumor, and maybe some other storm chasers with more concussive brain damage than sense would swing by for a pint and a shot at… well, at whatever it was they wanted.
Then again, Strawberry knew that probably wasn’t very ethical.
Still, even having narrowly dodged a grand moral conundrum, she couldn’t help but find herself in a sour mood this morning. The farmer’s market would be closing in less than an hour, and she’d only sold one measly pint. What was she meant to do with twelve bits of profit and more than two dozen pints left over? Even the thought of packing up her cart and trudging home made her sink deeper into her chair and sigh aloud once more.
“Did I tell you that I talked to Blossomforth the other day?” Redheart said, as casually as she could.
Strawberry flicked an ear and feigned nonchalance. “Oh?” She glanced in Redheart’s direction. “Did you ask her out?”
“I’m laying the groundwork, Strawbs,” Redheart said.
Strawberry rolled her eyes.
“Oh, what now?”
“You’re always ‘laying the groundwork’,” Strawberry moaned. “Just ask her out already! You deserve it!”
“I know, I know. But I just feel like—”
“You feel like procrastinating,” Strawberry interrupted. “Because it’s scary. But, honestly, if it weren’t for me, you’d procrastinate forever.”
“Well, maybe I—”
Redheart’s next thought was swiftly cut off by a theatrically loud clear of the throat. Strawberry Sunrise jolted and, for the first time in the past few minutes, noticed that there was a rather imposing figure standing in front of her stall.
Strawberry shielded her eyes against the harsh light of the sun, which hovered just behind the stranger’s head and shrouded them in a rather stark and dramatic shadow.
“Hello?”
The figure slammed a half-full pint of strawberries down on the table.
“Uh…” Strawberry blinked, still trying to make out the pony standing before her. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah,” the pony said in a raspy, yet unmistakably feminine, voice. “You can give me my money back.”
Strawberry looked down into the pint. As she had noted earlier, half had already been eaten—no, no, more than half. Only three strawberries rested at the bottom of the cardboard container, each looking more pathetic than the last.
“But… you ate almost all of them.” Strawberry looked back up at her customer and winced at the strength of the sun. “You do know strawberries go bad, right? You have to—”
“No, I know that!”
The figure leaned forward, at last out of her own shadow and into focus.
And Strawberry definitely, absolutely recognized her.
A pegasus. Minty green, with a shock of electric yellow mane that was slicked back into a neat mohawk. There was a shrewdness in her eyes, a winner-takes-all attitude which said that somehow, some way, she would arise victorious from this decidedly non-competitive conversation.
“Your strawberries didn’t grant my wish,” the mare said. “And I want a refund.”
Strawberry heard Redheart barely hold back a laugh.
“Excuse me?” Strawberry responded coolly. “You want a refund because… my strawberries didn’t grant you a wish?”
“Yeah.” The mare scoffed. “I didn’t pay twelve bits for some mediocre strawberries, I paid twelve bits for a wish.”
Mediocre…
Mediocre?
Strawberry inhaled deeply, preparing to unleash an as-yet unplanned rant espousing the nearly magical qualities of the humble, beautiful strawberry, when her friend slapped a hoof over her mouth.
“Um, actually, you’ll notice that it says ‘not guaranteed’ right down there,” Redheart said sweetly, pointing to the sign. “See? Right by the smiley face.”
The mare clenched her jaw and looked down at the chalkboard sign. Then, upon seeing the smiley face and condescending message, she clenched her jaw harder. “That wasn’t there last week.”
“Did you buy these last week?” Strawberry asked in disbelief. “I don’t remember you stopping by… maybe that’s why I recognized you.”
“Yeah, I bought ‘em last week from the nurse, actually.” The mare pointed accusingly at Redheart. “You were too busy complaining to the pony the next stand over.”
Redheart clicked her tongue. “Ohhhh…”
Strawberry scoffed. “That doesn’t sound a bit like me,” she said, flipping her mane over her shoulder. “Anyway, I can’t refund you. Sorry, not sorry.”
“Cute,” the mare commented, wrinkling her snout in obvious disgust.
“I try,” Strawberry said with a shrug and a smirk. “Plus, even if I did guarantee wish-granting powers, you didn’t do it right. User error. Oops!”
She pushed the half-eaten pint back across the table, and the mare stared back down into them for a long moment. Almost too long. It did give Strawberry a chance to look her over once more, though, searching for anything familiar.
“Did you maybe live in Ponyville once?” Strawberry asked. “Say… three to five years ago?”
The mare furrowed her brows. “What? No.” She looked right back down into the strawberries. “And how do you know I didn’t do it right? You weren’t there.”
Strawberry sighed and rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Well, don’t quote me on this, but I think you’re supposed to eat all of the strawberries in the pint,” she explained. “At sunrise. That part’s important, too.”
“I’m sorry, you think?” the mare repeated. “Aren’t these your strawberries?”
“Mm… yes, but—oh!” Strawberry clapped her forehooves together and grinned. “Oh, oh! Did you go to Cloudsdale Young Fliers Academy? Thunder Dust, right?”
The mare’s eye twitched. “Lightning Dust.”
“Lightning Dust, yes!” Strawberry looked to Redheart and gave her a little nudge. “We were in flight school together!”
Redheart chuckled nervously and shrank away from Strawberry’s touch.
“And here you are selling counterfeit wish-granting strawberries! Whoop-de-freakin’-do,” Lightning Dust snapped back. “Who told you these rules, anyway?”
But Strawberry barely heard the question.
Now that she was certain of her identity, more memories of Lightning Dust were starting to come back to her. Some good. A few. Maybe two or three. The others…
“Didn’t you get kicked out of the Wonderbolts Academy a few years ago?”
Redheart gasped softly.
Not surprisingly, the tone shifted.
Lightning Dust’s eyes went wide. Her face flushed, so quickly that it was nearly cartoonish, and she took a funny half-step backwards, as if stumbling away from her accuser. On a lesser pony, the expression might have communicated fear, but Strawberry only saw raw fury.
Of course, Strawberry being Strawberry, a little anger wasn’t going to stop her. “Aw, did I touch a nerve?” she teased. “Maybe you should have wished for a second chance on my mediocrestrawberries. That or an attitude adjustment.”
Lightning stiffened and instinctively flared her wings. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she insisted with a stomp of her hoof. “Plus, I seem to remember a certain Strawberry Dumbrise failing her written test back in flight school!”
Strawberry gasped dramatically and put a hoof to her chest. “Oh, goodness! However will I go on?” she bemoaned, throwing her head back in false agony. “They’ll simply never let me fly again!”
“Ha, ha.” Lightning Dust sneered. “Hilarious.”
“Wait, wait, wait—” Strawberry broke out of her theatrics and shook her head clear. “Didn’t I read that you were part of some new group? The, um… the Dropouts?”
“The Washouts,” Lightning Dust corrected firmly. “And, for the record, I—”
“And they kicked you out too!” Strawberry recalled, a nearly maniacal grin breaking out across her face. “Like, child endangerment or something? Oh! You strapped a kid to a rocket!”
“She signed a waiver!”
Strawberry sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Oof. Not a good look, Lightning.” She gently but earnestly pushed the pint of strawberries back across the table. “Maybe you should keep those, hm? Wish for, um… large-scale amnesia?”
Lightning Dust, not practically glowing pink from head to hoof, snatched the pint off the table and wordlessly stomped off.
“Bye!” Strawberry called cheerily after her. “Come again! Or don’t!”
Strawberry Sunrise tapped her chalk against her chin as she considered the updates to her signage:
STRAWBERRIES FOR SALE
Delicious fresh
Perfect for baking
Rumors of wish-granting capabilities greatly exaggerated
12 bits/pint
Was it funny?
Sort of.
Was it true?
Very probably.
But, most critically, did it fully and completely cover her plot on this wish-granting nonsense?
Ooh. Tough one.
She had thought about possibly removing any mentions of wishes and wish-granting from her board, but she also couldn’t help but see that as a coward’s retreat. Only a complete idiot—the type of idiot who threw themselves into tornados or strapped foals to rockets for a laugh and a few bits—could possibly believe that the sign was anything other than a joke. Hopefully there weren’t more than two of those in Ponyville on this particular Sunday morning. Or ever, frankly—but Strawberry knew that was probably asking too much.
Semi-satisfied and thoroughly bored, Strawberry set her chalk down on her tabletop and took her usual seat. Redheart had, for reasons Strawberry did not know, declined their usual weekend hang-out session at the booth. It was quite possibly due to last week’s drama (as Redheart was not fond of confrontation), but Strawberry hoped against hope it was because she had finally asked that damn Blossomforth out on a date.
Whatever the reason, Strawberry was alone that morning. Because she was alone, she allowed herself to get rather absorbed in her latest pulp romance novel. And, because she was rather absorbed, she wasn’t entirely sure how long the morning’s first customer stood there silently before Strawberry finally took notice of her.
It was surprising. An already tall mare wearing an additional few inches of tall hat, standing silent and still as a statue.
Strawberry jumped and dropped her book. “For the love of—” She put a hoof on her chest and tried to calm her racing heart. “Whew. Don’t sneak up on ponies like that. You scared the crap out of me.”
“H-howdy,” the mare said.
Howdy.
Strawberry couldn’t quite remember what Applejack looked like, but… well, this mare was yellow.
Applejack was yellow. Maybe.
This mare was wearing a hat.
Applejack wore a hat. Probably.
Strawberry sighed. “Ugh, Applejack?” she guessed, voice dripping with obvious disgust. “What in the hay are you—”
“Applejack’s my cousin,” the mare said.
That was all.
Strawberry blinked.
The mare said nothing.
Strawberry sighed. “I mean… okay,” she said. “Who are you, though?”
The mare pointed to herself. She looked a little disappointed.
“Yeah. You.”
“I’m Fiddlesticks.”
“And… did you want some strawberries, Fiddlesticks?”
“You don’t remember me, huh?” she said softly.
Her voice was far softer than Applejack’s. Not just in volume, but in quality. There was a gentleness in it, whereas Applejack practically always sounded like she was yelling. Or at least that she was firm. Strong. Grounded.
Fiddlesticks was sort of… airy.
“When you were real little, you were in the Ponyville gardening club,” Fiddlesticks reminded her. “You grew all sorts of things. Not just strawberries. I thought that was real cool. ‘Specially since I couldn’t grow a darn thing.”
She took her hat off and smoothed her shockingly blue mane.
And Strawberry almost remembered her.
There was something there. Some half-memory of trying to help a confused filly rebalance her soil acidity. Or maybe help her tend an apply tree?
Strawberry thought that didn’t sound a bit like her.
Of course, ‘almost’ isn’t remembering. But Strawberry was already embarrassed enough, so she faked it:
“Ohhhh, sure!” She smiled through her lie. “That was, um… whew! A long time ago.”
Fiddlesticks chuckled nervously and nodded. The implicit forgiveness made Strawberry’s stomach turn.
“Did you, um… would you like some strawberries?” she offered.
