Through an unwise, but legitimate, purchase—“I suppose those run in the family as well,” Octavia said with a humorless smile—Igneous Rock, her father, and Cloudy Quartz, her mother, acquired the tract of land that would become the Pie family rock farm. Their story was nothing special: they had graduated from the same college, gotten married, invested well, and purchased terribly. For majoring in agronomy and agribusiness, respectively, they could scarcely have picked a worse place to settle down, though they were not to know until it was too late. The land seemed promising.

Hemmed on three sides by a stream and the wood that it fed, and open to the wide Equestrian southwest, the brown and gray fields looked like they had produced crops in the past, but gone to waste in recent years. The plot sat like an oil stain just behind the forest’s south fringe, but it was their very own oil stain, bought with their own money, and they were eager to take it on and bring their land back to life. The staunch pair had stood on the edge of the farm, she with forehooves supported on a stump to affect a more grandiose and destined mien, and thought of the crops they would sow, the children they would rear, and the life of dignified, simple labor that seemed to unfurl before them like a banner in the vale’s dry air.

The problems were the wind, and the fact that the land had already gone fallow. No matter the good rain, the back-breaking toil, or the quality of soil they used, the farm would not yield. Potatoes the size of pearl onions and twig-like carrots were their rewards for months of stubborn work and defeated trips to the local town for their food. The soil was thin and rocky, and dust would blow frail sprouts away and lift hats off heads while gravel spawned everywhere: pebbles would crowd underhoof through thin soil while chunks the size of a pony’s head would remain hidden until they had cleft a plow. The story, so it was told when there were children to tell it to, was that Igneous had one day sat down to dinner, despondent, and set a rock on his plate. “About all this place is good for,” he would say, and then the spark of imagination hit, and that banner of destiny unfurled in a more unexpected way.

That was before they had children. Maud came first, a soft-spoken and introspective child who did exactly as she was told, but for her reticence worried the pair anyway. They thought she was touched in the head for a time, but did not say so. Limestone Pie came second, a rowdy and choleric filly who nonetheless fell in line with what had become, by her time, the Family Business. After that came Marble Pie, who would become Octavia, and then Pinkamena Pie at the last.

As Marble understood at the time, she was the luckiest filly in the world, for she had been born and, Celestia willing, would be raised on a magical farm. It produced no crops, but, rather, gave up history and mysticism in the rocks that scarred and pitted its surface. Each rock had a story to tell, Igneous would explain to her, carrying her around on his back through the gray lands. He dusted off a fleck of gneiss and turned it on its side, and told her that it had once been the tip of a moil used in the excavation of one of the tunnels through Canterlot Mountain. A great hero had used it in his humble duties, but then taken it up to defend the mining operation from a nest of subterranean monsters.

“Where is Canterlot, papa?” she had asked. “And how did it go here if it was there?”

“That is the mystery of this place,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I will explain it when you are older.”

By the time Marble Pie was of age to help with the work, the Family Business was already established. Through the luck of her birth, she had avoided the worst of the lean times. Unlike Maud and Limestone, she would not know what it was to go to bed without food, but her sisters did not hold that against her.

While Limestone and Igneous would work the fields, with Maud and Pinkamena sometimes helping, Marble and Cloudy worked indoors with the harvested stones, polishing, shaping, chiseling, painting. Rude and unimpressive they would be dragged into the house, shaken of their dirt on the mat, and then at the kitchen table, they were transformed into gaudy treasures. When they had enough, and when Igneous had invented a story for each one to increase their sale value, the whole family would pack up into a fat, awkward trailer and roll into town.

Octavia’s earliest memory was of the gneiss her father told her was an old moil tip, but her most vivid memory from early youth was her first trip to Ponyville. To her young eyes, the scraggly wire fence that played companion to their rattling trailer was a strange and mystical artifact, endlessly suspended over sere wheat like a guide rail. The blue sky and the green trees and the yellow fields were more beautiful than anything she had seen, and she could pass hours just watching it all roll by, dappling through treetops and refracting off duck-scattered ponds.

When they reached Ponyville, she was shocked afresh, overpowered by the colors, the voices, the smells of food and foliage. The streets seemed to stretch on forever, the thatched houses an infinite cavalcade of wonder and secrets out of which marched even more wonderful strangers, smiling and multicolored, yelling greetings and talking so fast her head spun. The town square, which she could see from where they set up their shop—simply unfolding panels from the trailer and setting up a couple hoof-painted signs—appeared as the absolute center of life and purpose: the place where serious ponies did serious things, and where Big Decisions were made. She wanted to see it, as much as she was afraid to look too long.

Other ponies would set up stands alongside the road and hawk their wares with the Pies. To their left, a mother and her daughter sold roses, and to their right, a jovial pair of brothers sold toys and party favors. These the Pie family considered their neighbors, and the fillies were allowed to socialize and play while the parents transacted business.

As they got older, they would help to sell the artifacts they unearthed, each believing the stories they told to varying degrees. Pinkamena swallowed every tale about every stone like it was gospel, where Limestone doubted but followed along, showing an apt memory for details but little skill at improvising when a story was challenged. For these, Marble was better consulted; she had the creativity to allay most customers’ concerns about this stone’s origin in a far away land, or whether that stone truly conferred good luck on the pony who purchased it.

They would spend three nights in Ponyville, and sundown fast became Marble’s favorite time of day. She remembered a giddy feeling every time she saw ponies packing up for the day, saying their goodbyes and taking their lives back to their homes. She remembered long shadows on cobbled roads, unctuous light reflecting off windows, muted conversations in the distance and her mother’s voice nearer as she spoke with the neighbors.

The Pie family would close the shutter on their little shop, throw the tarpaulin over it, and sleep on the floor in their bedrolls. Octavia remembered crickets and owl song, and would later associate the sounds of night with familial comfort.

Though her parents did not allow anyone to sleep in, Marble would take the habit of staying up late anyway. With her sisters asleep or mumbling to one another before sleep, she would toss and turn, enamored of the night and the suggestion of sky she could see through the tarpaulin. Sometimes, she would remain awake long enough to go out without being caught, and on such occasions, she would have to make herself go back after losing track of time. The second she left the shop, it seemed, all fatigue left her, and she would trot the empty streets with awed, eager respect.

For Marble, there was nothing more serene and mysterious than a sleeping town. She would spend minutes at a time staring at closed doors and shutters, wondering at the flowers in gardens and flower boxes that knew to close during the night and open in the day, and she would think young, magical thoughts. She had once heard Maud refer to the town as boring, but to Marble, each building was a new personality frozen in time, subtleties in decoration and architecture blossoming in the night for her amazed eyes only. When it was midnight, or near midnight, her favorite building was a winsome single-story house on the town square’s outer edge. The grass had grown up around its base, but the residents had kept it from reaching over the path to the front door, a straight and narrow isthmus of sandy soil and wooden ties. The rafters hung out longer than many of the houses she had seen, giving the roof a vaguely taloned appearance, the chimney a crooked calcar that Marble always looked to first, hoping to see smoke wafting out. When it was sunset, her favorite building was the austere barn on the other side of town, which she could just see if she stood outside the correct alley. So aloof and grand, it seemed to her like the representative of another world entirely, and she would later beg her parents to take her there.

It was on one such night of wandering that Marble encountered a pony named Joyful Weaver. She had circumvented the town square, still nervous to enter the hallowed space, to reach the north side of town, where she could see the odd windmill, the nubs of headstones that populated the small Ponyville cemetery, and then Canterlot Mountain not too far off.

“One might think that I would be changed, or at least amazed, by seeing Canterlot for the first time,” Octavia said. “I was not. It was so much that it did not really register with me, if that makes sense.”

She heard hoofsteps and loud conversation across a line of houses, and hastened to see to whom they belonged. Night wanderers were rare in Ponyville, and the prospect of suddenly finding more was at once a bolt of excitement and a shred of worry. Were these ponies like her, she wondered, or were they the sorts that her parents had warned her about? She circled around the block and watched them from behind and afar, two forms strolling casually in dim unicorn light—something she still found novel, her family being all earth ponies. One leaned on the other, and she thought that perhaps he was injured or tired, but as the pair strutted out of view, she decided it must be a gesture of kinship.

Creeping after them, she at last came to a sunken staircase partially hidden behind a hedge, its wrought iron railing wrapped in cat claw, exploding with tangled shadows in a dim porch light. Soft but merry voices came from within, and Marble stood on the top step for some time, ears up and breathing stiff. She willed herself to listen harder, to make out what the ponies were talking about, but could only discern the frequent bouts of laughter.

Back in her bedroll, she thought about the voices and their ponies, and the following day, told Pinkamena all about it—in the strictest confidence that their parents not hear of her adventure. Pinkamena asked to come along next time, and Marble agreed, though the next time did not come until the following month.

At the rock farm, life went on, seeming to Marble and Pinkamena to be the normal way of things, and not remarkable; for Maud and Limestone, it was an upturn in luck that had not yet lost all its sweetness, or its uncertainty. An early life of destitution had made them cautious.

For the next month, each filly received her own trinket to sell. Igneous did not say as much, and Marble would only figure it out later, that he was seeing whether any of them had what it took to be salesponies. Pinkamena sold hers on the first day, a black teardrop with the shape of a snowflake chiseled into its face. The story was that it had fallen out of the sky mere hours before a blizzard, a warning to the original owners to seek shelter. Pinkamena sold it for one hundred-twenty bits, double the price her father had told her, and Limestone later told Marble that she could not believe the Ponyville rube had purchased it. Neither she nor Marble sold their pieces.

For that trip, one of the toy maker brothers acquainted himself, sliding between their stall and his, chatting and laughing and making himself an interesting nuisance. Tumble Tower was his name; as a tower of blocks collapses with a sort of devil-may-care garrulousness, he explained, so he moved through life. He was a short, middle-aged stallion with an unkempt coat and big teeth, and he laughed with his entire body, shaking and pulling back his upturned face, it seemed, with every other sentence. Marble had been off to fetch water at the nearby well one afternoon, and then he was simply there, chatting with her parents like he had arrived with them. She remembered being struck by the softness of his amethyst fur when they shook hooves, and the delight just after when he found a bit behind her ear. An earth pony himself, the trick required extreme dexterity, which made sense, she thought, given his profession. He was used to working with tiny tools and delicate materials.

She tried to pay him no special attention in days following, but it was difficult. He was loud and full of laughter and wit, seeming always to be moving about or applying himself wholly to some task she did not understand, whether at their stall or his it did not matter. He moved quickly, but methodically, rarely revisiting a step, as Pinkamena might, and yet kept up a light patter of conversation, as Maud never did. He moved with his own laughter, incorporating the shaking mirth into his movements; it was almost like dancing, and Marble found herself staring more than was polite. A few times, she met eyes with the other brother, who kept a tactful distance, whether shy or unfriendly Marble never knew.

On the second night of their Ponyville visit, Marble and Pinkamena snuck out to find the secret stairs, as they called them. Tumble Tower had run into town earlier, and Marble privately hoped they would chance to meet him. The thought of seeing someone familiar, but outside the close context of the family business, felt mildly mischievous.

It took Pinkamena’s encouragement for them to enter the moonlit town square. Where Marble sat at the foot of the stairs and looked up at the podium from which the mayor gave her speeches, trying to imagine what grand edicts might deserve such position at the town’s center, Pinkamena ran circles in one of the grass quadrangles. Where Marble felt as though she were stepping on sacred ground, Pinkamena rolled and gamboled on the damp lawn.

Feeling strangely at odds with her sister, Marble led them to the north side of town, where it took some walking and doubling back before Marble found the stairs again. At the road’s end, when she knew they were close, she told Pinkamena to stop and be serious; it seemed that a modicum of respect was required, and Pinkamena complied with some difficulty.

