“I hope today’s meeting goes better than the last,” Marian muttered, standing up straight and setting all four hooves firmly. Neck high, back firm, she craned her neck back and forth to look at herself in the mirror.
 
Her mane sat in a loose bun, with only a few carefully placed tendrils escaping the fringe to lay artfully against her cheek or tuck around an ear. Her glasses were balanced just right, and the tweaking she had ordered on the holding spell kept them just right for both reading or walking. And proper. Never forget how proper it looks for a librarian to have glasses.
 
That, she had found out, was one of the smaller lessons she had learned from her internship supervisor.
 
“Ponies expect a certain look from a librarian, you see. If you can meet that look, then they will see you as a librarian and pay that much more attention when otherwise they would wander. Or they may just wander.”
 
And that was the very thing she needed to project. Well, not that last bit.
 
A quick turn to check her tail, normally coiled had been left free the night before, and its normal coil was a smooth curl instead. A slight twitch to her collar, just slightly off center, and she was ready.
 
It wouldn’t do to show up to such an important meeting looking as if she had just fallen out of bed, after all, but too much care into her appearance would make it seem as though she were looking down at them.
 
Such a touchy lot, her fellow townsponies, but they were hers, though many would argue the opposite: that she was theirs and had just come home. Except, possibly, her sister.
 
But this was her home. It was. Whatever her sister seemed to think.
 
As she stepped out into the mid-morning sunlight, the flood of sights, sounds, and scents came rushing in, bringing with them a flood of memories that drowned out the bitter ball of old regrets clinging to thoughts of Grace.
 
And a sweeter smell than most of Manehattan. She smiled into the dry breeze, already promising to be far hotter than any Manehattanite would have found tolerable, much less pleasant, and set off towards the town hall looming in the distance.
 
“Good morning, Mrs. Cheer! How are you?” she called to an older mare, her gray-streaked mane pulled back in a bun far more severe than Marian’s. A small herd of fillies and colts trailed behind her, all heading in the same direction as Marian.
 
“Fine, Marian. Fine and Dandy!” She laughed, the sound warm and rich as her dark pink coat. “Just takin’ the kiddos to the town hall to watch. You’re giving your proposal today, aren’t you?”
 
“Oh, no Mrs. Cheer. That was three days ago. This is a followup meeting. I’m sorry, if I’d known your children were interested, I would have—”
 
“Nonsense. And stop calling me a Missus. You’re not my student anymore, Marian, and I’d take it as a favor to have you call me Dandy.”
 
“Yes, Dandy.” That she was so easily able to change her naming of Mrs. Dandy Cheer was another sign of how much she had changed in the years since leaving. It hurt somewhere she didn’t think she had the words to describe.
 
So many things had hurt the same way when she had arrived a week ago that the ache seemed omnipresent in her mind.
 
“You can’t ever go home,” she whispered as Mrs. Cheer—Dandy—turned back to hustle some strays back into the group. She wasn’t certain what it was she had expected on coming home.
 
“You look like you’ve bitten into a crabapple. What’s got your tail in a knot?”
 
“Coming home.” Marian offered a smile to the other mare, then at the small gaggle of foals following in their wake. “It’s not easy.”
 
“I imagine so, ‘specially seein’ your old teacher with so much gray in her mane.” Dandy laughed again. The laugh hadn’t changed, and it was still as, well, full of Cheer as ever. “That’s better. I like that smile. Keep it.”
 
Marian laughed with her, feeling just a little lighter of heart, and a little more hopeful. Dandy had, and had not, changed in her time away. There were still pieces of what she remembered from her childhood here and there.
 
Maybe she wouldn’t have to worry so much.
 
But then she caught sight of the small restaurant where she had had her first date, her first kiss. It was still there, too, along with the memory of her first breakup, and she felt her mirth fall away. That breakup had started so much of the bitterness coating her memories.
 
“I’m sorry, Grace.”
 
She sighed, shrugged her shoulder once to assure herself the hefty sheaf of papers she had brought was still there in her saddlebag, and plodded on.
 