“I bought some just last week, actually,” Fiddlesticks said, with a bit of pride. “They were mighty good. I was just wonderin’—well, now, I s’pose your sign already answered my question, come to think of it.”
Strawberry almost asked, but the little flush of embarrassment in Fiddlesticks’ cheeks was enough.
“Oh. That.” Strawberry offered her own pathetic little grin in response. “It was just a little fun I was having. Somepony took it and ran with it. We’re all just grist for the rumor mill in the end, huh?”
She figured she had been wrong about the ‘idiot’ thing. She felt a bit bad about it now, actually.
“Well. Anywho.” Fiddlesticks put her hat back on her head. “Sorry to bother you.”
Strawberry straightened up. “Oh, you didn’t—”
“Strawberry!”
Shrill and sudden, followed by two snow-white hooves pounding the tablecloth. This time, it was enough to make both Strawberry and Fiddlesticks jump.
Redheart.
Beaming.
“Strawbs, it worked!” she announced.
“Well, good morning to you, too, Redheart,” Strawberry muttered.
Redheart giggled to herself. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “I just—I did it!”
“Did what?” Strawberry asked.
“I went out on a date with Blossomforth!”
Strawberry laughed lightly. “Well, hey! Good for you!” she said, giving her friend a pat on the shoulder. “So you asked her out? I told you, Red, you can’t just wait around for—”
“Oh, pfft. Not that.” Redheart waved off Strawberry’s advice for a second time. “I wished for it!”
“You—” Strawberry found herself momentarily at a loss for words. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope!” Redheart giggled again. It seemed to be completely involuntary. “I did exactly what Dust Devil said: I ate an entire pint of your strawberries as the sun was coming up, and when I ate the last one I wished that she would ask me out on a date. And she did!”
“What was that about the sun?” Fiddlesticks asked.
“Oh!” Redheart looked up at this stranger and smiled. “Well, there’s rules for how to make the strawberry wishes. The first is that you have to eat a whole pint of strawberries—it doesn’t work until you eat the very last one.”
Fiddlesticks nodded sagely. “Do you gotta eat ‘em all in one go?”
“Hm. I’m not sure!” Redheart turned to Strawberry. “Do you have to eat them all at once? Or can you space it out?”
“Wh—” Strawberry shook her head. “Red, there’s no wishes! And there’s no wishing rules! You just—I mean, c’mon! It was only a matter of time before one of your crushes asked you out. You throw enough spaghetti at the wall and something’s gotta stick, right?”
Redheart stuck her snout in the air. “I disagree,” she said. “I think my wish worked.”
“You said somethin’ about the sunrise,” Fiddlesticks interjected. “Do I gotta eat all the strawberries while it’s comin’ up? That sounds, um… a tad fast.”
“I’m not sure… I think it’s just the last one,” Redheart said. “Or maybe any of them! As long as you have one during the sunrise, it must work.”
“Where are you even getting these rules?” Strawberry asked, knowing well that her question would go unanswered.
“Gee, I ought to test some of this stuff out,” Redheart said, tapping her chin. “Say, stranger: do you have a pen?”
Fiddlesticks began searching the pockets of her vest.
Redheart unzipped her saddlebag and rooted about inside for a scrap of paper.
And, with that, Strawberry Sunrise had officially lost control of her own stupid rumor.
This would all be bad enough, of course, had it been the peak of the morning’s excitement. Unfortunately for Strawberry, while Fiddlesticks and Redheart traded notes on their respective wishing experiences, a fourth mare approached the booth. A familiar one.
“Oh, no…” Strawberry murmured to herself.
Lightning Dust was in a noticeably different mood today. While the pair had parted last week in a bit of a scene, today Lightning strode towards the booth with her snout held in the air. It was a different sort of walk. Not so much a winner’s walk, but a walk of… something.
Something was different. Absolutely.
Lightning came to a swift halt before the booth, did not look at Strawberry, and said, “One pint, please.”
She tossed twelve bits on the table.
Fiddlesticks and Redheart went entirely mute, each of them frozen in the middle of their conversation to watch.
Strawberry blinked.
She waited for the other shoe to drop.
She said nothing.
Lightning Dust only stood there, similarly waiting for Celestia-knows-what to happen. For Strawberry to hand over the pint, maybe.
“Um… of strawberries?” Strawberry asked.
Lightning spared Strawberry a fleeting glance. “Yeah. A pint of strawberries.” Then, quickly, as if she might have forgotten: “Please.”
Strawberry’s brows furrowed. “What are you trying to pull?”
“Tsk. Nothing,” Lightning smoothed a hoof over he rmane. “Just want some strawberries. That a crime?”
“From me?”
“Yeah.”
“For twelve bits?”
“For whatever you’re sellin’ ‘em for, I guess,” she snapped. “What’s with the third degree?”
Strawberry laughed, but said nothing.
Lightning Dust cleared her throat and tried to find someplace else to look. In her searching, she seemed to notice her fellow customer for the first time.
“Oh.” A blush, poorly hidden.
“Howdy,” Fiddlesticks said with a tip of her hat.
“What the hay are you doing here?”
Strawberry leaned forward. “I’m sorry, you two know each other?”
“Kinda.”
“Sorta.”
Redheart’s brows climbed up into her hairline.
Lightning Dust took a small step towards Fiddlesticks. “Did you buy some of these strawberries too?” She hissed.
“Maybe,” Fiddlesticks murmured. “What’s it to you?”
The words were vitriolic but the tone was… playful.
Strawberry and Redheart exchanged a look.
Lightning Dust and Fiddlesticks exchanged a different look.
Fiddlesticks gasped softly. “It worked?”
Fiddlesticks looked at Redheart.
Redheart grinned at Strawberry.
Strawberry glared at Lightning.
Lightning looked up at the sky and pretended not to hear.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Strawberry stood up. “What in the hay did you wish for? That you’d get yelled at by a mare at the farmer’s market?”
“No!” Lightning shouted back, though she appeared to wish she could jam the word back in her mouth as soon as it flew out. “It’s none of your business. It’s my wish.”
“Did you eat the strawberries all at once?” Redheart asked. “And all at sunrise?”
Lightning Dust struggled to pull her eyes off Strawberry. “Uh… I only had the last few in the pint.”
Fiddlesticks and Redheart looked at one another, nodded, and scribbled that down.
“I thought so,” Redheart commented. “That must be it. You have to have the last one while the sun is coming up. Did you do that, Fiddlesticks?”
Fiddlesticks shook her head.
“Well, here.” Redheart pushed another pint at Fiddlesticks. “You’d better take some more and try it out. Don’t forget to write down precisely what happens—we’ll need a good record. Oh! Lightning Dust, was it?”
Lightning pointed to herself. “Me?”
“Were you watching the sun when it came up?”
“Uh… through my window.”
Redheart picked up the pint of strawberries and placed it in Fiddlesticks’s hoof. “Better make sure you do that, too.”
“Ugh!” Strawberry reached out and snatched the pint back. “I’m sorry, are we just giving my produce away for free now? Writing wish-scripts like hack doctors?”
“Tsk. It’s just Fiddlesticks,” Redheart said.
“You don’t know Fiddlesticks.”
Redheart made a high, indecisive sound. “She’s a member of the research team, though.”
“The—”
“Look, I already paid,” Lightning said. She grabbed another pint off the table. “I’m out.”
“Wh—”
But Lightning Dust was already gone, her newly-developed air of quiet superiority lingering in a heavy cloud over the stall. Strawberry all but physically waved it off before angrily sweeping the twelve bits of payment into her cashbox.
Redheart coughed lightly. “Um. Anyway,” she murmured. “What are you planning on wishing for? For the sake of the test, it should be something obvious… Like, um…”
Fiddlesticks jammed her hat back onto her head. “That’s an easy one: I’ll wish for my sister to write me.”
“And who would that be?” Strawberry grumbled. “Apple Fritter? Apple Dumpling? Apple Bumpkin?”
Fiddlesticks laughed dryly. “No. Name’s Octavia. She’s an Apple by blood, but if she don’t spend every wakin’ moment pretending she ain’t…” Fiddlesticks trailed off, then shook her head. “I haven’t heard from her in a good long while. I’m a bit too much Apple for her liking.”
Strawberry hesitated, before finally saying, “Oh.”
Fiddlesticks just looked at her. Not even a nod.
“Those are on the house,” Redheart whispered. Then, with a wink, she added, “For the team.”
It was, quite frankly, too early for Strawberry to be awake.
She heard it all the time—that she must be a morning pony, that she must have a sunny demeanor, that she must be so warm and loving and everyone must love her in return. In a way, Strawberry Sunrise proudly bucked the stereotypes that her name set. In another, she sort of wished she was different.
She wished she was more like her name.
It was this thought, astoundingly complex in its outward simplicity, that led Strawberry to set her alarm a little earlier than usual. It was this nagging need, this wish, that had Strawberry pull a pre-packed pint of strawberries from her stash and sit to eat them, slowly, by the window, waiting for the sun to come up.
“Stupid,” she muttered to herself as another plump berry burst between her teeth. “So stupid,” she repeated, flinging little flecks of red juice onto the window pane.
She reached up and rubbed away the strawberry juice with one velvety pastern. It left a pink stain on her fur.
In her head, she resolved not to wish anymore. She revoked her previous wish and set about polishing off the pint without any more superstitious nonsense.
Until she took another bite, and wished for it all over again.
It was a difficult wish to put into words, and she had an awful feeling that that would probably disrupt the wish’s effectiveness, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Strawberry simply wanted to be the sort of pony who would want to wish on a strawberry, the same way some ponies want to want to eat healthier, or want to want to exercise more.
There was probably a word for that. Strawberry didn’t know it.
She felt a bit like she was playing a game with her pint: I wish, I do not, I wish, I do not. Like a filly pulling petals off a daisy. She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not…
Back and forth. Each berry, each bite.
I wish.
I take it back.
I wish.
I don’t deserve it.
I wish…
Until Strawberry reached into the pint one last time, watching the golden rays of the early-morning sunshine stretch lazily across the pink sky, and found that it was empty.
She couldn’t remember if her last strawberry had been a wish.
She felt stupid for hoping that it was.
And, in a simple pang to the chest, it was clear her wish had not come true.
“I don’t really get why you took the bit about wishes off your sign,” Dust Devil said. “I mean, weren’t you selling, like, way more when ponies knew they were magical?”
Strawberry heaved a long, deep sigh. “I think I’ve decided I just don’t want to bother with it,” she admitted glumly. “It’s been a lot of pressure, actually. Getting the wishes right.”
Dust Devil snorted. “Yeah, but… it isn’t you granting the wishes,” she said. Then, in a snap, her eyes went wide. “Wait, are you?”
“Tsk, no!” Strawberry scooped Dust’s payment off the table and dumped it into her lockbox. “I just meant—oh, nevermind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, they’ve been working for me,” Dust Devil said with a grin. “I’ve had successful wishes the past three weeks in a row!”
Strawberry arched a brow. “Oh?”
Dust nodded emphatically.
