Prompt: Daring Greenery

Roseluck shut her eyes and drew in a shaking breath. It was an attempt to steady herself, to find courage, or if courage could not be found then to feign its presence. Her thoughts remained focused on the ponies around her, though she could not say if this was out of selfless impulse, or an unwillingness to confront the danger that lay before. Whatever the source of her focus, she did not want them to see her fear.

It was these ponies whose faces greeted her, when she opened her eyes again: Lily, Daisy, Lilac, Trowel Strike, Dinky, Applebloom, and their new princess, Twilight Sparkle. These were the ponies who had come to bear witness, and perhaps to see her on her way.

“Don’t think of me as a hero,” she said to the herd, stiffening her spine as she spoke. Her wagon was behind her, loaded with that most dangerous of cargo.

“Um,” Twilight replied, biting her lip. The weight of the moment rested heavy upon her, and even the princess herself struggled for words. Finally, she managed, “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

Well, that wasn’t what Roseluck had been expecting, but sometimes Twilight struggled to express herself.

As Roseluck turned back to her wagon, the other ponies offered a salute to her bravery. Then, in full view of the street, she lifted her cargo from its resting place and placed it down upon her lawn.

It was a plant pot, in which was contained a blooming mock orange: philadelphus lewisii. A plant native to the Everfree region, it was also known as the arrowhead flower or the syringa flower, and was characterized by its bright white petals and hardy character.

But ponies are often afraid to acknowledge the truth, and no matter what ponies might call it, the mock orange wasn’t a flower at all.

It was a flowering deciduous shrub.

---------

“Hi, Roseluck!” called out Spoiled Rich, waving from her position on the sidewalk.

It is said that ponies who dabble in the dark arts cannot stand the touch of sunlight. Some speculate it is because the sun’s radiance embodies Celestia’s scorn for their wickedness, while others say it is because their wretched forms are so insubstantial that they are dispersed as easily as shadows. Though in the case of Spoiled Rich, it was because she was trying a new skin cream that made her sunburn easily.

Regardless, darkness fell over Roseluck’s house as she approached, mostly because the sun was setting and also there were a few clouds.

“I wanted to let you know,” she continued, “Filthy Rich and I loved the jade orchids you grew for Dr. Whooves and Derpy’s wedding. I didn’t know orchids could grow in those shades -- I thought they had to be dyed. It was so impressive, and it helped make the event feel unique, memorable. You did a great job.”

“You will not beguile me, dark one!” Roseluck replied. “Pollute not my ears with your honied lies.”

“Oh, Roseluck, you are always so dramatic,” Spoiled Rich answered with giggle. “Also, I have to say, I adore what you’ve done with your lawn. The little stone paths, the fountain, the design, it’s exquisite.”

“It’s…” Roseluck began to reply, only to clamp her jaw shut.

“It’s… what?” Spoiled Rich asked, tilting her head to one side. “It’s what, Roseluck? What is your lawn?” When she didn’t receive an immediate reply, she indicated the soil with a hoof. “Because, I can’t help but notice, you’ve created a lot of beds for particular plants to grow in, and the grass doesn’t seem as… neat as it might be.”

A chill passed over Roseluck, as Spoiled Rich indicated the blooming mock orange. “And I couldn’t help but think… no, but surely I’m mistaken. I couldn’t possibly… but well. Perhaps you’ll reassure me, Roseluck. You wouldn’t be thinking about turning your lawn into a native plant garden, would you?”

“Native plant gardens are better for the environment than lawns,” Roseluck shouted, trying to keep her voice steady. “They require less water and provide a habitat for pollinators. Also,” she squared her shoulders, locking her gaze with Spoiled Rich, “I was thinking of taking up beekeeping, and I want the bees to have more flowers close to their hive!”

“Well that sounds lovely,” Spoiled Rich said, smiling with the thrill of a wolf that has cornered a fleeing rabbit. “But you know, HoA rules don’t allow native plant gardens without prior approval.”

Trembling, rooted to the spot, Roseluck shouted: “I’m not afraid of you!”

Voice as cold as ice, Spoiled Rich answered: “You should be, Roseluck. Do not underestimate my means."