---

 
“The council is still in session, Ms. Marian. Please be seated.”
 
That was the last she had heard for the last half hour. Dandy and her students had been ushered in, the teacher tossing a concerned smile over her shoulder.
 
And then all she had seen were the odd pony coming to and fro up and down the hallway, too absorbed in their own task to give her a second glance. Most of them, anyway. One stallion stopped on rounding the corner to stare at her.
 
She had gotten used to the stray stallion staring at her in Manehattan, though most ignored her as much as they did everypony else. But the gawkers gawked, out-of-towners perhaps mistakenly thinking she belonged, and she’d dealt with her fair share of leers, whistles, and glares.
 
To see it at home, though…
 
She cringed inwardly, but kept her face carefully composed and even offered a faint smile. She didn’t recognize his face or cutie mark, but he smiled back, then continued on.
 
Maybe it wasn’t a stare. It might have only been curiosity at seeing a new face.
 
Maybe and might have. She scoffed at herself, built over years of learned caution; an unwary smile in the city might have meant an unwelcome nudge or worse.
 
The town hasn’t changed that much. I need to stop thinking like a city pony. Even as much as it had grown, it still held onto that heart of the country that meant a new face was a curiosity, even if it wasn’t quite a novelty. That was more evident in the city hall than elsewhere, as crude drawings and carelessly lettered papers from the schoolhouse fairly wallpapered the hallway she sat in.
 
Well, they would have been crude and careless in Manehattan’s austere marble-halled council chambers. Here, they made her feel like city hall was a large home, and everypony welcome inside.
 
Home. She smiled, feeling some of the bittersweet feeling flake away.
 
“The council is ready to see you, Ms. Mare,” said a young mare, sticking her head just far enough outside the chambers to see her. “If you’ll come in, I’ll be happy to seat you.”
 
“Thank you, but it’s just Marian.”
 
“Yes, ma’am.” The young mare backed away and held open the door for her as Marian walked with as much calm as she could muster and scanned the council circle swiftly.
 
The center seat, the mayor’s, was empty.
 
“This way, please,” the mare said, flicking her tail to touch Marian’s foreleg. “The council is at recess, but will be returning soon.”
 
The mayor is at recess. The sour bite to the thought surprised her, and she shoved it away, but her one-time friend’s scowl was the cause of at least half of her nerves, and she had tried to avoid thinking on it as much as she could.
 
Only, now that she was ready to face it, the fool mare was doing this to spite her.
 
That wasn’t why she was there, either, and she shoved it aside as she came to the front of the long row of benches filled with students looking bored out of their skulls, and Mrs.—Dandy! Get that through your skull, foal—Dandy beamed a smile at her from the front row.
 
Marian barely had a chance to settle herself on the comfortable seating cushion when the constable at the polished door to the side straightened.
 
“All rise for the honorable Mayor Mare Grace.”
 
Following on the heels of the officious bellow came Marian’s sister, the mayor of Dodge Junction.
 
Almost alike in coloring, Grace’s coat was a darker shade of pink, and her mane a shade of paler gold bordering on white. She wore her hair in a tight bun as Marian did, but where Marian’s held the artful escapee, Grace’s mane was as tightly regimented and carefully coiffed as any military brigade, and the black robe made her shorter stature seem as though she were a grim specter than a proper seeming official.
 
Did she have to dress like she was sitting at trial? At my trial? Even if…
 
She was certain none of the roiling cacophony of emotion in her head reached her face, but she forced the errant thoughts aside again all the same, and willed her mind to calm. It wouldn’t do to let that mess color what she hoped would pass the council in spite of her sibling’s objections.
 
“You may be seated,” Mayor Grace said, her eyes seeming to skip over Marian as she swept her gaze over the room. “Today, we are to hear from Mare Marian about her proposal for a library. Before we begin, I would like to remind everypony that we do have schoolchildren present, and to keep any discussion to a reasonable and amicable level.”
 