“And, um…” Strawberry hesitated, feigning disinterest. “What exactly did you wish for? Like, what did you get?”
“Bonuses!”
Bonuses.
“But—” Strawberry paused, then shook her head. “Dust, you’ve been wishing for a bonus every week?”
Dust shrugged. “Well, sure.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“No, I mean—” Strawberry paused again, trying quickly to organize her thoughts as they piled to the front of her tongue. “Why don’t you just wish for a raise? You deserve it by now.”
Dust thought about that. For a while. Hoof to chin, grimacing at the ground, the whole nine yards.
“You’d get a bonus every week?” Strawberry prompted, her patience waning. “Without wishing every time?”
Dust’s eyes went wide. “Whoa.” She nodded, slowly at first, then suddenly faster. “Wow, Strawbs, you’re a genius! Then I could get even more by wishing for a weekly bonus!”
Strawberry’s mouth opened to pick that one apart, but she thought better of it. “Say, what are you using all this money for, anyway?”
“Um…” She thought a while about that, too. Strawberry could have sworn she could hear her last two brain cells rubbing against each other, though she guessed it was more like two foals trying and failing repeatedly to perform a hoofbump. “So far? Strawberries.”
Strawberries.
Strawberry Sunrise wanted very badly to try to walk Dust Devil through her plan’s mind-numbingly circuitous logic, but thought better of it.
“That’s, um…” She sighed. “That’s really nice of you, Dust.”
“Aw, it’s nothin’,” she said with a blush. “I’ll see you next week!”
“See you next week,” Strawberry replied.
As she watched Dust Devil disappear back into the crowd, Strawberry wondered privately how much longer she would have to wait for the updates on the mares’ wish experimentation.
Then again, she would understand if they didn’t really feel like sharing with her. She hadn’t made herself an easy mare to share with. She hadn’t even made it obvious that she wanted Fiddlesticks and Redheart to share with her. For all she knew, they were off chatting about it right now. Maybe they’d been chatting all this time. Maybe, in a strange yet predictable twist of fate, Redheart was going to turn up swooning over Fiddlesticks. That seemed like a Redheart sort of thing to do.
Anyway, it was probably fair to want to avoid her. Strawberry hadn’t exactly earned anypony else’s company. She was rather adept at getting others out of her mane—had spent years cultivating this very skill, in fact—and you can’t have it both ways.
As her mother would have said: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
And Strawberry wasn’t upset.
That would be stupid.
Strawberry wasn’t stupid.
She picked up her book and tried to find her place, but her eyes danced over the text without absorbing a single word. She slammed the book down on the tabletop again and growled softly to herself. Now that was ruined, too.
That was fine.
She was working anyway.
What had she done to earn getting lost in her book? Sell a pint of strawberries to a sap? Perhaps the sap?
“Whatever.” Strawberry folded her forelegs tightly over her chest.
“Talking to yourself already?”
Strawberry jolted.
Lily Valley, the friendly-but-neurotic florist from the neighboring stall, smiled back at her. Lily’s stand was so overstuffed with flowers that it seemed more spherical than the traditional stand, and her head seemed to be floating at the center of the colorful explosion.
Even just glancing over at her display was enough to make Strawberry feel a bit insecure.
“Sorry. Slow days always get to me,” Lily said sweetly. “I just get this weird feeling that something bad’s about to happen. Do you ever feel that way? Like a… a vague sense of impending doom?”
Shocker.
Even knowing Lily Valley’s penchant for the dramatic, it was sort of an ironic thing to say. Here was Lily, a picture-perfect little pink-coated mare with a magazine-worthy windswept mane, her head poking out of an explosion of colorful flowers… and yet, a deep terror lurking in her eyes. A nervous little flicking back and forth, like a frightened bird.
“Eh…” Strawberry gave the question a moment of genuine consideration. “It’s more of a lingering frustration with life in general.”
“Huh. Interesting.” Lily plucked a single petal off of a flower from a nearby bouquet. “I’d trade with you if I could!”
“I… wouldn’t.”
Lily giggled at that. “Fair enough!”
She had a tiny little voice. Sort of nasally, but in an endearing way, if that was possible. Strawberry figured it must be, since she was hearing it.
“You’ve had a bit of a buzz lately!” Lily said. “I’ve been hearing about the wishes. I figured there’d be a run on your stall this week.”
Strawberry rolled her eyes. “Lucky me,” she grumbled, dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve got buzz.”
“I was thinking about picking some up for myself today,” Lily continued, unphased. She grinned expectantly at Strawberry.
“Yay,” Strawberry said.
Lily laughed politely.
Strawberry did not laugh at all.
“Is any of it… true?” Lily asked carefully.
Strawberry sucked in a slow, deep breath, and rolled her head to the side to shoot Lily a withering glare.
Lily cringed slightly. “W-what?”
“If it were true, do you think I’d still be here?”
Lily looked back down into her flowers, a flush overtaking her cheeks. “Point taken.”
She retreated back into her sphere.
Strawberry sniffed lightly, then pulled her folding chair up snug to her own stand and—
“Howdy.”
Strawberry shouted wordlessly, and a hoof flew to her heart. “Fiddlesticks!”
“Sorry. I wasn't tryin’ to scare you.”
“No one ever is, and yet…” Strawberry growled. “Redheart isn’t here yet. Or—I don’t know if she’s coming at all, actually.”
“Okay.”
Strawberry looked up into the eyes of the mare before her. “Lightning Dust isn’t here, either.”
A flicker of something. Strawberry couldn’t place what, exactly.
“Uh. Okay.”
She just stood there. She was thinking so hard Strawberry could practically see the gears turning in her head, and yet she stayed anchored completely to the spot.
“Hmph.” Strawberry tossed her mane over her shoulder. “How do you two know each other, anyway? Neither of you live in Ponyville. Or… do you?”
“N-nope.” Fiddlesticks cleared her throat. “I’m in town for work. So is she.”
Strawberry arched a brow. “Which is…?”
“She’s… well, I dunno what she’s doing,” Fiddle said quickly. “I’m part of a bluegrass band. Here for the festival.”
“That’s work?”
Fiddle scoffed. “Yes.”
“But…” Strawberry wrinkled her snout. “I mean, bluegrass?”
Fiddle set her jaw. “Some ponies like bluegrass,” she replied simply. “You don’t gotta be rude about it.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.” Strawberry looked down at her tablecloth and made a face.
“I saw that.”
“Saw what?”
“Your face.”
“What face?”
Fiddle heaved an enormous sigh, and evidently determined that this was not worth pursuing. “Could I get another pint of strawberries?”
Strawberry shrugged, and pushed a pint across the table at Fiddle. “Hey, wait a minute—did your wish work?” she asked. “Did your sister write you?”
“That’s not really your business, is it?” Fiddle quipped softly as she fished for change. “And since when did you care?”
“Well, they’re my strawberries,” Strawberry pointed out. “And… let’s call it a professional curiosity.”
Fiddle rolled her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just dropped her bits on the table and reached for her pint.
Strawberry tugged it just out of her reach. “Look, I’m sorry about the bluegrass thing, okay?” she said, with perhaps a little too much of her own eye roll. “Just… tell me about the wish. Let me pass it on to Redheart for you.”
“Pass what onto me?”
A little smile of relief passed over Fiddle’s face—there and gone. “Well, well. Speak of the devil.”
Redheart dropped her saddlebag beside the stand and beamed at the two mares before her. “And she shall appear!” she said with a little giggle. “How’d the wishing go, Fids?”
“Well, uh…” Fiddle’s face twisted as she did her best to fight back a grin, but it broke through easily. “Good. Pretty good, I’d say.”
Redheart gasped. “Did you get a letter?”
“Right as I swallowed the last bite. Right at sunrise.” She could hardly contain her smile. “And you?”
“Oh, not so lucky, I’m afraid.” Redheart shrugged.
“What’d you wish for?”
“A million bits,” Redheart said. She snorted in laughter. “Worth a try, right?”
Strawberry scoffed. “You have plenty of money, Red,” she pointed out. “Being a nurse in Ponyville is like being a firefighter in the heart of the Dragonlands.”
Fiddle gave Redheart a quizzical look.
“The triple-overtime on weekly magical mishaps adds up,” Redheart whispered. She threw in a wink for good measure.
Fiddle’s eyes went wide, and she nodded sagely.
“So!” Redheart clapped her forehooves together. “What have we learned?”
“That my strawberries are not—”
“Not you, Strawberry.”
Strawberry’s mouth snapped shut.
“Um…” Fiddle scratched the back of her head. “I dunno. Did you follow all the steps?”
“To the letter,” Redheart said. “I ate every strawberry in the pint, the last one as the sun was rising, and not a bit in sight. Maybe I wasn’t focused enough on my wish?”
Strawberries snorted. “Sounds like—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—the strawberries don’t actually grant wishes,” she said.
“Heard it,” Redheart said with a dismissive wave of her hoof.
“Maybe it was… too much?” Fiddle suggested.
Redheart’s brow crinkled. “Too much? How?”
“Well…” Fiddle cast a nervous glance in Strawberry’s direction, then cleared her throat and refocused on Redheart. “I feel like the wishes that got granted were all pretty small and doable. A raise, a date, a letter. Maybe a million bits just… ain’t reasonable?”
“So now the strawberries can reason?” Strawberry laughed dryly. “Am I hearing that right?”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Redheart scolded. “Plenty of spells are limited by their reasonability. It’s all about energy exchange—a tiny spell is like throwing a pebble in a river, I only get a splash. You have to start casting boulders if you want to really affect the flow.”
Strawberry sighed and shook her head. “And, on the pebble-to-boulder scale, the strawberries would be…?”
“You and I have different definitions of ‘perfect’,” Strawberry said. “And ‘pebble’, actually.”
“Oh, shush.” Redheart turned back to Fiddle. “Thoughts?”
Fiddle shrugged. “I dunno. I feel like the letter was… kinda huge.” She sniffed lightly. “I think if the two’a you knew my sister, you’d be inclined to agree.”
Redheart nodded. “Hm.”
“And—well, we don’t even know what Lightning Dust wished for,” Fiddle pointed out. “It could have been anything. I feel like it’d have to be something pretty big to come back here after… well.”
Quick, harsh glances were thrown in Strawberry’s direction.
“Wh—me?”
“I didn’t say nothin’.”
“Well, Strawbs, you roasted her pretty hard the first time,” Redheart reminded her.
Fiddle scoffed. “Try front and back ‘til crispy,” she amended.
“How do you even know what happened, Fiddlesticks?” Strawberry asked. “You weren’t there.”
Fiddle’s gaze shifted back towards the ground. “Uh. Lightnin’ told me.”
There was an odd little hitch in her voice, as if she didn’t want to admit she had even spoken to Lightning Dust at all. Despite noticing the hitch, Strawberry honestly wasn’t the least bit interested.
“Whatever. She had it coming,” Strawberry remarked. “She did some pretty messed up stuff.”
“Y-yeah, well. It was a long time ago,” Fiddle said quickly.
Strawberry scoffed. “Not that long ago.”
