It was very quiet out in Filthy Rich’s garden, so quiet that Scootaloo could hear her heart hammer wildly in her chest over the faint sounds of distant crickets and a dog far, far away, howling at the moon. In the quiet, the smallest of breezes blew past, carrying the tantalizing scents of the flowers which had mostly packed it in for the night, but somehow feeling alien to her earth pony senses. As a pegasus, she would have been able to feel where the wind had come from and where it was going, and even with her stubby wings, she could have bent it mostly to her will.

As an earth pony, she could not. Even the feeling of the soil beneath her hooves and the life of green grass and flowers which Apple Bloom had told her about seemed muted and muffled, as if Diamond Tiara had not cared enough to develop her own earth pony abilities. If she were a real pegasus like Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo could have leapt up into the sky and left Filthy Rich’s uncomfortable question behind. Instead, as an earth pony, all she could do was crash into the ground, just like her attempt to lie to Filthy Rich had done.

The story of her fight with Diamond Tiara and subsequent intervention by Twilight poured out in a long string of words, punctuated by heartfelt apologies and occasional inadvertent praise for how cool a life Diamond Tiara had. And her cool father, although Scootaloo tried not to sound too much like a suck-up. It did not seem to make much of an impact on Filthy Rich, who continued to stare up into the star-filled sky as if he expected Princess Luna to descend at any moment and tell him to wake up. By the time she stammered to the end of her confession, Scootaloo was feeling lower than… well, Apple Bloom would probably have some witty earth pony saying to define just exactly how far underground Scootaloo’s stomach was sitting, but all the little former-pegasus could think of was how she would never fly again, and the highest she would ever get again would be leaning out of the window of the clubhouse. Her mind kept going back to the dead dragon they had seen in the old crumbling castle, all torn up and decaying away into the dirt. It had a better chance of ever flying again than she did.

From Filthy Rich’s immobile stance and the determined set to his jaw, she knew exactly what was going to happen now. He was going to march Scootaloo back to Aunt Fix’s place and get his real daughter back, and then when Diamond Tiara took her wings and went to the creepy book-filled school in Canterlot, she would take any chance Scootaloo ever had of flying again with her.

She just wished she could tell what was going through the mind of Diamond Tiara’s father right now.

I was just telling her a joke! Diamond Tiara can’t be pulling a prank on me. This has to be real, but if so…

It was all Filthy Rich could do to remain quiet and listen as the little pony he had absolutely known was his daughter told him how everything he had known was all wrong. His world was turned upside-down, backwards, and inside-out, much the same as what had happened when he received the literally stunning letter from Twilight Sparkle just a few scant days ago. If not for the letter, he would have been absolutely certain Diamond Tiara was trying some last-ditch ploy to avoid being sent to school in Canterlot. In order not to fall over in a dead faint, he kept his knees locked while focusing on a distant star as his not-daughter talked. He wanted to pinch himself to wake up, but he was fairly certain all he would get out of it was a sore spot.

After waiting for a while after Diamond Tiara… that is Scootaloo had finished talking, Filthy Rich took a deep breath and sat down right in the middle of a grassy patch in the garden. The unaccustomed prickle of cool grass blades poking up through his coat only reinforced the chilly realization that this was most certainly not a dream or some memory captured on paper, but a very real situation which involved his daughter.

Well, and another little pony who only looked like his daughter.

“So you’re Scootaloo,” said Filthy Rich. He tentatively stuck out one hoof and nodded as the little earth pony who looked like his daughter shook it. “Diamond Tiara has told me a lot about you, but I suspect much of it is somewhat incorrect. No, I’d wager her descriptions of you and your friends were wildly incorrect.”

“Yeah, probably,” muttered Scootaloo. She settled down in the grass next to Filthy Rich and held a pink hoof up in front of her face. “I really don’t know what she’s told you, but we haven’t really done much but snipe at each other until this happened. I don’t think she really means to be cruel, it’s just that I make such a good target.”

