“I have [i]nothing[/i] to wear,” said Diamond Tiara.

“That can’t possibly be true,” said her father. “Your clothing allowance is more than adequate.”

“Oh, Daddy, don’t you know anything? Clothes are worthless without the perfect accessories.”

Filthy Rich turned from his daughter’s vanity to her tiara room. “None of those are perfect?”

“All these tiaras have [i]big[/i] diamonds. Big diamonds are last season. Now it’s little diamonds, lots and lots of them. You don’t want the heiress to your fortune to be seen at the Hearth’s Warming Ball in an outdated ensemble, do you?”

“I want you to have something left to inherit. I’m sure there are some very nice things in there that haven’t been seen by all of Canterlot. Now please find one and put it on, or we’ll be late.”

Diamond Tiara sulked along the rows of crystal cabinets that held her favorite jewels--that is, her newest jewels. There were more, of course, stashed away in the back, locked up elsewhere in the house, but those were all old. She came at last to the back wall of the room, where her parents insisted on displaying a few true antiques. She stood regarding them with distaste until Filthy Rich rejoined her side.

“What about this one?” he asked. The stallion craned his neck and took down a silvery diadem. “It’s an heirloom. Your grandmother’s favorite.”

“What? That old thing? There aren’t even any diamonds on it.”

Rich’s voice was measured. “It’s rarer than diamonds, Diamond. Look. You won’t find this kind of craftsmareship anymore.”

Diamond looked. The circlet was made of polished steel, shaped into plumes, beveled and cut with hundreds of shining facets. It was in pristine condition, but it had the look and feel of an old thing. She had seen paintings of her grandmother wearing it. She didn’t like it at all.

“It’s ugly,” she said flatly. “I won’t wear it. You can’t make me.”

Her father’s face darkened. He returned the diadem to its place, then said, “I don’t care what you wear. We’re leaving now. You can come as you are or you can stay home.”

She went as she was, scandalously bare of brow, and spent the whole night wondering how he could be so unreasonable.


The next day, Diamond Tiara went glumly to her vanity to search for a morning tiara. As the doors to her jewel room swung open, she neighed sharply and her ears went flat. Something was missing. The space reserved for her grandmother’s diadem was empty. Diamond Tiara shrieked.

“I’ve been ROBBED! Help! Help me!”

Her maid, Rosehip, was at her side in seconds. “Miss, are you hurt?”

“Get my father!” Diamond Tiara snapped. The maid vanished, and soon a placid-looking Filthy Rich stood in her place at the door.

“Daddy,” said Diamond Tiara, “Call the authorities right now! Some filth--some scoundrel broke into my room and stole my things!”

“What things, Diamond?”

“My tiara! My heirloom tiara!”

“What? That old thing?” 

Diamond Tiara stared at him. 

“You don’t even like it,” he continued.

“But it’s mine!”

“Not anymore.”

“But...Why aren’t you calling the authorities?”

“No one broke into your room. You didn’t want that tiara, so I found a place for it elsewhere.”

“You did what? Why? That’s not fair!”

“I’m not sure you know the meaning of the word. Now, I suggest you stop wasting your time and mine. It’s past time you learned to appreciate the things you have. Don’t expect anything new until you can.”

“But that’s outrageous! How can you--how am I supposed to--Daddy, I’m not finished!”

But her father was down the hall and down the stairs while she stood there sputtering. 

With another shriek of indignation, Diamond Tiara flounced through the hallway in the opposite direction, right into her parents’ empty bedchamber. She tore apart the heavy brocade curtains that covered the master vault. She entered the combination. [i]Four bit signs. Really, Daddy.[/i]

But the old tiara wasn’t in the master vault. It wasn’t in the mistress vault, or any of the other vaults she wasn’t supposed to know about. She searched the cellar and the attic and the wing of the manor labelled “Rich History.” The thing was nowhere to be found.

Finally back in her rooms, shaking from all this undue exertion, Diamond Tiara felt her rage gathering. Her face in the mirror was pale, her mane in awful disarray, and she had no tiara. What use were all these things if she couldn’t have exactly what she wanted right [i]now[/i]?

She felt mocked by the winking of those jewels. How dare they demand her satisfaction? How dare anyone ask her to live without constantly reaching for more? For better? Yesterday’s diamonds were yesterday’s Diamond’s.

Light struck her eyes, and she looked from her reflection to the ponnequin head that displayed last year’s birthday tiara. Her gift from last year’s Daddy. It was white gold, with diamonds that flashed pink by candlelight, and she had favored him with a genuine smile when he’d placed it on her head. Since then, it had survived her whims long enough to hold its pride of place.