“She’s doing her best,” Fiddle added. “She’s trying to be better. She’s owning up to her mistakes and making amends. What more do you want?”
Strawberry blinked. “What more do I want?”
“Yeah, you,” Fiddle said. “Since you’re suddenly judge, jury, and executioner for all of Ponyville. She’s doing better now—why would you say all those things?”
“Well, I—” Strawberry stuttered a moment. “I didn’t know she was working on it. How was I supposed to know that?”
“Did you ask?”
“Uh… that’d be a weird thing to ask about,” Strawberry said with a dismissive laugh.
“So you didn’t?”
Strawberry opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “No.”
“Then why’d you rake her over the coals like that?” Fiddle asked. “That ain’t fair.”
Strawberry rolled her eyes, feeling a flush creep into her cheeks and doing her best to suppress it. “That’s not fair? Life’s not fair.”
“Yeah, well.” Fiddlesticks reached out to take her pint of fruit. Strawberry did nothing to stop her. “Ever stop to think that maybe life ain’t fair specifically because of ponies like you?”
Strawberry’s mouth hung open.
Fiddlesticks stood there a moment longer, waiting for a response. When none came, she gave Strawberry Sunrise a curt nod, said, “So long, Red,” and turned to leave.
Redheart didn’t say anything for a long moment. She only watched as Fiddlesticks slipped back into the crowd. Then, still wordlessly, she pulled a second folding chair up to Strawberry’s table, fished a book out of her saddlebag, and began reading in silence.
At the stall beside them, Lily Valley chirped a thank-you to a customer who had just bought a small bouquet of daisies. Strawberry was too absorbed by her own inward fury to notice Lightning Dust, bouquet in hoof, follow Fiddlesticks into the throng of chattering ponies.
“I didn’t think I said anything all that bad,” Strawberry lied.
Redheart didn’t reply, merely raised her eyebrows.
“What?”
“All that bad?” Redheart repeated. “I mean, I guess it could have been worse, but… you were pretty rude.”
“She strapped a child to a rocket,” Strawberry reminded her. “Is no one hearing this?”
“I’m hearing it.”
“And you think I was rude?”
Redheart heaved a great sigh. “Strawbs, I love you. I do. But you definitely have a tendency to, um…” She trailed off, eyes rolling up at the sky, as she searched for the right word. “Exaggerate.”
Strawberry scoffed, folded her forelegs over her chest, and flopped back in her folding chair.
“Or… maybe overreact?”
“Overreact? Really?” Strawberry snapped back.
Redheart made a face. “Am I the only one who remembers the Applejack incident?”
Strawberry rolled her eyes. “No.” She flopped back in her folding chair and heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what she was so upset about. It was just banter.”
“I mean…” Redheart trailed off.
It was the sort of trailing off that said perhaps more than it intended to. Or perhaps it said exactly as much as it intended to, and Redheart simply couldn’t bring herself to actually say it out loud. Or perhaps it was the sort of trailing off that begged for Strawberry to leap in and fill the silence with the truth which Redheart could not perceive on her own.
Strawberry did not take the bait, juicy as it was.
“Do you think those flowers were for Fiddlesticks?”
Redheart shot Strawberry a stern glare. “Really?”
“What? I can’t talk about them at all now?” Strawberry groaned. “They kind of deserve each other, honestly. Fiddlesticks seems to be the only pony capable of forgiving her for all the stupid crap she did.”
Redheart said nothing.
Strawberry laughed. “The silent treatment? You can’t be serious.”
Redheart rolled her eyes.
“Is this how you deal with all conflict? Because I feel like I kinda get why your flings don’t tend to progress to relationship status,” Strawberry quipped, laughter in her words.
Redheart shuddered.
It was a subtle thing. A stiffening, as if she’d been hit. Not only hit—struck through. Electrocuted. Something right in the center of her chest.
Strawberry almost didn’t see it, but something about the way the bristle came to rest disrupted the conversation entirely.
“Uh.” Strawberry looked over at her. “I just mean, like—let’s talk like adults, y’know?”
Redheart’s bristle was still coming down. Something was off balance, slowly finding its way home, but Strawberry didn’t see what it was or how it moved.
“Red?” Strawberry gave her friend a nudge. “You okay?”
Redheart shooed her hoof off. Not an outright violent smack, but the closest thing to it.
“What’s the matter?”
“Strawberry, you don’t know how to talk like an adult.”
Redheart stood up. She gathered her bags quickly, jamming her book roughly into an open pocket.
Strawberry watched with her mouth hanging open. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m going to spend time with my marefriend,” Redheart said, pointedly. “And you might have known I’m calling her that now if you’d thought to ask.”
“But I—”
“I’ll see you later, Strawberry.”
And she was gone.
Fragments of words still tumbled to the tip of Strawberry’s tongue, and all she could do was stutter half-thoughts as she watched her friend trot briskly down the street and disappear around a corner. Even then, she stayed frozen, staring at the spot where the last flash of Redheart’s tail had vanished.
Later.
Redheart would see her later.
That was good, right?
It wasn’t totally over. That wasn’t the end of a friendship, even though it felt like one. Strawberry remembered that feeling vacuum when the last words had been exchanged—this wasn’t that, because Redheart would see her later. After her shift. After she’d cooled down. After she’d forgiven her.
Strawberry wasn’t totally certain who she wanted to do the forgiving, actually.
And that made her angry.
Which made her feel guilty.
Which made her feel like maybe Redheart ought to do the right thing and just not come back.
“I think I’ve decided what my next wish is gonna be,” Dust Devil said as she counted out her bits.
Strawberry said nothing. She only watched Dust Devil pick through her change.
Dust reached twelve, at long last, and dumped the bits on the table. “Don’t you wanna know what it is?”
Strawberry sighed. “Your wish?”
“Mhm!”
“Not really.”
Dust Devil momentarily deflated, but sprang right back up and flared her wings. “Oh! You don’t have to worry about the telling-ponies-your-wish rule,” she said, beaming. “I’ve got it on good authority that it doesn’t matter one bit.”
She leaned in and winked theatrically.
Strawberry blinked.
“On account of—well, I made a few wishes now that you knew all about,” Dust explained. “You even gave me the idea for one! So don’t you worry: we can chat about the wishes all we want. No harm, no foul.”
Strawberry grunted something and pushed a pint at Dust.
Dust did not pick up on the increasingly subtle cues Strawberry was laying down. “Thanks!” She picked up her pint and nestled it safely into her withers.
She hovered there. She had the sort of nervous excitement of a young foal the night before Hearth’s Warming.
“Oh, I’ll tell you!” She leaned in close, cupped a hoof around her mouth, and whispered: “I was gonna wish for you to get some more customers. Maybe sell out your stock!”
She drew back.
She smiled.
That was all she had to say, apparently. She stood there, strawberries balanced between her wings, smiling down on Strawberry Sunrise with this unsolicited gift. The sunlight glinted off her aviator’s goggles and nearly blinded Strawberry as she looked up at her. She had to shield her eyes with one hoof and squint hard to see Dust at all.
“I… didn’t ask you to do that,” Strawberry said, almost accusingly.
Dust laughed. “I know that, silly.”
“That’s stupid,” Strawberry said. “I don’t deserve that. I didn’t earn that! Why would you wish for that?”
“U-uh.” Dust took a small step back, and the sunlight’s angle changed. “It’s not stupid. I thought you’d like to—”
“And, what, I need you for that?” Strawberry scoffed. “I could sell out every week if I wanted to.”
“Oh.” Dust Devil cocked her head. “So… you don’t want to sell out?”
“Yeah! I mean, no! I mean—” Strawberry stopped herself, took a small steadying breath, and said, “Don’t be stupid. Don’t waste your wish on my crap. I can make all the wishes I want, right? I’m the one with the stock.”
“But… you aren’t.”
“Dust. C’mon.” Strawberry gestured broadly to her stall. “They’re my strawberries. Where do you think I—”
“I mean you aren’t making wishes,” Dust said.
Strawberry’s mouth opened to reply, but she found none. Instead, she snickered. “That’s—I mean, I—” She searched for an explanation, and settled on, “You don’t know that.”
But she did.
And she wasn’t.
That was true.
Dust made a face. Strawberry knew there wasn’t a lot behind the face, beyond some very general confusion with the entire interaction.
She sort of wished she could start frying her own brain cells at the rate Dust managed.
Strawberry let out a long breath. Then, without saying another word, she swept Dust Devil’s bits into her open cash box. They made an awful clattering sound, and Dust Devil cringed away from it.
“Um… sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” she offered.
Strawberry sighed. “Whatever.”
“I was just—”
“I’ll see you next week,” Strawberry said quickly. “Or I won’t. Whichever.”
Dust Devil clenched her jaw and looked down at the ground.
Strawberry didn’t wait for her to leave. She picked up her book and pretended she already had.
“Yeah, we’ve got data,” Lightning said with a flick of her tail. “The juicy kind.”
Fiddle and Lightning Dust exchanged an amorous look which was so over-the-top it bordered on the grotesque. Someone giggled, and Strawberry couldn’t be certain which one it had been.
“She’s not here,” Strawberry replied.
“Oh.” Fiddle waited patiently for more information, but none came, so she stuttered out more: “W-well, we wanted to tell her about our wish. Could you pass it along?”
Strawberry arched a brow. “We’re doing joint wishes now?”
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Fiddle explained, a blush overtaking her cheeks. “I think we’ve been wishing for the same thing for a while now. Pot finally boiled over, wouldn’cha say?”
Lighting snickered. “Something like that.”
They exchanged another long look, tails thrashing in unison, both nuzzling briefly.
Strawberry heaved an enormous sigh. “That’s beautiful. Pots boiling over. Love it.” The tone seemed to fly over the lovebirds’ heads. “Are you buying or just basking in PDA?”
Lightning’s face went stony and she stomped one hoof.
“Relax, Light,” Fiddle said, pressing a hoof into Lightning’s chest. By some miracle, this worked, and Lightning seemed to find an inner peace in a matter of moments. “Is it her shift? We didn’t miss her, did we?”
“I dunno where she is,” Strawberry said.
Fiddle and Lightning exchanged another look.
“Isn’t she your friend?” Lightning asked.
“Doesn’t mean I’m tracking her movements.”
“I know that.”
“Didn’t sound like it.”
Lightning ground her teeth. “Fine. I guess we’ll come back next week.”
Strawberry shrugged. “No guarantee she’ll be back then, but sure.”
Fiddle furrowed her brows. “Did somethin’ happen? You two seemed… on good terms, at least,” she said carefully. “I got the impression you sorta ran this whole show together.”
“Nope. Just me.”
“Oh.” Fiddle frowned. “So… did somethin’ happen?”
Strawberry gave a theatrically sarcastic shrug. “You could say that,” she offered. “Final offer: strawberries?”
“Pass,” Lightning said.
Fiddle seemed less sure, but also shook her head. “I guess we’ll see you next week?”
“I guess you will.”
Fiddle gave a half-hearted wave as they departed, quickly swallowed up by the crowd.