With no voices to guide them, Marble nearly took them past the secret stairs, but recognized the porch light and its overgrown banister at the last second. The two fillies stood at the top and listened to the voices within, amazed, Marble glowing with pride at having found it all by herself, and pleased as well that its occupants were there again.

Octavia paused and looked at her friends, who listened politely but without any of the anxiety that had lengthened her story. Vinyl had gotten her a glass of water, which she drank slowly.

Joyful Weaver was the town lush. Marble had no way to know, and would not know until years later, when, her final time in Ponyville, she would ask about him, by which time he was gone. Quick with a joke or an anecdote when he was sober, he was a mainstay at pretty much any dry party; but, with just a few drinks in him, his fuse shortened dangerously. He was the sort of pony bartenders dreaded serving, and what was worse, he knew it. He drank defensively, waiting for the first sidelong look or the first comment so he could feel momentarily justified for flying off the handle. It was a former friend that would tell Marble this, and in her words, “some ponies have thick skin, some ponies have thin skin. Weaver got no skin at all.”

He and his crew gathered often to gamble in a friend’s basement, and it was there that Marble and Pinkamena heard them. On that night, galvanized by her sister’s presence, Marble put her ear to the door and heard her first curse words amid a tide of adult laughter. Then she switched places with Pinkamena, who giggled along with them, and then they ran all the way back to their stall, trying to not laugh too loudly at their own bravery at glimpsing a secret part of adult life. Did mother and father do those sorts of things too, they asked each other.

For a long time thereafter, Joyful Weaver and his friends would be nothing to Marble or Pinkamena, for life on the farm was changing, drawing the sisters’ attention back inward and away from the secret stairs. It started when Tumble Tower came to call, apparently invited, possibly just acting like it. The four sisters watched him and their parents in the living room, talking in low tones and enjoying one another’s company in very mature ways—that was, without too much uproar or animation. Tumble Tower himself was much subdued when the fillies were not there, coming alive only briefly to pack and then light a pipe. They did not get close enough to hear what the adults discussed, but it was clear when the topic had turned serious: all three of them hunched over, voices tense—Igneous Rock’s almost angry. Octavia specifically remembered Maud chewing her own mane beside her, an anxious habit that set Marble’s teeth on edge.

However, the mood lightened after a few minutes. Tumble Tower held up his hooves and cracked a joke, and Cloudy Quartz laughed. Igneous asked him a few questions and then they shook hooves, and the room palpably relaxed. The adults took tea, and Tumble Tower went on his way after a while. The second he was out the door, all four sisters scrambled to their rooms to pretend to be asleep.

He would reappear a few days later with a valise of papers, which he and the parents spread across the dining table and looked over for hours. Limestone and Pinkamena went out to collect rocks, and Marble and Maud stayed inside to decorate. Most of the extra money had gone into improved tools for that task: clasps, chains, and the like to create more delicate, more detailed pieces of jewelry.

While Maud worked with an electric sander on an oblong, off-white piece, Marble fussed with the tiny, square links of a necklace. Maud did not speak often, even at home, and Marble respected it, but both fillies found themselves speaking at length that afternoon in the kitchen. In Octavia’s memory, that afternoon would become the example of ideal, pastoral peace, tranquil almost to the point of quixotism, coloring the memories around it as if she had preternaturally felt the day’s coming and passing. Of the static images, she recalled the faucet hissing and glistening stones sunning themselves on a folded dish towel, a bowl of pecans on the counter with their shells strewn about. In soft daylight, the quiet work of family created an atmosphere that Octavia had never found anywhere again, not even recreated in her music: calm, lazy nostalgia; the sound of hooves on wood floor, the smell of warm fur and dust. Though it was the last day where things felt right, if not a little strange, at home, it would remain untainted by that association in her mind.

“Do you know what happened to Maud?” Pinkie asked.

“Please do not interrupt me.”

“Sorry.”

Octavia closed her eyes. “No, I am sorry. I should not have been curt. No, I do not know what happened to her. For that matter, I do not know what happened to any of them.”

“Oh.”

Marble mentioned the story attributed to the stone Maud was polishing, that it was supposed to help attract members of the bearer’s preferred sex, and Maud said that she could not believe Marble still believed such things. Marble had no response, but Maud had tipped herself over into a more talkative mood, and no response was necessary to keep her going.

To look back on that day, and days to come, Octavia would wonder what was it about their upbringing that had produced such quiet, thoughtful mares. The three of them—she, Limestone, and Maud—could spend hours together in a room and not speak a word, and leave that room content to have shared the time. Pinkamena was the exception, but before her cutie mark, even she could fall into silence for short intervals. More often, she was the spark of color in the sisters’ serious interactions, the contrast by which they could see their mutual stoicism.

They had grown up on a dead farm with no neighbors, which was part of it; self-reliance was the first virtue that had manifested in their young lives, followed just after by labor and personal integrity. Their world was dirt and stone, their livelihood in transforming hard things into decorations, never mind that many of these decorations were beautiful or that the work was genuine. The beauty was beside the point, as was the irony that their living was made on selling their father’s lies. The work was real, the quality verifiable. However, none of this explained to Octavia why they had turned out how they had. Perhaps it was mutual acknowledgement of that lie, and knowledge that uncovering it among themselves bore no outcome on the course of their lives. Living under the subtle shade of deception had left its mark, but she was not sure whether that mark was all of what she saw when she looked at herself, or whether she could blame her parents for who she and her sisters were.

The simpler, and less satisfying, explanation was that there was no deep-seated origin to their serious natures, and that they had just come out that way naturally. Some ponies were naturally funny, some naturally shy, some naturally romantic, and Marble and her kin were naturally quiet.

The last Marble would see of Maud, she would not even remember clearly for how little significance the scene garnered. The family stood on the doorstep, dust at their hooves, giving awkward goodbyes and hugs, no longer surprised. Cloudy Quartz asked Maud if she was sure, and Maud said she was, and then she walked away.

Limestone would show her grief in short bouts of frustration, taken out on walls or furniture, lasting no more than a couple seconds before she was back to her usual self. Pinkamena overcompensated with positive energy, not that Marble recognized it at the time; Marble had thought that Pinkamena, as she did, had taken Maud’s leaving as an impersonal matter of course. For Marble, the connection did not feel frayed; there was no affront in her sister’s departure, nor did she believe that she, or the family at large, had pushed Maud in any way. Whether she was right or wrong to think in that way, Octavia never knew for sure, though Pinkamena’s later departure made her think that she had been in the wrong, that she should have been more outwardly sensitive, asked more questions, gotten to know her sisters better.

These thoughts, especially, frightened her. To think that she might grow up with someone and never really know her, it made Octavia question how many other friends she had missed out on in exactly the same way.

On that sunny day in the kitchen, though, Marble knew only that she was content, comfortable with her sister and with her tiny world. Let the adults speak of adult things if they wanted, for the sisters had their space to themselves.

Maud told Marble that she had been thinking about the outside world, of towns like Ponyville that she might one day visit. Marble had never thought about it, and asked Maud which towns she liked; Maud said that she did not know, but would like to find out. Through her interactions in Ponyville, she had learned that she was of the age where she should be in school. The knowledge that she was missing out on something essential to so many ponies’ lives rankled, and she said so.

Marble asked what school she wanted to go to, but Maud did not know that either. “Rock school,” she eventually said, which made sense. Trying to add to the conversation, Marble told Maud she thought she was smart, which was true. Everyone in the family looked to Maud for help with the most difficult tasks, and Maud was also the only one who had boldly expressed disbelief at their father’s stories, which earned Marble’s respect. Maud’s skepticism, more than her age, made her feel to Marble like the most adult of the sisters.

As their conversation continued, starting and stopping with the polishing and rinsing of stone, the twining and clipping of wires, the wiping of the counter, Maud wondered aloud whether she would live on the rock farm forever, which caused Marble to wonder the same. It had never occurred to Marble that she could leave the farm, and the fact that it had occurred to Maud burned, as though Maud had made some discovery and chosen not to share. She wondered what was wrong that made Maud want to leave. Then, Maud asked Marble to keep her thoughts from the others, and the hairline fracture between them closed. Marble eagerly agreed to keep the secret, and life went on.

The following month, on the trail to Ponyville, Cloudy Quartz told the sisters that Tumble Tower—“your father’s friend,” in her words—would be around a lot more at home, but not so much in town. The way she explained it at the time, Marble did not fully understand, but when she grew older, it was simple. Tumble Tower had found out their secret, and in exchange for a cut of the profits, agreed to vouch for the Pie family and its wares, and recommend them when he could. Back then, though, Marble only thought that Tumble Tower had found another job, and her parents were helping him with it. Friends, after all, helped one another.

That month in Ponyville was the best they’d had, and the family ate out on their third day, the sisters’ first time at a restaurant. Igneous Rock kept stopping Limestone from getting up to give the waiter her dishes, laughing and shaking his head whenever she started up from the table.

That night, Marble went out into the town, braver and stronger, and all alone. She walked north to the windmills, but instead of finding the secret stairs again, she ventured into the cemetery. There was not much to see; many ponies who had the option chose to take the train a final time and die in Canterlot, in the city of the goddesses. Marble looked at the headstones and found their craftsponyship excellent, though drab. She read the names, getting nothing from them.

“Please do not take that detail as any indication of future difficulties,” Octavia said. “I was not fascinated with death, or anything like that.”

“I don’t think we were, uh…” Rainbow said, looking to her friends.

“We believe ya,” Applejack said.

Marble saw no one on her way back to the stall, and then after an unprecedented fourth night in town, they were on the farm for another month.

Igneous spoke of upgrading their operation, and the sisters universally encouraged it, putting in lists of their requests for new tools and accessories. With Tumble Tower as an intermediary to purchase supplies, they were able to buy a set of drills and burs, a new wheelbarrow, and some solvent. Marble most strongly remembered Limestone jumping for joy and running through the house when her father showed them the latter. Removing misapplied glue was a tedious, precise task, one about which Limestone constantly complained. Her hooves were not gentle, and she spent as much time buffing out scratches in her stones as she did at chipping glue off with a chisel.

Of her sisters, Marble spent the least amount time with Limestone, despite what they had in common. Pinkamena was often too much for Marble to take in, and Maud too little, but Limestone seemed just right. Obedient and as diligent a worker as any of them, she radiated a certain sense that Marble always found attractive, and a little repellent for how attractive it was: a quiet vivacity whose origin could not be traced to the bland, obdurate earth. Limestone’s laughter could light up a room, but more often it was her sour moods that dimmed it.

Work was her comfort and her pleasure. Outdoors, behind a plow or with a spade, Limestone could be heard singing to herself or reciting descriptions of what she saw, seemingly speaking just to hear her own voice. She was happiest to come inside last, sit at the dinner table with a coat of dust and sweat, and race through her food before jumping into the cistern to bathe. Often, she would shake flecks of stone out of her mane or tail, and every surface of her bedroom had been dusted with the grit she carried with her everywhere.

Even the sort of work she found disagreeable, she would apply herself to at various times, using her indelicate hooves and mouth to make figures of the bits of stone that were unsuitable for sale. On her dresser, she had once shown Marble, she had little statuettes of each of them, made of gravel and dried twigs wired together. On the parent-figures, she had even painted minuscule cutie marks. Sometimes, Marble would go to a section of field Limestone had plowed to find it alive with pictures scratched into the dust, some small and contained, some too big to be seen up close; these Marble would follow, trying to figure out what image Limestone had intended, trying to picture how it might look if she could see it from above. Limestone never mentioned them, and Marble never asked about them.

Contrarily, idleness was her sister’s greatest frustration, boredom anathema. The journeys to and from Ponyville were restless, and her time at the counter with buyers hurried and intense. She had no patience for haggling or small talk, and while she could at least put on a smile and a happy voice, few believed it. The incongruity of her manner and appearance in those situations made Marble uncomfortable.

