Diamond’s ears were flat against her head, but that didn’t stop the noise of the clattering train cars rushing down the mountain. All her wit and savvy seemed to have left her, and she just could not find it in herself to care enough to do things properly. So she just snuck on the train carelessly, right after it started moving, and hid between the cars where nopony would find her. She just did it, without even caring about what else might go wrong. But...
That meant Diamond had to hang on between the train cars, trying to keep a stable footing, clinging to the shivering couplings. The wind was fierce, and the tracks didn’t seem to clatter so much as roar. She hated this. She hated hated hated doing this! She just clung to the thin railing, and tried to ignore the increasing exhaustion in her aching hooves. It was no wonder why nopony would check in between here, because who would willingly try to ride here?!
Diamond, that’s who. Somepony with nothing to lose. Just like Cryptic Note, in the final volume of The Last Enforcer.
The train ride became less harrowing once the mountains leveled out. The air was warmer and thicker down here, though still kind of cold. The train slowed to a speed that Diamond hoped was safe if she fell off, but it still seemed to be going by pretty fast, at least as fast as a pony could gallop. She was so glad she had eaten that hayburger, because her stomach felt like it was eating a hole in her again. She moved around as best as she could, trying to wedge herself in somewhere that wouldn’t crush her when the couplings compressed, so she didn’t have to waste energy hanging on so much.
Dodge Junction wasn’t a day away from Canterlot by train. Diamond was curled against the railing trying to get some sleep, when they arrived at the big train station. Diamond didn’t even wait for the train to reach its stop; she just jumped as soon as it slowed down, and landed heavily, running away from the tracks. If anypony shouted out for her to stop, Diamond didn’t hear them, or listen.
No, instead Diamond trotted out away from the station, down the busy streets with purpose. She traveled just beyond the city limits, to a certain location past the first road marker out of 11th street. Diamond made a beeline for a certain tree with a certain abandoned squirrel’s nest in it. There, she reached her hoof in and—it was empty.
“What?” Diamond gasped, feeling around frantically but nothing struck her hoof as she fumbled around beside wood and old straw. “No!” she shrieked, stretching up to peer into the hole fruitlessly, “How did they find it? It was supposed to be in there!”
Diamond dropped down from the tree, biting back another scream as the foreleg she landed on too hard flared up in pain. She hobbled drunkenly over to her other hiding spot. Maybe she told them about the tree, and not the other one, and just got them mixed up? She needed these bits! She wasn’t going to spend one more minute riding between train cars, and Ponyville was 2 days away! She needed food, and supplies, and water, and—and food! She was gonna—have to eat grass again?
Digging around in the other burrow was equally fruitless, all the bags of money gone, the under-tree burrow as empty as it could possibly be. But they—but whoever stole her bits had missed one! Diamond’s hoof disturbed a bit half buried in the dirt. She redoubled her effort, hobbled by how she could only use one hoof to dig stuff out of there. Her bad leg was hurting... not as bad, but she needed to rest it or—or something.
At last, Diamond was the proud owner of 4 bits that hadn’t been dug out from beneath that burrow. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t find any more, and it was getting dark. And a ticket to Ponyville cost 8 bits.
“Why is this happening to me?” Diamond tried to scream, but she only got the first word out, before she started getting choked up. Sucking in solid gasps, her tears falling on the coins she gathered. With an angry squeal she smacked away that neat little pile, sending the bits flying into the bushes, and an instant later Diamond was rooting around in those bushes, searching for them frantically. Bits! Bits meant food! She—she found 3.
It was enough to buy a carrot dog from a street vendor. She wanted to save it. She wanted to eat it slowly over the course of days. Any time she needed to feel better, she wanted just a taste of that rich, creamy coal-seared carrot, or the complex saltiness of the mustard, or the refreshingly crisp lettuce that practically melted on your mouth and you didn’t have to chew at all. But Diamond had no saddlebags anymore, so instead she had to eat it all now, and then she had nothing but grass again, until she got all the way back home.
This was fine. It was going to be fine. Diamond’s mood started improving as she slowly savored that greasy, sweet, bun wrapped vegetable. She just had to sit in between the train cars for the next... 2 days or so, with only 3 stops along the way. She snuck on the trains all the time; it was a piece of cake for a filly of her talents. Diamond just... didn’t want to have to hang onto that railing for 2 days straight. She was so tired.
Diamond had to spend another night in that forest. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, and it was getting dark. She wanted to find Mo and Edge and Larceny, but her leverage with them was just... gone. She couldn’t face them like this. They’d just laugh at her, and probably deliver her straight to the nuns! Somehow they’d stolen all of her money, not just the part she had let them steal.
