Pony after pony trotted past Twilight Sparkle, and so far, roughly a third had taken a flyer. That met expectations, of course. Whenever she’d stood out here promoting any sort of cultural get-together, she’d kept careful statistics on how many ponies grabbed one, and at the current rate, she’d only have four extras. Outstanding! Better to have a few too many than to leave somepony wanting.

She even had one set aside especially for Mayor Mare, who’d usually volunteer right away to give an introductory talk or, more often, go off on a tangent about whatever else was happening around town. No problem with that—as long as everypony had congregated, she might as well take advantage of it, and she never ran on too long, anyway.

In fact, it was rather nice to live in a place where public business didn’t need some grand presentation with gavels and parliamentary procedure to happen. Just an informal gathering, a friendly chat, then dissolving back into the crowd as nopony so different from the rest of them.

And there she went, with one of the town council members by her side. “Mayor Mare!” Twilight called, flagging her down with one of the sheets. But the mayor bent her ear toward the stallion with her and didn’t look over.

“Mayor!” she called louder as she sent a pulse of light from her horn. That did the trick! Mayor Mare looked over, and her eyes lit up at the sight of the stack of pages in Twilight’s hooves. Already deciding on an opening speech for whatever event it turned out to be, no doubt.

So the mayor strolled over to retrieve her earmarked sheet with a big grin on her face. “Care to attend a poetry reading in the library tonight?” Twilight asked.

The mayor’s outstretched hoof froze, and for the briefest instant, her eyes sparkled and she wore the biggest smile Twilight had ever seen on her. And just as quickly, the smile fled, leaving Mayor Mare staring at the ground as if her mother’s prized heirloom necklace had just slipped out of her grasp and washed down a storm drain. Twilight could only stand there and wait, her mouth hanging open. She hadn’t meant to—

“No,” Mayor Mare said. “No, I—”

“But you always attend community events!” Twilight said, wresting the words from her throat. She’d never needed encouragement before, but from the way the mayor shook her head and silently mouthed something, Twilight had made the wrong choice. “Of course, you don’t have to,” Twilight started, but had to say it to the back of the mayor’s head—she’d already trotted away. And by the time Twilight managed to tear her gaze from the retreating form, she’d fallen well behind pace. She was looking at an excess of twelve flyers now!

She barely registered Pinkie bouncing along, but did summon enough concentration to hold the stack of papers out in Pinkie’s path. “Here, Pinkie,” she said, already leaning after the mayor. “Could you give these out?” She let go of the flyers—maybe they fell to the ground and maybe not—and cantered toward Town Hall. Though Pinkie’s shouting did get through her focus…

“Who needs paper?” Pinkie cried. “C’mon, everypony, who needs paper!? Get your paper here! Ooh, it even has something about poetry on it!”

Twilight crept down the hallway and peered around the corner. The mayor’s office door stood ajar, and the occasional scratch of pencil against paper sounded, but otherwise, the only noise came from behind Twilight. Still lunch hour—most of the staff hadn’t returned yet.

So Twilight edged closer and peeked inside. Mayor Mare sat at her desk with some paperwork propped up in front of her, but her gaze rested below it as she slumped in her seat.

A good five minutes must have passed while Twilight alternately flinched toward the door and nearly turned to leave. The mayor had closed her eyes, and she took a long, slow breath. So Twilight bit her lip and knocked, softly at first. But the mayor never budged, so she knocked a bit louder.

The mayor’s body jerked, and her eyes shot open again as she sat up straight. “Oh, Twilight! I didn’t notice you there.”

Pushing the door open, Twilight flashed an apologetic smile and took what felt like a good hundred paces to traverse the few feet to the empty chair across from her. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, no, you caught me daydreaming. My own fault. What can I do for you?” Mayor Mare steepled her hooves and leaned forward over the desk.

Twilight opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak. There seemed to be a lot of that going around today.

Soon enough, the mayor’s posture faded. All businesslike at first, but as before, in the street, she looked down for something precious, lost far beneath the floorboards. She pursed her lips.

