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Description

TW: Parental abuse, manipulation
Resources: www.deviantart.com/perplexedpe…
Welcome to the Miracleverse! AKA, the Disliked Ships AU, but I don't use this as a platform for hate. While the universe is slightly... twisted, they are all options that could have happened in the main TFIMverse. They're a chance to do things with the... standard ships that people have, and using them in new ways, as well as a platform for interesting characters. And let me say, it's time for the stuff to begin! Sort of! First of the many times we'll be doing STORIES in this universe, these are pictures in scenarios that either advance the story, or in this case, provide backstory! They might feature only canon characters, or only OCs, this one features Starlight Glimmer and the story of her village, as her daughter Stitchwork Shine asks about her strange behavior during 'The Map Is On' . Takes place after 'The Meeting Of The Mane 7' but contains no spoilers for it. Originally titled as 'Curiosity Killed The Cat'.

THIS IS A PART OF STITCHWORK'S STORYLINE!PREVIOUS - NEXT (NOT YET)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starlight was just cleaning up after the 'excitement' that had been Twilight corralling seven ponies into what was now her living room because of that accursed map when she heard hoofsteps on the crystal behind her.
They weren't too heavy, and they were downstairs, so it was definitely Stitchwork. Turning around as she swept dust into a magical sphere that she disintegrated in a second, she faced her daughter.
"Hello, sweetie!" She forced a bit more of a cheery tone; she was just frustrated, no need to freak out, it wasn't Stitchwork's fault.... she smiled again, a bit more forcefully, but Stitchwork didn't seem to notice.

"I was just wondering..." Stitchwork idly pawed her hoof on the ground, nervous to ask this question as she wasn't entirely sure what she had seen, it was a little hazy in her memories even having happened only a day ago.
She paused... was it really worth bringing up if she didn't remember it properly? She remembered the hoof coming down and crushing a small spot on the magical map, but it was grey and blurry in her mind. Grey, blurry, and slipping out of her grasp fast.
She sighed, deciding she absolutely needed to know, even if it was a false memory, it'd be better to know than not. She gathered her courage again and spoke up. "I was just... wondering... um, why you put your hoof on the map back when it turned on?" She managed to get out, before she felt the room go silent and cold.

"What do you mean, Stitchy, darling?" Starlight feigned ignorance, the bottle on her neck glowing red, she hid her anger by funneling it straight into the bottle. She thought her persuasive magic would make Stitchwork forget the incident.
She had ground her hoof into Sire's Hollow, her birthplace, where no doubt her fathers still lived in, and where the mare that birthed her husband dwelled as well.
It filled her with disgust to remember how Firelight treated her as nothing but a small, helpless filly, and that had overridden her logic for a moment.
She'd never do anything to Sire's Hollow in reality; she was good now. Good ponies didn't seek revenge, good ponies forgive.
So she let out a little steam on an unreal Sire's Hollow, she wasn't evil; it wasn't real, and it was a healthy expression.
But her daughter didn't know about Sire's Hollow, what that place was or what it meant to her.. Of course she was curious. "I don't remember what you're talking about." She lied; good ponies could lie if the truth would be more hurt and trouble than it was worth, and that was this situation.

"Oh, you don't?" Stitchwork looked confused, and she wondered if she really did remember that hoof grinding down on the map... but she somehow trusted the grey, blurry memory right now.
Maybe it was hard to remember for her mother as well; it wasn't a huge action, and so much had happened in almost two days.
"It was when the map turned on, and you... I think, maybe you were talking about the size of the map, then you... got this really scary look on your face," Stitchwork confessed nervously, remembering the look, like she was wiping gum off the frog of her hoof on the map. "You looked at a place on the map and you ground your hoof into it really hard... Do you remember it now?"

"Oh, yes, that!" Starlight had turned around, hiding her narrowed eyes, annoyed that Stitchwork didn't drop it when she said she didn't remember. Why couldn't she take the hint?
Oh well, she'd handle it easily. "Oh, that was just... your mom being reminded of when she wasn't such a good pony." She turned around, having had a brilliant idea.

"What?" Stitchwork looked surprised; her mother didn't really ever talk about when she was evil, and she was admittedly curious. "What was it?"

"It was the village I made." Starlight lied, taking her over to the map and pointing to her village; she could redirect this 'false memory' thing so she could even teach Stitchwork a lesson about being a good pony! This was a good idea.

"The village you... is that where Mrs. Sugarbelle and Mr. Party Favor met you?" Stitchwork asked, remembering Starlight's good friends who she said she had met a long time ago.
She felt a little strange about staring at the place on the map; she was almost certain the place she had ground her hoof into was somewhere else... but the memory was fuzzy and fading, she could have misremembered it. It was an exciting day, after all.