Ignorant as she was of the family dynamic where it did not impact her, Marble did not know until late how close Maud and Limestone were. She had assumed that she was Maud’s primary confidante, but when Limestone later brought up Maud’s secret, Marble realized that she was not, in fact, the only one who knew. She was ashamed to be more concerned about who had known the secret first than the secret itself, which Limestone said had been eating at Maud for some time. That was during one of their Ponyville nights.

“I believe this is about when things began picking up,” Octavia said. “I was still fairly young, so I do not remember everything clearly. That… has bothered me a good deal as well.”

“Right,” Applejack said. “Hang on.” She dissolved into the ship briefly, and the group watched the veil of cloud move around them, dampening their fur. Pinkie opened her mouth for condensation.

“So when did you find all this out?” Fluttershy asked. “About your parents’ business, that it was a sham?”

“There was no specific point,” Octavia said. “I just looked back one day and everything was clear to me. The pieces fell into place, I guess you could say.”

“All right, Ah’m back,” Applejack said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“It is fine.” She took more water.

Limestone was clearly not tired, and Marble was not either, so she asked if Limestone wanted to explore the town. Both fillies snuck into the darkness and headed southwest, toward the farm, following the smell of apples and apple blossoms. Marble asked Limestone what Maud had told her, and she said that Maud wanted to go somewhere else and study rocks.

Marble asked how Maud would do that, and Limestone said she did not know, that she had tried to dissuade Maud of the notion. Her stance was that they were family and they each had an important job at home, and Marble agreed.

The problem, Limestone said, was that Maud was not happy on the farm anymore. She did not enjoy the work or the results, and they stopped at a dirt road to look at the Ponyville clock tower and a belt of stars behind it.

Limestone said she did not know how much longer Maud would hold on. She lowered her voice and asked if Marble could keep a secret, and Marble said she could. Limestone asked if she would, and Marble laughed and said that she would do that too. They found a spot under an outlying apple tree and sat, and Limestone confessed that she was angry with Maud for wanting to leave, but afraid to push too hard lest she hurt Maud’s feelings. She thought that the family business should come first, and that Maud’s wanting to leave was a betrayal in itself, even if the want never became action. The implication was enough, and it had shaken Limestone to the point where she could not look at Maud the same way. Sometimes, she said, she tried to think of Maud as having already left, and her anger would cool into sadness.

Marble had no helpful advice, for she had not thought about Maud’s secret much since hearing it. The mere fact of being told something personal was enough to galvanize Marble, and she realized, hearing Limestone speak about these things as though they were her problems—as though Maud’s waxing desire to leave tore Limestone as well—that she had been selfish without realizing it. Choosing not to think deeply about her sister’s situation, or her feelings, Marble had unknowingly closed herself off from further confidence.

These thoughts hit her as Limestone elucidated some point, and Marble burst into tears, and Limestone stopped talking to comfort her. She probably thought that Marble was sad for Maud’s plight, and Marble was in no place to correct the thought. She wept, was held, hushed, and conversation resumed.

Limestone went on to say that she realized she was powerless to stop Maud if she chose to leave. She could be angry or sad, and she could beg, and she could invoke family obligations, but if Maud truly wanted to leave, she would leave. The powerlessness was the worst, she said. With this, Marble agreed, understanding the pain of which Limestone spoke, for she had felt powerless all her young life.

“No, that is not true,” Octavia said. “I am exaggerating, forgive me. I mean to say that I felt that my fate was not up to me. I had agency in the things I did on a day-to-day basis, but ultimately, I believed that I would live and die by the farm. That is more accurate.”

Marble asked if Maud planned on telling their parents, and Limestone said she did not know. She thought that Cloudy Quartz could tell something was bothering her eldest daughter, but beyond that, she could not say. It was her belief that Maud should announce her intentions, if intentions they were, before long, and give her parents the chance to talk her out of it.

The two sat under the tree for some time after that, each one considering Maud’s problem, and then bolted when a lantern light came into view at the other end of the farm.

Back home, Marble helped her mother peel potatoes while Igneous counted out bits on the table. As he reached certain figures, he would make tiny exclamations and blurt out numbers, to which Cloudy would respond with gasps or small cheers of her own. The words “phlogiston license” stuck out to Marble, who did not know what that was.

Tumble Tower came for dinner that evening and congratulated the Pies on their success. He was as comfortable as a member of the family, moving about the house without leave or directions, joking and talking with everyone, telling his own stories and using his deft toy maker’s hooves for all manner of tricks that impressed the sisters, and even their parents a few times. He helped Cloudy Quartz cook, though she later said he was mostly in the way, and he helped clean up later, filling the kitchen with song and the sound of scrubbing brushes.

Over dinner, he said the Ponyville ponies were quite convinced of the Pies’ legitimacy, that he was a trusted voice in the public discourse, and that he had even gone so far as to engineer a few simple scenarios to prove their trinkets’ supposed utility. A female friend of his had agreed to feign attraction to a lonely stallion who purchased a virility amulet. With a wink, Tumble Tower told the sisters that they’d understand when they were a little older.

After cleaning up, the sisters went to their own affairs while the adults talked more business, and the next week, Igneous received a stack of paperwork for his phlogiston license.

As Tumble Tower would explain a few nights later to Limestone, who showed the most interest, phlogiston was special and required a specific license for private use. Where other explosives could be purchased at specialty stores and with a more general license for mining or excavation, phlogiston was inherently magical, and more difficult to use safely. He did not understand the mechanics, but it was not as stable as other compounds; the trade-off was that it was much more versatile, and better for fine-tuning if the pony knew what she was doing. Tumble Tower chuckled and said that the phlogiston license was for miners, or rock farmers, what a liquor license was for restaurants.

That same day, right before her bedtime, Maud came into the living room and confessed her desire to leave the farm. She didn’t wait for attention, she didn’t announce that she had something to say; she just walked in, visibly shaken, and said “Mother, father, I wish to leave this place.”

Marble had been in the cistern and came in dripping wet when Pinkamena found her and said that Maud was doing something big in the house. She did not believe it when she entered, missing the first half of the conversation. The momentary confusion turned to denial, and she only looked back and forth, sister to parents, parents to sister, feeling like an intruder and conscious of the puddle forming at her hooves.

Of specific dialogue, she would carry little with her:

“Why?” Her mother, a fast but compassionate syllable, uttered with knit brows and total eye contact.

“I do not want to miss out on the rest of the world.” Maud, somewhere in the middle of the conversation, after a long silence and a frustrated exclamation from Igneous. She was defending her point.

“Difficulties.” Shaking his head, not looking at his daughter, Igneous sighed. Marble backed up a step toward the kitchen then, afraid of paternal anger.

They spoke for what felt like hours, until the water on her coat began to evaporate, and Maud impressed upon them that she had no concrete plans, that it was just an interest. After the initial shock and objection, the three of them talked of what Maud might find if she left. Acknowledging the issues her absence would cause for the family business, both parents also knew what Limestone had, that it was not really their decision.

It was by listening to this conversation that Marble learned that her parents had been somewhat worldly when they were younger. Both had graduated from a small college in Applewood, where they had met, and both had traveled north to Canterlot first and then down to the farm. They knew of the wide world, and were able to offer Maud pieces of advice on travel, to which Maud shook her head and repeated that she had no plans, only interests. Marble would wonder later whether their intent had been to dissuade Maud by overwhelming her with advice.

Limestone eventually brought Marble a towel and told her to dry off, and clean the floor while she was at it. She kept her ears up and her head down, and by the time she was done, so were the interlocutors. Maud went to her room, and Cloudy and Igneous returned to their work, their hearts utterly removed from the task.

In the month between Maud’s announcement and her preparations to go, a pall settled over the breakfast table. Talk was often stunted anyway, but in the slow mornings, it all but disappeared. Limestone showed her feelings in her every action, and it became the family’s job for a time to keep the peace. All eyes were on Limestone, and she did not show whether she knew it. When she slammed drawers shut, no one said a thing; when she threw silverware into the sink, no one batted an eye. It was as though she had become a ghost. She did not speak to Marble or—as far as Marble knew—Pinkamena, and certainly not Maud, who bore her sister’s mood quietly, knowing better than to let outbursts become confrontations.

It was Octavia’s belief that this was the final push Maud needed to get out the door. The love of her family had kept her there against her will for so long, but as Limestone soured, the love curdled. Her sister’s lack of grace had allowed her to steal the attention, to diminish Maud’s real conflict, and filial love became grudging and martyrly.

Through it all, work proceeded as usual. Rocks were excavated, polished, turned to decorations. Maud worked as hard as ever, but fooled no one. She lingered in rooms, looked away from faces, and went to bed early.

For one day, like a spark off a chip of flint, the entire family—and Tumble Tower, who was there for one reason or another—joined to celebrate Limestone’s cutie mark. She had solved a puzzle with the explosives to unearth, but not damage, a group of valuable stones, and a flash of her old self appeared as she did a circuit around the farm, hooting and hollering for joy. Igneous beamed and told her they would have a special dinner in Ponyville on their next visit, and Maud looked away when he glanced at her.

The phlogiston license came shortly thereafter, and Tumble Tower recommended a supplier. Limestone, clearly meant to handle the magical explosive, was granted equal say in its acquisition and usage, and that was how she came to be involved with the family finances.

Maud’s final trip to Ponyville came and went with no drama. Limestone was able to keep up a professional front for the customers, and Marble still went out walking at nights. They celebrated Limestone’s cutie mark over an inexpensive dinner out, and pretended to not be sitting on opposite sides of a widening chasm. In her heart, Marble felt that she should be spending more time with Maud, but doing what? Maud did not enjoy staying up late, and Marble was discovering how little she actually knew about her sister.

How things could have been different, Marble would spend many sleepless nights wondering. Her other sisters might trace later events to different origins, but Marble chose to believe that it was Maud who started it all.

“Let me be very clear on this point,” Octavia said, noticing Pinkie’s falling expression. “I do not blame her for anything. Not one thing. She did right by herself, which is the correct thing to do. I only mean to say that I think her actions caused everything else, or at least allowed things to play out the way they did.”

“She was causally responsible, but not morally culpable,” Twilight said.

“In as many words.”

She thought that if she had been more attentive to Maud, Marble might have been able to soften the blow to the family and help her sister find a less shocking way to voice her feelings. On a bumpy ride back to the rock farm, their cart heavy with bits, Marble chewed on the one thought and its implications, blaming herself and wondering whether it was too late to fix the gulf that had appeared in the family.

Six days later, they stood on the sunlit doorstep and said their goodbyes. Maud had packed what she could, which was not much, in secret and hid it away in her room. By this, Marble could tell that she had always intended to go to Ponyville the last time. She appreciated the consideration, but did not say so. By the time she was shaking Maud’s hoof, her earlier fears had shrunk, and she was resigned to her silence, and to reflecting Maud’s. She could tell that her parents felt similarly. Pinkamena hugged Maud long and hard, and Limestone shook her hoof once, maintaining eye contact and a straight, severe face, a face that said, “You have made your decision. Do not back out on it for my sake.”

Marble didn’t know what happened to her sister after that.

Octavia stopped talking and thought how best to continue, and Pinkie, mistaking her pause as a surge of emotion, rubbed her back. Octavia leaned away.

“Come on, sis,” Pinkie said.

“It ain’t that bad so far,” Applejack said.

“That is true,” Octavia said. “Things will go downhill much faster now that Maud has left. Pinkie, you may stop me at any time, if you wish. I will be talking about you more in the next few minutes.”

“Are you getting to the part where the money dried up?” Pinkie asked.

“Uh-oh,” Rainbow whispered.

“Yes,” Octavia said.

“Go ahead,” Pinkie said. “It’s fine.”

Octavia looked at her for several seconds.

Tumble Tower’s tricks and jokes disappeared as he came over in following days, and his visits lengthened. Marble did not know what they were about at the time, but would soon hear the truth. In Ponyville, through some flaw in his plan, or by mere accident, Tumble Tower’s work with the Pie family had been called into question. Their claims’ authenticity had been tested and had come up wanting.