“She actually mentioned your generosity several times, Scootaloo, but I don’t think she meant it as a compliment. You and your little friends had quite the reputation before the Long Night. I really didn’t want to believe much of what I heard afterwards, but if any little ponies could do what you and your friends were supposed to have done…”

“It was pretty cool,” admitted Scootaloo, who had quit moving little blades of grass around with the tip of one pink hoof. “We got to fight Nightmare Moon and rescued Princess Luna and all kinds of neat stuff. And Twilight got transpor… transper… turned into a little pony just like us.”

You have a strange concept of a little alicorn being just like you, Scootaloo. Then again, Twilight has been almost inseparable from her little friends since she arrived in town.

“So, when will Twilight put the two of you back in your own bodies?” asked Filthy Rich.

Scootaloo shrugged. “I dunno. Soon, I hope. We got a bunch of books from the old castle for her to look for a countersmell. If you’re going to send Diamond Tiara off to Canterlot, at least she can have her own body back by then. She deserves that.”

He nodded in agreement, but Filthy Rich could read his little filly like a book, even if there were different pages inside the cover. Scootaloo was hiding something else, something that bothered the little pony far more than her unfamiliar body. Diamond Tiara was a master at the verbal art of fencing, and would have taken hours to get to the core of her discomfort, if at all. Scootaloo seemed to be a much simpler and more honest little pony, so Filthy Rich decided on the direct approach.

“So that explains who you really are,” he started, “but not what you expect to get out of trading bodies with my daughter. If you were that much in need of bits, I could have just tipped you well for delivering the paper while Archer is out.”

“I don’t need bits,” grumbled Scootaloo, sinking down into the grass until it tickled her nose.

“What do you want?” asked Filthy Rich.

“I want to fly.” Scootaloo’s voice was so low that if Filthy Rich had not been listening very carefully, he would have missed it. It did not seem to be the time for him to say anything, so he remained silent, allowing the darkness and the quiet of the garden to draw out the words Scootaloo was working so hard to hold back.

“I want to fly, Mister Rich,” she repeated slightly louder. “I want it more than anything else in the world. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night wearing my braces and just cry because I can’t jump out the window and zoom around the stars. Do you know what it’s like to want something that bad and not be able to have it, Mister Rich?”

Now it was Filthy Rich’s turn to feel the darkness and the stars spread out above as they pulled at the words trapped inside him, words which he had tried so hard to forget. It had been many years since he had spoken those words to his own father, who had been furious at the little pink foal who could not speak up in her own defense. Diamond Tiara had never really known her grandfather, as Stinking Rich had passed away when she was still very small, but she had not even had that fleeting exposure to her own mother. The orphanage said she had been given up for adoption without the mother even seeing the little foal.

He never had the courage to tell his own daughter, but it seemed like the time to tell the story anyway.

It was getting a little chilly out in the garden with a cool breeze from the north, and Scootaloo shivered a little while watching Diamond Tiara’s father. Filthy Rich had sat unmoving for a long time in the darkness, so long that Scootaloo began to worry about what she had said wrong. Eventually, he pulled a kerchief out of his jacket and wiped his eyes, although he did not look at Scootaloo when he was done. Instead, he stared up at the moon and spoke in a hushed voice.

“I never have told my daughter about her mother. We were so much in love, or so I thought. When she vanished, all I could think about was what I did, what I said, what I could have said to drive her away. Finding the pregnancy test in the trash almost crushed my heart. She knew I didn’t want foals, at least until we were older and settled in our careers. We argued about it, but I was so stubborn and headstrong, just like my father. There was so much I wanted to tell her that I had never been able to, and when I came back to the apartment and found her gone, it was too late. We used to sit out in the park like this in Manehattan and look up at the moon, talking about little things while cuddling instead of studying.”

“Eww,” said Scootaloo despite herself, which triggered a tense laugh from Filthy Rich.

“Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Times change, and we change to suit them,” he said with a slow shake of his head.

“I mean studying,” said Scootaloo in a rush. “Not the mushy stuff. I mean, colts are icky, mostly, but studying is a pain.”

“Hey!”

