Derpy peered out the window at the clouds, low and heavy. Then she looked down at the ground. Though the only snow remaining was that which had been piled against the fences by the plows, the grass was still brown. Just by looking, she could see that, were she to step on it, it would be as hard as the asphalt walkway she had taken.

“I think you need to have another go at wrapping up winter. It didn’t take.”

“Natural seasons here, remember?” said Karyn. “Nothing we can do about it. Not that I’m disagreeing with you. The forecast is calling for more snow soon as well.”

“Why would they call for that? No one wants it.”

“No, it’s just how they mean that they’re predicting it.”

Karyn’s argument finally reached Derpy’s brain. “Oh, right. Don’t mind me. It’s early.”

“Well, let’s have coffee. That’ll solve both problems at once.”

She put on the pot while Derpy kept looking. “Actually, it’s cold in Equestria too. I was hoping that I’d get here and warm up.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“As the representative of this universe here, yeah, I do.”

They let the conversation lull until Karyn put Derpy’s mug in front of her. Then Derpy brought up a subject.

“So how’s school going?”

“Great. Really good. And not in the sense of ‘great, really good’ that I would tell my parents when I didn’t want to discuss details.” Karyn flashed a grin to let Derpy know that she was giving her inside information. “But no, I’m genuinely enjoying myself in all the classes. I’m studying on a schedule that works for me and leaves me plenty of time for myself, and I’m passing all the tests. Only took me eight semesters to figure out this whole college thing, and now I have to leave.”

“That’s probably how they set it up. They want you to learn those skills, and once you have, all the rest you can do on your own time.”

“I suppose I should resent that, but at least I stop accumulating student loan debt.”

What she left unsaid was that she would have to begin paying the debt she had. Derpy said, “Dinky’s back at school as well. I don’t know how long she’ll be there. It depends on when she’s ready to take the tests. But I can say that this time, when she left, it wasn’t as bad for me as the first time.”

Karyn suspected that Derpy wanted to talk about Dinky, and that asking about her own schooling was just an excuse. Well, she thought, that could be forgiven, since she asked questions for that reason sometimes. “I know she can pass the tests. Then she’ll probably come back to live with you again, at least for a little while.”

“Mmhm. Hopefully by the summer. Speaking of which, I wish it were summer now. Even on the coldest days of summer, it wouldn’t be this cold.”

“Definitely.” Karyn let her mind drift to thoughts of summer. Each prior year around this time, she would have been counting the days on the calendar. In grade school and high school, it was a countdown to two months of complete fun. In college, she knew that she would have to work part time, but it was still a relief of stress from her classes. But this year...whatever happened, she would still have the summer warmth, and she would make time to go to the beach, and have barbecues, and take Derpy to...

“Oh! I forgot!” What had been a leisurely breakfast now turned intense as Karyn gobbled the rest of her toast and downed another gulp of coffee before putting the mug in the sink. Derpy took the cue and finished her own meal in short order, but she had more time since she could leave without having to put on a coat.

Leaving was what Karyn clearly had in mind as she got ready quicker than Derpy had ever seen her do before. She understood that Karyn didn’t have time to explain whatever it was she needed to do, and that the best thing she could do to help was to be ready to go where Karyn told her.

That didn’t stop Karyn from saying it, though. “There’s no time to explain. Get in the car!”

Derpy had the invisibility spell ready and turned it on. Keeping pace with Karyn, she took her spot in the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt. Once they were on the road, she ventured to ask, “Can you tell me about it now?”

“Yes. Sorry. I was thinking about this off and on, but it didn’t hit me until just now. OK, you know how we go to the park every summer?”

“Right, our little tradition.”

“But we’re not going to be able to this summer,” Karyn said, speeding up.

“Hey, yeah? Why?”

“My mom texted me the other day and mentioned that they’re closing it down this year for renovations. And I looked up the details and they’re starting after this month. So if we want to go, it has to be sooner rather than later.”

At last Derpy understood. “But do we have to race there? If it’s going to be open all day, we’ll have time.”

“But what I’m figuring is that it’s going to be packed since so many other people are going to want to enjoy the park while they can.”