He came to their house with a battered briefcase and stacks of papers, the odd bit sack, and spent whole evenings discussing strategies with Igneous and Cloudy. Limestone joined the conversations and reported things to Pinkamena, who reported to Marble. She informed them that their next trip to Ponyville would be humble and contrite, their wares purely decorative and divorced from the fantastical origins their family was known for reciting. In that regard, the secret was out, and Limestone thought it was about time.

Changing the family’s face in the course of half a month was no small task, however. They had to reinvent most of their finished products, turning charms and talismans into wall hangings and necklaces, burnishing away “mystical” engravings, and touching up duller pieces that no longer had the luxury of a flashy origin. They re-decorated their entire cart and learned as much as they could about the technical aspects of their work, which had always been less important than the stories surrounding it.

The second problem, which Limestone revealed on their way to Ponyville, was that the phlogiston license was not cheap, and if they did not find some way to keep up their profits, they would lose it. To Marble, it seemed of secondary concern, but Limestone spoke about it gravely. Maintaining and practicing with the phlogiston had become a pet project of hers, obvious considering her cutie mark, but it was one more thing Marble had not really seen until it was explained to her.

Because they were not chased out of Ponyville, Igneous proclaimed that their business was not finished and that they still had a good chance. No one believed him, but the sisters worked hard anyway, and sold a fraction of their wares. In shame, but with faint hope, they returned to the farm, dipped into a shallow savings account, and kept their phlogiston license for another month.

That month was leaner, the one following leaner still. When the time came that they sold nothing, that the only one who showed his face at their stall was the similarly distrusted Tumble Tower, they knew something else had to be done. The thought of it had percolated long before, hanging over the family’s heads at every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the reminders on their plates, in the shed with the tools they could no longer afford to maintain and the empty shelves, but it struck at last when the third day in Ponyville passed and Cloudy Quartz, dejected, slung the empty bit sack into the trailer before putting on her harness.

Tumble Tower came to call every other night, and for the first time, Cloudy Quartz did not participate in the meetings; taking her place was Limestone, as serious and adult as any of the others. To Marble, it was inexplicable, when she still felt so young herself, and she wondered how many other changes had taken place under her nose.

Cloudy Quartz met Marble in the fields one afternoon while Pinkamena ran about on the farm’s edge and the other three talked in the dining room. The blinds were open and Marble could see the table, where the ponies looked over something Tumble Tower had brought. Limestone was speaking animatedly, and Tumble Tower nodded while Igneous frowned at them both. It was in the field, on that day, that Marble abandoned her fear of the truth and asked her mother what was happening to the family.

They walked to the farm’s opposite border, where a grove of trees struggled by a shallow, dirty pond. Marble had gone there a few times on her own, mostly in the evenings, where she could see the sun setting behind branches. She enjoyed the play of color and shadow on the surface of the water, the dragonflies on lily pads, their wings yellowed in sunset. In the afternoon, she could see the algae and the spider webs, but found these equally pleasing. Like the scene from the kitchen, standing astride the pond that day felt correct to her, as if she and her mother had stepped into an invisible frame and could play out their dialogue properly for it.

Cloudy Quartz confessed much, but not all: they were losing money at a rate that would leave them bankrupt inside a year, and Igneous planned to give up the phlogiston license, but had not yet told Limestone. That would give them an extra few months, but it would crush Limestone, and possibly only prolong the inevitable. Cloudy wanted to accept their fate, cut their losses, and take what little they had left elsewhere, but Igneous, Limestone, and Tumble Tower thought they could hang on.

Igneous’ idea was to use his daughters for public relations, turning them loose in Ponyville to spread good cheer and hopefully beautify the family’s face so they might grow into a legitimate jewelry business. Tumble Tower’s idea was to find the money in an altogether different way, unspecified by him in Cloudy’s presence, but referencing the use of “dirt.” She used the term in front of Marble as if it were filthy.

Marble could not comfort her mother when she began crying, not the way she wanted to. She held her and patted her back, as one would with an acquaintance, but Marble had no secret trick to bring a smile back to her mother’s face, no soothing combination of words that would stem the tears. In that moment, she realized that she knew equally little about her father, and in the copse with the dragonflies, the sunshine on her dark mane making her head swim, she again felt pangs of self-rebuke. She was being selfish once more.

“Isn’t it more selfish to be worried about that kind of thing when someone else needs help?” Rainbow asked.

“I realize that,” Octavia said. “Thank you.”

“Uh, I mean… Sorry. I didn’t think before I said that.”

She recalled her mother saying she blamed herself for Limestone’s upbringing, that she had never wanted Limestone to become who she was, and that she was ashamed and baffled that her own daughter could twist out of reach. Marble did not understand, and Cloudy Quartz explained that while she and her husband were appalled by what Tumble Tower appeared to suggest, Limestone encouraged it. That was what they were talking about that afternoon, and why Cloudy had begun recusing herself from the conversations. Whatever it was, it would hurt other ponies. Marble did not ask her mother why Tumble Tower’s idea was so bad, when she had made a living with Igneous selling lies. The opportunity would not come, and that, too, had a place in Octavia’s growing library of doubts and questions. Was her mother a good pony at heart, or did her reluctance to be tempted simply come from a fear of change, or of risk?

Marble left that meeting by the trees determined to confront her sister, who, in her mind, had made her mother cry—as straightforward as that. She walked across the fallow earth, past piles of stones they were too late into the month to make into decorations, and barged into the house. So what if Tumble Tower was there, she thought. She would confront her sister in front of them all, come what may.

Instead, Limestone invited her to sit with them. “Glad you came,” Limestone said, looking up with a warm, almost relieved, smile, and gestured Marble to join. She said that she and Tumble Tower had a plan to boost their business in the short term, while Igneous would work with Pinkamena to help them longer-term. The idea with Pinkamena was exactly as Cloudy had described, and Limestone said she had already floated the idea past her to positive reception.

Igneous objected more loudly then and told Marble to not pay them any attention, that there was another way. Limestone sighed and turned her eyes on her father, a pleading and tired look that made him falter. They had discussed it up and down already, her eyes said, and there was no point to drag the conversation back.

Marble was not used to seeing Tumble Tower in the way he presented himself that day. She knew he could be serious and adult, but had never been in the same room when he did it. All she had seen of that side of him was the occasional flash before a punchline, or in unremarkable conversation. To her, it seemed inappropriate for someone she saw as a joker at heart to drop the amused and amusing face, and it furthered her impression that all was not well. If her mother’s outburst in the field was an isolated incident of heightened emotion, Tumble Tower’s odd calm was too upsetting to question.

His plan was simple in theory, and so seemed simple to her then, for she was young and inexperienced—as was Limestone, something Marble would not consider until after. In his papers, he had a few names and occupations, schedules, lists of loved ones, and details of that sort. He walked Marble through each item, step by step, and it was all so orderly, it was easy for her to see why Limestone was interested. Everyone had dirt, Tumble Tower said. “I do, my brother does, even your dear old pappy,” he said, winking. “Ponies can be convinced to part with a lot of money if you find that dirt. Think of it like buried treasure, if you like.”

Her father’s word for it was less attractive: blackmail.

The three of them went around and around that day, Marble at the table taking it all in and saying little, tempers flaming up and cooling off like flashes of lightning. Cloudy Quartz stayed outside throughout, and those that noticed did not comment. They drank all the iced tea and ate what was left of their biscuits, and Tumble Tower showed the sisters a trick where he spun a bit on the tip of his nose before catching it between his teeth.

They discussed the proposition until the lengthening shadows met the ceiling and their water glasses became amber, and Tumble Tower made a show of leaving. He took his hat, his papers, a last glass of water, and left a bit on the table. The three Pies, and Cloudy after Tumble Tower had gone, stared down on it. In the morning, the bit was gone, and no one spoke of it. Marble did not know who had taken it; it wasn’t her.

They prepared as best they could for Ponyville, and when it came time to go, they did so with only half of their wares. The trailer was easier to pull that way.

Octavia stopped for a minute. “I am just trying to remember how this next part went.”

Limestone had not brought up the blackmail plan to Marble or Igneous since the day Tumble Tower had come, but Marble knew they would discuss it the second they were alone. Her sister had not forgotten and would not allow her to forget it either. She even knew what Limestone would say, that family came first and there really was no argument after that fact.

So she stayed up and let Limestone catch her awake, and the two of them walked to the apple orchard again. It was getting cold at night, and they both shivered under a denuded tree, neither thinking to bring a blanket or coat from the stall. Limestone shocked Marble by apologizing and saying that she knew Marble was in an awkward position. She knew she should not ask her own sister to help her in the way Tumble Tower proposed, but—Marble had been right—family came first. They had to do something.

Marble said that she did not want Igneous to be angry with them, and Limestone nodded and thought about that for a long time. She eventually said they could do it if they just lied about how they got the money. They could say they had begged for it, or Tumble Tower had come into money and decided to be charitable, or they had found it in a suitcase on the side of the road. Igneous would believe anything if he wanted to, Limestone explained, if it meant he did not have to accept what his beloved daughters were doing.

Limestone asked her to look at it a different way, and explained the idea in the same way Tumble Tower had to her, one of many: that they were not hurting anyone. They would not actually release any of the dirt they found, she assured, but no one needed to know that; it was fear, but empty fear. Marble found herself agreeing as Limestone impressed the point that no harm would be done. Without her father there, the idea seemed more rational, and spoken with Limestone’s familiar, trustworthy voice, it seemed safe. She said she had thought it through multiple times, and though she still felt vaguely filthy about the whole thing, she had concluded that it was their best chance. That was the final point that convinced Marble: her sister felt bad about it too, so, in Marble’s mind, nothing bad could come of it because it was done with pure intentions. Marble apologized for being so difficult, and Limestone forgave her.

They went out the second night too, Tumble Tower’s papers in Limestone’s saddlebag, and they discussed whose dirt they wanted to find on their way to the town’s border. Marble, puzzled, did not ask where they were going, and saw soon enough their destination. Tumble Tower waited on a bench in a darkened gazebo, surrounded by sleeping flowers, his pipe burnishing the lower half of his face with the red of glowing tobacco.

He didn’t congratulate Marble or ask what had made up her mind. He just nodded at her, puffed on his pipe, and asked Limestone who their pony was. They talked it out a little more in the perfumed dark before Limestone finally chose. She thought that the most potential was in a pony named Joyful Weaver, the local drunk, who Tumble Tower said was a veritable warehouse of unsavory secrets.

“That is why I mentioned him earlier,” Octavia said.

“We trusted you had a reason,” Fluttershy said.

Tumble Tower visibly relaxed after they made their selection, and said that the next part would be easy. He said he had actually hoped they would pick Joyful Weaver, because he was an easier target. Tumble Tower would go about his business, talk to Joyful’s acquaintances and coworkers, snoop and probe and compile the dirt they needed, and by their next visit to Ponyville, he would have enough details for them. He laughed and looked at Limestone, and said, “then it’s all up to you, little miss. You sure you can do it?”

Limestone did not hesitate, and Marble nodded along with her, wondering why Tumble Tower needed them at all. After a moment of uneasy silence, she asked the question. He replied that it was not in his nature to do the sorts of things Marble and Limestone were preparing to do. He was just a humble toymaker, he said, as if that proved anything.

On the walk back, Limestone explained that Tumble Tower was only a consultant, and that he had drawn that line very early and very clearly to their father. He would help in whatever way he could, up to the point where he needed to do anything that would put him in harm’s way. He wanted to keep his nose clean, but not too clean, and Limestone said she respected that.

Two weeks later, he came to call with a couple papers in a sealed envelope, which he gave to Limestone on the doorstep. He did not stay for dinner.