So instead, she stayed outside of the city limits again, and just found a dark place to hide to sleep. The moon wasn’t out tonight. As night fell, Diamond couldn’t even see the hoof in front of her face, from where she had concealed herself underneath some fallen logs. The night was long and chilly, and Diamond had trouble sleeping. An owl would hoot, or some twigs would crack, surely the sound of something large stalking past Diamond’s hiding spot, no doubt. Something monstrous.
As she awoke that morning, Diamond found her belly had been swelling up. Not overnight, but it was the first time she really noticed it. Not a lot, just a teeny little, just enough to remind her of her future. It had been swelling up bit by bit, every single day, too slow for Diamond to even notice. But after months spent with the convent, and with Blueberry, Diamond had to admit she was... showing.
She was sore, and exhausted, and hungry, but when she awoke that morning and saw her belly like that, Diamond just didn’t have it in her to complain. She touched her abdomen curiously, then started stroking over the little bulge. It didn’t have very much give to it, and it felt very warm. Somewhere inside there was a foal all curled up in her. Diamond was a mommy; she couldn’t believe it, but she was. She was sore too, not just—not just in her hurt leg, or her scraped one, but like, where a mother is supposed to be sore. Like... in her teats. They looked funny. Diamond was pretty sure they looked funny.
She didn’t know what to name the foal. Mommies and daddies, but in this case only mommies get to decide a new foal’s name, and it was very important to decide on a good one. Diamond didn’t want to be a bad mother, so she had to think of the perfect name for her foal to mature and grow into. The name she picked could even have to do with the foal’s cutie mark one day. It didn’t always, but names had a very strong influence on who the foal was going to be. That was so important to Diamond.
Maybe something with silver in it, like Silver Spoon. Something that meant she loved her foal, and she was always going to be a winner, with someone like Diamond around to watch her back. Silver Winner seemed too obvious though, plus that name sounded kind of unicorny. Bread Winner, maybe. Or maybe something with the word Precious in it. Was Preciosa a name? It sounded fancy.
Diamond couldn’t spend a lot of time stroking her barely pregnant belly and thinking of names though, because she had to get up, and she had to make tracks if she was gonna get to Ponyville any time soon. She was so hungry, but she could hardly stand to eat any more of that grass. Just looking at it made her feel nauseated. Diamond wanted proper food, that didn’t make her feel sick, especially in the mornings. But she... made do, and choked down as much as she could. It mostly stayed down.
Then, Diamond cautiously circled around, and returned to the train station on the edge of town. Her hindquarters were clean and pink, with maybe a few ink smudges left. But that didn’t make Diamond Tiara safe here on the train station. This was the very same station where the ponies foalnapped fillies for ...some reason, whether or not they were pintos.
But not this time, they wouldn’t foalnap anypony. They didn’t catch any naive filly standing by the train schedule today. Diamond stayed behind walls and out of sight, and when she did locate the route to Ponyville, Diamond kept a close eye on her flank, for any station attendants even looking her way. When one such attendant did, Diamond just blithely trotted up to a random couple waiting for the train and announced brightly,
“It looks like the train is on schedule! We should be able to catch it, no problem!”
“Uhh... thanks...?” the one mare told her in puzzlement.
But behind Diamond, the station attendant had looked away.
“I’ll go get some snacks,” she announced to the confused mares, and trotted spryly in the other direction. She was hidden behind a sign before you could say pluffnuts. The train came without incident and... and Diamond made another mistake. See, she was going to go in between the cars, where there was no place to walk between cars, but she... just... didn’t want to go through that again. Diamond was falling over exhausted, and if she just snuck into a boxcar, then she could just maybe sleep just a little.
The boxcar was full of hay and dust, and the floor was just planks of wood, but Diamond found it dreadfully easy to fall asleep once the train started moving. Everything was going to be okay. She—may have done something stupid, but most of it wasn’t even her fault, and now she was going home, and Daddy would take care of her. Diamond couldn’t hardly believe she even made it as far as she did. But now she was done, more than done. Diamond was going straight back where she belonged: Ponyville. Diamond was going home...
The abrupt clanking of the train cars woke up Diamond Tiara. Were they there yet? Everything was slowing down. She lifted her head from the horribly scratchy straw, and turned her ears, but didn’t hear anything outside the boxcar. So she jumped up on her hooves and trotted to the sliding door, pulling it open enough to look outside. It was just... a forest. The train was stopped on the middle of the tracks?
A noise attracted her attention, where a couple of ponies in conductor’s caps were jumping out of the neighboring boxcar. They were—!
Diamond backed up from the door. It wasn’t supposed to be opened! She jumped forward and pulled it closed—why was it so loud? She just—freaked and dove behind the bales of straw, working herself into the corner so they wouldn’t find her. Why oh why did they have to do a boxcar inspection on this train, of all trains?