The voice out of the darkness made both of them look, and after a few moments, Twilight came slinking out of the garden’s shadows while carrying a blanket in her magic. She looked tired and a little embarrassed at being caught eavesdropping on their conversation. The little alicorn trudged forward and unfolded the blanket before draping half of it over Scootaloo and pulling the other half over herself. It made the two little ponies look just slightly like a two-headed monster of some sort and jarred Filthy Rich out of his morose contemplation, particularly when Twilight nodded at him and said, “Okay. Go on. Studying.”

“I thought you were looking for a spell to return my daughter,” said Filthy Rich with a frown.

“Was.” The little alicorn frowned and brought out what looked like a package of gum cleverly disguised as a tiny book. Scootaloo knew what it was, but Filthy Rich’s frown grew deeper while he looked at it. Before he could ask the inevitable question, Twilight opened up the tiny book and floated it over to him. “Can’t read. Too small.”

Momentarily at a loss for words, Filthy Rich tried to open the book instead. The pages were so small and thin he could barely even turn them, and the size of the printing looked more like speckles than letters. “That’s an impressive book,” he admitted. “I was unaware the Breezies had a lending library.”

“Not.” Twilight squirmed as she tried to get totally under the blanket until Scootaloo relented and gave up a little more of her part. “Shrunk.”

“Oh. So why can’t you just un-shrink…” He looked at the book, then at the pony presently occupying the body of his daughter. “Oh,” he repeated.

“She shrunk the books so we could bring more of them back from the old library this afternoon,” explained Scootaloo. “I tried to find some books about dragons so I could find out about the dead dragon we found, but I didn’t see any.”

“Dead dragon?” repeated Filthy Rich.

“Yeah.” Scootaloo tried to reclaim a little fraction of the blanket to deal with the shiver traveling up her spine at the thought of the rotting corpse, but Twilight had the edge of the blanket gripped too tightly. “Something in the Princess’ old castle killed it, and we saw the body when we were looking for the library. Can we talk about something else, please? It was kinda creepy. Sweetie Belle screamed when she saw it,” added Scootaloo.

“I would imagine so,” said Filthy Rich. “I take it you all went through the dangerous forest to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters this afternoon without getting my permission?”

“We had an adult,” protested Scootaloo. “Fluttershy knows all of the creatures in the forest, except for the one that killed the dragon, I suppose, and she wouldn't have let anything happen to us.” Scootaloo looked down into the grass, because she could not meet Filthy Rich’s accusing gaze. “It was perfectly safe. Mostly. We didn’t even go to see the manticore or the big snakey thing—”

“Sea serpent,” said Twilight very quietly.

“—or even visit the cragadiles because it was really important to get that spellbook so Twilight can find a way to put us back in our bodies. Do you want to go with us next time, Mister Rich?”

“Ahh…” Filthy Rich seemed to be caught between two answers, eventually settling on, “We can discuss the subject after my daughter is returned. Do your parents know about this—” he waved a hoof “—switchy magic thing?”

“No. We didn’t tell anybody! We thought Twilight could fix it right away.” Scootaloo hesitated at the sudden tensing of her friend under the blanket and tried to think of a way around the awkward situation. “It came from a really big black book out of the library, so it must be really difficult, and nobody knows about it except Bulk Biceps because he was there when it happened—”

“Your aunt,” said Twilight from under the blanket.

“Oh, yeah. And Aunt Fix, because we told her at Funland, but nobody else knows—”

“Trixie knows. The night I cast the spell, she said—” Twilight emerged slightly from under the blanket and took a deep breath before speaking in a slow and deliberate fashion. “Learning how to see somepony from their point of view is a critical part of being Great and Powerful. After I told her what I did, she said learning all about each other is good, and when they can get along without punching each other in the face, they can swap back.”

There was a particular expression sliding over Filthy Rich’s face, much like the single and never repeated time Aunt Fix had tried one of Sweetie Belle’s biscuits. The look was an obvious attempt to remain calm and unperturbed, while being used to cover up a considerably different emotion, which in this case Scootaloo could guess involved a considerable amount of shouting at Trixie when she returned from her trip.