“I shouldn’t have brushed you off,” the mayor said. “I’m sorry. I just…”

The word hung in silence. “It…” Twilight finally said, and Mayor Mare jumped again. “It seemed like something was bothering you.”

“Oh… Yes, I figured you might notice.”

Back to silence, and Twilight had gotten within a few seconds of muttering an apology for the interruption and excusing herself.

“I thought you might come by, but not so soon,” the mayor said. At least now she didn’t stare off as if the room were empty.

“You had me a little worried,” Twilight replied. She let her weight settle back into her chair. The mayor seemed to have returned from wherever her mind had taken her, so Twilight could wait a bit longer. She could go ahead and ask her question—an obvious one, probably to both of them—but pushing might make her clam up entirely.

The mayor glanced down and, from the sound of it, slid one of her desk drawers shut. “Twilight,” she said, “how much do you know about Ponyville’s history?” She flinched from the answer before Twilight even gave it.

The mayor should have known better! Of course Twilight knew her history. In fact, she’d just finished a book on that very subject. If something having to do with that had upset Mayor Mare, then problem solved. “Well, decades ago, when the Apple Family—”

“More recent.” The mayor sighed and took off her glasses, then tapped them against the desktop. “Probably not the kind of thing anypony would bother writing down, even if they knew.”

Now, that got Twilight’s attention. “What happened?” she said quietly before she could reconsider. So much for letting the mayor volunteer her story at her own pace.

“Have you ever noticed that most mayors are unicorns?” The mayor took another long breath and fiddled idly with a paperweight. “Even in towns where not many of them live, it still happens. There are exceptions, of course, but…”

Twilight had never thought about it before, but yes, a lot of mayors were unicorns. All with some kind of scroll cutie mark. Cloudsdale had a pegasus, of course, and an earth pony had recently taken over administration of Whinnyappleis after the previous mayor retired.

In Ponyville, though… it hadn’t really registered with her, until she’d moved here, and Mayor Mare had held office that entire time. Still, it wasn’t unheard of.

The mayor swallowed and swiveled in her chair to face the window. “Have you ever had to choose the best of a bunch of bad options?”

After choking back her first thought of a reply, Twilight raised an eyebrow. “I know it’s not the most glamorous place around, but Ponyville’s not that—”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Mayor Mare replied. She shook her head, tossed her glasses in their case, and leaned forward as if to get up.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight quickly said. “I shouldn’t have interrupted.” She motioned for the mayor to stay in her seat.

The desk chair’s springs protested loudly as Mayor Mare leaned back and ran a hoof across her mouth. “Have you ever had to do something because nopony else wanted to, and you’d rather have a known quantity than roll the dice?”

“I… I guess?” All the time, actually. That just came with being in a position of authority. The mayor must deal with that every day.

“We didn’t have any administrators here,” Mayor Mare said with a shrug. “We needed a new mayor, but nopony was available. So we had a choice: ask somepony to step up and try to manage, or allow Canterlot to appoint a new mayor, one from somewhere else. The leading candidate was on the city council in San Franciscolt. He knew nothing about the area, nothing about our uniquely blended population, nothing about the needs of a rural town…” She gritted her teeth. “I had a small interest in politics, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Turns out I was pretty good at it.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes. Unless they let children serve as officials, she would have already had—“But… your cutie mark. You must have already had the scroll. You didn’t know what it meant until then?”

The mayor cracked a small smile, but she sank further into her chair. “You’d think so, right? Maybe it meant for me to do this all along. Like I said, I’m pretty good at it, and I do enjoy it. And we need a mayor, of course. If I stepped down, then… who else would serve?”

Twilight folded her ears down. Something about that left a sour taste in her mouth—that somepony would feel trapped within her talents like that. “We’re all here to help, of course. Maybe nopony else can do the whole job like you, but bits and pieces—Applejack’s a whiz with finances, Carrot Top does a great job with landscaping, Roseluck for sprucing up public buildings… Any number of ponies here would pitch in. Just ask!” She cocked her head and reached for the mayor’s hoof.

“I know,” Mayor Mare replied. “I do appreciate it, but that’s never been a problem. I’m good at my job.”