She couldn’t think. She was tired. She didn’t know what to do!
The door slid open and she just—stopped. “We saw you close the door,” came a rough mare’s voice. “There’s no point in hiding.”
They didn’t understand that Diamond couldn’t come out of hiding. She couldn’t move, not now! Not like this! “I can’t—” she tried to admonish them, but it was no good. She just couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t even speak. No matter how she tried to keep her composure, she just lost it right there in front of them. Everything was just going wrong and she couldn’t like, stop like, crying. She felt so humiliated. The train ponies jumped in the boxcar, and walked up to stand before her, and Diamond couldn’t even tell them to leave her alone. She felt like she was falling to pieces. She couldn’t even look at them.
“Celestia’s Tits,” came that rough voice from before. “Not another one.”
“What?” Diamond thought, or said, or... sort of. She lifted her head dazedly, to look at the mare who spoke, who stood behind the ponies surrounding Diamond’s fallen form. It was an older, light grey mare who spoke, with a vivid curly orange mane and tail, and an engineer’s cap. This mare had a haunted look in her dark blue eyes, and a hollow sort of despair in her voice, from somewhere buried deep down inside her, when she said,
“Get this filly off my train.”
Diamond wanted to protest, but she was just—stunned at how the mare looked at her. The engineer spun on her hooves and walked off, repeating, “I don’t want this filly on my train, you hear?” Then she jumped down out of the boxcar and gallopped back towards the front of the train.
Diamond was honestly too confused to cry. What did everypony think was wrong with her? She should have asked. She... didn’t trust herself to talk.
“You gonna bite?” a plain looking sky colored pony with dumpy red hair asked Diamond seriously. Seriously? Diamond just stared at her incredulously.
“How about this,” that mare said, backing up to point at the door to the boxcar. “We let you go, an’ you don’t bite nopony.”
“Let me...” Diamond found her words if for no reason other than pure outrage. “Let me go? What are you talking about I don’t want to—”
“It’s either that or the guard,” a magenta haired bluer pony remarked. “What you wanna—” Diamond couldn’t scramble to her hooves fast enough.
“Like, back off! I’m going, I’m going,” Diamond told them irritably, sulking her way to the doorway out. “I just wanted to get to—I said I’m going!” They crowded her right out of that boxcar, and Diamond jumped down with a hiss of breath as she landed on her hurt leg.
“You got a bag?” one of them asked down to her, sticking a pink mopped head out the doorway.
“I don’t—like—” Diamond just couldn’t understand the concerned look on this pony’s face. Were they kicking her off or what? “No!” she told them angrily. “Just, no bag. I’m fine!”
And then she went stalking off down along the tracks.
Diamond Tiara didn’t reach the front of the train before it started moving again. She stared with seething hatred at each car that passed her, faster and faster, leaving her behind, until the train was all gone, diminishing in the distance. There wasn’t even a path here, just a gravelly burm that hurt to walk on, and then dense underbrush. Diamond kept walking though. What else could she do? These tracks had to lead to Ponyville eventually, and then oh boy would there be Hell to pay. She clung to a grim sort of satisfaction, imagining the train operators gesticulating before her in abject apology. She bet Daddy would buy their whole train so that they couldn’t even call it “my train” anymore.
Diamond quickly learned that it was a lot easier on your hooves to walk on the wooden slats of the tracks themselves rather than the burm. You had to be careful not to slip into a crack, but at least it kept the gravel out of your frog. Diamond was in no danger of getting run over by the train. The rails were long, straight and level here. Diamond’d be able to feel the train coming, long before it got dangerous. The terrain was still woodsy, but it wasn’t long before the forest thinned out enough that Diamond could at least see enough space alongside the tracks so she could walk among the trees, rather on this gravel that kept getting caught in her hooves.
Diamond kept walking and walking, and didn’t even notice how tired she was, but the daylight drifted away and evening grew long and chilly. Diamond shivered and... and she really needed to sleep. But... the forest was starting to look scary and dark. What if there were wolves in this one? It was a lot bigger than that little grove of a forest that Diamond had thought was a forest, back in Dodge City. Diamond wanted to just sleep on the ground, but she thought she heard something and—and she just couldn’t relax.
She skulked away from the tracks, looking around for something covery, some sort of hiding place. It was a forest so everything was like, covered. Finally she just settled herself into a thicket she managed to squeeze under. She didn’t hear any wolves or whatever hunted little ponies at night, and was completely passed out under there before even the moon came up.