It was all Marian could do to keep from letting the bristling anger show in her ears. First, the bare stress on the familial name, and then the pointed barb at keeping her cool when it had been…
 
When it had been me. Calm, Marian.
 
“Thank you, your honor. If I may, I have brought the prospectus and benefits study in multiplicate, as promised.” Such a thing would have hardly been necessary for her to do herself, but Grace had refused her the services of the council scriveners, and she had spent the last three days meticulously copying each one by hoof.
 
“You may.”
 
Minutes passed while Marian passed them out on her own, her anger growing moment by moment at each nearly apologetic glance from a council member. But only nearly.
 
“If you will turn to page four, we can begin where the meeting left off.” She almost expected Grace to ask her to turn the pages, too, but a rustle of papers shuffling followed.
 
Down to business, then.
 
 
 
“Ms. Marian,” Councilmare Desert said slowly, “It seems as though you have your rocks all in a row, and while I would agree with much of what you’ve put forth, I must stand with Mayor Grace. The expense does not seem to match the benefit.”
 
“If the Councilmare will turn to page seventeen, I’ve outlined the longer term benefits, as well.” As I said ten minutes ago! “The cost of operating the library would be more than offset by the benefit of long term opportunities for the community. I assure you that I am more than capable of maintaining the library and all of its books and facilities… with some help from the city, of course. That is outlined on page twenty.”
 
“Of course,” Grace drawled, cutting in over Councilmare Desert’s response. “Every little jot and tittle taken care of. Just like Marian.”
 
Marian flushed, quivering, and clenched her jaw tightly shut over the words that wanted to come out. Mastering those words was an effort of will, as had the last hour spent meticulously detailing every item in her proposal. Grace’s questions had been pointed, direct, and worse than her thesis defense—in terms of willpower expended, if not actual difficulty.
 
“Your honor graces me with her praise,” she managed in as cool and even a voice as she could manage. “My thesis was the study of the benefits of a library to a small town. The test study was Ponyville—”
 
“I hear they are still seeking a librarian,” Mayor Grace mused idly.
 
“—and the benefits it gained over a town such as Honey Mead Hill are pronounced.” She couldn’t help herself from adding: “As I have explained.”
 
“And you have done a fine job,” Councilstallion Quartzite said in what might have been a warm tone, if the frosty glare he leveled on the mayor hadn’t touched his voice as well. “I would ask your patience, again, for a short time while we deliberate.”
 
“Of course. Thank you for your time.” Marian bowed her head, trying to ignore the worried look Dandy shot her way, and the way she felt Grace’s gaze following her out.
 

---

 
“Deadlocked.” Marian glowered down at the pitcher of honeyed, iced tea gathering moisture in the blazing afternoon. “Four for, and four against, with the mayor abstaining for personal bias.” She barked a laugh. “Personal.”
 
Dandy, sitting across from her and nursing a smaller glass of tea, gave her what Marian imagined she thought was an encouraging smile. “She did abstain, though. Given your… history—” Dandy smiled again. “It would hardly have been fair, or legal, for her to cast a vote.”
 
“Why did I come back, Dandy? When it hurts so much?”
 
“Home, child. You said as much. This is home, for you, no matter how long you’ve been away. Maybe you could have left in better circumstances, but that’s what life is about. You make mistakes, learn from them, and aim higher next time.”
 
Marian shook her head and ducked to sip at the curving metal straw sprouting from the side. Nopony made tea like Dandy Cheer, and it never failed to make her feel a little better. Oh, it came close this time, but just the taste of the tea was enough to bring back memories of her and Grace in happier times, when they had been close.
 
Before that young colt, Stickle, had come through and stolen both of their hearts, one at a time, and crushed them.
 
She could almost see him again, all lanky muscle with a smile that could melt hearts at a hundred paces.
 
“Curse him, and that smile,” she muttered around the metal straw.
 
“Ah. Stickle Burr.” Dandy reached a hoof over the table and rapped it, hard, against Marian’s muzzle.
 
She took the blow as her due and sighed. “That’s about eight years too late, but well deserved.”
 