“Then… what did you think the scroll meant before? How did you even get your cutie mark if you hadn’t managed anything until you became mayor?” Odd. Twilight had never heard of somepony getting a cutie mark by accident, then still having to figure out what had caused it. Maybe she’d just taken a leadership role in her Filly Scouts troop or something and misinterpreted it.

The mayor opened her mouth, snapped it shut again, and stared at the bookcase behind Twilight for a minute. But her eyes had focused on something much more distant. “There used to be more to it. The scroll unfurled a little, some words visible…” A soft smile traipsed over her face, like a cloud’s shadow drifting across a field. She closed her eyes and spoke softly.

“Once, when in these woods, the stream threw her voice and led me down paths rocky with promise, overgrown with heart—I sat in her embrace, and I lived. I lived with all that lived around me, and I danced with the spots of sun that the trees invited in. They welcomed me as an old friend, and though I could not say how far back I’d made their acquaintance, if at all, I greeted them with the same warmth. Wispy lights led me deeper, where the day never dwelt, where time meant nothing, and venerable pines crowded around me, communing, sharing their wisdom season by season. I know not when I woke, or even if, only that the stream called to me again, and I answered. I answered as a child, long ago, when I still understood the question. And for her, that—”

Mayor Mare nearly coughed. She tucked her chin to her chest and held a hoof to her lips.

Twilight’s head swam, her skin buzzed. If not for her grip on the chair’s armrest, she might have floated away. She… she’d heard that. She knew it well. The mayor still couldn’t speak, so Twilight finished it in her place. “For her, that has always been good enough,” she said in a whisper, but it easily carried throughout the silent room. It may as well have been one of those great clock towers in Canterlot, tolling the hour, and rattling her bones along with it.

The mayor hadn’t fumbled with any of those words. She hadn’t struggled to recall any of them, hadn’t pushed them out in a monotone like a forced recitation. They’d flowed, like the stream itself, from her heart, and etched indelibly in her memory. That poem had either struck a deep chord with her, or—

“Y-you’re…” Twilight started. Mayor Mare remained slumped over, already nodding. “You were a poet? You’re Will o’ Wisp?” Twilight gaped.

“A pen name I used when I was younger.”

Her head shaking back and forth, Twilight balanced on the edge of her chair. How… how could she…? “You won the Summer Sun Poetry Award twenty-three years ago, received the Princess Celestia Arts Prize the next year, and then… nothing.” The mayor could easily have turned to stone, sitting there staring at her hooves. “I adore that poem! I memorized it for a language project in first grade and fell in love with it right away. In Canterlot, there wasn’t much to inspire me to think of it, but here, whenever I look at the White Tail woods, or even the Everfree…”

A smile curled Twilight’s lips. If only the mayor would smile, too. What a wonderful thing to share with her!

But the mayor had her jaw set. She’d… she’d opened that drawer again, the one Twilight had heard her shut earlier, and now her hoof seemed poised to slam it closed. “I can’t, Twilight. I just can’t.”

“Why not?” The deeper meanings of poems did go over Twilight’s head sometimes, but she couldn’t find a way to read anything painful into this one. But how could one poem turn her off to all poetry? Twilight hadn’t even planned on reading that one anyway.

The mayor sat up straight, put her glasses back on, and certainly looked every bit the government official. “Because that was when I agreed to serve as mayor. It just wouldn’t do to go back now. As I said, I ended up being quite good at this.”

Squinting at her, Twilight waved a hoof toward the window. “But why would that mean you have to give up poetry?”

“The scroll wound up over time. It means something different now. I tried once, years ago, and it unrolled a little, but just enough. Enough to warn me.” That rigid posture—all but her ears, which hung about as low as they could go. “I can’t risk it. Not for the town I love and the trust they’ve put in me.”

Twilight frowned. “I don’t think it works that way—”

“It’s my cutie mark.”

History didn’t record the beginnings of cutie marks. Maybe they’d been around as long as ponies, maybe not. But the fact that she could still learn something about them never ceased to surprise Twilight. Cutie marks changing, fading away, returning… rare and not well understood, but it did happen, once in a great while.