The morning dawned cool and wetly, ironic since Diamond felt parched as a desert on the inside. She woke up feeling more refreshed than she had in days, but her throat was so dry from thirst! She couldn’t even talk when she woke up. When had she drank last? Diamond rasped out a groan, and opened her eyes, only to realize that she was sleeping nose-to-nose with... a deer. It was an earth brown doe, her slim snout not inches away from Diamond’s nose, a doe who opened her big wide frightened eyes and shouted,
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
It was a beautiful delicate deer, with a light spotting on her back, who scrambled backwards out of that hedge like a pony possessed. “Wait—” Diamond shouted, but she was already gone, even though Diamond tried to follow her.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the deer continued to shout in a bizarre apology, as Diamond crawled from underneath the hedge to find the deer leaping with an alien grace through the dense underbrush, like it wasn’t even an obstacle for her. Diamond lost sight of her, and just shouted after the deer,
“What are you sorry for?!”
But there was no answer.
“Well, great,” Diamond rasped out bitterly, turning away from where the deer had vanished. “first time ever meeting a deer, and I... totally scare her away. Probably my ech—” she grimaced looking at her dirty tail in dismay. “Probably my hair, or, like... something.” Or maybe because she was just a stupid pony, like all the rest of those ponies who were all total jerks. Of course deer would run away from her. They thought she was one of them!
Diamond was still thirsty, so she went to where she’d seen a creek. The water there looked so inviting, and Diamond was going to just stick her head in and drink to her heart’s content. But as she craned her head down, a voice shouted, “Don’t!”
Diamond bristled from head to tail, turning and facing her attacker—it was the deer again. Just... standing there, looking at Diamond with a cool, unreadable expression.
“Creek water not for drink,” the doe told her in a sweet bell-like tone. “Drink leaf water.”
“Leaf... what?” Diamond asked uncertainly, trying not to make any sudden moves.
“Morning... leaf water, see?” said the doe, turning her head and extending a long tongue to lap at the... leaves covered in...
“Oh, dew!” Diamond exclaimed, making the deer startle in place.
“What?” the deer said, backing up from Diamond confusedly, “Do what? Do what?”
“No, it’s—” Diamond carefully collected herself. “It’s called dew. Morning leaf water.”
“Yes, do!” the doe said in sudden enthusiasm. “Drink dew, do! Do dew...” she lifted a slender, doubly hooved leg, just like a nervous pony. “I not speak... hard talk like pony,” she spoke haltingly.
“Trust me, you’re not the heaviest accent I’ve had to deal with,” Diamond said with a dissatisfied stort. Accent was the right word, right? Diamond wasn’t sure if that was right.
The doe didn’t answer her though, and Diamond was eager to get some sort of water in her. So blushing, she started cautiously licking the leaves on the bushes around her. It looked like they were just about dripping with water, but it was surprisingly hard to get enough off of them to drink. The doe seemed satisfied with this, continuing to not run away from Diamond in a panic, as Diamond licked the morning dew off the leaves.
The doe was beautiful! She had those little light spots left on her coat, as mentioned. She could have been in school with Diamond Tiara probably, if she was a pony. Diamond would have called the deer’s figure svelte and slender, but while her hooves were so delicate, dainty and complex, this deer was actually a bit chubby. She had a little white furred brush of a tail, just barely sticking up behind her rear. Diamond was tempted to ask if she could move it, but it seemed like kind of a weird question to ask. Her face was slender, and her eyes were huge, and a deeper brown than the rest of her.
They did this weird sort of drinking thing for a while. The doe only stopped Diamond once, because some of the leaves were not for licking. They made your tongue itch or... something. When at last Diamond felt... relatively alive again, she said to the doe, “What’s your na—” but when she turned to face her, nopony was there.
“Where did you go?!” Diamond whinnied in frustration, looking around for the—the doe abruptly stalked out of the bushes in front of Diamond, facing her, holding up a tiny hoof saying,
“Ssh!”
Diamond shushed, and the deer cautiously approached her again, saying, “Wolf sleep now, but not if much noise.”
“There are wolves here?” Diamond whispered in shock, despite that she sort of assumed it was the case. Really real wolves?
“They night, come find stupid deer who stay out,” the doe says in a surprisingly amused tone.
“Aren’t you like, worried about getting eaten?” Diamond asked aghast.
“Not afraid of wolf,” the doe said bitterly, a strange tone that Diamond just couldn’t fathom from somepony who was not afraid. She didn’t seem especially alarmed though, so Diamond didn’t bother her about it.
Instead the doe seemed eager, even excited. “Pony come,” she said to the rehydrated Diamond, prancing off in a bounding gait, and looking back her way. “Deer show pony pony road.”
Diamond certainly couldn’t argue with that.