“All right, but we’re not going to have any fun if we stress ourselves out over getting there. If we just go to say we went, that’s a day wasted. We always would stop off for a picnic lunch and make a day of it. Even though it’s cold and we might not get to stay the whole day, we should at least do it right.”

Karyn saw the logic in this, and slowed the pace of her driving. When they got near the park, they stopped into the deli that they had been to before and got some potato and macaroni salad.

Back in the car, Karyn turned off the main road down to where the park was, but as she approached, her stomach knotted. They came upon the park from the far end and drove past the parking lot to the gate, and she only saw two cars in the lot.

“Oh, no! They’re closed already? They said not till next month!”

“Uh oh. Where are we going to eat the salads then?”

She crept the car forward toward the gate, looking for any sign that would give her the full info, but to her surprise the gate was open. “Is it all right?”

“Looks open.”

“Well, let’s park and see. The worst thing they can do is kick us out.”

Karyn was still convinced that the park had been closed, but Derpy reached a conclusion. “Maybe they’re not, and no one showed up today?”

“But if they know it’s going to close, why wouldn’t people come while they can?”

Derpy surveyed the lot and the lawn nearest the entrance. Early shoots of grass were trying to make their way up, but the ground was still brown, and the trees were bereft of leaves. “I guess not everyone likes it as much as we do.”

“Maybe. So much the better for us. If you’re right, that means that there won’t be any renovators here either and we should have the run of the park.”

They started around the lake, and they saw that some of the water was still frozen on the surface, thin white bands around tiny islands in the middle, like someone had slashed the islands with a frosting knife. But as they reached the playground, Karyn stopped.

“Something wrong?” asked Derpy.

“I’m going to go on the roll slide.”

“Yeah? I think it’s a lot of fun. Go for it.”

“But it’ll probably be the last time. I’m sure that that’s being pulled out of there.” She walked toward the ladder on the other side.

“How do you know? They might keep it. Or get a new one.”

“It’s unsafe. Kids can get their fingers caught between the rollers and smash them. I’ve done it a couple of times myself. Just hurt a little, but as soon as one with brittle bones uses it, forget it. They probably don’t even make them anymore. It’ll be the last time in my life.” Karyn reached the top and slid down, raising her arms over her head. Once at the bottom, she experimentally put her pinkie between two of the rollers. It was, of course, too big to get pinched.

“Do you want to go again?”

“Maybe on the way out.”

They walked around the lake, with Karyn keeping an eye out for anyone who might have come in the other two cars. She spotted one family in the barbecue area just sitting on benches chatting, but that was all. The other person was around somewhere, or maybe the family had taken two cars.

At least the meadow was unoccupied. This was the one place that Derpy felt free to be visible in the outdoors on Earth. Karyn sat on the ground. It was cold on her backside, but her sweatpants made it not too bad, and she rather enjoyed the hardness of the frozen earth. When she stretched out, it felt good on her back.

“So why do they do it?” Derpy stared back the way they came.

“Why do they do what?”

“Renovate the park? I mean, you like it just fine the way it is, and probably so do a lot of other people.”

Karyn flashed her a grin. “Maybe someone ran a charity event and they wanted to use the money to fix up the park.”

“You really think so? And you thought that was going to happen in Ponyville too. You don’t think that my flying is going to help destroy some poor foal’s memories of a park somewhere?”

“I was kidding. They pay for these through taxes, not donations.”

“Oh.” Derpy showed relief, even though she wasn’t that big a fan of Earth’s taxation system. “But that is what we’re talking about, right? You want the park to stay the same because it’s where you played as a young girl.”

“Well, yes. I suppose that’s selfish of me. But—no, it’s not selfish, it’s more like, I get upset when I can’t go and do something that I used to again. Like something’s been lost forever. It’s why, when I was young, I never wanted to throw out books or movies. If I did, I couldn’t get them back. I guess that’s one reason that I love the Internet.”

“But there are going to be kids who will love the new park just as much as you did the old one.”

“You’re saying it is selfish?”

Derpy was worried that she had insulted Karyn, but she smiled again and got the salads out of the bag.

“We should have gotten something hot,” she said.

“You’re right. We could have gotten eggplant parm sandwiches or something. That would have warmed us up nicely. Or I could have packed a thermos with hot chocolate. But this is what we have, so let’s picnic.”