Strawberry sank ever lower in her seat, barely even visible behind the chalkboard sign which sat propped up against an old cement-filled glass bottle.
She snatched it off the table.
STRAWBERRIES FOR SALE
Delicious fresh
Perfect for baking
Rumors of wish-granting capabilities greatly exaggerated
12 bits/pint
With the back of one hoof, Strawberry wiped away the line about granting wishes. She took a bit of the line above with it, and decided to erase that, too. Her messy and erratic motions cannibalized more and more of the sign’s content until little remained beyond white smudges and the single line:
12 bits/pint
She thought it over.
Struck it through.
12 bits/pint
Half off!
6 bits/pint
She held it out at leg’s length and read it over a few times.
It seemed about right, at long last. About fair for non-magical, non-wish-granting, perfectly mediocre backyard strawberries.
But even fair felt like too much.
12 bits/pint
Half off!
6 bits/pint
4 bits/pint
All of the text was now crammed into the lower half. It looked ugly, trashy, cheap.
She erased it all.
4 bits
Stared at it.
It looked small.
Stupid.
Who would bother paying anything for her dumb strawberries? She’d already stuck herself with the stall right at the end, selling one weak product, barely bothering to chat with customers or improve her approach or really try at all.
She didn’t deserve customers.
She didn’t deserve profit.
She didn’t deserve anything.
She erased it all, held the chalk hesitantly, then scribbled her final directive:
Strawberry rose before the sun and sat in a chair by the window.
A bonus.
A date.
A letter.
A confession.
A raise.
Maybe that was the limit. Maybe it had to be something tangible for the wish to work. Not necessarily something you could hold, but something you could prove—something certain and grounded and real.
That could be it.
Strawberry settled a carton of fruit in her lap as she gazed out her front window. She wondered what real and tangible thing she might be able to wish for that would get her what she actually wanted.
But that was hard when she couldn’t put what she wanted into words.
She wanted things to be different. She knew that for sure. She wasn’t happy—anyone could see that. And if she wasn’t happy she must be able to make a change, right? There must be something that could make things better. Something she could ask for. Money or suitors or power or victory. Something undeniably good.
“I wish I was the best gardener in all of Equestria,” Strawberry whispered to her first fruit before biting into it.
But the second the juice spread over her tongue she knew that wasn’t right.
“I wish…” She chewed, swallowed. “I wish I was the best gardener in all of Ponyville.”
Another bite.
Another churn of her stomach.
She didn’t want that. Didn’t deserve it. It wouldn’t help her, anyway. Or maybe she already had it. Whatever the issue, it wasn’t right.
She snatched another strawberry out of the carton. “I wish I had a million bits.”
The sun was coming over the horizon now.
An unripe berry. Sour, lip-puckering.
Wrong.
“I wish I had more customers.”
Wrong.
“I wish I had a bigger farm.”
Wrong.
“I wish I liked more than just strawberries.”
Wrong.
“I wish I hadn’t said those things to Lightning Dust.”
“I wish I hadn’t said those things to Redheart.”
“I wish I’d keep my mouth shut.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Strawberry Sunrise looked down into the carton. Only two strawberries left.
She lifted the first.
“I wish the wishes worked,” she said.
She ate the berry in one bite.
Still wrong.
And she lifted the final strawberry. She held it up, really looked at it. Watched the way the sunrise reflected off its tight, shiny skin. The way it sent a perfectly soft red glow onto her pallid yellow hoof, turning her a fantastic peachy orange.
She didn’t wish on it. Not in so many words.
She just ate it, tension swirling and pulsing in her chest.
It tasted better than the rest, though maybe that was just because she hadn’t placed such unreachable expectations on it. It was simply the last unremarkable strawberry in this particular unremarkable carton.
She swallowed.
The sun came up, stretching across the sky and turning it the same peachy orange that the strawberry had turned her coat.
Just as the excitement was beginning to wear off, and Strawberry was considering going back to bed, there was a soft knock on the door.
At first, Strawberry had thought she’d imagined it. She watched the door carefully, waiting for more, but heard none. Perhaps it had been a squirrel leaping up onto the roof, or some other woodland creature pattering about.
Strawberry stood.
And there again came the knock.
Strawberry sighed. She looked towards the dark and comforting cave of her bedroom, then back at the front door. Against everything she thought herself to be, Strawberry chose the front door.
She didn’t bother peering through the peephole. She just pulled gently on the handle and allowed the door to swing inwards just a few degrees, opening up a tiny crevice through which to glimpse her guest.
She was standing a few strides back from the door, as if she’d come up to knock and quickly taken two large steps back. Her eyes were wide and wild, her mane an unkempt mess. She didn’t look the least bit like herself—at least not the self that Strawberry was accustomed to.
Strawberry squinted at the mare on her doorstep. “Lightning Dust?”
She seemed surprised to be hearing her own name. “H-hey! Uh…” She looked down at the ground and clicked her tongue as she tried to speak. “Do you have a sec?”
Strawberry pushed the door open a little more and stuck her head out into the morning sun. “What for?”
“I think I…” She trailed off, cleared her throat, and started again. “I think I need your help.”
Lightning Dust squirmed awkwardly as she tried to make herself comfortable at Strawberry’s dining room table. There was something odd about her demeanor that Strawberry couldn’t quite put her hoof on—she was acting a bit like a foal trying her best to behave herself, despite the desperate urge to misbehave. She seemed like she was fighting it near constantly.
Strawberry did her best to ignore it. This meant she only stared a little as Lightning Dust did her best not to boil over with rage due to a minor discomfort.
“Would you rather sit on the couch?”
“No,” Lightning spat back. “I’m fine.”
Strawberry made a face.
Lightning made a face back, but withheld any verbal response.
“You said you needed my help?” Strawberry asked, snout in the air.
Lightning scoffed. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like we’ve got beef,” Lightning said. “Or like you’ve got a stick up your butt. I dunno, what’s with the snooty act?”
“I’m not acting snooty,” Strawberry insisted, her snout still raised a degree above the horizontal. “Now, what’s the problem? And how will you be compensating me?”
Lightning’s face melted into a grimace. “It’s not like that. I just want to talk about the wishes.”
“Ugh. You’re joking.”
“Why would I joke about that?” Lightning asked, bored already. “Why would I drag myself over here at the butt-crack of dawn to make this joke?”
Strawberry thought about that.
She shrugged.
“Look. I know I didn’t tell you about the first wish but I, uh… I think I may have screwed up,” Lightning said, quick and quiet. “I was wondering if you knew how to, like… undo wishes.”
Strawberry raised an eyebrow. “Undo wishes?”
Lightning nodded.
“Seriously?” Strawberry scoffed. “That’s stupid. Can’t you just wish it back the other way?”
“I tried,” Lightning said. “It didn’t work.”
Strawberry sighed thinly. “That’s probably because my strawberries don’t grant wishes. You’re trying to undo realities,” she explained, condescension dripping from every word. “Hope that helps! I'll see you next week, I suppose.”
She stood up.
Lightning remained seated.
She wasn’t visibly upset, really. She wasn’t scowling or flushed or teary-eyed. The look in her eyes was more similar to the look someone might have when they walk all the way to their favorite restaurant for takeout only to find they’re closed, even though it’s a Tuesday and all restaurants should be open for lunch on a Tuesday. It’s called business hours.
In other words, it was disappointment. But, more than that, inconvenience. And a little frustration with herself for not bothering to check the store’s hours before leaving the house.
“Do you remember what you said to me at the market?” Lightning asked.
Strawberry sighed. “Could you be more specific?”
“You told me I should wish for something,” Lightning prompted. “Do you remember that?”
“Maybe you should have wished for a second chance on my mediocre strawberries. That or an attitude adjustment.”
“Um…” Strawberry feigned ignorance, even though the words were practically burned into the backs of her eyelids. “Nope, can’t say that I do! Remind me?”
Lightning leaned back a little in her seat and leveled a glare at Strawberry. “An attitude adjustment,” she said. “You told me I should have wished either for a second chance with the Wonderbolts, or an attitude adjustment.”
“Ohhh…” Strawberry nodded. “Right.”
Lightning rolled her eyes.
“I… sorta remember that.”
“Whatever,” Lightning grumbled. “Anyway. I did that.”
“Did what?”
“I wished for a sunnier disposition, okay?” Lightning said, smacking her hoof on the table.
The salt and pepper cellars rattled against one another like windchimes. Strawberry took a tiny step away from Lighting and looked up at the ceiling, as if this might somehow protect her from whatever would come next.
She held back the obvious quip at Lightning’s expense.
“I wished for an attitude adjustment. And it came true or whatever,” she muttered. “But it wasn’t… how I wanted it.”
She looked down at her hooves.
Strawberry chewed her lip. For a moment, a shadow of seriousness seemed to hang in the kitchen. She very nearly gave into it.
“That’s the weirdest wish I’ve ever heard,” Strawberry said.
Lightning looked up, a fire in her eyes.
“Who wishes for that?” Strawberry asked. “I swear, everyone in Ponyville is wasting these stupid wishes. Wish for something good!”
The fire smoldered, but Lightning did not spit it back at her aggressor. She, instead, politely swallowed it. “Not the point,” she said. Slowly. “The point is it didn’t work.”
“Well, all due respect, how do you know that?” Strawberry said. “I’m the gardener, after all. I grew them.”
Lightning took a long, steadying breath, but Strawberry could still see the embers of fury glowing in her chest. “Sit.”
Strawberry arched a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Sit down,” Lightning repeated, as much a suggestion as an order could be. “Please.”
The mare was barely hanging on. To what thread, exactly, Strawberry couldn’t tell, but Lightning Dust gave off the distinct impression of a member of the royal guard sweating bullets underneath his armor as he stood at a rigid attention. Or like a princess holding in a sneeze. Something bizarre and primal, in a way; teetering on the brink of a full-blown breakdown.
Strawberry sat down.
“Here’s the thing,” Lightning said, her voice shockingly even for the madness in her eyes. “I am so angry. All the time.”
Strawberry cleared her throat. “Sure.”
“And I do stupid things. And I make stupid choices.” Lightning Dust paused, nodded, then continued. “And I guess that’s what I wished for. To be less impulsive and less stupid. But now it’s like… I dunno. I can’t get anything out at all. It’s like it’s stuck.”
“Oh,” Strawberry said. “So that’s what it is.”
Lightning looked up at her. “You noticed?”
Strawberry shrugged.
“I can’t live like this. I feel like I’ve got something caught in my throat and I can’t cough it out,” Lightning said. “But I tried to undo it and nothing changed.”
Privately, Strawberry thought that maybe having something caught in your throat was better than hacking up a lung all over everyone you meet. Or however that metaphor worked out.
All she said was, “Oh.”
“I dunno. I figured you and Redheart had probably figured out the steps by now,” she said. “You weren’t at the market last week so I thought maybe you’d… ugh. I dunno.”
Strawberry very nearly reminded Lightning for the umpteenth time that the wishes, however real they might have seemed were not actually real.
Instead, she asked, “Why did you, um… wish for a better attitude?”
