Time Stops for No Mare (Minuette + time control)

[silvernis]

Mornings at Sugarcube Corner are always chaotic, but it’s organized chaos. Everypony who stops there has his or her own routine, and all these routines mesh together in a complicated but fairly coherent whole, just like all the cogs and springs in a clock. Macintosh Apple, for instance: he normally eats breakfast at home with his family, but on market days, he comes into town early with his cart and stops at Sugarcube Corner just as it opens to buy a half-dozen apple turnovers to-go. The mayor shows up between seven and seven-thirty, depending on whether or not she has to re-dye her mane before leaving her house. She always buys the latest Ponyville Express and a cup of coffee (milk, just a little sugar) and takes a seat by the front window so the citizenry can see her supporting a local business. Roseluck, Daisy, and Lilly always come in as a group and take turns buying two big loaves of bread that they’ll share, holding onto the leftovers for lunch. Rose prefers rye; Daisy and Lilly don’t care either way. Derpy, of course, loves muffins: one big banana-nut that she eats on the spot, and a blueberry that she stows under her mail carrier’s cap for later. If she has extra money, she’ll buy a third—usually chocolate-walnut—that she saves for little Dinky.

And me? I usually get a poppy seed bagel smeared with cream cheese, and a cup of tea (black, and steeped over-long for extra bite). Mrs. Cake makes the bagels fresh every morning, and they’re perfect. I’ve tried bagels from literally all over Equestria, and nopony makes them like Mrs. Cake does. They never have, and they never will.

Today is just another day, which means another bagel and another cup of tea before I head to my clock shop. It’s my own little routine, my own little cog in the clockwork, and I enjoy it. Some ponies rail against routine, but sometimes it can be comforting.

To nopony’s great surprise, Derpy trips over her own hooves again and sends one of her muffins flying. Without thinking, I stop time, take the muffin with my magic—my normal, run-of-the-mill unicorn magic—and adjust its trajectory just a little. Then I unstop time and watch as the airborne muffin lands right side up on the counter instead of splatting into Mrs. Cake. I smile as relief washes across her face. Derpy apologizes profusely, but Mrs. Cake just smiles and waves her along.

“You know you’re not supposed to do that,” says Time Turner from across the table. That’s where he always sits, and that’s what he always says. He sounds tired, like he always does.

My smile fades. “Why not?” I ask, nudging my bagel around on my plate so I don’t have to meet his old blue eyes. That’s what I always say. It’s our own little morning routine. Technically, he’s right—I’m not supposed to do it, and I know it. Technically, I’m supposed to do what he tells me to do, because technically, he is my probation officer and he could haul me back before the council if I misbehave.

And technically . . . neither of us care anymore. He’s learned that he needs to pick his battles; I’ve learned that he’s willing to let the little things slide provided I follow the rules with the big things.

[Scribbler]

“So,” I say, feigning nonchalance. “What’s your plan for today?”

Time Turner just looks at me.

“What?” I ask defensively. “What?”

He shakes his head, sighs and goes back to his newspaper. I am left to appraise the morning chorus of a town waking up, stretching and getting ready for the day.

I sip my tea. I scratch behind my ear. I roll my shoulders and crick my neck. I flip a bit of mane from my face. I realise something is knocking my cog off its groove when I find myself shutting one eye and then the other, making Time Turner disappear and reappear behind the fuzzy blue bulk of my own nose.

I look around, wondering what could be out of place as I mentally list off all the ponies for a second time: Mr and Mrs. Cake, Mayor Mare, Roseluck, Daisy, Lily, Derpy. Is it because Pinkie Pie isn’t here? No, she never comes in until right before the lunchtime rush. She’ll be upstairs babysitting the Cakes’ twins until then. Around midday she and Mrs. Cake will swap, and then two hours before closing Mr. Cake will take his turn while the two mares clean up. Regular as … well, as clockwork. Trust me, I know these things.

It’s as my eyes slide irresistibly from the counter back to the top of Time Turner’s head that I see her. Suddenly the reason for my restlessness becomes clear as polished glass. She walks in, laughing with the mare beside her. They cross the floor and greet Mr. Cake like they do this every day.

Except that they don’t. She doesn’t. She never comes in here. She’s always late for everything. It’s an iron-clad character trait. I watched her for long enough to know exactly how she operates, how she does things, how she reacts to every situation –

Well, every situation but one. I got that one badly wrong.

“Minuette.”

The sound of Time Turner’s voice drags my attention to him. His head is still lowered but he has raised his eyes to look at me. He almost looks malevolent that way, except for the look in his eyes: reluctantly sympathetic.