Since the grass was tamped down, Derpy put the plastic tub on the ground and ate laying on her stomach. “We don’t have to worry about ants at least.”

“Good point. There probably are some, but it’s too cold for them to come out. Or only a few survive from season to season. I don’t know, I slept through entomology.”

“I thought that was about words.”

“That’s etymology. But don’t get upset. I confused those myself for a long time.”

They munched away for a while, and Derpy enjoyed seeing the trees that formed the privacy screen empty of their leaves, the stark brown of a completed winter with the anticipation of spring. But she could tell Karyn wasn’t enjoying it.

“Problem?”

“No. It’s just not the same, you know?”

“Probably because it’s so close to the last one. The thing about doing it every year is that it has time to get fun again. So look at it this way. The next time we come here, next summer, it’ll be over a year and even more fun!”

Karyn stopped eating and poked at her salad with the fork. She came to full alertness, though, when a fleck of white came before her eyes. She shook her head, hoping she was mistaken, but soon others were there. Still she wondered if it might not be some tissue paper that had gotten torn up and was blowing in the breeze, until she touched one with her hand and felt it. Cold.

“It can’t be snowing now!”

“You said it was going to.”

“But that was for tomorrow night. This is too soon!” She covered the open tub of salad with her hand, even though a few snowflakes wouldn’t have hurt it.

“Maybe it’s just a few flakes.”

“Even so, I don’t want to be out in the middle of it.”

The picnic was brought to a swift end, and Derpy went back invisible. That was another problem, as her distortions on the snowflakes could be seen, and she had to fly up out of where people would look. Fortunately they passed no one on the way back, and Karyn fairly jumped into her car, quickly brushing the snow out of her hair.

“Am I showing?” asked Derpy.

“A few flakes are there but don’t worry. They’ll melt quick once the car starts. It’s not even that cold out.”

“It must be higher up in the atmosphere that it’s cold.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t stand it in my hair. So I’m making it warm in here.” Karyn turned on the engine and ramped the heat up to three out of four. It didn’t warm up immediately, but the snow melted all the same.

She backed out of her parking space and pulled toward the gate, then stopped. No cars were coming on the cross-street.

“Forget something?”

“No,” said Karyn, “but this is the last time I’m going to see the park this way. I wonder I’ll ever come back.”

“Of course we will. Next year, remember?”

Karyn said nothing, but put the car in gear and pulled out into the street. Only when they reached the traffic light did she speak. “You mind if we take a different way back?”

“I’m here to spend time with you. If you want to take a drive, I’m down.”

Smiling at Derpy’s use of an Earthly expression, Karyn made a right instead of a left.

“I hope we don’t run into my parents. They’ll ask why I drove out all this way.”

“You can just tell them that we went to the park. That you wanted to go before it closed.”

“Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t say we, of course.” Karyn sighed. “This is my old neighborhood. My old stamping ground. Probably I won’t live here anymore. Not really. I might wind up moving back with my parents for a while, but I’ll try to get out soon. And houses here are expensive. But this is my home town.”

She drove back streets and odd turns, going nowhere that Derpy could predict, but with perfect assurance that she knew where she was. Then they passed a strip mall, much bigger than the small store where they had bought the salads. She pulled in.

“Another one?”

“What?”

“This stationery store.” Karyn pointed at a store that took up a good portion of the mall. The sign over the windows said “Lincoln Stationery” in an outdated font. A much newer typeface spelled out “Going Out of Business” on the window.

“You went here, huh?”

“It’s just a stupid store. There’s no reason for me to feel anything.” Karyn wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t smiling either.

“You want to tell me about it?”

“From here we could walk to my house. My folks’ house, I mean. It would take a while, but...I came here all the time. Every year in August my mom would take me to buy school supplies. New notebooks and pens and folders. One year she even bought me the plastic binder that holds the folders. I was so excited because all the cool kids had that. I think it even had a pony on it...

“One time, I had to do a report. Not like the ones I do now where it’s all words on paper, but I had to add art and paste things on it. It had to be on oak tag. I didn’t even know what that was. Of course I put it off until the night before it was due. My mom was so mad. But she drove me here and helped me finish the project. I think it was the first time I ever stayed up after midnight...

“Then there was the time when I was really young, maybe six or seven, when I stole a roll of candy from this store.”