“So, Trixie knows.” The older stallion nodded slowly as some of the tension began to leave his face. “Well, she was Princess Celestia’s student, so if anypony can reverse this spell, she can. We’ll just have to wait for tomorrow and,” said Filthy Rich with considerable emphasis, “if the two of you can keep from ‘punching each other in the face’ afterwards, I will reconsider my decision on sending Diamond Tiara to Miss Puressence’s school. Is that agreeable, young ladies?”

Twilight nodded while Scootaloo thought. It was uncomfortable knowing something Diamond Tiara had never been told by her father, but there had to be more to it. “What happened to Diamond Tiara’s mother? Did she… die?”

For a moment, Filthy Rich looked as if he had been punched in the belly. If the older stallion had not been sitting down on the grass, he would have doubled over, but as it was, he laid his head down on the grass and closed his eyes. “No,” he said after a while. “She went into hiding while she was pregnant. I looked for her, but Manehattan is a very big place, and I couldn’t find her until somepony at the hospital contacted me about Diamond’s birth.”

He took a deep breath and looked over at Scootaloo. “Filigree had already checked out by the time I found the hospital. She gave you… I mean Diamond up for adoption without even seeing her. She was so tiny and precious, like a little diamond, but I couldn’t leave her behind no matter how much it cost me. My father was… disappointed that I dropped out of business school to come home and raise my daughter. We clashed several times. I’ve tried to raise her as best I could by myself.”

“Did you ever find Diamond’s mother afterwards?” asked Scootaloo.

“No.” Filthy Rich looked up into the sky at the brilliant moon again. “I’ve never stopped looking. I’ve got a number of contacts in Manehattan keeping an eye out, and Diamond and I go back every year during Hearth’s Warming for a week. She thinks we’re just going shopping and watching the lights, but I use every moment to look for Filigree. I know she’s out there somewhere, but I don’t think I’ll ever find her again.”

“Trixie says the Royal Couriers could find anypony anywhere.” Twilight seemed conflicted, but continued in her slow, deliberate manner which Scootaloo had learned meant she was trying her hardest to say something difficult. “I sent her a letter. Are you sure she wants you to find her?”

“I… don’t know.” The stallion heaved a deep sigh. “She deserves to know her daughter… our daughter is safe and loved. Even if she never wants to see me again, she should know Diamond is being raised to be a good pony.”

Scootaloo coughed entirely by accident and winced due to the expression briefly crossing Filthy Rich’s face. “My daughter is a good pony,” he repeated. “Just like you two.”

“Not me,” said Twilight. “You.”

“Both of you are very special ponies.” Filthy Rich sat up and turned around until he was just a nose-length from Twilight. The three ponies sat unmoving in the garden for a while under the brilliant moon and silent stars above until Filthy Rich asked the question he had been avoiding ever since he had first found out about Twilight Sparkle. “You spent twelve years out in that terrible forest?”

Twilight hunched her back, and Scootaloo snuggled a little closer for moral support as the little alicorn nodded.

“It’s just… you’re such a nice little filly,” said Filthy Rich. “I was so afraid of sending my daughter to Canterlot because she would be all alone, but you were alone out in the forest with all of those monsters. It must have been terrifying.”

“Had mom,” admitted Twilight with a tremble. “Never alone. Besides. Not all monsters.”

“Hey,” objected Scootaloo. “You said everything out in the forest was either trying to eat us or trying to keep from being eaten by us.”

“That’s all we ever see out of the Everfree,” said Filthy Rich with a nod. “They seemed to get a lot less aggressive in the last decade, but they’re still all monsters.”

“No.” Twilight stuck her head out from under the blanket and shook some of her ragged mane free in order to look the older earth pony in the eyes. “Some scary. Some big. Some beautiful. All dangerous. Not all bad monsters.”

She sat there for a time, watching Diamond Tiara’s father, but Scootaloo could see a certain twitch to the coat and angle to his eyes that put the lie to his next words. “If you say so, Twilight.”