The deer led her away from the tracks through the bushes though Diamond struggled to get past with them catching in her mane and tail. And wouldn’t you figure, there was a road, beaten into the forest, going right alongside the train tracks. Diamond stepped onto it gladly saying, “Thanks!” She’d be able to make much faster progress with this to follow! “Which way to Ponyville?” she asked the doe, who hadn’t come out of the bushes.
“Pony that way,” the deer offered enigmatically, again pointing one of her strange, exotic hooves down the way Diamond had been following the tracks. And... then she just stood there, watching Diamond. And Diamond stood there not moving. Because—deer! This was a real live deer. She even had a teeny little white fluffy tail kind of like a bunny, and really big ears. And she was brown all over! It made her really hard to see in the underbrush. Diamond... didn’t want to go.
“You’re so lucky,” Diamond sighed, looking down the trail to home. Where her warm bed, and her fine food, and all those horrible ponies she had to deal with every day were. “It’s no fun having to live with ponies, even if you are a pony. They’re always at each other—we’re always at each other’s throats. I wish I could go with you, and... and didn’t have to tell Daddy what happened. I’m afraid he’s gonna be mad at me, even though none of this is my fault! E-except like, the foal.”
The deer again regarded Diamond silently, even solemnly, and said in a very tense, emotional tone, “Pony should be pony. Pony no want be deer.”
“What? Why?” Diamond said half rearing up in surprise. “You don’t even have money to steal, or like, friends to hurt you.”
“You go pony!” the deer repeated urgently, and now there were angry tears in her eyes? “Pony better because,” she chuffed heatedly, “Pony live, and deer always die!”
A look of terror crossed the deer’s face as she said that, a look of shame and humiliation, and oddly, of betrayal. She turned her bright white tail then, and bounded away in great leaps. “Wait!” Diamond shouted, trotting after her, but there was no point in chasing that deer through more bushes. “What do you mean?” Diamond called out to the crashing bushes. But this time, the deer didn’t respond, or return. Diamond waited there for—a while, until the sun was high in the sky, but she couldn’t call after the deer. She didn’t want to wake up the wolves!
Finally Diamond started to cry, as she quietly realized, “I didn’t even—I forgot to ask her name.” She wiped her eyes fiercely, licking her pastern after doing so. This was stupid. She didn’t want to lose any more water! “Fine,” she said bitterly to the bushes, trotting down the road. “Be that way.” Diamond thought deer were special! That one must have been defective, or crazy or something. Figures, Diamond’s first encounter ever with a deer and it’d be a crazy one, who thought she was gonna die.
Diamond could have made it home before dark if she gallopped, but she was still so sore and tired. It was a long way to run, even if the road had been well kept. And the road wasn’t well kept, uneven and pitted in places, partially overgrown, and once with a fallen tree almost blocking the way. So mostly Diamond just walked, well... plodded mostly. She just didn’t have any energy, without having any food besides grass to eat, and until she got out of this forest, there wouldn’t even be grass. She probably should have looked for a—a meadow or something, but she just wanted to get home, and get this over with already.
So night was falling again, and Diamond Tiara was getting scared again. She didn’t want to stop but—the wolves might get her if she kept going in the night. She knew as soon as she stopped, she might not be able to get up again. She couldn’t sleep yet. She just... one leg after the other, clop clop clop clop, looking around fearfully for something that Diamond could just... fall under, or something. A cave or—or something.
And then Diamond saw in front of her, a distant flickering light. She—she made it! Diamond could see the lights of Ponyville! She sagged in relief, and almost fell down, but sheer force of will kept her moving forward. She was gonna sleep so hard when this was all over, and she was going to eat so much pizza, and pickles, and caviar and peanut butter and—stuff.
She got closer to the light, and her heart sank, as she realized it was only one light all by itself. There was light, but not a whole town. But then Diamond gained even more resolve, when she realized that it might be a place to sleep that would be safe from the wolves. It might be somepony who had food. Diamond approached what appeared to be a campfire under the darkening sky. Just a single, solitary campfire, some distance off the road, with a mare seated beside it, warming herself in the flickering light. Something from her campfire smelled delicious.
Diamond trotted into the circle of firelight, and announced herself saying, “Hey, I’m—”
Oh shoot. She didn’t know what name to use. Should she just use her real name, at this point? “Can I—stay?” Diamond asked lamely. That was terrible. “I hurt my thing, at the—the place,” Diamond clarified for the blue mare, who now gave Diamond her full attention.
Wait, no that was worse than terrible.
“Sorry, I’m like... really tired,” Diamond admitted, “And—hungry. Do you have any—”
“Is this what I’m reduced to,” the mare interrupted, in a glum yet indescribably annoying tone. “Handouts to estrosian wanderers?”