---------

“Alright,” Starlight Glimmer raised her voice to be heard, and banged her gavel on the table for order. “As you all know, Mayor Mare is on vacation this month and has asked me to take over her routine duties while she’s away. That includes arbitrating minor disputes, so tonight it’s my job to listen to you all complain about your neighbors and the stupid problems you’re having with them.”

A murmur ran through the town hall, and a pony in the front raised a hoof: “What if my thing isn’t stupid?”

Looking over her lectern, Starlight fixed that pony with a stare: “Okay, quick summary -- what are you here to talk about?”

The pony cleared their throat: “Despite food safety laws clearly requiring grocers to label if an item contains nuts, Green Hoof’s Grocery sells peanut butter without proper—”

Starlight cut them off with a sharp rap of her gavel on the lectern: “In the dispute of whatever that pony’s name is v. Green Hoof’s Grocery, I find in favor of Green Hoof’s Grocery’s. Also, let the record show that the pony’s complaint was, in fact, stupid.”

Ponyville’s stenographer, seated beside the lectern, nodded and entered that into the record, which the pony in the front row felt was a bit mean.

“Okay, getting back to the agenda,” Starlight cleared her throat. “Looks like the first scheduled arbitration for the evening is Roseluck v. Ponyville Homeowner’s Association. Are the parties here?”

Roseluck raised a hoof, as did Spoiled Rich. Shortly thereafter, several hundred other ponies clustered in the back of the room raised their hooves as well. They were all mares of an advanced age, eyes like dark jewels shining out from under wrinkled skin.

“Wow, you’re all here for this one hearing?” Starlight asked, momentarily taken aback. “This has to be most of the senior citizens in Ponyville.”

“They are the HoA’s army of darkness!” Roseluck shouted. “Ponies who in a past age were seduced by the allure of neatly trimmed lawns and neighborly block parties. They drank too deep of the HoA’s twisted alchemy, and were reduced to wraiths. Now, unable to bear the touch of the sun, they prowl the streets in the darkness before the dawn, spying upon the innocent and reporting ponies whose lawns are not at regulation length.”

“Roseluck,” Starlight let out a long sigh. “They aren’t wraiths. Most old ponies like to get up early to go for walks. And they weren’t poisoned by alchemy, they were poisoned by leaded gasoline.”

“Oh,” Roseluck said, letting out a quiet cough. “Well, I saw a HayTube video that said HoAs mostly started because of something called redlining, which is racist.”

“That’s nice,” Starlight blandly agreed, pretending for a few moments to shuffle the paper in front of her, which was challenging because there was only one sheet and also it was a scroll. “Okay, can somepony less dramatic explain the specific nature of this dispute?”

Lily, one of those mares known about Ponyville as the flower trio, threw up a hoof: “Spoiled Rich’s tyrannical—”

“Stop. More succinct. Explain the dispute.”

Applebloom threw up both hooves, nearly knocking aside her elder sister’s hat. “Accordin’ to anarchist theory, freedom is the sum—”

“Stop!” Starlight raised a hoof. “More succinct. More succinct. Explain the dispute.”

Dinky Doo, seated in the front row beside the pony with the peanut-butter related concern, drew a sword from beneath her chair. Gripping it in her teeth, she let out an incoherent battle cry, an animalistic growl warped by its passage through her teeth and around the blade’s hilt.

“Okay that’s too succinct.”

Finally, after a long and uncomfortable silence, Spoiled Rich raised a hoof: “HoA rules, which do apply to Roseluck’s house, require pre-approval if the front lawn is going to be used for a native plant garden. As Roseluck did not seek this prior approval, as the HoA’s president I request to apply the maximum permitted fine of twenty-five bits per week, and also to have her devoured by ghosts.”

“Devoured by ghosts?” Starlight asked, only to be told by several ponies present that that was in the HoA charter.

“For my part,” Roseluck said, “I think the HoA contract is overly restrictive. It gives too much power to a small group of ponies, who mostly use it to maximize their property values even at the expense of the community’s overall wellbeing. I request that the contract be nullified on the basis that it no longer serves the public good, and also that I might reforge the sacred blade of my mothers and their mothers before them and plunge it into the tyrant's black heart, banishing her forever.”