Derpy interrupted with shock. “You stole?”

“Yeah. I found the rack at the end of an aisle and I really wanted the candy. The store guy walked away, and I just put it in my pocket. This was before there were cameras everywhere, or I probably would have gotten caught. I didn’t, but I felt so guilty that I couldn’t even finish the candy. To this day I don’t like that brand...”

“Maybe that’s why they’re going out of business.”

Karyn didn’t think Derpy was being sincere, but even if she was, it broke her out of her nostalgic funk with laughter. “I doubt that the twenty-five cents—or less, at their wholesale cost—broke them. Come on, let’s go.”

She pulled the car around to the other side of the lot, slowing up again in front of another store. “Did you go to this one too?” asked Derpy.

“Yeah. You can’t even see what it was. But it was a video store. Rented movies.”

“So not quite a store then.”

Karyn stopped in the fire lane by the boarded store. No one would come by. “No, more like a club they would have you join to rent. I remember feeling so grown up when I got my card that let me take movies. In summer I would walk down here and you could get two or three movies for five dollars. And they’d let you have them two days, so I would come back then and rent more. It’s where I got most of the movies that people expect you to know.” She saw Derpy about to ask a question, and anticipated it. “This was before the internet, or at least before it was robust enough to stream movies reliably.”

“Oh. So the internet was what put them out of business.”

“Ultimately, but before that it was the big chain video stores. They could afford to buy up dozens of copies of movies when they came out and advertise that they would guarantee availability. So people went there. Then they jacked up prices so that five dollars only got you one movie. I didn’t like it.”

For a long while they just sat and looked at the shell of the store. Then Derpy had had enough. “Come on, let’s go back home. I mean, to your apartment now. Looking back too much isn’t good for you.”

“I’m really not upset about it, just melancholy. All these things have gone away, and I thought they were going to be my world forever. You’ll probably tell me that it’s just because I was a child.”

“There’s that, but it happens more than once. The stores and places you go to now, some of them are going to change in the future. You’ve got a lot of time left, and you can see it change more than once.”

Increasing her speed as they got back on the highway, Karyn said, “I hope I get more used to it in the future.” She let her voice trail off and wondered how Derpy knew this, and thought that there must have been places in Equestria that Derpy remembered as a filly, that now were gone. And she, Karyn, would never know them at all.

“Next year,” Derpy said, “when we come to the park, you can look at these places again. But not until then, OK?”

“Are we?”

“Are we what?”

Karyn took a deep breath. “You know, I’m going to graduate real soon. I’m going to have to figure out what to do with myself afterwards. Next year...I could be somewhere else entirely. Might have to move away to go to another school or a different job.”

“It’s OK. I can re-adjust the location of the spell so that I can go wherever you do on Sundays.”

“I appreciate that, but even if I have time, what that means is that we wouldn’t have the park, or eating at the school cafeteria ever again, or anything like that. My most familiar locations will be in Equestria.”

Derpy missed the significance of Karyn switching from the plural to the singular. “Don’t you worry. Whatever happens, we’ll make new traditions. It’s just like these stores. Something new always grows over something old. No matter what, we’ll always be together.”

Karyn looked over at the empty seat, turning back every few seconds to keep an eye on the road. Not sure if she was doing it to give comfort or to get it, she reached over and held Derpy’s hoof in her hand.

Author's Notes:

Chapter 140 means a climax, but since it's the penultimate 0-chapter, not too much of one.

“Do you just want to hang out here?”

Karyn didn’t answer for a long time. Placidly, Derpy finished eating. Normally, she would wonder if she did anything wrong, but she knew she hadn’t, and just needed to wait for Karyn to be ready.

“Derpy, can we sit down and talk about some serious stuff?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The point is that you’re doing the right thing now. And I think we need to talk about this deeper.”

“That’s what I want to do. Let’s sit down again.”

“No.”

Karyn had one hand on the chair, but raised her eyebrows. “No?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What would you do, if it were your decision?”

“I can’t answer that.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Come on. I know that it’s my decision and I’ll ultimately make it myself. I’m not going to automatically go with what you say. Or against it. I just want to know what you would do, and then we’ll talk about how you came up with that.”

Come back to see what Karyn's big decision is.