He didn’t even turn around. How could he even know? There’s so much about him I still don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I’d ever want to, actually. He’s the kind of pony that, once you know the answer to one question, you find yourself with buckets of others.

“Don’t,” he says simply.

Despite myself, my hackles rise. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”

He gives me another thousand-yard stare.

“What? That’s really freaking annoying, you know.” And intimidating, but no way I’d ever tell him that. Who am I kidding, he probably knows already.

“Don’t,” he repeats, softer this time.

I drop my head, staring into my teacup. Dejectedly I pick up a spoon with telekinesis and stir, even though it doesn’t need it. It’s just something to do; something to keep me occupied while she –

“Morning, Minuette!”

My blood freezes. I notice Time Turner stiffen ever so slightly. Tamping down the urge to bolt and run, I paste on a bright smile and turn around.

“Hi Lyra.”

She beams like I’ve just told her she has won the lottery. Sweet Celestia, I used to love that smile. I used to stop time while she was walking down the street and drop little gifts in her path because I was too nervous to actually approach her with them. I look at her now, but I’m seeing a thousand other versions of her: at her kitchen table, scribbling furiously at a new composition; lounging across the counter of Music Makers, the store where she works; sharing lunch with Noteworthy, her boss; in the middle of a crowd watching Twilight Sparkle show off her new crown in a parade down Main Street; asleep in her bed, as peaceful as a new-born foal –

Pinned to that same bed, thrashing and screaming, eyes wide and frightened as understanding dawns.

I blink for slightly too long. My smile quivers. I need to get out of here. I haven’t spoken to her since … since I fixed things. Or tried to. No, I did fix them, Time Turner just … unfixed them again. Or something. I’m not even sure what he did. Yet more questions to go in my bucket. Not that I spoke to her much before that. Most ponies would have called us only acquaintances, but Lyra thinks everypony is her friend. Even someone she only knows as the mare in the clock shop next to her workplace.

“Hi, Time Turner. I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Lyra says conversationally.

“Hmm,” Time Turner replies, noncommittal.

“Are you two related?” She gestures vaguely towards the underside of our booth. “You have the same cutie mark.”

“Actually, that is mere happenstance,” Time Turner says with a more convincing smile than mine. The weirdo way he talks just adds another hoof-ful of questions to my overflowing bucket. “A quirk of coincidence and concurrence.”

“Uh … right.” Lyra looks over her shoulder and gestures.

The mare she came in with trots over, carrying a tray with two plates on it. Both have identical piles of pancakes slathered in syrup and a fork jabbed into the top to stop them sliding around as she carries them. She’s an earth pony, after all, and wouldn’t be able to catch anything if it fell off.

“Hi there,” she says in a voice with a definite Manehattan twang to it. I recognise her instantly, of course. How could I not after all that … I don’t want to call it stalking, but I guess if the shoe fits …

“Bon-Bon, we should totally share breakfast with these guys,” Lyra enthuses.

Without further ado, she plops down on the seat next to me, shoving me over with a firm push of her rump. I almost gag but hold back the reflex as Time Turner folds his newspaper and slides over to allow Bon-Bon to sit beside him too.

Lyra’s proximity does things to my stomach that warn pretty clearly I might hurl soon. Suddenly my tea smells bad and I’m itching to just stop time, clamber over the table and make a break for it. Once upon a time, I probably would have; or I would have gone back to the point before I came in here and gone somewhere else for breakfast.

Time Turner glances at me once. It’s all he needs to.

I sigh and settle in to probably the worst start to a morning of my life.

[silvernis]

If only she would stop touching me, I’d probably be okay. Probably. Lyra’s always been a happy, cheerful pony—well, almost always—and she constantly bobs in her seat and gestures with her forehooves as she chatters on. Her soft, minty flank keeps brushing against mine, lyre against hourglass, like ice-cold razors raking over my coat, and it’s all I can do to not whimper and cringe away from her.

She’s saying something to me, I realize.

“P-pardon?” I say.

“I said, how’s business? Y’know, your clocks.”

Clocks? Right, clocks. Clocks are good. Safe. “Fine,” I say, hitching my mouth into a smile. “I, uh, I keep busy.” That’s mostly true.

“Really?” says Bon-Bon—not quite unfriendly, but blunt as ever. “I wouldn’t think many ponies need to have clocks fixed.”

I feel ugly old anger stir in my gut, but Time Turner doesn’t even have to look at me: I ignore it and force out a chuckle. “You’d be surprised,” I say before taking a big bite of bagel and cream cheese. It doesn’t taste as good as it did five minutes ago, but I chew slowly all the same: I don’t have to talk if I’m stuffing myself with bagel.