Lightning sighed. “Because my attitude sucks. And I’m sick of it.” She sank down in her chair. “I know I’ve done some bad stuff, but I’m over that now. I really am. It’s just… no one will believe me if I keep acting like a jerk.”
“No, no. I get that,” Strawberry said. “I mean, like, why make a wish? You could have just… worked on it?”
Lightning shot her a weird look. “Because,” she said. “I dunno. It’s easier to wish for it than work on it, right?”
“Is it?”
Lightning scowled. “Are you stupid?”
Strawberry cleared her throat demurely and looked down at the table. She did not respond.
“But this isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t me being less angry—I’m exactly the same amount of angry,” she explained, her voice coming out breathy but otherwise unaffected. “I just can’t get it out. And I can’t get other things out, either. Even good stuff. I can’t give Fiddle even close to what she deserves.”
“Ew.”
“Not like that, Strawberry,” Lightning said, dejected.
Strawberry wanted to believe that, but the image was now in her head, and she was afraid she wouldn’t have any luck at all erasing it.
She imagined the reason she had trouble with it was because Fiddlesticks was so… sweet. She was kind and quiet and only seemed to lash out when others truly deserved it. Lightning Dust, on the other hoof, was loud and impulsive and, frankly, too much. Everywhere. All the time.
Strawberry remembered that from way back in flight camp. Lightning was always too much. Strawberry wanted less attention, to be left alone, to skate by unnoticed, collect her passing grade, and fade into obscurity.
Lightning was now and always had been too much.
She needed to be… less.
The thought twisted Strawberry’s stomach before she really even understood why.
“Just—nevermind,” Lightning said. “This was a dumb idea. I’m gonna go.”
She tried to stand up.
Strawberry reached out a hoof to stop her. “Wait.”
Lightning paused, growled softly in her throat, and looked down at Strawberry.
She was less. That was for sure. She wasn’t yelling or teasing or being her rude, brash self. And, in a way, Strawberry liked that. She thought that was best. She thought Lightning deserved a little self-control.
But maybe that was the problem.
“I know I said I don’t believe in the wishes,” Strawberry said, screwing her eyes shut. “And I still don’t. I want that on the record.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But, um… If they did,” she went on, dragging out each pause, “is it possible that they’d be related to me?”
Lightning blinked. “Well, duh. They’re your strawberries.”
“No, no. I mean…” Her stomach twisted harder. “Is it possible, maybe, that my opinion about the wishes… has an effect?”
Lightning stiffened. “Where are you going with this?”
Strawberry sucked in a deep breath. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that what I meant when I said ‘attitude adjustment’ was less about being a better pony and more about, um…” She sucked more air over her teeth. “Just getting you to shut up?”
Lightning Dust raised her eyebrows an almost imperceptible amount.
“You were saying some really mean things!”
“So were you!” Lightning shot back.
“Well!”
That was the end of the thought. Nothing else came to mind—no argument, no retort.
“Look, it’s not like I was trying to do anything weird,” Strawberry mumbled. “I didn’t know that… or, I guess I didn’t believe that—”
“Who cares if you don’t believe in the wishes?! That doesn’t even—” Lightning cut herself off. Strawberry could briefly glimpse the wheels of her mind turning, meshing, grinding as they slotted together each piece of the puzzle. “It’s—it is you, isn’t it?”
Strawberry balked. “Me how?”
“It’s you!” Lightning pointed an accusatory hoof at Strawberry. “You’re the one pulling the strings! The wishes only come true when—what, when you think we’ve earned it?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Strawberry corrected.
“You wouldn’t?”
“You’re always ‘laying the groundwork’. Just ask her out already! You deserve it!”
“Why don’t you just wish for a raise?You deserve it by now.”
“Fiddlesticks and Lightning Dust kind of deserve each other, honestly.”
Strawberry kept the little flickers of memories to herself. She had thrown that word around quite a bit lately—more than she had realized. In fact, for nearly every wish granted, Strawberry could recall either saying aloud or thinking to herself how much each recipient deserved their spoils.
She bit her lip. “Or… well, maybe—”
“No, not ‘maybe’!” Lightning pounded a hoof on the table. “Definitely! The bonus—”
“Everyone knows Dust Devil deserves a bonus, she practically kills herself once a week for the stupid job.”
“—and the letter—”
“Fiddlesticks told me that sad story about her sister going no-contact!” Strawberry argued. “Of course she deserved a letter!”
“—and Redheart’s date—”
“Which anyone in Ponyville could tell you she’s earned!” Strawberry said, waving a hoof in the air. “She’s the one taking care of the aftermath of Twilight and company’s nonsense every time. Ask anyone.”
“But she didn’t earn a million bits, huh?” Lightning Dust prompted. “And what about Fiddle’s first wish? What about mine?”
Strawberry grabbed at her face and let out an agonized groan. “I don’t even know what those were!”
“Okay, wait. Let me get this straight: you think I don’t deserve to express my emotions?” Lightning asked. “That’s why I’m stuck like this?”
Strawberry hesitated.
Lightning’s eye twitched.
“W-well, I didn’t want you coming to the market and calling me names!” Strawberry argued. “What, that’s a crime now? To not want to be made fun of in public?”
“Whatever,” Lightning grumbled. “Like you’re so much better.”
Strawberry made a sound of stunned disbelief. Disgust, even.
“Yeah, it’s not as easy as you make it sound, is it?” Lightning accused. “Why don’t you just wish for it, huh? Make it all go away. Make yourself shut up for once. They’re your stupid strawberries—you don’t even have to pay the obnoxious 12-bit price tag!”
“I did!”
Lightning Dust froze.
For a moment, all they did was breathe—heavily, as if they’d been running.
Strawberry’s sudden shout had set the vase on the dining room table ringing. It was a soft sound, almost unnoticeable, but distinctly there. In a way, it made the whole room feel quieter than it had before—the ringing sucked all other sound up and left behind a vacuum of noiselessness. It prickled the back of Strawberry’s neck. Or, rather, something did. She would prefer to pin it on the vase.
After a morning of avoiding eye-contact, Lightning Dust stared right back into Strawberry’s face. The flame of frustration cooled to a gentle flicker, then a glow, then to nothing at all as it was replaced by something else.
“Oh,” said Lightning Dust.
Strawberry sighed. “Yeah.”
“For what?”
“To be—to have—” Still, the words didn’t come. “To be more… Strawberry Sunrise-y.”
Quiet again.
Lightning looked her up and down. The sweet aroma of strawberries hung in the kitchen. The soft warmth of the sunrise bathed the both of them in orange light.
Sweet.
Soft.
Warm.
Light.
Lightning looked down at her hooves. “And… what?”
“And it didn’t work,” Strawberry said quickly. “Because none of them work. They’re just flipping produce, they don’t grant wishes.”
A shadow of something crossed Lightning’s face. It wasn’t anger, Strawberry was certain. It was a gradual thing, a realization.
“Strawberry…” Lightning murmured. “Y-you don’t think you deserve—”
“Ugh.” Strawberry rolled her eyes. “Don’t say my name all pitiful like that. I’m not an idiot. I never expected them to—”
She cut herself off before she told a lie.
“It doesn’t matter,” Strawberry grumbled. “Strawberry season is almost over, anyway. Soon enough, no one will be making wishes anymore, and we can all just go back to the mercy of the universe like usual.”
Lightning sighed. “Great.”
“Great.”
Strawberry was tempted to hit back harder, but she held it back.
And Lightning was right: it didn’t feel better. It felt the same, only now she had to keep it to herself.
Despite it all, the coil of energy in her chest slowly unfurled. Lightning, too, seemed to relax a bit and melt further into her chair. The heavy huffing and puffing of their over-wound breaths calmed. The room slowly settled into silence.
“It’s just frustrating, y’know?” Lightning said. A little fleck of spit flew from her lip.
Strawberry looked up. “What?”
Lightning shrugged. “I’m working really hard on myself, and I think I’m doing a pretty okay job,” she said. “But no matter what I do, it feels like my mistakes are following me around. No one ever really forgave me.”
“I feel like Fiddle did,” Strawberry said. The softness of her own voice surprised her.
Lightning shrugged. “Maybe. I guess,” she said. “Doesn’t always feel like it. More like she… like she ignores it or something. Or maybe I just don’t think she should forgive me.”
“She kinda knows you,” Strawberry said. “And she’s defended you lots of times.”
“Probably just trying to get you to shut up,” Lightning muttered.
Strawberry tried not to take offense to that. She let out a tense sigh and looked down at the floor. She felt woefully unprepared for the situation at hoof, though she doubted there was any greater level of preparedness than the one in which she currently resided.
“Do you, um…” Lightning squirmed in her chair again. “Do you think I deserve it?”
“Deserve… what?”
Lightning ground her teeth. “Forgiveness,” she said. “For the Wonderbolts thing. And the rocket thing. And the other stuff.”
“Other stuff?”
“Like… who I was,” Lightning said. “Back when we first met.”
Strawberry thought about that.
Some things. Maybe.
The general brashness and the—for lack of a better word—attitude. The winner-takes-all approach to life and all that made it up. The bravado and the ego. Even those minor casualties in her quest for greatness. All forgivable. Technically.
But other things… maybe not.
It was such a broad thing, forgiveness. A clean slate. Did anyone really deserve that? A top-to-bottom do-over?
“I don’t know,” Strawberry said, surprised at her own honesty.
Lightning’s puffed-up wings drooped at her sides. “Oh.”
“But that shouldn’t matter,” Strawberry corrected. “Just because I don’t totally forgive you doesn’t mean other ponies won’t. It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Apparently it does,” Lightning said.
“Would it make you feel better if I said ‘yes’?” Strawberry asked. “That I do think you’ve earned forgiveness?”
“No,” Lightning said. “Because I know you’re lying. And, if you give me twenty-four hours, I can prove it.”
She pointed to the empty carton on the table.
That was fair.
Strawberry didn’t even bother arguing with the wish implication.
“What exactly did you wish for?” Lightning asked.
Strawberry sighed. “I don’t know. I had a hard time putting it into words,” she admitted. “I just want things to be different.”
“Different how?”
“Just… different,” Strawberry murmured.
It was an answer.
Technically.
But, for the first time in all of her attempts, Strawberry felt like the words were beginning to form. Because she did want something specific: she wanted things to stop.
Something was always going on. She was always at the center of some hometown chaos that blew around her like a storm. She was always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong pony. She was always stuck wondering if anyone wanted what she was offering—as much her produce as herself.
“Honestly?” Strawberry said softly. “I think I just want ponies to like me.”
Lightning sighed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I think that’s what everyone wants, to be fair.”
“Ew.” Strawberry wrinkled her nose at the implication that she was not, as she often believed, unlike other ponies “Really?”
Lightning scoffed. “Yeah, dummy,” she said. “It’s definitely what I want. It’s definitely what Fiddle wants.”
Strawberry furrowed her brows. “Ponies don’t like Fiddle? But she’s so…” She waved her hoof in a vague motion. “ Y’know.”