“Do you, in fact, have the shards of a sacred blade, which was your mother’s and her mother’s before her, that you might reforge?” Starlight asked.

“Yeah but it’s a trowel.”

“Okay, you know what?” Starlight said. “This is a complex issue, presenting challenges of legal structuralism vs utilitarianism, conformity vs individual freedom, and how society confronts old and unaddressed social wrongs. But also, I don’t care, so we’re going to put it to a vote. In one week, every pony whose house is affected by HoA rules will vote on if the HoA should continue to exist. If the HoA is unable to achieve at least a 60% share of the votes, I will recommend to Mayor Mare that she appoint a committee to consider an action proposal to conduct inquiries as to the legality of nullifying the HoA contract.”

“You won’t just nullify it yourself?" a stallion in the back asked. “That’s lame.”

“Mister, I’m a school headmistresses filling in for a local politician who took a month-long vacation, you’re lucky I’m here at all.” Starlight slammed the gavel to the lectern. “Arbitrarion concluded. Next on the docket… Paper and Oily Rags v. the Ponyville Fire Insurance Company?”

“Here,” said a pony in the front row, still covered in soot, their mane scorched and filled with ash.

---------

Of course, both sides did their best to rally support before the big vote. They spoke at after school meetings, bake sales, and went door to door in neighborhoods under the HoAs covered area. Roseluck and her supporters went door to door with pie, while Spoiled Rich went forth with her horde ten-thousand strong, clad in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears. Also she asked all her friends at book club to help.

The day of the vote, ponies queued up outside of Ponyville’s town hall. As in most earth pony towns, Ponyville practiced direct democracy in the Athenian tradition. Each pony could drop one stone into the prepared box: a black stone was a vote for the HoA, while a white stone was a vote for Roseluck. Also they could write the name of a pony on their stone, and whichever pony got the most votes would be covered in tar and cast out of the community to wander the wild. Athenian democracy was, Starlight reflected, pretty metal.

Spoiled Rich and Roseluck both stood by the voters box, making last moment enticements and pleas to their peers. Spoiled Rich sang a serenade of green lawns, darling neighborhoods, and communities free of strife and discord. Roseluck spoke passionately of freedom, of liberty, and of how cute her garden would look without the need to maintain the HoA mandated minimum 70% grass coverage for the front lawn. Each spoke until their voices were hoarse, and also horse, and the long line dwindled to only a few stragglers.

When the sun set, Starlight took the box and turned it over, allowing the stones within to clatter to the ground. White pebbles spilled out of the box in a wave, sending Roseluck and her supporters into fits of cheering, and marking the start of a very bad day for one pony in-particular. Lily, Lilac, and Daisy all hoisted Roseluck onto their shoulders, and carried her to her house. There, in full view of a cheering crowd, they all brought the rest of her native plants out of the backyard greenhouse, filling them in among carefully laid stone paths, native grasses, and sapling trees.

“It’s beautiful,” Lily said, looking over the elegantly laid out garden. “Good for the neighborhood, good for the insects and the animals, good for the soul.”

“It’s wholesome,” Lilac said. “Responsible. It shows we don’t need to waste hundreds of gallons of water a year, just to maintain some artificial idea of a beautiful lawn.”

“It’s great,” Daisy agreed. “But to be clear, now that the HoA is gone, there is no specific law that says I can’t have a 1955 Ford Thunderbird up on cinderblocks on my front lawn, right?”

Roseluck turned to look at Daisy, a frown on her face: “Um… no, but why would you…” Behind Daisy, a team of ponies pulled up a wagon, in which was precariously balanced the most car-shaped pile of rust that Roseluck had ever seen.

“Oh no,” she said, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

---------

Luckily, Starlight’s recommendations to the mayor were non-binding, so Roseluck and Spoiled Rich could both explain the situation to her when she got back, thus nullifying the outcome of the vote.

Later, Roseluck brought honey to book club (she was in Spoiled Rich’s book club) in return for which Spoiled Rich got the HoA to drop the complaint about her garden, so the entire thing worked out for the best.