Lyra taps her chin thoughtfully with a hoof. “Weren’t you . . . oh!” Her pretty face lights up, and my stomach churns as she leans towards me. “Weren’t you working on the clock tower?”

She knew that? Suddenly I don’t mind how close she is. I force down the bagel and smile, for real this time. “Yeah, I was. Actually, I just finished it up yesterday.” Without even realizing it, I’m explaining how the old flywheel had to be replaced, how I cleaned the gears and rebalanced the hands, and a dozen other clock-y things. Bon-Bon soon stops paying attention and turns back to her pancakes, but Lyra watches me the whole time, listening closely.

“Wow,” says Lyra when I finally shut up. “That’s so cool! I never knew how much goes on in there. It looks so simple from the outside.” She looks . . . impressed. By me. Me.

I can’t believe it, but I can’t help grinning. “You’d be surprised at how complicated some things are on the inside.”

“How very profound, Minuette,” says Time Turner, half-smiling in that uncomfortable way of his. I flinch, but Lyra’s too busy giggling to notice. She has a nice laugh. Bright and bubbly, but not ditzy. This is the Lyra I so desperately want to remember.

Bon-Bon notices the flinch. She doesn’t say anything, but she looks curiously at me. Panicking, I take another hasty bite out of my bagel, getting cream cheese on my nose.

Lyra giggles again. “Careful, Minnie,” she says, “you’re making a mess. Here.” She grabs a napkin in the golden glow of her telekinesis and lifts it to my muzzle, and before I can protest, she’s wiping away the errant cheese.

I go completely rigid. My heart pounds, my breath goes fast and shallow, and my eyes stretch so wide they hurt. I want to scream and push her away and yell at her for being so nice to me. My cutie mark tingles, and I hear the familiar whispering of vast, distant clockwork. It would be so easy to escape, to just go back and start this breakfast over again, to start this whole freaking day over again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bon-Bon’s frown deepening, but as she opens her mouth to ask what’s wrong with me, Time Turner suddenly pushes his newspaper towards her and asks if the new tariffs on zebra sugar are affecting her business.

[Scribbler]

“Huh?” She blinks at him.

I wonder whether Time Turner is actually doing me a favour. The concept is too ridiculous to even contemplate. No, he’s just maintaining the status quo. He must be. That’s his job, after all. Well, part of it. Part of it is keeping me rooted in the here and now and keeping me in line so I don’t screw up the Space Time Continuum. Or something.

Since I learned about what I can do, I’ve learned a lot about time travel and the effect ponies like me can have. The more time I spend with him, however, the more I realise that actually? I don’t know squat.

“So, um, how come you’re in here this morning?” I ask, changing the subject with all the finesse of somepony holding up a train by telekinetically bending the tracks. “You don’t usually have breakfast in Sugarcube Corner.”

“Ah,” Lyra says with every indication she is about to say something momentous. “It’s a special day, so we thought we’d treat ourselves.”

“You thought I’d treat us,” Bon-Bon interjects. "Because somepony spent all her bits on My Pretty Person figurines."

Lyra waves a hoof. “Details, details. The point is, we’re starting the day with a treat because –” She mimics a drumroll with her hooves on the tabletop. “It’s our anniversary!”

If I thought my blood went cold before, now it turns to ice water in my veins. Seriously? I seriously missed that? Or did I just forget? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“Uh-huh,” Bon-Bon says with a smile. She points a forkful of pancake at Lyra. “I’ve been putting up with this bubblehead for a whole year now.”

“Bubblehead?” Lyra says indignantly. “You say you wouldn’t call me that anymore!”

Bon-Bon just smiles wider. This is clearly some private joke between the two of them. Irrationally, I have another urge to stop time and clamber over the table, but this time I want to dump the rest of Bon-Bon’s pancakes on her head. I imagine syrup running into and over those perfectly coiffed curls, gluing her eyes shut and gumming up her nose. The image is a powerful one. I almost give in.

Almost.

“Well,” Time Turner says, glancing at the watch strapped to his left foreleg. It’s my work. He was my first customer when I opened my shop. I remember him standing in the doorway, nodding approvingly before presenting me with that battered old thing like it was a Ponex or something. “We’d better be going or Minuette will be late opening up.”

“We’d better hurry up too, sweetie,” says Bon-Bon. “You don’t want Noteworthy on your case for being late again.” She takes a bite of pancake and chews, not taking the time to appreciate the flavour. I guess when you work with sugary stuff all day you lose the taste for it.

“I was late one time!” Lyra protests. "One time!"

Bon-Bon swallows her mouthful. “Yeah, one time last week. What about all the other weeks?”