Looking at it now filled her with pain. She didn’t want to think about that, so she turned back to her anger. Daddy was mocking her, and all his diamonds too, and even the mirror was casting its ugly reflection back at her. She grabbed the tiara and hurled it into the glass, not sure who she meant as she shouted, “I HATE YOU!”

Rosehip materialized again at the sound of shattering glass. Filthy Rich arrived a moment later, with Diamond Tiara’s mother, Spoiled Rich, trailing behind. Spoiled took one look at the mess, rolled her eyes, and slid her gaze past her daughter as if she wasn’t there.

“You’d better get this spotless,” she said in Rosehip’s general direction, and then she was gone. Filthy Rich boomed into the silence that followed.

“DIAMOND. DAZZLE. TIARA. What in Tartarus have you done?”

The filly stood shaking in front of the mirror’s remains. She stared back with no answer, her eyes still blazing.

“What happened here? ANSWER ME!”

“DON’T YELL AT ME!” she yelled, but the fire faltered.

“Young filly, I have had ENOUGH! Things are going to change around here, or you are going to start facing some serious consequences! This behavior is OUTRAGEOUS…”

He continued, but Diamond Tiara did her best not to hear. How could this be happening? Didn’t her father love her anymore?

She felt lightheaded. Her breathing was quick and shallow. When he didn’t stop yelling, she decided to hold her breath. That used to work, didn’t it? It seemed to be getting quieter, anyway. And the light of her jewels was so dazzling. They spun all around her like stars as she fell unconscious. 

[hr]

Diamond Tiara woke up on cold ground. A ragged, roughspun blanket was the only thing that separated her from the night sky. Outside. Alone.

She shook off the blanket and stood, turning, trying to find her bearings. Nothing was familiar.

“Randolph!” she called. Randolph did not appear.

“Rosehip!” No Rosehip.

“Daddy…?”

Daddy wasn’t here. 

What was here? Darkness, mostly. But not just that. A full moon hung above, gradually illumining the night and her surroundings. Illumination made them no less strange.

She might have been in a castle garden. There were arches and trellises, pathways and terraces winding in every direction. But instead of flowers and manicured hedges, this garden was full of...junk. Old junk, everywhere, most of it broken or falling apart.

The only other feature of note was a large hill in the distance, with a pair of dark spires beyond. Diamond Tiara could scarcely stand the thought of venturing out in this place. But if she had any hope of finding civilization, surely it must lay in the direction of the biggest thing she could see.

So she chose what seemed a likely path, making her way between towers of tin pails and islands of armchairs, trying not to touch anything. She came to an open gate that was flanked by a pair of unicorn guards. She started to hail them, then realized they were only plaster. Unsettled, she took a moment to pass between them. Then something flashed brightly in the corners of her eyes.

Diamond Tiara knew gold when she saw it.

She backed up out of the gate, looking at the unicorn figures again. The moon was hiding behind a cloud. Empty white eyes looked back out of dull white armor. Shivering, she passed between them again and didn’t look back.

At last the crowded rows of junk thinned out, like trees on the edge of a wood. Diamond Tiara reached a place where they gave way to an open valley. Across that valley was the hill--no, mountain--that she had seen before. In between, in the valley, was a very small house. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to climb the mountain after all.

The filly trotted down the hillside, but grew dejected when the place drew near. There was no house. It was just a burned-out shell, a foundation really. The only thing standing was the stone chimney with its stone mantel. Diamond Tiara reluctantly approached what used to be the front door. There, at her hooves, she found a brass locket lying open.

Her predicament was briefly forgotten. Diamond Tiara had a fascination with the sorts of things ponies chose to carry in their lockets. This one, though, appeared to hold nothing at all when she knelt to examine it. She could see a scrap of streaked and sunbleached paper, but no pictures. She began to draw back when the moon came out and struck the open locket. 

Suddenly there was a picture. A photograph: a grey mare, a blue stallion, and a tiny red-maned foal. Diamond Tiara’s eyes went wide as she studied it closely. [i]Who are they? Why do I feel I should know them?[/i]

She didn’t know, and not knowing frustrated her, so she moved on and left the locket behind. As she passed by the fireplace she noticed a clock on the mantel, dulled by soot and frozen in time until her eyes set on it. In that instant the hands ticked over, and the midnight bells shattered the silence of the world. Diamond Tiara might have jumped out of her skin, but in that same instant the music started to play. 

It was a waltz, she thought. The kind her parents used to play at their grown-up parties for their grown-up guests. Only this seemed older still, like a waltz that had mellowed in retirement. It was warm and honey-sweet and somehow just a little sad. The filly listened with the same sense of familiarity that had accompanied her examination of the locket, but there was no room here for her frustration. When the music stopped, she stood in the ruined house a little longer, looking up at the moon.

