By the light of the nearly full moon, Clover glared down at her fragmented reflection in the wellwater.
Stupid horn that doesn't even work, she thought. I hate it.
If it worked, she'd never have to drag water home from the well by hoof. But the dumb thing just sat on her forehead, being useless. Sighing a dreadful sigh, she closed her teeth around the handle of her wooden bucket and struggled to lift it off of the ground without spilling any water. But it was no use; no matter how much she strained herself she couldn't lift it.
A stallion from around town trotted past.
"Excuse me," she asked, "could you please help--?"
"Why dontcha use yer little horn?" the stallion sneered, trotting faster.
Clover stomped her forelegs in frustration.
As the night settled over town, the wind picked up and sent her crimson mane streaming in front of her eyes while it also scooped the fallen leaves off the ground. Those lonely leaves, ripped off the place they belonged and left on the cold, dirty ground to wither, crunched as their short flight for freedom ended. Clover knew how they must feel. Her eyes brimmed with tears and emotions twisted up her heart, acting like kindling for the sudden burning anger coursing through her at the unfairness of, well....everything. She felt that fiery feeling consuming her and didn't bother fighting it, because it was the best way she knew to get these jagged emotions out of her.
As Starswirl approached the town, as a precaution he reached out and touched the Harmony. What he felt all but made him come to a dead stop, although not out of an expectation he would be hooficuffing sometime tonight as he half-expected. There was the usual poisonous miasma lurking in the air, the grass, the dirt, the fences, the sturdy timber-framed buildings, but now something else brewed within the natural order that flowed through everything.
He felt patterns draw themselves in the infinite energy stemming from the source of all creation and flowing through the physical world. His ears picked up and he cocked his head to the side like he did when there was a taste on his tongue he wanted to figure out, except now it was his mind's ability to sense the Harmony's weave, which normally affected an air of obfuscating randomness to conceal its pure mathematical perfection from ponies incapable of sensing it.
He knew he was gushing, but being in awe of its perfection was what allowed him to unite with it in the first place, and it still retained the power to make him as giddy as a schoolcolt. It was very rare of the Harmony to display itself this boldly, and he relished it every opportunity he came across. Usually the Harmony lurked under the surface and waited for ingenious ponies to decipher it, but all of nature was governed by its mathematics and, more than that, was alive with its mathematics. It was one of the prime tools used in creation. Math equations governed everything imaginable, and could be expressed by everything imaginable: gravity, optics, the chemistry of life, social accord, and even....music....
He began trotting around the town's periphery with his eyes wide open to find the focal point of the Harmony's confluence.
Somepony was going to sing a song, and the Harmony was going to play along.
Clover stared up at the moon, took a deep breath, and let the energy building in her flow freely.
"Oh, every single day, starts the same way," she sang to nopony in particular as she faced the light she'd left burning in her distant house, "with my papa telling me not to misbehave."
She strolled through the deserted marketplace, jumped on a deserted cart, and crooned at the moon.
"I go into town, they tear me down, and I say to myself I must be forever brave."
She thumped her chest with her hoof, then leapt off the cart as the wind and the critters and all the other sounds of the world seemed to chime in, weaving a kind of rough, earthy harmony with her and her song. Trotting through the town quicker now, she sang faster and pretended she was lecturing the townsponies.
"I try to tell them, that I won't condemn, them to a life of cruel and painful agony!"
She let out a sighing whinny, dropped her head, and rolled her eyes.
"That never wins me, any sympathy," she sang, then gritted her teeth as she continued, "from these peasants who'd just love to disagree!"
She dropped to her haunches and wailed, "I don't know how much longer I can stand this!"
She pointed at a shuttered house. "All the stares--"
She pointed at a different one. "--and all the swears!"
Jumping to her hooves and rearing back, she swept her forelegs at the whole town. "All the fits and all the snits!"
She cantered back through the empty marketplace, seeing the painful memories come alive in her mind. "If you could be, slightly less angry, and sell some of your sweet apples to me, without the worms, or the terms, I can hear you whisper as I turn tail and flee!"