Lyra waves a hoof again, telekinetically forking pancake into her mouth. “Detailsh, detailsh.”

“Sweet Celestia, don’t talk with your mouth full,” Bon-Bon chastises. I barely hold my hooves to my sides. The desire to hit her is intense. Lyra is not a foal! Why the hay is she talking to her like one? “Nopony wants to see your half-masticated breakfast.”

“Heh, masticated,” Lyra chuckles. “That sounds rude.” She continues to laugh to herself as she polishes off her plate, burps softly into her hoof and gets up from the table. “Hey, Minnie, want to walk to work together? We’re going the same way.”

“Uh …” In spite of myself, I glance at Bon-Bon.

“My store is on the other side of town,” Bon-Bon says, as if I didn’t already know. I remember watching her so many times, wanting what she has. The number of occasions I stopped time to provide little pieces of bad luck for her are too many to count: moving her over to walk into a muddy puddle; stealing her umbrella in the rain and turning it inside out; one time I even threw a rotten egg at her. Just prank stuff, nothing major.

No, I saved that for the one pony I shouldn’t have.

“Great! I hate walking to work alone,” Lyra exclaims.

My eyes flicker but I don’t glance at Time Turner too. I can feel him watching me as Lyra grabs my foreleg and all but drags me from the café. She stops when we get outside, stamps her other forehoof as if she has forgotten something and rushes back inside. I can see her through the window, smooching Bon-Bon like they’re a couple in a movie as the dramatic music starts. She ruins it by scrunching a hoof in Bon-Bon’s mane and escaping, laughing, into the street back to me.

“Lyra! Why you –”

“C’mon!” Lyra yells, cantering away. “I can tell this is going to be a great day already.”

[silvernis]

“What makes you so sure?” I ask as I follow her. I half-expect Time Turner to trot after me and remind me about a non-existent errand I have to run on the other side of town, but he doesn’t. Part of me wants him to. I’ve avoided Lyra for a year now, and my heart is pounding at the prospect of one-on-one interaction with her, even for a simple walk to work.

“Dunno,” Lyra says, laughing. “I just am.”

“Must be nice,” I mutter. I can’t help but envy her ever-sunny disposition.

Fortunately, she doesn’t hear me, and we continue through the busy streets of Ponyville—well, busy for a small country town, at any rate. Despite Bon-Bon’s ragging, Lyra slows to an easy trot once we’re out of sight of Sugarcube Corner. True to form, she clearly doesn’t care about being late, and I can’t pretend I do, either. I’d never tell Bon-Bon, of course, but she’s right: ponies aren’t exactly lining up to have their clocks repaired. I have all the time in the world.

Lyra talks all the while, going on about Noteworthy, a sonata she’s been writing, the not-yet-perfected spiced caramels that Bon-Bon is struggling with, her cousin Vinyl’s antics in Manehattan, her latest Pretty Person figurine (“She even comes with socks! Isn’t that awesome?”), and anything else that crosses her mind. I smile and let her. After a while, I stop hearing her words and just listen to the sound of her voice, letting the sweet golden melody wash over me as I drink in the sight of her.

I missed her, I realize with a start. I missed listening to her, missed those bright golden eyes, those sleek legs, missed the way she scrunches up her face when she’s puzzled, the way she flicks her minty tail when she’s excited, the way the muscles in her trim flanks shift with every step—

I stumble to a halt and close my eyes. Luna help me, no. No. I can’t do this. I can’t. I won’t. Not again.

I open my eyes and find Lyra staring at me, her smile replaced by a worried frown. I cringe: I remember the last time I took away her smile.

“You okay, Minnie?” she asks. “You seem kind of out of it this morning.”

You have no idea. “I’m fine,” I lie, forcing a smile. “I just . . . I haven’t been sleeping so well lately.” That’s true enough—I haven’t had a good night’s rest since these freaking hourglasses appeared on my flanks when I was little. Apparently it’s a chronomancer thing. According to Time Turner, none of us sleep well. Of course, in my case, I’ve got the added bonus of nightmares that writhe in my head every night, so who knows?

“Aw, that sucks,” she says.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I say, chuckling weakly.

“Y’know, Bon-Bon’s been having the same problem the past couple days. Remember those caramels I was talking about? She’s having a really hard time getting them just right, and it’s really bothering her.”

I cock an eyebrow. “She’s losing sleep over candy?” Oops. That came out a lot snarkier than I intended. Brilliant, Minuette. Just brilliant.

She shoots me a pouty look that instantly makes me feel guilty—well, more guilty than I normally do. “Yeah, so? Candy-making is her special talent. She takes it seriously.”

“Sorry,” I mumble, looking at my hooves.