"Yes it is, sweetie!" Starlight nodded encouragingly, and she sat down. "You see, when I was a bad pony, I decided Cutie Marks were the reason for everyone being so bad to each other; it was narrow minded and simplistic." Starlight parroted what she remembered of Twilight's explanation of wrongdoing to her in the months before the Crystal Empire fell.

"What did you think Cutie Marks did?" Stitchwork was admittedly confused, but intrigued by this illogical story; it didn't make sense... though she felt like she had heard a Pegasus stallion talking about the same thing, but she hadn't paid attention to him at the time. Maybe then she'd understand better.

"I thought that Cutie Marks allowed ponies to act superior over others, and that ponies who hadn't figured out their talents were punished by society." She recited the beginnings of her old manifesto, fighting the urge to begin projecting her voice, like she did in the old days.
"So I decided to fix that. I met a stallion named Double Diamond, he died a few years ago in a skiing accident, so you wouldn't have met him..." Starlight frowned... Double Diamond really was a nice stallion, always obeying her orders and following her manifesto perfectly... if only Twilight had... no, she was a good pony, it was good that he left her, like Sunburst left her.
She poured a little more anger into the bottle, shrinking the cloud and compressing it down. "He and I worked together to build a simple village in the mountains." She continued.

"...Mom..." Stitchwork looked at the sadness and anger on her mother's face as something dawned on her. "Was he your special somepony before you met Dad again?" She asked, prepared to hug her clearly grieving mother.

"... Yes." Starlight admitted to the first pony she had ever told this to. She sighed. "We built the wonderful village, and I earned my Cutie Mark by taking away his Mark, like we planned... though I wanted to make mine equal, I had a sacrifice to make; my ideals, or the ability to remove Cutie Marks for my cause." She recalled, enthralled by her old life... no, disgusted, she was just a hypocrite, not some noble savior.
That's what the tongue lashing she had gotten from Princess Luna when Twilight asked Celestia for her to be Twilight's student said. So it was true. No matter how good it felt to save ponies from their fates... it was bad.

"What do you mean?" Stitchwork was confused by the wording her mother used, and hearing her Cutie Mark story was... surprising enough on its own.

"I had initially planned to take both his Cutie Mark and mine, but when I tried, I couldn't finish the spell without my Cutie Mark. So... I faked it." Starlight cringed. She really had wanted to remove the mark, but the dampening effect it had on magic made that impossible. So she faked finding a staff, a piece of driftwood, and made a fake mark.
"I pretended I removed it instead. And then, I started to advertise my ideology and draw in ponies who hated their talents, their Cutie Marks, what discrimination they faced for the 'wrong' mark, so I removed them all. Mrs. Sugarbelle was a failed baker, and Mr. Party Favor a clown that nobody wished to hire. I made them the inhabitants of my village, and allowed them to view their old marks where I had put them, so they'd always know what they left behind."

"That sounds... interesting..." Stitchwork said, altogether distracted from her original question, now wondering... what exactly had her mother done wrong? From what she said, she wasn't kidnapping ponies, just offering them a service and a new home. She even allowed them the freedom to have their marks back.

"But it was wrong of me to do; ponies should be free to use their magic in the ways they want." Starlight recited from memory the lecture Twilight had given her. "Twilight and her friends freed all of my villagers and gave them back their marks, and I ran away... and that's the story of my village." Starlight finished.

"... Oh." Stitchwork was still confused; wasn't it freedom to use their magic to choose to not have marks? She had to be missing something, but she trusted her mother's story. "I can... see why you'd want to destroy that." She lied, still uncertain.

"Exactly. It was a reminder that I used to be bad, and I... don't like those." Starlight finished weaving her lie, and she had even taught Stitchwork a good lesson about ponies being free to choose what they want. She had finally told someone about her love for Double Diamond. Something she never told before, afraid they'd misconstrue their relationship.
She was a bad pony then, but never that bad. She was good, and had Night Glider not loved Double Diamond, she may have taken him back... though of course, she loved Sunburst so very much; he was her husband, her one and only love. He was hers, and Double Diamond no longer mattered.

"I can understand..." Stitchwork smiled. "I'm sorry for asking something that must have been difficult for you to talk about." She apologized, and turned around, satisfied with her answer and not seeing Starlight's sigh of relief at deflecting her questions.
She was still confused about the story her mother had told, why Princess Twilight had ruined what seemed like a happy community, but she had faith that there was a logical explanation.
She just wasn't smart enough yet; heck, she had actually thought her mother had stomped on some other town... though, as she looked at the map's projection, she couldn't see the dent from the grinding of her mother's hoof under the mountaintop where Starlight's village had been... and saw a small scuff mark nearby, under another spot in the map.

... Just what was going on?