“She wants to be a famous musician,” Lightning said. “Always has. But she won’t push herself. I guess because she’s afraid of what happens if ponies don’t like her. You know she hasn’t shown up to a single scheduled performance for this stupid festival? They have to keep calling in the stand-in. Whatever they call that.”
“Understudy.”
Lightning grunted her agreement. “I think that’s what she wished for. To be famous. The first time, that is,” she said. “I dunno. I don’t think she followed all the rules.”
Strawberry licked her lips. “Redheart’s the same way,” she said. “She’s always going on and on about some crush, but she never has the guts to ask them out.”
Lightning gave Strawberry a sideways glance.
“But… she deserves it,” Strawberry said.
Lightning laughed.
“I know,” Strawberry said with a roll of her eyes. “I heard it.”
“She does deserve it. She’s cool,” Lightning agreed.
Strawberry nodded. “Yeah.”
Lightning let the silence stretch for a moment before tapping gently on the table with one hoof. “You know ponies do like you?”
Strawberry shot Lightning a disbelieving look. “Yeah. Right.”
“Yeah, it actually is right, stupid,” Lightning added. “Fiddle went every week just to talk to you about your strawberries and junk, even when you basically refused to respond to her. That weird weather mare with the goggles is always hanging around you too, whatever her name is. She obviously likes you. And Redheart—I mean, doesn’t she wake up early after a night shift just to sit at your booth with you?”
Strawberry wrinkled her snout. “Yeah, but—”
“Why would anyone do that, week after week, if they didn’t like you?” Lightning asked.
Strawberry didn’t have an answer for that.
She looked down at her hooves. “Well… why would Fiddle be wishing to go on a date with you if she didn’t forgive you?”
Lightning, too, was struck silent by the simple question. She didn’t say a word as she leaned back in her chair and turned her gaze to the window.
The sun was well above the horizon by now. The last twinges of gold and peach and magenta were quickly vanishing from the sky, leaving behind that perfect aquamarine of the height of summer. In just under an hour, the farmer’s market would be opening.
Strawberry decided right then and there that this week, for the first time in a long time, she would not be attending.
And, with that, strawberry season finally came to a close.
Strawberry Sunrise smirked with a self-contained glee. “You mean always?” she asked. “Or just right now?”
“Straaaaawbs,” Redheart moaned. Her face glowed a bright pink, equal parts embarrassment and bitter cold. “I really like this mare!”
“Well, duh!” Strawberry gave Redheart a friendly punch in the shoulder. “I hope so! Otherwise you should just break up already!”
Redheart groaned. “It is so hard to shop for Blossomforth,” she complained. “She’s such a goody four-hooves. All she does is go for runs and eat salad. And read.”
“Get her a book, then,” Strawberry suggested.
“But what if she doesn’t like it?”
“So ask her what book she wants.”
“But what if she wants her Hearth’s Warming gift to be a surprise?”
“So get her a book you like.”
“But—”
“Red.” Strawberry grabbed her friend by the shoulders. “She’s not going to break up with you over a kinda-crappy Hearth’s Warming gift! She likes you for a reason, and it isn’t because you buy her stuff. Just get her your favorite book. She’ll love it because she loves you.”
Redheart rolled her eyes, but Strawberry couldn’t help but notice the tiny smile she buried in her scarf.
“Actually, scratch that: your favorite book is probably something weird,” Strawberry teased. “Like The Equestrian Guide to Medicine. Or Lamblet.”
“That’s a play, Strawb,” Redheart said, snickering.
“And it would be a really weird gift, right?” Strawberry giggled to herself. “Doesn’t the marefriend die in that one? That might be considered a threat, actually.”
Redheart snorted in laughter and gently hip-checked her friend. Strawberry stumbled a few steps, kicking up snow and giggling in foalish glee.
Snow had finally come to Ponyville after the longest summer of Strawberry’s life and an autumn that had sunk its claws in deep and held on with all it had. Most townsfolk chalked it up to waning participation in the annual running of the leaves, but Strawberry knew the truth: Dust Devil had misinterpreted a few key instructions from her supervisor and held off the first major winter storm of the season. As a result, she had been transferred to another department. This came with a small dock in pay—one approximately equivalent to the bonus she’d wished for back in May. She was, however, much safer there. Less head-first storm diving, and more paperwork. So it goes.
Most of the wishes had petered off with the end of the strawberry harvest. Redheart and Blossomforth, for example, hit a rocky patch towards the end of July, but Redheart had really put herself out there—more than she ever would have dared with ponies in the past—and they had reunited amicably. They had been happily inseparable ever since.
Strawberry wouldn’t admit it—at least not directly—but she actually found the whole thing sort of cute.
“Alright, I give in: what is your favorite book?” Strawberry asked.
Redheart chuckled. “You’ll laugh.”
Strawberry scoffed. “Well, sure I will. That shouldn’t stop you from telling me.”
Redheart made a small, choked sound as she tried to hold back a laugh. “Riverbank.”
“Ugh!” Strawberry stuck out her tongue. “That terrible Kelpie romance crap?! It doesn’t even make sense—Kelpies don’t live in rivers!”
“But it’s so much fun! And the Kelpie love interest? Freya?” She sighed wistfully, verging on the pornographic. “All those teenagers are right: the mysterious loner thing is to die for. She would drag me to the bottom of that river so fast.”
“That’s perfect, actually,” Strawberry said. “And it’ll make a great inscription for your marefriend. Do you think I’ll be able to accurately transcribe your weird moan?”
“Shut up!” Redheart said, though her obvious laughter.
“Never!” Strawberry retorted. “Now can we hurry up and buy something? We’re gonna be late if you spend any more time waffling.”
“Agh, you know I don’t do well under pressure!” Redheart said, skittering up to the next window display.
Strawberry shook her head. “How did they ever let you into nursing?”
“Other kinds of pressure.”
“Oh, sure. Just other kinds.” Strawberry sidled up to Redheart at the window and peered inside. She had to shield the window with one hoof and squint to make out anything at all. “I’m pretty sure this one’s closed, Red. Why don’t we just go back to the bookstore?”
“But I—”
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but it is actually the thought that counts,” Strawberry said. “Not every present can be the perfect present. Sometimes you just give someone something to show you care.”
Redheart hung her head. “I know…”
“She’s not going to judge you or your present,” Strawberry went on.
“I know…” Redheart repeated, dropping another tone and a half. “I just… I really want it to be the perfect present.”
Strawberry heaved a great sigh. “Alright. Fine,” she said. “How about I go out with you tomorrow and we try again?”
Redheart perked right up and flicked her tail. “You’d do that?”
Strawberry pretended to mull it over for a moment. “Eh, sure. But you’ll owe me a coffee.”
“Deal.”
“The fun kind. With marshmallows and peppermint sticks.”
Redheart giggled. “Whatever you want, Strawbs.”
“Great. Now can we please get to the theater?” Strawberry said, pointing down the street in its direction. “If we get stuck with crappy seats to this thing, we’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Oh, pfft.” Redheart scoffed and waved her hoof dismissively. “Fids won’t care.”
“Yeah, she won’t,” Strawberry agreed. “Lightning Dust, on the other hoof…”
“Are you kidding me?” Lightning Dust hissed. “Five minutes to spare? Are you trying to piss me off?”
“And a happy Hearth’s Warming to you, Dusty,” Redheart said with a mock winter cheer. She even reached out to give her begrudging friend a condescending pat on the head.
Lightning batted the hoof away with perhaps a tick too much ferocity. “Don’t call me Dusty, Red,” she corrected in a snarl. “And please, for the love of all that’s pony, tell me you have your tickets.”
Strawberry whipped the set of tickets out of her saddlebag and flashed them at Lightning. “Ta-da! That’s me, Red, and Blossom.” She demonstrated, pointing to each ticket. “Have a little faith.”
Lightning sneered. “I’ll try.”
Strawberry stuck her tongue out at her.
Lightning hesitated, weighing her options, then returned the stuck-out tongue—if a bit more pointed. And violent. Regardless, Strawberry counted this as a win.
Like the other wishes, Lightning’s attitude adjustment had slowly ebbed away until she was back to her old self—at least as far as Strawberry could tell. She was brash, rude, and a bit egotistic, despite her somewhat impossible charm and charisma. A lot of that came flying out of her mouth with little to no filter.
But the filter was growing in. Strawberry privately thought of it as teething; it was a painful thing to grow, and the effort of it could sometimes cause her to lash out in and of itself, but the effort was there. And, Celestia, was she a lot more fun now.
Most of the time, that is. At the moment, her concern with fighting the demonstrably non-overwhelming crowds to get the best seat for a decidedly non-visual performance was tamping down any fun she might be capable of having.
Redheart and Strawberry trailed right behind her as she parted the seas and led them into the theater.
It was a small-ish place. A Ponyville place. It had all the grandness and prestige of the restaurant your parents took you to for your cutecinera—fake nice, but real enough to feel like it when you had blinders on. And boy did Lightning have blinders on.
“The two of you should count your lucky stars there’s still seats up close,” Lightning scolded.
“Oh, sure,” Strawberry agreed. “Wouldn’t want to miss an important note sitting behind some pillar.”
Lightning’s head whipped around to shoot Strawberry a menacing glare, but she quickly went back to wing-punching concert-goers out of her way in a quest to get to the front rows.
“Actually, would you guys mind staking out my seat?” Redheart asked. “I think I was supposed to meet Blossom in the lobby.”
“Sure, fine, whatever,” Lightning agreed. “She better be here soon!”
Redheart flashed Lightning an easy-going smile and turned to fight her way back up the aisle.
Lightning Dust, unfazed, gave one last pony one last shove and finally arrived at what she seemed to believe were at best possible seats. After a quick check of their view, she plopped herself down into the red-velvet fold-out chair and gestured for Strawberry to sit beside her. Strawberry squeezed in as gracefully as she could manage and deflated into her own chair.
“How was Fiddle feeling when you dropped her off?” Strawberry asked.
“Nervous.”
“Any more nervous than you?” she said with a giggle.
Lightning glared at her. “Hilarious.”
Strawberry sighed softly, then reached over to give her friend a pat on the shoulder. At first, Lightning bristled at the touch, but she quickly relaxed into it. “You’re doing really good.”
“Ugh.” Lightning rolled her eyes. “It’s not about me.”
Strawberry shrugged. “It can be a little about you.”
Lightning grunted.
Strawberry said nothing. She gave her friend another gentle pat.
Lightning sighed. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome!” Strawberry beamed.
“Sorry about the, uh… drill sergeant-ness,” she muttered.
“Well, I forgive you.”
“I just want to make sure she sees us,” Lightning explained. “And—I mean, would it kill more ponies to show up to this thing? I wanted her to have a packed theater! Packed!”
Strawberry chuckled. “Maybe it’s better if she starts small?”
Lightning folded her forelegs over her chest and sank even lower in her seat. “Whatever. Stupid Ponyville theater and their stupid tiny shows.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
Lightning sniffed. “Did I tell you Octavia bailed?”