She asked Marble to come with her to Ponyville a few nights later, and Marble agreed. They talked in Limestone’s bedroom, which had been stripped of its stone figurines and swept of its ubiquitous grit. They discussed the walk to Ponyville for nearly an hour, trying to recall the path and the obstacles they would encounter, and drawing a crude map. They went over what they would say to Joyful Weaver and how to convince him that they were serious—even though they were not, Marble reminded Limestone.

They decided they would leave the following day, and Marble agreed, and fell asleep with scared excitement whirling in her young heart. At last, she would be doing something to help the family, she kept telling herself.

In the morning light, however, she woke to find her excitement diminished, in its place the decidedly un-romantic reality that she was planning to poison someone’s life for her own gain. She was quiet all morning, wrestling with the thought; Limestone’s assuredness only made it worse, and when she realized that, she realized right after that she didn’t know whether her sister was good anymore. She was not yet used to thinking in those terms, and it paralyzed her, as if she had woken up to find her sister replaced with someone who just looked like her. Across the morning, she put in only an hour’s work, constantly turning in on herself and examining her dilemma, trying to find a different angle from which to approach it. She remembered snapping at Pinkamena.

Just before noon, Limestone approached her, and Marble told her that she was having second thoughts. Limestone, clearly upset, responded that it was Marble’s decision, and after pretending to consider for longer than she needed, Marble told her she was sorry, but had to back out. Limestone said, “that is fine,” and turned into the house to tell her parents that she was going to Ponyville. Her story: she was going to meet a possible explosives wholesaler, someone who could supply them with much more affordable batches of ammonium nitrate. It was clear that no one believed her when she left, but no one stopped her either. When Cloudy Quartz looked at her husband, he hung his head.

Limestone had returned with the dawn on the day of the sonic rainboom, saddlebags heavy with bits, and she slept most of the morning. Octavia remembered glaring at her bedroom door for a time, jealous of the privilege, but also the pride she knew Limestone felt. Perhaps she should have gone after all, she thought, for there was no pride in staying behind.

That was the day that Pinkamena got her cutie mark. The sonic rainboom over Ponyville had inspired her first party, and that, mixed with the elation of finally having a little buffer of money, allowed for the final happy day on the farm.

Octavia paused, and Pinkie smiled. “I remember that day like it was yesterday,” Pinkie said.

“I remember it fondly,” Octavia said. “It is just that everything around it was unpleasant.”

Where Pinkamena produced the supplies for a full party inside the silo was not asked, but thought about much; Octavia would find out years later, when she no longer cared.

She remembered being pulled from her task with the others and dragged into the silo, her sister marching in cheerful lockstep and singing a made-up song all the way there. It was a day like any other, which made the surprise all the stranger and more welcome. It was like stepping into someone else’s dream. Confetti and streamers caught dusty light like colorful flies and spider webs over piles of food on bright tablecloths. Marble remembered the towering cakes, sagging under their own weight, and the odd decoration or speck of dust that had landed in the frosting. She remembered the golden flowers Pinkamena had spaced on the door jambs and each plain pilaster, cords of red streamer connecting each one, ringing the structure’s wooden walls. At once, she felt insulted, and reeled back with her parents and with Limestone, caught off guard by the refutation of that almost tangible austerity their silo embodied in its quiet, its dust, its unpretentious walls and crossbeams. The indecorous gesture called for retaliation, but of what sort? To tear it down would be awful, to walk away worse; to their serious and, moreover, stressed and miserable selves, it was a sight hardly more welcome than the silo aflame.

Yet, on that day, whether by some muted charm in the air, the electric hope of new money, the sheer audacity of the shock, or something else entire, inaction transformed into a new feeling. First, the smiles came, and the picture changed. Balloons and desserts glowed with the same light that had made them at first garish insults, the punch bowl reflected pleasure instead of selfishness, and the dirt floor suddenly seemed to be the one out of place. After the smiles, there were the snickers, the tentative steps into the waiting party, the guarded inspection of what Pinkamena had to offer—and she herself, quite anxious to see their reactions. She asked them if they liked it, and told them what it was.

The sun seemed fixed in place that day. They danced and shook, ate well of the food Pinkamena had mysteriously procured, talked and laughed. As in a dream, amends felt unnecessary. In the party space, there was no talk of work or of money, and for a time, Marble felt what it was like to be out from under life’s weight. She knew that they were family, but in those hours, she felt it as well: sisters and parents she understood, and who understood her, so well that self-consciousness did not exist, and embarrassment could be laughed off or blinked away. In Pinkamena’s new light, everything was new and easy, as if they had all come up for air at the same time.

Then, sundown, and the party ended. They helped clean up, which amounted to piling everything in a corner and taking the food inside. Pinkamena said she would take care of the remains, and they trusted her. Marble remembered walking back to the house, feeling her giddy smile flatten. The house was business, sacrifice, unrest, and the want of money. It was guilt for helping her sister, and a different sort of guilt for not helping very much. In her mind, Marble distinguished this as “reality,” and the party as “fantasy.”

The family had pretended to be surprised at Pinkamena’s cutie mark, but no one really was. The party had been such a success, they all knew the second the dancing caught on: a collective “this is it” thought, expressed through the wide smiles and the gracious thanks to their host. They had started enjoying the party through other impulses, but the knowledge of what it represented had kept them going.

The following week, Marble was awake to hear her father scramble out of bed and out the front door. She watched him streak across their land after a pair of shadowy figures, lantern swinging in his jaws. There was a loud argument, the meaning of which she missed through her closed window, and a warning shot from her father’s pulse crystal. She did not know that he owned one, and this detail, more than anything else, kept her up the rest of that night, up to hear Igneous and Tumble Tower speaking in low voices in the main room.

He was still there the following morning, face bruised and patches of fur missing from his neck and chest. With a self-deprecating grin, he greeted each sister with a nod and a small joke. “Like my new look?” he asked Marble, who only stared.

He and Limestone disappeared into the fields while everyone else worked, and when they came back, Limestone was calm, Tumble Tower apprehensive. Joyful Weaver, she later told Marble in private, had followed Tumble Tower the night before, and, seeing him approaching the farm, cornered him in a shoulder of the wood and gave him his bruises. Tumble Tower had told her that he was to consider it a warning, and that if he and his friend—meaning Limestone—did not back off, there was plenty more.

Limestone didn’t say it, but Marble took her meaning, or thought she did: perhaps if Marble had joined her, and Joyful Weaver had seen there were two of them against him, he might not be so bold. She went on to say that the beating only gave them more material to use against him to extract money.

Marble asked Limestone to go out into the fields with her later that night, and they did. It was a little past midnight, which did not bother Marble, but clearly put Limestone on edge. After a deep breath of cold air, Marble yelled one word at her sister: “fool!”

She almost yelled it again, almost fell into a chain of invectives and long-held judgments, but did not. The anger in her one word struck Limestone and left her astonished, and momentarily cracked Marble’s determination. By the time she had composed herself, so had Limestone, and they spoke as though the word had not been uttered.

Tumble Tower was a friend of the family, a trusted one; he had known them through good times and bad, and, Marble reminded Limestone, had become a friend before becoming a business partner. Treating his injuries as simple material for future blackmail was as plainly wrong to Marble as the party had at first seemed. She brought up all the usual facts: that he was a living pony, with his own feelings and troubles, separate from theirs; that using him in such a way disregarded these things, made him into a tool; and so on. Limestone agreed with all her points and apologized, and Marble trusted the apology.

The family conference came next. Mother, father, Limestone, Marble, and even Pinkamena sat down at the dining table the following day. Five pairs of eyes darting across a barren tabletop, searching for answers and offering none of their own. Marble felt in that exact moment the depth of the family silence, heavy and sincere, each one of them filled with and buried by their feelings. With eye contact alone, Marble felt that the room could explode, but the moment passed as quickly as it came on, and the tension relaxed when Cloudy Quartz sighed and asked Limestone what was really going on.

Marble could tell that she had really gotten to Limestone when her sister told the truth. The blackmail, the revenge exacted on Tumble Tower, the corrected thought to use that revenge as new material against Joyful Weaver. She walked them through it, detached and precise, the voice of business, of what Marble saw as adulthood.

Pinkamena cried, and Marble comforted her as best she could. Cloudy Quartz looked at her daughter for some time before excusing herself from the table. Igneous thought for a very long time, not speaking. When their mother returned, she hugged Limestone tight and said she loved her, and Limestone cried too, though she tried not to. In the bright, warm day, she admitted that she was lost, and knew that the only solution she saw would bring them nothing but pain in the end. She asked what alternatives there were, continuously emphasizing that she saw none, and she was sorry.

“Sounds like someone I know,” Vinyl said, and smiled weakly. “Sorry.”

“You are correct to point it out,” Octavia said. “Where do you think I first learned such restrictive thinking?” She cleared her throat. “To continue. This is… easier than I expected.”

Igneous pointed out that they could always pull up the roots and make their way to Canterlot. If they took everything they had left and sold off everything they didn’t need, they might be able to afford an apartment, and the fillies were old enough to find jobs.

“I do not want to leave this place,” Limestone said quietly, face damp with spent tears. She looked at her cutie mark.

“There might not be a choice, honey,” Cloudy Quartz said. Her tender, wounded voice would remain in Octavia’s memories for the rest of her life.

At that, Limestone cried again, and Pinkamena cried with her. Marble and Igneous exchanged weary looks across the table. The discussion went on into the night, and no one moved to go to bed. Talk of business turned to talk of feelings and of failings, and then fears, regrets, and secrets. At this, Marble offered little, Pinkamena much. They had run out of napkins by morning, and Limestone and Cloudy Quartz were asleep at the table when everyone else came in for breakfast.

And yet, despite all, in the day following the event, everything went back to normal. It was a reflection of the family’s grim luck, Marble thought, that it was so easy to consign an entire night of confession and deep conversation to isolated memory. It was as though the day had occurred just to be the party’s antithesis, and, its purpose so fulfilled, could be regarded with the same perplexed, guarded nostalgia.

“What a night that was,” they might say, and leave it at that.

So they went to Ponyville and sold next to nothing, and Marble wandered the town and lost herself in the stars, and Limestone withdrew, and Pinkamena became thin and diminished in a family that could not support her newfound passion. Talk between siblings was cyclical and self-serving, and secrets were told without intention, ideas voiced without regard for other ideas. They got back home, dug up rocks, and fell into their patterns. Sometimes, Ingeous would point out a listing for an affordable apartment in the Canterlot suburbs, but nothing came of it. At the beginning of the first week of winter, Pinkamena was gone. She left a note, the exact contents of which Octavia did not recall, but which basically said that she was sorry, but had to go. Her cutie mark demanded it, her life was calling, and she could not let herself wither on the rock farm. There was no one to blame. Life went on.

Tumble Tower came over, and he, Limestone, and Marble stayed up. He expressed his regrets that Pinkamena had left them, but said he wished her the best and was glad she had found her calling. He regaled them with a halfhearted tale of his own cutie mark, which he had found in a similar way. Earth pony toymakers were not common, and he went on that one of his fondest memories was his neighbors throwing him a huge surprise party the week after he got his mark. It was one of those neighborhoods, he said, where everyone was friends with everyone else. He teared up a little, remembering it, and Marble patted his back.

The conversation should have been heated, but wasn’t. The three of them spoke as adults, going over their options, accepting or appearing to accept counterpoints when they came. Limestone suggested revenge against Joyful Weaver, Marble preached a withdrawal to Canterlot, and Tumble Tower landed somewhere in the middle. Since it was his face on the line, they deferred to his choice. He said he would go into Ponyville, find Joyful Weaver, and apologize and promise that the blackmail would stop. Then they would find someone less volatile and try again.

Octavia stopped speaking for a minute. “Okay, now it is getting difficult.” She looked down at her hooves. “You will forgive me if I take this part a bit slower. We are nearing the point when it happened.”