Clover took a running leap, and landed on a cart.
"But for all they bawl about my alicorn," she sang, knocking her horn with a foreleg, "I would trade a betrayed life with this useless horn...."
She gazed in wonder at the moon hanging overhead.
"....If I could take to the sky just like the pegasi."
She leapt wholeheartedly into her imagination and pretended she had wings to flap.
"Take a spring, take to wing, and then I wave goodbye!"
And with that, she soared off into the clouds. The town receded below her until it was as insignificant as an anthill.
"This town and its ponies are driving me crazy," she sang as she banked between cloudbanks. "With their spite and their scowls and their mutters so foul. My kindest words thrown away with a whinny of 'nay!' I'm supposed to hear a chide and take it in stride?!"
She burst above the clouds, spread her wings, and soared close enough to touch the surface of the moon. As she reached for it, she felt the celestial harmony build to a crescendo and bellowed:
"Papa says to be glad with a life that ain't half-bad, but how can my spirit be unbriiiiiidled....?"
Right as her hoof skimmed the ethereal moonlight, she felt herself being pulled backwards to the world, her wings rapidly fading away into nothing.
"When I can feel these chains holding me fast like reins?"
She fell from her imagination and thumped back to the ground in the boring old regular world. She hit the bucket full of water she'd labored to draw from the well, and it spilled all over her and made the dirt around her into mud.
"And my spirit's leaking something viiiiital....?"
Earthbound again, she craned her head to the sky and and reached out a feeble hoof to the moon, though she knew it was futile.
She croaked tunelessly, "....into the air I'll soar through, when I fly away from here."
She let her face hit the mud, too weary to keep it aloft anymore.
"Look at this, girls," sang a familiar voice, "look at how she hurls, herself into the dirt like a seed on the wind!"
She picked her head up and saw Golden Vein and a few other fillies from around town smiling viciously. If there was one pony Clover didn't want intruding on her song, it was Golden Vein. But alas, that was just the way the world worked....
As Clover picked herself off the ground, Golden Vein sang in her simpering little voice, "You stupid little filly, nopony told you, silly? You're not actually a clover to be planted in the ground."
Clover finished cleaning her face off in time to see Golden Vein aiming a ball of mud at her.
"You sprout so slow," the golden-curled filly sang, "let me help you grow, both as a pony and as a blooming flower!"
When she tossed it, Clover willed her horn to counter it, but her magic fizzled. The ball hit her right in the eye, splattered all over her face, and sent her toppling backwards, eliciting a laugh from the other fillies.
"Use your little horn," sang Golden Vein, dusting her hooves off. "Curse us up a storm!"
As they left, Clover got up and bellowed at the top of her lungs, "Come back here, Golden Vein, and cower at my power!"
The sound of windows shutters being thrown open sounded from all around town, and mares and stallions leaned out to look at the commotion.
"We don't know how much longer we can stand this," they sang in chorus, casting scornful looks at Clover.
"All the curses--" the mares sang.
"--and the per-verses," the stallions continued.
"All the mutters, behind closed shutters!" they finished together.
Clover trotted to an open window and sang, "Oh, if you pinch--"
The stallion inside slammed the shutters in her face, so she trotted to the next one.
"Do I not flinch?"
Again, they slammed the shutters on Clover, so it was on to the next house, desperately seeking a reply.
"So I insist you stop being so cruel to me!" she sang, then trotted to the center of town and wailed, "So change your ways, or one of these days, I'll be standing over your broken homes, laughing heartily!"
Every door in town opened simultaneously, making Clover gulp. The townsponies strode out of their doorways, their hoofbeats lending the world-song an ominous marching beat.
"Oh, our yards we must guard against this little menace," they thundered, "who hexes and perplexes and tells us our business!"
A passing herd of miners back from the mines chimed in, "We're rude and we're crude and we're mighty uncouth, but we prefer it that way--"
"--and ain't that the truth!" Clover sang as she galloped away from them in a huff, only to run straight into her father, his face covered with rock dust.