“It’s not like, handouts,” Diamond said in disgust, “I can pay you. I just need to get to like, Ponyville first.”
“Ponyville?” the mare exclaimed, looking up in incredulous, her tail lashing in aggravation. “You’re going to Ponyville?”
“Yeah, what of it?” Diamond said suspiciously, cautiously turning her side to the mare.
“Trust me,” the mare told Diamond in a every unimpressed tone, “You don’t want to go there.”
“Why not?” Diamond asked in confusion. “Did something happen to Ponyville?” Celestia knows something seemed to happen to that town practically every other week.
“No, nothing happened to Ponyville,” the mare repeated acidly, then tapped her chin, correcting herself, “Or rather, nothing that would keep you from going there. It’s just not a place a wanderer like you would be welcome!”
“I’m not a wanderer!” Diamond said hotly. “I have a house there, and my Daddy that I’m going home to.”
“And I’m the princess of Saddle Arabia,” the mare remarked wryly.
“Well—fine, I don’t have to tell you anything,” Diamond said in frustration, “But Ponyville is like, loser city. Ponies would lose their shirts before they didn’t get all friendly and helpful even when you—er, when they can’t prove you did anything bad.”
“Ponies everywhere are like that,” said the mare in a strangely exasperated tone. Diamond didn’t know what to do though. She wanted the food! What could she say to get the food? It was cooking right there!
“So like, if I could, like, make a deal with you, to...” Diamond stated trying to kick start her exhausted brain into gear. But all she could think is how could he say that to her?? And something smelled so good, she wanted to eat already.
“I found some beets,” the mare said to the dumbly mute Diamond, again not looking at her. “Don’t ask where I found them, and you can have one.”
Diamond’s smile lit up the night like it was day. “Thank—” she said all too eagerly, before biting her tongue and choking back the words. Nopony could know she was actually, like grateful for this. “It sounds like we have a deal,” she repeated more carefully. “I won’t tell a single soul.”
The mare gave Diamond a long look in the firelight, and then her forehead lit up in sparkling purple. Diamond hadn’t even realized this mare was—under that ridiculous looking hat, and all. But this unicorn mare used her magic to levitate a stick next to the fire, and speared something searing in among the coals, pulling it out and looking at it with satisfaction before tossing it Diamond’s way. Diamond made sure to catch the stick part, going to her haunches to hook her hoof around it.
“It’ll be hot, so don’t burn yourself,” the mare said with a teasing smirk, before spearing another baking root embedded in her campfire. And Diamond didn’t. She only took a little nibble at ow ow ow! Diamond dropped the beet and stuck her tongue out, looking at it woundedly.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” came the mare’s wry voice.
“Tho thoo me, I’m like, hungry, okay?” Diamond grumbled. “It’s just been a—really like, long day. Or, two days I guess. Actually this whole week has been just insane.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me all about it,” the mare said disinterestedly.
“You bet I am!” Diamond told her challengingly. “It all started when Peachy started bullying me. Did you know I was foalnapped, and trapped in a convent?”
“Fancy that,” came the snarky reply. Well, Diamond didn’t care if the mare wasn’t impressed. She told her anyway. All Diamond’s plans, and how there was no point in even keeping them secret anymore. How her stallion betrayed her, and she had to raise this foal all on her own now, and how she and her daddy had gotten attacked, and even though Diamond got foalnapped, she escaped and actually like, walked all the way to um... when she got foalnapped again, and taken to the convent.
Diamond wasn’t exactly remembering things in chronological order, but she was happy and content soon, had a hot if bland roasted beet in her stomach, and a drink from the mare’s waterskin, one of the few things this mare seemed to have with her. Diamond asked her why she didn’t have a tent or like, anything, and it turned out this mare had a lot of really cool stories to talk about too, amazingly enough.
She’d just gotten chased out of Ponyville, apparently! They even broke her stuff! That wasn’t the Ponyville Diamond remembered, but the mare swore it was true.
“Ponies in Ponyville might seem friendly and approachable,” she advised Diamond that evening, “But then they turn on you at the last minute. And attack you with a giant bear!!”
Diamond was starting to have serious doubts about this mare’s sanity. She had even more stories, stories of defeating an even bigger bear, and apparantly the mare had a statue dedicated to herself erected in Trottingham. Stories of a strange city full of gryphons who all hated each other, but couldn’t get away from their debts, of distant rocky landscapes where gold grows right out of the ground, of strange creatures across the ocean who were covered in stripes and only one color. Apparantly this mare had seen a real, live changeling before down in a tropical jungle, though it fled before her powerful magic.