“Stick him out of your mind. He’s gone, and mores the better for it. You had the right of him, y’know. I don’t blame you… well, I suppose I do. A little. You handled your sister poorly, girl. Is it any wonder she holds a grudge?”
 
Marian grunted and sucked down more tea to offset the ache. A moment later, she shook her head.
 
“Of course not. I’d hate you, too, if you did that to me without knowin’ the why.” Dandy smiled again, but it seemed fragile, somehow. “Did you ever tell her?”
 
“I tried to tell her, but you know her. She won’t listen until she sees something right in front of her.” Marian snorted.
 
“And you figured you’d show her, hmm?”
 
“It was stupid, and I hated myself for it for years. But she held onto it, why? Why does she still—” Marian cut herself off and deliberately stuck her lips on the straw again, ending a desire to make herself appear more idiotic.
 
“You had a choice in what you did, she did not.” For a moment, Dandy’s smile turned into a frown, then her smile came back, firmed, and she sipped at her tea again, rocking slowly back and forth on her hind legs. “I remember you two used to love each other as much as two sisters could. Shame that a lousy stallion like Stickle Burr could come between the two of you.”
 
“If I could take it back…” She shook her head. “I still wouldn’t. He was cheating on me with at least one mare on the sly, and Celestia knows he would have tried for more. Or maybe he was! He would have broken her heart inside a year.”
 
“So you broke it for her.” Dandy’s smile faded, then came back at her over the rim of her glass. “We all do foolish things, Marian, time and time again. The important thing is that you learn from them and try to mend things when you can.”
 
“I tried to, once, but the letter got returned in two days, unopened.”
 
“A letter? Marian…” Dandy sighed, shaking her head. “I had such high hopes when you asked me for that first book, then another and another. You have no idea how proud I was when you went off to Manehattan to learn all about being a librarian.”
 
“And now I’ve ruined them.”
 
“Hogwash. You exceeded them. So what if you made a mistake, that doesn’t change all that you’ve grown up. We all make mistakes. You’d hardly be a pony if you were perfect. But… you do need to make amends with your sister. You were in the wrong, even if your heart was in the right place. Your parents would say it, were they in town, so I will.” She chortled softly to herself. “Did, I suppose.”
 
“They never knew Grace and I had a falling out, save that I didn’t come home.” Marian took another long pull of tea, peered into the pitcher and sighed. Another pitcher would be nice. “I could spare them that, at least.”
 
Dandy smiled as though she had heard Marian’s not quite thought. “More soon, dear. Do you know what you’d like to say?”
 
“No. How do I tell her that I was trying to save her the heartache? Can I? Will she listen?”
 
“Of course she will. She’s still family, and I don’t know how that works in Manehattan, but family still means something around here.” Grace wavered a hoof, then added: “If you say the right thing.”
 
No pressure. “I need to think. I can’t just… You’re right, of course. You always were.”
 
“That’s silly talk. I’m no more right than you are, most of the time. No more right than Grace. I should tell you about my romantic mishaps when I was your age. They’d curl your tail to hear the half!”
 
In spite of her mood, Marian laughed. “I would so love to hear them. Maybe I can learn from you again.” She pulled experimentally on the straw again as she tipped the pitcher.
 
“Hah! No you wouldn’t! Except, maybe, ‘Don’t do what Leery Cheery did!’”
 
Marian choked, halfway between laugh and swallow. “Leery Cheery? Oh, I have got to hear that.”
 

---

 
“Just say the right thing.” That wasn’t so hard, really. Not at all. Except it was, and she seemed to be going around in circles on what she should say. And literally going around in circles in front of the wide, stable-inspired home Grace lived in as mayor.
 
“Grace, I’m sorry I kissed Stickle in front of—” No. She snorted, lashing her tail at the stupid line.
 
“Grace, Stickle was cheating on me. I know he was cheating on you, too.” That was no better. She stamped on a half-buried cobblestone and sat down hard, rolling her hoof back and forth over the smooth surface.
 