She giggles, and I realize she’s just messing with me. “Relax, Min. Besides, it’s not all bad. I get lots of free candy to taste test, and Bon-Bon’s candy is great. Especially the candy on her flanks,” she adds with a sly wink.

I know I’m supposed to laugh, but all I can manage is a strained, sickly smile. I try to ignore the jealousy burning white-hot in my chest. I can’t hold back the shivers running through me from horn to tail.

Lyra notices, of course. She steps close, sliding a solicitous foreleg over my withers. The touch is electric, but somehow I manage to not gasp.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asks. “You’re shaking.”

“I’ll be fine,” I insist, not sure which of us I’m trying to convince. I fight down the urge to shove her away. “I’m just tired. I, uh, I’ll take a nap after lunch or something.”

Her face suddenly brightens, and her tail flicks. “Hey, I know! I can come over later and play you a lullaby!”

I look blankly at her. “A what?”

“A lullaby. On my lyre. It’s what I’ve been doing for Bon-Bon to help her sleep better.” She beams. “It really works, I swear! You’ll be sleeping like a foal before you know it.”

“So . . . you’re saying you want to come over to my shop and play me a lullaby so I can take a nap?”

“Yep!” she says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

No. No no no no no. Given my long history of bad ideas, I know one when I see it, and this is a bad idea. It has BAD IDEA written all over it in big red letters, with slightly smaller ones underneath that say TIME TURNER WILL FREAKING KILL YOU. It’s an awful, terrible, thoroughly not-good idea. I can’t do this. I can’t. I mustn’t. I won’t. I’m smarter than this. I’m stronger than this—

—and I smile warmly at her and say, “Thanks, Lyra. I’d love that.”

[Scribbler]

The morning goes as expected. That is to say, it’s boring as hell. And yes, I mean hell, not Hell or Tartarus, as ponies are calling it in this time period. It was called something different in the ancient past and will be called something different again in the future. They say the entrance to the underworld is actually located in the deepest part of the Everfree Forest, and ponies of myth and legend went down there to battle demons and try to become immortal by drinking from the river down there. Or maybe they drank the water to forget something … I’m not sure. Not even I have been to look for the entrance. I’m a risk-taker, not an idiot.

Well, most of the time.

I spend a lucrative hour cleaning the faces of all the clocks and timepieces in the front of my shop. You’d be amazed at how much dust can cling to glass surfaces that just sit around all day. I levitate myself up to wipe a cloth over those closest to the ceiling, and it is in the position that my first customer finds me.

“Um … hello?”

I falter, dipping in mid-air. I was so distracted by my own thoughts I didn’t hear the bell above the door chime. “Gaaah!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” The mare below me rushes forward and then stops, shifting awkwardly from leg to leg. Her wings flap as if she is thinking about flying up to rescue me.

“It’s okay!” I say hastily, levitating myself to the floor. “You just startled me for a second there.”

“I did? Oh my,” the mare mumbles, looking horrified at herself. “Being startled is awful. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I say dismissively. “What can I do for you today, Fluttershy?”

She seems surprised that I know her name. Granted, I’ve never had many dealings with the Elements of Harmony before – for someone whose remit is ‘keep a low profile’ hanging out with ponies who save the world is a real no-no – but it’s difficult not to know who they are in a small town like Ponyville.

“Um …” Fluttershy haltingly withdraws something small wrapped in what looks like an old shawl from her saddlebag. I gesture her over to the counter, where she slides it towards me. I didn’t even know it was possible to slide something apologetically, but she managed it. “It … it stopped. I don’t wear it usually, but … um … it was my mother’s, so I’d hate if it were, um, broken …”

“Don’t worry,” I reassure her, carefully unwrapping the shawl to reveal the beautiful watch within. It is hoof-made, probably one-of –kind, judging by the craftsponyship. There is a tiny stamp in the corner that indicates it was made by an earth pony, not a unicorn, as is usual with fine work like this. The watch is also very, very old. It can feel the weight of years when I pick it up. “Wow,” I breathe. “You say this was your mother’s?”

“Um, yes.” Fluttershy tucks her mane behind her ear and then immediately untucks it again so she can hide her face behind it. “She was an, um, earth pony so I … I didn’t live with her after I went to flight school. She got sick before I graduated so I … I keep her watch and some other things in a lockbox in my cottage.” She shakes her head. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear stuff like that. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Gosh, you were so young.”

She nods and tells me just how young. I wince. I lost my own parents around the same age. I don’t remember much of them. I was whisked away for training the moment my cutie mark appeared, but I remember being held and the smell of cinnamon tickling my nose the day I said goodbye. I didn’t know it was the last time.