It was pretty obvious all this stuff was just made up. You could tell because the mare always had herself as the center of action, who saved the day. It was classic pony um... stupid stuff. Diamond wasn’t going to fall for it ...again. But this mare talked so enthusiastically about herself without prompting, and it was easy for Diamond to drift off to sleep just listening to her, feeling somehow comforted even in this dark hour.
The fire was cool when Diamond Tiara awoke. The mare hadn’t waited up for her, it seemed; Diamond was alone in the clearing they’d slept at. Awakening fully, she lifted her head up and turned an ear, but there was no sound of hooves clomping on dirt anywhere around. “Well good,” Diamond said with a tight feeling in her chest. “I didn’t need some crazy mare slowing me down. I’m just fine all on my own.” There was no one to say it to though, and Diamond felt like she sort of wished there was. She’d been away from the company of ponies for too long, and she just couldn’t wait to jump in and get her hooves dirty again. It couldn’t have been far from here to Ponyville, and almost more than the powerful thirst she awoke wit, Diamond felt an aching longing to be there, where she was in control, and nopony could mess with her, and she could... be with other ponies.
Or at least with stallions. Diamond had a hankering for a stallion something fierce.
Diamond had to make tracks if she was gonna get to Ponyville any time soon. She shouldn’t have slept in, since there wasn’t a lot of dew left, so it took her a long time to take advantage of that deer’s trick for getting enough to drink. But she forged through the brush as she searched for pooled droplets, and the morning was still cool and misty. Diamond did that in the direction she meant to go, so she was still making progress if slowly. By the time the sun was high and the chill had left the air, and the leaves were all dry, Diamond felt... less like death warmed over. She moved to the main road then, walking steadily with a look of determination on her face.
They were gonna regret dumping her off that train. She was going to make everything better just like she knew how, by hurting the ponies who hurt her, and putting everyone back in their proper place: below her. Diamond was tired of being put in their place. She had to start getting her act together, and taking a leadership role again, so they couldn’t hurt her anymore. Diamond was better than them, supposedly, so she better well start acting like it. And if that meant hurting some ponies and feeling funny about it, well Diamond would just have to bite that bullet, because she that’s just how the world worked.
The trees seemed endless, and the hills rolled up and down, seemingly taking forever to get from the peak of one, to the peak of another. But the sun hadn’t even begun to set before Diamond saw the trees thinning out, and started to see farms dotting the landscape. At the crest of a hill, the world opened up into the great fertile bowl that Ponyville was situated in. She beheld the town, with its straw roofed cottages dotting the landscapes, grain grinding windmills along the meandering streams, and even the bright, colorful tent village could be seen from here.
Diamond Tiara couldn’t believe it. Ponyville. She was looking down at the beautiful town, its buildings spread before her like a mother spreading her welcoming hooves, welcoming her daughter home. Diamond was home. Finally. She—she missed it so much! Why didn’t she just come here in the first place? Because Diamond had to go and be the hero, like a total idiot. She went and made a friend, and that foolish desire led her halfway across Equestria to find him, only to have her hopes dashed on the rocks, just like everypony tried to warn her. Just like Daddy tried to warn her!
He told her how dangerous it was to open up for another pony, to let them use you, take your gratitude and grind you up like oatmeal mash. But she didn’t listen. So Diamond had paid for it dearly, in this whole wild goose chase. But now she knew what to do. Her place wasn’t out there in Canterlot, dodging guards and breaking into people’s houses. Her place was here, in Ponyville, letting other ponies do all the dangerous things for her, just living a peaceful, luxurious life, and... it wouldn’t be too bad to raise her foal in that. It’s not like Diamond didn’t have servants to help her. She just had to make sure she was never accidentally grateful, so they wouldn’t get any ideas about pushing her around. That’s what daddy taught her, and that’s what Diamond was gonna do from now on. She wasn’t going to make any more mistakes. She was just going home.
Ten minutes later, Diamond’s aching hooves wanted to collapse under her. Why wasn’t Ponyville getting closer faster? Her trot slowed to a plod again, as the distance reasserted itself, and just how tired Diamond was from walking so very, very far. The town beckoned to her. She couldn’t stop now. She had to get there and—and find Daddy, or find her servants and tell them that Daddy was foalnapped. Then they would fix her problems for her, and Diamond could focus on more important things than failing to save ponies, like the swelling in her belly, and how to get all the bits from the stallions she attended to.