“Grace, I love you. You’re my sister, and…” And I intentionally hurt you.
 
“I could always leave. Ponyville is looking for a librarian, and I would have stayed longer if I could have. Such a nice town.” But it wasn’t home. “Not yet, but I could make it a home.”
 
And all she would have to do was disappoint Dandy, abandon her family, and let her sister always think the worst of her.
 
“Grace… I was wrong.”
 
And I have to do the right thing. She lifted a hoof to knock at the door.
 
I was wrong.
 
 
 
What if she doesn’t want to see me? Marian continued pacing, waiting for the return of the majordomo, whom had been back twice to talk to her and relay messages. The last, ‘Tell her… I was wrong,’ had been nearly half an hour ago.
 
She paused to look up at the moon starting to rise over the distant mesas to the east, felt the eye of the Mare in the Moon on her, and offered up a silent prayer against the darkness.

Behind her the door opened, and the majordomo, a stocky stallion with more gray in his mane than not, and a silver platter for a cutie mark, stepped out. “The mayor will see you now.”
 
“Thank you.” Marian stepped passed him, and turned when he didn’t follow. “Are you leaving? I thought a majordomo, well, I thought you almost lived here.”
 
His eye twitched, but his face remained otherwise impassive. “She has asked that this meeting be private. Completely private. Good night.”
 
With that, the door closed, and Marian was left in the dimly lit entryway, staring at a portrait of her sister, smiling as she sat behind a plainly carved desk clean of papers.
 
The dim lighting made the portrait seem to loom in the narrow, short corridor.
 
“Grace?” Her voice drifted down the hallway, only echoed back faintly along with her hooves’ light clumping on the solid wood floor. The house was a straight line, not unlike many stable-houses so popular in the east, with rooms branching off the central corridor. Other portraits, of other mayors, she presumed, sat here and there in between the doorways, with more empty places where future mayors would find their portraits.
 
“Office,” came her sister’s voice, cold and hard, drifting down from near the end of the long hall.
 
She was seated behind a well lit desk, papers scattered across the width of it in a carefully organized mess. Paperweights sat on most, and others were held down by what appeared to be the remains of a dinner.
 
“Ms. Mare,” Grace said, voice as chill as her eyes were hot. “Imagine my surprise when you showed up here, seeking an audience. Imagine my further surprise when your last message said ‘I’m wrong.’ This is not the place to discuss city business. My office hours are—”
 
“I’m not here on city business,” Marian snapped, her own voice crisp enough to crack. “Not business at all,” she added in a softer tone. “Grace—” The look she got could have, should have, set the floor on fire around her.
 
“Grace. You think you can just waltz in here from the city and dictate what’s best for us? For—” She snapped off the rest with a click of her teeth. “How dare you, Marian. You always were a city pony, through and through. Even when we were younger, you acted as though you were too good for this town, my home.” Grace stood, slamming a hoof down amid the papers. “My home! My life!”
 
“Grace, I was wrong to—”
 
“Oh, you bet your ass you were wrong.”
 
“Yes, I was. Am.”
 
Grace stared at her over the table, glared fire and hate and pain at her. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you stay in Manehattan, where you belong?”
 
Pain? Of course pain. You were the one who tore out her heart. “I don’t belong there. This is my home.” Marian waved a hoof at the wall behind her. “And you’re my—”
 
“Don’t you dare say it. You abandoned—” Grace’s jaw worked, teeth grinding. “Us. You abandoned us. Mom and dad didn’t know. I didn’t know how to tell them that my coltfriend was cheating on me with my sister. And the worst part? Do you know what the worst part was?”
 
Marian shook her head.
 
“The worst part is you were right. You selfish, self-righteous… I hated you. I hated that you were right about him. Why? Why did you try to tell me like that? Why?” Tears shimmered in Grace’s eyes, but she stared straight at Marian, only a quiver of her lower lip giving any sign of her rigid control.
 
“You.” Marian stared at her sister, feeling the truth as though Grace had whispered it in her ear. “I abandoned you. After I hurt you so badly. You knew? That he was cheating?” She hadn’t seen it, hadn’t suspected that Grace had known.
 