“What is this? Why am I here?”

No answer but the light on the path ahead, and so she followed it.

She had no idea how long she kept walking. It seemed like it should be sunrise by now. Instead, as the mountain grew larger and larger, the sky around it darkened more and more. Diamond Tiara felt cold and tired, unused to either. She no longer looked up, but trained her eyes on the path in front of her hooves. Soon she was barely minding that, until a clang and a clatter brought her back around. 

It was an old-fashioned steel tiara she’d kicked along the road. Feeling almost apologetic, she bent to pick it up, then looked ahead, then dropped it. She had reached the foot of the mountain. It was made of broken crowns.

Diamond Tiara laughed harshly. “Oh, good one, Daddy! I get it! You can come out now.”

Silence. She looked around, but no one came strutting out from behind a curtain or under a pile of junk. She climbed a little way up and called again. “Come out! Where are we, anyway?”

There was no answer, but now she could see to the top of this thing. There was someone up there, wasn’t there? Just a shadow, but it moved. 

“Wait!” called Diamond Tiara. “Please wait there.” She scrambled as well as she could up the pile of scrapped circlets and jagged crowns. They slipped and slid beneath her, and her hooves hurt, but the shadow stayed. By the time the filly reached the summit, she was ready to fall to her knees.

She didn’t know what she expected to see, but somehow the Princess of Dreams never crossed her mind. Yet there she stood, still and solemn, with her midnight mane flowing into the stars.

“Your--Your Hi-hi-high...P-P-Princess Luna!” 

“Diamond Tiara.”

She had never heard her name in such a gentle voice before. It made her want to be on her best behavior.

“What brings you to my realm?” asked the Princess.

“Yours? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“No? It is rare to find this place by accident.”

“Princess, if I may...What is this place?”

“One of my projects,” said the alicorn, and Diamond Tiara wondered if she had smiled.

“This,” Luna went on, “Is a home for broken things. For vanished things, lost to time or fate. I collect them and keep them safe.”

“Why?”

“Because they live in memories and dreams. Some things are special. They mean something to someone, even when they break and fade away. As long as there is a place in dreams for the things in my garden, I will keep their places here. So those who cherished them can always keep their memories.”

“But why is it all so old? Who wants to think about old stuff?”

Now she was sure the Princess smiled. 

“You see the degradations of time, not the value of the memories, because you see the things for how they appear and not what they’ve meant to others. Things that have no meaning are forgotten, lost forever, though they start out bright and new. They are only things. But preserve the essence, the [i]meaning[/i] of a thing, and you can always summon its true form. You must have caught a glimpse of that or two, in the moonlight.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Diamond Tiara.

“But you are looking for something. Something important. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“If it is here, you should be able to find it easily.” 

Diamond Tiara looked around at the discarded crowns and broken diadems, but there were so many, and they were all starting to look the same. 

“It will help to think of a memory you associate with the thing,” said Luna. “Something that makes it special.”

“I...I can’t think of any.”

“Why is this object important to you, Diamond Tiara?”

“Because it’s mine!”

Luna frowned. “So you do not wish to find it because you love it,” she said slowly, “But rather--you love it because you possess it?”

“How else can I love something?” asked Diamond Tiara. 

The Princess was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, “No thing lasts forever, little pony. The world is always fading and unraveling. The things you thought belonged to you will slip away and you will watch them go, and if you watch long enough they will turn to dust before your eyes. You must learn to love them when they’re gone, or you will lose them forever.”

“I’ll try, I guess, but I still don’t get it. What does this have to do with getting my tiara back?”

“Perhaps nothing at all,” said Luna. “If it is not here, it is not lost. But it may no longer belong to you.” 

Now it was the alicorn who knelt before the foal. “Diamond,” she said, in that same velvet voice. “You are so full of pain, but it need not grow to consume you. You are beloved by those who would do anything to keep you from suffering. If you can take their words to heart, perhaps there will not always be such pain.”

Tears swam in Diamond Tiara’s eyes as she looked back at Luna, speechless. The Princess gently kissed her brow. “Wear that star a while, little one. Now I shall take thee home again.”

Filly and alicorn descended side by side. Once, Diamond Tiara looked back, long enough to see a pale sapphire glow near the top, amid the jumble of crowns and coronets. “What’s that?”

“A broken thing,” said Luna, but her eyes lingered on it for a moment. “Come, now.”