“You don’t believe her, do you, Mister Rich?” Scootaloo put one foreleg over her trembling friend and frowned at the older stallion. “If your daughter told you, would you believe her?”

The faint breeze that blew across their shallow hill brought a hint of the tantalizing scents that must have had surrounded Twilight every day in the Everfree, and the little alicorn swallowed before speaking. “He was lied to. Don’t know what to believe. Know what it is like. Had nightmares. Couldn’t tell difference between. At night, I used to sing sometimes. I could tell it wasn’t a dream if we sang.”

“I never heard you sing before,” said Scootaloo. “Did your mother sing with you?”

“Sometimes.” Monster huddled deeper into the blanket until only the tip of her horn was sticking out. “Sometimes sang with monsters,” she added with a growl.

“Monsters don’t sing,” stated Filthy Rich in his most authoritative voice.

Two violet eyes peered out from under the rumpled blanket, illuminated by a small filly horn which seemed to glow like foxfire in the starlit night. Ever so slowly, she emerged from under the blanket and took several steps out onto the little grassy mound in the center of the garden. She never took that intense gaze off of him until she turned in the direction of the nearby Everfree Forest, sat down on her rump, and raised her face to the brilliant moon.

Filthy Rich sat patiently partially under the blanket next to his ‘daughter’ while waiting for whatever it was the strange little alicorn was doing in his garden. Her mouth was open as if she were singing as loud and as high as she could, but no sound at all was emerging except for the occasional gasp for air when she ran out of breath. Scootaloo had dragged the blanket over and huddled closer to him, using one elbow to prod him in the barrel while grinning with bright white teeth in the moonlight.

“What is she doing?” whispered Rich to the little filly, trying to fight down the sudden primal urge he had to scoop up his Diamond Tiara and flee.

“I don’t know,” whispered Scootaloo back, “but whatever it is, I bet it’s awesome!”

The silent song proceeded for an extended period, with Scootaloo managing to keep herself quiet only by extreme concentration and Filthy Rich stifling an urge to nibble on one of the surrounding flowers while waiting. The sound of chewing would be almost deafening in the silence, and certainly would distract Twilight from… whatever it was she was doing. He had just nipped a bloom off of a nearby bush anyway before screwing up enough courage to ask what was going on when he heard the faintest of flapping noises.

And an enormous bat, fully the size of a large pony, dropped out of the sky and landed with a thud directly in front of him.

He was almost too frightened to scream, but managed to suppress his natural reaction to a startled yelp while scrabbling a few steps backwards. It was a massive bat out of nightmares, with broad shadowy wings, bared fangs and coal-black, glittering eyes, although it looked more awkward than terrifying while squatting on the ground in a somewhat spraddle-legged stance on its hind legs. The huge bat was still taller than Filthy Rich, and hissed quietly at him while Twilight remained perfectly still, still looking up to the sky and singing her silent song. Then it shuffled a little to one side so it could look at all of the ponies in the garden, tilted its pug-nosed and fearsome face up to the silvery moon, and also opened its mouth to sing, just like Twilight.

The silence was deafening. Somehow, the distant noises of the town became more distant and faint while a sensation like having hundreds of little insects crawling up his back made Filthy Rich fight to keep from scratching. There was something there, most certainly, because the giant bat and the little alicorn bobbed their heads in perfect synchronization, and even Scootaloo was nodding along with her lips moving to the rhythm of the inaudible song. It was terrifyingly beautiful, and went on far, far longer than his overloaded mind could track. Something deep in his chest made his lips move along with the music, even though he could not hear a note, and when the giant bat vanished back up into the sky on silent wings, the ordinary silence that it left behind made him gasp for air. There was even a little flash of green eyes when the bat climbed up into the darkness, as if the little batling clinging to its mother’s back had wanted to take one last glance at the terrifying strange monster their mother had stopped to sing with.

“That was awesome,” whispered Scootaloo.