Diamond was tired, dirty, again, sore and even wounded sorta; the more she walked on that poor foreleg the more she wanted to favor it, and just rest for a... while. She had grass breath from when she’d tried to eat on her way here, and she was pretty sure her mane would never be free of twigs again. But she was home! It was surreal that Diamond found herself just walking down the same streets she’d walked down most of her life, with ponies all around she recognized, but never knew, trotting to and fro like they didn’t have a care in the world. She saw a guard she—
Diamond zipped behind a barrel, staring around fearfully at the guard in the golden armor. There were guards here?! No, no, of course there were guards here. There were always guards here. Diamond just hadn’t really... paid attention to them before. She didn’t know until recently about the mysterious evil royal guard... thing, that Diamond was less sure of every day. Was there even one single royal guard who wasn’t rotten to the core? Diamond just didn’t know anymore.
It was so busy here there was plenty of cover traffic, and Diamond was the only one who seemed to give the guard any pause, so she steeled her nerves, and forced herself to trot along just like as if she belonged here. Ponies weren’t giving her strange glances, were they? She didn’t seem wearily out of place, in this happy village, did she? Diamond wasn’t taking any chances. She just made a beeline for her old house. That lavish mansion that she called home, before an ordinary average trip to Manehattan turned her whole life upside down.
Then, she walked around a pony’s legs, and then she just saw him. Diamond Tiara had the best luck of any filly in the whole wide world. She saw him, on one of his infrequent trips to the market, to talk with somepony or lean on them, to keep his business well stocked and cheap. His regular business, not the special thing that he and Diamond Tiara did. Diamond Tiara saw her daddy, Filthy Rich, a warm brown stallion with a dark mane and tail and blue eyes like hers, trotting there among the ponies, like he belonged there.
“Daddy!” Diamond shouted heedlessly, breaking from the crowd to run his way.
His head lifted and turned her way, eyes wide with shock. “Diamond Tiara?” he said, in a tone that sounded like he was hardly daring to hope.
“Daddy, it’s me!” Diamond shouted, hoping he recognized her under all this dirtiness!
“Diamond Tiara!” he shouted gladly, gallopping towards her too now.
“Daddy!” Diamond cried giddily, charging straight for him, becoming blinded by tears.
“Diamond!” he shouted, not caring that his other horseshoe just dropped off. Only caring about her. Because he was so glad to see her!
“Daddy, I’ve missed you so much!” Diamond declared to the stallion before her, beside herself with relief. She tried to hug him, but his whole upper body reared up in shock then, cringing away from her, shouting,
“Diamond Tiara, what have you done to yourself?!”
Diamond couldn’t answer, too busy scooting back in sudden terror from those big powerful forehooves of her daddy, just a hair’s breadth away from contact with her head. “Daddy?” she said faintly, not understanding his horrified expression, not comprehending the way he was looking at her.
“Is this what you’ve been doing all this time?” he said, in a rising note of horror.
“What do you mean, daddy?” Diamond said fearfully, backing up another step and seeking an answer from his accusing eyes.
“You...” he had difficulty even saying it. “You’re with foal!” he shouted, as if that were the most horrible thing in the world! And there were gasps from the crowd around her, too!
“I–I’m sorry daddy,” Diamond said in confusion, “But I couldn’t help it!”
“You couldn’t help it!” he declared in outrage, “After all I’ve done for you, you couldn’t help it!”
“What?” Diamond asked in utter astonishment.
Daddy seemed to sag as he looked down to her, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “You don’t even care, do you?” he said in a defeated tone. “When you ran away, so many months ago, I tried to hold out hope for you, that you wouldn’t let me, and yourself down. I thought I taught you better than this, Diamond Tiara. I thought you were different from the others. But I guess you can’t take the gutter out of the guttersnipe.”
“What?” Diamond repeated numbly, her butt down flat on the ground.
“You’ve had it so easy,” he told her in an aggrievated tone, “I’ve held your hoof your entire life, and you’ve done nothing but hurt me.” He looked down upon her solemnly, saying with regret in his voice, “I’m afraid I can’t get you out of this one, Diamond. Maybe it’s time you showed some personal responsibility, for once in your life.”
“I’m responsible!” Diamond said desperately, struggling to regain her hoofing with the ground tilting underneath her.
“Goodbye, Diamond Tiara,” he said with a grief stricken note of finality, turning and walking away from her.
“I’m responsible! What do you mean? Daddy, come back!” Diamond yelped, and as she stumbled forward to follow him, thoughtless in her fright, she saw daddy turn his head to the right, and mention some quiet words to a...
A royal guard.
Diamond stood splay legged, as the guard immediately walked up to her, blocking her off from daddy, who then continued to walk away. The guard was a clean white stallion in golden armor, with a blue tail, smartly trimmed, his mane hidden under his helmet.
“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” he said in a calm, soothing voice. “We need you to come down to the station, just to answer a few questions.”
Diamond Tiara ran for her life.
It’s nice to see things starting to look up for her! I’m sure everything will be smooth sailing from here.
...
...