“This has all been setup?” Rainbow asked.

“Yes. The actual event would not mean so much if I did not give you the full context.”

“No, I get it. I was just asking.”

“Keep going, darling. You’re doing great,” Rarity said.

Tumble Tower went to Ponyville that night, where he said he would go to bed, and then find Joyful Weaver the following day, hopefully when he was sober.

So. A few afternoons later, out in the fields, Marble was poking around a pile of loose rocks, not really working. She could see the road to Ponyville from where she stood, and thought of Pinkamena, as she often did. She wondered where her sister was, and how she was doing, whether that cutie mark had gotten her a job or some friends.

She walked a little father out until she reached the warped roadside fence, the same fence that had been so fascinating when she was younger. She did not remember whether it was a quiet day, or whether birds were singing. It must have been quiet, else she would not have heard the pony in the woods.

She approached the sound of slow movement through underbrush, thinking at first that it was a deer or rabbit. Instead, she found Tumble Tower, his clothes streaked with blood and dirt, his face strangely unharmed as he crawled through the wood. She froze and hid behind a tree; she could tell that he had not seen her, and she watched, instantly shocked out of herself.

He would try to gain his hooves, and would succeed for seconds before collapsing with a breathless moan. When he did manage to stand, she could see the dark stain on his midsection, almost black, a flat and tacky patch on his wrinkled suit. She must have looked for twenty minutes before finally approaching.

On his belly, forelegs splayed before him as though in worship, he rolled his head back and forth in the dry soil. When he noticed her, he stared for several seconds, as if trying to remember where he had seen her before, then broke into a smile. He said something benign, which frightened her, and, noticing her fright, he became serious. “Get your father,” he said.

His chin rested in the dirt, and she backed away slowly, head spinning. She went through the trees, met the road, and stopped at the rail again to catch her breath. The sun was hotter suddenly, her head was pounding, her ears were rushing. She put a hoof to her heart, which felt like it could pop out of her chest at any second. Her mouth was dry, and she turned back into the wood instead.

She watched, and when he moved, she backed away as quietly as she could. What stopped her from getting Igneous? She never really knew, but had come to assume that it was just another permutation of the feeling that had overtaken her at the party and the family conference. She was too afraid to act, too shocked to move or think; she felt like she had discovered a dead body, not a living one, and could not shake the petrifying fear that kept her rooted to the side of the road. The wrongness of it shut down her thoughts. A body on the ground like that was enough to remove from her that sense of agency. Like coming home to a burning farmhouse, she could only stare, fear and disbelief rendering her motionless.

A cloud passed across the sun and went on its way, and she retreated to a depression in the land, shaking. The blood was part of it; she had never seen so much, certainly did not think of ponies as things that could bleed like that and go on. With the blood came the reminder of mortality, hers and her family’s, and then the fact that her friend was facing his in that exact moment.

Also, it was a spectacle. Over the course of hours, the vision of mortality would drag itself out of the woods and force itself into a final gasp of life, a droning play from which she could not turn her attention. Under the horror, small and ashamed and very, very quiet, there thrummed that fascinated thread.

Tumble Tower got to his hooves at the road and slipped through the rail, made it to a rise in the field. Marble watched him struggle, and then lower himsef to the ground, knees bending and head bowing in concession, in which position he remained when she finally went to him.

Eyes open, breathing shallow, Tumble Tower looked at her as best he could. She could smell the blood and chlorophyll on his clothes. He grunted softly, intonation rising as if in question, and she could only stare. She had been fixed to his vicinity when he had been moving, and now, she was fixed to the spot. He frowned and tried to raise his head to meet her eyes, and she stood there. The spectacle had all but ended, but she could still not move. From a distance, his movement had been dramatic in its simplicity, a wounded hero’s return, but up close, he was just a pony. His fur was mussed, his mane was flared out around his head, his eyes fluttered, his head bobbed, his nostrils quickened with his breath. The blood was not moving much anymore. His shoulders quivered, and his tail was still. Marble watched Tumble Tower lean to one side, his upturned eye showing the orange sun, and his breathing slowed further. His lips parted a fraction.

And when night came, and the stars and moon had frosted his body with silver light, and when she could not control her shivering anymore, Marble stumbled to her sleeping hooves and walked back home.

Cloudy Quartz found him the following day, and the news ran through the house with quiet anger. Igneous got his pulse crystal again and stormed out the door, but was back an hour later. Cloudy remained quiet and attended to the duties of home, afraid to say anything. It was a tragedy, but she had warned them that they might come to it. Limestone wore her hurt plainly, and her eyes were fixed on her mother for just such a mistake. Anything she might say, Limestone was prepared to take it the wrong way.

Marble stayed in her room and watched the sunlight move. She had given a morning’s work and retreated to her bed, and no one stopped her, and there she remained until the next afternoon. The image of him was burned into her mind, and she cried freely for it for hours, face pressed down into her pillow.

When she had cried herself dry, Marble joined the family in time to help with the funerary preparations. Igneous had gone ahead to town—leaving his pulse crystal behind—to deliver the news, and Cloudy Quartz and the fillies worked on assembling a coffin. She possessed limited carpentry knowledge, and by the time he was back, they had a rough box for Tumble Tower, solid but not varnished, and poorly decorated. With him in it, they rode to Ponyville, met his brother on the border, and gave his body over. They did not attend his funeral; Igneous said it wasn’t proper, and Marble supposed she knew why.

With each passing day, the image of his face and his voice telling her to get father, too calm for someone dying, remained with her. She began to wonder what had gone through his head in those last moments, what he thought of her, standing over him instead of helping. Did he realize that she was afraid to help, beset with some new curse she did not know she had? Did he think ill of her at the last, thinking her stupid or malicious? He might have thought nothing of it, and died in peace. He might have thought that it did not matter that she had not gotten Igneous, because his time was up already and there was nothing more to be done; and he might have been right to think so. He might have not thought at all, she told herself, and simply died with a cloudy head and the sound of muffled wind in his ears. It might not have hurt, and it might have hurt very much.

This thought led her down its own path, which troubled her only in the nights, when she walked to the road’s edge and looked at where they had found him, and where she had found him. She did not know whether he had suffered in his last seconds. Surely he had suffered before that, but how much did it really matter?

She shied from asking herself that question, but each time it came, she shied a little less. At last, one night under a crescent moon, with a winter wind in the trees and on her damp face, she allowed herself to freely wonder.

How much did his suffering matter? In the case of Tumble Tower’s death, he had died alone and without ordeal that she could see. Her presence might have meant a lot to him, or it might have meant very little, but that, too, she could not imagine amounted to much in the scheme of things. The fact was that he was dead, and he was not suffering anymore. She wondered whether that fact eased the pain he had felt before finally dying, whether the inevitability of his death had given some pale comfort in the end.

Then, pulling at that thought more, she made the disquieting realization that his death did not affect her in any physical, measurable way. She was sad and frightened, but she was not harmed; she had not been made to suffer on his behalf, only by what she thought of it and of herself, and these thoughts were separate too. She had been his only witness, and, she wondered, if she had instead walked away and forgotten about him, then what? His suffering would be brief and empty, without witness and without empathy, with no way to ramify. In such a case, did it matter? Did one, single life, destined to end from the moment it crawled out of the woods, matter in any measurable way?

She did not know, and the thought terrified her. She cried until her chest and throat hurt, thinking she was evil, asking herself what kind of pony thought things like that. What did she lack that allowed her to brutishly question the significance of a friend’s death? She thought of Limestone, whom she considered the darker of the two, and who grieved openly for Tumble Tower, and Marble wondered what that made her.

On each subsequent night, she went to the road and went further down the path of thoughts, starting from the same point and always ending up comparing herself to Limestone, or to her parents, or to one of the departed sisters. She called herself selfish, stupid, and inconsiderate; she told herself that she did not understand anything, and from that premise drew the conclusion that what she felt was foundationally incorrect, and that she was, herself, fundamentally wrong. This made her cry harder, which reinforced her beliefs. If she were a better filly, she would confess to her sister and her parents, and ask for help. She would go to Ponyville and confess to Tumble Tower’s brother, and accept the punishment she deserved, for beside the fact that he was dead stood the fact that she had done nothing to help. Whether there was hope for him was immaterial; she did not know, and it had not crossed her mind to wonder about it at that time. She had no good reason to let him die, just the same base fear that kept her by the road, weeping for her own selfish heart, hating and relishing every second.

On a night in the middle of December, she lay by a fence post and stared at the soft clouds, filled with hatred. She had not hated before, but she recognized the feeling at once. She thought that if she could encounter herself somehow, she would hate that miserable-looking gray filly on sight. She saw weakness, selfishness, and the cowardly desire to hide from punishment. In every session by the road, she saw flagrant, self-centered fear, deferring the admission she deserved to make and her family deserved to hear.

Thinking these thoughts, she slowly raised her head to the sound of creaking wheels. A small halo of light appeared in the distance, illuminating a cart and an equine figure as it rounded a bend, and Marble watched it come. Perhaps she could confess to this stranger, she thought, but knew she lacked the strength even for that.

The cart stopped, and Marble took in brilliant white and purple stars adorning a base coat of blue, speckled with sprays of silver and gold, like a stylized map of the night sky. The wheels groaned as it halted, the canvas top rippled, and the lantern swung gently, a pair of moths in orbit. A young, blue unicorn with a long, argent mane was strapped into the oiled harness, and she greeted Marble with a wave and a high, haughty voice. “You’re the first pony I’ve seen ‘round these parts. Trixie, glad to meet’cha.”

She was headed to Ponyville, and asked Marble whether she was lost. Marble looked back toward the farm and thought of Pinkamena and Maud, the memory of each colored by despair. She thought of her family’s next time in Ponyville, which would come soon—unless it didn’t. From where she stood, bathed in the yellow lantern light and filled with cooling hatred, she was not in her right mind when she said that she was on her way to town. Trixie asked if Marble could help pull the cart, and Marble said she could, but did not immediately get into position, instead taking another minute to look homeward.

They walked together for an hour before pulling off into a thinner patch in the woods and preparing to sleep in the trailer. Dousing the lights and winding her harness up, Trixie told Marble a little about herself: that she was a traveling performer, a runaway from Trottingham who wanted to make it big in the great, wide world. She practiced illusionism of both magical and practical varieties, and fancied herself an actress as well, and she was proud to say that she had made it all the way up from Trottingham on her own, earning her daily bread with her shows or by foraging in wilder parts of the land.

Marble asked how far Trottingham was, and Trixie thought for a time before saying that she had been on the road for a couple years. “Years?” Marble repeated. She had not known how huge Equestria was, and that night, she found herself revisiting the thought, wondering what was out there and how to get to it.

In their time approaching Ponyville, conversation was largely one-sided, Trixie telling Marble stories of her journey and the life that had led her to it. She was born in Trottingham and had spent her formative years in a cottage near one of the smaller vineyards, alternating summer jobs between grape picking and unloading cargo for the airships that passed through the city. Her conservative parents pushed her to make something of herself in oenology, a subject in which she had shown a jot of promise before finding her cutie mark.

As they did, though, her cutie mark wound up having nothing to do with her upbringing, and when she found it, she, like Pinkamena, was drawn into the world. This she skipped over, the drama of her departure and the sorrow of parents left behind. Marble said she understood, but did not elaborate. It was clear that Trixie knew Marble was withholding information about herself, but had tact enough not to press, and Marble was grateful.

Like a traitor entering her former enemies’ camp for the first time, Marble felt as though every eye in Ponyville was on her the day she showed herself, outside her parents’ company. Her parents and sister had been through two runaways, and Marble could imagine the quickly dawning feelings as they realized that they were one more short. The family business had been sinking already; minus another worker, how could they possibly survive? The question reared up at the end of a long day of walking, the two of them camping in Trixie’s trailer just off the farm, where the family had graciously parted with some of their crop to feed the wayfarers. If they recognized Marble, they didn’t show it. Marble sat up, staring out the grimy port hole, letting realization after realization stack atop her, slowly internalizing the toxic feeling of what she had done.