“Indeed,” whispered Filthy Rich, just barely loud enough to be heard but still feeling as if he were screaming at a funeral. He just sat and breathed for a while to get up the nerve to actually stand up, blessing his exercise program and diet for not falling over from a heart attack. He had underestimated his daughter, her friends, and in particular Twilight Sparkle, who had lived alone with only one parent for so long. Now she was a little filly again, and all the time she had lost in the dark forest was hers to spend again. Most ponies did not get second chances like that, and in her actions, he could see a second chance of his own which he had been putting off for far too long.

“Thank you, Twilight. That was… awesome.” He mopped his forehead with a kerchief and suppressed a shudder in the chilly night air before continuing. “It’s quite late and I should be sending Scootaloo to bed. Would you like to stay tonight to keep her company? It sounds like she’s had a very busy day, and you have your work cut out for you tomorrow. School in Ponyville starts the day after tomorrow, and I’d like to have all this sorted out by then, if possible.”

“Awesome!” Scootaloo scurried over and helped Twilight stand up, then nudged her towards the house. “Diamond Tiara has this huge tub—”

“Already took a bath,” said the little alicorn, although she was trying to keep pace with the rapid gallop of her friend.

“Well, Randolph can whip you up some dinner in the—”

“Already ate,” said Twilight, falling further behind.

“She’s got this really huge library full of all kinds of books,” said Scootaloo. “Hey, wait up!”

After the little fillies were off in Diamond Tiara’s bedroom and the house had settled into silence, Filthy Rich opened the top drawer of his bedroom cabinet and got out the ring he had hoped to use a long, long time ago. He had missed his opportunity then by a matter of hours, and denied his daughter a mother by his delay. This time, it would be different. Diamond needed a mother to teach her how to be a better pony, and he would provide what she needed.

He slipped out of the house, down the walkway, and trudged through town under the stars, determined to do this tonight before he lost his nerve, like he had so many times before in the small town. The path was familiar, even in the darkness, and the lights in her house were still on, or he would have turned around even now. Trying not to think about what he was doing, he lifted the heavy brass knocker on the door and let it fall several times.

It was for Diamond Tiara. He had sacrificed so many things over the years for his daughter. This would be one more, and possibly could even be pleasant. Diamond Tiara seemed to get along with the mare well, and had taught her many of the lessons she needed to learn in order to be the important pony she was going to grow up to be. He tried not to think of anything but his words as the sounds of somepony rattling around inside the house grew, and then the door opened, and there was no turning back.

“Why, Filthy Rich! What in Equestria are you doing out this late at night?”

Rich nodded at the mare, who had wrapped herself up in a bathrobe to answer the door. She had pink curlers in her mane and quite a bit of white stuff still sticking to her face from a moisturizing pack, but she looked… average. Just average. There was no pony who could match the radiant beauty of Filigree just coming out of the shower or her sleeping face after a long evening as she lay in the morning beams of sunlight across his shoulder. He had missed so many classes, entranced by her beauty in the fragile dawn when responsibility had been overruled by passion and love. But Diamond Tiara’s mother was not here. She would never be here. He had driven her away and would never be able to find her again. Diamond needed a mother now, far, far more than she needed her Daddy, so although he had no real love in his heart for this mare, they had enough shared interests to make a marriage work, and it would be the best for his little filly.

He lowered himself down to one knee on the house’s doorstep, reaching into his jacket and producing the diamond ring he had once hoped to give to somepony else.

“Spoiled Milk, will you marry me?”

It had been said that Manehattan could very well be called, The City That Never Slept Because It Was Too Busy Making Money. If so, insomnia was the affliction of the affluent, and the lights burning late into the night in the tall concrete and glass towers of the city were the symptoms of the monetary plague which it was suffering. For a diseased city, it still maintained a good attitude in addition to the altitude of the buildings, one of which still had a light on at the thirty-seventh floor, and a tired mare looking out of the glass at the moonlit city below.