“I’m not blind,” Grace murmured, lifting a foreleg to brush at her cheeks. The heated edge was still there, and her posture spoke of anger still, but it cooled as she let out a breath. “He left me, Marian, but after I caught him in a barn with some hussy from Canterlot.”
 
“I’m so sorry, Grace. If there was some other way to tell you, and make you see…” Another way to break your heart for you. She swallowed the words, but didn’t look away. It was too late, and the talk far too long overdue.
 
“That wasn’t the worst part.” Grace stepped around the desk to jab a hoof at Marian’s chest. “The worst part was that you took my best friend away when I needed her the most. You left me, Marian. I needed you, and you left!”
 
A grandfather clock in another room chimed the hour into the silence that followed.
 
“I’m so sorry.” It felt like a paltry thing to say, and the words felt like sand coming off her tongue. “I didn’t mean to hurt you so badly. I only thought to save you the heartache that he—” She stopped, jerking her eyes away from the hurt she saw in Grace’s eyes. It was an excuse, and Grace didn’t need excuses, nor did she want them. “I’m sorry.”
 
“I missed my big sister, when she left,” Grace said quietly, turning away again. “I didn’t understand why she did what she did, and I wanted to hate her, tried to hate her for what she did to me.”
 
Grace pulled out a sturdy bottle of golden liquid from a lower drawer, along with one glass. The smell of apples and alcohol filled the small office in moments, and Grace settled back down behind her desk, the small glass held in the crook of one foreleg.
 
“I couldn’t hate her. Not after the truth came out. I hated you, but not her. She had always been there for me when we were little, tending my scrapes and making me laugh with the stories she told me. She taught me to love to read, and taught me about being a mare.” She took a sip from the glass, held it in her mouth, and swallowed after a long moment. “She was almost more a mother than mother, always off on business with father.” She snorted.
 
“I’m still your sister, and I still love you.”
 
“Are you?” Grace didn’t look at her, both eyes focused on the glass in her hoof. “You tried to send me a letter once, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it. I had to hear it from her lips, not on some page. My sister would have understood that. She would have come back.”
 
“She hated herself for a long time.” Marian took a hesitant step up to the desk, then another when Grace only glanced at her. “She thought she had destroyed a sisterhood, but thought she had done the right thing, to save her little sister from discovering a hard truth without…” It sounded stupid, when she started to say it. “She made a terrible mistake, and she ran from it. She never should have stuck her nose in her little sister’s business.”
 
“No, she shouldn’t have, but I missed her all the same.” Grace set the glass on the table and slid it across to Marian. “Why did you never come back in eight years?”
 
“I was…” Marian pushed aside the lie that she was too busy. There had been more than enough chances to escape for a weekend, a week even. She hid the pause in a sniff of the glass, a smile touching her lips at the smooth aroma. “I missed this. You can’t find apple brandy like this in Manehattan.”
 
“Appleoosan. Their first press just came out of the barrels a few weeks ago.” Another glass thumped to the desk, and she made another measured pour of two shoes. “It’s very good.”
 
“I was afraid,” Marian said softly.
 
Grace nodded once and took a sip from the freshly poured glass.
 
“I thought you would hate me if I came back. For a couple of years, I thought that, and I was terrified of… this.” Marian waved the glass between them. “After a while… it just became a habit to come up with some excuse to not go home. One time, I decided that I needed to wash my mane instead of buy a ticket home.” She laughed, the sound bitter to her own ears.
 
“You always did have a thing about keeping your mane just so. All the better to accentuate your height. Celestia, how I envied you for that.” Grace lifted a hoof to touch the not-so-severe bun behind her ears. “I tried to emulate you for so long, but I never could manage the fine work like you could. I thought you kept it up because you wanted to be a city pony. I thought you had left us to live your life in the city, and never mind your family.” She took a short sip of her brandy. “I hated you more for that than anything else.”
 