She was not sure which was worse, that she had left her parents and sister to their fates on the dying farm, or that she had no intention of returning. In that night, crying and then trying not to cry, she felt despicable, soiled, and small, but also free.

Trixie performed for money while Marble stayed in the trailer, helping to clean and mend props. One afternoon, after a show, both mares were relaxing and counting Trixie’s money, and Trixie said, out of the blue, “I know a runaway when I see one, Marble.”

Marble did not know what to say to that, and Trixie explained that she had seen plenty of ponies just like Marble on her journey north, and traveled with a few. If Marble did not want to share her past, fine, but she was not fooling Trixie. Marble said that was okay.

They stayed in Ponyville for six days and did four shows. For the final one, performed on the northern end, Trixie talked Marble into playing her assistant. No words or tricks or anything, Trixie explained, just looking pretty and following stage directions. She coached Marble on smiling, which Marble found humiliating, but also vaguely comical.

Where Trixie moved about her stage with practiced ease and charisma, flourishing her cape and keeping up a rhythmic patter in time with the ceaseless stream of colorful, benign magic from her horn, Marble stood and wore her smile, following directions stiffly and awkwardly. She kept her eyes off the audience as much as she could, terrified that she would look up and see her parents among them, or Limestone, or even Pinkamena, whom she would not meet in Ponyville. She was an earth pony surrounded by unicorn magic, but it was Trixie’s confidence that made her feel strangest of all, as if Trixie were making a mistake sharing her world with Marble, and it was somehow Marble’s job to point it out. She wondered whether Trixie asking for her help had been an act of charity, and would wonder that for some time after leaving town.

They made enough money off that show for two days’ worth of food, if they were careful, which meant nothing to Marble, who did not know where they were going. They spoke of it over a foraged dinner, what Marble would do. She had initially said she was headed to Ponyville, and now she had arrived. Trixie, meanwhile, meant to keep going north. When Marble asked her where, Trixie responded with a shrug and a smile, and said something about heeding the call of adventure without worrying about the details. She had used that phrase in one of her stage tales as well.

What Marble told Trixie was that she might want to set down roots in Ponyville because the town seemed nice; what she felt was that she might still be able to redeem herself if she walked back to the farm. Her family would not be able to trust her for a long time, which was correct and deserved, but at least they would have a chance of survival. If they decided to move to Canterlot, Marble’s being there would make a world of difference. She said she would decide in the morning, and Trixie shrugged. She said that if Marble did wind up joining, she would need to get used to being an assistant, or perhaps something more, and Marble agreed that that was only fair.

Marble actually decided three hours later, on her evening walk about town. She talked to a couple strangers, learned Joyful Weaver’s fate, heard about Tumble Tower’s demise, and when the interaction got to be too much, she moved out to the countryside east of town. She smelled the air, thick with unshed rain, and watched the lights of distant Cloudsdale. The Pies would pass by, or sometimes under, the city on their way to Ponyville every month, but Marble had never given it much thought. Her experience with pegasi had been mostly relegated to seeing them from a distance and selling to them. To her, they were just earth ponies that flew, the floating city just something to look at.

She weighed her options, lying in a damp field, seeing herself in both positions. In the first, she was with Trixie, walking the wilderness to parts unknown, likely becoming friends and joining in the grand adventures Trixie described. In the second, she groveled and wept for her family, and promised to never raise her eyes to the horizon again, and was put to work. Simplifying it to herself: in the first, she was happy; and in the second, she got what she deserved.

Fear of rebuke was the deciding factor in the end, and the following morning, she got in the harness with Trixie, and the two of them marched out of town without a word between them.

They followed the train tracks north to Canterlot and skirted the mountain, stopping in neighborhoods off the suburbs’ fringes or in tiny hamlets farther out. They performed for small crowds and made enough to get by, and it took them a month to traverse Canterlot’s outer ring. There, Marble tried different routines for Trixie’s performances, but showed no real promise in anything. She could not use her hooves well enough for practical illusionism, had no sense of humor, and her singing voice was unremarkable. She got by as an assistant, but could tell that Trixie was getting weary of the routine.

Toward the end of their suburban circuit, they ventured deeper into the city and came to a strip mall, where they were able to afford some new clothes, supplies to renovate the trailer, a new deck of cards, and lunch in a hectic food court, where Marble saw a unicorn playing an acoustic guitar. She remembered him with one foreleg on a pedestal with the guitar leaning into his wither, little plugs of magic moving on the strings. Noticing, Trixie remarked, “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

Marble thought she had meant for their next show, but Trixie got up then and walked over to the stallion, bold as anything, and asked to borrow his instrument. He turned out to be happy to let someone else take a turn, and cheerfully showed Marble how to play, fumbling some to describe it to an earth pony.

Octavia spared a thin smile. “So you see, I even had an audience for my very first performance.”

She wasn’t able to do much with her hooves, which felt like rubber on the guitar strings, so close together and so thin, but when she felt she had taken enough of the stallion’s time, she discovered that everyone around was much impressed. When she asked about it later, Trixie told her that as a beginner, and an earth pony, she had shown obvious aptitude. Marble didn’t see it, which seemed to bolster Trixie’s stance more.

They were on the road north of Canterlot for several days before the next village, a homey little nook of a town called The Bend, carved directly into a hillside. Trixie picked up a gift shop guitar and a pack of spare strings and gave them to Marble. They sat up and messed with it into the night, their only company a cheap radio in the corner, and before they had gone to bed, Marble had figured how to imitate the first twenty seconds of one of the pop songs that kept coming on. Trixie didn’t say much, and it didn’t occur to Marble that she had discovered something, not until much later.

By the time they were in sight of their next village, a smoky clump of buildings in the middle of a sagging, chilly forest, Marble could play with competency that belied her inexperience, and Trixie asked her if she was comfortable playing for a show. Marble said she didn’t know any songs, and Trixie told her to try to make one. That, too, had not occurred, but on the following day, Marble had done it. The song was short and precise, but full of feeling, and Trixie, moved, insisted that she perform.

So they got Marble an empty crate and plopped it down on the stage for her, and she played her music while Trixie changed costumes for the second half of her show. She did not see the audience, not from fear of looking at them, but from her focus on the music. In privacy, the guitar had come to feel like a plaything to her, absent the pressure to perform, but on that night, for her audience of thirty, she felt again the weight of life on her back. Their money, their livelihood, felt to rest solely on Marble’s ability to perform. When she ran out of prefabricated material, and Trixie had not yet come back, she stumbled and slowed, and time ran on ahead of her like a frozen river while one hoof strummed the same note over and over.

It was the look of eager expectation in one audience member’s face, she later decided, that moved her. She realized in an instant that they were waiting, not for her to fail or go away, but for her to do something amazing. So, taking that one note she monotonously strummed, Marble constructed a simple tune of variations and good-seeming ideas, and she lost herself in the music a second time. She could not think of home then, nor did she think of it for many days after.

That particular night, Octavia wished she could remember better, for it was the night she got her cutie mark. She remembered applause, and whistles, and Trixie patting her on the back and then stepping away for Marble to bow a second time, alone. Money showered the stage loudly, and the ponies all dispersed, talking amongst themselves, a cloud of noise breaking apart among the trees. She remembered Trixie jumping up and down and pointing at her flank, and she remembered being thunderstruck, and she remembered flinching at the sound of a cork exploding out of a bottle and the fleshy slap of foaming liquid on wooden floor.

And talking. She remembered talking, talking more than she ever had, about all sorts of things that seemed massive at the time but would not be remembered. Plans for the future, inspiration for songs, sentiment. This was all new to her, and as she took more sparkling wine, the sense of triumph seemed to lift her ever higher.

“Now that I think about it, it was quite similar to how I felt in Tartarus.” She looked at Colgate, who looked back with polite curiosity.

After that, life was easy for quite some time. They steadily moved north as winter gave way to spring, and by the time they reached the midpoint to the closest big city, the warmth had driven ponies out of their homes and into Trixie’s audience, and they found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with. Marble was pulling in viewers on her own, but still insisted that they perform together; she did not like the idea of a show all to herself, though she had enough music in her head to do it.

For about a week after her cutie mark, Marble did not think of home or family. She thought of where she had come from, which was south of where she was, but such thoughts only served to heighten her experience far away. She walked and performed, inexplicable friends with the wanderer from farther south than she, and lived from show to show. They had enough money to be comfortable, though she never was comfortable, for she was always on the move. Each village was only good for two or three shows before the ponies grew tired of them, and they had to move on, so she never set down roots. She did not ask Trixie about it because, as it seemed to her, Trixie had been traveling alone for so much longer, and she was fine. Marble frequently reminded herself that she was in no hurry, and that there was nothing wrong. She was alive and she was content, and no one relied upon her for anything.

Such thoughts did not last. As the novelty of her cutie mark wore off, and in its place developed a sense of obligation, she turned her thoughts back south. Her night walks resumed, and at those times, she let herself be horrified afresh by what she saw when she reflected. She had been blinded by success and had tricked herself into happiness she did not deserve. What use was a cutie mark for someone like her, she asked herself. Talent was all well and good, and it earned them money, but it did not erase the self-centered cowardice that stigmatized her heart, nor could it ever. She could not bear to think of her family without her, and her unconscious mind spun the three of them into miserable storylines that she would occasionally review to torture herself. Thinking them destitute, bankrupt, crouching in some filthy apartment or a debtor’s prison, or on some street corner somewhere, she invariably convinced herself that she was not worthy of her talents or of the livelihood they afforded.

Beside the family was Tumble Tower’s dead face and heavy body, the body she had let expire. In her more philosophical moods, she compared her family and Tumble Tower and found them quite similar as they related to her. The comparison brought her down on herself, and she wondered which was the greater crime, abandoning her family or letting her friend die. Yet, guilt for both was not enough, for all the contrition in the world would not undo what she had done, and, when she looked at it realistically, she knew that no action she could do would reverse her choices. She reasoned that the best she could do was wear her shame, learn from it, and show her sorrow to anyone who chose to look.

None of this did she share with Trixie, who was so used to her tacit nature that she did not ask when Marble was silent or moody. And why should she? She had never known Marble when she was young. She had no reason to expect anything different.

In September, they followed a sequence of small lakes between a maze of wooded valleys and scrubby peaks, and Trixie taught Marble how to forage for mushrooms. There was no one to perform for in the lake chain, and the two were alone but for each other for close to a week. On these nights, particularly painful, Marble took her guitar to the lakes’ edges and composed music. She had a talent for dirges and elegies, which were sometimes good for audiences, but Trixie kept urging her to learn some happier tunes as well, things that could be played to the rhythm of swinging flagons.

It was the beginning of autumn when they reached Hoofington, and Marble had turned into Octavia. Never exposed to musical notation, she had simply heard “octave” in an audience once, liked the sound of it, its roundness in her mouth, and changed it a little to suit as a name. She played as The Gorgeous and Magnificent Octavia, and she had her own hat and cape, much more subdued in color and pattern than Trixie’s. She let her mane grow out and Trixie helped her style it. Her stage persona was that of Trixie’s foil: a brooding, mature artist-type who used her music to touch the hidden wells of emotion that Trixie could not. She experimented with not speaking on stage, but it did not fit her personality.

Octavia hadn’t seen it, but Trixie had, and Octavia later decided she owed a deep debt of gratitude to the unicorn for pushing her. She was content to keep traveling and living show-to-show, but Trixie told her, flat out, that it was a bad idea. She said that Octavia had a lot more to offer than just cheap music for a traveling show. In their months together, she had grown into a proficient musician, the best Trixie had seen—not that she had encountered very many in her time, but still. She told Octavia that she should find something better, and, a few days later, walked her to the local college.