“Evening, Miss Trellis. Working late again, I see.” The elderly goat pushing the cart full of cleaning supplies looked into the corner office door and nodded at the earth pony mare behind the opulent and overflowing desk. In the fluorescent lights, the burgundy of her coat looked almost blood-red where the shadows washed over it, with a few extra wrinkles and perhaps a grey hair or two on the pregnant young mare that Caoimhe had not seen before.

“Oh!” The tired executive stumbled back from the window and put all four hooves on the rich carpet. “Sorry, Missus Caoimhe. I just got back from a sales trip and I wanted to get my desk put in order before tomorrow morning. The trash can’s empty,” she added almost apologetically.

The nanny concealed a knowing smile and rummaged around on her cart. Most of the big executives in the company treated the help as if they were needing to be herded from one place to another and locked in a pen to keep them from wandering around. Rose had always been kind to her ever since her first day in the office and her rapid trip up the ladder of success had not resulted in a hoof to the eye of anypony or anygoat for that matter who she climbed over on the way up. She even pronounced Caoimhe’s name correctly as Keee-vah the first time she heard it, and had made a special point of buying the elderly cleaning goat a little something special around the holidays, not just another company manebrush sampler like the rest of the executives.

“I knew you was out a cavorting around the countryside, Miss Trrellis,” said Caoimhe, rolling her r’s by accident as she concentrated on finding the little bag of pastries she had purchased for the end of her shift. “You may still have a couple of weeks, but you’re gonna need to keep your strength up, if’n you want your little billy to come out all bucking and nickering for his mamma. Here.”

Caoimhe put the bag of cherry-filled and alfalfa-nut pastries on a clean section of the desk, then seated herself right on the carpet in front of them. Rose looked as if she were about to object to being treated much like Caoimhe’s many grandchildren, but after a brief sigh, the pregnant mare took out the top pastry and began to eat. “You’re a cruel, cruel nanny. You know that, right?” she muttered through the crumbs.

“I need to take cares of the only pony in this building who works longer hours than me,” said Caoimhe. “Give me one of those too. It’s about my breaks time.”

“It’s always your break time,” said Rose, waving a few bits of alfalfa crumbs over the table and her undone paperwork. “You are the hardest working lazy employee this company has. If I put you in charge of manebrush sales for the whole West Coastal Region, sales would double and all you’d do all day is lean back in your soft chair and complain about how hard you’re working.” With great effort and a little tentative prodding, Rose sat her own enlarged belly into her executive chair and brushed some crumbs off her coat. “I hate this.”

“You first foal is always the hardest,” admitted Caoimhe. “Goats, ponies, much the same. Supprised you ain’t popped a couple out by now.” She lowered her voice and checked the open doorway behind her before adding, “Still ain’t found out who the billy is?”

“No.” Rose Trellis sat down the remnants of the pastry with a sharp frown. “I swear, that’s the last quarterly sales meeting after-party I ever take a drink at. Every bloody quarter, every bloody executive has to get corked out of their gourd over a few percent rise or fall in our sales.”

“As I remember, yous said the same thing every quarter until abouts a year ago.” Caoimhe finished off the doughnut she was working on and contemplated eating the wax paper it was wrapped in just to get the last of the frosting. Since it was just the two of them in the dark office building, she did anyway. “So are you placing her with the adoption agency like you said before, Miss Trellis, or have you found a family willing to take the wee one?”

“Adoption,” said Rose bluntly. “No need to hang my stupidity on a little foal. I’ve got too much to do here anyway.” She waved a hoof over the paper-covered desk as if that would cause some magic to happen, but only a few crumbs scattered across the reports and graphs.

“Never enough time before ‘em and never enough after,” agreed Caoimhe, getting up from the floor and collecting the trash from their break. “Too bads you can’t find that no-account scoundrel, or you could maybe get him to take a little responsibility. Oh, that reminds me. There’s a couple young bucks from the castle been asking questions around the company yesterday, lookin’ for some mare named Filly Green or something. Th’ one I talked to seemed pretty enough for a bat, wit’ them big gold eyes an’ a nice smile. If’n I was a few decades younger, I might be tempted to take him on a test flight, if’n you know whats I mean.” The elderly goat gave a salacious wink.