Description

TW: Parental abuse, manipulation
Resources: www.deviantart.com/perplexedpe…
Welcome to the Miracleverse! AKA, the Disliked Ships AU, but I don't use this as a platform for hate. While the universe is slightly... twisted, they are all options that could have happened in the main TFIMverse. They're a chance to do things with the... standard ships that people have, and using them in new ways, as well as a platform for interesting characters. And let me say, it's time for the stuff to begin! Sort of! First of the many times we'll be doing STORIES in this universe, these are pictures in scenarios that either advance the story, or in this case, provide backstory! They might feature only canon characters, or only OCs, this one features Starlight Glimmer and the story of her village, as her daughter Stitchwork Shine asks about her strange behavior during 'The Map Is On' . Takes place after 'The Meeting Of The Mane 7' but contains no spoilers for it. Originally titled as 'Curiosity Killed The Cat'.

THIS IS A PART OF STITCHWORK'S STORYLINE!PREVIOUS - NEXT (NOT YET)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starlight was just cleaning up after the 'excitement' that had been Twilight corralling seven ponies into what was now her living room because of that accursed map when she heard hoofsteps on the crystal behind her.
They weren't too heavy, and they were downstairs, so it was definitely Stitchwork. Turning around as she swept dust into a magical sphere that she disintegrated in a second, she faced her daughter.
"Hello, sweetie!" She forced a bit more of a cheery tone; she was just frustrated, no need to freak out, it wasn't Stitchwork's fault.... she smiled again, a bit more forcefully, but Stitchwork didn't seem to notice.

"I was just wondering..." Stitchwork idly pawed her hoof on the ground, nervous to ask this question as she wasn't entirely sure what she had seen, it was a little hazy in her memories even having happened only a day ago.
She paused... was it really worth bringing up if she didn't remember it properly? She remembered the hoof coming down and crushing a small spot on the magical map, but it was grey and blurry in her mind. Grey, blurry, and slipping out of her grasp fast.
She sighed, deciding she absolutely needed to know, even if it was a false memory, it'd be better to know than not. She gathered her courage again and spoke up. "I was just... wondering... um, why you put your hoof on the map back when it turned on?" She managed to get out, before she felt the room go silent and cold.

"What do you mean, Stitchy, darling?" Starlight feigned ignorance, the bottle on her neck glowing red, she hid her anger by funneling it straight into the bottle. She thought her persuasive magic would make Stitchwork forget the incident.
She had ground her hoof into Sire's Hollow, her birthplace, where no doubt her fathers still lived in, and where the mare that birthed her husband dwelled as well.
It filled her with disgust to remember how Firelight treated her as nothing but a small, helpless filly, and that had overridden her logic for a moment.
She'd never do anything to Sire's Hollow in reality; she was good now. Good ponies didn't seek revenge, good ponies forgive.
So she let out a little steam on an unreal Sire's Hollow, she wasn't evil; it wasn't real, and it was a healthy expression.
But her daughter didn't know about Sire's Hollow, what that place was or what it meant to her.. Of course she was curious. "I don't remember what you're talking about." She lied; good ponies could lie if the truth would be more hurt and trouble than it was worth, and that was this situation.

"Oh, you don't?" Stitchwork looked confused, and she wondered if she really did remember that hoof grinding down on the map... but she somehow trusted the grey, blurry memory right now.
Maybe it was hard to remember for her mother as well; it wasn't a huge action, and so much had happened in almost two days.
"It was when the map turned on, and you... I think, maybe you were talking about the size of the map, then you... got this really scary look on your face," Stitchwork confessed nervously, remembering the look, like she was wiping gum off the frog of her hoof on the map. "You looked at a place on the map and you ground your hoof into it really hard... Do you remember it now?"

"Oh, yes, that!" Starlight had turned around, hiding her narrowed eyes, annoyed that Stitchwork didn't drop it when she said she didn't remember. Why couldn't she take the hint?
Oh well, she'd handle it easily. "Oh, that was just... your mom being reminded of when she wasn't such a good pony." She turned around, having had a brilliant idea.

"What?" Stitchwork looked surprised; her mother didn't really ever talk about when she was evil, and she was admittedly curious. "What was it?"

"It was the village I made." Starlight lied, taking her over to the map and pointing to her village; she could redirect this 'false memory' thing so she could even teach Stitchwork a lesson about being a good pony! This was a good idea.

"The village you... is that where Mrs. Sugarbelle and Mr. Party Favor met you?" Stitchwork asked, remembering Starlight's good friends who she said she had met a long time ago.
She felt a little strange about staring at the place on the map; she was almost certain the place she had ground her hoof into was somewhere else... but the memory was fuzzy and fading, she could have misremembered it. It was an exciting day, after all.