Marian winced, sniffed again at the glass and took a long sip as the silence hung between them—brittle, but no longer heated. “Did you know that I never really fit in? City ponies, real city ponies living their day to day lives, don’t coif their manes, or burnish their tails, or put them in an elaborate coil. They dress more like you, but their lives are so fast, Grace. I was spinning on my hind legs for a year before I could adjust.”
 
“And you still had every stallion in a hundred paces ready to be wrapped around your hoof at a word, and half the mares as well.” Grace snorted, rolling her eyes and tossed down the rest of her glass.
 
“Not as such.” Oh, there had been stares. There had also been grimaces, and glares from stallions and mares alike. And more than her share of leers. “Some of them thought I would be easy, too overawed by the city to see past their games. Half of the rest thought I was a bumpkin trying to imitate what I thought a city pony was like…”
 
Fueled by the sweet burn of apple brandy, Marian told story after story of life in Manehattan. Absent the ready laugh, and the sisterly hugs, of course. But Grace did laugh, and she smiled, and she kept refilling her own glass and Marian’s.
 
We can never go back to the way things were, but maybe that’s for the best.
 
 
 
Marian pushed her glass across the table some hours later, and well past midnight if her recollection of the slow chiming grandfather clock somewhere in the house was anywhere near accurate. The night seemed fuzzy in her memory, but she remembered all of it, and was glad for the smile Grace offered her.
 
“City life is nothing like what I imagined. Not living in a city, anyway.” Grace tipped the bottle over once more, refilling Marian’s glass before her own. She frowned down at it, swirled it, and took a tiny sip.
 
“It’s very different from home, that’s for sure.” Marian took a matching tiny sip of her brandy, the warmth easing down her throat pleasantly and adding a tiny bit to the small furnace in her belly. “I missed home. I think I always missed it, even if the ache got easier to bear. It never got less, though.”
 
The clock tick-tocked loudly in the late night calm, and the sound of gears ratcheting heralded the next chime. When it faded, Marian felt the change as though the chime had been a signal. Something eased out of the room, a tension that had been felt, but never acknowledged.
 
Maybe it was her imagination.
 
“I missed this.” Grace waved her glass between them. “Talking with you.”
 
“I did, too. I missed you, Grace.”
 
Maybe it was the alcohol, or the night, or the frustrations of the last few days, but whatever the cause, admitting that she had missed her sister broke something inside her. “I’m so sorry,” she choked out through a sudden sob. “For what I did, for not coming back, for—” She tucked her chin to her chest and clenched her teeth shut over the babble spilling from her lips, and the sobs wracking her body.
 
A moment later, Grace was beside her and running a hoof over the arch of her neck. She didn’t say anything, and Marian was glad for the silence. She didn’t want to say anything else, and didn’t want to hear Grace crying, either. Not until she was in control of herself again.
 
Grace sat beside her until the ache subsided, and she was able to rein in the sobbing. She mastered herself by small turns, and relaxed as her sister pulled her into a tight embrace.
 
“I’m glad you’re back.”
 
As simple as that, as simple as family, she was home.
 
“Me too.”
 

---

 
Marian sat again at the petitioner’s table in the council hall, and this time the slight murmur of bored children was replaced with the muted roar of the majority of the townsponies crowded into the aisles behind her.
 
In front of her, the full council sat, including Mayor Mare Grace in a more casual dress of light purple to offset her light pink coat.
 
“Order.” Grace tapped a hoof against the edge of the desk. “Order in the gallery, please.”
 
As a hush fell over the crowd, Marian smiled at her sister, and received a smile back. They had not spoken of business since their brandy fueled night of bonding, and had spent almost every day since catching up with each other. Oh, there were still rough patches to smooth out, and anything involving stallions was off limits by mutual, silent accord, but there was more that Grace wanted to know about Manehattan, and so much that Marian wanted to know about the changes to Dodge Junction.
 
But they were family again, and if the bond felt more fragile, well, time and honesty would strengthen it.
 
“Good luck!” Dandy’s hiss at her ear startled her into turning around to see that her old teacher had snuck in close enough to lean over the railing.
 