“What was her name?” I ask.

“Posey.”

I look at Fluttershy and it is as if I am seeing her as she was then. It’s not my magic, for once. Her mannerisms and the way she talks are so filly-like it’s uncanny. Most of the little ponies in Miss Cheerilee’s class don’t act half so foalish as this fully grown mare. I wonder whether losing her mother so young has something to do with it, or whether she was always destined to be this way.

I shake myself back to reality and tap the watch face. “I can take a look at it now, if you like, or you can get some shopping done and look back in later if you want me to be more thorough –”

“Thorough is good,” she says, already backing towards the door. “I’ll go to the market. Angel Bunny needs some carrots anyway, so I … I’ll go to the market and look back in later. Thank you so much, Minuette.” The shop bell jingles and she is gone.

I spend a few moments watching the door, as if I expect her to come back. When she doesn’t I place the watch down, flip the shop sign to closed and leave through the back door. I can move through time in a blink, even though I’m not supposed to. I can’t, however, move through space the same way. Geographically, I have to hoof it like everypony else. I reach my destination and spend a fruitless fifteen minutes scouting for names until I come across the right one. It’s under a tree, the cleanest and neatest grave in the whole cemetery.

“Hmm,” I say, finishing some calculations in my head. I concentrate and the world blurs around me. Passing through time is a lot more complex and wearing than merely stopping it for a moment. It used to make me physically sick. I would end each time-shift on my knees, retching into the dirt. Not the dramatic entrance you might think of for a time-traveller. Nowadays I can make the shift without embarrassing myself, though I still get a little queasy the bigger the temporal distance.

This shift isn’t too far into the past. I rewind slower and slower, until I come to the right year. Then I whip days past me, like flicking through pages in a rolodex. I stop when I see a spindle-legged yellow pegasus filly come up a graveside of freshly turned earth.

I step out of the shift, into the time period itself. I know I don’t have long before Time Turner senses what I’ve done and comes to get me. I step forward and, a propos of nothing, put one foreleg around the shoulders of the sobbing filly.

Be like Lyra, I tell myself. This is the sort of thing Lyra would do to make somepony feel better.

“Hey,” I say softly.

[silvernis]

I expect her to eep! in surprise and dart away, but she doesn’t. She just looks up with anguished turquoise eyes, then collapses against me, clinging tight with her forelegs and burying her face into my chest. Her hot tears dampen my coat as I hug her close. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I mean it. I don’t really know Fluttershy, but I do know what it’s like to lose something—somepony—important. I know what it’s like to have some vital part of you ripped away. I know how much it hurts.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper again. The words are woefully inadequate, but they’re all I can offer her. Because I’m not like Lyra, I realize. I don’t have Lyra’s unsinkable cheer, or her easy familiarity, or her warm smile. I’m not a beam of sweet golden sunshine that could brighten this filly’s darkest day. I’m just . . . hollow. My smiles are frail paper masks I stretch across my face to hide the emptiness inside.

For Fluttershy, though, even my meager efforts seem to help a little. Her heaving, gasping sobs slowly subside to quiet weeping, and her deathgrip loosens. After a long minute, she wipes her face with a trembling foreleg, looks up at me, then abruptly shuffles backwards as she finally realizes that she was clinging to a strange pony who appeared out of nowhere.

“W-who . . . who are you?” she squeaks from behind her long pink mane.

“My name’s Minuette,” I say, putting on a smile that I hope is reassuring.

“Do . . . did you know my mommy?” Her voice is soft and shaky; I have to lean in to hear her.

I want to lie and say yes and tell her about how wonderful her mommy was, and if I knew anything about Posey, I might have tried it. But I didn’t know her, so I simply shake my head and say, “No. But nopony should be alone at a time like this.”

She whimpers, and I suddenly realize that she is alone. I glance around the cemetery, but we’re the only ones there. Why is she crying her eyes out at her mother’s grave all by herself? Where’s her father?

“Is your daddy here?” I ask.

“No,” she whispers, looking at her hooves.

I do the only thing I can think of and hug her again, patting her mane as grief overwhelms her. I’m not good with kids—I’m not very good with other ponies in general, really—but it doesn’t matter. She needs a shoulder to cry on, and I can give her that much. As she sobs, I try to ignore the question looping angrily though my head: why isn’t her daddy here?

We sit like that until I feel the telltale ripple in the timeline. I hear slow, careful hoofsteps behind me, but I don’t look up. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him and his stupid rules and his reminders about split timelines and the futility of trying to truly change the past.

“Minuette,” Time Turner says, sounding almost gentle. Grimacing, I force myself to lift my head. The sour scowl of disapproval I’m expecting isn’t there; instead, he’s just standing there looking solemn, even . . . sympathetic? “We have to go,” he says.