[hr]

It was still full dark when Diamond Tiara woke in her own bed, in her clean room. No trace remained of the wreck of her vanity. All the lamps were out, but the door to her chamber was open. So was the one across the hall, where Rosehip slept. From that apartment shone a brilliant cluster of light. Diamond rose to take a closer look. 

Rosehip’s apartment could fit inside Diamond Tiara’s tiara room. A wooden chair was backed against the room’s only window, and it was here that Rosehip sat sleeping. And cradled in her lap, to Diamond Tiara’s astonishment, was a crown that shone with the white fire of hundreds of diamonds.

Overcome by greed, the filly closed in, reaching for the treasure that rested beneath her maidservant’s hands. Moonlight flared into the window, scattering its fire, and Diamond saw the thing for what it was.

The diamonds were not diamonds, but the perfectly cut facets of her grandmother’s tiara.

Her greed fled in the face of a different, distinctly unpleasant sensation. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it might be shame.

The light was falling over Rosehip’s face now. It occurred to Diamond Tiara that the mare must be close to her own mother’s age. She had a youthful face, but there were dark circles under her eyes, and her hooves were cracked and worn from hard work. Though she never said so, Diamond Tiara knew Rosehip was very pretty. Her coat was a mousy taupe that Diamond associated with new house interiors, but her eyes were blue like her father, Randolph’s, and her mane was a lovely dusky red, like...Like the baby in the photograph in Luna’s realm.

Randolph and Rosehip had been with her family for decades. For the first time, Diamond Tiara wondered about their lives before they came here. The moon had moved on, and she was suddenly loath to wake the sleeping mare, so she crept back to her bed and a dreamless sleep.


Rosehip was dusting the furniture when Diamond Tiara woke. The filly threw off her covers and leveled her gaze at the mare.

“Rosehip,” she said. “Did my father give you that old tiara of my grandmother’s?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Go put it on, please.”

“Miss?”

“Please put it on. I want to see it.”

“As you like,” said Rosehip. She emerged from her room a moment later, the diadem resting atop the red wave of her mane, and shifted her eyes awkwardly. At last she said, “Do you want this back, Miss?”

Instead of answering, Diamond asked, “Do you like it?”

Rosehip’s blush was near the color of her mane. “It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Diamond picked up a parcel in her mouth to keep from saying anything more. She set the flocked grey box down in front of the earth pony maid.

“What’s this?” asked Rosehip. 

“For you. Do open it, Rose.”

Within were a necklace, a pair of earrings, a brooch and two cuffs, all cut from shining steel in the same style as the diadem. 

“Why, Miss,” breathed Rosehip, “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to. Just wear them!”

“All at the same time?” 

Diamond Tiara swallowed the sarcastic reply that flew at her lips. When it had gone, she found a fondness for the earth mare’s simple sincerity.

“It’s called a parure,” she explained. “They’re meant to go together, if you want. Depending on the occasion you can wear them all at once, or separately. Then it’s called a demi parure.”

Still wearing her new tiara, Rosehip pursed her lips and made a funny face. “Demi-pa[i]rure[/i]!” she said with an exaggerated accent. Diamond Tiara giggled, and Rosehip smiled.

“Thank you for the gift, Miss Diamond,” she said. “Do you feel...better today?”

“I’m not sure how I feel,” Diamond said quietly.

“Your father was very worried.”

“He was? What about my mother?”

“Missus Rich doesn’t really speak to me.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

“Miss?”

“What, Rosehip?”

“I know you were angry. What I don’t understand is, why did you throw [i]your[/i] favorite tiara?”

Diamond could feel that strange feeling from last night returning. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted to--punish someone. Bad enough I didn’t care if it hurt me too. Or like maybe it would be better if I did.”

“You could have really been hurt, you know. Take this from me, little Diamond--there’s hurt enough in this life without you having to do it yourself.”

Diamond Tiara felt her face burning. She glanced at Rosehip’s hooves, wondering if any of those scratches came from broken glass, then looked away quickly.

“I’m sorry, Rosehip,” she said.

Rosehip paused. Blinked. “Well. Thank you, Miss Diamond. I accept your apology. As long as you’re in the mood, you might think about apologizing to your parents too.”

“Even my mother?”

“You only get one mother, child. I know maybe you think you got the wrong one. But you still have a choice today. Someday you won’t anymore. So if you ever plan to try--today’s the day. And if you can’t do it for her, do it for you.”

“I...I’ll try.”

“That’s all we can do, little Diamond.”

“Thank you, Miss Rosehip. I think I’ll go now.” 

Rosehip watched her go, wearing a look of plain wonder. After a while she shook her head, straightened her new tiara, and got back to work.