“I don’t think I need luck, Dandy,” she whispered back. “I’m home. I just need my family.”
 
Dandy’s smile stretched wide, and she reached out a hoof to pat Marian on the back. “So you do, but I hope the vote goes well, all the same.”
 
Whatever the result of the vote, and Grace still could not cast a ballot since family was involved, this was her home. And whether or not she had to move to another town to pursue her career, it would always be where her heart was.
 
Dandy had been right, as usual and in spite of her insistence she was wrong as often as anypony else, that family was more important than anything else. Family couldn’t be replaced.
 
“Before we begin deliberations, I would like to say a few words,” Grace said into the gathering quiet. “When my sister came home, I was not in the best of minds to listen to her with a fair thought to the reasons and reasoning behind her proposal. I admit that, and I ask that any who were influenced by my attitude to consider the proposal Marian has put together, not the way I acted towards her.
 
“I may not have as much say in the vote, but I will say this. Families need a library. Where else can a mother go to find the latest book of bedtime stories to read for her foals? Where else can a father go to learn about what interests his children? Where else can a family go to enrich the bonds they share?
 
“A park, yes. A diner, maybe. But a library, quiet though it might be, is a place where families can go to learn together. A family that learns together grows together, and a family that grows together can expect great things for the future. Please, my fellow townsponies, Councilmares and Councilstallions, help our community grow. Help our family grow. Help us set those great expectations—more, help us achieve them.”
 
Marian held her breath, holding back tears throughout the short speech, and felt herself smile so that her cheeks hurt for the stretch, and she laughed as Grace smiled back.
 
“I love you,” Grace mouthed as a tumult of hooves pounding approval rose from the gallery.
 
“I love you, too,” Marian mouthed back.
 

---

 
“Looking good, Marian.”
 
“Dandy!” She looked up from the desk and the list of books that were to be arriving in the next few days.
 
“Thought I’d see the place before you put up all the books. And bring a few from the schoolhouse.” Dandy shifted a shoulder, rolling the saddlebags briefly, filled to bulging with books. “The place looks very nice. ‘Course, it’ll look nicer with a whole passel of books on every shelf.”
 
“The first shipment should be arriving from Canterlot on the next train. I can hardly wait, and I’ve been busy, busy, busy getting the catalog ready.” She shot quick glance, just as quickly averted, at the cabinet of drawers that would soon be filed with cards, grimacing. “Of course, the cards came all out of order from the publishers. Typical.”
 
“Sounds like you’ve got your hooves full. Well, I won’t bother you too much. I just came by to drop these off.”
 
“No, no. It’s fine. I think I need a break from staring at cards and manifests.” Marian lifted her head as the door opened again, and Grace walked in. “In fact, I think I lost track of time if Grace is here.”
 
“Yes. Yes you did,” Grace said with a smile and a nod to the older mare. “Dandy.”
 
“Mayor.”
 
“Grace, please.” Grace offered a hoof in greeting. “Marian’s told me how you helped her see past her own fear.”
 
“Fear, was it?” Dandy touched the hoof, smiling. “Why, I suppose it was. I thought it was that stubborn Mare will. Never could get you to do something you didn’t want to, or see what you didn’t want to, unless you were ready.”
 
“She is stubborn, isn’t she?” Grace pranced up to nudge Marian’s ribs. “Eight years stubbornly refusing to admit she was afraid.”
 
“Either of you.”
 
Grace laughed, shaking her head, and bumped shoulders with the older mare. “I wish I could make you an adviser, Dandy. I swear, half of the clerks I’ve hired are afraid to tell me the truth when I’ve set my hooves.”
 
“Bah. You know I’m always available for a chat. Except when I’m teachin’.” Dandy shook a hoof at both mares. “Don’t let me catch you trying to interrupt a class, or it won’t matter if you’re the mayor or Celestia herself, I’ll put you under my hoof and give that flank a whack.”
 
Marian laughed, and Grace joined in.
 
It’s good to be home.