“Ugh. No.”
“Some bullcrap excuse about weather and travel times,” Lightning grumbled. “She literally lives in town. Fiddle deserves—”
She just barely caught herself.
Lightning cleared her throat. “Fiddle’s been putting in a lot of effort to reconnect,” she said, her tone suddenly a lot more even. “I would have thought Octavia would… I dunno. Try.”
Strawberry sighed. “It’s hard.”
Lightning sighed, too. A forlorn echo of Strawberry’s. “Yeah.”
“We’re back!”
Strawberry looked up in time to see Redheart skittering back down the aisle, Blossomforth in tow.
“Hey, Blossom!” Strawberry waved.
Blossom smiled. “What’s up, guys?”
Strawberry shrugged. “Same old, same old,” she said.
Blossomforth was, in a word, flexible. She was, of course, physically flexible—this was why she was always in urgent care having some sort of sprain, strain, or dislocation taken care of—but this extended to her personality, as well. She was an easy-breezy, roll-with-the-punches sort of mare; exactly the type that Redheart, or really any nurse, needed to balance out her perpetual manic episode.
This is to say, of course, that Blossomforth (a) seemed not at all bothered by the whirlwind insanity of the evening’s plans, and (b) easily and gracefully stepped over both Strawberry and Lightning to reach an empty seat, without even spilling a single kernel of the popcorn she was holding.
Strawberry turned to Blossomforth. “Say, what’s your favorite book?” she asked. “Lightning and I were just chatting about our favorite books.”
Redheart’s face went stony as she tried to communicate, without words or facial expressions, that this was a bad idea.
“Um…” Blossom tapped her chin with one hoof. “Gee, that’s a tough one. Are you looking for a recommendation, or are we talking junk food reading?”
“Good question, good question,” Strawberry said. “Let’s hear the junk food option.”
“Oh, well that’s easy: I love the Riverbank series,” Blossom said, one hoof on her chest. “You can pry those from my cold, dead hooves.”
Redheart’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me.”
Blossomforth shook her head. “Nope! Tease me if you must, but I love a good monster romance.”
“You are literally my dream mare,” Redheart said as she grabbed Blossom’s face in both hooves and drew her in for a kiss.
Strawberry looked over at Lightning. “All in a day’s work.”
“What the hay’s Riverbank?” Lightning asked.
Strawberry blinked. “Can I just ask: how’s the rent under that rock? Is it cheap?”
Lightning opened her mouth to shoot back a retort, but was cut off by the a sudden outburst of crazy giggling from behind them.
“Good one, Strawbs!”
Strawberry turned to look over her shoulder in just enough time for Dust Devil to clap her aggressively on the shoulder.
“So crazy to see you guys here!” Dust said, beaming. “I usually go to these sorts of things myself.”
Strawberry scowled. “Um. What are you doing here?”
Dust Devil gestured to the stage. “Appreciating a little classical music,” she said nonchalantly. “Why—what are you doing here?”
Strawberry supposed all that time in tornadoes had more of an effect on Dust Devil’s brain than she had even thought. She very nearly replied, ready to really dig into this new Dust, but the gentle one-two strobe of the house lights cut her off.
Lightning Dust grabbed at her friends and shushed with as much gusto as she could manage.
Another one-two blink. The house lights switched off, and the stage lights kicked on, illuminating many, many rows of black folding chairs. After a moment, ponies began to file in from both sides, and the audience applauded their arrival.
It wasn’t hard to spot Fiddlesticks among the many members of the orchestra; she had insisted on wearing something on her head, and the conductor—clearly not willing to put up much of a fight—had approved a simple black bandana. Though it was hardly formal wear, Fiddlesticks marched out with her head held high and took her seat with the other string players.
Lightning just barely managed to hold back shouting her name, but did wave one foreleg rather aggressively in the hopes that Fiddle would see her.
She did.
Fiddle’s face split open into an excited grin as she surveyed the four ponies in the audience for her. She waved her bow in response, as gently as she could.
The conductor raised his baton in a flourish of blue magic, sent some unknown signal to the orchestra to raise their instruments, and cued the music with what could only be described as barely-contained panache.
The concert itself was simple, straightforward, and unsurprising. The orchestra played a medley of holiday music that the audience seemed to enjoy. All of it, of course, had been heard day and night without reprieve in Lightning and Fiddle’s shared apartment—meaning that even Strawberry, who had never so much as touched a violin, probably could have muddled her way through the show.
But the music was the least important part. Lightning stayed completely riveted on Fiddle’s face through the entire performance, a sort of wonder in her eyes that Strawberry couldn’t have possibly described. She was the first to applaud each piece at its conclusion, even if she was humming along to every note. She sat practically on the edge of her seat.
When the final chord rang out through the theater, and the conductor turned to bow to the audience, Lightning Dust wasted no time in shooting to her hooves and pounding them on the linoleum as hard as she could, whooping and hollering.
Others quickly followed suit.
The conductor seemed overwhelmed, but smiled and bowed again, then gestured for the orchestra to rise and bow along with him.
Fiddlesticks was up out of her chair so fast she nearly kicked it into the horn player behind her.
“There’s my filly!” Lightning shouted as she ran to embrace Fiddlesticks.
Fiddle, for her part, took a flying leap into Lightning’s waiting forelegs, and the two of them stumbled through the lobby squealing and laughing.
Strawberry sighed and shook her head. “Gross.”
“Tsk, don’t be like that,” Redhart said, giving her friend a strong nudge in the ribs.
“Um, I totally reserve the right to be like that,” Strawberry said. “I’m the one who matched them up! And you two!”
Blossomforth giggled. “Oh, here we go…”
“And yet I remain a sad, rejected maid,” Strawberry lamented. “All those wishes, and not one success for poor, old, miserable, old Strawberry Sunrise.”
“You’re twenty-seven, Strawberry,” Redheart pointed out, rolling her eyes.
Strawberry sighed wistfully. “Yes. Ancient,” she bemoaned. “I can only hope I’ll survive to next strawberry season, when I might finally make the perfect wish on the perfect pint of perfect strawberries and find true love…”
“So you finally admit it?” Redheart asked. “The strawberries did grant wishes?”
“Hmph. I admit no such thing,” Strawberry said, turning her snout in the air. “I’ve still yet to find any hard proof that they did anything whatsoever, honestly.”
“Ugh.” Redheart shook her head. “You have got to be the most stubborn, pig-headed pony I’ve ever known.”
Strawberry clicked her tongue. “You betcha!” She agreed, grinning devilishly. “Face it: you have just as much proof that that bag of popcorn grants wishes as the strawberries.”
She pointed to the nearly-empty paper bag in Blossomforth’s hoof.
Blossom looked down into the bag, sizing up the remaining serving. She traded a quick and inscrutable look with Redheart before shoving the bag into Starwberry’s hooves.
“Alright, then” she said. “Make a wish.”
Strawberry arched a brow. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Blossom said. “Do it for real. And make it a good one.”
Strawberry rolled her eyes. “What constitutes a ‘good one’?”
Blossom shrugged. “I think only you know that.”
Strawberry held back the snark fighting to the surface and peered down into the paper bag.
Three lonely popcorn kernels remained at the bottom. They looked perfectly good, even if they were kettle corn, which Strawberry deeply despised. She briefly considered using this as an excuse to get out of the little game, but realized that such a cop-out would brand her the target of teasing by the group for some years to come.
She shook the bag gently. The kernels rattled about a bit, making soft impact sounds against the taut brown paper.
Strawberry bit her lip.
She did have a wish.
Better than a wish, she had words for it:
She wished to be Strawberry Sunrise.
She wished to be the pony everyone liked. The pony every loved. The home gardener with the incredible strawberries.
She wished to live up to her name. Now and forever.
And, in a way, it felt like too much to wish for.
At the same time, though…
Strawberry closed her eyes.
She didn’t wish in words. She wished on a feeling—both exceedingly simple and devastatingly complex.
She wished for the sweetness of strawberries and warmth of the sun. For bouts of laughter over inside jokes. For group hugs and reaching out to one another through crowds. For holiday cheer, all through the year.
With the feeling firmly in her mind and heart, she upended the paper bag over her mouth and let the popcorn tumble in. It hit her tongue, sweet and dry, and stuck there like little bits of styrofoam. She quickly chewed and swallowed both pieces, though she wasn’t fast enough to keep the taste from lingering.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, crumpling the bag up and tossing it into a nearby trash can. “There. Wishing complete.”
“What’d you wish for?” Redheart asked.
“Tsk. Can’t say,” Strawberry replied, shaking her head. “That’s against the rules.”
“It is not against the—”
“Hey!”
Strawberry bristled at the sudden touch and her shoulder and turned to see Lightning Dust standing behind her, Fiddlesticks on her arm.
“Uh, hey!” Strawberry shook off the strange feeling the popcorn had left her with and painted on a smile. “Congratulations, Fiddle! You were amazing!”
Fiddle smiled demurely. “Aw, shucks. That’s awful sweet of you to say,” she said.
“Well, keep in mind I know nothing about music,” Strawberry reminded her quickly. “Take all compliments with a grain of salt.”
Fiddlesticks giggled.
Lightning rolled her eyes, but smiled in appreciation. “We’re going out to eat,” she said. “You guys wanna come with?”
Strawberry opened her mouth to reply, but Redheart cut in before she had a chance.
“Ooh, ooh! I just heard about this new crepe place that opened up!” Redheart did a little hop in place. “We should go there!”
Lightning looked to Fiddlesticks, who only shrugged in a post-adrenaline bliss.
“Yeah, sounds good. What’s the place called?” Lightning asked.
Redheart opened her mouth to reply, then frowned. “I don’t remember.”
Lightning chuckled. “Okay, where is it?”
“Um…” Redheart pouted. “I… don’t remember.”
“Hon…” Blossomforth shook her head, smirked at her scatterbrained marefriend.
“Well, how are we supposed to get there if you don’t know what it is or what it’s called?” Lightning growled.
Fiddle gave Lightning a soothing pat on the shoulder. “Oh, it don’t matter, Light,” she said softly. Strawberry swore she could see the fire in Lightning’s eyes extinguish. “Why don’t we just walk around town and see what finds us?”
Blossom smiled. “I like your style, Fids,” she said. “Just see where the night takes us.”
The two pairs of ponies, locked tightly together, looked at Strawberry expectantly.
Strawberry smiled sheepishly. “It’s, um… is it okay if I fifth-wheel you guys?”
“Don’t be dumb, Dumbrise,” Lightning said, throwing a leg around Strawberry and guiding her towards the door. “You said it: you paired us up. You’re an automatic invite on all double dates.”
As the group of mares stepped out into the bitter cold, Strawberry found herself surprisingly warm. Lightning hugged her close to her left side, Redheart to her right, as they tromped through the snow and down the street.
None of them could be entirely sure where they were headed. In all honesty, Strawberry didn’t particularly care.
In fact, as Strawberry breathed in the warmth of the friendship that surrounded her, she realized that her kettle-corn wish could not have been granted—but only because she had already made it true.