"Yes it is, sweetie!" Starlight nodded encouragingly, and she sat down. "You see, when I was a bad pony, I decided Cutie Marks were the reason for everyone being so bad to each other; it was narrow minded and simplistic." Starlight parroted what she remembered of Twilight's explanation of wrongdoing to her in the months before the Crystal Empire fell.

"What did you think Cutie Marks did?" Stitchwork was admittedly confused, but intrigued by this illogical story; it didn't make sense... though she felt like she had heard a Pegasus stallion talking about the same thing, but she hadn't paid attention to him at the time. Maybe then she'd understand better.

"I thought that Cutie Marks allowed ponies to act superior over others, and that ponies who hadn't figured out their talents were punished by society." She recited the beginnings of her old manifesto, fighting the urge to begin projecting her voice, like she did in the old days.
"So I decided to fix that. I met a stallion named Double Diamond, he died a few years ago in a skiing accident, so you wouldn't have met him..." Starlight frowned... Double Diamond really was a nice stallion, always obeying her orders and following her manifesto perfectly... if only Twilight had... no, she was a good pony, it was good that he left her, like Sunburst left her.
She poured a little more anger into the bottle, shrinking the cloud and compressing it down. "He and I worked together to build a simple village in the mountains." She continued.

"...Mom..." Stitchwork looked at the sadness and anger on her mother's face as something dawned on her. "Was he your special somepony before you met Dad again?" She asked, prepared to hug her clearly grieving mother.

"... Yes." Starlight admitted to the first pony she had ever told this to. She sighed. "We built the wonderful village, and I earned my Cutie Mark by taking away his Mark, like we planned... though I wanted to make mine equal, I had a sacrifice to make; my ideals, or the ability to remove Cutie Marks for my cause." She recalled, enthralled by her old life... no, disgusted, she was just a hypocrite, not some noble savior.
That's what the tongue lashing she had gotten from Princess Luna when Twilight asked Celestia for her to be Twilight's student said. So it was true. No matter how good it felt to save ponies from their fates... it was bad.

"What do you mean?" Stitchwork was confused by the wording her mother used, and hearing her Cutie Mark story was... surprising enough on its own.

"I had initially planned to take both his Cutie Mark and mine, but when I tried, I couldn't finish the spell without my Cutie Mark. So... I faked it." Starlight cringed. She really had wanted to remove the mark, but the dampening effect it had on magic made that impossible. So she faked finding a staff, a piece of driftwood, and made a fake mark.
"I pretended I removed it instead. And then, I started to advertise my ideology and draw in ponies who hated their talents, their Cutie Marks, what discrimination they faced for the 'wrong' mark, so I removed them all. Mrs. Sugarbelle was a failed baker, and Mr. Party Favor a clown that nobody wished to hire. I made them the inhabitants of my village, and allowed them to view their old marks where I had put them, so they'd always know what they left behind."

"That sounds... interesting..." Stitchwork said, altogether distracted from her original question, now wondering... what exactly had her mother done wrong? From what she said, she wasn't kidnapping ponies, just offering them a service and a new home. She even allowed them the freedom to have their marks back.

"But it was wrong of me to do; ponies should be free to use their magic in the ways they want." Starlight recited from memory the lecture Twilight had given her. "Twilight and her friends freed all of my villagers and gave them back their marks, and I ran away... and that's the story of my village." Starlight finished.

"... Oh." Stitchwork was still confused; wasn't it freedom to use their magic to choose to not have marks? She had to be missing something, but she trusted her mother's story. "I can... see why you'd want to destroy that." She lied, still uncertain.

"Exactly. It was a reminder that I used to be bad, and I... don't like those." Starlight finished weaving her lie, and she had even taught Stitchwork a good lesson about ponies being free to choose what they want. She had finally told someone about her love for Double Diamond. Something she never told before, afraid they'd misconstrue their relationship.
She was a bad pony then, but never that bad. She was good, and had Night Glider not loved Double Diamond, she may have taken him back... though of course, she loved Sunburst so very much; he was her husband, her one and only love. He was hers, and Double Diamond no longer mattered.

"I can understand..." Stitchwork smiled. "I'm sorry for asking something that must have been difficult for you to talk about." She apologized, and turned around, satisfied with her answer and not seeing Starlight's sigh of relief at deflecting her questions.
She was still confused about the story her mother had told, why Princess Twilight had ruined what seemed like a happy community, but she had faith that there was a logical explanation.
She just wasn't smart enough yet; heck, she had actually thought her mother had stomped on some other town... though, as she looked at the map's projection, she couldn't see the dent from the grinding of her mother's hoof under the mountaintop where Starlight's village had been... and saw a small scuff mark nearby, under another spot in the map.

... Just what was going on?