[Scribbler]

“Give me a minute,” I say tightly. My throat is clogged with something. I’m not sure if it’s phlegm or emotion.

“We have to go now,” he says, gentle but insistent.

I’m about to bite of a ‘why?’ but Fluttershy turns her head to look at him. Since she is pressed so tightly against me it leaves a trail of tears and snot across my belly. I don’t care, even though it’s gross and I’d usually be dancing about trying to scrape it off before it hardens.

“Wh-Who’re you?” she mumbles with a sniff.

“I’m …” For a moment he actually seems lost for words, but that can’t be right. “I’ve come to take my … friend home,” he says eventually.

I almost choke on my own laughter. Friends? Us? As if! Still, the explanation, though awful and implausibly delivered, is easier for her to swallow than the reality. Fluttershy sniffs again and wipes at her eyes.

“Oh.” She doesn’t protest. She just steps away from me and nods. “I understand.”

Something in this tiny action makes me want to punch things. How can a filly her age be so … so … browbeaten? Everything about her is cowed and broken until she doesn’t even bother trying to fight back anymore. It reeks of things I don’t like to think about. Abruptly I want to go back further and check out what led up to this moment. My horn starts to glow, but then I catch Time Turner’s eye and I know I’ll be done for if I do.

You remember the part where I said Time Turner is my probation officer? Well, Ponyville – the Ponyville of the time I just came from – is … well, I guess you could call it my prison. Confining a time traveller to one place and era is as good as locking a pegasus in a steel cage at the bottom of a dark cave. You don’t have to own a pair of wings to have them clipped.

“Minuette,” he says, like he’s reminding me he’s still there. Like I could forget?

“I’m coming,” I say truculently. I take two steps toward him, then turn abruptly and fasten onto Fluttershy in a last hug from behind. She squeaks and I can feel her wings trying to spread in panic. “It’ll get better in time,” I whisper into her ear, my voice fierce with sincerity. “I promise, it’ll get better for you in time.”

“Wha –” she starts to say, but then I freeze everything so I can release her and run into a fresh portal back to my prison-time without her seeing my tears.

I’ve never felt so impotent in my life. I know her life will improve. I know she’ll make friends and be happy – happier than she is now, happier than me, happier than most ponies in Equestria! – but that doesn’t change the fact that I want to make things better for her now.

We land inside my shop. The dust motes are frozen in the air and not one clock is ticking. The air has a thick, treacly quality I associate with Time Turner’s stop-time magic. My own magic doesn’t do that. I’ve wondered why before but he has never given me a straight answer.

I whirl on him as he steps through behind me. “Where was her father?”

Time Turner shakes his head. “Why would you think I’d know?”

“Because you know everything!”

“You give me too much credit –”

“Don’t play that game with me this time!” I almost shout. I’m so angry I can’t keep my tone civil, it seems. “She was crying over her own mother’s grave and he wasn’t there! Why wasn’t he there? You know everything about this town and its ponies. Tell me why!”

[silvernis]

Time Turner rubs his forehead, then sighs and looks up at me with his tired old eyes. “Her father wasn’t there,” he says, “because he was busy puking up cheap booze along the side of the road. He was going to the cemetery to be with Fluttershy, but when he passed the pub, he decided to stop in for a little liquid courage first. A little turned into a lot.”

“So he left her crying over her mother’s grave all by herself because he was drunk?” My trembling hooves still want to punch things.

“Ponies can do foolish, hurtful things when they’re upset and intoxicated,” he says levelly. “You should understand that better than most.”

I cringe and jerk away as if he’d hit me. “I know,” I mutter, hating him and hating myself. He’s right, of course—I know all too well what alcohol can do to ponies, what it can turn them into. As much as I want to be angry at Fluttershy’s father, my fury suddenly feels more hypocritical than righteous, and it fizzles out as quickly as it flared up. Staying angry at other ponies is hard when your own sins are so much blacker than theirs

“Gust wasn’t a bad pony,” Time Turner continues quietly, “but he was ill-prepared for marriage, at least not with a mate who couldn’t fly. Few pegasi are comfortable living on the ground, and Gust found out that he was not one of them. He loved Posey, but, as it turned out, not enough to give up Cloudsdale. They never officially broke things off, but for all intents and purposes, they lived separate lives.”

“What about Fluttershy?”

“She lived with Posey until she was old enough to go to flight school. Then Gust took her to live in Cloudsdale.”

“Posey didn’t try to stop him?”

“Posey encouraged him. It broke her heart, but she wanted to give her daughter the chance to live life as a pegasus, in the sky.”