“Filly Green?” The business executive held very still at her desk where she had been brushing crumbs into the wastebasket.

“Yeah. They’re lookin’ for a mare who had a foal and went missin’ around the time you joined the company. Seems they’ve got a letter from her daughter that needs delivered. Sounded pretty sincere about it too, but it’s a big city an’ it’s been eight years, so who knows what.” Caoimhe shrugged and put a business card on the desk before turning to push her cleaning cart back out into the hallway. “I saved you his card, Miss Trellis, ‘cause I ain’t got no space for two billys in my life no more. Maybe some night you could look him up and maybe put a harness on the young buck. Ain’t none of us getting no younger, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah,” murmured Rose, looking at the card much as one might look at a venomous snake. “Good night, Caoimhe.”

“Good night, Miss Trellis.”

The squeaking of the cleaning cart died away in the distance for a long time before Rose turned her chair away from the card and looked out of the broad plate-glass window in the office she had fought so hard to acquire. Eight years of trying had not driven the memories of her betrayal away, but they had weakened them.

Until just now.

For a brief moment, her hoof scrabbled for the window latch. Thirty-seven floors would pass in moments and take away the pain, but the building owners had not designed the sealed corner office for pegasi, and the thick windows would take more than her awkward blows to break. The foal in her belly took that moment to roll into a more comfortable position, for it, not her, and Rose put her hoof back down on the thick carpet again. Just because it was her mistake, did not mean she had the right to inflict such an end on the little creature. She had survived this long. Just a few more weeks and she would be rid of it, off to the adoption agency much like her first unnamed child

She rested her forehead against the cool glass while she thought about her first long-abandoned child. Her momentary weakness a week after delivering had been a crushing blow. When she returned to the adoption agency in a nervous fit, just to get a look at the foal, or at least that is what she had told herself, the little filly had already been placed, even though the polite ponies could not tell her where due to client confidentiality. Now it seemed her ghosts of eight years ago were coming back to haunt her even as her mistake of nearly a year ago was making her repeat the same steps, like some cowardly alcoholic who could not resist the opportunity once a fiscal quarter to get sloshed out of her gourd without having some reason in her belly to avoid booze and eat the right foods. The not-so-little creature inside her belly kicked again as it shifted positions, but she ignored the accustomed pain to stare out into the night and the brilliant moon.

It was such a different moon than she and Richie had gazed at so long ago. Once it had imprisoned Nightmare Moon, the betrayer of Princess Celestia, which made her own betrayal of Filthy Rich and their mutual daughter somehow easier to bear. She would never be able to face her own daughter now, to tell her how her mother hid away from her father and gave birth in secret to hide what she thought was her ultimate shame and betrayal. She had stolen a father from her daughter and stolen a daughter from herself. Whatever kind couple who had adopted their daughter would not be interested in some strangers coming into their lives to take away the child they had raised. Richie would still be angry at her for running away from the both of them. There was no happily ever after in any of their futures. The only thing she would bring to either of them was discomfort and pain.

It was time to cash in her expensive condo and retirement. The bits would take her far away and buy a new identity once this foal was born and given away to a more worthy set of parents. It was time to dye her mane again and rebuild a new life. It was time to run away from her mistakes and vanish. Now.

Still, she stood at the window of her office and watched the moon until it dipped below the horizon and the city was bathed in the new light of dawn.

Lieutenant Insomnia
Royal Equestrian Courier Service
(Anywhere. Anybody. Always. We deliver.)

Author's Notes:

Next arc will be Three-Day Promise

You will believe a pegasus can fly. Or else.

Trixie promises to fix Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara’s problem in just three days. What she does not realize is what new problems she will create in the process, from Alicorns to Zebras.

Thankfully, she has friends now, if she will allow them to help.

Also, one reminder. Although Filthy Rich and Rose Trellis are the same ponies from Diamond Tiara Buys a Little Sister, the foal is not. There’s a dark surprise or two in Rose’s future, and I don’t mean twins.