"Papa," she sang, her shining eyes pleading, "this town and its ponies are driving me crazy, with their spite and their scowls and their mutters so foul!"
Carmine got down on his knees and wiped the mud off of his daughter's face as she started weeping.
"My kindest words thrown away with a whinny of 'nay!' and I'm supposed to hear their chides and take them in stride?!"
Forlornly, Carmine nodded, and the world-song dropped out until it was just the lonely wind accompanying Clover.
"You say I should be glad for a life that ain't half bad, but how can my spirit be unbridled, when I feel these chains holding me fast like reins, and my spirit's missing something....vital....?"
As her words echoed into the night, the melody of the wind faded away until it became mere wind once again.
Their synchronization broken, the ponies of the town turned and went back into their houses one by one, grumbling to themselves.
"We'll carry on, Clover," Carmine said. "We always do. Now run along home. I have to go pick up my wages from Orrin Tin."
"I hate him," Clover spat. "Him and Golden Vein!"
"I hate them too." He wiped a bit of mud away from under Clover's eyes. "But Orrin Tin runs the mines, so I have to get my wages from him."
"While I did indeed have a craving for pie," Starswirl said as he casually walked over, "I sincerely hope you did not take that to mean mud pies, young one. I don't know if I could stomach having my fondest wishes so misunderstood."
"Will you take Clover home, Starswirl?" Carmine asked. "She's had a rough time. Did you get the water?"
She shook her head. "It spilled everywhere."
"Not to worry," Starswirl said. "I'll take care of it."
"Thank you." Carmine nodded at him, then got up and walked away heavily.
"Are you alright, Clover?" Starswirl asked.
"No, I'm not alright," she snapped as she nudged her father's wooden bucket upright with her nose. "This town isn't alright."
Starswirl's horn lit up with cerulean light, and so did the bucket as it rose into the air, to Clover's surprise. Starswirl turned his eyes to the well. With a squint, a geyser of shining water shot from its mouth, arced through the air, and splashed perfectly into the bucket.
"That filly," Starswirl said, levitating the bucket and heading for the mill, "with the gold bars cutie mark...."
Clover scoffed. "Golden Vein."
"I saw her give another filly much the same treatment when I first came to town."
"She thinks she's so great," Clover said as she rolled her eyes, "because her family found out this place was worth mining. They own the mining rights and the equipment, so everypony has to work for them."
"Ah, she's old money. That explains it."
"She butted into my song!"
"I noticed that, yes." Then he asked offhandedly, "Have you ever wondered why that happens?"
"Because she's a dirty sneak--"
"No, no. Have you ever wondered why ponies spontaneously bursting into song like that? How everypony seems to know the lyrics and the melody, so they can sing along at a moment's fancy?"
"That's....that's just the way the world works."
"Naturally. But have you ever wondered why?"
"No," mumbled Clover, "I just figured...."
"....that spontaneous synchronized singing is one of the great unsolvable mysteries of the universe?"
Clover nodded as she pushed the front door to her house open. Then, she lolled her head back and yawned.
"Sounds like somepony's ready for bed," he said.
Out of weariness, Clover trudged towards the stairs. But as soon as she reached them, she remembered what they had been talking about.
"Wait, do you know why that happens?"
"Of course," he said, sounding mildly offended, though with a warm smile. "Would you like to know why?"
Clover nodded rapidly, but she was interrupted by another yawning spasm.
"Hmm," Starswirl said. "It appears the mysteries of the universe must wait until tomorrow."
"No, please tell me!"
"I'm afraid it's no use trying to expand your mind if it's half-asleep. Tomorrow, I promise."
Grumbling, Clover climbed the stairs. Her thoughts blazed with righteous fury at being brushed off like that, but as she approached her bed, it got harder and harder to recall why she was so angry. It got harder to think of anything, really, aside from how soft and inviting her fluffy pillow looked.
She rolled into bed and fell asleep before she knew it.