“And now she lives down here anyway. Talk about ironic.”

“Cruelly so, considering how Posey fell ill and died shortly after Fluttershy discovered her cutie mark.”

I’d heard the story of how Fluttershy had fallen from the sky and found her talent for, well, whatever it was she did with animals. “So that’s why she didn’t go back,” I say softly. “It wasn’t just the critters that kept her on the ground.”

Time Turner nods. “She was devastated by Posey’s death and blamed herself for not being there. She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Cloudsdale.”

“And Gust?”

“I daresay there have been better fathers, and in this timeline it will be many years from now before he and Fluttershy are comfortable with each other again, but he truly did try. He moved back to Ponyville to care for Fluttershy. and when she was old enough, he bought her cottage for her. He lives in Cloudsdale now.”

I nod slowly, digesting that. It’s sort of funny. Fluttershy may be quiet, but she usually seems cheerful enough. You’d never know what she went through when she was younger. I guess that’s true of everypony, though—we lock our pain away deep down inside and smile and pretend it’s not gnawing on our souls.

Sighing, I push through the thick, time-stopped air and walk back to my workbench behind the counter. “I should get to work,” I say, levitating Posey’s watch over and placing it carefully on a square of thick black velvet. “Fluttershy will be back soon.”

Time Turner doesn’t move. I can feel him watching me, but I don’t look up from my workbench. Instead, I begin setting out my tools and lenses, waiting for the inevitable.

“Why?” he finally asks. His voice is quiet.

“To pick up her watch,” I say, glancing at him. “She dropped it off earlier.” Earlier is a relative term, of course.

Time Turner’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “That is not what I meant, and you very well know it.”

It wasn’t, and I do, but I don’t have a good answer. I bite my lip and hunch back over my workbench, trying to focus on the watch. Horn glowing, I bring my tools to bear and start to open the case. The fastenings are unusually intricate, almost puzzle-like. I struggle to find the calm, soothing state of mind that I normally slip into when working, but it’s no use: Time Turner’s freaking question keeps skittering around in my head, and I can’t shoo it away. My old master would’ve boxed my ears for trying to work on a fine piece like this when I was flustered. I’m not an apprentice anymore, though; I force myself to keep my tools steady, and soon the watch opens with a sharp click that sounds extra-loud in the uncomfortable silence.

Time Turner doesn’t move. He won’t, either, not until he’s gotten an answer. He’s nothing if not persistent. He just stands there, watching and waiting as if we have all the time in the world.

We do, after all.

After several long moments, I sigh and put my tools down. “Look at this watch,” I say, lifting the partially disassembled timepiece with my magic and holding it up so he could see. “See how clean the casing and the face are? And look at the movement. Most of this is original, which means it’s probably even older than you, which means Fluttershy has been getting it maintenanced religiously. Even the repair work”—I gesture at the escapement, which is slightly shinier than the parts around it—“is flawless. Whoever put this in knew what they were doing, and I’m betting Fluttershy paid top bit for it.” I lower the watch back onto the velvet, give it an affectionate pat, then look up at Time Turner. “She’s taken really good care of this watch. She wouldn’t do that if it was from somepony she didn’t care about. Posey . . . her mother meant a lot to her.”

Time Turner raises an eyebrow. It makes him look even snootier than normal. “An astute appraisal,” he says, “but why should that make you casually break one of the rules I’ve spent the past year telling you to not break?”

[Scribbler]

I shrug noncommittally. “There are rules and then there are rules.”

“Evasive,” he says dryly. “Answering a question without truly answering it. You sound almost like me.”

An even drier chuckle leaves my throat. “We become what we fear and hate the most.”

I feel him baulk. I don’t see it, since I’m studiously not looking at him, but I feel it like I’m giving him a thousand yard stare. I expect him to say something. Maybe I’m kind of hoping he does. Why did I say that? Was I being flippant? Much truth spoken in jest, maybe? I actually don’t know. Maybe it’s that lemming instinct kicking in again: the one that makes me do stupid things that should really get me killed, or at least badly maimed.

Do I fear and hate him? Truly?

I used to. Bloody hell, did I hate him in the beginning. I loathed him with every scrap of fire I could summon to burn up my insides, but nowadays? It’s hard to keep a fire burning continuously.

“We do indeed,” Time Turners says with a bizarre note in his voice that makes me finally look up. He is staring into the middle distance, a pensive expression on his face. He look like he has just realised something. Before I can guess what it might be, however, he shakes his head and stamps a forehoof on the floor. “Having your heart in the right place doesn’t change that you broke the rules, though.”

“I know,” I sigh. “What’s my punishment?”