Grace Notes Artistic University was Hoofington’s premiere college for music and dance, with courses offered in other focuses as well. Its old-styled, pillared courtyard opened wide on a quad busy with young ponies, welcoming the eyes and drawing attention to the three buildings, arranged like prongs on a trident and connected with bulky, engraved bridges, which Octavia would learn on her orientation the students had decorated themselves. Chestnut and cedar trees grew off the buildings’ sides like billowing skirts, and on their tops too, Octavia could make out fuzzy tips of gardens. She was so amazed and intimidated, standing on the cobbled walk with her friend, that she refused Trixie’s suggestions for days afterwards.

But, in the end, Trixie implored and beseeched her enough, and Octavia crossed the sunny quad and knocked on the admission officer’s door. For her, admission was an awkward and overlong affair, for she had no formal education, no GED, and yet possessed a music cutie mark. Papers were signed, officials were consulted, demonstrations were made with her guitar and her singing voice, and in the end, she took a test just to make sure she had enough sense to fit in with a college environment. The test was a formality for cases like hers, her advisor assured; the school saw ponies with art cutie marks all the time, and if they were going to turn her away, they would have done so already.

Trixie stayed in town the whole time, and Octavia kept performing. For her final show, Trixie ceded the stage to her for longer than usual, and Octavia skipped the prepared songs and chose to improvise. It was a perfectly average show, not memorable except that it was her last, and Octavia and Trixie finished their night talking and reminiscing, dry-eyed both.

Bright and early the following day, Octavia took her textbooks and her guitar up to Grace Notes and disappeared from Trixie’s life. There, for six years and a semester, she learned, changed majors, and festered. Her creativity stagnated; what had seemed profound in Trixie’s shows turned out to be moderate skill in one particular style of songwriting. Her peers seemed to outshine her in all things, developing their music and making it their own, while she plodded forward, doing exactly what was asked of her and no more. With sheet music in front of her, she could play most anything, but without, she fell into the same sad pigeonhole.

Her friends were acquaintances, mostly other reserved ponies who enjoyed complaining of how they had been cheated in life, or how they looked around them and saw only pedestrian minds. It started as good-humored sarcasm in her first year, and by the third, those that remained had turned to bitter, morose artists who, like her, played in dingy nightclubs and constantly critiqued their own art. Not enough meaning, they would decry of themselves, or sophomoric, or lacking subtlety. Octavia did not particularly like these ponies, but she knew that she belonged with them. While they dwelt on their failings, so too did she, and she began to see Tumble Tower in crowds and in her dreams. In the latter, he joined her smiling family, standing on the doorstep or chatting in the fields, motionless as though posing for a portrait. The dreams gave her endless fear and loathing, and her music grew all the darker for it. Her professors were nonplussed while her peers used words like “genius” and “underappreciated.” She performed in smoke-filled dorms, and in those same dorms discovered her sexuality with an oboe player two years her junior, a dark little pegasus mare who came from a rich family.

She graduated with no honors and a presentable GPA, enough credentials and connections to get her a job in television or radio, and recorded a few jingles just out of college. She scored one of her friend’s film projects, which went nowhere. She kept her dark attitude and moody music, but cleaned up her appearance, and in two years’ time, rode a different friend’s coattails into the local orchestra, where she thrived.

Where she had felt crushed and stunted in college, she felt enlivened in the orchestra. Following the conductor and letting her music meld into a greater whole, the sense of teamwork gave her happiness and lightness of heart that she had not felt in a very long time. She excelled where others slowed down, happy to follow directions, her creative side long since beaten flat. Where many of her acquaintances were already jaded, or thought they had reached the peaks of their abilities, Octavia felt liberated. More skilled with the technical aspects of musicianship, she quickly became the mare to rely on in her orchestra, and her name grew. Hoofington contained her for a time, but when she received an offer to join the Manehattan Philharmonic, she realized that she had “made it.”

From there, the cycle repeated. She was blinded by her success, and thoughts of family and Tumble Tower quit her mind for a few happy and prosperous months when she became a sensation. Her severe aspect, her commanding presence on stage, her raw skill, and her mysterious origins made her into an almost mythic figure in the music world, an image she was savvy enough to encourage. Raven hair, black tuxedoes, a dour expression, and her unadorned cello made her an imposing figure for the magazine covers.

Crowds of hundreds became crowds of thousands, and her net worth skyrocketed while her self-esteem plummeted. She imagined that her family would recognize her—her face was everywhere, it seemed—and she thought of the seething and just anger they would feel. She imagined all the usual terrible things and made herself miserable even as her wealth grew.

“You know the rest,” Octavia said with a small shrug.

“Uhh,” Applejack said. “Pardon me, but Ah think you’d better finish the story, Octavia.”

“She’s right,” Fluttershy said. “You’ve come this far.”

She purchased a mansion in Hoofington and began a collection of musical instruments, and it was in that mansion that the most beloved classical musician of the time began the painful process of unraveling herself, bit by bit, dream by dream.

The problem, which she did not grasp then, was that she could come home. After months away on the biggest stages, in the most expensive company, supping on the most exquisite food and getting drunk on the most overpriced spirits, and then drying out over the most luxurious airship rides money could buy, Octavia could come back to her mansion, maintained by an army of servants, and collapse into her own bed, where her thoughts would rush back in on an exhausted, burned out heart. In the absence of work, she could only turn to herself, and the dreams that had germinated through college began to bear fruit.

Dark silhouettes sank to the ground and lay still, and disembodied voices questioned and berated her. Later, black faces would appear in cupboards and in the throats of brass instruments, or manifested and curled up on her pillows and bundled sheets. She would wake up drenched in sweat, then pace the mansion and its grounds at odd times of the night. Sometimes, she would practice her music with the stars.

Staying awake helped for a time, but as the dreams slowly folded outwards, Octavia could only look on herself with detached horror, seeing without understanding, feeling without thinking. She heard doors close through the walls, and heard shouts of alarm or sorrow in the dead of night. Sometimes, she would doze in her chair and come out shaking, not entirely certain whether the nightmare had been real or a fiction. Afterimages flashed at her from blank spaces on furniture, and servants’ voices took on mocking tones.

Octavia cleared her throat. “Obviously, a lot of this was due to the fact that there was a Tartarus gateway in my attic.”

“The pinhole,” Twilight said.

“Yes. I did not know that then. I simply thought that I was coming unhinged.” She sighed. “I know the servants thought the same. I wish I could apologize to them.”

“But if all these things were actually happening,” Rarity said, “wouldn’t a servant tell you she noticed it too? Wouldn’t that mean it wasn’t all in your head?”

“I do not really know, to be honest. I think many of them blamed me, as though I were at fault somehow. Like I was haunted, perhaps.”

“In a literal sense, you mean,” Twilight said.

“That is correct.”

The house groaned and soughed, and hoofsteps echoed in the drywall, and the dreams became heavier and longer, their memories sticking to her conscious mind like molasses. The blank figures she saw turned aggressive, pouncing on her in bed and screaming into her mouth, or locking her in shrinking rooms. She would flinch from shadows, and would not dine after the sun went down, though she stayed up with her instruments more and more, banging her piano and grinding out piece after piece on her viola. Plates and vases began to break, and she would only realize much later that she was the culprit, frenzied and sleepless, terrifying her servants and herself with lengthening fits of rage and panic.

Her career could not go on with her in such a state, and her stardom faltered with her performance. The torrent of money became a trickle, photo shoots became less frequent, and she eventually resigned from the Manehattan Philharmonic. Looking back, she thought it was a dumb thing to do, but it made sense at the time. It fit the tragic story she believed it was her fate to soon conclude.

Fame and fortune took on the ugly aspects anyone could have expected, but for which she was not prepared. A perfectionist amongst perfectionists, with a guilty conscious and a sense of self-worth warped by years of isolation followed by years of worship, she was incapable of approaching her problems except through her music, which grew darker and more experimental, and temporarily bolstered her income when she found a producer. She went to one therapy session before dismissing the practice, and buried herself in work and assiduous self-loathing. Sleep came less frequently, and the dreams got worse still, and while she knew she was slipping, she had no idea how to help herself. Meanwhile, she had begun to see her sister—at first she did not believe it—in the newspaper, the new Element of Laughter, right there for Princess Luna’s exorcism with a team of friends Octavia had never heard of. She vainly combed the papers for any mention of herself in her sister’s articles.

Her label dropped her some time after, her manager claiming as delicately as he could that she was too unreliable and too temperamental, and Octavia swallowed this without a word of objection. She slunk back to her mansion, where she remained for several more months, alternatively working quietly on one opus or another and restlessly pacing rooms or practicing her instruments.

The cycle would refresh from time to time if a project was finished or a new instrument was added to the collection, and she would take on a small job or two with each new renewal. As it always did, she circled back upwards in her time, and began to take temporary work when she found it. The money resumed its influx, but the servants started falling off, and Octavia searched for a new place to live; she was beginning to see the faces in more than just her house.

When she found a cheap apartment in Lower Canterlot, she packed two bags and her cello case and left, leaving the house key to the head servant. She took the train from Hoofington to Canterlot and stared glassily at the passing countryside the whole way down, uplifted but hardly realizing it. The mansion was behind her at last, the symbol of her stupidity, her years of excess and blind greed, left to rot with her accumulated but lessened wealth. Though she did not really think she could ever return to her family, and knew she could not bring Tumble Tower back to life, she could at least offer her sacrifice as a gesture of contrition. Somewhere, maybe her parents would find out what had happened to their daughter, and could be comforted by her acceptance of the life she deserved—or something a lot like it, anyway.

She had performed in the Canterlot suburbs hundreds of times, but never alone, and when she took the taxi from the train station to her new home, she cried without shame. It was strange homesickness that made the tacky faces of stores and cookie-cutter houses seem friendly: time-worn companions ready to accept and soothe, bland familiarity dressed up as old-world dignity or modern class; so much nondescript, domestic routine, straight from a time and a place where Everything Was Alright. Was this the life she had forsaken, or was it the life she had stumbled into at last? Was it a life she would simply view from behind burning, sleep-deprived eyes?

Musing on her new stage of life, she nonetheless felt better in the weeks after the move, her mind and life free of its former clutter. She kept to herself and did her work, took fewer jobs, watched dispassionately as money disappeared again. Rent, utilities, groceries, the occasional debauched night, and the occasional attempt to recapture some or another lost memory added up, and she hardly worked. By that time a year later, she was considering taking up a day job at a nearby gardening center.

The Grand Galloping Gala was coming up, and an old college associate apparently put in a good word for her, because Octavia received the gilt invitation in her mailbox without any advances on her part. She took the job and took the train up to Greater Canterlot, and rehearsed with three others for a plain performance in the royal hall, little more than background music for socialites and dignitaries as they mingled and fawned over the princesses. She thought nothing of it, and on the night of, awake for her thirty-ninth hour and head a stew of vague pain and fevered thoughts, she was sure she was hallucinating when she saw Pinkamena in the crowd.

“And now you truly do know the rest,” Octavia said.

“You can do it,” Vinyl said.

Glaring at her, Octavia continued.

Her sister rushed on stage, reeking of fruit punch and sweat, scraped out some tuneless jingle on her cello, and dove into what looked like, from the band’s point of view, a developing riot. If Pinkamena recognized her sister, she gave no indication, and Octavia was in no condition to chase her down.

So the night went to pieces, the band griped and got drunk at a classy bar that Octavia could neither afford nor turn down, and she went back to her apartment feeling curiously violated. So long had she envisioned the two circles of her life intersecting, and now that they had finally touched tangents, she had no idea what to do.

A few months later, she stood in the queue at the train station, seeing whether there was a way out of town so soon after the battle with Discord, and was there approached by the Element of Generosity, who had provided one of her outfits for a magazine shoot. She met the Elements of Harmony, and later her sister, and made the life-changing offer.