Twilight covered the mayor’s hoof with her own. “I assure you, it’s worth a try. Even if your worst fears come true, you could back off. And I don’t mean the appearance of your cutie mark changing. I mean actually seeing an effect on your ability to serve as mayor. If you don’t lose anything there, then who’s to say what it means? Point is, there’s no reason to deprive yourself of something you love.”

As if rebutting an argument she’d already voiced in her own head countless times, Mayor Mare shook her head quickly. “Or like I said,” Twilight continued, “there are other ponies around who could fill in the gaps. You’ve lived here long enough to know them all—they’d gladly do that for you.”

“What kind of talent requires you to get help to do your job?” The mayor practically spat the words out.

So Twilight took a slow breath. She had the perfect example. “Take Rarity. She got her cutie mark from her gem-finding spell, but she also has an extraordinary talent for designing and making fashions. Does her cutie mark represent both?” She shrugged and wrinkled her brow. “I really don’t know. Maybe. But I do know that using one won’t diminish the other for her. She doesn’t come back from a gem hunt suddenly unable to sew a dress. They just don’t work like that.”

“No,” the mayor answered, tapping her hooves together. “I-I don’t think I could take the risk.”

“Please.” Twilight walked around the desk and put a hoof on the mayor’s shoulder. “Will you try? I think it’s just what you need—I’ve only seen one case like this before. A stallion’s cutie mark had faded when he wouldn’t use his talent, but when he did again, it was like he’d never stopped. Nothing else had changed about him, only his heart. And nothing changed after he figured that out. He was the same pony all along, no matter what his cutie mark said.”

“I don’t know…”

Twilight glanced down at the drawer, slightly ajar now. And just visible, a book cover she knew very well, ever since first grade. “You read that beautifully. Even while you’re a good mayor, you still read that beautifully.” Mayor Mare looked up, her eyes dancing. A starving wild animal, transfixed by the food held out to her, but unable to make herself sate her hunger or run away to safety.

Smiling warmly, Twilight squeezed the mayor’s shoulder. “Cutie marks aren’t about sacrificing your passion. They’re about finding it. All of it.”

With a gulp, Mayor Mare reached a shaking hoof toward the open drawer.

Twilight flopped into her chair as she marked the last item off her checklist. Room set up, refreshments laid out, guest speakers seated, microphone connected, lights dimmed. And Mayor Mare reading through her community announcements after thanking everypony for attending. She didn’t have her usual full tone of voice, but Twilight smiled anyway. It had taken no small amount of courage for her to show up at all—Twilight would make sure to give her a hug afterward.

“...And beginning swim classes for three- and four-year-olds will start next Monday. There are still spots open—please sign up with Jumping Jack at the recreation office if you’re interested.”

Good for her! She did cast a little surreptitious glance over the crowd, but she held her ground and didn’t head for the exit, as Twilight had feared she might. So Twilight patted the empty seat next to her that she’d saved for the mayor. She’d even put Mayor Mare’s attache case in it, so now she slid it off to stash it underneath—

Tucked in the side pocket, that book. And with a couple of sheets of paper sticking out. Fresh, not yellowed with age, and pencil scratches covering both sides. Had she…?

Twilight pricked her ears and gazed up at the stage, where the mayor still hadn’t yielded the microphone. She took a step away, then pursed her lips and swallowed.

Mayor Mare drew a deep breath and smiled, looking right at Twilight. Not at all stiff, like at a council meeting, but at ease, maybe as if relaxing in a forest. And did that scroll appear a bit longer than earlier today, with the merest hint of flowing script exposed?

For just an instant, Twilight felt like she might float up out of her seat. But instead, she closed her gaping mouth, returned the grin, shut her eyes, and listened. She just listened.

“Once, when in these woods…”

Author's Notes:

A stallion’s cutie mark had faded when he wouldn’t use his talent, but when he did again, it was like he’d never stopped. Nothing else had changed about him, only his heart. And nothing changed after he figured that out. He was the same pony all along, no matter what his cutie mark said.

This is a reference to another of my stories, "Until Forever." Check it out if this concept interests you!